Posts by Pascal Monett

OpenAI wants to bend copyright rules. Study suggests it isn’t waiting for permission

"rigid copyright rules are repressing innovation and investment"

Oh cry me a river.

Rigid traffic rules are repressing Ferrari owners from fully using their powerful cars. Rigid home security (locks and alarm systems) are repressing thieves from gaining loot. Uber is being repressed in many cities from being able to transform people into Uber-slaves where Uber gets the money and the slaves take all the risks.

Copyright rules are in place for good reason and, if you find that they are repressive, you can thank Disney in a large part.

So, be good little boys and tell your investors that some of the billions they give you will have to go to pay for the data your multi-billion datacenter will be analyzing.

After all, nothing is free in this world, so why should you be the exception ?

Oracle's masterclass in breach comms: Deny, deflect, repeat

Re: For a sceond I thought that said

In other words : fake news !

Oracle faces Texas-sized lawsuit over alleged cloud snafu and radio silence

And so it starts

I was wondering how long it would take before lawsuits started flying.

Apparently, it took 8 days.

Lawyers are of the efficient kind, especially when they smell blood in the water.

AI datacenters want to go nuclear. Too bad they needed it yesterday

Re: Water

I have to admit I have trouble with this "huge demand in water" story.

Make a reservoir, fill it and you're done.

It's not like you're watering a plant. You collect the vapor and drip it back into the reservoir.

Why can't that be done ?

We're not taking about making new chip wafers, we're talking about cooling. Cooling doesn't need fresh water, it just needs cold water.

A nice reservoir should do that just fine.

Check Point confirms breach, but says it was 'old' data and crook made 'false' claims

"it would not be making any further comment"

So, basically, we told you that 120K user accounts are a small number of accounts, nothing of import was taken, everything's fine.

Now buzz off.

.

Great PR there, guys. I'm really impressed by your cheek.

Tech trainer taught a course on software he'd never used and didn't own

Not quite the same experience, but still a seat-of-the-pants flyby

I generally give programming courses to beginner programmers. They need to learn everything : variables, variable types, functions and procedures, passing variables to said functions and procedures, etc.

One time, however, I got a group of expet JAVA dwevelopers. So, to break into their mindset was rather challenging and, for them, I pretty sure the absence of any method controlling garbage colletion was anatheama to them.So I coded a seconde node where I created a smal collection of docuements and a script that would loop through the collection.

Once the code had loaded the next document, I used the keyword DELETE to remove the previous document from RAM.

The thing is, I had never used that keyword before. I didn't even know if it would work.

Thankfully, it did, and I avoided making a total fool of myself, but it could have easily gone the other way . . .

Cashless society could be why fewer kids are eating coins and sticking things up their noses

Yikes

“The coin shaped batteries are easily caught in the oesophagus, and when stuck start to cause damage immediately and can erode through the oesophagus wall very quickly (within 2 hours) ”

Well that was news to me. I'll have to make sure that my batteries are stored in places where a six-year old cannot easily get its grubby little hands on them.

Nvidia GPU roadmap confirms it: Moore’s Law is dead and buried

a datacenter is a gigawatt

So, if I understand correctly, that means that each datacenter is going to be built right next to nuclear reactor, right ?

This nonsense is getting sriously out of control.

Nuclear center must replace roof on 70-year-old lab so it can process radioactive waste

"delays and overspending"

What ? In the UK ?

Impossible.

Never heard of before.

Inconcievable, I tell you . . .

Tech support session saved files, but probably ended a marriage

I know about ambitious lazy know-it-alls as well

Obviously, I'll name no names, but at a previous workplace I was often called on by an almost-manager (who totally behaved liked a manager) for "special tasks" (entirely professional, I can assure you).

While most of those tasks fell logically under my programming purview, the day he asked me to write documetation about an EU directive that he was supposed to be the expert on, I politely declined and indicated that I did not have the necessary expertise in that area.

