Posts by Pascal Monett

Why does the UK keep getting beaten up by IT suppliers?

"unforeseen technical complexities"

In other words, the people who were responsible for the specifications fucked up. That seems to be a regular occurence within UK government structures.

If you are designing a framework which is supposed to work country-wide, you can't content yourself with the opinions of old farts who don't know how things work. You need to gather the needs of the people who will actually work with the product and are expected to deliver something.

I have 30 years of experience in designing and implementing software products. I obviously start with the stuffy ole farts who declare what they think is what they need. Then I go talk to the people who actually do the job, and make sure that the final product responds to their needs.

The old farts won't know the difference anyway.

US freezes foreign aid, halting cybersecurity defense and policy funds for allies

Re: if it forces European leaders into self sufficiency

I don't like Trump and I don't trust his coterie of criminals in high positions in any way, but indeed, if this finally forces the Euromafia to do its job properly, then I'm for it.

Funds for cyberdefense ? Since when is the US responsible for cyberdefense in other countries ?

Oh, Cisco. Hmmm. Well, maybe a bit, then . . .

AI facial recognition could sink this murder probe

"Clearview doesn't want to come defend its technology in court"

Well that says it all, doesn't it ?

On top of that, who are these Keystone cops who take facial recognition from one video to accuse someone of a crime they had a record of on another video ?

They found a gun. Well duh, it's the USA. You can find a gun almost anywhere there. Would be a lot easier if guns were forbidden, eh ?

So, did the gun match the bullets ? Did it ? Because I believe we have actual reliable technology to determine that. And if it did, then screw this facial recog stuff, that guy is guilty.

But did the gun match the bullets ?

Google takes action after coder reports 'most sophisticated attack I've ever seen'

Interesting

Some truly up-to-date scum, there. Worth paying attention to.

As for passkeys, they're a brilliant idea until your device is stolen/broken.

Then what do you do to recover you account ?

A password is easy to replace. My biometric data, or the private key stored on the phone I just dropped into water, is not.

Citrix slated to axe its Technology Professional program

"the needs and priorities of our key customers"

Oh. So you don't consider all of your customers as key customers.

And you've just told them that to their face.

AI agents? Yes, let's automate all sorts of things that don't actually need it

"We know bad actors may try to misuse this technology."

But we're ready to make money off of that as well.

Tech stocks tank as US AI dominance no longer a sure bet

Re: Wishful ThinkingTM is not a good basis for policy

No, but apparently it's the only policy in use these days.

Sweden seizes cargo ship after another undersea cable hit in suspected sabotage

Sieze it and scrap it

If it's a scrapheap, you'll at least get some metal out of it and it will be one less shadow ship that Putin can count on.

It's not like Malta is going to go to war.

Okay, nurse, I'll go take my dried frog pills . . .

AI chatbot startup founder, lawyer wife accused of ripping off investors in $60M fraud

"an enterprise-grade AI chat service"

What the hell is that ?

Something that only answers with quarterly result quotes ?

Linux rolls out the welcome mat for Microsoft's Copilot key

All this hoopla

And most actual Linux users are not going to rush to replace their keyboards anyway.

Re: Why all the animosity?

Well gosh. We're talking about another useless Borkzilla-imposed functionality that is extending its claws into penguinland.

Why are you surprised ?

Fitbit pays Uncle Sam $12M to sprint away from claims of burning-hot smartwatches

"the update failed to solve the problem"

Well duh. If you failed to design your gizmo in such a way as to avoid overheating, on something as basic as a watch, you're not going to be able to just throttle the CPU and hope it works (eh, Apple ?).

This watch was badly designed from the start and not properly tested.

So, business as usual.

User said he did nothing that explained his dead PC – does a new motherboard count?

That is still the case

Dear me

Do I know that kind of story.

I still have friends who call on me to help them with their PC woes. The latest tale is one who called me complaining that her Windows was excruciatingly slow. We chatted for a while and I came to the conclusion that I had to check things out for myself.

When she brought me the laptop, upon launching it I immediately saw that she had two different anti-virus products installed. When I asked her why, she answered : "but if I have two, I'm twice as protected".

If only.

I proceeded to uninstall one of them while explaining : "You hire two maids, but you only have one broom. They're going to fight over who gets the broom and, during that time, the cleaning doesn't get done."

VMware users gripe over 3-year commitment to renew licenses

Their largest customers are leaving in droves. They have the resources to do so and, apparently, they look at the invoice and say : No.

