Posts by Pascal Monett

Microsoft makes a game of Team building, with benefits

"foster close and collaborative relationships"

Include Quake III Arena.

That'll get the adrenalin flowing, sharpen the reflexes and provide a good laugh for everyone involved.

Minesweeper ? Pah !

Security firms hijack New York trees to monitor private workforce

Well duh

"Amazon's worker surveillance disproportionately targets low-paid workers and people of color"

Not hard to understand how that works. Where do the low-paid worker work ? On the warehouse floor, gathering items for Internet orders*.

Where do the better-paid workers work ? In management, watching screens all day and pressuring low-paid workers for not moving fast enough and having to pee.

You're not going to put surveillance on management, now are you ?

* and talking about people of color is a cheap shot. I'm sure the lowly white guy on the warehouse floor is under just as much surveillance as his afro-american colleague.

Notorious Emotet botnet returns after a few months off

Once again, it's all down to an attachment

When people will finally learn to not click on attachments from somebody they don't know, virus infections will go down by 95% at least.

And when people start paying attention to politics, we will get competent people at the top.

Okay, it's time for my dried frog pills. Nurse !

Nvidia's datacenter growth can't save it from gaming GPU woes

Re: Ooooh, falling sales... ye wee poor sods!

It's called capitalism. You sell stuff for the highest price the market will bear.

And, as far as GPUs are concerned, there are a lot of right crazy people out there.

Iranian cyberspies exploited Log4j to break into a US govt network

Re: What goes around comes around

Yeah but we're the good guys.

Australian exchange pauses project to move stocks to blockchain

"Blockchain itself has not failed at the project"

No, of course not.

No one is authorized to criticize blockchain, the new darling of tech.

It's the implementation that screwed things up, obviously. Blockchain is flawless.

Except that it slows down transactions, can't manage concurrent access, needs to have endless workarounds implemented, etc, etc. In short, if they do insist on making it work, the code will be such a festering pile of crap that nobody will want to touch it with a bargepole.

$171 million blown on this failure, and a lot more work to come. I think it's time to bury this turkey.

NASA's Artemis mission finally launches after faulty Ethernet switch delayed countdown

. . . and not beholden to US lawyers.

Worried about your datacenter carbon footprint? Why not put it in orbit?

A daft idea

There is no atmosphere in space, so no aircooling is feasible. The only way to get rid of heat is by radiating it away.

Out of date after 5 years ? That's the lucky scenario. It's much more feasible that there will be a heat meltdown before that.

Swiss bankers warn: Three quarters of retail Bitcoin investors are in the red

Re: still has a chance of returning some sort of result

But it is returning a result.

A negative one.

Investor tells Google: Cut costs now and stop paying staff so much

"not labor intensive"

If that is your criteria then you should invest in farms.

This bollocks was certainly written by a highly-paid administrative busybody that has never had an idea or solved a problem in his life.

You want Google to be run like Amazon ? Go invest in Amazon.

tsoHost pulls plug on Gridhost service with just 45 days' notice

Re: "tsoHost ceased to offer telephone support in July"

There should be a law mandating phone support when you are a hosting company.

In any case, I would never go and have my website hosted by a company with such a shoddy record.

Microsoft warns Direct Access on Windows 10 and 11 could be anything but

Direct Access

Why is it that Borkzilla continuously strives to ensure that malware will have the best possible access to its platform ?

What's wrong with VMs ? They help ensure that any malware on the user side will not be able to attain the corporate side. It may not be perfect, but IMHO it's a hell of lot better than just plugging a user PC directly into the corporate network.

NASA's cubesat makes it to the Moon to test orbit for human visitors

"a 60-kilowatt solar electric propulsion spacecraft"

Does that mean that the craft is using one or more ion drives ?

Is the the beginning of the TIE fighter ?

Russia-based Pushwoosh tricks US Army and others into running its code – for a while

"I would never hide this"

But you did hide this.

So, what does that make you ?

A liar.

I don't do business with liars. It's hard enough with honest people.

Google agrees to $400m settlement in privacy lawsuit

It's paying almost $400 million

Why should it do so if it didn't do anything wrong ?

Google admits no wrongdoing ? Fine. Take the CEO, put him in the middle of town square and flog him until he admits wrongdoing.

I'm sick of this bullshit.

Amazon reportedly considers laying off 10k employees

Yeah but, improving costs money.

Laying people off is just a tweet.

Of course, you spend the next month trying to get actual, competent people back again, which is work, but Musk is not doing that work.

He's just poking more holes in the hull of the Twittanic.

Apple sued for collecting user data despite opt-outs

"if they opt not to share data or allow apps to request it"

I note that there is an option to not share, there is no option to not collect.

