Posts by Pascal Monett

Engineers, coders – it's down to you to prevent AI being weaponised

That it may not have, but it curtailed the hell out computers, to the point where they had to invent mentats - human computers (because human, it was okay).

Because advanced civilizations will always need computers, whatever the form.

AI principles, yeah

I followed that link, and found exactly what I expected : a nice, touchy-feely, heartfelt list of things goody-two-shoes Google promises to do and not do with AI. Nice to see they have found the light.

But I'm sure they did it with the best of intentions.

Microsoft: The Kremlin's hackers are already sniffing, probing around America's 2018 elections

Re: Paper ballots only solve a tiny part of the problem

I think you are assigning way too much power to the disruptors.

Paper ballots are traceable. The results are sent electronically are, these days, are most likely encrypted. Even if not, when the results are published, they are also controlled. Any error is called out and corrected.

Whatever attack can be set up on data transmission cannot survive a proper error correction procedure.

You need to remember that there are countries using paper ballots. You don't hear much about their vote count being called in question, now do you ? There's a good reason for that.

As for phoning electors and spreading misinformation, hackers (Russian or otherwise) are not going to do something that so obviously points to them. Remember that it took a state agency investigation to find the hacker's traces. With phone calls, it'd take a quick check at the phone company to get proof.

Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Twitter make it easier to download your info and upload to, er, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Twitter etc...

Well that's easy ; the non-account holders will never ask about it since they don't have an account, so Google et al can do whatever they want with that data.

Microsoft still longs to be a 'lifestyle' brand, but the cupboard looks bare

Me neither

It's my PC. I paid for the hardware.

If Microsoft wants to control my hardware, then it should give me a PC. If it's their hardware, then I accept their control over it.

But as long as I'm the one footing the bill, I expect to be able to use it as I intend without anyone or anything watching over my shoulder.

Mmm, yes. 11-nines data durability? Mmmm, that sounds good. Except it's virtually meaningless

Re: smoke and mirrors

There is practically nobody today that can actually prove 6 nines uptime - especially not The Cloud - so 12 nines is just horseshit, and let's just forget that mention of 16.

Alien sun has smashing time sucking up planets

Re: Planet definintion?

Well our solar system started in a similar manner.

If some planetoid hadn't slammed into Earth, we wouldn't have the Moon.

And in the early days of our Solar System, everything was being bombarded by asteroids.

So pretty exciting times back then. Things have largely calmed down now, after a few billion years.

We should check back on this star in a billion years or two, to see how the situation evolves.

Boffins mix AI and chemicals to create super-fast lab assistant

Congratulations on one thing

This is the first article I read about statistical analysis machines (ie pseudo-"AI") that does not crow to high heavens the incredible benefits that AI will bring to the proceedings as if all issues are already solved, as is usually the case.

The article actually states "It all hinges on human expertise to tweak the algorithms behind it and the AI is only as good as its trained to be." - that is a first.

Bonkers Azure bookings give Microsoft a record-breaking $110bn year

Great, just great

There is no better validation for the usefullness of The Cloud (TM) than making oodles of money out of it.

Despite its failures, despite the security issues, The Cloud is milking it, ensuring that people will use it and companies will want their share of the pie.

So The Cloud is here to stay.

Humbug.

Revealed in detail: World powers stuff spyware kit, how-to guides in dodgy nations' pockets

Security aid ?

You mean making sure that the NSA has access, right ?

Don't try to tell me the contrary, I won't believe you.

Sub-Prime: Amazon's big day marred by server crashes, staff strikes

What would you have him do ?

"..it's pointless geting infeasibly rich, then looking back on your life and all the shoulders you've ground into the dust in order to get there, only to give it all away at the end"

Um, I would think that solving a deadly disease problem is something that a minimum-wage worker would have a bit of trouble doing.

So, what do you think he should have done ? Build a Coliseum and reinstate gladiator fights ?

Re: "Once these obscenely rich people have grown out of their thirst for continuous success"

Um, as far as I can tell, that never happens.

Bill Gates is the exception to that rule, which, as any Frenchmen knows, proves the rule.

L'exception confirme la règle

Official probe into HPE’s Oz 3Par crashes would create 'further negative publicity' if revealed

Don't you just love it when so-called democratic governments do a public cover-up ?

I just love it when any government spouts nonsense to cover up some embarassing failure, but when a "democratic" government does it "for the good of the People", masking why a project paid for by The People's taxes failed abysmally, it has that special "you just continue paying your taxes and watching football, we know what we're doing" tang.

If it's paid for with public money, the Public that paid for it has the right to know the why and how. The only thing you're really saying is that someone should be losing his pension over a monumental cock-up.

And we can't have that, now can we ?

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.