Posts by Pascal Monett

Google now minus Google Plus: Social mini-network faces axe in data leak bug drama

Still,

"If this were a bug in Facebook . . "

You know things are bad if you have to use Facebook as a positive reference.

Hate to burst your Hubble: Science stops as boffins scramble to diagnose gyro problem

One can only hope

Nothing is eternal and all that, but here's hoping that Hubble can yet be useful for some more years.

Intel's commitment to making its stuff secure is called into question

What ?

""The statement is typical PR, and as such of no value," he said.

[..] Intel has made a concerted effort to pay more attention to security or at least to talk about it more."

Oh, so you consider that Intel talking more about security is not PR ?

Microsoft yanks the document-destroying Windows 10 October 2018 Update

Well thank goodness

Thank goodness this release wasn't changing much, right ?

Right ?

Didn't you get the memo ?

If you keep your backups on the same computer, You Are Doin' It Wrong (TM).

Which? That smart home camera? The one with the vulns? Really?

"Our rigorous testing programme . . ."

Was established by Sir Mortimer Lefancy in 1867, based on approved journalistic reviews of the time. We make it evolve continuously, once per geological epoch.

Come on guys, if you can't be bothered to Google, don't go pulling a "we value our customer's privacy" shit.

You didn't, and you don't have a clue.

End of.

Super Micro China super spy chip super scandal: US Homeland Security, UK spies back Amazon, Apple denials

"It is bonkers to think it would have screwed up a story this huge"

The facts seem to say otherwise.

And I'm not talking about what companies say :

Fact #1 : Bloomberg says an FBI investigation is/was underway

Fact #2 : the FBI denies any investigation

This may be the Trump era of politics, but if the FBI unequivocally denies that there is an investigation, I believe the FBI.

So either Bloomberg reporters decided to try and cook up a story, which does indeed seem out of character to say the least, or somebody conned Bloomberg into publishing this story.

Conspiracy theorists, start your engines !

30 years ago, NASA put Challenger behind it and sent a Space Shuttle back out into the black

I envy you guys :)

Uncle Sam gives itself the right to shoot down any drone, anywhere, any time, any how

What the hell is that gun in the picture ?

What kind of shoulder-mounted cannon is that ?

Does it have auto-fire ?

High compensation ? What on earth for ? It's just a frakkin' drone.

Keep it away from places it's not supposed to be, end of.

I have popcorn ready for the impending reports of idiots getting their kit shot to pieces next to an airport or prison.

It's over 9,000! Boffin-baffling microquasar has power that makes the LHC look like a kid's toy

Be careful though, microquasars always play for keeps, and you don't get to argue.

On the third day of Windows Microsoft gave to me: A file-munching run of DELTREE

I have a PC with Mint on it

I am actively trying to wean myself Windows, because 7 is the last Windows I will ever have.

I am not yet strong enough to replace my Win7 machine yet, because it is my gaming rig and I'm sorry, but very few of the games I play run on Linux. And don't tell me about Wine, if I'm leaving Windows, I don't want a nicotine patch. I want to quit cold turkey, no messing around.

The good news is that Steam is doing a bang-up job of getting Linux games into the mix. I'm basically counting on that for my retirement.

Win7 will have to hold until then.

Re: Microsoft needs to fix this ongoing bug and fast

Absolutely not. Microsoft needs to stay the course and hold fast.

It's the only way users will get sufficiently fed up with Windows and move to Linux once and for all.

Then we will finally have world peace.

@JohnFen

Due to the fact that my wife and daughter are fanatical XMas enthusiasts, I have ruthlessly enforced my own policy in the house - with success - so that, from January to the end of October, the official name is The Holiday That Shall Not Be Named.

Because if I didn't, I'd be hearing XMas carols in June. In my own house. Just. No.

I like XMas very much ; in December.

ONLY in December.

Convenient switch hides an inconvenient truth

I just love the comments on On Call stories

You learn the damndest things.

Decoding the Chinese Super Micro super spy-chip super-scandal: What do we know – and who is telling the truth?

Re: Which Nation State

The same ones that argue that encryption should come with backdoors ?

Former General Electric boss explains how he got the internet wrong

Re: Password managers

I have a password manager for my home PC - it's a text file. It is there for my convenience, given that nobody but me uses my PC.

Because it is a text file, I think it will fly under the radar if ever my machine is hacked. I imagine hackers are looking for programs in memory, not all the text files on disk (besides, this one is on the NAS, so if I'm not connected, it's game over for finding that).

Where can I hide this mic? I know, shove it down my urethra

Dear God

The sheer amount of innuendo almost made me dizzy. Way to go, Dabbs !

Windows 10 1809: Now arriving on a desktop near you (if you want it)

Re: why is it your problem?

My wife is an elementary school teacher here in France. If you think the Education Nationale has on-call IT techs for hardware issues, I have news for you my friend.

