Posts by Pascal Monett

NASA confirms Florida house hit by a piece of ISS battery pack

It happened in Florida

Nothing to see here, move along. Watch out for the alligator on the sidewalk. Move along . . .

Micron says it's first to QLC NAND with over 200 layers

Re: we're sacrificing reliability for convenience yet again

Convenience will be the death of our civilization.

Mark my words.

And get off my lawn !

Change Healthcare’s ransomware attack costs edge toward $1B so far

I wonder just what level of security you can get for $872 million.

I'm thinking the Board might be well advised to start budgeting a few tens of millions in that direction - because otherwise, there's a good chance that they'll be budgeting another few billion in payouts in not too long.

Google location tracking deal could be derailed by politics

"could be derailed by politics"

You mean, politics other than lobbying efforts ?

Those are the worst, ain't they ?

NASA needs new ideas and tech to get Mars Sample Return mission off the ground

Re: So they got samples ..

You do realize we're talking rocket science here ? Things that have never yet been tried ?

Step by step, grasshopper. That is how we advance.

Intel's effort to build a foundry biz is costing far more – and taking longer – than expected

Ohio

Now that is an intelligent choice for a chip foundry.

Just below the Great Lakes, water in abundance, it is a much better choice than Arizona.

Good on Gelsinger for having done that. Now why did he have to go and put two fabs in the driest place of the US of A which is subsisting only because it is sucking up an entire river of water that is failing ?

CISA in a flap as Chirp smart door locks can be trivially unlocked remotely

I'm guessing that that number is going to go down.

"application software to remotely control compatible locks"

How is it that people looked at this possibility and thought : "now that's a great idea" ?

I am not interested in remote-opening my front door. I want to open it when I get there, not before and certainly not after.

And if I am renting something with this, I will tell the owner that I am replacing the lock. If he objects, I will look elsewhere.

Open source versus Microsoft: The new rebellion begins

Re: The 3 assistants with fantastic people skills who effing hate computers

Um, sorry but, if they hate computers, switching them to Linux is not going to do any harm.

NASA tries to jog Voyager 1's memory from 15 billion miles away

I'm sure they'll get it working again

Space may be hard, but NASA engineers are the bee's knees and, if they say there's a chance, I'm sure they'll fix the problem.

That said, there will come a day when even they won't be able to fix the problem. It will be a sad day, but what a record !

US House approves FISA renewal – warrantless surveillance and all

"passed the House with bipartisan support"

Because of course it did. Warrants are just a nuisance when you can drape yourself in the mighty righteousness of National Security.

This bill will always pass. All the hoopla around respecting privacy is just theater.

AI spam is winning the battle against search engine quality

There is only one solution to oppose scams and malware : intelligence.

Check the link. If it goes anywhere you're not familiar with, don't click.

Nobody is going to offer you millions to just click something. Sorry, that Nigerian billionnaire does not exist. Play the lottery, you've got better chances.

No one you know is sending you an attachment you should open. If someone you know does send you an attachment without you expecting it, contact the person and make sure it was meant for you. In every other case, trash the mail. It's a weapon.

It is so fucking simple, and yet so many are still caught by this.

Sometimes I dispair of Humanity.

Loongson CPU that performs like 2020 Core i3 makes its way to Chinese mini PCs

Re: Probably not exactly a bargain.

Because you think you'll be able to buy one ?

This is Chinese tech, for the Chinese market. Your opinion is irrelevant. What is important is that China now has Core I3-level tech.

They will improve.

Apple's failure to duck UK antitrust probe could bring £785M windfall for devs

So, the fruit cart is facing legal trouble

Looks like the days of Cupertino riding high on other people's work are coming to an end.

5% is enough for Apple to still gain money and provide Store services at their current level but, of course, why settle for 5 when you can gouge six times more ?

Well six times more is too much, and the rising number of lawsuits tends to prove that Apple is going to have to lower that ratio permanently.

It might choose to do so on its own terms before having to bow to a law (ie set the bar lower to appease everyone before you're forced to set it really low).

One case at a time.

Microsoft gives Hyper-V ceilings a Herculean hike

So it's a cloud option, right ?

Because there ain't no motherboard that can handle that level of hardware.

I shudder to think of the monthly cost for someone who actually signs up for 2000 CPUs and 240TB of RAM. Some beancounter somewhere is going to have a heart attack.

VMware's end-user compute products probably have a new brand: Omnissa

It is going to create a mess

Artificially tight deadline created because the Board has decided something stupid ?

You bet it's going to create a mess. The gun is going to meet the foot and Broadcom is going to demonstrate how little it cares about the users of the product it has paid a fortune to destroy.

