Posts by Pascal Monett

Mastodon makes a major move amid Musk's multiple messes

"making X pay to play"

Oh yes, please ! Brilliant idea, Your Muskiness !

Would you like a noose with that ?

95% of NFTs now totally worthless, say researchers

Re: NFT = Not F-ing There

Yup, that's one for the ages.

Data breach reveals distressing info: People who order pineapple on pizza

Well played.

Re: I don't understand...

So you're Belgian ?

Re: I don't understand...

In Italy (tourist section), we went to a pizzeria that had a sauerkraut pizza.

I think everyone knows for who that is intended. I'm just wondering : do they actually sell it ?

Epic payout: FTC opens Fortnite settlement claim floodgates

Things aren't going Epic's way right now

Maybe Epic will have to create a new set of skins in Fortnight to break even.

Menacing marketeers fined by ICO for 1.9M cold calls

TPS

Nice to see this kind of thing catching on.

Direct marketing can be useful, but it's mostly a nuisance and it endangers people who just can't say no (for whatever reason).

Just say no.

So what if China has 7nm chips now, there's no Huawei it can make them 'at scale'

Re: it's obvious that things can't escalate into a shooting war

That's what they said in 1914 as well.

Don't jinx it.

What ?

"The development has spurred the US Commerce Department's Bureau of Industry and Security to initiate an inquiry into the purported 7nm chip, and how or if it was made using American technology."

I seem to recall reading in these very hallowed pages that there is one company in the world that makes it possible to engrave chips at the bleeding edge of technology, and that company is not American, it's Dutch.

So I take it that the USA has the patents and has licensed ASML to use them ? Or is all this just some more USA! USA! Rah Rah Rah chest-thumping ?

They're already a 3rd-world country. They have politicians who lie all the time to everyone, and try insurrections when they lose the vote.

It's just that they have the only 1st-world military in the world.

But China is catching up there too . . .

Authors Guild sues OpenAI for using Game of Thrones and other novels to train ChatGPT

"one or more very large sources of pirated ebooks"

I would have liked to by a fly on the wall of the meeting that decided to go get pirated material to use as training data.

Mgr - "Okay, guys, we have this ginormous potential waiting on training data. Where can we get that ? Ideas ?"

Mkting - "Well, we could strike deals with the Project Gutenberg website, they've got plenty of free books. I'm sure they'd be willing to help."

Mgr - "How much would that cost ?"

Mkting - "It's free for the customer, but we'd need a deal where we can get stuff in bulk. Shouldn't cost more than a couple thousand."

Mgr - "How long would that take ?"

Mkting - "I guess a month or two to negociate the deal and have a contract written up."

Mgr - "Too long. We need to move forward now. Any other ideas ?"

Dev - "Well, I know this site where we can get just about everything. All I'd need to do is write a script to automate the downloads."

Mgr - "What about the contract ?"

Dev - "Um, well, there isn't any. It's BitTorrent-like, you just go choose and it drops in."

Mgr - "And we can get recent stuff, no problem ?"

Dev - "Well yeah. Pirates love recent stuff."

Mgr - "Pirated ? So no contract and no money ?"

Dev - "Nope. And it's untraceable."

Mgr - "Go for it !"

Signal adopts new alphabet jumble to protect chats from quantum computers

"an effort to keep encrypted Signal chat messages protected from any future quantum computers"

Don't worry guys, you've got 50 years to prepare for that . . .

Salesforce engineers roll back change after breaking own cloud for hours today

Might need to rethink those layoffs, eh ?

Oh, it's too late for that.

Shame.

Pot calls the kettle hack as China claims Uncle Sam did digital sneak peek first

"We're not the ones spying, you are."

Oh come on. You all are.

Intel slaps forehead, says I got it: AI PCs. Sell them AI PCs

"they will have devices like sensors with that level of compute"

Sensors with 64GB of DDR5 and two A100s in SLI mode ?

Sensors ?

What exactly are they smoking ?

Hong Kong authorities cuff six in connection with floundering crypto platform JPEX

"maliciously frozen funds"

Sounds more like reasonably let you drown to me.

Having read the room, Unity goes back to drawing board on runtime fee policy

In case you're not clear on the problem

Check out this video.

It's highly educational.

It's a shame, really

But I guess this is what happens when you hire someone from Business School to head an open source project.

Open source and Business are two different mindsets, and they are incompatible.

This is why.

World's most powerful free-electron laser upgraded to fire a million X-rays per second

Re: Awesome!!!

Can't wait for the artist' rendition.

VMware staff reportedly told job cuts may start before Broadcom acquisition

They don't even pretend any more

Once upon a time, in the halcyon days of yore, a merger would be followed by a transition period of at least several months, period during which everyone pretended that they were all being integrated into the new happy family. Only after that would layoffs be presented to the employees by tearful managers regretting that they had not found their place in the new team.

Crocodile tears, to be sure, but the play respected the script.

