Posts by Pascal Monett

Maltese browser game biz flings €1m sueball at Google over Adsense kerfuffle

"Google states that it alone determines what is and is not valid"

Yup, Google is God and God is not happy that somebody used their platform to make money on someone else's back.

Which is something I can actually get behind, for once.

But really, complaining that Kiwix has a load bar that is fixed to lad at seconds, and booting them for that before mentioning that they used other people's games ? Frankly, if I was in charge of explaining why somebody got the boot, I'd go straight to the "they cheated on other people's work" part and utterly forget the loading bar.

Am I to understand that if you create a website to present your own game but create a fixed 10-second loading bar for it, then Google will boot you from Adsense ?

I think that's a bit harsh. You can argue that it is part of the game experience. A bad part, granted, but I think it's up to the players to decide if they like it, not Google.

Re: If anyone gets paid,....

Nor the ad man, who is surfing on everyone else's work.

Are US border cops secretly secreting GPS trackers on vehicles without a warrant? EFF lawyers want to know

The police situation in the USA is completely out of hand

Regular police already ignore restrictions and sometimes even basic human rights, but border cops are even more crazy.

And, since they have special powers, they simply think they are literally above the law.

On top of that, government officials have long been ignorant of information requests when it inconveniences them, but with the orange baboon and his clique of chums who brazenly ignore pointed questions, a very bad example has been given.

It's starting to look like a little revolution is needed.

Today's Resident Evil: Ransomware crooks think local, not global, prey on schools, towns, libraries, courts, cities...

"criminals are now upping the amounts demanded"

. . because they know insurers will pay up.

But you give an example where the insurer specifically did not pay up, because recovery would be more expensive.

And you cite multiple people saying that small government organizations would take the least costly route.

So, if crims are increasing their cost, it means they are getting closer to the point where recovery would be less costly.

Not very logical.

Hey, it's 2019. Quit making battery-draining webpages – say makers of webpage-displaying battery-powered kit

"It's clear Apple appears to be learning its lesson"

No, it is not. Given that Apple has the most energy-intensive mobile web site out there, until Apple has made a change to that situation, it clearly hasn't learned its lesson.

It's not because a few Apple employees are saying some things about energy conservation that Apple Corp is going to steer in that direction. Hell, they even mention Brave, a fast browser that has ad-blocking built in. Apple is not going to switch to telling people to use Brave.

Microsoft's only gone and published the exFAT spec, now supports popping it in the Linux kernel

Is Microsoft really that desperate ?

Or is MS actually starting to change ? Could it be that enough Linux-friendly people have been hired, or is it just the fact that MS sees sooo many Linux servers, phones and slabs as is starting to realize that its citadel is becoming its tomb ?

In any case, I think I noticed a pig with wing stubs today.

Researchers studying Facebook's impact on democracy decry lack of data access, warn: We'll walk...

". . a definitive timetable for when the full set of proposed data can be made available"

You've gotta hand it to The Zuck, he knows how to delay and faffle about and tire everyone out.

First he ignores convocations, then he says that nothing was wrong, then he says the issues don't concern FaceBook, then he grudgingly accepts a modicum of oversight only to turn around after a long period and, hands helplessly held apart, states that giving up the required data might affect people's privacy and that, in conscience, he can't allow that.

That is a master waffler, no doubt there.

GDPR...rrrse! Mass-mail fail as German biz asks UK resellers for consent to use their dealer data

Ah, the joys of career-ending emails

Though thankfully never having been subject to the embarrassment of sending such mails, I have received a few in my time.

It's always best when you get the complete contact list of the condescending arse who thinks he's better than everyone and does not hesitate to show it. Mind you, I never got to rib him on his mistake, he curiously very quickly left the company after that mail.

Otto man thrown under the bus: 33 crim trade secret theft charges for ex-Uber exec Anthony Levandowski

"That case would be abruptly settled in 2018 after just four days in court"

So Uber folded after just four days. So not only is Uber guilty as hell, but it has no guts either.

Oh, when it comes to cheating people out of their revenue, or cities out of their taxes, yeah, then Uber is strong. But catch it red-handed and it becomes a whimpering dog.