Support contract required techie to lounge around in a $5,000/night hotel room

So, a nice week-end then

The client was an idiot. If the decision was to not do anything before Monday morning, the client should have arranged for him to arrive Sunday night.

Oh well, I'm sure that the beancounter shook his head at all this.

British watchdog has 'real concerns' about the staggering love-in between cloud giants and AI upstarts

"[158] lobbying entities focused on AI"

In 2023.

So now there are more. Talk about 1st-world problems . . .

Apple to allow some iPhones to be repaired with used parts

"it plans to begin"

Oh great. Sounds like me when I tell my wife that I'll be mowing the lawn "this week".

The only difference is, I will, 'cause if I don't, it'll only get worse.

We never agreed to only buy HP ink, say printer owners

I ditched inkjets for laser.

You don't actually need to print in color.

The onus is on HP to show us the law that says that its printers can only use its ink.

Ink is ink. If it's good for one printer, it's good for all of them.

US 'considering' end to Assange prosecution bid

"the seven years he spent holed up in Ecuador's London embassy"

The souvenir of which Ecuador's ambassador is still desperately trying to drown out in alcohol . . .

Netherlands arm of KPMG fined $25M for cheating in exams

Re: Why do companies think that taking shortcuts is a good thing?

Because, in the short term, it works.

And in the long term, your high-level MBA will have already moved on to wreck another company.

Hilarious

"failing to prevent its financial auditors from cheating on exams "

What I note is not that KPMG failed to prevent cheating, it is that KPMG's auditors cheated en masse.

Goes a long way to say just how reliable their auditors are . . .

Boffins deem Google DeepMind's material discoveries rather shallow

Put your ear to the woodwork. The bugs are positively crawling in that space and, if you go to LinkedIn, the sound is deafening.

Digital Realty ditches diesel for salad dressing in US to cut datacenter emissions

"nitrogen and particulate emissions are said to be almost the same"

Is that really a disadvantage ?

Some bad things are greatly reduced, some bad things aren't, but they're not increased either. Honestly, I'm tired of seeing these everything-isn't-perfect kind of comments. So it's not perfect. It's still better.

And it recycles already used oils, which, in my opinion, is even better.

Broadcom has willingly dug its VMware hole, says cloud CEO

I disagree.

That may be how today's MBA types think, but there is a saying in French : ce sont les rivières qui font les fleuves, which can be loosely translated as it's the little streams that makes great rivers.

if you are willing to cut off all the little streams, your greate river is going to fail.

I don't know how to to teach that to the business suits, though.

CHIPS Act hangover sees most US science agency budgets cut for 2024

Wait a minute

The military gets more than it asked for ? It has already asked for as much as it thought it could get away with, and they give more ?

Content yourselves with giving what was asked for, you'll have more to give others who need it.

Huawei Cloud reveals the dynamic traffic allocation system it uses to cut bandwidth bills

10 times the peak bandwidth ?

I think that's going to open some eyes at Redmond (and elsewhere).

Who knows ? Maybe Huawei will accept meeting with Western engineers and sharing the technique ?

Microsoft brings World of Warcraft and other Blizzard titles back to China

"games from within the Middle Kingdom"

Why would I want to install an executable from a country that is well known for autocratic surveillance and theft of industrial secrets ?

I'm already battling with Google's insatiable appetite for data, I don't need to Xi Ping's hunger as well.

Notepad++ dev slams Google-clogging notepad.plus 'parasite'

Re: Hurrah for Notepad++

I second that. Anytime I have to deal with a new Windows install (God how I am tired with that), Notepad++ is on my shortlist of things to install post-haste, in order to get the best tools at my fingertips.

I am glad to see that this leech has been dealt with.

Post Office slapped down for late disclosure of documents in Horizon scandal inquiry

"Sixty people died before just seeing any sort of justice served"

That is the point that should be relentlessy repeated.

This is not your run-of-the-mill failed Government IT operation where the higher-ups get their honours and move on, and the public pays the bill and shuts up.

No, this is an abject failure of government where the higher-ups literally walked on the corpses of honest people just trying to do their job for Queen and Country.

The fallout on this should be ruthless and profound. There is no excuse for the Old Boy's Club here.

UK businesses shockingly unaware of how to handle security threats

"It flies in the face of common sense"

Yup.

Time to redefine "common" sense, 'cause it ain't so common no more.

Palantir and Oracle buddy up on cloud infrastructure

Palantir and Oracle

Why am I not surprised that the sleaziest companies in IT somehow manage to always forge alliances ?