Today, apparently, time is money more than ever before, and we're talking layoffs before the merger has even happened. Okay, it's a surprise for no one because we've seen this play a million times, but does a smidgen of decency really cost that much ?

Oh, silly me, it costs, so it has to go.

Activist investor KKR buys 20 percent of Asian datacenter outfit

"from 62MW to 120MW"

Interesting. So, apparently the importance of a telecoms group is measured in megawatts.

I didn't know that providing comm lines and routing for supporting smartphone users was so demanding energy-wise. Do those cell towers use that much power ?

South Korean telco SK Broadband and Netflix call a truce in network payment fight

SK Broadband is still being unreasonable

I've said this before and I'll say it again, why does SK Broadband think it has the right to single out Netflix and wring money out of it ?

Netflix pays for its broadband usage already. SK Broadband's clients pay for their usage.

If SK Boradband feels that it is not being paid enough, it should adjust its prices, not attack a specific website.

UK judge rates ChatGPT as 'jolly useful' after using it to help write a decision

What reassures me is that it is a judge. He did not simply ask ChatGPT to write his ruling, he consulted it for a specific part, controlled the result and was satisfied enough to include it in his ruling.

That is called using the tool properly, not like those two lawyers who took ChatGPT results and included them without controlling the content.

There's several reasons why lawyers are lawyers and not judges, and this is one.

Probe reveals previously secret Israeli spyware that infects targets via ads

"use legal data collection and digital advertising technologies"

Well that's smart. Why bother with zero days and other such shenanigans when (almost) everyone is leaving the barn door open wide ?

Abuse the system in place and your route to success is halfway done.

NoScript For The Win !

Again.

Scattered Spider traps 100+ victims in its web as it moves into ransomware

Re: The race is ON!

Idem. They're US-UK based ? As soon as they get successful enough, the FBI will get them.

They should move to Moscow before that.

TSMC's outlook is so fuzzy it's reportedly stalling fab machine deliveries

"trouble with staffing at its Arizona fab projects"

Don't worry, you'll be having a lot more trouble with water at your Arizona fabs.

Google throws California $93M to make location tracking lawsuit disappear

"which was based on outdated product policies that we changed years ago"

Yeah, Guv'nor, I killed that guy, but it was years ago. Come on, you can't seriously want me jail now.

Google exec: Microsoft Teams concession 'too little, too late'

Sorry

I'm terribly sorry, but I just can't bring myself to sympathise with anything a Google mouthpiece complains about.

You are hoovering up every bit of data you can (with and without permission), storing it forever in bit barns the size of Texas, and using and abusing that data to sling stupid ads for which you get paid all the money.

You have no right to complain about anything.

Salesforce flipflops from 'you're fired' to 'you're hired' in six short months

"We know we have to hire thousands of people"

It does not appear that you know diddly squat about what you're doing. You just fired thousands of people, now you say you know you have to hire ?

Don't you have some kind of program that can give you indications on what your company needs ? Maybe you should use some of that.

Oh, and just a question : is there a managers 101 where it states the wait time to look good between massive layoffs and announcing thousands of hires ? Because that manual needs amending : six months ain't half enough.

Techie labelled 'disgusting filth merchant' by disgusting hypocrite

Ah, the good ol' days

When you could threaten someone with bodily harm over the phone, in front of witnesses, acknowledge that you found their home address like a stalker, and not have your door burst down fifteen minutes later by six bulky men with an attitude armed to the teeth.

Unity closes offices, cancels town hall after threat in wake of runtime fee restructure

"we're not gauging but we're charging"

Yeah, and drug dealers always give the first hit free.

This is just another bait-and-switch. Once Unity was certain that theirs was the market standard, boom! time to turn the screws.

Kind of makes you wonder just what the other "open" toolboxes have in store.

We're going to end up with a saying : beware the open-source developer bringing gifts.

Google promises eternity of updates for Chromebooks – that's a decade for everyone else

"at the end of their usefulness"

For who ?

Does Chromebook "support" still start the moment it leaves the factory, instead of the moment it is purchased ?

Because that's what I heard about Chromebooks. It's support life starts when it leaves the factory. If it sits in storage for nine months before being purchased, the poor sucker has lost nine months of support.

With a friend like that . . .

In any case, I still abhor companies that sell hard product and pretend to arbitrarily and artificially determine its lifespan. A Chromebook will last until the keys fall off the keyboard. If Google hadn't succeeded in brainwashing everyone to think that three-years-and-chuck-it was a good idea, I'm sure that there would still be first-gen Chromebooks chugging along merrily.

Software doesn't rot, hardware does. The lifetime of a product is never the software.

Meet Honda's latest electric vehicle: A rideable suitcase

Dignity isn't the only thing at risk

From that picture, it seems to me that this suitcaseomobile is made out of plastic. Given this report, that calls into question Honda's declaration of going toward carbon neutrality.