Funnily enough, he didn't ask much from me after that, but I didn't mind because he was the kind of guy who took credit for everthing he asked everyone else to do.

IBM US cuts may run deeper than feared ‒ and the jobs are heading to India

Train new hires from India ?

In an ideal world, my answer would be no, here's my resignation.

Then I would join a company called American Business Machines, which should logically have a much harder time offshoring jobs to anywhere.

But hey, let's be realistic : IBM has been shooting itself in the foot for so long it's surprising that it still has a knee.

ISS resupply and trash pickup craft postponed indefinitely after Cygnus container crunch

It is curious

It seems curious that, the more private space operators there are, the harder it is to get people and cargo to and from the ISS.

CrushFTP CEO's feisty response to VulnCheck's CVE for critical make-me-admin bug

"it claims to have some high-profile organizations [..] among its clientele"

Methinks that claim is going to be called into question shortly . . .

Now Windows Longhorn is long gone, witness reflects on Microsoft's OS belly-flop

Re: Deliver something worthwhile?

Well Vista certainly wasn't it.

Windows 1 0 is not an entire failure, but 11 is certainly going in that direction.

The thing, XP (SP3) is certainly the last Windows OS that considered that it was "your" PC it was running on.

Everything since considers that it is Borkzilla's PC, and Borkzilla can do as it pleases.

I can't wait for the day when I can retire, erase all that shit and install Mint and once again have a "Personal" computer.

UK's first permanent facial recognition cameras installed in South London

Re: Success rate?

Are you kidding ?

The cops will have a 100% success rate, and a stellar performance rating to go with it.

It's the judges that will be swamped with useless cases, and who cares about them ?

Ransomwared NHS software supplier nabs £3M discount from ICO for good behavior

"People should never have to think twice about whether their medical records are in safe hands"

They aren't.

Today's jobs Microsoft thinks could use an AI assist: Researchers and analysts

AI in Research

I predict it will soon declare that it has discovered how to create a warp drive.

You'll just have to go through 10,000 pages that will basically be all of Scotty's Star Trek declarations with a mix of Star Wars hyperdrive description and maybe some Babylon 5 or The Expanse for good measure.

Good luck building an actual warp drive with that.

From MP3 to Web3 to now 3D, Napster gets a new owner

"active fan engagement"

I listen to music to disengage, to calm myself, to create an audio universe in which I can lose myself.

Actively engaging myself, with added "gamification", sounds like this pseudo-idea is targeted towards teenagers who will be asked to click on a specific icon at a specific time during whatever is playing to get some stupid "bonus points" which will do who cares what.

Not interested. As far as I'm concerned, they have already failed.

Even Google struggles to balance fast-but-pricey flash and cheap-but-slow hard disks

“What’s new with Google Cloud’s Storage”

We've found a new way to extract even more information from you with the excuse of improving your storage throughput.

This new API is going to boost your storage efficieny while sending us the filenames and filesizes of your files during downtimes.

Dell sheds ten percent of staff for the second year in a row

So, that 4-day workthing is going to go swimmingly at Dell, right ?

Especially since they're also pushing for Back To Office, if I'm not mistaken . . .

US defense contractor cops to sloppy security, settles after infosec lead blows whistle

"The company denies any wrongdoing"

That kind of declaration should automatically be followed by the immediate incarceration of the CEO for blatant lying.

If you didn't do anything wrong, why are you paying millions in settlement ? To avoid the expense of a lawsuit that will demonstrate publicly that you did do wrong and cost you more ?

Bullshit.

4-day work-week pilot due in tech land by early summer

A 4-day work week

Really ?

That is being asked of companies who have almost universally decided that post-COVID working from home was over ?

I really feel that is going to go over very well, especially when the CEO explains to shareholders that they've been paying their staff 20% more than necessary . . .

50 years ago the last Saturn rocket rolled out of NASA's Vehicle Assembly Building

Re: Consider the glass

Hear ! Hear !

