Posts by Pascal Monett

First time's the charm: SpaceX catches a descending Super Heavy Booster

"Easily fixable"

Trust His Muskiness to spout nonsense about something he has absolutely no knowledge of.

Kudos to the incredible SpaceX team and the CEO who has managed to keep Musk at arms' length and stop him from imposing stupid decisions that would have undoubtedly made sure SapceX never got to where it is now.

As far as SpaceX is concerned, Musk can spout his bullshit. Everyone knows who is doing the job and, as long as he isn't a decider, people will continue to trust that the engineers are doing their job right.

If only Boeing could back into that mindset.

Boeing again delays the 777X – the plane that's supposed to turn things around

"The challenges we have faced in development"

Yeah, like making sure the engines are properly placed, the doors don't fly off mid-flight, the pilots actually know what they can do and the plane can actually take off and do it.

Big challenges for a company that has completely lost the plot.

I'm guessing that this is not going to be the last reschedule . . .

Compression? What's that? And why is the network congested and the PCs frozen?

Re: Near identical

He was in sales, so expendable by definition.

Those are the stories that demonstrate how we got to where we are now. Better management of email is, just like laws about security, due to the abysmal failures of existing procedures.

The eggheads who thought of email management (back in the day where a 10MB hard disk cost a huge chunk of money) didn't think about the real world, they just thought that a message should never be lost - and that's how the Real World^TM lost plenty of messages.

Nowadays, we have servers with terabytes of disk space, and we still limit message size to a very reasonable 10MB. If you have more than that to send, you can arrange for a shared cloudy thing and not bother the email server with it.

But that takes experience, and experience always means experiencing failure and finding out why.

Smart homes may be a bright idea, just not for the dim bulbs who live in 'em

Abrilliant article that I will reference in future

It says everything it needs to say about all that "smart" malarky that I never did and never will trust.

I'm not handicapped. I can get my fucking ass off of the fucking couch and flick a switch. The rest of the world doesn't need to know about it, thank you.

Cards Against Humanity campaigns to encourage voting, expose personal data abuse

Re: with a serial number on it which they record

I don't like that because it means that they can tie your name to who you voted for.

That, IMO, is a violation of the right to vote and a clear path toward rounding up everyone who voted "wrong" and making them pay for it.

In France, any ballot with anything written on it is considered null and not counted. The UK system opens you to this kind of ridiculous shenanigans.

Re: Most countries record the names of voters without making that information "public"

In France, every time I vote I go through the same procedure. I bring my voting card (sent regularly by the government), present my voting card to the first town official who looks me up in his database - which is a sheaf of printed papers with all the people allowed to vote in that town. When he finds me, he has me sign in (with a pen) in the empty space next to my name.

Then the second town official gives me my voting envelope (which is empty) and I can go to the table where the ballots of all available candidats are waiting for me to pick up (one ballot per candidate). I look over the choices, pick more than I intend to use (because I protect my voting anonymity that way), and I go into the voting booth to place my chosen ballot in my envelope. I could also have brought my ballot with me, because a week or so before the vote I am always sent an official, nominative envelope with all the candidate's ballots in it.

When I exit the booth, I go to the voting box where a third town official verifies that I have placed my envelope in the box, saying "a voté !" (has voted) when I'm done.

Then I go to the fourth and last official who gives me back my voting card and I am free to leave.

So my name and signature are properly registered on a piece of paper which is undoubtedly stored somewhere, but who I voted for will never be known unless I say it.

Windows 11 24H2 hoards 8.63 GB of junk you can't delete

Easy fix, Redmond

Just remove those 8GB from the cleanup options.

That way, you can continue to clutter user disks for no good reason and they won't know about it.

Because you're the specialist in doing things without anybody noticing, eh ?

Tesla's big reveal: Steering-wheel-free Robotaxi will charge wirelessly

Agreed.

It's time to post this link again.

BOFH: Boss's quest for AI-generated program ends where it should've begun

"They're all hostile," the PFY says. "They all want your information."

That is gold.

Techie took five minutes to fix problem Adobe and Microsoft couldn't solve in two weeks

Re: it was too much effort to switch off

What else do you expect from a PHB ?

Chinese boffins build soft robot finger that can take your pulse

"It could also be used in the home"

One step closer to the ultimate sexbot . . .

Tencent builds one NoSQL database to rule all data models

30 million requests per second

Now that is an impressive performance.

Now all we need to do is wait for China to take over the world and we will have this technology at our fingertips . . .

FBI created a cryptocurrency so it could watch it being abused

"coded in a way that prevented market manipulation"

Oh really ? And how did you do that ?

