Posts by Pascal Monett

Intel and Micron downgrade 3D Xpoint relationship from friends with benefits to partners

"Micron can [PR bull] maximiz[ing] the benefits for [..] shareholders"

That there is the real reason, as usual : money, profit and shareholder ROI.

Customers are just the inconvenience that companies put up with to get money.

Western Digital formats hard disk drive factory as demand spins down

Yeah, case in point : where am I going to go to replace my NAS drives now ?

I don't have the money to put 4 3TB SSD drives in there, not at current prices.

I guess I'll just have to advance my plans to replace the 3TB drives I have now with 8TB drives sooner than later, and hope that they'll last until SSDs become a dime a dozen.

Gov.UK to make its lovely HTML exportable as parlous PDFs

Re: Stand alone, reliable documents

A pdf also requires a computer/device, the knowledge to install a PDF reader and the ability to use it.

If you're talking about printing then I don't care if you printed from a web page, a Word document or a PDf - it's printed and that's the end of the problem.

Azure certifications are awful, Microsoft admits, so it has made new ones

Certifications, pah !

As long as the exams are done by sitting in front of a computer and divining which option is the least infeasable, certs are really only an excuse for the existence of an entire industry.

A real cert would be a panel of three experts grilling the candidate for twenty minutes, or, for more practical things, a misconfigured server to correct and put in working order. Or sit the programmer in front of a computer and give him two hours to pound out the code to solve a given problem, then review the code. Bonus points if the program compiles and actually works.

Obviously, that would rather limit the number of certified people and would kill the certification industry as it stands today. But the certification would actually mean something.

Notes/Domino is alive! Second beta of version 10 is imminent

Notes haters gotta hate.

As a developer, I love the Notes environment. I can do everything ; use LScript, JavaScript, make webservices, design web-enabled applications... I even made an approval process for the Boss's iPhone which worked without processing anything on the phone side - all server-side processing. No add-ons needed !

I've written code to FTP data to mainframes, reformet CSV files for JIT server treatment, send webservice requests to the proper server for data processing - all without using anything other than the Notes Designer.

It is one hell of a powerful tool.

But the client ? Even I must admit that that thing is a dinosaur that the metor missed. It needs not a redesign, it needs to die in fire and be entirely replaced with something else.

But for development ? I can do anything.

I hope IBM will finally put some marketing muscle behind the next version.

Two-factor auth totally locks down Office 365? You may want to check all your services...

I always love these tales of companies losing money because of a mail

It tells me two things :

1) the company is not using a CRM, does not have client/supplier account numbers on file and

2) nobody bats an eye when getting a mail telling them to wire money to account 0123456789, instead of "wire this amount to client/supplier XXXX using the already recorded IBAN we have"

They deserve everything they get.

Timehop admits to more data leakage, details GDPR danger

"by the time incident response processes kicked in"

That means that "incident response" is the headless chicken phase of the IT department panicking amongst calls from upper management to know what the hell is going on, preventing anything from actually being done.

Brilliant example of closing the stable door after the horse has bolted.

Now maybe would the time to analyse proper network surveillance options and revise the security procedures ? Nah, just make noise about how security is at the heart of everything you do and lessons will be learned to prevent this from ever happening again until next time.

Tomorrow it'll be business as usual anyway, so why spend money that could go to CxO bonuses ?

I see you're trying to leak a file! US military seeks Clippy-like AI to stop future Snowdens

More "AI" nonsense

"machine-learning technology could be used to suggest levels of classification, as well as automatically monitor and log records of who accessed files, where they were accessed, which systems were used to access the materials, if any changes were made, and whether that person really had a need to know the contents"

If I can accept that data analysis could suggest classification levels, you don't need pseudo-AI to log activity records, detect changes and flag inappropriate access. Those are things that we have been doing for decades already with normal code.

This is just more "AI" bullshit to make people think things are going to work better.

Your phone may be able to clean up snaps – but our AI is much better at touching up, say boffins

And this will be defined by future historians of what is left of the human race as the exact moment the conflict started.

Google offers to leave robocallers hanging on the telephone

"If the AI detects that a machine is calling you and you don't want to speak to the machine ..."

Why on Earth would I need an app for that ?

If I get a call and a machine is on the other side, I'm not waiting for a "do you need help with that ?" popup, I'm cutting the call as fast as I can get to the bloody button (when the fuck are we ever going to regain the satisfaction of slamming a receiver down ?).

