Posts by Pascal Monett

This won't hurt a bit: Amazon now a US healthcare provider

Amazon 2100 :

Search for Heart Attack.

Popup for Ambulance : Special Deal, only $6500 if you purchase in the next 5 minutes !

Yay capitalism ?

Lawyers join forces to fight common enemy: The SEC and its probes into cyber-victims

"Either outcome imposes a significant and unfair burden on attorneys"

So, if I understand correctly, because Covington is a den of lawyers, they are required to have special priviledge when it comes to dealing with the SEC.

SEC asks the same thing in every case, it's not new.

If it is such an issue for lawyers then, given that even they state that being hacked is inevitable, they should find a way to ensure that client data is not available to hackers - aka don't put it on the network.

It's not like lawyers will ever have a paperless office anyway.

Ancient art of banning rideshare companies revived in India, this time on motorbikes

How's that for disruption, Uber ?

"the practice and services violated existing laws, since the vehicles are not registered for commercial use"

Well, they never were, so why did it take so long to notice ?

Did the Indian Minister of Transport recently have a bad experience on a moto-taxi ?

Titanic mass grave site to be pillaged for NFTs

Now that's a blockchain I could get behind.

APNIC calls in lawyers to handle election code of conduct breach allegations

False allegations, disparagement of opponents [..] and creative approaches to the truth

A Monday in US politics then . . .

or Fox News.

Humans strike back at Go-playing AI systems

Re: that's still not generalised AI

It's not AI, period.

Hong Kong to crypto exchanges: get a securities broker's licence, or go home

What's the point ?

Why bother about funny money brokers in Hong Kong ?

Xi Pooh has already forbidden that in China, and that's where you're going.

Chinese boffins call for research on ‘countermeasures’ to US chip bans

Re: I see a potential for China to corner the market in the 1nm class

I don't think it'll be that simple.

FTX is back in Japan, where users can withdraw fiat and crypto

"comprehensively regulated cryptocurrency sector"

Ah. So it's not a free-for-all sticking it to The Man being largely taken advantage of by completely unscrupulous individuals.

Geez, maybe having regulations is not such a bad thing after all . . .

GoDaddy joins the dots and realizes it's been under attack for three years

Green hats, really ?

What about blue hats ? Or grey hats ?

Or hey, it's the latest fashion apparently, rainbow hats ?

Can't be woke if you leave them out, can you ?

This is getting ridiculous.

Nations agree to curb enthusiasm for military AI before it destroys the world

You seem to have not at all followed the raft of diplomatic activity that took over 20 years to bring Russia to this point.

Yes, Russia invaded Ukraine all alone. But we (aka The West) made a lot of promises to Russia, specific promises, not general notions mouthed in platitudes, and we did nothing to hold ourselves to those promises.

You try promising things to someone and never making good on your promise, and then tell me how long that person is still going to believe you.

Virtual reality telemetry means you can virtually kiss goodbye to privacy

"This really changes how we think about the notion of 'privacy' in the metaverse"

No, not really.

Not for anyone with an attention span worth a damn.

Sick of smudges on your car's enormo touchscreen? GM patents potential cure

My car has clean, unsmudged surfaces

It's using a revolutionary new idea : buttons.

Actual, physical buttons to control things.

No smudges there.

EU lawmakers argue against signing US data-transfer pact

Because the "bonus" was a lie, and you don't have a choice.

Unless, of course, you're OK with saying goodbye to 45% of your commerce budget.

Your figures, not mine.

"interpreted solely in the light of US law and legal traditions"

Aka : the NSA does whatever the fuck it wants and if you don't like it, fuck you.

Personally, I am still wondering why we (the EU) hasn't just shut down the data pipe until this is resolved properly, aka following EU rules.

Let's not get confused : that data is making US companies salivate. The junkies need their fix. You tell them what you agree to give and they'll fold, it just takes a bit of time. The rest is all a storm in a teacup. Let the noisy ones bloviate, you can wait them out. They cannot stand to wait.