Nobody cares about the equipment, nobody knows why the WiFi isn't working and if a reboot doesn't do the trick, the computers stay unused until such time as I walk in to check what is (or isn't) going on. If I get the things working again, everyone will be happy until it all goes pear-shaped again a few weeks later.

The younger, new teacher generation isn't all that better because now they've grown up on mobile and skipped the formative years of faffing around on school equipment or a home PC.

But there is light at the end of the tunnel : my wife is planning on retiring in four years. So I have at most four more years of school IT support to bear, and then I'll be done with it.

"there isn’t a lot in it"

Well whaddya you know, maybe this time Microsoft will manage to not break something.

Maybe.

In any case, I'm no longer on the sidelines because my wife now has a work laptop with Windows 1 0 that I am desperately trying to find the way to properly lock down. It's a "clean" system, in that it has obviously been wiped and reinstalled, so I am hoping that I can stay ahead of the rot and stop the creep.

Windows Update has been disabled, of course. I'll enable that every now and then, for the security updates, and that will be all.

Organic stuff, radiation, unexpected methane... Yes, we're talking about Saturn's surprising rings

Space, it's fascinating

I've had National Geographic posters on my bedroom walls during all my childhood. The solar system, of course, but also one great map of the local galactic cluster, going from our solar system to the local cluster in a reverse zoom effect.

I always thought the Great Red Spot was eternal and lo, it is shrinking.

I've always thought Saturn and its rings to be eternal and lo, it is draining.

Nothing is eternal, even if the timeframes are measured in millennia instead of years. It is awesome, but sometimes a bit sad. One day, our descendants will look at Saturn they'll just see a second Jupiter.

It's good to be alive now.

UK space comes to an 'understanding' with Australia as Brexit looms

Poppycock

"To date, the UK remains the only country to have the dubious honour of developing an orbital launch system and then dumping it."

That is utter bollocks. The USA made the Saturn V for the Apollo landings and then scrapped it. They can't even make one any more.

Then they went and made the very impressive and expensive Shuttle, which also got scrapped for reasons we all know.

So the UK is most definitely not the only country to have developed and scrapped an orbital launch system.

You dirty DRAC: IT bods uncover Dell server firmware security slip

Well it was previously a good thing when access to the hardware was much more limited, the Internet was non-existant and malware was limited to making your computer say hi on boot on a specific day.

Nowadays malware is much more dangerous, and a disgruntled employee with server room access is practically one web search away from downloading code that can hurt your business, so yes, being able to install unsigned hardware code is now insecure.

CEO pleads guilty of conspiring with drug cartels to sell them stealthy Blackberrys

Possible, but not required.

If you market a secure phone and guarantee that nobody will be able to snoop, you will naturally attract criminals who appreciate that sort of service.

And I think that, at that level, making a difference between high-flyers in criminal activities and high-flyers that don't want to be caught cheating may not be all that easy.

Clouds gather as Cloudera and Hortonworks settle on uneven merger

"allow the new business to cut down on duplicate staffing costs"

Yay for yet another example of merger followed by layoffs.

And congratulations for making it sound like a good thing. I'm sure those who will be fired for XMas will be thrilled for this opportunity to make the shareholders happy.

California cracks down on Internet of Crap passwords with new law to stop the botnets

No need for a unique password

It seems everyone is fixated on that point, when the article clearly indicates that another option is possible : forcing the user to change the default password on setup.

So no, there is no need to have a device-specific manual or anything else. Every manual is the same and printed the same way, it's just the consumer that has to change the password on setup and not forget it. Then curse and snarl six months later when he forgot it and needs to to force a reset on his IoT thingy.

Wi-Fi Alliance ditches 802.11 spec codes for consumer-friendly naming scheme

Re: Actually , no.

Indeed, and in the rare instances where I talk about WiFi with what the article names "common people", I just say WiFi, because that's all that is needed in the conversation.

But hey, change the name by all means. When it doesn't matter, I don't care.

Microsoft: OK, we have no phones, but look how much we love Android

Uh, because the hardware makers will tell MS to get stuffed ?

This isn't the '90s anymore, and Microsoft is not only not the only game in town any more, it has forfeited its presence in that particular market.

So, when you're begging for a seat, you do not give orders to the driver.

JAXA probe's lucky MASCOT plonks down on space rock Ryugu without a hitch

Flywheel ?

As I am obviously not as informed as some of my fellow esteemed commenters, I went a-hunting to find out what this mechanism was, and found this, which clarified everything.

There is, however, nary a flywheel anywhere.

Tsk, tsk.

Using Microsoft's Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations? Using Skype? Not for long!

"face the wrath of bean-counters"

It is high effing time beancounters faced the wrath of sysadmins.

UK.gov asks biz for ideas on how to 'overcome' data privacy concerns in NHS

I know, but I just love that video.

