Posts by Pascal Monett

Two signs in the comms cabinet said 'Do not unplug'. Guess what happened

If it's a switch, I'm sure an electrician could just connect the wires behind and leave the switch as bait for the clueless.

US commerce bosses view EU rules as threat to its clouds

"ensure that non-EU suppliers cannot access the EU market on an equal footing"

No, they are designed to ensure that EU data stays in the EU.

If you don't like it, tough. That's the way the ball is rolling now and you're not going to stop it.

130,000 UK businesses sue Google over £13.6B in lost ad revenues

Re: Google gets absolutely nothing from us for this

That's like saying the local drug kingpin gets nothing from you because you send all your customers to him directly.

He's still getting money from you, it's just you're not the one paying.

FTX's crypto villain Sam Bankman-Fried admits 'I made a lot of mistakes'

Re: Another difference between these amateurs and pros

Agreed.

When I saw the interview, the only thing I could think of is : this is a kid. He's got zero banking experience, zero CEO experience and the only reason he got the job is because venture capitalists are stupid and willing to give hundreds of millions to someone that just spouts the right bullshit.

If there is one thing that this crypto madness is demonstrating repeatedly, it's that you don't hand the responsability of money to someone who doesn't have more than a decade of experience handling money in a regulated environment.

There's a reason why the bank teller doesn't become head of branch in six months.

Elon Musk picks fight with Apple for slashing advertising spend on Twitter

Re: so he's gone off the rails

He's never been on the rails . . .

Iterable co-founder claims he was ousted because of racial discrimination, not LSD use

So, um, let me just clear one thing out

Taking drugs when you're the CEO of a California startup is supposed to be fine, but if you find any of your employees doing that, they're getting the boot.

Is that how it works ?

Because I don't think that's how it should work.

JAXA: Research simulating life onboard ISS contained fabrications

Not a problem

They can just make a game out of it. Sim ISS might be a good name.

Or maybe ISS Tycoon.

International cops arrest hundreds of fraudsters, money launderers and cocaine kingpins

Depends on the bank you work with.

For my professional needs I have a bank in Luxembourg, the BCEE. The BCEE never sends me mail, I have a mail icon on my screen when I connect to my account via their secure website (secured by the traditional login name + password and a one time token) if a message is waiting for me.

To make any important change to my account, I have to physically present myself in one of the many branches, justify my identity and then ask for what I need.

I very much doubt that any criminal is going to be able to modify anything remotely.

Of course, if you live in the USA, things are very much different.

China: Face-to-face meetings are best when swapping space station crews

"a veteran of China's second ever crewed mission"

Excuse me, but a veteran is someone who is supposed to have significant experience in a particular domain or activity. Doing something once does not give you significant experience.

Fei Junlong was part of the second Chinese crewed mission, no problem there, but that does not make him a veteran.

If he is part of the next three crewed missions after this one, then he will have five missions under his belt and, like a WWII ace, will then likely deserve the term veteran.

But not before.

Judge tells Amazon: Stop retaliating against employees

It's nice to know that megacorps still don't own the Justice Dept in the US

However, if ordering Amazon to play nice is a Good Thing^TM, making that order come with a billion dollar fine would likely ensure more immediate compliance in my opinion.

Fines need to be redefined when a company makes more than a billion dollars a year. Even a $200,000 fine won't make them bat an eyelid. Fines need to be defined as X days of operational income (not benefits, sales income).

That will make these financial behemoths sit up and take notice.

Re: But it's Christmas

Link or it never happened.

Block Fi seeks bankruptcy protection as 'shocking' FTX contagion spreads

And another one bites the dust . . .

It seems to me that this ginormous Ponzi scheme that is the crypto market shudders violently as soon as something contrary to utopia happens.

Crypto is based on fairy dust and all those exchanges are super professional and reliable, right up until they aren't. Then, like dominos toppling over, other super-professional exchanges suddenly have massive difficulties.

Funny, when Lehman Brothers bit the bullet I don't remember hearing about how Goldman Sachs suddenly froze customer access to their bank accounts.

Ah, the magical world of crypto, where everything is well until suddenly you've lost everything.

But by all means, keep sticking it to The Man !

Windows Server domain controllers may stop, restart after recent updates

Go Borkzilla !

"Updates to Windows Server [..] might cause some domain controllers to stop working"

Because yeah, that's absolutely the outcome you're counting on after having applied an update.

Tell me, Nadella, are you secretly working for Red Hat or what ?

Musk: Twitter will have 1 billion monthly users inside 18 months

Re: The problem with bad journalism

Wrong.

It could either be that the user was not logged in, or it could be that the user was logged in but chose to post anonymously.

Man wins court case against employer that fired him for not liking boozy, forced 'fun' culture

Re: "Fun & pro, that's our motto!"

Not to mention that their website figures the words Six Sigma multiple times - one basic entry in my Bullshit Bingo card.

Then there's the fact that they apparently have a rating for managers lifted directly from Judo : yellow belt, green belt, etc. First time I've heard of such a notion, but they'll happily explain it to you (for a fee, undoubtedly, even if it's just your phone number).

