Posts by Pascal Monett

Time running out for crew of missing Titanic tourist submarine

Re: They pay vastly more. Incredibly more

Oh you're soo right. Those poor rich people. Their lives are soo difficult !

Anybody gonna start a GOFundMe for billionnaires ?

So the sub has not been certified

But they still offer commercial trips.

Am I supposed to be surprised that something may have gone wrong ?

I would have thought that offering a commercial service would be surrounded by guarantees that are a bit beyond "We designed the sub with NASA". I would have supposed that there would be a clear trail of paperwork pointing to all the tests that have been done and approved by some authority that is not an employee of the company.

Apparently not.

And if the answer is "nobody would be foolish enough to certify", then the response should be "Well I'm not going".

They went, and I'm guessing they'll stay.

Frankly, throwing yourself out of a plane with just a few meters of cloth to keep you alive seems positively reasonable in comparison.

'We hate what you’ve done with the place – especially the hate' Australia tells Twitter

"then stared down the tech giants as they threatened to withdraw some services"

Well done.

Shame that you can't have the same attitude towards the dinofuel industry.

Or maybe Musk should buy a few politicians, like they did ? Ah no, there's the whole "cutting costs" thing.

Oh well, nothing lasts forever.

SAP admits HANA Cloud makes for multicurrency messes

"lengthy and complex workarounds"

All required because someone, at the specification stage, wrote "local currency" when discussing currencies and everybody just went along with it.

After all, you're only setting up a cloudy thingy on a communications network that goes around the world, it's not like you should actually take into account any specific financial considerations, such as accounting departments in multinational corporations having to deal with multiple currencies, right ?

Right.

Elon Musk's Twitter moves were 'reaffirming' says Reddit boss amid API changes

So, Reddit is a democracy now ?

Where's the voting booth on the position of CEO, then ?

Whose line is it anyway, GitHub? Innovation, not litigation, should answer

As long as they're making money there are no issues.

Singapore to roll out (literally) more Robocops

"Singapore has decided the additional eyes remain relevant"

Because of course it has. The police state always has a fuzzy, feel-good vibe to it, doesn't it ? When you're the one policing, that is.

Looks like Singapore is on track for Utopia.

I wish its citizens the best of luck.

FTC pulls emergency brake on Microsoft's marriage to Activision Blizzard

Thank you for your responses

Pretty much confirmed what I thought : there is no legal possibility of preventing Big Money to merge. However, there is definitely the legal possibility of making a company split in two, if you're willing to go the distance, spend decades in legal wrangling and make hay for scores of lawyers.

In the meantime, apparently the only thing possible is basically banning the results of the merger in the countries that don't like it, which will do squat as far as consumer interest is concerned.

Yay capitalism.

"Microsoft is appealing against the [CMA]'s final decision"

How exactly does that work ? Is Borkzilla and Activision (Borkvision ?) going to merge everywhere but the UK & USA ?

The UK has said no, so how is it that the FTC has to get involved ?

Could someone please explain this to me ?

False negative stretched routine software installation into four days of frustration

Testing ?

Pray tell, what is this strange notion of which you speak ?

Bad times are just starting for India's IT outsourcers, says JP Morgan

Re: Why do we have more scams originating from offshore?

Come now, you don't think the UK has more scammers than the entire rest of the world, now do you ?

"After 34 years with the firm"

34 years is certainly a highly commendable amount, but gee, how lucky it is for him to get out right before the crunch.

Microsoft remembers it was going to bring Windows 11 to HoloLens

"increased engineering velocity"

Oh, so you're putting your engineers in catapults, then ?

WTF ? Is there any domain whatsoever where PR bullshit cannot go ?

Megaupload programmers cop a plea in New Zealand to avoid extradition

The guy changed his name to DotCom, for Pete's sake

And he's apparently got a rap sheet longer than some drug traffickers.

