Posts by Pascal Monett

What to expect when the UK-US Data Bridge comes into force this week

Re: Schrems III looks inevitable

Unfortunately not. Mr. Schrems looks out for EU privacy violations.

You have regained control. Schrems is not going to save UK privacy.

It's always from The World to The USA

I wonder if anybody has actually taken notice of that.

All the agreements are for transfer of Personally Identifiable Information to the USA. Never the other way around.

The USA is the black hole of PII on the Internet.

Maybe someone should do something about that.

Generative AI slashes cloud migration hassles, says McKinsey partner

Re: "when done correctly"

Yes indeed. Those are the magic words that enable the idiot that spouted them to hide behind the bullshit if it doesn't work.

It's the business version of "you're holding it wrong".

Honestly, to publicly state that some absent-minded text-spewing robot that doesn't even understand the significance of what it says improves cloud migration should be a one-way ticket to the padded hotel room.

Such deceit is despicable.

Microsoft gives unexpected tutorial on how to install Linux

I know how to enable a new system in Windows !

It's called FORMAT C:

SAP barely moving needle to migrate users off ECC before support ends

"move users to a subscription model of S/4HANA in the cloud"

Just wondering : if SAP customers have a working local version and are not going to be pushed to The Cloud^TM, what is SAP going to do ?

It's not going to just cut off its existing customer base, not when two-thirds say NO.

So, what are its options (apart from the obvious) ?

Yeah, but where would it make more money then ?

Cloud, subscription model plus licenses, THAT makes more money.

Service to the customer ? Don't be ridiculous. SAP is not there to serve customers, it's there to milk them.

Software patch fixes Euclid space telescope navigation bug

"the telescope's Fine Guidance Sensor"

I'm curious. Hubble had its issues, but detecting its position in space was not one of them.

I haven't heard that JWST has any issues like that either.

So, how is it that this telescope does ? Isn't satellite positioning a known science now ? What did they change on this one to make it not work like the others, and why ?

I would have thought that Science shares knowledge like that. Apparently not.

I'm a bit disappointed about this.

SBF on trial: The Python code that allegedly let Alameda hedge fund spend people's FTX deposits

Sure, take $10B from customer accounts without their knowledge or consent

Yeah, that's what all reputable banks do, isn't it ?

Burning at the stake is too good for this asshole.

US allows Samsung and SK hynix to keep making chips in China

"indefinitely"

Well, at least until the next time the White House occupant gets his knickers in a twist.

Vietnam accused of Predator spyware attack on EU and US politicians

"making them feel safer and more secure"

Seems a bit difficult to achieve. Our governments don't want us to feel safe. They want us to be scared. COVID. War. Crashing economy.

A scared population is a compliant one.

So this declaration is hookum.

Especially since, if they really wanted people to feel secure by being subject to police invasion of their private lives, the police would be announcing that they have the tool (and are not afraid of using it).

If they have the tool and aren't telling us about it, how are we supposed to feel safer ?

Net neutrality meets opposition in US, while Europe mulls charges for Big Tech

“threaten the progress the country has made”

Yes. Forcing the Internet back to net neutrality would certainly threaten the progress back to slavery that the Republicans have been pushing with Trump and ever since.

After all, going backwards is still going somewhere . . .

DoJ: Ex-soldier tried to pass secrets to China after seeking a 'subreddit about spy stuff'

Re: team leader and sergeant

Thank God he was part of the Human Intelligence squad !

Can you imagine his actions if he was just a basic grunt ? He might have posted secrets on a Minecraft forum !

Of course, he'd have to remember them first and, from what I read in the article, remembering things (like operational security, online stealth and spycraft basics) is not his strong point.

Scripted shortcut caused double-click disaster of sysadmin's own making

Lesson learned

Indeed.

I would even say, lesson engraved.

FTC: Please stop falling for social media scams, you've given crooks at least $650M so far this year

Re: But What About The Benefits?

Yes but, haven't you heard ?

Soon we'll have AI in our PCs. Surely we'll be protected then, right ?

Musk in hot water with SEC for failure to comply with subpoena

"enough is enough"

And just who do you think you are to say that the SEC is overstepping its bounds ?

