Posts by Pascal Monett

Cloud engineer wreaks havoc on bank network after getting fired

"Brody worked as a cloud engineer for First Republic Bank"

And he'll have the rest of his life to reminisce fondly about that while flipping burgers.

No pity. You get fired, you go. You don't touch your former employers' network or anything else. You want revenge ? Tell everyone you know that you unfairly dismissed - whether it is true or not.

Now, the only thing everyone knows is that he watches porn on the job and abuses his knowledge to wreak havoc when being caught.

He'll never work in a bank again, that's for sure, and there's a good change he'll never be in an IT position ever again.

And he doesn't deserve to be. Not for a long time.

Epic decision sees jury find Google's Play store is illegal monopoly

This is the mother of all Google trials

Monumental. A jury has found against Google. It's going to cost Alphabet some pocket money to bury Epic under endless appeals.

More importantly, if this judgement is upheld, Google's entire gaming revenue stream is going to be upheaved in a major way. Goodbye 30%, hello 5%, or maybe 10%. Gosh, Board bonuses are going to dip by 5%.

Aw, shucks.

British railway system is getting another excuse for delays – solar storms

So, let's review

Now, the things that can keep UK trains from running are not only the wrong kind of snow, too much rain, but also too much sun.

Find an excuse for when it's the wrong kind of wind and you can shut the train stations down, guys.

Amazon's practices are 'the essence of competition,' it tells judge

"including it in the case at all makes the argument untimely"

Yes, Your Honor, I killed that person in 2019, but you're late to the game and that date is expired.

Sure. Play it your way. That always works with a judge.

NASA pushes back timing of ISS deorbit vehicle contract

"just in the nick of time"

That's hoping that it won't be late which, given Humanity's track record on getting space right the first time, is far from guaranteed.

But one thing is certain : the ISS will be coming down. The challenge is making that happen in a controlled manner. Right now, that challenge is on the funding. We'll see how Round 1 goes down. That'll give insight on how Round 2, getting ready to de-orbit, might pan out.

Hollywood plays unwitting Cameo in Kremlin plot to discredit Zelensky

So, now it's about substance addiction

The line that he is a Nazi is no longer relevant ? Old news ? Gotta find something else ?

If you were capable of winning this stupid mess you created in the first place, you wouldn't have to stoop to attacking your opponent's reputation. But I'm guessing Putin doesn't care about this kind of shenanigans. He may smile on it, but he doesn't have time to actually coordinate it.

This is done by the armchair generals in the rear, who's only ability is their Internet connection and total lack of moral compass. Oh, and the fact that they managed to not get drafted. Yet.

BOFH: Just because we've had record revenues doesn't mean you get a Xmas bonus

Brilliant

I love the part where somebody doesn't want to pay, and BOFH reminds them that bonuses are only for the living (and there are some bricks in the corner).

Great stuff !

Bank's datacenter died after travelling back in time to 1970

Re: Yearly tasks....

Completely agree. Yearly tasks are a pain to schedule, especially when the responsible person leaves the company (whatever reason).

I'm thinking there should be a yearly calendar process for business. The business needs to know these things, and they cannot be tied to the knowledge of one person. How many times has Borkzilla been caught out because it forgot to renew its own certificates ? And it's far from being alone in this. If there was some sort of shared calendar showing yearly actions and who is responsible for them, then I think this kind of issue would be almost resolved.

At a business level, that should be easy to organize. Create a user named Yearly Renewal, share his calendar with all upper management, and have HelpDesk insert the proper data and the names of people responsible. When one person leaves, check Yearly's calendar for all events under that person's name and figure out who to reassign them to. Then make sure everyone is checking Yearly's calendar at least once a month.

That should work, no ?

Amazon's game-streamer Twitch to quit South Korea, citing savage network costs

Re: is this better for SK Broadband?

Well, manglement at SK Broadband could return to the negotiating table, but if that happens, they will be no longer be in a position to mandate 10x carrier prices.

And they will lose face which, contrary to our Western civilization politicians, is anathema to many Asian cultures (painting Asian in broad strokes, here).

So I feel confident that SK Broadband is going to watch Twitch leave without flinching. I do wonder, though : how much does it actually cost to transmit a megabyte over fiber ? I mean, the router is plugged in whether or not you're transmitting. How much more energy does it take ? I realize that it should take more, but how much more ?

Hubble Space Telescope is back in the game after NASA fixes gyro glitch

Awesome

As usual, NASA gets a problem, and NASA finds a solution. Redundancy FTW, eh Boeing ?

