Posts by Pascal Monett

I'm a security expert, and I almost fell for a North Korea-style deepfake job applicant …Twice

So, you call yourself a security expert

And you can't be arsed to get an interview in person.

I'm thinking that you're part of the problem.

Google confirms Gulf of Mexico renamed to appease Trump – but only in the US

Re: It doesn't even qualify...

Indeed.

It's pathetic.

But not surprising given the level of the orange turnip.

DeepMind working on distributed training of large AI models

"distributed training"

So, if I understand correctly, spreading personally indentifiable information over an even greater amount of privately-owned, billionnaire-funded companies is the solution to our future ?

Count me out.

Already three years late, NHS finance system replacement delayed again

Quango

That triggered an automatic memory : Jobs for the Boys.

Sorry, but Yes Minister has to be the best political satire that has ever been written.

UK government using AI tools to check up on roadworthy testing centers

"The UK government is betting on AI tools"

You mean, those same pseudo-AI "tools" that hallucinate and deliver stupid answers ?

Wow. That's reassuring. I mean, I'm reassured I don't live in the UK.

Only 4 percent of jobs rely heavily on AI, with peak use in mid-wage roles

What a surprise

Pseudo-AI is useless in customer-facing jobs, and even more in highly specialised/critical jobs like surgury.

So pseudo-AI can basically only be used in administrative tasks and, even then, it's not used all that much.

Well gosh, I do believe I've read that some lawyers found out that AI won't write their judicial papers all that well.

I'm waiting for the report that says that companies have banned the use of AI for internal reports.

Ah, who am I kidding ? That will never happen.

NASA’s radiation tolerant computer lives up to its name after surviving Van Allen belts

Two kilobytes ?

Whatever happened to 640KB is enough for everyone ?

Apple warns 'extremely sophisticated attack' may be targeting iThings

"A physical attack may disable USB Restricted Mode on a locked device"

If you have physical access, security is already compromised.

I'm reassured to know that this attack can only take place in the real world, not by malformed SMS or some other Internet-based hack.

Sure, it's an issue, and it's good that Apple is doing something about it, but honestly, no Russian/Chinese/North Korean hacker is going to be able to take advantage of this.

So who can ? Your spouse, close friend or whatever other enemy already lives next to you.

Not nice, but you just might find out who you really can't trust.

Some workers already let AI do the thinking for them, Microsoft researchers find

Re: Gee, what a surprise.

It's called management.

Meta's plan to erase 5% of workforce starts today

We don't need AI to stop thinking for ourselves.

Do you still know someone's phone number by heart, or do you just click on the Contact entry ?

Do you know their birthday, or do you rely on FaceBook to send you a reminder ?

We are conveniencing ourselves to death.

With the best of intentions, of course . . .

UK armed forces fast-tracking cyber warriors to defend digital front lines

"a £40,939 ($50,974) starting salary"

Well, at least they're putting some money where their mouth is.

India's banking on the bank.in domain cleaning up its financial services sector

"a domain only they can use"

Yeah, until hackers find a way in.

But good luck with the idea.

DeepSeek's iOS app is a security nightmare, and that's before you consider its TikTok links

"the No DeepSeek on Government Devices Act"

What the fuck is wrong with the US Government ?

Government devices should only have government-approved applications on them.

Or am I supposed to infer that every government employee has admin access to his PC/phone and can install whatever he wants ?

Does that mean that there are furious games of Call of Duty happening during work hours ?

Either government employees only have the stuff IT lets them, or it's a free-for-all and DeepSeek is just another layer of insecurity on top of FaceBook, TikTok and a raft of other things that having absolutely nothing to do on a work computer/phone.

So, which is it ?

Does this thing run on a 220 V power supply? Oh. That puff of smoke suggests not

"built to survive minor accidents"

We don't do that anymore. It's too expensive, plus our bright young engineers don't have the expertise to predict what might happen if a capacitor is blown.

In my experience, if your electronic thingamajig gives you a puff of smoke, it's done.

And forget repairing. We've lost that as well.

Ah, progress . . .

Musk's move fast and break things mantra won't work in US.gov

Re: Now they are identifying the useful programs and moving them to the State Department

Yeah, right. They have the required experience to decide that, even though they're, in the best case, just a bunch of billionnaires with henchmen who've never had to actually screw in a lightbulb on their own.

Yeah, I'm really reassured.

BOFH: Engage Hollywood Protocol – because nonsense always looks legit

Wheels within wheels

Great story.

Full marks.

No carpet, though . . .

Google's 7-year slog to improve Chrome extensions still hasn't satisfied developers

Google facilitating ad blockers ?

You really think I'm going to believe that ?

Google lives on ads.

If it has made MV3, it's specifically to make ad blocking more difficult.

