Posts by Pascal Monett

Chinese boffins find way to use diamonds as super-dense and durable storage medium

Wow

Is that a USB key, or a marriage proposal ?

Tech support chap showed boss how to use a browser for a year – he still didn't get it

"learnt many things about how not to run a company"

It is truly amazing how people can confuse power with ability.

You have your own company ? Good for you. That doesn't mean you're a success.

Panasonic brings its founder back to life as an AI

"making the AI necessary"

There is nothing that makes pseudo-AI necessary.

Write it down in a book and publish that, if you must, but do not start artificial shrines to the memory of what was nothing but a CEO.

Are you going to start worshipping it every morning before the management meeting ?

What a crazy world we live in, and this AI bullshit is just making it worse.

Microsoft patches the patch that broke Exchange Server

"Microsoft did not explain precisely what it fixed"

Oh, too embarrassed to own up ?

That's funny. I'd have thought that you were way passed the point of being embarrassed about anything . . .

Australia passes law to keep under-16s off social media – good luck with that, mate

Re: Fat Chance

They don't mind looking like idiots.

It does not keep them from being re-elected.

Re: a workable age verification system

I'm still waiting to see something that actually works.

In the absolute, it could, but at the condition that you have every birth recorded in a government-held database (that is inviolate), and that you are sure that the person requesting verification is the person who's record is in the database.

Good luck on that last part.

Google earns fresh competition scrutiny from two nations on a single day

The pressure is rising

Sooner or later, the tide will come in. Corporations have no right to make decisions like that. Either they accept external software developers, or they don't. The only thing Google has the right - and the obligation - to do is ensure that apps on its Store are not malicious.

For the rest, Google has no right to choose. If it needs a cluebat to the face to understand, so be it.

Fine print in Intel's CHIPS Act deal includes requirement to keep control of its foundries

Tough

Intel has long been a leader in the silicon industry. Hell, without Intel the computing landscape we have today simply wouldn't exist.

I have no empathy for a corporation. The US Government has, rightly, decided that it needs to guarantee the country's independance concerning critical technical products. The Board at Intel needs to toe the line, however much that might not be financially interesting for them right now.

'Best job at JPL': What it's like to be an engineer on the Voyager project

Re: "I know I do."

Audentes Fortuna iuvat

If you don't try, you will never succeed.

It is better to fail than to do nothing.

If you fail, at least you tried.

The only thing worse than being fired is scammers fooling you into thinking you're fired

Waiting for them to try me

I am self-employed.

Good luck convincing me that I'm firing myself.

No, Broadcom did not just end VMware's flagship VCDX certification program

Broadcom

Continuing digging the hole it has created for itself.

Congratulations on supporting your investment so well.

Investors just can't pull the plug despite datacenters facing AI power crunch

"Investors are increasingly concerned"

. . that their investment is not going to give the returns they expect.

Do not tell me that they give a fig about sustainability or energy consumption when they continue to throw billions into this pseudo-AI malarky.

The workplace has become a surveillance state

"there is a growing desire among"

employers Nazis.

They are Nazis. It's easy to become one, apparently.

I have one question : when has your job been to watch what your employees are doing ?

Your job is to manage, to forecast, to plan.

Not to be slave driver.

Telco engineer who spied on US employer for Beijing gets four years in the clink

"Ping Li, a US citizen and Chinese immigrant"

It sure seems that employing a first-generation Chinese immigrant in a position that has access to key critical data is starting to look like a losing proposal from a security perspective.

Let them create restaurants and settle down, make children and live in the West.

Then employ the 2nd-generation, or the 3rd, who have not been endoctrinated by Beijing and are less susceptible to immediately send everything back to a home they no longer know.

Because I'm sorry, but the number of Chinese immigrants who have been caught stealing secrets is more than I care to count.

CrowdStrike still doesn't know how much its Falcon flame-out will cost

"customers can't find a better security product"

That is sad.

Failure should not be rewarded with better revenue.

On the other hand, experience can only come by learning from one's mistakes.

In that case, CrowdStrike has just become the most experienced security vendor on the planet, so . . .

UK council still hadn't fully costed troubled Oracle project 2 years in

Not a problem, people

It's just another round of wasted money.

You have too much of that anyway, right ?

Kill Oracle's 'JavaScript' trademark, Deno asks USPTO

"This outdated legal relic"

Wait, are we talking about Oracle now ?

China sends cloud powered by homebrew Loongson CPUs into space

Wait, widely accepted legal precedents ?

What accepted legal precedents ?

You're being sued several times over your practices, I think you should wait for the results before stating that they are widely accepted.

That they are widely used is another matter entirely.

