Posts by Pascal Monett

Hololens for biz shocker: Surprisingly, it doesn't totally suck

"evaluating the insurance risks for buildings"

The expensive inspector is expensive because he goes on site and makes sure that the insurance knows the state of the building to be insured.

If I were an insurance company, I sure as hell would not accept a virtual tour of a building unless the company being insured agreed to virtual insurance - in other words if anything happens they don't get reimbursed.

And gestures. I can't stop picturing a guy in a suit waving around frantically during the whole call because his PowerPoint presentation isn't going well due to a botched Windows 1 0 update. Gets me giggling.

Really guys, video conferencing already has a hell of a time taking off, you think silver-haired suits paid 1000$/hour are going to don one of these things and talk blindly in their conference room ?

If there is one thing high-paid suits cannot stand, it's looking ridiculous. Gestures ain't helping on that point.

Just not cricket: Microsoft's big data Googly called No Ball

Re: Sight

Agreed, begin able to see is good.

Or did you mean, sigh ?

Ah, the marvels of spelling...

Kudos to the academician

That Stern guy deserves applaud for resisting the current ever-present urge to put computers in charge of even more data and for doing it with rock-solid arguments to boot.

Indeed, it would seem that the suggestion to use Big Data for the DLS evaluation is just another shiny shiny that would excite the engineers but is useless to the real world since, apparently, DLS only takes the last 4 years of data into account.

And I like very much the point about not taking into account personal stats since it could skew a team's entire strategy. Very realistic.

Thumbs up for keeping a sport about the sport and resisting the siren song of borgification by engineer.

Israeli Pentagon DDoSers explain their work, get busted by FBI

"prohibited from stressing internet connections [that they] do not have [..] authorisation to test"

If that is true, then their DDoS of the FBI site is justified by invoice and they can easily name the contact and get their name cleared.

Unfortunately for them, if the FBI arrested them it would seem that they have a bit more explaining to do than that.

Florida Man's prized jeep cremated by exploding Samsung Galaxy Note 7

Re: The windscreen glass melted

@Are car fires usually that hot?

Personal experience :

I was doing a consulting job for one of the larger French banks in Paris in the summer of 1997 (good times). It was lunch hour, the canteen was on the 3rd floor, I was sitting next to the window overlooking the street. Although the windows were soundproofed, I heard a collision. Curious, I looked outside.

A small Renault 5 had ran into a street pole. The driver was trying to get out. I noticed the police sirens when three cars came careening in. They arrested the guy without trouble.

That's when I noticed the gas dripping from the rear of the car. I don't know how long it had been dripping, but seconds after I noticed it, the gas caught fire (it was summer). As I watched, it took about three to four minutes before the fire appeared inside the car, but when it did, it took less than 90 seconds and the car was a raging inferno. Seats, tires, paint, everything was burning.

In the middle of that inferno, I heard a big bang - the windshield had shattered and wanted people to know it.

That's how hot a car fire can get.

End of story ? The cops spread out as soon as they noticed the fire, making sure nobody got too close, but they didn't try to put it out. I didn't see anyone radio in, but the fire truck arrived in due time - after the car was reduced to a metal husk. In all the confusion, the perp had been taken away without my noticing.

A most interesting lunch.

SOHOpeless Seagate NAS boxen become malware distributors

Any time you get money by just sitting on your ass and waiting for it to roll in is very good ROI.

Humans are terrible when it comes to realizing what they are doing. When VCRs were in all living rooms, we had the blinking 12 problem*. Now that everyone and his dog has internet access, we have the default password problem.

Do we learn ? Nope.

* for you younguns that never saw it : VCRs that blinked at 12:00 were the ones that their owners didn't know how to set the time and never bothered finding out. There were enough of them for the Internet to remember.

Google's AI finds its voice ... and it's surprisingly human

"a system modelled on how the human brain works"

No. A system modelled on how we think the human brain works.

We still don't understand everything, and it will take at least a few more decades before we do.

I don't even want them to look human. Robots should not look human, nor sound human. They are machines, they are tools.

Let's not add more confusion for the weak-minded. They have enough trouble already with all those conspiracy theories.

Petulant Facebook claims it can't tell the difference between child abuse and war photography

Re: At age 32, one is fully responsible for their actions

At age 32, one is considered, often wrongly, fully responsible for their actions etc.

FTFY

US Congress blew the whistle on tax-dodging Apple, claims Europe

Somehow I don't see why this is sooo difficult

Apple is a US company. As such, it declares profits, and the US government should just say : you made this much profit, you pay this much tax. Why is it such a problem ?