FTX collapse prompts other cryptocurrency firms to suspend withdrawals

"It’s hard to see SBF in a clear light"

Not really, no.

He's a con man, and he's now on the run.

University staff voice 'urgent, profound concern' as Oracle finance system delays payments

"we will continue to keep them informed with progress"

2022/11/15 : We are still having issues

2023/02/03 : Still not working

2023/08/10 : The database appears to be stable when there is no data in it

2024/05/13 : We just might get this working by September

2024/09/09 : Ah, I guess not after all

2024/12/13 : We'll keep you posted next year. Merry XMas everyone !

Twitter is suffering from mad bro disease. Open thinking can build it back better

You want the State to manage social media platforms ? Are you insane ?

The Republicans are actively trying everything they can to ensure that people of color won't be able to vote in 2024.

You want them to be in charge of managing social media ?

That's a fast track to ensure that anyone discussing voting rights will be banned - among other things.

Corporate social media is bad enough. Government social media is a true nightmare.

Think about Indonesia, Pakistan, Iran. Do you really think the State can run social media objectively in those countries when it hardly has a chance in the USA ?

If only that were true.

There is a large swath or US Republicans who still believe that Biden stole the election.

That fact that over 200 legal challenges from Repulicans were all lost is no matter to them.

Let's face it : the Republicans are no longer a political party, they're a religion.

Australia to 'stand up and punch back' against cyber crims

That's not how the law works.

Someone trashing your car does not give you the right to trash their car.

Alibaba hides 11.11 shopping festival sales figures for the first time

Is that far enough ?

"TY15 will be located one kilometer from the TY6/TY7/TY8 IBX datacenters and approximately 1.5 kilometers from the TY2 IBX datacenter"

We're talking about Japan, hence earthquakes and tsunamis. I thought that the preferred distance between two datacenters was in the ballpark of 10 kilometers, not less than two.

LockBit suspect cuffed after ransomware forces emergency services to use pen and paper

At least they caught one

I hope the guy goes down for several decades.

Twitter, Musk, and a week of bad decisions

"he's not afraid of the FTC"

<yoda>He will be.

He will be</yoda>

Musk tells of risk of Twitter bankruptcy as tweeters trash brands

"We all need to be more hardcore"

You're going to end up being hardcore with 12 employees.

Keep on making stupid decisions, then making stupid demands from whoever is left.

I'm sure your costs are going to go down sharply in the days to come - your payroll is going to go near weightless.

Of course, at that point it's going to be you running around trying to make everything work.

We're just here to cheer you to your doom.

Go ahead, be rude. You don't know it now, but it will cost you $350,000

Failed as a manager

First of all, he failed to notice which customer he was talking to, or didn't care.

Second, as a manager, you do not immediately defend anything. You get the customer's side of the story, then you tell said customer you'll call back. Then you go get the recording of the call and listen to it with the helldrone.

THAT is when you can decide to defend the guy, or, as it should have been in this case, drag him over the grill, then call the customer back and be all sweet and helpful and replace the doggone drive.

He deserved to lose that contract.

Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes's arguments for new trial deemed spurious – just like her tech

There's another choice ?

It's a baby. There's every chance that it can get adopted.

People like babies when they want to adopt a child.

Adopting a teenager is just asking for trouble.

Seems like she'll be right at home - except no longer on the top rung of the ladder.

Musk sows more Twitter chaos, now with Official policy snafu

"Please note that Twitter will do lots of dumb things in coming months"

Well duh, with His Muskness at the helm, we're expecting that.

Look! Up in the sky! Proof of concept for satellites beaming energy to Earth!

Re: Mad dogs and Englishmen

The article clearly states that, standing at the equator, you get blasted by four times that amount of energy.

There doesn't seem to be much economy denial going on there right now.

Re: You also get the problem ....

Nice idea, but I'm guessing that beaming energy from a geostationary orbit would require an order of magnitude in tightening the beam so as to not to have a 200km-wide reception area.

If said satellite is is low Earth orbit, it's likely a lot easier to hit a (relatively) small region on the ground.

But you're right, it is also very much more at risk of getting shredded by space junk.

Windows breaks under upgraded IceXLoader malware

"The emails contain a ZIP file"

Once again, thwarting this attack is just a question of NOT CLICKING ON ATTACHMENTS FROM SOMEONE YOU DON'T KNOW.

How many centuries is it still going to take to get the message through ?

Musk sells $3.95 billion in Tesla shares, paid eleven times more for Twitter

"It no longer publishes monthly data on the number of active users it has"

That, in itself, speaks volumes.

It clearly means that the numbers aren't good and they're being hidden so that people can't see just how bad they are.

