Posts by Pascal Monett

Falcon Heavy sends NASA probe to metal-rich asteroid Psyche

I have to admit

All these billionnaires have really shaken up the landscape when it comes to accessing orbit.

Yes, it was inevitable as soon as the US government lost interest in space when the race was won. Obviously, government has amply demonstrated that it can't concentrate on anything that won't drive re-election, whether or not that thing would be useful in the long run. The long run, for government, is the next election cycle. That is a pitifully small distance when improving things are concerned (any things, not just Science - take a look at your train infrastructure).

So yay for billionnaires. At least, when their ego is involved (not to mention other personal measurements), they can indeed make a change.

British boffins say aircraft could fly on trash, cutting pollution debt by 80%

Re: Meanwhile out in reality

Interesting comment.

The article does not mention Velcocys anywhere.

Care to explain why you mention a company with a dismal stock price as a counterargument when said company has not been referenced by the article ?

I mean, Renault isn't doing too well at the moment either, but I fail to see how that has anything to do with potentially making fuel out of trash.

Because if we can make jet fuel out of trash and lower our carbon emission, I'm all for it. It'll help solve two problems at once.

Not holding my breath though . . .

That's no joke. It's the actual plan.

The step after is to make sure we all contribute in serf days to building the castle walls of the places our "betters" will be living.

US Navy sailor admits selling secret military blueprints to China for $15K

Well I'm not going to feel sorry for DeBeers.

Zhao ?

Curious, I thought he would be paid in diamonds . . .

In any case, have you no pride ? You're selling secrets of the US Navy, the most powerful Navy in the world. $10K would be a starting point for negociations, the end price should be a lot more.

Pathetic.

Windows 10's latest update issue isn't a bug but a feature – to test your patience

Re: Again?

I must report that my work laptop breezed through this update as well.

No issues here - this time (crossing my fingers for the next time).

Look, boss – Nvidia's still cool with staff working from home

"Unlike some of its peers"

Nvidia has but one peer : AMD.

All the rest are gnats beating their wings uselessly.

You're talking about foreign remote.

Just one question : how do you know you're not hiring a Moscow hacker ?

We're not in e-Kansas anymore: State courts reel from 'unauthorized incursion'

"hopelessly behind on protecting government systems"

No problem. If the attacks keep up (and why wouldn't they ?), there's bound to be a Senator or two that will be impacted at some point and then, lo and behold, money will flow to get things in order.

Birmingham set to miss deadline to make Oracle disaster 'safe and compliant'

In theory, yes : you don't get reelected.

But that's only if the constituants are doing their fucking job, ie electing capable people.

Then again, if you were a Birmingham resident, would you want to run to take over responsibility for that shitstorm ?

One door opens, another one closes, and this one kills a mainframe

Re: Opening doors - yes, it can cause chaos

And that is why those rooms are Authorized Personnel Only, and Vps are not authorized.

They can look through the the windows to show off the blinkenlichten.

How 'AI watermarking' system pushed by Microsoft and Adobe will and won't work

Exactly. I don't see Adobe maintaining that Cloud out of the goodness of its heart - it doesn't have one.

Plus, a verification system that you have to pay for wouldn't be used, meaning the check itself has to be free.

Adobe doesn't do free.

So how's it going to make the millions it is expecting from this ?

Microsoft ends its week on a high – after a trying time with tax bills and Copilot costs

"keep its platforms largely open for a few years"

So that'll be two years and a few months, then.

Ubuntu unleashes Mantic Minotaur with 23.10 build

Crowd-sourced translations

Proving once again that, as soon as you give them a chance, there will be an asshole to demonstrate why we can't have nice things.

Canon claims its nanoimprint litho machines capable of 5nm chip production

"I would be surprised"

Well, you're Gartner.

You must be used to being surprised.

And that doesn't keep you from hedging your bets, stating that if indeed it was a breakthrough, it would soon find itself under sanctions list.

Well duh. The usual pony show at Gartner.

I'm sure that there will soon be a "report" from Gartner, paid by some Canon-favorable company, that will gush praise over this new breakthrough.

Let's just wait for it.

EPA flushes water supply cybersecurity rule after losing legal fight with industry, states

Ah, the land of the best Justice money can buy

That rule destined to get an overview of the actual security of an essential component of society bothered some corporation ?

By all means, let's forget that. Let's just keep on staying the course, and forget that nation-state-backed hackers are intent on fucking things up in a major way.

What's the worst that could happen ?

Okay, should I translate "the worst" into your share value for you to get a fucking clue ?

Gas supplier blames 'rogue' code for Channel Island outage

Yeah but, those who deem themselves superior will counter with the proven fact that, mathematically, your chances of winning are negative.

And all the people who have already won will get a good chuckle out of that.

I really would like to be of those who can chuckle.

"because of the code"

No. The code is not responsible here. It may be the direct cause, but the real responsible is the idiot who bungled the specifications and did not do sufficient testing to ensure that the code would work in extreme situations.