And cats too, of course.

Someone mentioned herding cats ?

Obligatory link here

Civil rights group Liberty walks out on British cops' database consultation

Apart from everything, you mean ?

Re: Despite this practice being ruled unlawful

It's not "I'm sorry Your Honour" because this does not go to court.

At worst, it's a small remark at the Club over drinks and a <sigh>, of course, you're right, but we don't have the budget to change that right now.

Screwed SAP salesman scores $660,000 jury award

Yeah, but that is so last millennium.

These days it's all about screwing.

Um, you do realise you're talking about hiring an assassin ?

Those guys get paid.

Always.

One way or the other.

Google is still chasing the self-driving engineer that jumped ship to Uber

Re: No one in the right mind would risk hiring someone who sees nothing wrong with stealing.

Yeah but : Uber.

He fits right in.

A web where the user has complete control of their data? Sounds Solid, Tim Berners-Lee

Might be a nice idea, but it'll stay theoretical

Unless there's a way to force Facebook to use this construct, I don't see any change any time soon.

Apart from the fact that we might soon have to learn to manage our private data in yet another data repository.

Oh, and great idea to make the users manage access - in a world where most of them blindly accept all app permissions, what could possibly go wrong ?

Financial Conduct Authority fines Tesco Bank £16.4m over 2016 security breach

A 30% discount just for cooperating

What the frak ? Isn't cooperation supposed to be MANDATORY ?

If you don't cooperate, multiply the potential fine by 2, I say.

UK ruling party's conference app editable by world+dog, blabs members' digits

Well yes, since at most they could only be some 7 billion delegates.

7 billion is a limited number. A big one, but still limited.

Volkswagen links arms with Microsoft for data-slurping cloud on Azure

Plugging the car into the cloud

Thanks for the heads-up.

Given that VW is probably just the first to do this, the day I buy a new car I will know that I have to find a means to locally disrupt phone stuff to prevent any proper connection between my car and whatever shite this tech is trying to connect to.

I just hope that it won't affect GPS.

Location, location, location... technologies under the microscope

Bluetooth, good idea

Especially as I have it turned off by default, like WiFi and mobile data.

So please go ahead and base all your advertising on that tech so I can walk through blissfully unawares.

Re: " they will try and promote, say HP sauce or Tabasco sauce or something you don't usually buy"

Of course they won't. Targetted ads have only ever shoyn me stuff I have already bought.

Those ad people are completely incapable of showing me stuff I might actually be interested in. The closest they come is when they show me stuff that people have bought after having bought that.

Clueless muppets, the lot of 'em.

AI-powered IT security seems cool – until you clock miscreants wielding it too

Now wait a minute

"AI is able to learn sensitive information, such as personal preferences, from a vast amount of seemingly insensitive data"

Yeah, but up to now, all that data is made available to the statistical analysis machine that is not AI. The machine does not go look for it itself.

Now, I am sure that it could be possible to surf Facebook and Twitter and glean some info about a specific target, but unless you have your malicious pseudo-AI sitting inside the company you want to attack, or you have compromised its network to extract that data, I don't see how it could capture the vast amount of data it needs to analyse.

Facebook monetizes 2FA, Singapore monetizes hacker, and ransomware creeps monetize US Democrats

"a huge disincentive [..] to set up a 2FA option"

Well FaceBook is a huge disincentive. With its history of ignoring the law and any sense of morals as long as it can get away with it (and a bit longer if possible), I am astounded at the number of people who blissfully continue to give Zuck their private life, giftwrapped.

And with all the information easily found on the Internet, with all the proof of its shady behavior, I'm sorry if I consider that people don't really have the right to complain any more. You put your life on FaceBook, you know Zuck is going to aggregate it, mine it and sell as much of it as he can.

US Senators want more AI, while Microsoftie Paul Allen wants to use it to save wildlife, etc

"Neural networks are only really good at memorising the patterns seen during the training process"

It's a computer blindly following its programming. It is not AI, and slathering it in market-speak and statistical mumbo-jumbo will not make it AI, ever.

Intel boss admits chips in short supply, lobs cash into the quagmire

What was that ?

"..Intel CPUs permitted to run Windows 7.."

Permitted ? I would have thought that a CPU will run everything it can, and if it can run Windows Advertising Version then it can run Windows Useful Version as well.

Fortnite 'fesses up: New female character's jiggly bits 'unintended' and 'embarrassing'

They call that a dance ?

It is utterly lame and ridiculous. Epic is right to present excuses, but chose the wrong subject.

Microsoft gets ready to kill Skype Classic once again: 'This time we mean it'

“We’re continuing to work on your most requested features”

Um, really ? In that case, pray tell, how many users asked for Skype to be terminated ?

You're pulling a Trump there, Microsoft.

Oh, I forgot. You meant to say that you're continuing to work on the most requested features that you like.

Carry on, then.