As far as I'm concerned, he can spend the rest of his life in various Courts, fighting all the charges he's got sticking to him.

He's a crook, and that's that.

Amazon confirms it locked Microsoft engineer out of his Echo gear over false claim

"I have a smart home"

That was probably not your first mistake.

The only remaining question is : have you learned your lesson ?

EU boss Breton: There's no Huawei that Chinese comms kit is safe to use in Europe

So, the Commission is looking to ban Huawei on security grounds

I'm sure that they'll happily turn themselves to Cisco, right ?

Cisco, a company based in a country that has all the laws required to force it to reveal information to its Goverment.

While being forbidden to reveal publicly that it is doing so.

Yeah, much more secure than Beijing.

Re: Following the series of links starting with the reference to Huawei backdoors...

Oh yeah. Lots of talk. Much pressure and thinly veiled threats to National Security.

Proof ? Are you kidding ? You don't need proof, just trust us.

Yeah, sure.

Intel details coral-shaped immersion cooler that bubbles like Mentos in Coke

Intel, Nvidia, HP, Raytheon

Intel : Full year 2022 results ? $63.1 billion

NVidia 2022 : $26.91 billion

HP 2022 : $63 billion

Raytheon : 2022 income at $5.2 billion (for some reason, Raytheon prefers to officially talk about its sales and share price instead of its revenue)

So, tell me why these companies needed a few piddling millions of government money to do that research.

That money should have been awarded to startups that had a good idea (okay, have to find some, but still).

UK smart meter rollout years late and less than two thirds complete

Lord Duncan of Springbank

"when we move to the Star Trek phase," it will allow the "technology to be our friend."

Well that clears a lot of things up as far as UK Gov is concerned. They're waiting for Captain Kirk (Pickard ?) to beam down and solve all their problems.

Now I understand NHS better.

Re: Boiled down to it's cynical bottom line ...

Notionally. From the citizen point of view.

From the view of Boris Johnson, you're only good to be knifed in the back, tortured until you give up your banking details, then have your body stuffed under teh sofa while Johnson and his ilk empty your accounts and go party with some Russian oligarchs.

But, apart from that, yeah, you're right.

Recipient of Europe's largest ever seed round doesn't even have a product

"compared to $25 billion in the United States"

Hmm. So they're throwing more money on the bonfire in the US.

Well good for them. Apart from more promises, what are they getting out of it exactly ?

Europe teases breaking up Google over ad monopoly

"it may have abused its dominance to favor its own AdX platform"

It may have.

What naïveté. How touching.

I'm sure the €5000 fine will be quite adequate to educate Google.

North Korea created very phishy evil twin of Naver, South Korea's top portal

"shut down the now inaccessible phishing site"

Um, if it's inaccessible, isn't it shut down ?

And how will South Korea shut down a web site hosted in North Korea (I'm supposing it is hosted there) ?

Florida man insists he didn't violate the law by keeping Top Secret docs

Well done

578 words on the OHSG and no mention of his name, but a brilliantly concise list of his failures.

Impressive.

Parker Solar Probe uncovers mystery of 'fast' solar winds

"the quietest, most dull part of the solar cycle"

Goes to show that 1) it's good to have a baseline - you don't want to study a volcano crater when it's erupting - and 2) the open fusion furnace just far enough away from us is never what you can call "quiet".

Oh, and 3) Space is awesome.

Family-owned aerospace biz throws a wrench in Boeing IP lawsuit

"Boeing rewarded Wilson's efforts by brazenly stealing Wilson's intellectual property"

BOING is seriously starting to look like a den of scum and villany.

GitHub accused of varying Copilot output to avoid copyright allegations

Yeah, but GitHub is now Borkzilla'd, and Borkzilla has never known how to Search.

AI weapons need a safe back door for human control

"controls [..] that allow them to be turned off if they get out of control"

Um, where's the problem ?