A normal human being would be mortified by the attention, and would do everything to prove good faith and obedience to the law.

Because the SEC is the law, not you.

But you go ahead and keep digging your grave. Celebrity driving over a cliff is always prime time entertainment.

Police ignored the laws of datacenter climate control

Re: Convenience

To be fair, what the hell were they thinking putting electronic equipment in a room full of humidity ?

That server would have been better off sitting outside the building. Maybe next to a door, for quick access.

Online tracking is alive and well in link decoration

Link decorations ?

I use CleanURL. And uBlock Origin and NoScript.

Don't know what those things are, don't care.

ESA funds space weather satellite swarm to understand and combat orbital debris

Have you skipped the part where those 8 will be safely deorbited at the end of their lifetime ?

Because apparently, you did.

Google promises Germany to creep on users less after market power probe

Many business models ?

""Data are key for many business models used by large digital companies"

As far as I can see, there is only one business model : sell anything you want, but slurp everything you can and sell it off to all bidders.

Thank God fo NoScript.

You've just spent $400 on a baby monitor. Now you need a subscription

"the sudden imposition of subscription fees"

Bait-and-switch, again.

I understand that Miku got bought out by some new company who decided it had the right to make the change.

It doesn't. It shouldn't have. You buy a company, you buy its obligations. You don't like its obligations ? Don't buy the company.

This is why I will never have a "smart" house. The only thing that is smart is the vendor fees to keep everything working.

I can use manual switches. Go to hell.

When is a PC an AI PC? Nobody seems to know or wants to tell

What a load of bullshit

"An AI PC," he added, "is a PC that learns about you continuously, it's a PC that is your personal foundation model within the data within the PC and it is a PC that will be able to interact with you more naturally."

What you're actually saying is that Google can go cry in a corner, you're making a PC that will report our every click, hesitation and decision to some remote data store to be combed over incessantly by multiple scripts that will inevitably sell all that profiling to all and sundry.

Well I'm not having any of that. I've been using computers since the IBM PC. I don't need you to "help".

Cat accused of wiping US Veteran Affairs server info after jumping on keyboard

"their cat jumped on the keyboard"

I can confirm that I have found my cat louging on my laptop keyboard often enough to totally believe that.

It's come to a point where, especially in winter, if I leave my home office desk for more than a minute, I have to lower the laptop screen to 45° above the keyboard else I find that my cat has edited my code in a strikingly surprising manner.

Not even the ghost of obsolescence can coerce users onto Windows 11

"A collective shrug from PC users"

Yup. We don't care.

And the fact that hardware doesn't improve that much year over year means that we won't care for good long while to come.

Why is Borkzilla declaring Windows 1 0 obsolete ? It was supposed to be the last version until Redmond got an aneurysm and decided to do another one.

There is nothing in 11 that can't be ported to 1 0. All you need to do is put it in the upgrade system. You do know how to do that ? I'm asking because I seem to recall that Windows 1 0 patches from fast track kinda spilled over to the regular channel from time to time.

But, in any case, there is nothing in 11 that anyone cares about but you.

Oh, and talking AI for future upgrades ?

Fuck off.

Microsoft CEO whinges about Google's default search deals

Cry me a river

Convicted monopolist in relapse complaining about another monopolist's monopoly.

My heart . . . is fine, thank you.

$17k solid gold Apple Watch goes from Beyoncé's wrist to the obsolete list

Yes, there is a choice. The choice of not buying.

The choice of only buying things that can be fixed.

We did not make that choice, so now we have the long, hard slog of getting the law involved. And that means fighting the lobbyists, which are still doing their damndest to fight the right to repair.

If we had just not bought, it's the manufacturers that would be begging us to buy their fixable stuff.

Re: No doubt

Because there's more money in selling than in fixing.

This is the consumer's fault. We all accept that Apple decides, arbitrarily, to define a date after which something is obsolete and refuses not only to fix it any more, but even deprives other providers of parts to do so.

This will last until people get fed up of buying things that are declared obsolete when they are still perfectly fixable and maintainable. We have all been led down the path of the new shiny, and enough of us have run stright down it that I don't know if we'll get back out of it any time soon.

From vacuum tubes to qubits – is quantum computing destined to repeat history?

