Posts by Pascal Monett

Paessler pulls subscription licensing switcheroo on PRTG Network Monitor

"3,000 of the 10,000 largest VMware customers"

So, you don't care about the little ones, and you haven't managed to retain 50% of the largest ones.

And you call that a success ?

Latest Ghostscript vulnerability haunts experts as the next big breach enabler

It's either open a file or click a link

There's the remote edge case where you visit a compromised website, but it seems to me that 99% of all malware is still waiting for the user to do something stupid.

Fix that and the miscreants will lose billions overnight.

Labour wins race to lead UK, but few would envy the load in its tech in-tray

I don't know.

I am personally rather familiar with Sir Humphrey. I absolutely love Yes Minister and its sequel, and I personally consider that it should be mandatory watching for every political student.

Then they can go on to House of Cards, which I abandoned after season 1 because wayyy too plausible and not funny at all.

Oracle releases experimental next-gen kernel build

Btrfs

Excuse me if I am a bit confused, but how many file systems do we actually need ?

I understand why FAT fell by the wayside, and I get that NTFS might not be the best of breed, but it's been since the 1960s that we've been studying the problem.

Why don't we have a good, reliable, standard file system yet ? Why does every vendor still have their own ?

Europol says mobile roaming tech is making its job too hard

"while not impeding secure communications disproportionately"

But it's okay to impede secure comms a little bit - just enough to avoid either putting boots on the ground or, worse, more paperwork like, oh I don't know, a warrant ?

You want to hear what some suspect is saying ? Here's an idea : directional microphone. I hear they work very well.

Of course, that's less easy to put in place than clicking on a keyboard from a thousand kilometers away.

Innocent techie jailed for taking hours to fix storage

"he had worked more hours than were allowed"

Than allowed by whom ? The police handbook ?

And is that officer going to go around jailing firefighters because they took 11 hours to secure a building in flames ?

Ridiculous.

Time Lords decree: No leap second needed in 2024

The negative leap second

A new Y2K in preparation ?

I can understand some points, actually. Adding seconds just means that logs write the next operation x seconds after the last. Removing a second would mean that a log (especially transaction logs) would have multiple entries for the same second, and then some more. That could be quite the headache for many servers and RDBMSs, not to mention the admins that keep them ticking.

And I have zero idea how to solve the issue.

Db2 is a story worth telling, even if IBM won't

Worse than that, IBM seems actively engaged in burying the product and any mention of it until it is completely forgotten.

Then, when the balance sheet comes up, they're all wailing and astonished that they're not making enough money.

We've banned Chinese telco kit and drones. Next: Mountain bikes?

"its fleet of DJI drones"

How is it that the US Government, which has been increasingly hysterical over China for the past decade, has purchased these drones in the first place ?

I mean sure, buy one to study it, but a fleet ?

Row erupts over data sharing function in UK doctor software

"better understand the implications of this software"

Seems like there was a step missing in the project before the software was written. Thos creating the software should have been more aware of its implications.

As usual, people talking to people who aren't on the ground, making decisions about what should be done and then getting all surprised when the people supposed to use the software get all riled up and worried about responsibility.

It seems that the root problem is that it's never the people actually responsible who get asked what they need, it's only the upper-class manglement who don't have a clue but need something to look good on their CV.

So much for green Google ... Emissions up 48% since 2019

"who spun it as a net positive"

In other words : this is what we're doing now and we ain't changing anything.

So, Google, how 'bout them FPGAs ?

ITER delays first plasma for world's biggest fusion power rig by a decade

Bummer

I was hoping to see fusion in my lifetime.

I guess I'll just have to hope that my daughter sees it.

Ransomware scum who hit Indonesian government apologizes, hands over encryption key

"not all victims would get the same treatment"

And there goes any goodwill you might have garnered. Penetration testers my ass. You're nothing but a bunch of greedy scumbags. I would hope you rot in Hell, but God is infinitely better than me.

Australia to build Top Secret cloud in AWS for military and spooky users

"to securely host our country's most sensitive information"

In the cloud. On someone else's server. Server that is managed by a group of barely-paid administrators fresh out of college.

I'm sure nation-state-backed hackers everywhere are looking forward to finding out what is in that cloud.

And they'll find out.

Microsoft Stores all close their doors in China

Re: the average user often opts for a MacBook

Sorry to burst your reality distortion field, but given that the MacBook has trouble breaching the 20% market share, it would seem that the average user buys a Windows laptop.

Oak Ridge boffins twist exotic metal into eco-friendly, solid-state cooler

I remember that

It was all the rage back when watercooling came out. Watercooling won because the Peltier coolers had a tendancy to freeze not on ly the CPU, but the air around it, meaning ice crystals forming on the motherboard.

Not good.

Cue a slew of tutorials explaining how to spread vaseline around the CPU to avoid shorting the motherboard.

Yeah, watercooling was easier.

