Posts by Pascal Monett

Federal frenzy to patch gaping GitLab account takeover hole

You're absolutely right, except you're wrong because today, developers have the habit ingrained in their skulls that production servers should download code from 3rd-party servers.

It's in the bloodstream now, there's nothing anyone can do about it - except the miscreants.

If they create enough mayhem, bloodshed and tears to make all CTOs and CIOs scream for keeping production server code under control, then we might get back to those hallowed times when an admin actually knew what was running on the server he was responsible for.

But, these days, the mantra is "move fast and break things" and, boy, how we are setting ourselves up to be broken . . .

Vivaldi composes Split View sonata for browser on iPadOS

Can't have your cake and eat it

"They both run the same iOS operating system, even if Apple claims that iOS and iPadOS are different; they are fundamentally the same."

Well, Apple, it's your fault for making one OS run on both platforms. You cannot tout your excellence in design and then pretend that that is not how things work.

Think tank: China's tech giants refine and define Beijing's propaganda push

"bureaucracy and inefficiencies have frustrated attempts to control public opinion"

Let's not forget corruption.

Heaps and heaps of corruption.

I honestly don't think there is a country in the world that can actually shape everyone's thoughts via governmental diktat.

It's just too much hassle and requires too much supervision. The Internet may let you think you have everyone under surveillance, but conversations outside the Internet escape you.

You cannot control everything.

Not a Genius move: Resurrecting war hero Alan Turing as your 'chief AI officer'

Don't worry, they're looking . . .

REvil ransomware scum sentenced to almost 14 years inside, ordered to pay $16 million

Why did he go to Poland ?

Was he not aware that Poland is a NATO nation ? Apparently he did not grok that showing up there would place him squarely in the sights of US law enforcement and my, do they enforce.

Well, I'm sure he'll be able to find himself a cushy job when he gets out of jail in five years for good conduct. Or he'll move to Moscow and start his operations again with Putin's blessing.

A million Australian pubgoers wake up to find personal info listed on leak site

"The kiosk can capture facial biometrics and match it to a database"

So, one step further down the road to biometrics being used for the most mundane things.

Why does a club require you to give up your face to some datacenter that gives no guarantee that it knows how to manage that data securely and is not under legal obligation to do so ?

The sooner we treat biometrics with the same level of care and security that we treat financial data, the better.

Banks are under serious obligations to have the right to handle our money. Firms using biometrics should be as well, because I can't change my face if you foul up.

Japan will use AI to find out what bears do in the woods

"On the bright side, labor costs incurred by the park were reduced by 20 percent"

Oh great. So now, firing people is a bright side.

Let's get AI CEOs please, and see just how they find a bright side to getting fired.

Dropbox dropped the ball on security, haemorrhaging customer and third-party info

"no evidence that the attacker accessed the contents of users' accounts"

Well, if the attackers got hold of the OAuth tokens and MFA passwords, how would you know ?

Block accused of mass compliance failures that saw digi-dollars reach terrorists

So, an ex-Twitter CEO

Hmm. Looks like just being a CEO is not enough to guarantee that you can do that job anywhere.

And, just out of curiosity, does a CEO of a financial institution have to follow the training and certify that he is aware of anti-fraud techniques like every other peon ?

Because it doesn't look like he is.

GPU cloud upstart CoreWeave gets $1.1B injection as AI hype train chugs on

So, Cloud AI has no idea what a recession is ?

When this AI nonsense starts crashing, it's going to hit the ground really hard.

Infosec biz boss accused of BS'ing the world about his career, anti-crime product, customers

He was just following Trump's lead

Not surprising that this character lied his way through, he was following the ex-President's brilliant example.

And as long as the OHSG is not cut down to size and put in an orange jumpsuit, characters like this one will continue to pop up and wreak havoc everywhere.

Google Search results polluted by buggy AI-written code frustrate coders

Well there goes the neighborhood

we regularly hear 'Even if imperfect, we prefer to have something 80 percent correct, [rather] than nothing at all'."

Great. Looks like Borkzilla has always been ahead of the curve after all.

So, this is the future of programming. This explains Crapita, Fujitsu et al. to a tee.