You're not dead yet.

US State Dept has no idea if its IT security actually works, say auditors

"no idea if its IT security actually works"

Let's take the safe route and say no, it doesn't.

And it is right, its IT security doesn't work. I'm sure there's a hacker somewhere that will be happy to demonstrate.

Anybody in Moscow interested ?

Google doubles minimum RAM and disk in 'Chromebook Plus' spec

Nice, just one question

Does the guarantee period still start when the Chromebook exits the factory, and not when the Chromebook is bought ?

Because I'm absolutely not interested in buying something with a guarantee that has been active for months before I bought it.

ESA delays Vega-C's return after nozzle design fails tests

"Its Ariane 5 heavy lifter has flown its last mission and its successor is yet to fly."

I'm honstly rather surprised by this situation.

I would have thought the ESA would have had a better grasp on scheduling than to retire a launcher that works before its successor was ready.

But hey, this is rocket science, and I'm sure the people on the project are working their asses off to make things right. Space engineers are no slouches. If the launcher is not ready, I'm sure there are good reasons for it.

Shame though.

Co-founder of collapsed crypto biz Three Arrows cuffed at airport

"arrested last Friday [..] as he attempted to leave the country"

Airports these days are not safe territory for wanted criminals wishing to flee the country.

He would have been better off taking a boat trip. Much more discreet and efficient, I would think, although then you are stuck in boat for a while.

But hey, he's scum scamming people with empty funny money promises. His escape strategy was just as bright as his work ethics . . .

Musk's first year as Twitter's Dear Leader is nigh

Brilliant article

A savory list of failure in chronological order that demonstrates without a doubt that having money does gift you with intelligence or sanity.

Thank you for this resumé of a train wreck.

Re: Elon Musk owns xTwitter

I think we know that.

Your point ?

Re: I've just stopped using (anti-)Social Media in its slimy entirety

I'm sorry, didn't you just mention "followers" and Mastodon ?

Or are you saying that you've let your followers go to Mastodon and you haven't set up shop there ?

Because if you're on Mastodon with your followers, you haven't abandoned social media in its entirety, slimy or not.

PhD student guilty of 3D-printing 'kamikaze' drone for Islamic State terrorists

Maybe so, but explicitely creating schematics for an explosive warhead is not something I would expect from any project of a PHD student.

Let him get hired by MI6/the CIA and then Bob's your uncle, but in school, you do school projects.

Norway wants Facebook behavioral advertising banned across Europe

"given that Meta has already committed to"

Bullshit. Meta has committed to nothing. All it's done is make the proper mouth noises to make the problem go away.

When it has made the corrections in code, then it has committed.

Until then, fine them a million kroner per minute. That'll make The Zuck think again.

Red Hat bins Bugzilla for RHEL issue tracking, jumps on Jira

Re: Jira is the single source of suckage

That is an excellent link.

I'm keeping that.

Oh he ran it all right, into a wall. He took a powerful company that had been handed to him on a platter, and made an enormous mess of it.

That's why he got canned, and none too soon.

Search for phone signal caused oil spill, say Japanese investigators

Wow. Just wow.

You're the captain of a 100,000 ton cargo ship and your only focus is getting a signal for your smartphone. So, without knowing the waters you are in or going to, without the slightest inkling that maybe you should check, you just change course straight into catastrophe.

At this point, the whisky is an anecdote. It is literally irrelevant. The big issue is changing course without checking anything. That's like driving along a road, closing your eyes and then deciding when to take a left turn. I would have thought that naval school would have taught him the necessity of knowing where you're going when captaining a vessel of any kind, let alone an enormous cargo ship.

Who decided to give him command and how much experience did he have beforehand ? Was this his first command ? I cannot believe he was a seasoned captain. I would think that cargo companies prefer having their ships commanded by someone with experience, but this dude acted like a frat boy on party night.

Well, in any case, that'll be his last command. I don't feel sorry for him.

Supermicro CEO predicts 20 percent of datacenters will adopt liquid cooling

"I decided that [we] should design high efficiency [PSUs,] systems and datacenters"

And that is what happens when you are CEO of a multi-billion dollar company that you founded.

There is no Board telling him what to do. There are no "activist investors" clamoring for layoffs to line their pockets.