I was told to make backups, not test them. Why does that make you look so worried?

Re: The only verified backup is one that you have restored from

I do my backups on a rewritable DVD and my 4-bay NAS configured in RAID-5.

I haven't yet got to the point of renting a box in the bank to store another copy . . .

DOGE geek with Treasury payment system access now quits amid racist tweet claims

"I was racist before it was cool"

Racism has never been cool.

Go back to where you belong, Nazi Germany 1939.

Copilot+ PCs? Customers just aren't buying it – yet

Typical Borkzilla

"Microsoft's intention for the initial launch was to pit the machines against Apple Macs 'in terms of performance and efficiency,' "

Bunch of morons. Redmond cannot fight Cupertino in terms of hardware because Apple doesn't have the same customer market.

Apple's market is artists, composers and other assorted artistic types.

Borkzilla's market is businessmen, Fortune 1000, bankers and home users.

Trying to pin the advantage on hardware just demontrates that you haven't evolved sine Y2K.

Hmmm. That explains a lot actually.

Eggheads crack the code for the perfect soft boil

"a total duration of 32 minutes"

Whoa there.

We're talking about breakfast.

3 minutes in boiling water and you're done.

I don't have 30 minutes to wait for an egg.

Uber CEO warns robotaxis can't find a fast route to commercial viability

Ah, Uber

The sexual harassement, legal cheaters and grifters of the world.

Whatever you say, I only think one thing : fuck you.

Why UK Online Safety Act may not be safe for bloggers

"an AI-generated explicit image posted to a bike blog"

This nonsense needs to be stopped.

Pseudo-AI should not be allowed to publish anything anywhere.

It's not an opinion if it was generated by a hallucinating data center.

I actually prefer reading nonsense from AManFromMars (not that I do, with the years, I have developed a very efficient visual filter, but still).

Tesla sales crash in Europe, UK. We can only wonder why

Tesla

I live in France.

If I wished to buy a Tesla (spoiler : I don't), apparently I have to go near Strasbourg to get it.

That's a 2-hour drive, which someone else has to do because I'm supposed to come back with my car. So that's two people saddled with four hours of their life just shuttling to and back from a given point.

Then, there's the fact that there are absolutely zero Tesla garages. There's nowhere I near me I can bring the car if I find a problem. If the problem is serious enough, that means that I have to pay to get the car transported back to Strasbourg.

Are you kidding me ?

Not to mention the price of replacing the batteries when they're worn out.

Not to mention that, if ever the car gets into an accident, there's a fair chance that the insurance inspector will declare that it is totalled, and I've lost everything. Insurance be damned, they won't buy me a new one.

Meanwhile, Toyota does great hybrid cars, and there's BYD that has an impressive lineup - and dealerships across France which also do repairs.

I'm very happy that Tesla has had such a success, but when I pay over €50K for a car, I prefer to be able to get it within 30 minutes, and have it serviced within 30 minutes.

My Audi works fine because my garage is 30 minutes away and they have the parts required and the expertise to handle it.

And the battery only costs €120 to replace.

That's kind of important at a time when we all appear to being going to war with China, which is the only country making batteries at this point.

Re: One piece of anecdata

Keep us posted on how well you manage to resell it.

I'm genuinely curious, because I'll be damned if I buy a car that needs a $12K battery upgrade.

Tasteless, but I like it.

Why on Earth would they go looking for stuff outside of their comfort range (not to mention intellectual capacity) ?

You have to have courage to learn new things.

Education doesn't stop at school, but only the intelligent understand that.

Robocallers who phoned the FCC pretending to be from the FCC land telco in trouble

Robocallers getting punished always pleases me

I just hope they don't squirm out of paying the fine . . .

DOGE latest: Citrix supremo has 'read-only' access to US Treasury payment system

Re: jesus

Yeah. Gotta hand it to the Orange Turnip, he's learned a lot since last January 6.

Now he's staged a coup and nobody can do anything about it.

Because that horned guy is too busy being pardoned to give a shit.

Microsoft's final Exchange Server 2019 update still missing as support deadline ticks down

Re: Ms have struggling for some years with Exchange Server…

Um, slight correction there : Redmond has always struggled with the Exchange server.

Boeing, Boeing, burned: Over half a billion dollars by Starliner in 2024

"John Mulholland, who had led the Starliner program until 2020"

Um, so they're bringing back the guy they threw out already ?

And that is supposed to be good thing ?

Early mornings, late evenings, weekends. Useless users always demand support

I don't get called after hours, but . .

When I was contracting for a rather important company in Luxembourg, I was part of the IT team and thus part of the Helpdesk ticket system.

