Posts by Pascal Monett

China wants to build a 200km-long undersea tunnel to America

Transcontinental railway over several continents

Very ambitious project indeed. Tunnels are delicate enough to do right and railway over or under water is of the same order of magnitude. It has been done before - on the same continent.

Building such a project over multiple continents means taking continental drift into account. Continental drift is apparently an inch a year. A railway has a precision of ±0·5mm, which is about 200 times smaller than the drift.

That means that somebody is going to have to come up with a way to make what is a fixed structure float over the places where the continents drift - in opposite directions. And that solution is going to have to allow for high-speed travel and decades of use.

If they do pull it off, it will be a major engineering feat that will eclipse everything that has been built up to now.

Clever cluster-wrangling proto-boffins told to set their LAMMPS on PyFR

This seems to be the cream of the crop

Sounds like the rocket scientist division of the programming arena. Once you've done something like this, you look at the specs for a CMS and you laugh while you turn to program your next atomic explosion simulator for your home-made Orion spaceship.

SatNad's purple haze could see Lumia 'killed'. Way to go, chief!

"I expect Microsoft to kill Lumia, possibly as soon as mid-2016"

Well now that that has been said, I expect Lumia sales to die by next month.

NSA snooped on German chancellors for DECADES: Wikileaks

Given that there are French fishermen, I'm pretty sure that they have a word for a stick to kill fish with.

No idea what it is though.

Russia campaigns to stop SUICIDALLY STUPID selfies

"or after climbing to the top of electricity pylons"

Is that a hobby or something ? I'm supposing that it isn't any more legal in Russia than in any other country, so WTF ?

Do they really drink that much vodka ?

Bloodthirsty Microsoft prepares for imminent 'major' job cuts

Re: MS is used to everybody being afraid of them

I think that's over now. We now what MS is : an OS company that is desperately running behind the times.

Google is our new overlord now.

EU ombudsman slams Commish handling of German ePrivacy laws

"the ombudsman has neither the power to enforce fines nor implement changes"

So, basically, the mad dog is barking in the shed, just ignore it.

It says something about our society when we create these watchdogs positions to ease our conscience yet specifically prevent them doing anything about that which they are charged with overseeing.

It's like the financial auditors of a government. They can point out every single overspend, underline every murky deal and paint a target on every useless expense as much as they want, nothing they ever say changes anything.

So what's the point ? A good conscience ? That's about as useful as the overweight guy sitting in front of his TV stuffing his face with Cheetos and Coke and thinking "I'll do some exercise tomorrow".

Give the ombudsman power to put someone in jail. That's the only thing that focuses the mind.

Ford's 400,000-car recall could be the tip of an auto security iceberg

"[this] underlines the increasing need for over-the-air (OTA) software updates"

Let me make a bit of a parallel here.

Once upon a time, there was this thing called a console. It had no Internet connection, it had a defined hardware list and games were made for it and sold on the open market. No recall was possible, the game had to work from the shelf. There was no patching.

During those heady days, console gamers made much fun of PC gamers, with their constant updates and struggling framerates and constant need of upgrades.

Then the console got a hard disk and an Internet connection. Where is the console today ? Waiting for updates, struggling for framerates, and no game works as advertised on day 1.

Meanwhile, PC gamers have better equipment and actually less issues these days because they are not beholden to the proprietary portals imposed on consoles, nor do they risk DDOS of their only provider because if one game server doesn't work, there are other games to play. On a console, whatever the game, there is in practice only one server.

Please do not repeat this mistake with cars.

The modest father of SMS, who had much to be modest about

It's where the story is, for sure, but that story doesn't sell.

Now, put in a backstabbing and some juicy bits in black stockings and NOW you have a STORY.

Welkom in Nederland: Laid-back, chilled, and MONITORING everything

Well then,

That's it for Ixquick then.

Shame. I thought I'd found a valid replacement for Google and now these numpties nix it.

Evil NSA runs on saintly Linux, Apache, MySQL

Re: "why don't we try to insert our own covert backdoor code into the Linux kernel"

Um, because it is Open Source and your kernel backdoor will not only have to be approved by the kernel coders but will also have to remain invisible to all the intelligent people who are looking at the code ?

Kernel backdoors can only exist when a restricted number of people know about them. That's something proprietary code allows because then you only have a small group of people with the right to check the code. Open Source means ANYBODY can find it as soon as they look in the right place.

And do not mistake Open Source kernel developers for nitwits. I'm sure that many of them know the entire kernel they work on inside out and will be quick to spot anything that seems out of place.