Harvard freshman kicked out of US over OTHER people's posts on his social media

"incompatible with the culture and mission of higher education and our national ideals.”

Um, buddy, I think you didn't get the memo : your national ideals have been redefined. Corrupt, racist assholes are in charge, and they want America to Be White And Republican Again.

The Tell-Tale Heart! Boffins build an AI that can tell your sex using just your heartbeat

The black box nature of convolutional neural networks

We're going to end up creating an honest-to-goodness AI and we won't be able to explain how.

Just you wait an see.

AMD agrees to cough up $35-a-chip payout over eight-core Bulldozer advertising fiasco

"Typically class action attorneys gets 15-20%"

Normally, in a world that is just, a lawyer should be paid for his work, not get a share of the money that is supposed to go to the people who have been wronged.

But, this is the US of A, a country which has defined the term lobbying and set the example of how not to manage corporations or professional interests, so what else can you expect ?

Huawei smartphone sales up but only thanks to China as US trade ban gives punters the jitters

Good going Google

Way to encourage Huawei to build its own store and do away with you entirely.

You do realize that Huawei does not need you, long term ? I know you're used to everyone coming to you, but you see, in China they have a peculiarity that exists nowhere else : they speak Chinese. Everyone else in the world has some knowledge of English, and you provide translation services to be sure, but China is the one country in the world that will have no trouble writing you off and going their own way.

So you might want to think again before actually giving them a push in that direction.

Eight-hour comms lags and shock discoveries: 30 years after Voyager 2 visited gas giant Neptune

We'll need to send more probes for that. I would heartily agree to send a probe in orbit around Neptune.

Imagine Siri as your IT help desk. Too scary? OK, imagine PAYG on-prem IT. Oh, too much? How about everything on Kubernetes?

Ah, the joys of bleeding-edge tech

Who is not interested in renting what you own ? Thank God VMware finally reacted to all the mails and phone calls I made clamoring to be able to pay for what I already have.

I now eagerly await the law that will tax me for the air I breathe. Only then will we truly be in the 3rd millennium.

Biz forked out $115k to tout 'Time AI' crypto at Black Hat. Now it sues organizers because hackers heckled it

And, by filling their PR with terms like "multidimensional", just reading their blurb smacks of bull.

Oh, and I'm glad that the encryption takes time into account. That's nice. And they're using a statistical analysis machine, for all the good that will do.

They missed working blockchain in, though. Too bad. That would have clinched their success to be sure.

It will never be safe to turn off your computer: Prankster harnesses the power of Windows 95 to torment fellow students

Re: what it was like when you were young

Let me see, ah, yes. The Internet was barely on its feet, computers were worth about as much as car, and a T1 was the Holy Grail.

Pranking ? That bastard hadn't even been born yet. Oh, and the United States was actually viewed as the best country in the world.

Got anything to add ?

American ISPs fined $75,000 for fuzzing airport's weather radar by stealing spectrum

An ISP fined $25K ? What's the use ?

Fine at least $250K. Otherwise, it won't even be noticed.

Security gone in 600 seconds: Make-me-admin hole found in Lenovo Windows laptop crapware. Delete it now

Re: Why aren't there a gazillion class actions being filed every day over this crapshoot?

Because the lawyers are the only ones who benefit ?

Pokemon Go becomes Pokemon No as games biz Niantic agrees to curb trespassing addicts

Re: not a lot of time to do digging

That is not an excuse. If there is not enough time to check, then that point should not be authorized to show up, period.

Next, you start Google Earth in the morning and use it to check the coordinates coming in. That should take about five seconds.

Oh, the data coming in does not mention GPS coordinates ? Your fault for sucking at defining locations.

No new point should go active before being checked. End of.

Oracle OKs Oracle investors to sue Oracle: Put NetSuite suit before a judge – board panel

Wait a minute

How is it that the Board of a company gets to decide if a class-action lawsuit against itself should proceed ?

Isn't that something for a judge to decide ?

Or has the justice system in the USA just got fed up and handed itself over to corporations because they finally decided that that is how it works anyway ?

Google bans politics, aka embarrassing stuff that gets leaked, from internal message boards

They may own the equipment and make the rules, but apparently everyone has missed one little detail : the law says that no employer can order employees to refrain from discussing any specific subject at all.