This ancient quasar may be the remains of the first-gen star that started us all

"the so-called Population III stars"

Why do they do things backwards here ?

If it's one of the earliest stars, it should be a Population I star and our Sun should be part of the Population III category.

Twitter begs some staff to come back, says they were laid off accidentally

I feel largely close enough to the front row from here, thank you very much.

Europe wants Airbnb and pals to cough up rental property logs

It had to happen

That being said, I wonder exactly how precise those reports are going to be.

Not giving out any specifics, but I rented an RB&B flat once (a few years ago). It was such a nice place that I returned the year after that.

At that point, I had the landlord's phone number. Guess what ? He told me that, instead of going through the website, I could just call him to rent and, if it worked out, he'd give me 10% off (paid in cash because duh).

I'm guessing I'm not the only one who has that kind of agreement that completely bypasses any control.

Oh, look: More malware in the Google Play store

"Well over 50 percent .."

That, to me, says that there's well over 30% that did.

We're not out of the woods yet.

"before adding the malware back in a future update"

So how is it that said developper is not completely banned ?

He cannot say that he didn't do it on purpose.

Catching a falling rocket with a helicopter more complex than it sounds, says Rocket Lab

Then why don't they just stick with Plan B ?

This helicopter nonsense was stupid from the start and is starting to look like just an enormous waste of resources - with additional risk to the helicopter crew.

Boeing's Starliner launch pushed back again... to April 2023

"visiting spacecraft traffic at the space station"

Yeah, because there are so many spacecraft visiting the station these days . . .

US chip industry worried it may lose out to rivals over China ban

"some US companies are alarmed at the amount of revenue they may lose"

Oohh, money is starting to talk.

This is going to get interesting.

Elon Musk reportedly outlines horrible Twitter layoff process

"Twitter Complaint Hotline Operator"

I'm sorry, aren't you supposed to be managing Tesla 40 hours per week already ? Minimum ?

Oh, silly me, that's for the peons (aka everyone but you).

But really, hotline operator ?

Do you really think anyone's going to buy that bullshit ?

Well, at least you might have done one good thing for Twitter : kill it.

Re: Some people go to car races to see the accidents

You don't need to be on Twitter to see it crash.

Multi-factor auth fatigue is real – and it's why you may be in the headlines next

"sometimes the attacker will pose as part of the organization's IT staff"

Like that should work. You're part of my IT ? Then you don't need my access codes.

It's like the time, way back when, when I got a call from "my bank". After a minute of droning on about a security check, the guy asks me for my credit card number.

I said : "What ? Why are you asking me for my credit card number ? You are working in my bank, so you don't need me to tell you."

Then I hung up.

AMD’s latest, greatest Radeon graphics card $600 cheaper than Nvidia’s top RTX 4090

Re: 68 Billion Colours ?

Indeed.

I think we were told, way back when color monitors existed and the first high-end graphics cards were born, that 16.8 million is "True Color".

This is the important bit for those who can't follow the link :

"For a display to fool the eye into seeing full colour, 256 shades of red, green and blue are required; that is 8 bits for each of the three primary colours, hence 24 bits in total. However, some graphics cards actually require 32 bits for each pixel to display true colour, due to the way in which they use the video memory – the extra 8 bits generally being used for an alpha channel (transparencies)."

So now I get it. The graphics card is no longer bothering with just 256 shades + transparency. Instead of using 8 bits per RGB value, it is now using 12 bits for every color.

12 bits gives up to 4095 values, raise that to the third power and you get 68 billion.

I doubt the eye is going to see much difference though.

China reminds world shock and ore can hurt tech supply chains

An interesting game of tug-of-war has started

Thanks to Trump and his stupidity, China has finally woken up to the fact that it has most of the resources everybody else wants.

China didn't really care about the tariffs, it wasn't the one paying them and it had barely an impact since the USA makes nothing and imports everything, so it was just the consumer that got shafted.

Now China is making sure everyone understands that it is holding the cards. Electronics depend on China at this point in time, and even if rare earths are hardly that rare, it'll take years before the rest of the world can ramp up to no longer depend on China.

Years that those fabs being built in states with the least amount of water won't have.

Tablet, Chromebook shipments come crashing down

"We firmly believe"

Well I firmly believe that the guarantee period for something that I buy should start on the day I bought it, and not on the day it left the factory.

We have a fundamental disagreement there, Mr Reith.

SpaceX's Falcon Heavy rocket launches after three-year hiatus with secret US sats

Re: five million pounds of thrust

It's also 2547.24 great white sharks of thrust, if that helps.

Minecraft's 'first luxury goods collection' features real-world $3,000 Burberry coat

"one of the most iconic fashion brands in the world"

Oh, you mean Gucci ?

Because Burberry is rated 18th here.