Security gurus deliver coup de grace to US govt's encryption backdoor demands

Indeed.

There's nothing left to repair guys, it's beyond repair.

It needs to be torn down and rebuilt.

Oh, and not by the scumbags that are in place now.

Robo-taxis, what are they good for? Er, the environment and traffic

"shifting to electric, autonomous taxis in 2030 would cut vehicle emissions by 90 per cent"

Yup, and will also impose the doubling of nuclear power plants in the country.

Because you think wind power will be good to recharge all those vehicles ?

Nuclear is the future. We have to make it work.

Furor rages over ICANN and Facebook's bid to publish home addresses of website owners

"ICANN staff will propose pulling out"

As far as XXX is concerned, I've heard that that method doesn't work all that well.

Right, I'm going.

Open Compute Project testing is a 'complete and total joke'

Great news

Now I know that, if I am being proposed a cloud environment which is OCP certified, I should run the hell in the other direction.

We tried using Windows 10 for real work and ... oh, the horror

Re: You do know that many servers in the enterprise environment are running Linux, don't you?

You do know that users never sit in front of a server, don't you ?

Linux will be contained in the server room for a while yet.

Unfortunately.

Re: Bejewelled 3 refuses to install, but you can buy it again

Buying a game you already own and came out only last year just so it runs on a new OS is NOT an acceptable solution.

Google yanks fake Android battery monitor

"its intentions were revealed by the permissions it seeks (basically, everything)"

Um, if I remember correctly, that seems to be the case for almost every app I have ever installed on my phone, so no, that doesn't reveal anything in itself.

But kudos for monitoring the app's activity and nailing its nefarious nature.

Now find the authors and flog them good. Maybe that'll give them some incentive to not do that kind of thing again.

Protecting users against advanced threats and the human factor

There might be an other solution to this issue

Have an email system where sysadmins can assign user rights to clicking on links.

For Lusers, no rights. They get mail where links are stripped from the body.

Once a Luser has eventually proven a certain degree of intelligence (yeah, I know, but for the sake of argument, okay ?), his status can be upgraded to Under Suspicion. Links he receives are stripped and non-clickable, but he can copy/paste them manually into a browser.

If Luser Under Suspicion manages to not completely bollox everything for six months, he gets upgraded to Luser Under Surveillance. His mails get the links clickable. If he mucks up at any point, he his slapped back down to Luser Under Suspicion and now has to wait a year - oh, who am I kidding, he'll never get upgraded again.

Obvously, no Luser is ever above suspicion.

A possible variant of this scenario is links are clickable, but anything under Surveillance automatically gets a 404 in return. Gosh, the Internet is so unreliable these days. . .

Microsoft: Stop using Microsoft Silverlight. (Everyone else has)

Terrible analogy which demonstrates that you missed his point entirely.

A better one would be you don't visit any cafe that won't allow you to eat the cake you buy on your own plate that you bring.

In your face, US citizens! Govt can’t save you from corporate eyes

So Congress shows what stuff it is really made of - cotton fluff

But hey, as they say : the market is self-regulating, right ?

Right.

So that means that, if the industry is not willing to be regulated, the onus is on us to regulate it : by not buying their products.

I'm sure that, when (if?) a company brings out a product that is guaranteed to respect our security and privacy and the other companies see their market share melt like an ice cream cone on a New York sidewalk in July, then there will be changes.

The bottom line, people. Never forget the bottom line. It's up to us to bottom theirs.

In other words, a lost cause.

Script-blocker NoScript lets in ANYTHING from googleapis.com

Just confirms that security is YOUR business

I rechecked my whitelist options and no, nothing Google is in there anywhere.

Whenever I do install NoScript, by default I remove the existing whitelist. There is no such thing as security if you don't know what you're allowing.

NoScript is a tool, not a solution. Use it correctly and you're golden.

UH OH: Windows 10 will share your Wi-Fi key with your friends' friends

So let me get this straight

Microsoft has created a function where it slurps your passwords and stores them on its servers to pass them out to anyone who is listed as your friend when you designate them as such, and again to anyone they have as friends when they designate them as such.

If i remember correctly, we are all but 6 links away from anyone else in particular. Therefor that means that this new function makes your passwords available to practically everyone. Way to go, Microsoft !

Just an idea, though : maybe you could disable sharing passwords that you acquired by being shared them ? In other words, my friends get my password, but not their friends ?

Oh, and passwords stored on the Microsoft cloud. What could possible go wrong ?

Hide the HUD, say boffins, they're bad for driver safety

I suppose that infrared cameras are not blinded by visible light, contrary to the so-called night-vision cameras which enhance light.