Blaming the code is easy, but code is just the materialization of a list of scenarios. If you have a scenario that was not foreseen, then the code is likely to not solve the problem.

Somebody didn't foresee this, or didn't put in the effort to check if the code was viable in that situation.

It's still not the code that is at fault.

Calls for Visual Studio security tweak fall on deaf ears despite one-click RCE exploit

"Perceived" weaknesses ? Really ?

From my point of view, those weaknesses are hardly a question of perception if they're already being exploited.

530K people's info feared stolen from cloud PC gaming biz Shadow

Wait a minute

"This highly sophisticated attack began on the Discord platform with the downloading of malware under cover of a game on the Steam platform, proposed by an acquaintance of our employee, himself a victim of the same attack"

So, if I parse that properly, that means that an employee of the company knew a dude who got a malware-infested game, and because the dudes knew each other, the employee posted that infested game on the company server ?

Is that all it takes ? Is there no review process, no malware control on incoming code ? Or was the employee high up enough in the food chain to be able to bypass such mundane matters ?

They can apologize all they want, I won't be trusting such lax procedures any time soon.

Workload written by student made millions, ran on unsupported hardware, with zero maintenance

Re: Makes you proud

I'm pretty sure that, if I were to check code I wrote 14 years ago, I'd smack myself in the forehead and mutter "what the blazes were you thinking ?".

Google offers some copyright indemnity to users of its generative AI services

"Whether or not AI systems violate copyright laws"

Statistical analysis machines cannot violate anything they haven't been programmed to violate.

They're machines, not AI.

You want to assign guilt ? Find the manager who defined the data to be fed to the machine.

Theoretically, that's still a human.

Engineers pave the way for building lunar roads with Moon dust

"powerful carbon dioxide lasers"

So that's the solution to global warming !

Make lasers out of all that CO2 and fry the Moon !

Everest cybercriminals offer corporate insiders cold, hard cash for remote access

"loss of team members"

Oh, so some of them have been sent to the front of the "special military operation" that is absolutely not an invasion, then ?

Good.

They're going to get some much-needed first-hand experience of Reality, hardcore style.

Can't say I feel sorry for them.

DARPA worried battlefield mixed reality vulnerable to 'cognitive attacks'

So, we're on track for full electronic warfare

Reminds of a passage from Star Wars Volume 3: The Last Command (Timothy Zahn). I type the excerpt below :

"I'm Councilor Organa Solo," Leia identified herself. "This is Ghent, an expert slicer. Can you use him ?"

"I don't know," the colonel said, throwing the kid a speculative look. "Ever tackled an Imperial battle encrypt code, Ghent ?"

"Nope," Ghent said. "Never seen one. I've sliced a couple of their regular military encrypts, though."

"Which ones ?"

Ghent's eyes went a little foggy. "Well, there was one called a Lepido program. Oh, and there was something called the ILKO encrypt back when I was twelve. That was a tough one - took me almost two months to slice."

Someone whistled softly. "Is that good ?" Leia asked.

The colonel snorted. "I'd say so, yes. ILKO was one of the master encrypt codes the Empire used for the data transfer between Coruscant and the original Death Star construction facility at Horuz. It took us nearly a month to crack it." He beckoned. "Come over here, son - we've got a console for you right here. If you liked ILKO, you're going to love battle encrypts."

Excel recruitment time bomb makes top trainee doctors 'unappointable'

"The interview scores are stored in an Excel spreadsheet"

And right there you strike out.

Any important data should not be stored in Excel. It should be in a proper actual database, be it MSSQL or Oracle or literally anything else.

Because a database needs a proper db admin, and probably a designer as well. Tha's two people to raise questions and ensure data accuracy.

Excel ? A single fool can mash anything up, and that's what happened here.

I give Office training courses. I've heard people say they know how to program because they have used Word macros.

That is what happened.

No pity.

California's Governor Newsom signs laws on right to repair and data deletion

A step forward

And every little step is required for us, as a whole, to stop endlessly pillaging Earth's resources when it is not required.

Microsoft takes another run at closing Exchange brute-force security hole

Hope springs eternal

Given that everything old comes back again, I can't wait for all this Online malarky to be folded back into local servers.

Because I dearly hope that CxOs will tire of relying on Borkzilla's ceaselessly failing infrastructure.

Maybe they'll even go for something else entirely. There has to be something else than Exchange in this world, no ?

Please ?

Astronomers spot collision between two exoplanets, both feared vaporized

Re: feared vaporized

Maybe, maybe not.

Yeah but wait a minute

This is the first publication of a detected collision.

Okay, one is infinitely more than nothing, but it's still just one.

Let's not go assuming that the entire Universe is playing planetary pinball just yet.

CISOs' salary growth slows – with pay gap widening

"At a macro level, CISOs had a good year"

Oh really ? With all the breaches we've heard about ?

Some people are lucky.

Your phone's cracked screen may one day heal itself, but try not to drop it for now

CCS Insight

So, Gartner now has a little brother ?