Broadcom will be left with the small fry, until another competitor eats its lunch.

Frankly, that's all it deserves.

Who is DDoSing you? Rivals, probably, or cheesed-off users

DDOS attacks are getting shorter ?

I thought the point was denial of service. Ten minutes max of denial is nothing. Borkzilla's Azure does hours, or even days at the drop of a hat.

Oh, and a disgruntled user ? So, somebody who goes on the Dark Web (because they're not advertising on Google, if I'm not mistaken), contacts some criminal hacker group and rents their service for ten minutes ?

Those hackers must be selling pretty cheap. On the other hand, they haven't bought the equipment they've hacked, so it likely doesn't cost them much.

Tool touted as 'first AI software engineer' is bad at its job, testers claim

"rather than recognizing fundamental blockers"

Obviously. It doesn't "recognize" anything. It's a statistical analysis machine put to very exacting use.

To recognize a fundamental blocker, you need experience and intelligence. This pseudo-AI has neither.

Cognition AI has set itself a tall task, and the market is not going to stand for a 15% success rate.

LinkedIn accused of training AI on private messages

Why am I not surprised ?

I bailed from LinkedIn the day Borkzilla acquired them.

I was forced to have an account by a previous employer and, along the way, made contact with some people I appreciated so, when I left that employer, I kept the account for the sake of those contacts.

But then Borkzilla appeared and I decided that enough was enough, so I closed the account.

Now, I am very well aware that my account is still there, but there is nothing going on and I haven't accessed it since, so I Redmond wants to train pseudo-AI on whatever garbage is in there, it's welcome to it.

Apple sued for using dangerous 'forever chemicals' in Watch bands

Re: some limitations of the study

That may be true, but the lawsuit nails the fact that Apple knows about PFAS and has committed to phasing them out.

Looks like Apple didn't tell their supplier about that little detail.

Re: Lifetime guarantee

No it's YLMV - Your Lifetime May Vary.

Ransomware scum make it personal for Reg readers by impersonating tech support

Sangria Tempest or Carbon Spider

Could we stop giving those criminal groups sexy names ?

They're not hurricanes, they're scum.

So, call them Scum0001, Scum0002, etc.

They do not deserve more than that.

China claims major fusion advance and record after 17-minute Tokamak run

"not peer-reviewed work"

China regularly spurts out record claims in almost every domain, and many of them are either debunked or unverifiable.

If they really did this, it is a Good Thing^(TM), but until I hear reports of scientific confirmation, I'm going to refrain from congratulating them.

Meta, X sign up to Euro Commish code of conduct on hate speech

"platforms should respond in 1 day"

Looks like Musk is going to have to re-hire some moderators.

Is he going to have the time, given his new responsibilities in the US Government ?

Re: Hate speech - a truly Orwellian concept

I beg to differ.

If you advocate for violence against or the death of any specific group of people, you are using hate speech.

I can despise you and I have the right to say that (that is not, btw, the case). I cannot say that I want you hurt or dead.

Just like you can't yell "FIRE" in a theatre.

There are limits to free speech.

I totally agree with you there.

Self-control and being an adult. Add in common sense, and you have the perfect storm of what is lacking in adults today.

Got a telescope? Bid farewell to ESA's retiring Milky Way mapper

"three trillion observations"

Once again, stellar engineering and steadfast maintenance has brought back a wealth of information beyond all expectations.

Why can't Redmond have that level of excellence ?

Capital One two-day outage leaves customers in free-fall

Beancounters should never have been allowed in management positions.

They're there to count the beans, not to decide how to use them.

Tech support fill-in given no budget, no help, no training, and no empathy for his plight

Re: Universities are the absolute worst for shadow IT

Agreed.

From what I've read (here and elsewhere), universities are the absolute most dismal IT environments that exist. No budget, so-called "administrators" that have nothing but demands and no knowledge of the requirements, and no flexibility when it comes to finding solutions.

It's obviously a lot easier to shield oneself with a half-baked procedure document than actually think about how to make things work.

SpaceX resets ‘Days Since Starship Exploded’ counter to zero

Yes, you're right. Scientifically, Einstein has never been proven wrong.

But that doesn't mean that we won't find a way.

I definitely hope that we find a way.

Just as your LLM once again goes off the rails, Cisco, Nvidia are at the door smiling

AI security tools

Great.

We have created ourselves a brand new technological threat landscape, and we are actively trying everything to increase our insecurity.

Yay progress.