Can "The Future" (TM) please stop with the diapers and the nannying ?

God am I looking forward to retirement and sending this whole technological shit to the toilet where it belongs. Give me a fiber connection, a house in the mountains surrounded by a bear pit (fully stocked with bears, of course) and paintball Gatlings on the first-story walkway with LAN target acquisition and remote firing and I will be in Heaven before my time.

Outage outrage: TSB app offers users a TITSUP* encore

@ boltar

Yeah, but this is the Internet.

We'll give a shit about other people's experiences when we've come out of our mother's basement and had some ourselves.

Re: Never mind that,

Yes, let's torch all the banks and use Bitcoins instead.

Or let's not. I like being able to eat every day, and not need to wait for some Exchange run by incompetent criminals to decide to implement a transfer at outrageous rates.

Fresh cup of WTF with lunch? TeamViewer's big in Twitter's domination-as-a-service scene

Oh God, I am on the edge of my seat.

Waiting to fall over.

<snooze>

Well, each to his own I suppose. I'll continue googling "tits & stockings", thank you.

You accessed your FaceBook account from your work computer ?

There are things I'd like to say about that, but decency prevents me from doing so.

Your IT admin might want to have a word with you, though.

US taxman wants AI to do the security checks it seemingly can't do itself

Re: @ James 51

The lack of them ? The lack ??

Because you think that Apple, Google, Microsoft and Uber are paying their fair share of tax ?

Get those four to pay proper taxes and you could practically double the salary of every teacher in the States. And give them proper equipement. And probably refurbish their schools.

Boffin botheration as IET lifts axe on 20-year-old email alias service

Another "use someone else's server" service bites the dust

Yep, the gentlemen's agreement of "we give you a prestigious email address for nothing and forward anything that comes in to whatever you want" is now coming to an end.

Just like the good old days of nobles riding into the Church on their horses is long gone.

Sorry guys, you had it good for a such a long time that you thought the rules were set in stone, but the truth is you used someone else's service, based your life around it and now that service is being yanked.

Great idea too, creating your website logins on a forwarded email. Like the website cared what your email was in the first place.

Despite all the IoT bullshit about managing your house from your phone (using someone else's server), the future looks squarely set to "you manage your own shit and if not, you takes your chances".

In this case, the chips are now down and the house is closing shop. I think the global message is clear : don't trust someone else's server.

Malware-slinging scum copied D-Link's code-signing certificates to dress up PC nasties

"copies of code-signing certificates"

I wonder how that could happen. I'm thinking insiders got them out and sold them off in each case. Or maybe a targeted phishing expedition got lucky.

In either case, big fail on certificate security on the part of the companies involved. Given we don't hear of this too often, I guess once in a while is somewhat unavoidable.

Nissan 'fesses up to fudging emissions data

Nah, Renault hardly knows how to make cars, let alone measure things properly, so cheating ? Totally incapable of that because not competent enough.

Absolutely... fabless: Marvell swallows a large dose of Cavium

It's called the free market. You can't shout its virtues from the rooftops when they are in your favor only to complain and grumble when they are not.

That said, I'm all for competition but, realistically, given the sheer amount of money involved in that industry, you seriously cannot expect a large number of players to survive for very long.

We're not talking pizza parlors here.

Cops suspect Detroit fuel station was hacked before 10 drivers made off with 2.3k 'free' litres

Maybe it was a busy day and it took him nine cars to notice ?

Okay, I'm going out on a limb, I know, but if it's rush hour and there's not a colleague to count on, it's conceivable.

And if the miscreants wanted to maximize the haul, they'd obviously hit when activity is high.

Re: jerry cans

If those specific ten cars all showed up one after the other at the same pump with a half dozen jerry cans - they're gonna have to have some seriously l33t 'splaining skillz to convince the plods that it was all sheer coincidence.

Re: I'm predicting they all know the station attendant in some capacity

You mean like, they've already been to that station a few times ?

Re: the entire country East of the Rockies unlivable to humans

I lived for four years in Boulder, Colorado for four years and they were the best four years of my childhood.

Right at the feet of the Rockies, you took the car and twenty minutes later you lost in the wilderness.

Gorgeous.

To this day, 40 years later I still love mountains.

And we didn't have no roaches.

