Posts by Pascal Monett

Ring dinged for $5.6M after, among other claims, rogue insider spied on 'pretty girls'

Re: If the government can get so jumped up about tik-tok

Yeah but Tik-Tok is Chinese.

Get with the program.

ByteDance 'would rather' torpedo TikTok than sell it off

Re: This is the best possible outcome

The amount of stolen videos on YouTube is also gobsmacking.

Indeed. If I were in charge of a global market where a single entity provided a quarter of my earnings, I'd think twice before shutting the operation down for that entity.

FCC votes 3-2 to bring net neutrality back from the dead

"People will switch to ISPs that don't meddle with connection speeds"

That argument is only valid if every citizen has the choice between every ISP.

I very much doubt that that is the case anywhere, let alone in the Land of Monopoly that is the USA.

Anyone using that argument is just a humongous hypocrite.

Re: A little late.

Because Republicans ?

City council audit trail is an audit fail after disastrous Oracle ERP rollout

Re: it's just too big to manage

It's only big because there are no subdivisions. Somebody is obviously a control freak and cannot stand the idea that his local empire be divided and his "power" be diminished.

So there's just one big blob of incompetence at the top, instead of spreading the risk and maybe finding someone competent somewhere else.

That is almost certainly just incompetence, not necessarily fraud.

Meta's value plummets as Zuckerberg admits AI needs more time and money

"investors are unwilling to wait too long"

Of course they aren't.

They're not investors, they're gamblers. They want their fix, NOW (or soon, at the very least).

An investor is a person who wants to participate in a project, and is willing to put funds in it to bring it fruition, not to get a return in two years.

If the project is important, it could take ten years. A true investor knows that and is willing to take the risk because he believes in the project.

Today's "investors" are just selfish man-children who want their next lollipop for snack time. Long-term thinking ? Not their strong suit.

Throwflame launches fire-spitting robo-dog from Hell

Re: "ready for anything," … lighting the barbecue

Well, there's still the hydraulic press and nuts . . .

Turns out teaching criminals to write web code keeps them out of prison

I disagree

"one of the reasons the Land of the Free has the highest per capita incarceration rate in the world"

That is not the reason.

The reason is that prisons are private companies who have primed the law to send them people that other countries would use rehabilitation programs to get back on track.

The War on Drugs is just one good excuse to condemn users to jail instead of going after dealers - there's more of the former.

Then you have police entrapment with "hookers" who are just there to entice men to commit, then get cuffed.

That is why the Land of the Free has the highest incarceration rate. It's a business.

Forget the AI doom and hype, let's make computers useful

That is a quote I will keep

"The neural network is unable to generalize from what it has 'learned' ”

And I'm going to keep this article's URL to be able to show it to anyone who starts spouting off about how computers are now "intelligent".

Unless they're in marketing. Then it would just be a waste of time.

Indian bank’s IT is so shabby it’s been banned from opening new accounts

I can't imagine the state of their IT

For a bank to be forbidden from adding new accounts, that is just . . mind boggling.

I've seen some bank departments where some people were seriously out of touch, but that was just the one person here or there. For the entire bank to not know what it's doing with 40+ million customers ?

How can that happen ?

Yeah, I know, India. But this is a bank. We're not talking some online store, this is supposed to be men in suits with serious boardroom power.

I just cannot fathom what the hell is going on over there.

Musk moves Tesla's goalposts, investors happily move shares higher

"and people can add their private Teslas to the available pool"

Oh of course. I'm sure many proud owners of a car that costs at least $35K will be overjoyed at the opportunity of having Random Joe Schmuck climb drunkenly in the back seat and vomit over everything during the trip.

And that is supposing that Full Self-Driving actually works, which I seriously doubt Musk will ever get to.

Australia’s spies and cops want ‘accountable encryption’ - aka access to backdoors

Now just a cotton-picking minute

"tech companies should respect the rule of law and the order of a court, or independent judicial authority, and provide that information"

Obey the rule of law, no problem. Obey the order of a court, obviously. But just what exactly is an "independant judicial authority" ? Is that your nephew's office with a nice sign on the door saying "Warrant Delivery" and no questions asked ?

Because I would not agree with that. Get yourself a proper warrant from a proper judge and stop trying to use children as an excuse yet again.

Samsung shows off battery tech it says will see you gone in nine minutes

Great news

I fully support EVs with 10-minute charge times and 1,200km in range that don't spontaneously catch fire and can last 20 years. Once you guys have licked those issues, how about tackling the issue of your EV being sent to the scrapyard after a collision ?

Because I've heard that that is a thing.

Tesla misses the mark on all fronts in quarter of chaos

"Musk said [..] We believe"

There is no "We" with Musk. It's what he believes that count.

And he can go promise yet more awesome and outstanding improvements for his death wagon. I'm pretty sure we'll be hearing more accounts of latest-model Teslas plowing into something or another under Full Self-Hallucinating.