Congratulations to the lowest bidder !

There are 10,000 reasons to doubt Oracle Cloud's security breach denial

So, when's the lawsuit ?

And will it be class action ?

Given the amount of data pilfered, I'm guessing a lot of CEOs are likely to be quite unhappy about this mess and will be wanting more than just excuses.

Accenture: DOGE's federal procurement review is hurting our sales

My heart bleeds for those poor, poor shareholders

I am so terribly sorry for those millionnaires who invested their "hard-earned" monies in a company headquartered in a tax haven who, apparently, might not be able buy a new Ferrari this month.

Ah, the humanity !

Datacenters near Heathrow seemingly stay up as substation fire closes airport

Redundancy has a cost

Had there been a second substation built ten years years ago, I'll bet anything that four (or six) years ago somebody would have complained that it was useless and its maintenance costs would be cut.

And we'd be right here again today.

NASA (and ESA/JAXA/etc) are the only ones who understand the true utility of redundancy and who are ready to support the cost of it, because when your probe is a billion miles away, you'd better hope that you have a functional backup plan if something goes wrong.

Apple hallucinated Siri's future AI features, lawsuit claims

Re: Given this....

Agreed.

It is high time all this pseudo-AI bullshit got the downsizing it deserves.

Too many software supply chain defense bibles? Boffins distill advice

Bullshit

All of these are just excuses to continue downloading untested software to production servers.

You want to stop supply chain attacks ? Simple : have a copy of your production environment, download the new code there and test it. If you find a problem, don't move it over to the production version.

That used to be standard practice before the kids took over with the "move fast and break it" attitude.

It might be time to backpedal on that a bit.

Just sayin'.

Oops, they did it again: Microsoft breaks Outlook with another dubious update

Stop dreaming

If jumping ship to Linux or BSD was a business option, Borkzilla would already be dead.

Business is tied to Windows by the neck, the hands, the feet and the balls.

And Redmond knows it.

SAP legacy ERP customers still in no rush to adopt latest platform

"You have to have AI"

Really ? Why ?

Business has been functioning just fine up to now without any hallucinating pseudo-AI.

It would seem that business is going to continue functioning just fine without it.

It looks like IBM is cutting jobs again, with Classic Cloud hit hard

"Arvind Krishna has been very open about shifting labor focus to India"

Well duh, he was born over there.

I wonder what the outcry would be if a Chinese-born national got to the head of Boeing and starting shifting jobs to China. I've got the obscure feeling that the US Government would have an official reaction over that.

HP Inc settles printer toner lockout lawsuit with a promise to make firmware updates optional

"We lose money on the hardware"

I'm sorry, isn't there a law that says that such practices are illegal ?

You can sell at cost if you want, but you're not supposed to be allowed to sell below cost.

Why is the FTC not putting its nose in this ?

Trump fires Democrat FTC commissioners, presaging big tech policy shifts

Thank God the USA is a democracy

You know, with all the safeguards and laws to ensure that the proper procedures are respected ?

What's that ?

The President can dispense with procedures with a single signature ?

Wow. I wonder what the Founding Fathers would have thought of that.

Extortion crew threatened to inform Edward Snowden (?!) if victim didn't pay up

Re: Edward Snowden?

Yeah.

It's not like a message from Snowden would result in DEFCON 4 at the White House.

And that supposes that Snowden has access to the Internet from his comfy cell at the Kremlin.

Celonis slaps SAP with lawsuit claiming it's gatekeeping customer data

"28,000 different variations for the process of running a sales order"

No wonder SAP projects are never finished . . .

AI running out of juice despite Microsoft's hard squeezing

Hasn't that been done already ?

Re: being lazy is part of his job

I'm a programmer. Project manager, senior developer, 25 years of experience in my specific domain.

And yes, I'm lazy as fuck. But that means that I'm going to test my code in every concievable configuration to ensure that it does its job right.