On top of that, Google has so many fingers in so many pies that just about anything is work-related.

Including discussions about censorship.

Leaked EU doc plots €100bn fund to protect European firms against international tech giants

Re: What makes the EU think they can do better than the VCs?

That's not the point. What we have here is a new trough for the snouts of those in the know.

And, as for creating yet another multinational behemoth intent on harvesting all my details to make money on ads, I'm not sure it is an advantage to have a European one.

I'm already saturated with ads, don't need yet another source.

Don't trust Facebook's Libra cryptocurrency, boffins warn: Zuck & Co know that hash is king

Not a bot. I just live in France - so maybe I get a time zone advantage on the rest of you.

Plus, I'm working part-time at the moment.

"could lead to biased decision-making"

Oh don't worry, it's FaceBook. Biased decision-making is their specialty.

I didn't need to read this to know that I do not want anything to do with Libra, but this is a nice confirmation of my own bias.

US regulators push back against White House plan to police social media censorship

Funny that, when I look at his pictures intelligence is not something I see there.

Re: nothing [..] can eclipse the constitution

Except for taking power, putting in place your croonies who do as you say and block any attempt to set things straight, and then surfing on Congress' inability to impeach you.

Apart from that, yeah, nothing.

Got a burning desire for a Hololens 2.0? Microsoft insists its math coprocessor won't be too hot for headgear

"125Mbit of SRAM"

Well one thing is sure, that thing is not running Windows in any way, shape or form.

I'm guessing some variety of Linux, it's the only thing that could work in such a space. Anyone know more ? I've tried finding out, but I didn't get anything other than gushing articles about how good it is, and lighter it is (by a few grams), and how it connects to Azure all by itself.

Oh yeah, that last bit - makes it off my buyers list.

The story so far: How's that Autonomy High Court battle with HPE looking at half-time?

Re: millions of HPE's money will have been squandered

It's okay, they've already squandered billions. A few millions more is not a financial problem.

Besides, it's HP(E). They're used to squandering money.

As browser rivals block third-party tracking, Google pitches 'Privacy Sandbox' peace plan

"privacy is paramount to us"

Oh yes, it definitely is. You want to know everything about our privacy in order to monetize it, we know.

And that's why we have NoScript and uBlock Origin.

You don't like that ? Well it's your fault in the first place.

Steam cleaned of zero-day security holes after Valve turned off by bug bounty snub outrage

"there was an exchange that resulted in him being banned"

Well it's simple then : publish the content of the exchange and show everyone what happened. Because there's a good chance that somebody started to be insulting and the other someone didn't appreciate and shot back. So publishing the exchange will settle the matter.

Then Twitter can get outraged again and we'll know if we need to bang on Valve to reverse the decision or not.

But of course, that won't happen, because it would be a breach of confidentiality or something. Too bad.

Re: Disgusting

again !

My god, it's full of tsars: A gun-toting Russian humanoid robot is on its way to the International Space Station

"the bot will be carrying out menial tasks"

Yes, like inserting malware into the guidance system, sabotaging experiments, covering the solar panels with a special fluid that gradually turns opaque in the sunlight . . . you know, menial tasks.

On a side note, anybody wonder why absolutely nothing was said about this launch before it was successful ? Nobody was talking about this a week before launch, and it would have been a great attention-grabber, don't you think ?

Maybe the Soviet Union still lies in the shadows, ensuring that only good news gets out. It the rocket had failed, we might never have heard about this.

I couldn't possibly tell you the computer's ID over the phone, I've been on A Course™

Re: He should be proud that of that guy

Obviously the training should have forced a bit on the notion of difference between internal and external calls. Everybody knows the Helpdesk, if your scammer is calling from there, all is already lost.

Overstock dot-gone: Surplus biz CEO now surplus to requirements, ejects after Russian spy fling, deep state rant

"our keiretsu of blockchain firms"

Hm hmm. Yeees, of coourse. Nurse ? Bring me 50mg of benzohydrophenylatrium, stat ! We just might be able to bring his conscience back to within the borders of the solar system.

Maybe.