What to expect when the UK-US Data Bridge comes into force this week

Re: Schrems III looks inevitable

Unfortunately not. Mr. Schrems looks out for EU privacy violations.

You have regained control. Schrems is not going to save UK privacy.

It's always from The World to The USA

I wonder if anybody has actually taken notice of that.

All the agreements are for transfer of Personally Identifiable Information to the USA. Never the other way around.

The USA is the black hole of PII on the Internet.

Maybe someone should do something about that.

Generative AI slashes cloud migration hassles, says McKinsey partner

Re: "when done correctly"

Yes indeed. Those are the magic words that enable the idiot that spouted them to hide behind the bullshit if it doesn't work.

It's the business version of "you're holding it wrong".

Honestly, to publicly state that some absent-minded text-spewing robot that doesn't even understand the significance of what it says improves cloud migration should be a one-way ticket to the padded hotel room.

Such deceit is despicable.

Microsoft gives unexpected tutorial on how to install Linux

I know how to enable a new system in Windows !

It's called FORMAT C:

SAP barely moving needle to migrate users off ECC before support ends

"move users to a subscription model of S/4HANA in the cloud"

Just wondering : if SAP customers have a working local version and are not going to be pushed to The Cloud^TM, what is SAP going to do ?

It's not going to just cut off its existing customer base, not when two-thirds say NO.

So, what are its options (apart from the obvious) ?

Yeah, but where would it make more money then ?

Cloud, subscription model plus licenses, THAT makes more money.

Service to the customer ? Don't be ridiculous. SAP is not there to serve customers, it's there to milk them.

Software patch fixes Euclid space telescope navigation bug

"the telescope's Fine Guidance Sensor"

I'm curious. Hubble had its issues, but detecting its position in space was not one of them.

I haven't heard that JWST has any issues like that either.

So, how is it that this telescope does ? Isn't satellite positioning a known science now ? What did they change on this one to make it not work like the others, and why ?

I would have thought that Science shares knowledge like that. Apparently not.

I'm a bit disappointed about this.

SBF on trial: The Python code that allegedly let Alameda hedge fund spend people's FTX deposits

Sure, take $10B from customer accounts without their knowledge or consent

Yeah, that's what all reputable banks do, isn't it ?

Burning at the stake is too good for this asshole.

US allows Samsung and SK hynix to keep making chips in China

"indefinitely"

Well, at least until the next time the White House occupant gets his knickers in a twist.

Vietnam accused of Predator spyware attack on EU and US politicians

"making them feel safer and more secure"

Seems a bit difficult to achieve. Our governments don't want us to feel safe. They want us to be scared. COVID. War. Crashing economy.

A scared population is a compliant one.

So this declaration is hookum.

Especially since, if they really wanted people to feel secure by being subject to police invasion of their private lives, the police would be announcing that they have the tool (and are not afraid of using it).

If they have the tool and aren't telling us about it, how are we supposed to feel safer ?

Net neutrality meets opposition in US, while Europe mulls charges for Big Tech

“threaten the progress the country has made”

Yes. Forcing the Internet back to net neutrality would certainly threaten the progress back to slavery that the Republicans have been pushing with Trump and ever since.

After all, going backwards is still going somewhere . . .

DoJ: Ex-soldier tried to pass secrets to China after seeking a 'subreddit about spy stuff'

Re: team leader and sergeant

Thank God he was part of the Human Intelligence squad !

Can you imagine his actions if he was just a basic grunt ? He might have posted secrets on a Minecraft forum !

Of course, he'd have to remember them first and, from what I read in the article, remembering things (like operational security, online stealth and spycraft basics) is not his strong point.

Scripted shortcut caused double-click disaster of sysadmin's own making

Lesson learned

Indeed.

I would even say, lesson engraved.

FTC: Please stop falling for social media scams, you've given crooks at least $650M so far this year

Re: But What About The Benefits?

Yes but, haven't you heard ?

Soon we'll have AI in our PCs. Surely we'll be protected then, right ?

Musk in hot water with SEC for failure to comply with subpoena

"enough is enough"

And just who do you think you are to say that the SEC is overstepping its bounds ?

A normal human being would be mortified by the attention, and would do everything to prove good faith and obedience to the law.

Because the SEC is the law, not you.

But you go ahead and keep digging your grave. Celebrity driving over a cliff is always prime time entertainment.

Police ignored the laws of datacenter climate control

Re: Convenience

To be fair, what the hell were they thinking putting electronic equipment in a room full of humidity ?

That server would have been better off sitting outside the building. Maybe next to a door, for quick access.

Online tracking is alive and well in link decoration

Link decorations ?

I use CleanURL. And uBlock Origin and NoScript.

Don't know what those things are, don't care.

ESA funds space weather satellite swarm to understand and combat orbital debris

Have you skipped the part where those 8 will be safely deorbited at the end of their lifetime ?

Because apparently, you did.