I am not reassured.

Musk axes two more senior Tesla leaders, guts public policy team – report

Re: Strategy has worked so well at Xitter

Yup. Looks like Musk is starting to apply his "success" at Xitter to Tesla.

So, another bonfire has started. I'll get the popcorn . . .

Apple's 'incredibly private' Safari is not so private in Europe

Ah Apple

Between jailbreaking and locked ecosystem and now this, the iNazi has amply demonstrated its thirst for control of everything.

And, as usual, when you're addicted, you don't think straight. Apple is addicted to control, and it has now undermined the security and privacy of its users.

Congratulations for giving me yet another reason to never buy your products.

France willing to buy key Atos assets to keep them French

Re: Consanguinity

Of course not. It's the fact that they practically all went to the same preschool that is the determining factor.

Allegedly.

OpenAI slapped with GDPR complaint: How do you correct your work?

"The technology has to follow the legal requirements, not the other way around."

Amen to that.

Python, Flutter teams latest on the Google chopping block

It's incredible

It is incredible how Google continues, year after year, to axe useful projects while making more and more billions, and yet cost-cutting is the name of the game.

And everyone who used the products that are being disemboweled somehow still haven't got the message : Google is not there to make your life better, it is there to make PROFITS.

Stop using its products. Stop validating this behavior by looking at the next new tool and saying "oh, I could use that !".

Just stay away from Google code. Google needs to be taught a lesson : when you're making all the money, you can afford to let projects continue.

Either that, or be true to yourself, Google, and replace the Board every two years. Via shotgun.

The chip that changed my world – and yours

Re: there should always be a need for simple chips that do simple things

I totally agree. Nobody is going to put a Core3 Intel CPU in a "smart" doorbell. So there has to be a simple chip in today's tech that could do a job that does not require umpteen billion transistors if you know how to program it.

What might that spiritual successor be ? What chip is being used in all those damned IoT thingys that are being sold by the thousands every day (for the greatest joy of malware hackers everywhere) ?

NASA's Psyche hits 25 Mbps from 140 million miles away – enough for Ultra HD Netflix

Weather conditions are for Earth

This tech is going to be invaluable for the future of communication in space. Sending cat videos from the comms satellite orbiting Mars to the comms satellite orbiting Ganymede will be a cinch if this can be worked out. It'll just take time, as the authors of The Expanse demonstrated brilliantly.

Ex-Space Shuttle boss corrects the record on Hubble upgrade mission

No, not a happy read, but a clear indicator of why we got the Challenger disaster.

Rules were being ignored. During the heady days of the Apollo program, that would never have happened. They would have scrapped the flight, returned the Shuttle and too bad for the cost of the mission that would have had to be redone.

But Apollo was over. The cost of the mission, and its urgency, took prime consideration and the mission was ordered on. If there had been an actual failure of the flow pump, the Shuttle could have been destroyed on re-entry.

We came that close to not knowing about O-rings.

Second time lucky for Thoma Bravo, which scoops up Darktrace for $5.3B

"the UK High Court deemed HPE to have 'substantially succeeded' "

What a bunch of wankers.

HP top management not only did not do its due diligence, it ignored competent people who were against the deal.

It deserves all the pain it got, and more.

UK's Investigatory Powers Bill to become law despite tech world opposition

Indeed. Let us not forget that Apple is happy to do business in China and shuts up about human rights abuses over there.

Apple is only a champion of privacy and human rights when its CEO doesn't risk going to jail.

UK agriculture department slammed for paper pushing despite tech splurges

"reducing contingent labor to 12% of headcount"

So, they're aiming to fire 88% of their "contingent".

Does that mean they're going to fire 88% of administrative busybodies ? And nobody has gone on strike yet ?

Wow. Talk about double standards. Google fires 25 people and it's headline news. A UK Gov administration is looking to reduce headcount by 88% and it would seem that that's just worthy of a throwaway line in one sentence of a 14-paragraphe article.

Where's the angst ? Where's the revolt ?

Oh, I forgot. It's administration. Bureaucrats do not know how to revolt.

BOFH: Smells like Teams spirit

My solution is simple : when I get a new business computer, the sound is muted.