He is in control, he decides and the company executes. And the decisions he makes are carefully considered to grow his company, not his investor's portfolio.

An example to follow, apparently.

iPhone 15 is too hot to handle – and not in any good way

"It’s expected that Apple will address this through software updates"

AKA : throttling the CPU permanently to keep the phone from getting too hot.

So people will start complaining that their new shiny is a slug.

Too bad Apple chose titanium, apparently.

Musk, Yaccarino contradict each other on status of X's election integrity team

That took longer than I thought it would

But now, she has contradicted the Great Leader.

Her days are numbered.

Yelp sues Texas for right to publish actual accurate abortion info

"acquitted by his party in a Texas Senate trial"

So I understand that it is not a judge that acquitted him because, in Texas, criminal Senators are brought to trial before other Senators.

Truly a jury of his peers, then. And they acquitted him.

What a surprise.

And that in the land that boasts having the best justice system money can buy.

It would appear that some criminals don't need money to go scott free.

More and more LLMs in biz products, but who'll take responsibility for their output?

"There is no liability to the model"

And it has started.

I've already said that the responsible is the entity who hosts the thingamabob. Something goes wrong ? Sue them. They don't appreciate ? They sue the maker of the thingamabob. That can drag out in court for decades, consumers are not affected.

There is one basic rule in the French judicial system : if someone is harmed, then the entity responsible for the harm pays. If that entity can find another entity to blame, fine, it pays the someone, then gets reperation in court from the other entity. And so on and so forth. But the consumer gets compensated.

I've already said this, and I stated that companies would be dragging their feet.

Well, it has started already.

Didn't need a Palantir to see that coming.

From frying Panos into the Fire? Amazon confirms hiring of Microsoft veteran

"Alexa staff were included in the extensive layoffs"

Of course they are. Hiring is for upper management. Firing is for peons.

That said, I can't find who for the moment, but that reminds me of an Welsh comedian commenting on Alexa. I'll always remember this :

<in a heavy Welsh accent> "Alexa, what time does Marks & Spencer open on a Sunday ?"

<Alexa> "I'm sorry, I didn't understand."

Yeah, I know, it's not funny like that, but the audio is awesome. If anyone can find that, it would be a blessing.

You shouldn't be able to buy devices that tamper with diesel truck emissions on eBay, says DoJ

"government's actions are entirely unprecedented"

That doesn't mean that the action is wrong.

It actually means that the government is reacting to new elements in the world. In a democratic country, that is supposed to be a good thing, no ? Besides, the action is hardly unprecedented. I do believe the government has never been friends with defeat devices of any kind.

In a future where Meta actually becomes a thing, if we find out that kiddie porn is on that platform, I'd think that everyone would be okay with the government stepping in to quash that particularly horrible thing, right ?

The action would still be unprecedented, as far as Meta is concerned.

Not an argument.

Zuck dives deeper into the metaverse, dragging Snoop Dogg along for ride

"Meta is still trying to make the metaverse a thing"

Of course it is. Facebook is dying, Meta needs a new revenue stream.

Something must be done. This is something, so it must be done.

Intel starts mass production on Intel 4 node using EUV in Irish fab

"arguably the most complicated piece of machinery humans have ever built"

100,000 parts, oooh.

3,000 cables, aaaah !

40,000 bolts and more than a mile of hosing - OMG !!!

Sorry, Intel, have you checked out ITER ?

The 23000-tonne ITER Tokamak is a complex assembly of one million components and an estimated ten million individual parts. Surrounding the central reaction ...

You are so outclassed it's not even funny.

Israel and Italy have cheapest mobile data out of 237 countries

"Also surprising is that the US is one of the most expensive nations on the planet for mobile data"

Surprising ? Really ?

When you know that the USA is the country where every telco is buggering its customers, preventing true coverage from being known and doing as little as possible to upgrade the network to something useable, I don't really find this study surprising on that point.

Maybe so , but how do you propose we get an idea of what's going on ?

Of cours the data is skewed. The only question is, how is it skewed, and is it consistently skewed in the same way ?

If you have multiple years of skewed data and you know how it is skewed and you know that it is consistently skewed in the same way, then that data is still representative of reality.