GM parks claims that driver location data was given to insurers, pushing up premiums

"we ended that program due to customer feedback"

No. You ended that program because some courageous individual sued you and was successful.

Anduril picks Ohio for 5 million square foot autonomous weapon factory

Interesting

They didn't decide to build that factory in India, or Mexico.

Oh but of course, we're talking weapons. That means we can sell them for lots more, which means we can pay USA-level salaries for workers to make them.

And we can also pretend that we're making an effort to contribute to the country's economy.

Blue Origin reaches orbit with New Glenn, fumbles first-stage recovery

Zuckerberg is only interested in his island retreat.

As far as he's concerned, Humanity can die as long as his hidey-hole keeps him alive.

I almost wish his dream comes true and he lives the rest of his life alone. But that wouldn't bother a Borg, now would it.

Infoseccer: Private security biz let guard down, exposed 120K+ files

Assist Security

Demonstrating the difference between being there for the paycheck and actually being competent.

Oh, and I love the dig about the eventual "unlawful" access of the "ethical hacker".

You're idiots and you have been exposed. Shooting the messenger just confirms it.

Apple's interoperability efforts aren't meeting spirit or letter of EU law, advocacy groups argue

"open and transparent"

Those are two words that are not in the Cupertino lexicon.

They prefer the "you're holding it wrong" attitude.

UK government tech procurement lacks understanding, says watchdog

"an overemphasis on acquiring the minimum requirement or cheapest resource"

Wasn't it Niel Armstrong who commented on how he was going to space on something built with the lowest bidder ?

It worked out for him, thank goodness, but sometimes the government would do well to remember that cheapest isn't always best.

Something that costs more often has a reason for it (not always though, it's tricky).

India becomes just fourth country to dock satellites in orbit

Coronagraph

There's something I don't get. Two satellites orbiting together with millimeter precision is awesome, but would it not have been simpler to put a disk in front of the one satellite to block the Sun and allow analysis of the corona ?

KISS is still relevant, no ? Especially in space.

We were able to have a telescope deploy itself with vastly more complex requirements, surely a simple disk wouldn't be such an issue ?

I second that.

Awesome achievement !

US adds Chinese RISC-V player that TSMC suspected of helping build Huawei GPUs to risky company register

"RISC-V is freely available intellectual property"

Well, at least we can be sure that China didn't need to steal that.

Oh, Deere! FTC sues tractor maker, alleging decades of monopolized repairs

"the stench of partisan motivation"

Isn't that a convenient excuse.

And cancelling something that might bring farmers some measure of justice, what stench does that have ?

GoDaddy slapped with wet lettuce for years of lax security and 'several major breaches'

Another proof

Proof once again that the Internet is not important.

Not unless you're talking about TikTok, banning Huawei or the latest changes at Meta, that is.

A web hosting provider ? What's that ? Who cares ? Just pretend to be nice and go about your business.

These are not the droids you're looking for.

Shove your office mandates, people still prefer working from home

Re: Just a thought

That depends on what your expertise is.

I have 30 years of experience in my specific domain. I'd like to see someone in Bangalore give the same level of competence over a WFH connection.

SEC sues Elon Musk for allegedly screwing investors out of $150M before Twitter takeover

Re: He'll end up in a US jail

As much as I would like to see him wearing an orange jumpsuit next to Trump's cell, for some reason, I don't think that's going to happen.

The bell tolls for TikTok as lifelines to avoid January 19 US ban vanish

"We need time"

Really ?

Maybe you could have planned ahead ? <slap> Idiot, what am I saying. You're Senators, you don't plan, you react.

When you have time.

Well, you don't.

By the way, when do you plan to have the time to plan on defending Humanity from the next asteroid strike ? When it's a month away ?

Bye bye, then.

Right.

Anything an Anonymous Coward endorses has to be good.

Boeing going backwards as production’s slowing and woes keep flowing

Re: They need ....

Agreed.

I'm sorry for Mr Ortberg, but his presence is too little, too late to restore the company’s culture and regain a leadership position.

He's got decades of rot to cut off first, starting with everyone on the Board and going down, like a surgeon cuts off gangrenous tissue.

A delicate exercise at best.

I wish him luck.

Funny, but you forgot the troll icon.

They've only gone and made Doom run in a PDF file

I only use SumatraPDF.

It's good enough for me, and lightning quick.

It doesn't have all the bells and whistles, but hey, it's free.

Pornhub lockdown and fact-free Zuckbots – welcome to 2025

"facts will always trump opinion"

Sorry, but it seems to me that US Republicans do not obey that little rule.