Law prof predicts generative AI will die at the hands of watchdogs

"Generative AI is destined to drown in a tsunami of regulation"

Good.

I fail to see what benefit the making of entirely fabricated content can bring. If I want to read something that has a chance of being interesting, I want it to have been produced by a human, under human oversight.

Sure, throw in an image made by Leonardo. That's not a problem because it will be the human that has decided that the image was relevant. If said human had asked another human to create the image, the result would have been the same. Leonardo is just destroying the livelyhood of actual human content creators. If everyone is OK with that, then let's do that.

But I refuse to read a book that has been generated by pseudo-AI. I refuse to read entire articles generated by a machine. I do not see how they can possibly be engaging and interesting.

GenAI can drown. It's no loss to me.

If Britain is so bothered by China, why do these .gov.uk sites use Chinese ad brokers?

Re: There are, of course, reasonable exceptions

And what, pray tell, may be a "reasonable exception" to your government selling your private data to, not only a 3rd party, but a 3rd party that's not even in your own country ?

No. Just NO.

When I deal with a government portal, I fully expect that everything that happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.

I'm paying for that portal. I'm paying for the people managing that portal. I'm paying for the hardware that that portal is working on. That fucking portal does not need more revenue.

But hey, if you find normal that your own government whores your data out to anyone, well that's your choice . . .

Waymo robotaxi drives down wrong side of street after being alarmed by unicyclists

"the accidents were unavoidable"

Oh, so just like a human then ?

If that is the case, then what's the point in automated vehicles ?

You're supposed to do better. You're supposed to have the means to detect issues dozens of times per second. You're not supposed to get distracted.

If you can't do better than a human, you're useless.

Mandiant: Orgs are detecting cybercriminals faster than ever

Great news

Miscreants still have 30% more time than they need to accomplish their nefarious deeds.

Oh well, at least things are improving.

Overall.

Globally.

Does that include the health care industry ? Because I'm guessing not.

Voyager 1 regains sanity after engineers patch around problematic memory

"The problem was eventually traced to a single chip"

Wow. That's never something you're going to read in a Borkzilla report, now is it ?

Well done to NASA engineers. Once again they have snatched victory from the jaws of defeat.

I hope they can carry this on for a long time yet.

Microsoft really does not want Windows 11 running on ancient PCs

So you're perfectly fine with a vendor forcing you to spend money to replace a perfectly working computer just because the vendor says so ?

No wonder Borkzilla & Co are making mint.

Huawei wants to take homegrown HarmonyOS phone platform worldwide

"expand its native HarmonyOS smartphone platform worldwide"

No problem.

Huawei just needs to demonstrate that its OS isn't phoning everything to Beijing.

How I would like to be able to say : "like Android". Unfortunately, Android is already as bad as Beijing, so, again, why not ?

It's not like we are living in a civilization that respects our individual privacy. So, one more, one less . . .

Tesla slashes vehicle and self-driving-ish software prices as shares plummet

"an essential part of doing business in the auto industry"

Sure. Because automakers everywhere routinely slash the prices of their options by a third.

Yeah. Pull the other one, it's got bells on it.

Europol now latest cops to beg Big Tech to ditch E2EE

"it needs lawful access to private messages"

No problem.

Get a warrant.

You don't have one ? Go fuck yourself.

You do not need backdoored encryption. You need to follow the example of lawful authorities who have managed stellar successes by doing their fucking job.

Watchdog tells Dutch govt: 'Do not use Facebook if there is uncertainty about privacy'

If ?

Whaddya mean, IF ?

Haven't you followed the last two decades of Facebook debacles ?

The words privacy and Facebook have nothing to do in the same sentence without a strong negative.

Gone in 35 seconds – the Cybertruck's misbehaving acceleration pedal

The clock is ticking

I honestly think Musk is wearing out his welcome to a dangerously thin state.

He should stop pretending that his main job is defending his personal Free Speech and get back to work.

If he ever was capable of actual work, that is.

UK data watchdog questions how private Google's Privacy Sandbox is

It is perfectly private

It's all between you and Google. No one else will ever know anything about it.

Well, no one but Google and the 13 million companies to which it sells its data . . .

Google all at sea over rising tide of robo-spam

Or

Or you can use NoScript, and kill the beast in the egg.

Please excuse me while I couldn't give a damn about how Google makes its billions.

I am protecting myself, I am not depriving Google of revenue.

It has largely too much of that.

Rarest, strangest, form of Windows saved techie from moment of security madness

Security through incompetence

Declan's lucky day was because Borkzilla couldn't be arsed to do a proper CPU version, and couldn't be arsed to make emulation work properly either.

So, a sigh of relief, a restart of the VMs (or similar) and the problem is over.

One of the rare cases where Redmond incompetence saved the day.

Microsoft teases deepfake AI that's too powerful to release

Re: Only a matter of time

They're not releasing it yet.

