Posts by Pascal Monett

Is this the way the cookie wall crumbles? Dutch data watchdog says nee to take-it-or-leave-it consent

God bless the Dutch

And blessed be the GDPR, which is really starting to look like the thing that is going to give us back our Internet experience.

While this CEO may be stiff, his customers are rather stuffed: Quadriga wallets finally cracked open – nothing inside

Thank goodness Bitcoin is there to stick it to The Man, right ?

So happy that all those financial rebels have such a secure and reliable solution, well away from the prying eyes and overbearing regulation of pesky government.

Funny, but I'm not all that bothered about government oversight when it comes to ensuring that my money remains in my possession.

Put down the cat, coffee, beer pint, martini, whatever you're holding, and make sure you've updated Chrome (unless you enjoy being hacked)

So, viewing an ad can be bad ?

Isn't ads that thing that Google is doing it's best to ensure we see, ahem, for our "protection" ?

Well gee, it looks like ad blockers are not so useless after all, eh Tim ?

Unless you want your wine bar to look like a brothel, purple curtains are a no-no apparently

Good on him for standing up

Congratulations on how the guy is dealing with the issue : openly, honestly and calmly.

It is high time the rabid prudes step down a notch and let other people live their lives. Purple is not the colour of prostitution either - it seems to me that it is seen every Easter in Christian churches and catholic cardinals have been seen wearing that color - so zip it, prudes, you're just revealing your shameful desires as usual.

TalkTalk kept my email account active for 8 years after I left – now it's spamming my mates

This would normally be a rant about sheer incompetence

But TalkTalk, so it would be entirely redundant.

I am looking forward to a lawsuit.

Uber won't face criminal charges after its robo-car killed woman crossing street

DISGUSTING

That's really all there is to say. I don't care what the excuse is : it was Uber's test vehicle running on automatic. Uber is liable.

I hope somebody is going to appeal this appaling decision.

From hard drive to over-heard drive: Boffins convert spinning rust into eavesdropping mic

Sign firmware ? Not worth the bother.

If my PC gets hijacked I think that the data on it is very much more interesting to the miscreant then trying to find out what I'm saying, which is frankly of no interest to most people.

If we're talking about espionage, a good directional microphone or a bug are time-honored procedures with a very good success rate.

And you can even hear whispers with those.

You won't get Huawei with this, America! Chinese giant sues US government over 'unconstitutional' ban

So it's actually because Beijing can force Huawei to cooperate ?

In that case Europe urgently needs to ban US equipment because the NSA can do and _has_ done exactly that.

Goes to show that you need to be careful when you say something, there could be unintended consequences.

UK Ministry of Justice: Surprise! We tested out biometric tech in prisons and 'visitors' with drugs up their bums ran away

Is it just me ?

Biometric trials that fail, facial recog that fails miserably, government IT projects that don't stop failing and, for some unfathomable reason, are never stopped - does anyone else have the impression that, in general and broadly speaking, Benny Hill is in charge and has been for the past decade ?

Two in five 'AI startups' essentially have no AI, mega-survey of nearly 3,000 upstarts finds

2 in 5 have no AI, 3 in 5 have Bullshit AI

It's statistical analysis, people, nothing more.

If it was AI, you'd need a lot more than a few pixels to make it take an elephant for a banana.

Civil servants 'Sir Humphrey' their way through grilling on UK.gov's digital transformation

Let's make one thing clear

Yes Minister was a documentary. A case-by-case educational show in mastering civil servant procedures.

So why the surprise when they apply the procedures ?

Mine's the one with the plausible denial examples.

Ah, this military GPS system looks shoddy but expensive. Shall we try to break it?

I don't think it is that difficult to write that kind of policy, but there is not enough popcorn in the world when it comes to enforcing it.

Re: why it was separated deity only knows!

Accountants know as well. Hardware gets amortized, software doesn't. That is why it is very important to have both lines on the invoice.

Sniff the love: Subaru's SUVs overwhelmed by scent of hair shampoo, recalls 2.2 million cars

Holy cow, it's everywhere

So now I learn that we emit potentially noxious gases simply by wanting to stay clean and smell nice. Terrific. What other doomsday mechanism will our consumer society dump on our ignorant hides ?

It might be time to slow things down a bit and not rush to production with every half-baked idea simply because we can.