What I always adored was the guy filing a ticket at quarter to five on a Friday and, of course, there were never enough details to fully understand the problem and correct it.

Invariably, when I called his desk to ask some questions about the issue, he was already gone.

Well if he doesn't care that much about his ticket, it can wait for Monday.

Intel knocked off global chip revenue top spot after rotten 2024

Re: Making America Great Again! Really???

Where he always is when the shit hits the fan : behind an impenetrable legal wall that prevents him from being implicated in any way.

He is responsible for more bankruptcies than a Mafia don, but he has never lost money because of that since it was always the schmucks who trusted him that paid out of their pockets (eh, Giuliani ?).

Ireland's AI minister has never used ChatGPT but swears she'll learn fast

Curious

I find it curious how, just when we've learned that the Chinese have apparently a better AI solution than the West does, there is a sudden acute interest in ChatGPT and associated AI products at the government level.

Um, guys, it was there last year.

Is this a harbringer of a massive pork barrel in the making ?

Why users still couldn't care less about Windows 11

There is no reason for Windows 11

There is nothing there that couldn't be patched into the supposedly last ever version, except that the Board needs to see its pile of cash increasing and has imagined these totally artificial excuses to enforce it.

The problem is that Redmond is not a government, and users will see their own interests before the Boards' desire to acquire yet more money.

Not even Nvidia's Jensen Huang can talk President Tariffs out of chip import taxes

"without proper legislative review"

Welcome to the new order.

UK govt must learn fast and let failing projects die young

Re: Know what you're aiming for

Not to mention some sort of education concerning what has already failed (most of them) and what has succeeded (not very much).

But that would, in turn, require not favorising some other minister's cousin, so . . .

Ontario responds to Trump tariff by pitching Starlink deal into the trash

Re: denying the uniquely Jewish experience of the Holocaust

I'm sure the 3.3 million Soviet POWs (scroll down to Table 3) and the 1.8 million Poles that were killed as well (among many others) would slightly disagree with that assessment.

But hey, what's a little fact to stand in the way of ignorance ?

Intel rakes in €515M from EU after ancient antitrust fine nixed

No longer, indeed.

I still uphold the ideal, but the eurocrats have ruined it.

You're going to do what to the feature? Microsoft defines what it means by 'deprecation'

Re: almost everything people do on their PC now works just fine under Linux

True.

But, aside from Linux users, who knows ?

Windows 11 stages a comeback – still miles behind older sibling

"difficult to buy a PC without AI silicon"

That doesn't mean that people will actually want to use said "AI" silicon.

Clippy was largely ignored. There's no reason, except the expectations of Redmond's Board, that people will flock to this new AI Clippy.

But hey, go on throwing money and resources at this abomination. Since when had Borkzilla ever learned from experience ?

Arrr! Can a sailor's marlinspike fix a busted backplane?

"period costume with the knife and marlinspike"

Awesome.

Asteroid as wide as 886 cans of spam may hit Earth in 2032

886 cans of spam

Who knew that spam could be so devastating ?

Intel sinks $19B into the red, kills Falcon Shores GPUs, delays Clearwater Forest Xeons

Re: Sleepy Shores

Indeed.

Beancounters are not the ones to think of successful new products.

Meanwhile, "The board remains intensely focused ". Gosh, what a surprise. That bunch of suits needs to find someone that will give them their next quarter of share returns.

They don't give a flying one about the tens of thousands of people who are trying to work at their company . . .

Google to Iran: Yes, we see you using Gemini for phishing and scripting. We're onto you

So, AI is not a gamechanger ?

You might want to tune your violins properly.

On the one hand, you are touting your AI thingamajig as the best thing since sliced bread, and now you're saying that it is not that good.

Communication needs to be consistant.

What better place to inject OpenAI's o1 than Los Alamos national lab, right?

"protect the US power grid"

The only thing that will protect the US power grid is getting its network secured and off the general Internet.

Anything else is fluff and pseudo-AI is not going to help.

And now something fun for a change: Building blocks of life in Bennu asteroid samples

We are not alone

We can't be. The Hubble Deep Fields experiment proves that, whatever point in the sky you look at, there's a galaxy somewhere out there.

A galaxy. Millions upon millions of star systems. And we now know that most stars have planets.

There is life out there. It's just that there is a vanishingly small chance that we ever communicate with it, let alone meet it.

Microsoft signs eviction notice on Dev Home

Indeed.

Google has form in that area as well.

Spending watchdog blasts UK govt over sloth-like progress to shore up IT defenses

All those reports and they still can't get it right

It would seem that there is a wealth of knowledge about what is insufficient, and no drive to correct the issue.

I guess it's normal : civil servants are there to generate reports, not work, and ministers are certainly not there to stick their necks out and take risks (cf Yes Minister).