Imagine a land in which Big Tech can't send you down online rabbit holes or use algorithms to overcharge you

I have to admit

Apart from the censorship, there are a lot of things concerning the Internet that rather like in how China is trying to shape it.

Of course, there's the unfortunate fact that China is shaping it for political reasons only, but still, there are some good ideas there.

So-called "social media" sites will have to be reigned in one day. Things have already gotten out of hand with tracking and they're getting worse.

It might be good to analyze Beijing's decision under the eye of freedom of expression and freedom from tracking.

Network engineer chose humiliation over a night on the datacenter floor

Re: Murphy's Law also *loves* demos

Well, the search worked . . .

Now’s your chance to try Microsoft’s controversial Windows Recall ... maybe

Yeah, but that would violate Redmond's Golden Rule : never let the user think for himself.

Mega defense corp Thales faces Anglo-French bribery and corruption probe

So, Thales is being investigated

Isn't that an again ?

What happened to the last investigation ?

I'm sure the same thing will happen to this one. With a company like that, there are too many people in important positions that prefer not to get their feathers ruffled.

Whomp-whomp: AI PCs make users less productive

"Organizations [..] must [educate] in order to truly showcase the potential of 'everyday AI' "

Aka : please help us sell this new generation of bullshit.

Techie left 'For support, contact me' sign on a server. Twenty years later, someone did

Re: Passwords

I feel that you gave him way too much phone time. He says the head demands that you give the password ? Nope. He has the password. Go ask him. Have a nice day.

And then I'd hang up. Forever.

Microsoft flashes Win10 users with more full-screen ads for Windows 11

Re: Win10 will be the last OS from Microsoft I will ever use...

Amen to that.

I will drag my Win7 home PC and my Win10 work laptop for the next few years until my retirement.

At that point, I will have the time to erase everything Borkzilla from my personal universe and move to some version of Mint.

I'm sure it will be quite refreshing to have, once again, a Personal Computer.

Pakistan's tech lobby warns that slow internet is strangling IT industry

Because you're bothered by pakistani programmers ?

What on Earth is your work domain ?

Brazil hooks up with Chinese satellite broadband service that doesn't operate yet

"China could use them to impose censorship"

Well I don't see that that is much different from Musk. He cuts off service on a whim.

At least, with China, you know what you can expect.

Billionaire food app CEO wants you to pay for the privilege of working with him

He thinks experience is overrated

Good.

He can resign then, and let me take his position.

We'll answer any questions DoJ has, HPE CEO tells us as Feds probe $14B Juniper buy

I have an idea

Let's just forbid Fortune 1000 companies from buying other companies.

It will always harm competition, one way or another.

If you're that big, you can stand on your own two feet.

Mega US healthcare payments network restores system 9 months after ransomware attack

"I'm blown away"

I'll bet you are.

Welcome to healthcare. The industry that never has the money to do IT properly, but apparently has the money to redo its IT when required.

It's not enough to have guidelines and general procedures, it is high time that IT gets an instruction manual for large companies, and that healthcare gets the means and the obligation to do things right.

Unless there's a law, it will first have to be approved by The Board - and that's where everything costly disappears.

Job seekers call BS on the workplace AI revolution

Job seekers ?

If they're looking for a job, they don't have a work life - they're looking for one.

Does not compute.

Put your usernames and passwords in your will, advises Japan's government

"Maintain a list of your subscriptions, user IDs and passwords"

Good luck with that.

Most people can't be bothered with such mundane details. They let the browser remember.

We have tech that does its damndest to keep us from thinking. Social media feeds us automatically what it thinks we want, and we lap it up like thirsty dogs.

I don't see this initiative going anywhere.

Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 struggles to take off

How unfortunate

How unfortunate that Redmond didn't ask Blizzard for a few pointers on how to do major online game launches.

I mean, it's not like they bought them or anything.

Oh, wait . . .

Steam cuts the cord for legacy Windows and macOS

Re: Mac gaming on Steam, even with newer macs, it's casual at best

Mac OS if less than 10% market share.

Nobody is going to bother with all the effort Valve went through (which I salute) to bring gaming to such a feeble revenue stream.

I have a colleague who is entirely Apple-brainwashed. He has an MAC OS ARM laptop, on which he games, because he is subscribed to a gaming service which allows him to basically VPN into a PC and play.

In other words, he doesn't use his MAC to play, he uses it to log into a proper PC and game from there.

And he can't stop telling me how practical it is.

I'm glad he's having fun with his monthly subscription.

Study suggests X turned right just in time for election season

"social media as it should be"

Oh, you mean inexistant ?