Advantage : EU.

Ubuntu Advantage is being wired deeper into the distro

"messages about the paid Ubuntu Pro offering… which is by design, and it's not going away"

Thank you, Microsoft.

And to think you said that Linux was a cancer.

Heads to roll at Lenovo amid 'severe downturn' in PC sales

"Now companies including Lenovo, HP and Dell are facing an uphill battle to sell more product"

Well gosh, what a surprise.

I wonder if all the unforcasted units sold during COVID lockdowns might have an effect.

As in, now everybody has a PC / laptop or equivalent, even those who thought they didn't need one.

You ever seen someone going to a restaurant after having just eaten ? I haven't.

Cut the marketing budget ? Yeah, that's good. Nobody's buying because everyone is equipped.

Come back in a few years. You'll be useful by then.

Right now, you can hibernate. But stop whinging. You've had your buttered bread.

Outage-ous: Twitter OKs cannabis ads, then goes up in smoke

"In an update to its drugs and drug paraphernalia policy page"

I'm sure Mr Spliff will do his utmost to serve the needs of all cannabis users and pushers on the bird network, or what's left of it.

Tesla's self-driving code may ignore stop signs, act unsafe. Patch coming ... soon

"surely the real issue here is that the software is dangerous?"

Let's not confuse the issue, which is all about the preposterous slander imposed by the word "recall".

That is what must be changed and Musk will die on that hill if necessary (aka send unlimited amounts of salesdrones to die in his place until the issue is snowed over by whatever important news is churned up next - look, squirrel !).

If you have a fan, and want this company to stay in business, bring it to IT now

"people bitched about it for a considerable time afterwards"

Of course. What Trent should have done was shut everything down so as to not inconvenience the desk drones. Customer Satisfaction ? That only counts if I can get a yearly bonus, or better yet, a raise out of it.

There is no I in Team, right ? Well, there obviously was no team there either, so I it was.

Tesla fires gigafactory staff after someone made the mistake of mentioning unions

"Tesla has reportedly fired employees [..] just a day after workers announced plans to unionize"

Well that's one plan that will be going forward now. Well done on quelling dissent, Tesla.

Major success.

What is it with companies in the USA these days ? It seems they are all pining for the Pinkerton days of yore.

Microsoft's new AI BingBot berates users and can't get its facts straight

"users have requested more features [..] such as booking flights"

Sure, I'm going to risk my money and my travel plans on a brain-dead, mindless, unreliable statistical inference machine that can't keep its facts straight - or even remain polite.

Yeah, no problem there.

Right.

I'm really impatient for the day this pseudo-AI bullshit hits the same brick wall as funny money did so we can get back to watching cat videos in peace.

Biden: I want standard EV chargers made in America by 2024 – get on it

For a shitshow, it sure seems to be a successful one.

Core-JS chief complains open source is broken, no one will pay for it

"Free open source software"

I'm sorry, what in the word free do you not understand ?

You propose your code freely for all and then you're surprised that people take it without paying ?

Hint : if you hand out sandwiches and say that they are free, you won't get paid either.

US defense forces no match for the unstoppable fiend known as Reply-All

Re: Ageism is alive and well...

Not to mention : what the hell do sorting rules have to do with Reply All ?

Besides, this is an old problem. It was a problem when boomers were young, and it will likely be a problem when today's millenials have become boomers as well.

So the military still hasn't learned to control Reply All

It took decades, but finally Outlook allowed for controlling Reply All (I think it was in Office 2010).

I remember clearly working in various major organizations in Luxembourg around 2010 and seeing, for the first time in my life, that Reply All prompted a message box along the lines of "Are you really sure you want to do this ?". Some messages were more of the "Only do this if you can justify it to your manager" type.

So the military haven't cottoned on yet ?

Oh well, give them another four or five decades, they'll get there eventually.

The Pentagon is shockingly bad at managing its employee smartphones

Government phone lockdown

There is a simple solution to this : stop handing out phones that have zero protection in place.