Of course, I understand that an aluminum casing would very much make that abomination heavier but, if it is made of plastics and batteries, it is basically a toxic mess of a product.

HP reveals bonkers $5k foldable tablet/laptop/desktop

I think you'd have trouble putting one of those laptops on a music stand.

Ex-Twitter employees pull Musk back to money table over missing severance

The dumpster fire is intensifying

It's good to see that, in the end, no amount of money can shield an asshole forever.

Stoner Cats NFT project declawed for being an unregistered security

"[they] wanted all the benefits [..] but ignored the legal responsibilities"

Well what do you expect from a bunch of Hollywood producers ?

They live a life of dreams. Reality only dawns on them when the police knock at their door.

Besides, who still thinks NFTs are a thing ? You're paying money for something you can see for free on Google Images.

Rollbar might be good at tracking bugs, uninvited guests not so much

"the attackers first tried to fire up compute resources"

And they failed because security was too tight to allow that. Good on Rollbar for that.

Now, apparently, Rollbar needs to firewall its internal network a bit more to prevent lateral infection, that might have stymied the attack and made it fail completely.

In any case, points for resisting a complete takeover.

Activist investor to GoDaddy: Cut costs, improve sales, or sell

Re: "activist" investor

Exactly. When I hear those words, I immediately translate them to "asshole who wants to rake in the money by shredding the company".

I see nothing here that would change my opinion.

Apple's iPhone 12 woes spread as Belgium, Germany, Netherlands weigh in

"the iPhone 12 was approved by the FCC before sale"

The FCC approves iPhone 12, the FAA approves the 737 Max, it's becoming clear that certification agencies in the US need a serious revamp.

Scientists spot startlingly close black holes in Hyades star cluster

"we'd probably already be dead"

In the category of rogue planets or stars, the possibility of direct collision is almost zero. But you don't need a rogue star, or black hole, to collide with Earth in order to destroy Humanity (and possibly all life on Earth as well).

A star or black hole passing close enough to our Solar System will throw planetary orbits out of whack, likely ejecting several, if not all. That would logically depend on how close it gets. But one thing is sure : if Earth gets ejected, we're all on a timer to the deepest freeze we will ever know.

However, even if none of our planets are actually ejected, the outer planets' orbits will certainly be perturbed, which will very likely in turn perturb the orbits of the inner planets. Not to mention everything in the Kuiper Belt will go nuts, and whatever is beyond as well.

So, even if the Earth possibly stays in its actual orbit, the amount of asteroids being josled by all this will be enormous, and there's every chance that we might see a new Late Bombardment in the years that follow.

The only question is, at what distance are we doomed by a passing star or black hole ? If it is two light-years away, are we safe ?

Beijing freezes social media service for a month for letting kids see smut

"particularly for website platforms that 'repeatedly make mistakes' "

No wonder Facebook is not present in China.

Zuckerberg would never get out of jail.

Airbus takes its long, thin, plane on a ten-day test campaign

"leaving airlines to decide if they want to cram passengers in"

Really ? Because they're going to decide not to put 250 seats in if they can ?

If they could, they would.

Ford, BMW, Honda to steer bidirectional EV charging standard

Re: Clarity

Sorry, I obviously read that wrong because I understood that there were three companies involved. BMW and Honda not being US companies, it was obvious that it was their US presence that was involved.

I will endeavor to confuse myself better in the future.

Re: So you can still have enough remaining to use the EV to drive

No, you'll have enough for what you think you need to drive.

Any nasty surprise and your EV will not have enough juice to get where you need to go.

Frankly, to me an EV is already seriously limited as far as range is concerned. To give people an excuse to drain them for supplying power is the height of stupidity. There's already a waste of energy charging the damn things, now you want to waste more energy discharging them.

We don't have fusion yet, and too many countries are using coal. Stop the madness.

Re: Voila!

Yeah, solar is going to be very useful when you come back home from work in the evening.

Especially in winter when the sun sets before you leave work.

The only viable solution for all these new vehicles is nuclear. Preferably the Thorium kind.

So, I gather that you don't have a refrigerator or a freezer ?

GitHub alienates developers by force feeding them AI recommendations

"provide a first-class developer experience"

Yes, because developers are clamoring for ads. Bug fixes my arse. The bug was that the ads were not in our face enough.

Carry on, Borkzilla. Your efforts to drive everyone to another platform will bear fruit, don't you worry.

Having slammed brakes on hiring, Google says it no longer needs quite so many recruiters

Nooglers ?

That's the nickname for people who work at Google ?

Well, another sticky note on the trivia pile.

Watchdog urges change of HART: Late, expensive US biometric ID under fire

"urging the company to end its plan to host HART"

I sympathize, but that was a useless gesture.

If not Amazon, there's two other solutions. One of them will host this thing. Heck, in all probability they all bid for it. It's a long-term government contract.

It's money. For sure, and for a looong time.

You don't say no to that.