The lazy part comes after, when I just have to select the data set and push a button to get a report.

But before I let that button go into production, you can be sure that I have worked my ass off to make sure that it will respond properly to every concievable case.

But yeah, I'm lazy as fuck.

If I'm not mistaken, Watson was still of the "excpert system" generation, and did not use pseudo-hallucinating-AI.

The fact that Watson failed is because, well, it was IBM.

As Chromecast outage drags on, fix could be days to weeks away

"earlier Chromecasts have a longer certificate validity, of 20 years rather than 10"

Okay, so why the deliberate decision to shorten the cert validity time ?

This thingamajig appears to be useful to many people. Did Google estimate that the newer version wouldn't last more than ten years, or what ?

Somebody made this decision conciously. I'd really like to know the reason.

As Elon Musk makes thousands of federal workers jobless, tycoon pushes for $56B Tesla pay deal

So, one question

Has Judge McCormick been fired by DOGE yet ?

Get off that old Firefox by Friday or you'll be sorry, says Moz

Re: Better yet: go Librewolf

Interesting news. I'll have to give it a try.

If it accepts NoScript and uBlock Origin, then it'll be a winner in my book.

Microsoft will kill Remote Desktop soon, insists you'll love replacement

Remote Desktop

One of my top prioritites to disable on all of my home PCs.

They can rename it whatever they want, I'll disable it anyway.

The IT world moves fast, so why are admins slow to upgrade?

"why are admins slow to upgrade"

The real question is : why is it that the rule "always wait for version 1.02" is still valid ?

Because Borkzilla & Co push out "bright" ideas ideas without a clue as to what the consequences may be.

Admins, on the other hand, have to ensure that the business continues running because, if everything comes crashing to a halt, it's their ass on the line to get everything running again.

In that kind of situation, you get burned once and you've got the lesson.

Borkzilla, on the other hand, appears to never have learned any lesson.

$16B health dept managed finances with single Excel spreadsheet. It hasn’t gone well

The only proper, professional way to do things is analyze the data and the requirements and set up a proper SQL database (no, not in Access) to handle the job.

Of course, it would seem that this approach is going to fall over at the analysis stage . . .

Developer sabotaged ex-employer with kill switch activated when he was let go

"he faces sentencing at a later date"

And he faces never getting a coding job ever again.

And that is well deserved.

Troubled French outsourcer Atos finds pot of gold at the end of UK state bank Rainbow

$612 million

I know that the readership of El Reg is primarily English-speaking, but we are talking about a French company, so it would have been nice to see the pounds and dollars converted into Euros.

$612 million is (following Wise's current exchange rate of 0.9209) equivalent to €563.59 million.

Just for the record.

Eutelsat in talks with Euro leaders as they mull Starlink replacement in Ukraine

"The US also reportedly paused offensive cyber operations against Russia"

Interesting.

Has Russia stopped offensive cyber ops against the US ?

Somehow I think not.

Elon Musk calls for International Space Station to be deorbited by 2027

"There is very little incremental utility"

It's interesting to contemplate the fact that His Muskiness is suddenly an expert on Science and a visionary when it comes to deciding what should be or not be done in space.

The ISS has invaluable utility and, if it does need to be replaced, it needs to be done in the most progressive way possible, preserving what exists and allowing for a new station to be built before decommissioning the old one.

Musk has a habit of throwing his toys out of the pram.

He is not qualified to decide on how Science should advance.

Unfortunately, he's got the position now, for a mere $250 million.

US minerals company says crooks broke into email and helped themselves to $500K

"investigate, contain, assess, and remediate"

A truckload of corporate bullshit to simply say : CORRECT.

But why use one word when you can spew a bunch of important-sounding ones ?

Microsoft Azure faceplants in Norway, taking government services with it

"Problems with Azure were confined to one region"

So, just a small number of users, then ?