Because, apart from implementing rules that prevent customers from buying and/or selling x amount in t time, which somebody with average intelligence could circumvent using more than one account, I don't see that you're intelligent enough to prevent market manipulation.

But those were just words anyway. PR fluff to impress the gullible.

Which is the basic rule for anything crypto these days.

GSA plows ahead with face matching tech despite its own reliability concerns

"despite its own recent report admitting the tech is far from perfect"

Well it's following the shining example of Microsoft, then. What a surprise.

Next we'll be hearing that, if logon is not working, it's because our face is wrong.

Microsoft admits Outlook crashes, says impact 'mitigated'

"find out what the problem is"

Hint : the problem is using Outlook.

Post Office CEO tells inquiry: Leadership was in 'dream world' over Horizon scandal

"neither the Post Office's executive or board were seriously concerned"

I hope that a jail sentence will start to seriously concern them.

You have issues with 'Issues' always being called 'Issues' in Jira, so Atlassian now allows them to be called ‘Tasks’

Terminology

If they had called it a Ticket from the start, it might have been less problematic.

A Ticket can be anything, and allows the creation of sub-categories that, if configurable, would have satisfied everyone from the beginning.

Dutch cops reveal takedown of 'world's largest dark web market'

The noose is closing

Criminals may wish to take note : the days where the Internet was a guarantee of immunity against law enforcement are well and truly over.

If you show up on the police's radar, they will get to you.

Moscow-adjacent GoldenJackal gang strikes air-gapped systems with custom malware

“an unknown worm component”

Maybe social engineering ?

An embassy was infiltrated. Embassy personnel know better (normally) than to pick up a stray USB and insert it into their work PC. I'm thinking specific employees were targeted with the appropriate arguments and an infected USB key was handed over. The arguments can range anywhere from basic seduction to promises of important data.

The only other possibility is that the cleaning lady had a hand in this.

Internet Archive user info stolen in cyberattack, succumbs to DDoS

haveibeenpwned

I have two email addresses that haveibeenpwned indicates have been implicated in 4 and 3 pwnages, but that just means that somebody got my email address and the password I used for those sites.

If you don't use the same password for everything, it is less important.

Copilot's crudeness has left Microsoft chasing Google, again

Sharepoint. Ugh.

'Nuff said.

Asian crime gangs are growing – fast – thanks to AI and other tech

"70% of cryptocurrency related scam transactions globally in 2023 used stablecoins"

Ban the stuff.

Contrary to the VHS is killing cinema argument of yore, crypto is now overwhelming helping only criminals.

It's time to shut it down.

MediaTek enters the 4th Dimensity with 3nm octa-core 9400 smartphone brains

"make the chip up to 40 percent more power efficient"

Great. Guess what ? Battery life will probably not improve because, as usual in the CPU arena, whatever power gains are made are gobbled up by new, power-hungry bits and bobs - here, it's AI.

So you'll be charging your phone every day, as usual.

A year after taking on Intel's NUC mini-PCs, Asus says it's ready to improve them

"real-time conversational interfaces"

Great.

We're being trained to talk to machines.

Skynet won't need to kill us, it'll talk us to death.

Epic judge orders Google to let rivals set up app stores

Google is appealing

How totally unsurprising.

And, of course, it is asking for a stay of execution while it spends the next ten years fighting this decision.

Because that's what it's going to do. Google will fight this tooth and nail, because it hits its bottom line and we can't have that, now can we ?

Re: "permit third-party Android app stores to access the Google Play Store's catalog"

Why do you say dodgy ? That seems to me to be a gratuitious ad-hominem attack. Other app stores can very well be just as reliable, or better, than Google's (or Apple's).

And what makes you think that any other app store is going to list an app if its owner doesn't submit it for listing ?

I don't know that app stores scrape other stores like pseudo-AI companies scrape other sites. If you do, please tell us.

Google brings better bricking to Androids, to curtail crims

Re: I loved good old days when you were not watched every second of your life

Amen to that !

Re: Already fing annoying

So basically thieves already have a workaround.

Great news.

Happy birthday, Putin – you've been pwned

Unprecedented

Yeah, normally you're the one attacking others.

What cheek ! What gall ! To attack you !

Unbelievable, ain't it ?

Windows 11 migration? Upgrade engine revs up, enterprises have no choice

Oh I absolutely agree.

Windows only exists in the business market because of the vast amount of sheeple who can't, for the life of them, imagine using anything else.

Unfortunately, it is a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Those who are intelligent enough to use Linux already are.

The morons are infected with Windows and will remain so.

Under the form of an expensive contract, maybe, but for the global user population ? Not a chance.

Re: Big if

Oh knock it off.

If companies could do that without totally disrupting the back-end services, they would have done it already.