End of an era for ULA as the last Delta IV Medium rocket leaves launch pad

Yeah, sure

The USA is of course going to spring billions to help create a replica of something it already has simply because the UK was stupid enough to leave a political entity that was creating it and now the UK wants its own.

I don't think that's going to happen, guys. You wanted out, you've got out.

Of everything.

Gartner awakens from trance, tells huddled villagers: 5G revenue will almost double to $4.2bn next year!

"Gartner has performed its ritual reading of market omens"

I think Gartner needs to change sacrificial animal. Maybe switch from chicken to duck ?

TalkTalk's voice-over is writing speeds that its text can't match: Ad pulled from broadcast

"We immediately took action to correct it once we became aware" . .

. . that someone had noticed our intentional falsehood and reported it.

There, FTFY.

Devs invited to bake 'Run on Google Cloud' button into git repos... By Google, of course

"easy deployment of containers to a managed service"

Yay, an even more efficient method to post private identifying data on a unsecure, internet-accessible server.

Just what the world needs nowadays.

Shhh! Microsoft, Intel, Google and more sign up to the Confidential Computing Consortium

Well one thing is for sure

Like it or not, Microsoft practically has to be part of such an initiative - if only to ensure that it doesn't go off again on its own and creates a conflicting standard.

Which it still could anyway, to be sure. And will, if it doesn't like how things will go.

Buying a Chromebook? Don't forget to check that best-before date

That's Chromebook right out of my buying list then

It is not acceptable to me that a supplier artificially limits updating hardware to less than the hardware's expected lifespan.

If I call a plumber for a kitchen sink, he won't tell me that he can't do anything about it because the sink is more than 6 years old. Only in IT do you have companies arbitrarily decide to stop supporting something they sold. And here, it's even worse, because the expiry date is not tied to the sell date.

That is disgusting.

Here's a top tip: Don't trust the new person – block web domains less than a month old. They are bound to be dodgy

I have a setting in my brain that makes it easy : don't click on dodgy links.

I never click on a bit.ly link or any other shortened link. I distrust those by default. I always check where the link goes and if it doesn't go to somewhere logical or reasonable, I don't click.

Of course, all that means that I'm not part of those people who just blindly click, then belatedly wonder how their computer got hacked.

Eighty-year-old US 'web scam man' on the run after pocketing $250,000 in Dem 'donations'

The people who donated might see a problem

Microsoft: Reckon our code is crap? Prove it and $30k could be yours

"Yo browser sucks, Micro$oft" is unlikely to go down well

Yeah, but still, Yo browser sucks, Micro$oft.

Sorry script kiddies, hacktivism isn't cool anymore: No one cares about stuff that's easy-peasy to defend against

Hacktivism ? Didn't that become obsolete ?

Once upon a time the Internet was a paltry hundred million web sites. Deface one and it would be noticed. Today the Internet is billions of websites, the most consulted being the ones who are the hardest to hack, and if you hack a less-consulted one it will hardly be worthy a mention on Twitter.

Criminals, on the other hand, are making hay out of infiltrating and encrypting company data for ransom, and they're doing it by the bucketload apparently, because they have incentive to be better. Beats hacktivists by a country mile apparently.

Moore's Law isn't dead, chip boffin declares – we need it to keep chugging along for the sake of AI

Hey, I will welcome our 32GB SRAM CPU overlords as soon as they deign to show up.

Latest sneak peek at PowerShell 7 ups the telemetry but... hey... is that an off switch?

What the hell is the use of that ?

What is the point of getting a log on people's use of a given command ? If you're going to log command usage, why limit logging to a subset ?

I can't even begin to fathom the reasons for Microsoft's telemetry. It is useless to prevent botched patches, so what is MS doing with it ?

Brits are sitting on a time bomb of 40m old electronic devices that ought to be recycled

Don't be so picky. Just take dollars, like everybody else.

At least you can easily change the battery with an Android

Welcome to Hollywood, Claranet-style: You've (not) got mail, or hosted sites for that matter

"Apologies for any disruption"

Is it me, or is there an epidemic among hosting companies these last few days ?

It can't be a coincidence, now can it ? If the Flying Spaghetti Monster trying to drum up some attention ?