Meta scores $200k default win against alleged peddler of Instagram Likes

Oooh, the outrage of the guilty

"These blatant actions reflect the true nature of Western services and their attitude towards their users."

More like :

"These legal actions reflect the true nature of Western services and their attitude towards their abusers."

I'm the last person to support anything Zuck, but criminal scum are criminal scum and I have even less sympathy for them.

US bans Chinese telecoms imports – won't even consider authorizing them

Re: they can say "NO" and possibly win on the issue

I take it you've never heard of National Security letters ?

Read up.

How not to test a new system: push a button and wait to see what happens

How to make an IBM engineer hyperventilate ?

Easy : ask him how many years he's got until retirement.

Epson zaps lasers into oblivion, in the name of the environment

Oh sure, inkjets are "green". Pull the other one, it has bells on it.

From my personal experience :

I've bought Epson inkjet printers. About every two years when I was still using inkjet. Heads clogging, ink drying, etc, as has been said above, I've wasted God knows how much ink on so-called "cleaning" procedures.

Inkjets may be fine, but only at the condition that you are printing many pages every day. If you are printing a dozen pages a month, you're up shit creek without a paddle.

I bought a Samsung laser printer in 2010. It's still working fine, even when I only print a page a month.

Inkjets are green my ass.

Doctors call for greater scrutiny of bidders for platform that pools UK's health info

It's that simple

"it would be for NHS England to come up with a process that commands the trust of the public and the professional alike"

Given the history of shambolic failures of NHS IT, I doubt any process would be sufficient to command the professional's trust, much less the public.

I don't live in England, but as soon as I hear the word Palantir outside of the Lord Of The Rings context, my brain is screaming "run !!" inside my head.

Guess the most common password. Hint: We just told you

So there's a new malware framework out there

Good to know, obviously, but since the bigger problem is all the clueless idiots who will click an attachment without hesitation, I don't see that a new malware framework is a particular cause for alarm.

You could send them I Love You again and it would work just as well.

ESA names first Parastronaut: paralympian and aspiring surgeon John McFall

"a former Paralympic sprinter with a bronze medial to his name"

Meaning that this guy, with one less leg than I have, can run faster and farther than I ever could or ever will.

Hats off.

EU still getting its act together on European Chips Act funding

"still getting its act together on [..] funding"

I take that to mean they still haven't agreed on whose pockets to line.

Massive energy storage system goes online in UK

Re: Real numbers

So you're assuming that none of them have a fireplace where they can burn wood to heat the house instead of electricity ?

Out of 300,000 homes I'd suppose that there is a portion of them that have one. That would lower their electricity consumption for heating drastically.

China declares victory over teenage video game addiction

Well I'll be damned, it wasn't a meme after all.

Too soon? Amazon commissions FTX mini-series

Re: Easier to write the scripts

Well at least somebody is going to make some money out of this.

UK competition watchdog investigates Apple and Google 'stranglehold' over the mobile market

Re: "Its study found"?

Agreed.

If Borkzilla hadn't completely fouled up, there might have been a third party but, guess what ? It's expensive to be part of that club.

Huawei is still going strong in China. I wonder if the UK competition watchdog has any complaint about how Apple and Google have barely any say over there.

HP Inc to lay off up to 6,000 staff, cut costs by $1.4 billion

"it will lay off between 4,000 and 6,000 staff"

And it will do so before XMas, to make sure that everyone ends the year on a high note.

Well done, board !

I'm sure you will feel entirely entitled to this year's massive bonus.

JWST snaps first chemical profile of an exoplanet atmosphere

Eat another half of a pie. It might help.

Windows Subsystem for Linux now packaged as a Microsoft Store app

They're not pushing enough to the Store.

I would like Windows Update to only make security updates.

The rest of their bullshit I don't need, and would prefer it to be housed in the Store so as to not pollute my PC with stuff I don't want, don't need and couldn't care less for. Eh, Cortana ?

'Pig butchering' romance scam domains seized and slaughtered by the Feds

5 people lost $10 million ?

That's an average of $2 million per person.

A far cry from the excuse that poor people invest in crypto because they can't get a loan to invest in housing.

Also, you're on a dating platform and, instead of angling to get invited for dinner, the person you're talking to starts mentioning money and investments ?

And you fork over the cash without even meeting in person ?

Damn, stupid is always managing to set the bar lower.

DraftKings gamblers lose $300,000 to credential stuffing attack

"only about 15 percent of people use strong and unique passwords"

So that means that 85% of Internet users are ruining the experience for everyone else.

Well I'm sorry, but I'm part of the 15% and I'll be damned before I allow any website to have my biometric data for security.

Not until they either 1) prove that they cannot be hacked (yeah, right), or 2) tell me how I can change my fingerprints.

Intel reveals pay-to-play Xeon features with software-defined silicon

Re: Nothing new here

Mainframes and servers are very different beasts.

Mainframes have always been tailored to customer needs, and they have always been very expensive. That is why servers took off in the first place - you could have a server for a pittance (compared to a mainframe) and their power, reliability and feature set has never stopped growing.