If at first you don't succeed, you may be trying to install that Slow Ring Windows 10 build

"the gang at Redmond appear to have lost patience with the company responsible"

Well, in defense of the company responsible, the board is still on life support after having been told that their most precious asset needs to be changed. Oh, not the game, of course, that's just the money-maker. No, it's the anti-cheat, that has been lovingly crafted by Northern Trolls in specially-made dank caverns with WiFi access and an endless supply of chocolate frogs. Do you have any idea how difficult it is to gather all those chocolate frogs ?

And they're going to have to - gasp - do it again ? Pity the stock price, for Pete's sake.

Okay, seriously now, it's a game company. Most of them don't have a stellar track record for keeping talent. Most of them do have a reputation for crunch time that lasts months, if not the whole development time. Then you have to find a team smart enough to not only understand the existing anti-cheat model, but also grep the required changes and implement them correctly - a rather demanding task, eh, Microsoft ?

All of this hoopla and most games I play have no anti-cheating issues. Minecraft ? You can whitelist the participants and, if you don't, there's a plethora of add-ons specifically tailored for tracking cheaters. None of that has anything to do with the OS. 7 Days To Die ? There's an entire anti-cheating system included in Steam apparently, and I haven't heard a peep about issues on Windows 1 0.

So I'm thinking that this is likely an issue for some other kinds of entities, the likes of EA Games or Origin, who are pretty crappy at how they handle players in the first place. I have banned their stores from my PCs due to the shoddy experience they have imposed on me. If that is indeed the case, then I can only rejoice that Microsoft is leaving those PCs in the dust.

Three posts and BAM! Linuxed.

That didn't take long at all.

YouTube's pedo problem is so bad, it just switched off comments on millions of vids of small kids to stem the tide of vileness

Re: Is this accurately reported El Reg?

Um, the fact that YT is blocking comments now doesn't give you a clue ?

The BBC might be right about the future, but comment blocking is happening now.

I myself never look at comments elsewhere than on El Reg - this is the only place it is worth it. But I do find curious that YT hasn't made comments an option in the hands of the channel owner. With parental guidance options.

I would say that children have no business posting on YT, but education is outrated these days.

Vodafone exec dons tartan tam-o'-shanter, clutches bottle of Irn-Bru, in snap shared with firm... just before Glasgow staff told of redundo dates

Oh come now - cut him some slack

After all, he's in charge of customer care, not employee care.

And it's a good thing too, because he obviously doesn't care about the employees.

The biggest uptick in demand for software devs by bosses is for... *rubs eyes* blockchain engineers?!?

I need to find me one of those companies

I need to find one of those companies that has money to burn on useless tech and convince them that my new securchain technology will put them two steps ahead of the competition.

Then I should be able to milk those idiots until I retire.

Don't mean to alarm you, but Boeing has built an unmanned fighter jet called 'Loyal Wingman'

Stealth indeed.

We already have the film, we know how this is going to end.

Slow Ring Windows 10 fragged by anti-cheat software in the games you're playing at work, says Insiders supremo

And that argument falls flat when your disc breaks because they do not send you a new disc.

If I had a license, then the disc is irrelevant and breaking one should ensure you get another free. But no, you have to pay for a new disc, meaning you pay a second license.

So that means that that disc is mine, and licensing terms can stuff it where the sun don't shine.

Of course, that only mattered when games were actually sold on discs. With rampant multiplayer everywhere, all they need to do now is control your access to the server. They don't care about discs any more.

China's tech giants are a security threat to the UK, says Brit spy bigwig

Re: peek into them and see

You do not want to ask Huawei to send you items for inspection - that will obviously turn up nothing since, if Huawei was indeed guilty of the accusations, it would hardly be stupid enough to send actual evidence.

You need to stop a container at the border and confiscate some stuff for inspection. That is the only way you have a chance to find evidence - if there is any actual evidence to be found.

Indeed, gentlemen don't.

Unfortunately, there are no gentlemen in government.

'God, Send Mobiles,' the industry prayed back in the '90s. This time, 5G actually has it covered

I'm not concerned by all the hubbub

I've got fiber to the house now, and 4G is more than enough for my needs when I'm not at home, so I'll be watching this craze from the sidelines. I'm in no hurry to replace my phone anyway.