It's not only the Government, but it's the Department of Defense. If there is one institution in a country where you don't fool around, it's there.

The DOD should have software that locks the phones it gives out to only a set of applications. The Play Store should not be part of that set.

But of course, that means having actually thought about and planned something before handing out unsafe platforms, but hey, it's not like the DoD is in charge of the security of an entire nation.

Oh, wait . . .

Chipmakers threaten to defect to US, EU if UK doesn't get its semiconductor plans sorted

"aiming to publish the forthcoming UK semiconductor plan as soon as possible"

Meaning : as soon as they've found a way for (at least) one of their buddies to get his snought in the trough.

Wait 'till it happens before celebrating.

Ransomware crooks steal 3m+ patients' medical records, personal info

"one year of Norton LifeLock credit monitoring"

Norton ? Dear God, just hang me now.

Microsoft switches Edge’s PDF reader to pay-to-play Adobe Acrobat

Could they just replace Edge ?

And finally nuke everything IE out of the Windows landscape ?

Is that possible ?

I want to live in the universe where that is possible.

IBM says it's been running 'AI supercomputer' since May but chose now to tell the world

That's a supercomputer these days ?

"each is a twin-socket system with 2nd Gen Xeon Scalable processors configured with 1.5TB of DRAM, and four 3.2TB NVMe flash drives, plus eight 80GB Nvidia A100 GPUs, the latter connected by NVLink and NVSwitch"

Somehow, I feel a bit let down compared to Frontier, an 8.7 million core, 1.1K petaflop beast at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

It seems they'll call anything a supercomputer these days.

Forced labour ?

You compare forced labour with computing how many people are getting gassed, and how much more efficient the process could be ?

Wow.

No more rockstars, say Billy Idol, Joan Jett in Workday Super Bowl ad

Rock star

It's interesting how besuited, Gucci-wearing so-called high-level executives want to be associated with what is commonly known as a depraved, drug and alcohol-filled lifestyle.

It's almost as if they have to compensate for their utter borishness by sprinkling glitter around.

US, UK slap sanctions on Russians linked to Conti, Ryuk, Trickbot malware

The game of whack-a-mole continues

"travel bans on the seven and freezing their assets"

I wonder if these Russkies have assets outside of Russia. They probably have multiple crypto wallets, but I haven't heard that The Man can freeze those.

And for travel bans, I'm sure that has them shaking in their sapogi.

What's up with IT, Doc? Rabbit hole reveals cause of outage

Re: Ouch

Yup. That's one lucky bunny.

Name wouldn't be Roger, by any chance ?

Find My Kids app is basically AirTags for your offspring

Re: I did not do latin in school.

It's not a question of amount, it's a question of not needing to remove your eyes one second from that all-important screen that has replaced your hand (and mind, apparently).

Coming next : an Education app which will gamify your child's upbringing, so you can finally ignore the brat completely and fob it off to a slab of plastic and toxic metals while you go on with the more important things in your life, namely your next Twitter post.

Microsoft teases how it'll make Sentinel a bit easier to monitor and audit

"If you're expecting to see particular incidents in your queue but you don't"

Then you know that our software is performing with its usual of performance.

Classiq to school academia in quantum computing with help from Microsoft

"in readiness for when fault-tolerant systems become available"

Hmm. As far as software is concerned, if you're dealing with a system where all possible values are automatically and instantly computed, I'd think that your software would be fault-tolerant by default, else it would crash.

Quantum computing is a very, very curious beast.

Singapore pulls plug on COVID tracking program

Re: spend a great deal for very little return

Oh come now. You only say that because you're not part of the select group that had their snoughts in the trough.

I'm sure they feel that the return was quite satisfactory.

Ring system discovered around dwarf planet Quaoar leaves astronomers puzzled

Ice volcanos beyond Pluto ?

Okay, Space is wierd and very, very large, but if it's already wierd that a 1,100 km-wide ball of stuff has a ring system, it is absolutely mind-boggling that it might have cryovolcanoes.