Being a NASA engineer must be one of the most stressful but rewarding jobs there is. You know that what you do is important, so when there's a mission-breaking issue like this, you have to find a solution. And when you do, it's better than if you won the lottery.

Big kudos to NASA engineers. Well done.

HP TV ads claim its printers are 'made to be less hated'

Re: HP Support

Ah, kids these days . . .

Microsoft's code name for 64-bit Windows was also a dig at rival Sun

"the OS titan missed an emerging trend"

You mean to say : "the OS titan missed another emerging trend".

FTFY

Post-Brexit tariffs on EU-UK electric vehicle imports staved off till 2027

So, Brexit means Brexit, except when it doesn't

Could someone please explain why all those billions in trade taxes are not being eyed with envy by governments ?

Why should automakers be exempt from trade tax when everything else isn't ?

Or is this all just a question of "well, we're only getting around to discuss this problem now" ?

A year on, CISA realizes debunked vuln actually a dud and removes it from must-patch list

Re: Test with all the layers

I believe the terme is pen-testing, because penetration.

I also believe that, if your pen testers can't get through without you deactivating your defenses, you need to find better pen testers.

EU running in circles trying to get AI Act out the door

Re: First to legislate?!

I have to agree that I don't see the point in this pseudo-race.

I don't care if you're first to legislate, I care that the laws you make a good. You can be the tenth to have made the law, if yours is the best, it's the one everyone should use.

Re: The EU is not the centre of the universe.

Of course it isn't the center of the Universe. It's not pretending to be.

However, it is a market of over 350 million consumers. If you want to lock yourself out of that, feel free, but know that your competition might not.

Veteran editors Notepad++ and Geany hit milestone versions

Re: Notepad++ FTW

Absolutely agree. I've been using it for over a decade now. No other editor handles large text files as quickly, and the program-language support is a godsend.

'Wobbly spacetime' is latest stab at unifying physics

So, physics goes wibbly-wobbly

Nothing like a stiff drink to sooth the nerves, right ?

It's ba-ack... UK watchdog publishes age verification proposals

Ah, politicians

They operate on the good old "something must be done" principle (this is something, so it must be done).

Granted, since the past three decades it appears to me that, globally speaking, politicians everywhere are getting more and more shallow and stupid (the shitshow we've got going in France is appalling), if not outright callous and thieving, but the real problem, IMO, is that they all feel that they must appear to be achieving, and they will grasp at anything to do so.

They haven't understood that their job is not to achieve, it is to manage. Achieving is done by the voters, they have a job (hopefully, at least), and jobs are what achieve things.

Politicians (and administrative busybodies in general) are simply there to make sure the rules keep everyone globally going in the same direction. And maybe, from time to time, inaugurate a monument.

"facial age estimation"

Oh, the paragon of truthfulness. Yes, I am eagerly waiting for the AI that can identify the age of a person by only analyzing a portrait. I'm sure all the Asians will be either miffed or delighted (following if they're actually under 30 or over 40) at such a "proof" of age. I personally know a woman of Chinese ancestry who is going to celebrate her 40th birthday soon. Going by her face, I would swear she's still in her 20s.

So yeah, I'm really interested in seeing a program that can accurately judge a person's age by only their picture.

I won't be holding my breath, though.

Digital memories are disappearing and not even AI or Google can help

A strikingly important article

The subject of our memories is a very important one, and we're nowhere near a proper solution.

I agree that file storage works, but file retrieval is indeed a thorny subject - made worse when the storage medium differs the older the file date.

I also have a collection of DVDs, HDDs and now BluRay discs that I store my digital life on. When VHS went out of style, I used my living room DVD player with hard drive to convert from VHS to MP4 and voilà, all those files went to DVD storage (and are now also backed up on BluRay). What happens when switch to crystal cubes with yottabytes of storage ? I'll be copying all of that to the cube, of course.

And then what ? My data organization isn't terrible, but if I absolutely had to find that school programming project, I'm not sure I could do that in a single day. Might take me more than a day or two to go through all those DVD labels to guess, or check, the right one. And yes, I have an index. Somewhere. Going to have to find that as well, but I think I know where it is.

So yeah, I'm rather looking forward to the day I can just ask my robot butler for that project folder I saved in 1998 and see the folder appear on my whatever-a-PC-will-be-by-then.

And then I'll check the contents, find that they are useless and chuck the folder to the bin.

Branson's wallet snaps shut for Virgin Galactic

So, Branson is folding

Apparently, erecting massive, uh, rockets, yeah rockets, doesn't do it for Branson anymore.