It's work. I don't need more distractions.

Never respond to spam.

It just encourages them.

Well, if I'm not mistaken, the breath mint is going to ensure some kind of accident . . .

VMware’s end-user compute community told to brace for ‘Omnissa’ shift

Re: Omnissa?

It's Omnia's sister.

And never forget the rule : beatings will continue until customer satisfaction improves.

Help! My mouse climbed a wall and now it doesn't work right

"simply accepted the news silently and continued about his day"

Gosh. An intelligent user.

Well that explains the 99%, then.

Intel excited by PC sales pop and GPU prospects, but investors aren’t because the outlook is poor

Wall Street idiots

Tesla is tanking (55% profit decline for Q1), but Musk parades some outrageous claims and promises and Wall Street ups the share price.

Intel has solid plans for the future, is realizing gains at a high level, but because one quarter lost half a billion bucks, Wall Street sends the share price down.

What a bunch of morons.

Cops cuff man for allegedly framing colleague with AI-generated hate speech clip

Darien = scumbag

It would seem that intelligence is not his strong suit. You want to flee by plane and you bring a gun with you ? Way to go to pass unnoticed.

From the article, it seems obvious that this idiot was bungling his job, getting rightfully chewed out for it and, of course, decided to retaliate instead of cleaning up his act.

What made him decide to run for it is not clear, but getting caught simply because you improperly stashed a firearm speaks volumes about his lack of anything resembling the notion of risk vs reward.

Ring dinged for $5.6M after, among other claims, rogue insider spied on 'pretty girls'

Re: If the government can get so jumped up about tik-tok

Yeah but Tik-Tok is Chinese.

Get with the program.

ByteDance 'would rather' torpedo TikTok than sell it off

Re: This is the best possible outcome

The amount of stolen videos on YouTube is also gobsmacking.

Indeed. If I were in charge of a global market where a single entity provided a quarter of my earnings, I'd think twice before shutting the operation down for that entity.

FCC votes 3-2 to bring net neutrality back from the dead

"People will switch to ISPs that don't meddle with connection speeds"

That argument is only valid if every citizen has the choice between every ISP.

I very much doubt that that is the case anywhere, let alone in the Land of Monopoly that is the USA.

Anyone using that argument is just a humongous hypocrite.

Re: A little late.

Because Republicans ?

City council audit trail is an audit fail after disastrous Oracle ERP rollout

Re: it's just too big to manage

It's only big because there are no subdivisions. Somebody is obviously a control freak and cannot stand the idea that his local empire be divided and his "power" be diminished.

So there's just one big blob of incompetence at the top, instead of spreading the risk and maybe finding someone competent somewhere else.

That is almost certainly just incompetence, not necessarily fraud.

Meta's value plummets as Zuckerberg admits AI needs more time and money

"investors are unwilling to wait too long"

Of course they aren't.

They're not investors, they're gamblers. They want their fix, NOW (or soon, at the very least).

An investor is a person who wants to participate in a project, and is willing to put funds in it to bring it fruition, not to get a return in two years.

If the project is important, it could take ten years. A true investor knows that and is willing to take the risk because he believes in the project.

Today's "investors" are just selfish man-children who want their next lollipop for snack time. Long-term thinking ? Not their strong suit.

Throwflame launches fire-spitting robo-dog from Hell

Re: "ready for anything," … lighting the barbecue

Well, there's still the hydraulic press and nuts . . .

Turns out teaching criminals to write web code keeps them out of prison

I disagree

"one of the reasons the Land of the Free has the highest per capita incarceration rate in the world"

That is not the reason.

The reason is that prisons are private companies who have primed the law to send them people that other countries would use rehabilitation programs to get back on track.

The War on Drugs is just one good excuse to condemn users to jail instead of going after dealers - there's more of the former.

Then you have police entrapment with "hookers" who are just there to entice men to commit, then get cuffed.

That is why the Land of the Free has the highest incarceration rate. It's a business.

Forget the AI doom and hype, let's make computers useful

That is a quote I will keep

"The neural network is unable to generalize from what it has 'learned' ”

And I'm going to keep this article's URL to be able to show it to anyone who starts spouting off about how computers are now "intelligent".