Salesforce investors reject plan to add extra $20M to Benioff's total pay

Benioff is already a majority shareholder

So, if the company is doing well, he's doing well. He doesn't need more and, since he's already a billionnaire, he hardly needs a few paltry million more.

He should have asked for 20 billion. Apparently, among billionnaires these days, it's all the rage.

Google Translate now fluent in 110 additional languages from Abkhaz to Zulu

Re: To translate or [fail] to translate

Dialects are always a nightmare for linguists, so forget about computers.

MIT's bionic leg upgrade leaves amputees walking like the wind

It is breathtaking to see what future we are preparing on the medical front

I am gobsmacked to see that we are finding ways to overcome handicap so efficiently.

Well done. This is what happens when you have intelligent people dedicated to actually solving problems and technology that provides novel means to new solutions.

Don't tell me that landing on the Moon was a waste of money. This is proof that it wasn't.

France poised to bring 'charges against Nvidia'

What about FPGAs ?

I thought that there is now renewed interest in FPGA tech for all that juicy AI and ML stuff.

Nvidia can therefor argue that it hardly has a monopoly since it's going to get kicked out of the market, right ?

Boeing to reacquire spun-off supplier Spirit AeroSpace to shore up safety

"reacquire spun-off supplier Spirit AeroSpace"

Yeah well, at this point you can only say : incest is what it is, right ?

CISA director: US is 'not afraid' to shout about Big Tech's security failings

"not afraid to say when something is amiss"

I congratulate you.

Now, when are you actually going to do something about it ?

Because you remind me of the wife who is continually pestering her husband to get a job. For years.

An arc welder in the datacenter: What could possibly go wrong?

You're right. Hadn't thought of that.

"You just broke the stock exchange"

Proper answer : Fuck you, I wasn't there and you're incompetent.

Frankly, it beggars the mind that someone could actually think to call a person who isn't even in your team any more and blame them for your cock-up.

Verizon hit with whopping $847M verdict for infringing 5G and hotspot patents

"The judicial process is ongoing"

Sounds like an appeal if I ever heard of one.

Obviously.

Make 'em squirm, I say.

What do CTOs hate most about GenAI? Tool changes that break stuff

Tool changes that break stuff

Um, sorry, but aren't we in the Scrum epoch of move fast and break things ?

Aren't you supposed to be happy about that ? Oh, you're not ?

Well, it might be time to calm down and go back to waterfall, then. You know, when things were actually being planned ?

Chinese space company accidentally launches rocket in test gone wrong

So, rapid unscheduled disassembly, then ?

They might want to think about putting the launch pad a bit farther from the nearest town ?

China warns citizens to stop posting info about spy satellites on social media

Hu Youping

I can but salute a courageous woman who placed herself in harms' way to protect innocent people, and paid the ultimate price for it.

Now I can only think of one thing : if that had happened in the USA, the guy wouldn't have come aboard with a knife, he would have had an assault rifle.

Microsoft tells yet more customers their emails have been stolen

"If you have a Rabbit R1 – why?"

Indeed.

The Wiki page says : "designed by Teenage Engineering".

Yeah, well I'll wait for it to be designed by Adult Engineering - they already cause enough problems.

Indonesian government didn't have backups of ransomwared data, because DR was only an option

"Authorities are instead attempting to decrypt the data"

Yeah well, given their competence in managing a government datacenter, I very much doubt that they'll get anywhere fast on that job.

Police allege 'evil twin' of in-flight Wi-Fi used to steal passenger's credentials

"on condition he restrict his use of the internet"

How naive. Really ? Go back home and be nice is all he gets ?

He knows how to set up this stuff, he will do it again. How is the police going to monitor his connection to be sure he plays nice ? They won't. They don't have the means and, frankly, they have more important criminals to catch - and I'm furious that I have to acknowledge that.

Windows: Insecure by design

Re: converting to Linux is soooo hard

I think you missed the point.

I am not going to convert my customers to Linux. I have to live with that.

Yes, I have a Linux Mint PC on the other side of the desk right now. I love it. I can't use it for business.

You're 80 years old. I'm glad you're self-taught, but I never said I didn't understand Linux, I said I can't use it yet.

I hear you loud and clear

Windows is a cancer to my IT life that I will excise once and for all when I retire in less than a decade now.

Until then, as a freelance programming consultant, I unfortunately must have the same platform my customers use and, for some strange reason, none of them are on Linux.

Remark, if only one of them were, I'd be in a pickle. I guess I'd have to have a second work laptop. And no, I'm not going to VM Linux into my Windows or vice-versa. I'm not a systems administrator.

That is why I have scheduled my Linux conversion to when I'll have the time to deal with it.

Until then, well, I roll with the punches, I guess.

American interest in electric vehicles short circuits for first time in four years

Now that is the truth. I have never seen a car advert where the vehicle is sitting in a traffic jam.

Yet, that happens to me every day.

But yeah, it ain't sexy.

For the record: You just ordered me to cause a very expensive outage

"I felt no inclination to do so"

No kidding.