Stop touting Linux as the obvious solution to all IT woes. It isn't.

Not without a hell of lot of expensive preperation and the full support of management up and down the hierarchy.

A working Turing Machine hits Lego Ideas

Re: No Annoying Music

Point taken.

Re: No Annoying Music

There's also the possibility of simply muting the sound.

Tesla Cybertruck recalled again. This time, a software fix for backup camera glitch

Two seconds ?

Two entire seconds to wake up a camera ?

What CPU is that based on, a 486 ?

In the era of AI and stupendously powerful computer chips, two seconds to turn on camera is disgusting.

Office 2024 unveiled for Microsoft 365 refuseniks

You can't see doesn't mean that Redmond doesn't benefit.

Harvard duo hacks Meta Ray-Bans to dox strangers on sight in seconds

"so that people can take their own privacy and data into their hands"

I'm sorry, but I strongly feel that the days where we could take care of our own privacy are long gone.

Ever since Google, our privacy has been in the hands of strangers in suits sitting in plush, expensive rooms who only think of how they can monetize our private lives.

And Eric Schmidt is the asshole who started it. Damn him. (but, if not him, there would have been another)

Elon Musk's X mashed by Australian court for evading child protection reporting

"X/Twitter does not need to comply with local requirements"

Oh but of course Elon, you're the one setting the rules again.

That's not how law works, and you have amply shown that you know nothing about law.

You barely know anything about decency.

Re: purely symbolic....

Agreed.

Ten times that would catch his attention, maybe.

Not just AI datacenters needing own power: Taiwanese server-maker Quanta has bought microgrids

Nuclear

Interesting.

I wonder if, like it has done for space access, private industry is going to be the engine that brings nuclear energy (preferably Thorium) back on the table.

Saying goodbye to the tech dreams Microsoft abandoned with Windows 11 24H2

Great idea, Redmond

Remove a tool included since forever for free and impose a paying replacement.

I'm not saying WordPad was the bee's knees, but having the gall to remove it and officially state that now you have to pay for Word to get the functionality is something that only the marketing department could possibly think is a good idea.

But I'm sure that the strain of supporting that decades-old code you haven't touched in years is reason enough, right ?

Microsoft throws in the towel on HoloLens 2

Re: being able to walk around inside buildings that haven't been built yet

Yes, that could be interesting.

There's this other, well-established technology called a screen. It can show images and, with a thing called a computer, you can use a tool called a mouse to move your point of view, and a thing called a keyboard to advance.

It's all very high-tech, I know, but maybe it means that you don't absolutely have to depend on strapping your head to some bulky portable low-definition screen to achieve the same result.

Cloudflare beats patent troll so badly it basically gives up

Patent trolls

As a judge, I would start with one question : when is the last time you made a product based on your patent ?

Never ?

Case dismissed.

The force is strong in Iceberg: Are the table format wars entering the final chapter?

"something that you can be a part of, that you can control"

Yeah, sure. Until some multi-billion dollar conglomerate comes into the game and changes the rules.

Broadcom, anyone ?

And yeah, we're talking open source. Big deal. When big money comes in, the rules fly out the window of The Board^TM.

Mega supermarket spots stock discrepancy of tens of millions amid ERP system migration

"a minor discrepancy"

Man do I wish I could label $10 million as a "minor discrepancy" in my accounting !

Microsoft lifts the price of System Center by ten percent

“The new pricing supports the continued development and improvement of System Center"

Oh, so the old pricing didn't ?

Bollocks. That's just your excuse to gouge your customers ever more.

You ain't fooling no one.

Get ready: US port strike may snarl tech supply chains

"some ILA members can make over $200,000 per year"

Gosh. I have over 25 years of expertise in my field and I'm not making that kind of money. I'm guessing that those ILA members with that kinf revenue are the ones who are deciding the strike.

And why are you griping about a 50% increase for $20 an hour ? It seems to me that that is an appreciable increase.

Oh, you're expecting more.

Unfortunately, Big Business wants to maximize margins and you're at the bottom of the pecking order. Yep, a strike is just about the only thing that is going to help.

Another OpenAI founder moves to arch-rival Anthropic

"the Microsoft-backed AI house"

So, most major founders of an open-source thingy have fled the house to another, non-Redmond-managed one ?

There's a clue there. I'm sure of it.

I mean, it's not like Redmond has ever declared that Open Source is a cancer, now is it ? Oh wait . . .

700K+ DrayTek routers are sitting ducks on the internet, open to remote hijacking

DayTrek should be fined in court

I don't care who brings the lawsuit, but in this day and age, to put on the market such a piece of crap is criminal negligence and somebody should be going to jail over it.