Jupiter's moon Io has volcanoes, but that's because Jupiter's gravitational field is literally mushing up that little pizza ball. Quaoar does not have such a luxury, and I very much doubt the Sun can be counted on for melting its surface enough at that distance to encourage icy volcanic activity.

So, if this stuff is confirmed - and it still has to be, apparently - then astrophysicists are going to have a hell of a time explaining how a dead ball of ice deep in the freezer of space can be active enough to spout frozen geysers that manage to create a ring in such conditions.

This is going to be a mind-bender of major proportions.

Open Source Policy Summit: Where FOSS and government meet

"how European laws should not apply to open source companies"

Not going to happen. Closed source has to obey the laws of the countries where it sells, there is no reason to exempt open source from the same obligations simply because the sale price is zero.

Besides, it's not like it's a problem for the developers. You don't want your code to be GDPR-compliant ? Not a problem, your code won't be used in the EU. I don't think there are many non-EU developers who are bothered by that.

EU-centric developers, of course, will have to ensure that their code is GDPR-compliant, meaning that they'll have to amend whatever FOSS code they decide to use to ensure proper compliance. The burden is on them (apply to other countries/law structures as applicable).

But all code should be compliant with the laws of the country in which it operates.

Codebreakers decipher Mary, Queen of Scots' secret letters 436 years after her execution

"the confidential correspondence doesn't provide many details about the Throckmorton Plot"

How unfortunate that famous people didn't systematically write about important events of their time in their private correspondance.

Someone should have shown her Twitter.

Not so good morning Vietnam, as government announces, then buries news of Intel investment

Re: But they're communists

You seem to assume that Intel will only accept one offer.

I'm sure that Intel is quite capable of taking several offers of money at the same time.

The Twitpocalypse may have begun, as datacenter migration reportedly founders

"Going forward, Twitter will be broadly accepting of different values"

Racists of all countries, unite !

Hang on, let me get the status page updated. Oh, right. I fired that guy. Oh well.

Wait, you don't like white people ?

Transmission FOSS BitTorrent client hits version 4.0

Re: Nobody will ever revoke your right to play a physical disk sitting on a shelf.

They're looking for ways, though . . .

Scammers steal $4 million in crypto during face-to-face meeting

Whereas, in real life . . .

You want proof of funds ? I can provide you with a printout of my bank account balance.

I can even give you my IBAN number, for all the good it will do you.

If that is not enough, I can point you to my bank, where you can phone and ask questions yourself. But you won't be getting a cent either before, during or after the meeting. Not unless I actually transfer money to you, and why would I do that ?

Only in the funny-money universe can you feel obliged to actually give someone you don't know your own money just to prove that you have it.

Cedars-Sinai hospital's website shares patient info with Meta, lawsuit claims

"Facebook parent could then offer that data to other advertising clients"

You mean : Facebook parent will then offer that data to other advertising clients.

FTFY

Bank of England won't call it Britcoin but says digital pound 'likely to be needed in future'

Re: But why is this necessary?

Good question.

Since COVID I have touched physical money maybe three times. Everything else has been done via VISA or bank transfer.

The digital Euro already exists, so does the digital pound. There is no need to pontificate about a new currency, just create a plastic card with proper security and contactless tech, call it a wallet and let everyone put their money on it like cash at the distributor.

Maybe limit it to €200 max, to avoid the bigger issues.

Get terminals in the hands of stores everywhere, or allow the existing card terminals to deal with the wallet, and you're done.

Yes, "they" will be able to see that I shop at a given supermarket, but "they" won't know what I've bought. The shopping list is not sent to the VISA card handler, only the amount paid.

Which is basically no different from "they" being able to see that I connected to The Register, or that my smartphone is connected to a given cell.

We live connected lives and we have only ourselves to blame for that. Stop referring to some shadowy "they" as an excuse for protecting your privacy. Give some real problems.