So you have a pseudo-AI-controlled missile launcher. Let's say that they're not nukes. You'll still have a screen to monitor the status, with a pair of eyes checking that screen, and I fail to see why there shouldn't be a Big Red Button (with a plastic cover) or similar to shut down or prevent any unscheduled launch.

Like, the fuel ignition is connected to a wire that leads to a switch on the control panel (ok, not a button). Flip the switch and ignition is impossible, no matter how many orders the AI sends.

Obviously, the switch will be set to Allow when all is normal, because if there is an alert and the system needs to launch in the next twenty seconds, then there might not be enough time to engage ignition, but then I'm supposing the entire system is doing its job.

It's when all is clear, no issue is at hand, then suddenly the panel goes rogue, red lights strobe and THAT is when you need to know : should this be shut down or not ?

Then again, if we're talking AI-controlled hardware that should react in less-than-human time (and 20 seconds is pretty short if you're not already on DEFCON 3), then go ahead and install all the backdoors you want. First, Beijing will thank you for giving them access and time to plan and second, you will need another AI to use said backdoors in time if it is called for.

Nexperia left off subsidies list as Germany chips away at Chinese connection

decision made at the higest level, eh ?

So, which lobby group won that round ?

Because let's be honest here, this is not a courageous political decision. Avoiding entanglements with Beijing is par for course, but apparently some big purses were still pushing for inclusion.

So what money bag was the big factor ?

Why can't Nvidia boss Jensen Huang escape the Uncanny Valley that makes AI feel icky?

"many downsides we're yet to understand"

I've got the feeling that we're going to get a chance to understand them, and sooner rather than later.

Google changes email authentication after spoof shows a bad delivery for UPS

"that call would be highly regarded by an end user as genuine"

Um, it's very likely that it would have been regarded as genuine anyway.

Just this week I got an email posing as from Amazon Prime, nicely alerting me to the fact that my automatic renewal had not gone through and click here to allow us to take care, or I would incur some additional renewal fee of €59.

Initially, the only thing that bugged me was the "additional" renewal fee. I thought to myself : huh ? There is no renewal fee on Prime ! Then my brain kicked into gear and I checked the link and, sure enough, it did not go to any domain registered by Amazon.

Finally, I logged onto my Amazon account and checked : my Prime subscription is in December.

Nice try, guys. For a tenth of a second, you caught me compliant. But that link would have given you away anyway.

But that's only because I always check the link. 90% of people don't (and that's more like 99.9% probably).

So good on Google for correcting the issue. Now someone tell me that changes anything in the Luserverse.

Robot can rip the data out of RAM chips with chilling technology

You have physical access

So this is just one more thing miscreants could get their mitts on.

Now, when I read "and through using ball grid array (BGA) packaging", I am intrigued. How does BGA packaging make it more difficult to "read" a RAM chip ?

Microsoft injects ChatGPT into 'secure' US government Azure cloud

Ok, what is the point ?

Who and in what government agency is going to have a use for a babbling "generative content" toy that can't actually bring itself to define anything specifically ?

Are there that many government employees that will ask how long it takes for a tank cannon to cool down ?

ChatGPT is not a reference tool, nor an encyclopaedia. It seems like just yesterday ChatGPT was but a toy for university types to play with, and today it is being monetized like crazy.

Hey Borkzilla ? Have you checked that its output is reliable and accurate ?

Don't think so.

MediaTek accused of setting 'patent troll' on rival, says it will defend itself

"a fabless chip company"

In other words, a company that invented nothing itself, but bought patents for the sole purpose of sueing any other company that might have something slightly similar.

A hangman's noose is too good for that lot.

BT boss Jansen agrees to 'waive' future salary bumps

Wait, where's my hankie ?

Oh, a multimillionnaire is going to get slightly less millions for doing what already ? Laying people off and parading in front of news cameras ?

Excuse me while I am not duly impressed.

Microsoft says share the wealth with cyber-info for business

Re: Just stating the obvious...