Unless they're in marketing. Then it would just be a waste of time.

Indian bank’s IT is so shabby it’s been banned from opening new accounts

I can't imagine the state of their IT

For a bank to be forbidden from adding new accounts, that is just . . mind boggling.

I've seen some bank departments where some people were seriously out of touch, but that was just the one person here or there. For the entire bank to not know what it's doing with 40+ million customers ?

How can that happen ?

Yeah, I know, India. But this is a bank. We're not talking some online store, this is supposed to be men in suits with serious boardroom power.

I just cannot fathom what the hell is going on over there.

Musk moves Tesla's goalposts, investors happily move shares higher

"and people can add their private Teslas to the available pool"

Oh of course. I'm sure many proud owners of a car that costs at least $35K will be overjoyed at the opportunity of having Random Joe Schmuck climb drunkenly in the back seat and vomit over everything during the trip.

And that is supposing that Full Self-Driving actually works, which I seriously doubt Musk will ever get to.

Australia’s spies and cops want ‘accountable encryption’ - aka access to backdoors

Now just a cotton-picking minute

"tech companies should respect the rule of law and the order of a court, or independent judicial authority, and provide that information"

Obey the rule of law, no problem. Obey the order of a court, obviously. But just what exactly is an "independant judicial authority" ? Is that your nephew's office with a nice sign on the door saying "Warrant Delivery" and no questions asked ?

Because I would not agree with that. Get yourself a proper warrant from a proper judge and stop trying to use children as an excuse yet again.

Samsung shows off battery tech it says will see you gone in nine minutes

Great news

I fully support EVs with 10-minute charge times and 1,200km in range that don't spontaneously catch fire and can last 20 years. Once you guys have licked those issues, how about tackling the issue of your EV being sent to the scrapyard after a collision ?

Because I've heard that that is a thing.

Tesla misses the mark on all fronts in quarter of chaos

"Musk said [..] We believe"

There is no "We" with Musk. It's what he believes that count.

And he can go promise yet more awesome and outstanding improvements for his death wagon. I'm pretty sure we'll be hearing more accounts of latest-model Teslas plowing into something or another under Full Self-Hallucinating.

Law prof predicts generative AI will die at the hands of watchdogs

"Generative AI is destined to drown in a tsunami of regulation"

Good.

I fail to see what benefit the making of entirely fabricated content can bring. If I want to read something that has a chance of being interesting, I want it to have been produced by a human, under human oversight.

Sure, throw in an image made by Leonardo. That's not a problem because it will be the human that has decided that the image was relevant. If said human had asked another human to create the image, the result would have been the same. Leonardo is just destroying the livelyhood of actual human content creators. If everyone is OK with that, then let's do that.

But I refuse to read a book that has been generated by pseudo-AI. I refuse to read entire articles generated by a machine. I do not see how they can possibly be engaging and interesting.

GenAI can drown. It's no loss to me.

If Britain is so bothered by China, why do these .gov.uk sites use Chinese ad brokers?

Re: There are, of course, reasonable exceptions

And what, pray tell, may be a "reasonable exception" to your government selling your private data to, not only a 3rd party, but a 3rd party that's not even in your own country ?

No. Just NO.

When I deal with a government portal, I fully expect that everything that happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.

I'm paying for that portal. I'm paying for the people managing that portal. I'm paying for the hardware that that portal is working on. That fucking portal does not need more revenue.

But hey, if you find normal that your own government whores your data out to anyone, well that's your choice . . .

Waymo robotaxi drives down wrong side of street after being alarmed by unicyclists

"the accidents were unavoidable"

Oh, so just like a human then ?

If that is the case, then what's the point in automated vehicles ?

You're supposed to do better. You're supposed to have the means to detect issues dozens of times per second. You're not supposed to get distracted.

If you can't do better than a human, you're useless.

Mandiant: Orgs are detecting cybercriminals faster than ever

Great news

Miscreants still have 30% more time than they need to accomplish their nefarious deeds.

Oh well, at least things are improving.

Overall.

Globally.

Does that include the health care industry ? Because I'm guessing not.