Typical billionnaire. He got what he wanted, now he's no longer interested.

Spanish media sues Meta for ignoring GDPR and harvesting data

"systemic and massive disregard for privacy laws"

Yup, that sounds like Meta, all right.

El Zuck will never give a flying fig about user privacy because his entire empire (and fortune) is based on pilfering that privacy.

To teach him the error of his ways will require liberal and enthusiastic percussive maintenance with bats (corked or not). Given that that is legally frowned upon, the only other option is pathetically small fines which will be royally ignored until the EU in its globality decides to fine META a year's worth of its global revenue.

Then El Zuck will start listening.

But since that won't happen . . .

Interesting. Thanks for the link.

DevTernity conference collapses amid claims women speakers were faked

Re: They might consider it private personal data that they should not give out/confirm

The they should have the balls to say so.

HP exec says quiet part out loud when it comes to locking in print customers

"HP is squeezing more margin out of print customers"

You mean, the ones it has left.

Laser is the future. Toner can be refilled, nobody knows who did it (yet).

Ink is just you subscribing to a mafia cartel in Saville Row suits. Ditch them. Besides, do you really need to print in color ? Really ? That business presentation ? Make it a PowerPoint. Or a PDF. Nobody needs the slides on paper, and absolutely nobody will know where the paper is in a week. Send them the effin' file. Aren't we supposed to be going paperless ?

And for the few holdouts who absolutely want their pics on print, don't you know that Kodak does the job for pennies ?

Stop the nonsense. If you're a professional printer, you already don't use ink. If you're an amateur, you've got magnetic storage. If you want a wall-size print, you're not doing it on an HP inkjet.

Stop feeding the trolls. They don't deserve it.

40 years of Turbo Pascal, the coding dinosaur that revolutionized IDEs

Re: Richard, you've damaged me!

Yup. I learned OO programming with Turbo Pascal.

Best time of my life.

World's largest nuclear fusion reactor comes online in Japan

ITER and JT

Seems that they both started construction the same year. Scientists, engineers and technicians have been collaborating on both projects. JT has achieved a monumental result already, but ITER is going to make us wait another two years.

Is it because ITER is bigger ? The wiki says "ten times the plasma volume of any other tokamak operating today", but that was before JT.

So what's the score now ?

And, hang on, whatever the score is, they planned a decade ago to have a fusion reactor ten times bigger than anything running a decade later ?

Wow.

Re: Hope this goes well

Yeah, maybe not. I hope not, anyway. With fusion we will finally do away with all the stupid greenie arguments against nuclear and be able to advance to a society where energy is no longer a problem.

I'm looking forward to seeing that start before I retire, at best, or before I die, at worst.

Oh, and I basically just turned 57, so you see, I'm really hoping.

Google submits complaints about Microsoft licensing to UK competition regulator

So, Google defending the little guy

Google, the "you have no privacy, get over it" company is defending the little guy ?

No. Google wants to be sure to get its proper share of the market, the biggest one.

You don't fool me.

Boffins find asking ChatGPT to repeat key words can expose its training data

Hmm. Maybe there's some truth to this "AI" they keep on harping about ?

Book ? You want me to say Book ? Okay, Book.

Book. Again ? Okay. Book.

Book ? Book.

Book ? Book.

Book ? BOOK !

Book ? What ? You want a fucking book ? Here's a book : [..] Now go do something intelligent with your time !

Oh no. With people, you can get bullshit that is far from what you've put in.

US readies prison cell for another Russian Trickbot developer

"$34 million of which came from 149 victims in the UK"

That's almost $230K from each.

They certainly hit the jackpot on that run.

That being said, actually being condemned to not even three years after facing a lifetime in jail ? Somehow that feels a trifle light.

Seems that white-collar crime does pay. Again.

Health crusaders prep legal challenge over NHS mega contract with Palantir

"there is no lawful basis to proceed"

Oh what a bunch of party crashers. Come on, after all the junkets they've been paid to go to and all that time quaffing champaign, eating delicious munchies and, occasionally, listening to some boring busybody tell everyone why it was important, you want to gut the trough that has been set up from which Lord only knows how many in the UK government are going to profit ?

Have you no pity ?

What's that ? UK citizens ? Who cares about them ? If they were so important, they should've gotten themselves elected.

AWS rakes in half a billion pounds from UK Home Office

"The contract – valued at £450,281,369 to be precise"

No, that's just the initial cost.

The true cost is going to be more because cloud activity will ramp up and incur cost overruns, to no one's surprise.

Uneless there's a clause in there that caps AWS on the amount it can invoice without capping the UK Home Office's activity ?