The entire issue is based around where the profit is made. Wipe the table clean : if you're a US company, it shouldn't matter where the profit is made in order to pay US tax.

As a friendly gesture, Apple could deduct taxes paid in other countries (yeah, that'll help them).

Foreign companies, of course, would only pay tax on profit made on US soil, deducting that from the taxes to be paid in their own country.

As always : KISS.

NASA's OSIRIS-REx is off to nick some rocks from asteroid Bennu

Re: If the Bods at NASA can see that far ahead

If they can "see" that far ahead it is because they are engineers, scientists and astronomers and they are working with rules that have been well-proven that they know by heart.

The only rule about the Euromillions is that it is specifically tailored so that you lose. Which doesn't keep me from playing a ticket regularly, just like you.

EU court: Linking to pirated stuff doesn't breach copyright... except when it does

Just goes to show

It seems to be open season on copyright right now.

Oh well, a bit of disruptive justice can't be all that bad, eh Uber ?

Inside our three-month effort to attend Apple's iPhone 7 launch party

Saving face becomes a questionable effort when said face is covered in tar.

BT needs to ditch its legacy to be competitive, says chief architect

"unfortunately that’s what makes the press"

Sorry, if you are a services provider, it is quite normal to be judged on your poorest performance because that is what your customer might get.

I'd like to see the ad world in a universe where companies had to advertise only their least appealing offering.

"10 kbps guaranteed !"

I think that would set some things straight.

Apple: Crisis? What innovation crisis? BTW, you like our toothbrush?

"if they didn't, the other one would, and take all the spoils"

And, if the Watch table is empty, then how many spoils are there to take ?

Ten-year-old Windows Media Player hack is the new black, again

Those who forget history . . .

Intel's makeshift Kaby Lake Cores hope to lure punters from tired PCs

I'm well aware of the technicalities of the legal side of the argument.

They say it's a license. I say bollocks.

If it were a license, then you could bring in a broken disk and get a free replacement, because the disk is your right to view.

But that never happens, ergo it's mine, license be damned.

Sex is bad for older men, and even worse when it's good

That is a valid question

But in any case, if I'm told that in seven years' time I'll have to have boring, infrequent sex to live longer, I have but one thing to do : thank God for whisky !

It's time for humanity to embrace SEX ROBOTS. For, uh, science, of course

So, sexbots and child versions in the cards ?

As much as child pornography disgusts me, if it can keep a percentage of pedophiles from harming actual children, I say go for it.

As for the stuffed up repressed puritans who would like, once again, to banish all thought of fun, I have one thing to say : good luck with that.

Hacker takes down CEO wire transfer scammers, sends their Win 10 creds to the cops

Don't think so

The real solution is to have proper checks and balances, and a CRM solution that is up to date.

If these spammers can send you mail that looks like your Financial Officer in <other country> needs money, then they can probably send you one that looks like the Secure Mail conditions are correct, even if the normal flags are red.

Managers are not technical people. However, sending money should be an easy affair of telling the local accountant : send this amount to our <country> branch, and ask a report as to why they need the money. The accountant then fires up his accounting package that has the IBAN account number and does the transfer.

Of course, the real CEO of <country> branch then calls to find out what the hell is going on. the situation is resolved without trouble.

The issue is only that people get mails telling them to wire money to an account in the email. Sorry, that should just never work. You tell me to send funds to one of my suppliers, I don't need your mail to know what account to send the money to. I will also check whether or not I have any pending invoices with that customer before sending anything.

Organization, people. It is just inconceivable that major organizations depend on IBAN account numbers sent in emails to do their work. If they are so big as companies go, then they have all the details in their accounting packages, so why is this a problem ?

Lose a satellite? Us? China silent on fate of Gaofen civilian/spy sat

"If it is indeed a failure, it's the first for a Long March lifter since December 2013"

Correction : it's the first we know of.

Obama says USA has world's biggest and best cyber arsenal

The US has the best digital weaponry, so everyone else should stop

Yeah, that sounds like a very good argument.

For a bully.

Unfortunately, digital is not nuclear, and even the poorest countries could conceivably fund a digital hacking department.

This announcement is no reason to stop.

Pokémon-loving VXer targets Linux with 'Umbreon' rootkit

"Umbreon is manually installed onto an affected device or server by the attacker."

Having just started getting acquainted with Mint, I was very interested in this report.

I stopped reading at that sentence.

Physical access, etc etc, we all know the drill.

ACCC mulls regulating roaming charges

"In other words: hands off our networks."

Never forget : No man's life, liberty, or property are safe while the legislature is in session.

HSBC: How will we verify business banking customers? Selfies!

What did he say ?