They will, in some form or other.

Besides, you're right : it's only a matter of time before someone else does the same and releases it. On the one hand, there's a lot of fun to be had. Upload your favorite clip and dub everyone in Darth Vader's voice. Could be a hoot. Unfortunately, the possibilities for mischief are literally boundless.

That won't stop 'em from releasing it though.

I wonder what computer Machiavel had . . .

AI energy draw from Chicago datacenters to rise ninefold

"industry is exploring nuclear as an alternative"

Good. Anything that will decrease the insane amount of coal plants that we are collectively using is a Good Thing in my book.

Please base them on Thorium, for added safety and availability.

WhatsApp, Threads, more banished from Apple App Store in China

Re: YouTube is available in China?

Indeed.

What's to bet that it's a "filtered" version ?

Wing Commander III changed how the copy hotkey works in Windows 95

I can only encourage you to read them. You will learn that the authors thought things through way more than could be shown on TV.

Simple example : in the books, you learn that, when fighting on spaceships, the guns use bullets made of plastic so as to not punch holes through the ship hulls.

They thought of that, and of many other things besides.

It really is an awesome story.

Ah, The Expanse.

I was so enamoured by the TV series that I bought the books - and read all of them.

I understand now why the TV series stopped when it did. It still gave a positive message, but eschewed the following 50-year plotline that the rest of the books described.

The book series is awesome, to be sure, but trying to get everything after the Slow Zone was colonized would be a mind-breaker for production and for most viewers.

Some things are best left in print.

Agreed. I remember playing WCIII, it was fun.

But X-Wing was the game that finally decided me to buy a joystick. And Alliance was just everything a Star Wars fan could want at the time.

Awesome games, awesome gameplay, fun and engaging. Terms that more than few modern so-called blockbusters have utterly forgotten.

Unintended acceleration leads to recall of every Cybertruck produced so far

"press the brake pedal if the accelerator ever gets stuck"

Wow. This actually had to be said.

Is it just me, or is Humanity's IQ diminishing ?

Cybercriminals threaten to leak all 5 million records from stolen database of high-risk individuals

"work is underway to further protect data"

Then, when the next breach occurs, further work will "be underway".

Sometimes it would be so nice to be able to just stand those idiots in a line and slap all of them in one fell swoop.

I don't care that security is hard. You know that the database is critical. Get yourselves an $800 million dollar budget and secure the damn thing.

Some smart meters won't be smart at all once 2/3G networks mothballed

So, smart meter joy is continuing

This train wreck keeps on derailing, apparently. That's exactly how it was programmed from the start.

Now, all those people who didn't want anything to do with 'em are going to have the joy of watching the technician come back and do it all over again.

Planned obsolescence at its finest.

Ransomware feared as IT 'issues' force Octapharma Plasma to close 150+ centers

Re: don't want to pay for, the resources to protect themselves

Not a problem then. Those Vulture Capitalists will just have to continue paying the danegeld until they get fed up with doing so.

Nothing educates like pain.

Crooks exploit OpenMetadata holes to mine crypto – and leave a sob story for victims

"avoid using the default credentials"

I'm sorry but, in this day and age, if you are a company installing a product and you use the default credentials, you deserve all the pain you get.

Stability AI decimates staff just weeks after CEO's exit

Re: winners and losers

And "with enough money"

NASA will send astronauts to patch up leaky ISS telescope

Re: Why design it to be attached to the ISS

Electricity from the ISS's solar panels ?

So how did it "develop a leak" ?

Was a very small micrometeorite the cause, or did the incessant heating/cooling from orbiting the planet 20 times a day finally create cracks in the telescope tube ?

Inquiring minds and all that . . .

IBM accused of cheating its own executive assistants out of overtime pay

"retaliating against them for accurately reporting their working hours"

So, I see that IBM has finally gotten rid of the dinosaurs and is now grinding down the rest of its employees.

I wonder how long this will last before nobody but college freshmen applies for a job at IBM anymore ?

Google fires 28 staff after sit-in protest against Israeli cloud deal ends in arrests

Take this as a lesson

Google will not allow anything to get in the way of it making money.

You have ethical problems ? Fuck you.

911 goes MIA across multiple US states, cause unclear

Biden ?

185K people's sensitive data in the pits after ransomware raid on Cherry Health

"In an abundance of caution"

You mean, the abundance you did not put into securing your network and training your people ?

And I see that you have found the boilerplate yada yada for failling to ensure the security of the data in your care. Well done. It sounds just as reliable now as it has the last million times we've already heard it.

You might want to actually put some millions behind your words soon, because it has cost some other health company $800+ million just to clean up.

You have that kind of money ? If so, carry on mouthing your platitudes.

Microsoft claims it didn't mean to inject Copilot into Windows Server 2022 this week

"appears to have been accidental"

The only thing accidental was the drone who clicked on the "Start Taking Over The World" option ahead of schedule.