Reform of USA's Section 702 spying rule may make it to a vote this week

Being a privacy advocate in the US

That must be like being Sisyphus. You toil all day to push that stone up the hill, and you wake up the next morning to find the stone back where it was, with Big Money silently giggling behind your back.

Solar eclipse darkened skies, dampened internet traffic

"Plenty of whom went offline to gawk at the celestial dance"

Of course they did. I was in Luxembourg City last time there was an eclipse there. I saw daylight turn into darkness, went outside and experience the sudden drop in temperature and the silence. Even the birds were hushed.

It was an awesome experience and I readily understand that Humanity was terrified by it.

TSMC scores $11.6B funding infusion for Arizona fabs, now plans for third plant

Great idea

Yay ! Another water-guzzling plant in a place which is singularly devoid of water without the Colorado river, which just happens to be over-used and drying out due to climate change.

What could possibly go wrong ?

Hint : Tax breaks do not an industry make.

Shadow of Trump hangs over future EU-US tech collaboration

"No concrete action appears to have been decided"

Well duh, it's just administrative busybodies that are making themselves look busy.

Given the state of US politics, it's certain that any actual decision or accord made now stands every chance to be overturned if the OHSG get re-elected. He did, after all, decide to flush the existing Paris accords down the drain. He doesn't give a shit about previous engagements.

Cloud vendor lock-in is shocking, but there's a get out of jail card

"second-source can do the same for the cloud"

I have my doubts on that point.

The way I see market conditions these days, having an open-source based second-source supplier that becomes successful is going to entail two things :

1) open-source developers are going to attack the company to get what they consider is their "fair share" of the spoils, and

2) AWS, Azure or any other multi-billion behemoth is going to lavish the company board in boatloads of billions to buy them out, and they will fold

So, short or medium term, any successful open-source-based company with big government contracts is going to disappear, either because of lawsuits, or because of bagfulls of money.

Return to step one.

Re: UK meet Sweden

Yeah but Sweden is the exception to all the rules. It is a country that is consistently doing everything right, but nobody wants to follow its example because the Old Boy's Club of all other countries would lose its privileges.

Change Healthcare faces second ransomware dilemma weeks after ALPHV attack

"It's a stark reminder"

It's almost a mistake, PR-wise. Indeed, now the scum have demonstrated publicly, in less than a month, that they will go back after targets that have previously paid up.

Boards everywhere should be paying attention here. You get hit, you'll get hit again if you pay.

Stop paying. It's the only solution.

Once you've secured your network properly, that is.

Engine cover flies from Southwest Airlines Boeing 737 during takeoff

Re: Yeeeek

So all you've got is an Airbus incident that is 25 years old.

Compared to the way too many Boeing incidents since the Max was thrust down everyone's throats.

Sorry, I still prefer Airbus.

"Our maintenance teams are reviewing the aircraft"

And our Board is looking into acquiring Airbus planes for added safety.

Head of Israeli cyber spy unit exposed ... by his own privacy mistake

Re: "9% of them do so within three days"

I understand your point however, there is a caveat : when the police arrest them, or they get a ticket, they KNOW they've done wrong.

"9% of them do so within three days"

I take that as a clear indication that there is a non-negligible portion of users who clearly need a permit to demonstrate that they understand what they're working with, because right now, they don't.

Given that computers and the Internet are becoming central parts of our working and personal lives, what with government portals being the way forward, it seems that a Computing License should be just as mandatory as the driver's license is.

Somehow, I doubt we'll ever get there.

Liquid cooling specialist snags Microsoft datacenter wizard as advisor

Advising here, advising there

Pretty soon you're talking real salary.

Nice job if you can get it.

Google sues app devs, claims they're Play Store crypto scammers with 100k+ victims

"an injunction to prevent [them] from ever accessing Google services again"

Um, how exactly is that supposed to work ? It's not like you give your name and address when you use a browser.

They'll always be able to sign up for a new gmail account under a fake name, that's not controlled either.

So this injunction is just legal waffling. I don't see how it can be enforced, especially when the culprits aren't on US soil.

Tough luck, bosses, AI is coming for your job, too

What if ?

"what if organizations shared worker metrics data from AI management systems and that influenced future hiring decisions involving said workers"

In a world where installing a tattletale in your car to radio your insurance about how you drive, supposedly to lower your insurance bill, is becoming common practice, that is not a what-if scenario.

It is blindingly obvious that any AI management system will automatically and almost immediately be taken by upper management as criteria for advancement, not to mention continued employment.

Whether that will be a good thing or not, well, I guess that depends on what your current management feels like to you.

Academics probe Apple's privacy settings and get lost and confused

"it's written in legalese"

So, documentation written by lawyers.

If that is not proof that we're going to Hell in a handbasket, I don't know what is.