"well-proven facial recognition technology which has been around for decades"

So, he's saying that people have been taking selfies with their phones for decades already ?

The only thing that has been well-proven with every single "biometric" technology is that they are not reliable and can generally be easily faked or worked around.

What has also been widely discussed is the fact that if your biometrics are compromised, there is no backup solution. Not to mention that fingers are easy to detach from hands.

This whole biometrics malarky is a disaster waiting to happen. Passwords may not be the best solution, but changing them is easy as pie.

Sophos Windows users face black screens after false positive snafu

Re: I don't think RedHat, Mint or Linux are AV Software are they?

Well, given that 99.999% of all virii target Windows, in a sense, they are.

Red-faced VESK scratches '100% uptime' claim after 2-day outage

Well it's not really a problem anyway, since they were going to abandon the 100% claim because merger. And the "small number".

So everyone can forget about it, right ?

Sysadmins: Poor capacity planning is not our fault

"get senior management to take the issues seriously"

That only happens when senior manglement is capable of looking beyond its own nose.

If you're stuck with the incompetent, IT-is-wizardry and just-make-it-happen types, it's not ammunition you need, it's a frakkin cluebat because with those types, there is no such thing as proof that they haven't done their job - it's always your fault.

And the cherry on the fail cake is that they have no compunction of looking at you at saying that you should have told them. After a number of emails and meetings which did exactly that.

At that point, it's ammo I need all right. The 9mm kind.

Brexit must not break the cloud, Japan tells UK and EU

What is that ?

"Japan also wants uniform intellectual property rights across the EU and UK and for Japanese businesses based in the UK to be able to employ Europeans. And vice-versa."

And would you like fries with that ?

No really, do you honestly think that the UK Brexit crowd is going to pay attention to your wishes for more than a second ? They don't know where the wind is blowing right now.

Besides, from everything I've read up to now, Brexit specifically DOES NOT want EU workers to move freely in or out. Not that they have the means to stop it, apparently.

Thanks for the heads-up. I now have a new site to follow ;)

HDMI hooks up with USB-C in cables that reverse, one way

Can we just use an Ethernet cable already ?

There is a high-speed standard that works wonderfully well and has done so for years. It can handle up to Gbps speeds, which should be largely enough for TV resolutions for quite a while longer. It is already ubiquitous and cheap.

So can we do away with all this stupid connector issues and just plonk in Ethernet already ?

Oh, right, it doesn't do DRM. Damn.

Microsoft thought of the children and decided to ban some browsers

Edge is at 3.91 %

But I thought Windows 1 0 had finally reached 25% market share ?

Shouldn't that mean Edge should be at 25% market share as well ? Or am I supposed to believe that 90% of Windows 1 0 users are tripping over themselves to install Chrome/Firefox/whatever and NOT use the vaunted Microsoft solution ?

Pixellation popped: AI can ID you, even after PhotoShop phuzzing

In short

Instead of pixellating, just replace face by a swath of any uniform color.

No way anyone will recognize anything then.

Appliance-maker Liebherr chillin' with Microsoft, prototyping another Internet fridge

Re: 3. People think Cortana/Siri is cool

I've said this before, but I can't help repeating myself :

Not long ago, wife and I were at a friends' house for dinner. Good time all around, but one point really woke me up on this Cortana/Siri business.

At one point in the conversation, my friend said the word "Sarah", because we were talking about someone called Sarah. At that point, his phone next to him (because he is part of those people who can't live without their phone within arm's reach) piped up, asking if Sarah needed to be called.

We all had a good laugh about that, but it started me thinking. What if you're in a heated argument with your jealous (with reason) other, and you start swearing to high Heaven that you're not in relation with "Sarah" anymore, then your phone pipes up "Do you wish to call Sarah ?" ?

Go ahead and explain that it's not the same one. See how well that works.

I think this whole connected malarky is going to bite more than one arse before people chill about how "cool" those pseudo AI-bots are.

Re: All right then

Effin' A on that. And I'd really like to know how the fridge is going to know when I'm in the shop. I'm betting there's an app for that, app that will be hacked six ways to hell before Sunday.

Trust fridge makers to keep my life private ? No way.

Beautiful, efficient, data-sucking Smart Cities: Why do you give us the creeps?

Smartphones, Smart TVs, now Smart Cities

Every time the word "smart" has been associated to something, in the end it's all about sending as much personal info about you to whoever owns the design of the object. Smartphone apps often try to control everything about the phone to send to the app developer, smart TVs send your viewing data back to the TV maker, and now smart cities want to know where you are all the time.

I don't care what "better" ads you have in store for me. Stop spying on my life !