"a pilot is also taught when it's safe to ignore the view outside"

Well that's pretty much any time he's flying above 10,000 feet. There are no trees, deer crossings or sudden turns at that altitude, so he can obviously concentrate on his radar or whatever else needs his eyeball attention. Whatever obstacle is coming his way is another plane, and his radar will "see" it before he does.

On the road, the first rule is Keep Your Eyes On The Road. The second rule is Respect The First Rule.

Jets may be a lot faster than cars, but cars have obstacles all around them at practically all times and one second of inattention can get you to meet one brutally.

Let's remember that the dashboard has two functions : to tell the driver how the car is doing and, if necessary, indicate what is wrong. The driver has enough to deal with what with paying attention to road conditions that can change suddenly without warning. Adding any other data to that information is putting the driver in danger of information overload.

That said, I dearly like the idea of night driving with IR-enhanced HUD display showing me the road as if it were broad daylight. But no arrows or tokens please, just the road as it is.

VPNs are so insecure you might as well wear a KICK ME sign

So the good news is . . .

Stick with IPv4 and you're golden, right ?

Audit finds new flaw at US Office of Personnel Management

Of course. Haven't you noticed the awards ceremony every four years ?

Is that a FAT PIPE or are you just pleased to stream me? TERABIT fibre tested

Ipswitch ?

Are they sure their results didn't get some help from a tentacle ?

Smart meters set to cost Blighty as much as replacing Trident

the programme in danger of turning into a "costly failure"

No.

The programme in danger of turning into ANOTHER "costly failure".

FTFY

Windows 10 is due in one month: Will it be ready?

"With Windows 10, the experience will evolve"

We know.

At installation, it will race along and we will find it marvelous (those that have drunk the Cool-Aid, anyway). Over time, it will get slower, bloated and unstable. Patches will get bigger and bigger, and we'll need a terabyte disk just for the Windows folder.

We know Windows, Nadella. We've been using it since the 90's, and you've been polishing the same turd since.

But yeah, Win7/64 is the best version by far. And it's MINE. It does what I WANT. And YOU can't keep me from using it.

You can keep your "service". I will not be your cash cow.

A 'puter mechanic is the guy who does percussive maintenance on your PC box when the Internet is down (aka I can't Google anymore).

Boffins set networking record with marathon 12,000 km fiber data run

That's easy

They're missing 12,000km of fiber !

Humongous headsets and virtual insanity

Re: Not realistic enough for gaming?

The gaming industry has been confusing "realistic" with "immersive" for far too long. Yes, back in early 2000s games were still fugly blocky messes of pixels, but Syndicate was a great game, and I still remember my finger cramps after Quake marathons.

Today, we have "realistic" behemoths like COD or its counterpart which, as graphically enhanced as they are, are still sorely missing in the actual realism department, and even more in the fun department. Not to mention that I hate playing with random people - they're more often that not complete jerks. Minecraft, ugly as it is, is way more fun and immersive.

So let's lay off the realism and get back to having fun, shall we ? The graphical engines are now very much "good enough", so get cracking on immersive, please.

Gates: Renewable energy can't do the job. Gov should switch green subsidies into R&D

Why don't we change tack on this issue ?

Instead of worrying about terrorists and nukes, let's get reactors and cheap energy in place so as to improve EVERYONE's living standards so terrorists won't have so much misery to motivate them.

A well-fed man living a comfortable life makes a terrible terrorist - unless he's a psychopath, obviously.

Re: China and India ignore their pollution at OUR expense

Right.

Continue conveniently ignoring the pollution WE have created during the past century at EVERYONE's expense for OUR OWN benefit.

Hint : we live in INDUSTRIALIZED countries. China and India are industrialiZING. You can't seriously expect them to not want what we have, now can you ? Neither can you tell them to not do what we did.

That man told me to stuff a ROLE up my USER ENTRY!

Re: "a simple e-mail to the beancounters"

That idea is directly on par with having to send an email to IT support when your PC does not work.

The solution is not always email. The solution I employ, as a contractor, is to go the person responsible for hiring me and telling him that I can't work because I don't have a login. Cue embarrassment and a quick call to some IT person and the problem is generally solved in the hour. If I am told that I can't have login before tomorrow, I then state that I will be back tomorrow and leave because otherwise I have to bill them.

Up to now, I have never met a manager who does not prefer not being billed and getting started the next day. Personally, in these days of cash scarcity, I can't imagine a private company's department manager who would dream of paying me a day to do nothing, let alone a few weeks.