I don't think so.

Logitech's Wave Keys tries to bend ergonomics without breaking tradition

"modern" people

If I'm not mistaken, "modern" people are all under 30.

Let's talk about this again in 30 years, shall we ?

Regulator says stranger entered hospital, treated a patient, took a document ... then vanished

"Rather than fining public sector institutions for incompetence or a lack of training"

They should fine the government for lack of funding.

Hubble science instruments still out after going down 3 times in a week

Thank you, I am completely aware of that.

So, I should expect NASA to be charged with a Hubble update any day now. Is that what you're saying ?

Because I'm saying that's not going to happen.

I'll be happy to be proven wrong.

I hope someone will step up to the plate

If replacing the gyros is all Hubble needs to continue functioning for another decade, then I hope some billionnaire somewhere will find enough loose change in his couch to make it happen.

Obviously, Space is now beyond government budgets, but the Science is still necessary. No use talking to politicians, so billionnaires is where it's at.

Ex-school IT admin binned student, staff accounts and trashed phone system

He was IT Admin. What makes you think he wants to deal with customers ?

At best, he'll be cooking the fries.

Re: NerdRageQuit

There's nothing in the article that says that he no longer had access after he was fired.

It's a university. Those things are not exactly renowned for having proper firing procedures, let alone IT procedures. I'm guessing he got called to the Head Office (or whatever equivalent), got told he was fired, and got sent back to his desk to clean up by himself and let himself out.

Yes, he's a blithering idiot and yes, he will never get work as an IT admin again. Way to capitalize on your diplomas. But there is nothing that says that he went home and wreaked havoc from there - although there's a 99% chance that the uni would not have had the administrative time to lock his account before that since unis are serially incompetent in everything IT.

So yeah, he was an idiot, but if the uni had handled the situation with proper oversight, it wouldn't have happened. The uni paid the price in inconvenience. The idiot will pay the price in a McDonalds kitchen.

Fitting for all, I say.

Bank boss hated IT, loved the beach, was clueless about ports and politeness

Now that is exceptional.

Not only did she recognize their work, but she organized money to make it official.

I always appreciate that you say thank you, but if you're putting your money where your mouth is, I give you 5 stars every time.

Roblox investor plays hardball over 'weak' parental controls

the DeKalb County Pension Fund

What are you doing investing in game companies ?

You're a pension fund. Go invest in oil or something else that lasts a long time. Gaming is one of the most volatile markets there is without you idiots throwing a monkey wrench into the mix. You have nothing doing there in the interest of your pensioners.

Go buy some Capita stock. They never seem to lose.

Six pack of sub-Neptune exoplanets hang tight around nearby star

Re: Music of the spheres

What astounds me is that, with the feeble amount of experience and empirical data we have, we can still project orbital stability over four billion years.

Thank God for Newtonian mechanics.

SAP faces more accusations of breaching on-prem customers' trust

"Our partnership with each of our customers is built on trust"

Yes. You trust that your customers will continue to shower you eternally in boatloads of money, while your customers trust that you will shaft them in every way you can find.

Weak session keys let snoops take a byte out of your Bluetooth traffic

Blutooth security

Glad to see that there are people who are keeping the industry on their toes on the matter of security. Unfortunately, automakers are still dragging their feet on that particular question.

So, until Blutooth security is wound up tight enough to force automakers to do it right, I don't see that much will change for consumers.

The specs can be complete and detailed, if the implementation sucks, there will always be vulnerabilities.

China's Loongson debuts processor that 'matches Intel silicon circa 2020'

Re: Loongson has a loong way to go

Maybe so, but the important thing is that they've started the journey.

Give them time and they may well find architectures that are better than ours.

Besides, competition is always a good thing for the consumer, right ?

AI offers some novel crystal materials that could form future chips, batteries, more

Finally, a proper use for a statistical analysis machine

I can totally believe that this is the way to go forward in creating new and useful materials to boost our technologies in every domain. Of course, as noted, a bit of fine-tuning is still required, but this can potentially bring many more returns than some stupid filter for smartphone pics.

And hey, if a machine finds us the proper compound for room-temperature superconductors, I won't complain.

That time a JPL engineer almost killed a Mars Rover before it left Earth

Re: Indeed a good "Who Me?"

Agreed.

Having to check that 10,000 pins are correctly connected, down to the last one ?

Lord preserve me from that.

Server sales down 31% at HPE as enterprises hack spending

"de-elongation and customer digestion"

My, my. To what ends corporate bullshit has to go to say that customers are simply not buying because they don't need to.