Dwarf planet Ceres has a watery secret: An 11 mile wide ice volcano

Incredible amounts of water out there

So Europa is an icy ball, now Ceres has a cryovolcano. There are astounding amounts of water out there.

Makes for good chances of finding habitable planets when we finally take to the stars, I think.

When Irish eyes are filing: Ireland to appeal Europe's $15bn Apple tax claw-back

"Ireland did not give favorable tax treatment to Apple"

So Ireland gave normal treatment to Apple.

Which means every single other company in Ireland should now pay .005% tax.

I think the fallout on this is not going to be pretty. Looking forward to the report on the next parliament session.

ABBA-solutely crapulous! Swedish router-maker won't patch gaping hole

Well that's fine for the providers, then, but what of the models that can apparently end up in a home ?

The article states specifically that some vulnerable models can end up there.

Latest Intel, AMD chips will only run Windows 10 ... and Linux, BSD, OS X

@ Jonathan 27

What makes you think that I haven't already bought a SkyLake CPU ?

Because I have. With 32GB RAM and 5TB of hard disk space.

I've had it for a year now. I'm very happy with it, and looking forward to seeing what Mint will make of it.

Don't forget the DRM

Let it not be forgotten that Intel has lovingly baked DRM into said 7th gen chips - for the ease of use and reliability that all users crave, right ?

Not compatible with Win 7 ? Not a problem here - I'm in the process of transitioning to Linux anyway.

And without DRM if at all possible.

Brave idea: Ex Mozilla man punts Bitcoin adblocking browser

@RIBrsiq : VISA doesn't mean credit card details

I don't know if you are aware, but there is this thing about security going on. Mainly, it means that, nowadays, banks can give you a one-time transaction code, so when you buy something online, you're not actually giving out your credit card details.

I know this is very difficult to comprehend for a US citizen, but elsewhere in the world, there actually are banks that are devoting resources to ensure proper transaction security.

Call me when the US has caught up with current technology.

Why Bitcoin ?

Just give me an option to chuck a few dollars to sites I like. I don't mind using my VISA, and I certainly prefer they know that I have given them the dough.

That way, when I log in, they can say "oh, here's our sponsor coming to see us, get rid of those ads on his page".

If I pay money I generally see no benefit in being anonymous to those who get it.

Adobe ices ColdFusion server admin password, file hack hole

Confusing version numbers - as usual

Well, Coldfusion has apparently gone from Version 11 to Version 2016.

That is an immense help when trying to determine version history. When will vendors decide upon a version numbering scheme and bloody stick to it ?

Is that a Marketing idea ? Shoot them, please.

Lindsay Lohan's Grand Theft Auto V cartoon case kicked out of court

"a woman holding a mobile who, it was argued, looked remarkably like Lohan"

Sorry, I see no resemblance between that mobile and Lohan. It looks like a mobile to me.

Behold this golden era of storage startups. It's coming to an end

"We're moving from revolutionary storage technology advances to incremental improvements"

And that means the technology is maturing. That's supposed to be a Good Thing (TM). It means that standards are easier to put in place, which in turn allows for more ubiquitous usage of said tech.

Let's put it this way : when gravity modulators can be had for a dime a dozen, it will be sad for all those rockets we won't need anymore, but we'll be regretting them in space.

Paint your wagon (with electric circuits) but leave my crotch alone

Heat does have a way with electronics, doesn't it ?

It's a bit ironic. Progress has transformed our PCs from towering, heat-belching monsters to cool, near-silent and immensely more powerful tools, only to give us handheld scorchers that sometimes even catch fire.

I really do hope that we'll get room-temperature superconductors some day. It will be a blessing in more ways than one.

Ditch tape and fly into the public cloud with us, beams bullish Actifio

Re: Daft idea

Can only agree. Trusting one's backups to a startup would be the worst possible business continuity choice one can make.

Then again, it's probably only slightly worse than the backup choices most companies seem to make these days. It might even actually work - until they fold, that is. Or until something screws up and they lose data.

After all, all clouds have lost data up to today. Some only a bit, some have lost everything. Do you really want to roll those dice ?

How much does your kid hate exams? This lad hacked his government to skip them

All that work just to postpone an exam

And a passing smirk about security to justify the act.

Here's another idea : study more, so the exam won't be an issue and you can have fun on your New Year.

Wasn't smart enough to think of that, eh ?

Surge pricing? How about surge fines: Pennsylvania orders Uber to cough up $11.4m

Re: "This fine is ridiculous"

So you think that a company that refuses to comply to the law, obstructs investigation and just goes ahead and does whatever it wants is justified if it makes you feel better ?

Do you, by any chance, work at Exxon ?