Governmental organizations are, admittedly, different. Wasting a whole morning before finally getting a working login is par for the course. If I don't even have a desk, there's generally some meeting to wait for anyway, so it's not like I don't know how to "look busy" in the meantime.

Get your WELLIES to MARS: Red Planet reveals its FROZEN BOTTOM

"the mysterious loss of its magnetosphere"

I thought that the loss of the magnetosphere was linked to the solidification of its core. Earth's core is still moving, Mars' isn't. I thought that was the reason.

Isn't it ?

FBI says in secret that secret spy Cessnas aren't secret

"This technology had only been used [...] five times since 2010"

Sure.

Once per year, all year.

So they're right !

US govt: Am I the only one around here who cares about DNS security and stability?

ICANN needs to be canned

All its personnel, and board, should be fired and replaced by an entirely new group of people who are actually concerned about making the Internet work correctly.

Burning the bridge is not always a solution, I know, but this is no longer an organization working for the community - it is a group of people systematically subverting everything they consider counter to their private interests, and such behavior should be labelled criminal and pursued as such.

The bare minimum is to get ICANN out of California. Ship them to New York or something, where they won't have it so easy in every way.

Graphene sheaths could boost processor signal speeds by 30 per cent

"needs more work before going into production"

Right, so I'll file that in the same folder as all those marvelous things batteries are supposed to become some time in some as-of-yet-undetermined future.

The future will be great - as soon as it gets here. Don't hold your breath.

LinkedIn reveals invitation-only bourgeois bug bounty

But people do expect and demand them - these days anyway. Such is the hoopla around this issue that any company not offering bounty is pointed at and sternly looked at until said company relents and starts a payout plan.

There have been too many examples of bug hunters ignored or taken advantage of to avoid this situation today.

I note with interest that LinkedIn seems to have found a way to retain the talent and avoid the chaff. I wonder if other companies will take note and copy the method - if they aren't already more or less doing the same thing.

A server apocalypse can come in different shapes and sizes. Be prepared

Um, if you have to perform a restore, I do believe it would be a dead system at that point.

Yeah, but then accounting refuses your requisition on the grounds that the service is already running, and you have a devil of a time getting your expenses paid when all the accounting is done manually.

Why are there so many Windows Server 2003 stragglers?

Don't worry. When do get pwned, it'll be all your fault anyway.

On the other hand, it may just provide a bit of entertainment to see the managers' headless chicken rush to CYA.

Go fac' yourselves: US privacy bods walk out of visage recog talks

"Facial recognition is used to"

provide the NSA with the complete list of people in a given area at a given time, to be plugged into the The Machine at a future time.

So, Person of Interest really was a documentary after all.

Re: Sad but working solutions...

Not really.

I think that it is illegal in most countries to hide your face in public.

That is why the bank robbers in films always put on their balaclavas right before going into the bank. If they walked all the way there in public, they'd be arrested long before they got to the bank door.

Flash is fallible. But you'd rather have an AFA than spinning rust

Re: giving up

Why give up one for the other ? With today's prices, I took both.

An Intel i7 quand core is currently 350€, and for that price you can get a nice Intel 300GB SSD to boot your system on.

Add a 3TB spinning rust SATA disk to store you work data and you're good to go.

Hacked US OPM boss: We'll fix our IT security – just give us $21 million

You contradict yourself

You say it's easy to fix, then you list a bunch of items and state that it "is doable with a competent IT team" - meaning you acknowledge that all that is decidedly not easy and requires expertise.

If it was easy to do, every company would have it included in whatever OS they use and it would happen automatically - like connecting to the network via Ethernet or WiFi.

But it is not easy at all, which is why most companies, even sizeable ones, do not have an intrusion detection system, do not run vulnerability scans (automated or not), nor do they have the luxury of restricting root access because most of them use IT as they use Word - as long as it works, forget about it. Hell, we can be happy if most of them have any kind of anti-virus installed.

Not that I approve that behavior, but that's what they do.

Re: " they would require a far bigger effort and systems in a really miserable state"

If I got the gist of the article correctly, the systems are in a really miserable state.

Too old to be secured ? What kind of cop-out is that ? You can always add a firewall in front of it, no ?

Auto-playing video ads? People love auto-playing video ads – Twitter

The molesting uncle

Twitter is starting to look like a molesting uncle, allowing 140 characters of service provided you accept videos to be automatically thrust down your bandwidth.

I wonder how long it will take for Twitter to decide that you don't get to turn off the auto-run feature because "their customers (ie advertisers) clamored for it".

In any case, I salute the start of Twitter's bold march into oblivion.

Can't wait for it to get there already.