Because then the cost is for Borkzilla to shoulder, whereas by talking infosec, the cost is for everybody.

Deepfakes being used in 'sextortion' scams, FBI warns

Not a deepfake

"Such concerns surfaced again this week when a deepfake video aired on Russian TV purportedly depicted Russian President Vladimir Putin declaring martial law against the backdrop of the country's ongoing illegal invasion of Ukraine."

More of a forecast, actually.

Boeing discovers Dreamliner defect, delivery delay decided

"we've made it an imperative to de-risk the next decade"

Gosh, such a good thing that you decided that !

Whistleblower claims Uncle Sam is sitting on hoard of alien vehicles and tech

So, preparing a book tour, are we ?

Looks like somebody checked his retirement package and found it lacking.

AWS teases mysterious mil-spec 'Snowblade' server

"due to the sensitive nature of the device"

What's so sensitive about a server ?

It's not the hardware that is sensitive, it's what data you put on it.

Hong Kong tries to outlaw uploads of unofficial and anti-Beijing anthem

"the song contravenes China's National Security Law"

I did not know that China's National Security was so fragile as to be put in danger by a song.

That Beijing wishes to have Google correct the fact that the song is not the national anthem is fine and perfectly justifiable, but to forbid it is just nuts.

But it's China, so nuts it is . . .

Sweden’s Evroc going full Viking with Euro cloud to raid US providers

"Europe's digital economy must be built on a European foundation"

I can only agree with that.

Enough with sending data to the USA !

Microsoft Windows edges closer to SMB security signing fully required by default

"this is all part of many more changes coming to SMB"

Wow, many disasters in gestation then ?

I've gotta stock up on popcorn . . .

Metaverse? Apple thinks $3,500 AR ski goggles are the betterverse

Re: Longevity

Nobody who's actually working, that's for sure.

Re: bound to sell more as demand picks up

If demand picks up, you mean.

There's a fair chance that those 10 million sold are all they'll ever sell.

In any case, I'm not buying anything that is even remotely tied to Zuckerturd, and I'll be damned if I'm strapping a diving bell to my face.

Sorry Apple, count me out of this.

Cry-pto: Feds bury Bitcoin exchange giant Binance in 13-count fraud lawsuit

Re: Really mad

I'd wait to see how it ends, if I were you.

Setting up an unlicensed securities exchange is indeed easy. It's keeping it alive and avoiding jail that seems to be a tad more difficult.

And yeah, criminals who put their deeds in writing . . .

Thanks for making the job of law enforcement easier, guys.

Stanford Internet Observatory raises alarm over 'serious failings with the child protection systems at Twitter'

As if Musk cares

So the lowest tier is $42K ? Guess what, he already doesn't pay his bills and he's not known for doing favors.

Twitter is dead. Leave it to rot.

Windows XP's adventures in the afterlife shows copyright's copywrongs

Will never happen and is unreasonable to ask.

Code is the source. You publish it and anyone can use it. That entirely defeats the object of copyright because you'll be spending all your money on chasing infringers. Either that or nobody will buy your product in the first place, so you have no money for the chase.

Releasing the source code has nothing to do with copyright.

The only source code Microsoft has ever officially released is MS-DOS, and that's only versions 1.25 and 2.

The code to XP has been leaked, but not in its entirety. There are some bits missing.

Apparently, the source of NT 5 has also been leaked, but not released.

As for the code base, yes. Even though Microsoft stated loudly that 7 was a complete rewrite, the fact that vulnerabilities targeted Vista and 7 equally demonstrates that that declaration was pure hookum.

Borkzilla has never written anything from scratch since XP.

Microsoft Windows latest: Cortana app out, adverts in

"fixing Ethernet connections"

If you are a company and you need Borkzilla's help to debug your Ethernet connections in this day and age, you don't deserve a network.

Hire yourself a fucking admin worth the name and get the problem solved.