In a galaxy far, far away, aliens may have eight-letter DNA – like the kind NASA-backed boffins just crafted

Or they could just wait for the jaws to the face and find out that, yes, an 8-base can not only be alive, but lethal as well.

I'm getting out before it's too late. Mine's the one with a flamethrower in the pocket.

Blue Monday: Efforts to inspire teamwork with swears back-fires for n00b team manager

On the fence here

I do not agree about "when to not". It was his idea, so he should have taken responsibility for it. On the other hand, he should also have been told about the data-skimming, so taking responsilibility and pointing that out could have saved him.

Not that there was much fallout on the whole affair anyway, it seems.

Japan's Hayabusa 2 probe has got the horn for space rock Ryugu – a sampling horn, that is

Little step by little step, we weave our doom.

Decoding the President, because someone has to: Did Trump just blow up concerted US effort to ban Chinese 5G kit?

"the issue has reached the highest levels of government"

The issue is that the highest levels of government are held by people with the morals of drug cartels - but in more stupid. They say incredibly stupid things that are regularly proven wrong, but they think that, because of their position, their words have a special weight. They don't understand that respect is something that is earned, it is not a given. And it must be accompanied by acts that are on par.

When you declare a National Emergency, you do not go and play golf the very next day. The act is not on par with the words.

Google: Hmm, this government regulation stuff looks important. Let's stick some more lobbyists on that

"government affairs and public policy"

Right. Google is just being nice, soon it will be "Bureau of Law and Decision Making" - at least if Google has it the way it wants.

Not so smart after all: A techie's tale of toilet noise horror

Computer sound is on in an open space ?

As far as I'm concerned, that will last exactly one update before either it gets muted or it's keyboard-to-the-face time.

Computers have no business making noise in a business environment.

Northern UK smart meter rollout is too slow, snarls MPs' committee

Now, now, everything is fine

Have no fear, Mrs Reeves, tthis will turn out to be the second greatest clusterkluck since the update of the NHS

Just you wait and see.

Europe-style 5G standards testing? Consistent definitions? Who the fsck wants that, asks US mobe industry

If it wasn't pathetic, it'd be almost funny

And here comes the USA again, pretending that it is the sole arbiter of what is right.

I get that it wants to be first but, just like that annoying bully in college, wanting it does not make it so. Especially when nobody is depending on you to reach a decision.

The CTIA has nothing on the GSM Association, no influence, no leverage. Basically the only thing it has achieved is to very publicly describe how it is going to be screwed.

I'm counting on the GSM Association to just ignore that kid in the back row and get on with the project.

Secret mic in Nest gear wasn't supposed to be a secret, says Google, we just forgot to tell anyone

So used to it they forgot to tell

Talk about a damning indictment of our society...

HPE wants British ex-CFO to testify in UK Autonomy lawsuit before Uncle Sam sentences him

Just one question

Is an "an enraged Hewlett-Packard" going to pursue and prosecute the idiot who agreed on the deal at HP without proper discovery as well ?

Because okay, they cooked the books, but you were too incompetent to see the $8 billion hole you threw yourself into. That is a magnitude of incompetence that is striking in itself.

Down productivity tools: Microsoft Teams takes a Monday tumble

Re: Why do things have to keep changing?

So, people should actually stop trying to make better things then ?

Want to create fake web profile pics? This creepy AI tool makes them on demand. Plus predictive policing, and more

"people could be taken in by AI-generated news articles that read like a child wrote them"

That's happening on Facebook all the time. It's Facebook that is a damning indictment of the state of our civilization.

Crypto crash leads to inventory pile-up at Nvidia, sales slaughtered

"I think that the demand will return"

More like : you're praying it will.

It will. But drop the mining shit, okay ? Or at least make a special mining line and leave a line for those who are actually interested in gaming.

Remember those guys ? Gamers ? Those who put you where you are now ?

The algorithms! They're manipulating all of us! reckon human rights bods Council of Europe

The private sector ? Act with fairness ? Have you heard of Facebook ?

If the private sector was intent on acting with fairness we wouldn't need GDPR.

As far as companies are concerned, if it isn't explicitely against the law, it's fair game to try whether it's moral or not. And that is not something that is exclusively reserved to US companies either.

The self-regulating market is a pipe dream served by selfish people intent on preserving their situation - the rest can be damned.

So regulate. Make laws and enforce them. That is the only thing that will protect the people and keep things fair.