Microsoft might not support Windows XP any more, but GandCrab v4.1 ransomware does

I think it's less a case of "when ya gonna learn" and more a case of "when are your managers going to allocate the funds to get you out of that hellhole" - and the answer to some cases is replacing a MRI machine that cost millions with another one that costs millions.

I've got a hunch those bastards that made the nasty are going to make WannaCry look like a walk in the park.

Basho investor to pay up $20m in damages for campaign that put biz on 'greased slide to failure'

Chester Davenport

To think that he is apparently a Distinguished Service Scroll Winner and got honors at a law school.

Looks like he was just pond scum looking to gain shark status.

Failure across the board, I say.

Slow-mo Tintri train-crash continues: Firm shuts up shop across Europe

"A recorded message stated Tintri was undergoing structural changes"

Well yeah, getting buried is indeed a "structural change".

Once again pie-in-the-sky manglement ruins a good idea and skips the ship before getting wet, letting all the deck hands drown without even throwing them a lifeline.

I hope the CxOs will find themselves at the short end of a heavy, court-imposed fine to get those ex-employees their due.

Snooping passwords from literally hot keys, China's AK-47 laser, malware, and more

"we should consider dumping passwords altogether for a better system"

I'm glad the boffins have made that bold announcement.

I am eagerly waiting for the next paragraph in which they describe said "better system".

I won't be holding my breath.

Sorry, Mark 85, but you are wrong - although not entirely. As you can see here, the US has signed all four protocols, but only ratified two, the first and the last.

I don't exactly know what impact that has, but it must be significant.

As for China, it has signed and ratified the first three protocols, but not the last.

Spidey sense is literally tingling! Arachnids detect Earth's electric field, use it to fly away

You should try Zero Punctuation - it'll blow your socks off.

We might not have a SyFy movie yet, but we have a SciShow clip where Hank explains how it works.

Given the similarities in the information from the clip and this article, seems to me that they likely were based on the same reference material. I don't know who's at El Reg's Science Desk, but that is a job well done.

AI bots suck at marking written essays, not too shabby at old Atari games, and more...

To hell in a handbasket and so on and so forth . . .

Science! Luminescent nanocrystals could lead to multi-PB optical discs

Re: I doubt writeable DVDs are stable

Well, my first CD burned in 1992 is still perfectly readable - although the programs I stored on it at the time are now completely useless.

Decision time for AI: Sometimes accuracy is not your friend

This article is full of statistical analysis, but it is not about AI

This article is proof that what is currently called AI is nothing but statistics applied to vast amounts of data.

Yes, I am positively convinced that data mining can and does bring surprising insights into what the data contains.

Nontheless, we're not asking a server "Find me the fraudulent claims". We are fine-tuning a statistical analysis tool to get the result.

A far cry from AI.

Banks told: Look, your systems WILL fail. What is your backup plan?

That is not what should be regulated

I do not see that it should be a regulatory issue that banks have proper procedures and backups in place. If they don't, they pay the costs and if they pay too much, they end up dying.

Sure, there will be a bit of a mess, but in the worst case customers will take their government-guaranteed money elsewhere and that will be that. To Big To Fail is overrated.

What I would like to see is subprimes completely forbidden and no way to recreate them. What I would like to see is a bank that manages my money honestly and doesn't try every single dirty trick to make more money at all costs.

But hey, I'd also like to win the lottery. I know where my chances are better.

Like an everflowing stream: New tech promises remote S3 nearline disk performance

"they appear to have come up with [..] a faster way of streaming files "

They're fiddling the books, storing stuff locally and playing with metadata workarounds.

There's only one true way to stream faster : use a bigger pipe (and make sure the backend can use that increase in bandwidth properly).

At last – a use for AI! Predicting an England World Cup victory

"the predicting goat"

Just one question : the people who feed and take care of this Zabiyaka, I take it they worship Zeus ?

Because any other situation, including being atheists, make them blasphemers to their own convictions.

IBM Cloud’s elasticity stretches and stretches (Big Blue's credibility?)

So IBM is having trouble getting its cloud running properly ?

Maybe it should have not laid off so many people who actually did the work, all in the name of profits.

ICANN't get no respect: Europe throws Whois privacy plan in the trash

Re: Good for regulators

Indeed, it is quite satisfying to see the pricks at ICANN taken down a notch or three.

I just hope the slapping will continue.