I would have hung around just a wee bit longer though, to get a whiff of the chewing out the moron was undoubtedly going to be subject to.

And maybe even longer, to ensure that he didn't try to shove the blame to me.

Polyfill.io owner punches back at 'malicious defamation' amid domain shutdown

Interesting link. 2000+ companies at a single address ?

And HM's Revenue Service is not looking into this ?

Hmmm.

"The site owner claimed to have $50 million in funding"

Um, buddy, since you claim a number of things that are already demonstrably fake, you can go claim as much money as you wish, nobody cares.

You are lying all over the place. You claim to be based in the UK, so where's your office ? What's your VAT number ? Why is your phone number not a UK number ?

You can talk about slander all you want. If that were true, all you'd need to do is file a complaint from your UK office. Right ?

I don't know if you're Chinese or not and I don't care. You've been found out and shut down and that's a good thing. Go ahead and try to create an empire, I will never trust you or your products.

Infosys CEO to pay a whole $30K in penance for non-disclosure that enabled insider trading

"an approach that spares him an embarassing inquisition"

It also clearly indicates that he is guilty, and the price of the fine is cost of doing business to him, so he doesn't care since there are no other repercussions.

On the other hand, this is not organized-crime-level stuff either, so nailing him to the wall would be a bit overkill. The unjust monies have been impounded, that is certainly punishment enough.

So don't do it again, right ?

Appeals court reanimates lawsuit accusing Meta of hiring bias against US citizens

"possibly roping the Supreme Court into the legal proceedings"

Step carefully there. SCOTUS decisions have, of late, reserved some surprises.

As for the complaint, I feel there is some ground in it. A competent US citizen did not get the job some H-1B holder got. Sure, the competence of the H-1B holder is not put into question, but the chance that he also has decades of experience for that specific job offer seems kind of slim to me.

Whatever the outcome, I'm not expecting this affair to do anything to Meta's hiring practices. Not until there's a federal law that states that US companies are required to hire US citizens competent for the job before looking to bring in foreigners.

And that will never happen for many (lobbying) reasons.

TeamViewer can't bring itself to say someone broke into its network – but it happened

" significant compromise of the TeamViewer remote access and support platform"

That's a bummer for a lot of people, and it seems a major headache in the making for Redmond. If some customers' security gets compromised because of this, there's going to be blood in the water.

Microsoft yanks Windows 11 update after boot loop blunder

Re: they still haven't defined what testing is

Oh, but they have.

It's just that they decided they're not interested.

Elon Musk to destroy the International Space Station – with NASA's approval, for a fee

"make sure the job is done right first time"

Yeah, because Musk has a great track record on that score.

Re: Can't help wondering

The ISS is in a gravity well and it is going down. In order to push it up and away, one would likely need to strap and entire rocket to it to get the job done, which means launching a rocket that's carrying a rocket.

Last time I checked, Humanity doesn't have that capability.

One other solution might be an array of ion thrusters, but that would means dozens, if not hundreds, of hours of spacewalking and, since we've never done that before, a good chance that something might go wrong and the resulting catastrophe would end up sending the ISS down in an uncontrolled fashion. Not acceptable.

I think it is much better to plan for how and when the ISS finally re-enters the atmosphere.

FCC slaps Verizon with $1M fine for dropping 911 calls, again

"we're committed to ensuring"

If the fine was a billion dollars, I'm sure those words would be true.

Korean telco allegedly infected its P2P users with malware

"an entire team at KT"

If it is an entire team, then the CEO is aware and responsible and should be dragged in front of a judge for trial.

You don't P2P ? Fine, that's your right. But you do not have the right to spread malware to your own customers.

That is just wrong.

Resource burden of electric vehicles set to triple by 2050

"if a set of circular economy strategies is concurrently and ambitiously implemented"

Ambitiously ?

When Sir Humphry uses the term "ambitious", it generally means the politician runs away from it.

I don't expect this generation of political clowns to do anything ambitious except fail.

Etched looks to challenge Nvidia with an ASIC purpose-built for transformer models

Primary Venture Partners and Positive Sum Ventures

Who funds these operations ?

I checked out PVP's web site. All of their "partners" are very young when you're talking funding in billions. So I take it they're not the ones with the money, they just distribute it.

So who gives them the money ?

British Airways blames T5 luggage chaos on fault 'outside of our control'

"AI and machine learning will help flights depart on time"

I think the 350 new employees might have more importance on that side of the business.

Pseudo-AI can always plan for the plane to depart by 6:30, if not enough hands are available to load the luggage, top up the tanks and get the passengers inside, it won't happen, period.

Oh, and side question : is that pseudo-AI going to be using FPGAs , or regular climate-destroying GPUs ?

Yahoo! Japan to waive $189 million ad revenue after detecting fraudulent clicks

Advertisers, apparently.

Nobody else, though.

Glastonbury to turn festivalgoer pee into eco-friendly fertilizer

"It is also nice that not everywhere smells like Paris"

Ooh, burn !

And right before the Paris Olympics as well !