Bad news for WannaCry slayer Marcus Hutchins: Judge rules being young, hungover, and in a strange land doesn't obviate evidence

"while talking to an unnamed associate over a recorded prison telephone line"

Holy shit man, how stupid do you have to be to go and say things like that on a prison line ?

Haven't you seen any one of the innumerable Columbo, CSI ad nauseam to remember the "Anything you say can and will be used against you" line ?

Well you're going to remember that now, I'd wager. Too bad it's too late.

A once-in-a-lifetime Opportunity: NASA bids emotional farewell to its cocky, hardworking RC science car on Mars

All good things come to an end

The mission was a great success, and congratulations are in order for all of its participants.

Opportunity : Science the way it should be done.

Judge snubs FBI's bid to snaffle Autonomy docs ahead of founder Mike Lynch's UK showdown

So Lynch lied

He exaggerated the value of his company, okay that's bad, but where was HP's due diligence ? What band of incompetent interns audited Autonomy and contented themselves with rubber-stamping the whole thing ?

If I buy a house without checking it out, I don't think I can sue the previous owner if all the nice pictures I saw were just wallpaper and cleverly painted plywood. Why should a multi-billion dollar company get that privilege ?

Ever used VFEmail? No? Well, chances are you never will now: Hackers wipe servers, backups in 'catastrophic' attack

Someone please explain to me

. . how an external hacker without any contact (accomplice) in the company could totally wipe all production servers and all backup servers in one go, without ever being detected ?

Okay, forget the detection part - the IT admins could be clueless - but that does not go with the fact that they had different credentials for different servers. They were at least doing something right.

And why go and nuke everything if you're just a hacker ? That's not going to make you any money.

This smells very strongly of an inside job. Done by a state-level actor or not, this is not some group out of Sevastopol just having some fun.

NHS needs to pull its finger out and prep staff for future robotics, genomics, data-led healthcare

"investment in IT systems [..] as well as the training [..] will have to be planned carefully"

Is that a public recognition of the fact that that has most certainly not been the case up to now ?

The implicit implication that that is utterly unacceptable will be discussed at a later panel.

RIP Dr Peuto, Zilog and Sun's bright SPARC

Re: Halt and Catch Fire

On behalf of grumpy old sods, allow me to tell you young whippersnappers that we know it's that old.

And we're proud of being able to grump about it.

Uncle Sam to its friends around the world: You can buy technology the easy way, or the Huawei

"out of security concerns"

It's all well and good to cite security concerns, but if you're up to government-level declarations of punishment, it would be nice to see some proof that those concerns are valid.

And, for the moment, all we have is bluster and rhetoric, which is a bit thin to base state-level menaces on.

But hey, it's the Trump era. Who needs reason ?

Intel SGX 'safe' room easily trashed by white-hat hacking marauders: Enclave malware demo'd

"performing anti-piracy decryption of protected Hollywood movies"

Weird just how much that actually sounds like pirating them.

In any case, I rather agree with Intel on this one : know whose code you're running. Don't run code from just anywhere, just like you don't click on a link in a mail from someone you've never met before.

620 million accounts stolen from 16 hacked websites now for sale on dark web, seller boasts

"I'm just a tool used by the system."

No you are not. You made the choice to become a person inflicting misery on others, you could have very well chosen to do otherwise. You are, however, the perfect target for a number of tools, such as a golf club, a tire iron, maybe even a sledgehammer.

Ever yearn for the Windows 95 shutdown sound? TADA! There's an Electron app for that

"getting the thing to talk to the internet was challenging"

Sounds like the implementation was spot-on then.

Makes me feel like getting an XP VM to run my old Transport Tycoon and Settlers Xth Anniversary once again.

Leaky child-tracking smartwatch maker hits back at bad PR

"the accuracy of the watch was only +/- 500m"

So not only is he selling a piece of shit GPS, he's also selling one that is not secure ? And it's not a problem because you can't have 100% security ?

I'd really like to ask him if he has a lock on his door and, if so, why.

Not going up in my esteem is the least I can say.

Lovely website you got there. Would be a shame if we, er, someone were to sink it: Google warns EU link tax will magnify media monetary misery

Ah, capitalism at its best

Google is basically claiming that, if it cannot continue making almost all the money, then other people will suffer.

Here's hoping that the EU will not be impressed by that.