US Declaration of Independence labeled hate speech by Facebook bots

Re: Organized religion is the root of all evil

I beg to differ. But I as cannot possibly say it better than Patton Oswalt, I will refer you to his take on Sky Cake.

IBM wins five-year whole-of-government deal with Australia

Quantum ?

So IBM has taken q-bit processors out of the lab and learned how to program them to file and store citizen census data ?

Somehow that smacks of bullshit to me.

Re: “significant savings"

Exactly.

There will be gnashing of teeth before this is over.

Security guard cost bank millions by hitting emergency Off button

Re: most emergency buttons provide [..] no information on what, exactly, they are supposed to stop

Well, the prevailing tradition is that they stop everything in a room by cutting off all electricity that goes in (except for the lights).

Now, if you've found big red buttons marked STOP next to the door of a server room that didn't stop everything but the lights, then indeed you've found some sneaky ones.

As to "very few have been pushed", well <grin>, we've got loads of stories here that prove you wrong ):-D.

Things that make you go hmmm: Do crypto key servers violate GDPR?

Storm in a teacup

So my email user name is associated to my public key. Well my real name is associated to my phone number and that's not something that is going to change, right ?

Let's not get distracted here. There's enough to do to secure our private lives already without going off on wild goose chases like this.

India tells WhatsApp to add filters, ASAP

I seriously disagree with you

Education is indeed the answer and I do not view that education is relative.

Education is teaching a person that things need to be viewed with a critical mind, that people are not to be feared simply because they do not have the same color or culture that you are used to, that diversity is the richness of the human race and that stupidity and greed have no color.

Education is the incessant treadmill of treacle-like progress toward that goal, with all the insufficient budgets and systemic failures due to political cowardice and expedience. Aside from the fact that we know very well how to teach people to read and write, but we still haven't a procedure to teach people how to think independantly - mainly because every government prefers blind obedience.

A fine vintage: Wine has run Microsoft Solitaire on Linux for 25 years

Re: "We live in a *nix world now"

Well, as long as you do your work on a phone or tablet, I guess you're right.

But as far as working on company applications are concerned, we're still squarely a Windows PC world. I've been consulting for companies for a quarter of a century and I have never seen a Linux workstation anywhere. I have spotted a few Linux servers, here and there, but zero workstations. I have also seen a few Apple PCs, mainly in web development.

But the bulk of them are Windows PCs.

And that will stay that way until the *Nix generation becomes Head of IT and/or CEO. Only then will we see the possibility of a switch, because these guys and gals will look at licensing fees for Windows and Office, the backlog of Helpdesk issues and the nightmare of legacy crap still being dragged along and they will choke on their coffee before chucking the whole mess out.

But before that ? Not a chance.

Uh-oh. Boffins say most Android apps can slurp your screen – and you wouldn't even know it

"the permission model is flawed"

Wow, what a cliffhanger. I don't think I've ever heard that before.

</sarcasm>

What a pity that even a group of boffins in real lab coats with an actual study of it will probably not generate a change of the matter.

Bill Clinton's cyber-attack novel: The airport haxploit-blockbuster you knew it would be

"making his way out of the White House through a secret tunnel"

Right, because there is a tunnel in the White House that the Secret Service doesn't know about/hasn't bugged and rigged full of detectors nor have a pair of Marines posted at either end.

I'm all for suspension of belief, but it has to be at least plausible. Give me a traffic jam and a sudden, inspired escape, and I'll go along because, even if dubious, it just might happen.

But a secret tunnel, unknown to an organisation who has been in charge of the White House for almost as long as there have been Presidents ? And this one new guy who has only been there for, at best, three to seven years, knows about it ?

Well that just about sums it up : I'll keep on reading Tom Clancy novels. When he pulls a Deus Ex Machina out of thin air, he's good enough to at least dress it up properly.

Hands up if you didn't lose data in the Typeform breach

"the council will consider ending its relationship"

You'd better not just consider it !

I hope that there will be a massive move against this, to send a strong sign that we the public no longer tolerate this kind of gratuitious data-hoovering, but I doubt it. Tomorrow will likely be business as usual, right Talk Talk ?

Google Chrome update to label HTTP-only sites insecure within WEEKS

Re: "Large company intranets may use those address ranges for all their devices."

And Google is the authority to decide to flag those large company intranets as insecure.

Sure.

'Coding' cockup blamed for NHS cough-up of confidential info against patients' wishes

"unreserved apologies"

How about "immediate resignation" ?