Social interactions should be in person. This artificial world we have created is alluring, to be sure, but it is not real. Email is fine for corresponding with family. Internet video is fine for seeing one's loved ones from time to time. SMS works great for near-instant chat with actual, real-life friends. But spending all day long on web sites that "connect" you is debilitating and does not give any real sense of contact, much less human interaction.

It's all a dream, Neo. Take the red pill and come back to reality.

Russian suspected Phobos ransomware admin extradited to US over $16M extortion

Russian cybercriminals

If you want to stay free, you should apparently stay in Russia (for certain values of free, obviously).

So you've seen Russia from the inside ?

China wants mobile devices to limit usage time for minors, ensure they only see nice content

A content filter

I am genuinely curious to see how they're going to make that work.

Every attempt made on this side of the Great Firewall has failed miserably. It's mainly a list of authorized sites, not content filtering.

Is YouTube available in China ? Because if it is, there's going to be one hell of a challenge right there. Oh sure, I know that nothing mentioning Tienanmen is going to be available, but that's just a keyword filter, and only concerns the title of the video.

To me, a content filter is an endless game of whack-a-mole, and once you start, you can never stop playing.

Data is the new uranium – incredibly powerful and amazingly dangerous

"We don't know what a 'data Chernobyl' might look like"

I imagine that the tens of millions of people who've already had their identity stolen and their bank accounts abused (not to mention their credit rating) might have a slight notion of what that might look like . . .

Europe glances Russia's way after Baltic Sea data cables severed

It didn't last time, what makes you think it will this time ?

Northern Ireland schools ditch £485M Fujitsu deal after less than a year

Finally

At long last, a multi-million dollar contract falls through even though contractual clauses would have probably ensured that Fujitsu reap a handsome reward.

Is this a signal that the heavyweights need to pay attention to actually bringing value ?

Somehow, I don't think so.

Windows 95 setup was three programs in a trench coat, Microsoft vet reveals

"the excitement of installing Windows 95 for the first time"

I remember that sense of wonder. It was awesome.

After reinstalling for the 300th+ time, that sense of wonder had largely disappeared . . .

iOS 18 added secret and smart security feature that reboots iThings after three days

"law enforcement is under more time pressure"

I'm all for it.

I've had more than enough of hearing how the police run amok through people's private data whether they have a case or not.

If you can't get a warrant, you shouldn't be looking at my data.

Musk, America PAC sued for allegedly rigging $1M election prize

"allegedly lying about their $1 million election lottery"

Oh my God, you mean to tell me that, after not paying so many of his bills, he's not paying out $1 million ?

That he promised ?

I am shocked.

Shocked, I say.

Microsoft starts boiling the Copilot frog: It's not a soup you want to drink at any price

"The drive is always to abdicate [..] thinking about it"

And that, in a nutshell, is why we are all going to Hell in a handbasket.

We have brains. Like muscles, if you don't use it, you lose it.

Think !

Before it's too late !

Trump appoints Musk associate Brendan Carr as FCC chair

Business as usual

Trump is obviously surrounding himself with cronies and crooks who will do anything he says and kiss his feet while doing so.

I expect a repeat of the infamous Oval Office meeting where Trump sits and everyone else is standing at attention, waiting for his/her turn to lavish praise on His Trumpiness.

It's going to be a long four years - unless he croaks first.

Now the question is : what's better ? He finishes his mandate and dies in (relative) obscurity, or he dies during his presidency and gets the full Presidential burial ?

NIST trains AI to hear the 'oh crap' moment before batteries explode

"find its way into homes, office buildings, and [EV] parking garages"

Hey, I'm all for it. I know one parking in central Luxembourg that would probably have very much liked to have that alarm in 2019 when it was devastated by a vehicle that caught fire. It was never specified if the vehicle was an EV, though.

It's still closed, and I don't know how many other vehicles were trashed before the fire was put out.

Price tag for renovation ? almost €30 million. And they had a fire alarm.

Yeah, you definitely want all the warning you can get concerning a garage fire.

Or any fire, really.

Letting chatbots run robots ends as badly as you'd expect

Re: Asimov only wrote down some words to sell some books

I respectfully disagree with those words.

Science fiction has long been lauded as a tool for describing societal conditions. Asimov was as much a philosopher as a sci-fi writer. Do not cheapen his work.

That said, I upvoted you because I agree with everything else you said.

Swiss cheesed off as postal service used to spread malware

Interesting

What will be more interesting will be to find out if this method is used again.

If it is, it has to mean that the criminals got their money's worth.

Congress ponders underwater alien civilizations, human hybrids, and other unexplained stuff

Not even going to waste my time watching that video

I'm sure it's just a bunch of accusations, declarations and hookum without any single demonstrable fact.

That this has gotten as high as Congress demonstrates just how low the US has sunk.

No wonder Trump got re-elected.