Now, Intel is trying to shoehorn a subscription model to its line of servers.

Good luck with that.

FAA asks for vendor feedback on $10b tech contract

I don't get it

So, only off-the-shelf software and no additional development ?

I guess that means that Air Traffic Control software is shrinkwrapped now, and that accounting software is installed pre-configured to your needs. That's nice.

So, all you really need to do is get Office 365 licensed across all your PCs and you're good to go, right ?

Bollocks.

There isn't a company in the world that use Salesforce out of the box (let's not even think about SAP). There is no company using Excel that doesn't have at least half of its business-critical data lying around in Excel files of various complexity. All those files are regularly touched up to respond to changing business decisions - touched up by people who most likely have no training and learned on the spot how to use Excel formulas. If you're using a mainframe, you are developing/maintaining software every day.

Proposing a contract for software with zero development included just means that you're going to have to propose another contract for development, or beg the supplier to "help" you configure and tailor whatever software you bought to your needs.

And that'll likely cost more than if it came along with the procurement contract.

Software company wins $154k for US Navy's licensing breach

"Bitmanagement [..] disabled the copy protection software on BS Contact Geo"

And that was the beginning of the problem.

You bought X number of installs ? You get X number of licenses.

You want to install more ? Buy more licenses.

As much as I would love to rip on the US Navy on this occasion, it's more of a global administrative issue. Administration is very picky about what the peons that it controls do, very much less on what happens inside its own walls.

So don't go and give them any slack. They get what they pay for and no more.

Watchdog warns UK health data platform could damage patients' trust

Be on the safe side : go ahead and protest pre-emptively.

Besides, if it ain't happening now, it'll happen later.

Those board positions don't fill themselves, you know.

Locked out of Horizon Europe, UK commits half a billion to post-Brexit research

"the UK remains open to association"

Oh, isn't that nice.

Unfortunately, it's the UK that pushed for a rule that excludes non-EU members from getting EU funding. So yeah, go ahead and blame the EU for not wanting to "cooperate". The EU is just using the rules it has, rules that the UK is more than partially responsible for.

And, since you're no longer part of the EU, you can't go and have the rule changed.

But you've taken back control, so all is well, right ?

Microsoft's attempts to harden Kerberos authentication broke it on Windows Servers

Another brilliant demonstration of Borkzilla testing procedures

Oh, and "engineers were trying to resolve the problem".

How nice of them to worry after the fact.

Re: Word to the wise

Yeah, it would be nice, but don't count on it.

France says non to Office 365 and Google Workspace in school

Re: You can't sell for less than cost in France

Yeah, at least that's the theory.

IIRC, OVH customers who had paid for redundant hosting in different locations had no issues.µ

It's only the small fry who thought they didn't need it who caught flat-footed when the fire broke out.

Serendipitous discovery nets security researcher $70k bounty

Booz Allen

Booz.

Aptly named. Apparently, they have a rather drunken approach to operational data security.

Are those the same clowns who employed some guy who's Office version was hacked and not registered ?

Here's an idea, Booz : stop putting all your data into easily-accessible Excel files and use a real database with proper access controls.

Oh, sorry, silly me, that would mean work.

US Supreme Court asked if cops can plant spy cams around homes

Just one question

The ACLU wants a warrant to be served for installing police cameras on utility poles.

My question : to who do they serve the warrant ?

When the police have a warrant to investigate a house or an appartment, they serve it to the occupant of said habitation. That's normal.

So, who gets to see that warrant when it's a utility pole ? The mayor ? The inhabitants 100 meters around the utility pole ?

Former Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes sentenced to 11 years in prison

"His sentencing is scheduled for December 7, 2022"

So, they'll both be behind bars for XMas.

Boo hoo.

iFixit stabs batteries – for science – so you don't have to

Interesting video

Now, can we get back to the Good Ol' Days ^TM where you could replace the battery in your "smart"phone ?

Boffins are studying Martian clouds to avoid another Opportunity episode

Re: Please correct the glaring inaccuracy

The ISS not even out of Earth's atmosphere, and what we are sending to the Moon is our fault (and it likely wouldn't survive on the lunar surface anyway).

Every bit of life we know of depends on Earth. That is fact.

Which is why it is scientifically a monumental thing if ever we discover even the smallest of bacteria somewhere else - anywhere else.

World's richest man posts memes as $44b Twitter acquisition veers off course

By my calculation, it just has.

Multi-tasker Musk expects to reduce time at Twitter, seek another leader

"a CEO will be hired"

Good luck finding someone stupid enough to take the fall for you.

Windows 10 – a 7-year-old OS – is still having problems with the desktop and taskbar

"The latest fix comes after a number of other problems were resolved this week"

Ah, Borkzilla.

Seven years into The Last Windows Ever and not only is it not the last, but you have four different versions of it running on customer PCs and they all have endless bugs to correct.

One might wonder if the Development department is not introducing new bugs just for job security.

Re: Maybe it's time for M$ to shitcan half its workforce as per the current trend?

Shhh.

You don't want to tempt the beast into saying "hold my beer".