Posts by Pascal Monett

Google stops enforcing Play store payment rules in India

Thank you India

Now all we need is for every other country to fine Google for $250 million and we might get the PlayStore fees under control.

Ritz cracker giant settles bust-up with insurer over $100m+ NotPetya cleanup

"a stolen and publicly leaked NSA exploit"

Thank you, NSA, for your contribution to criminal organizations everywhere.

Putin must be laughing his ass off.

Meanwhile, instead of suing Zurich, Mondelez should sue Washington DC.

And, while I'm at it, there should be a law stating that a company that holds more than one brand should have its name on the packaging of every product it sells.

That way, people will know who it is they're buying from.

Two Scotts among volunteers helping NASA to track Artemis mission

Re: waste of money

Oh that stupid argument again.

I'm tired of posting links to the contrary. Go and educate yourself if you have the brains.

After spate of delays, Intel promises Sapphire Rapids Xeons for early 2023

"the delay would narrow Intel's 'leadership window' "

Intel has no more leadership window.

PR bullcrap is all very nice in announcements to the public and to investors, but the fact is that AMD, the once-eternal underdog, has taken first place in the technology race.

Intel is now running behind.

It's nice to see a change at the top.

Kioxia warns of potential cost of US chip policy over China

Re: an over centralized power in Xi surrounded by weak "Yes" men

I'm guessing you could replace Xi by Putin and that sentence would pretty much apply as well.

UK facing electricity supply woes after nuclear power stations shut, MPs told

I don't find that amusing at all.

The Greenies in Germany have been very vocal about nuclear for the past fourty years, talking about pollution and keeping our planet clean, and now they don't even squeak when new coal plants are being built ?

Fucking hypocrites.

Thorium reactors can use "used" nuclear reactor fuel in addition to Thorium, and they produce comparatively little waste which lasts vastly less long.

On top of that, they do not need active surveillance because, if the reaction gets too hot, the salt plug melts and all the reactive material just drops into retaining pans. The reaction stops automatically.

All you need to do after that is wait for the existing matter to cool down, put in a new plug, scoop it all up and start over (of course, I am aware that this is a largely oversimplified version of reality, but I'm not a nuclear scientist, nor even an engineer).

The thing is, nobody wants to do Thorium reactors because everyone wants to get the Plutonium that EPR reactors make, to make more bombs.

We have more than enough bombs.

Let's get back to making civilization function.

Can gamers teach us anything about datacenter cooling? Lenovo seems to think so

"you'd run out of power before your rack is half full"

Okay, for me that begs the question : how many 1U units can a rack hold ?

Because if 2KW units are put in a 42KW rack, it should hold at least 21 of them.

But if 21 units is less than half the rack's capacity, that would mean that a rack can hold in excess of 42 units.

Did I get that right ? How tall are those racks anyway ?

Spooky Pillars of Creation snap reveals a dark side

Agreed. That first image makes me think of two monsters with giant mouths and tiny arms lunging at their prey somewhere off-focus.

Google kills forthcoming JPEG XL image format in Chromium

Yeah but, Chrome is for market dominance.

Google will never let that go.

Re: This is bad.

This cjxl tool, is it recent ?

Don't use GitHub, don't know how to check and the various version posts don't have a posted date.

Because, if cjxl is recent, or at least more recent than unicode, then it is a bloody shame they can't handle it.

NASA details totally doable, not science fiction plan for sending Mars rocks to Earth

Here's hoping that it will work out

The difficulties in landing anything on Mars is demonstrably non-negligeable - and that is just for stuff that was never meant to take off and come back.

This time, they want to send a robot that not only has to land intact, but must also rejoin the rover, extract the sample tubes, store them safely, and then take off and come back to Earth.

And all of that, practically on its own.

The difficulty of this mission is exponentially higher. If the engineers manage to pull this off, that will be one hell of a feather in their cap.

Russia says Starlink satellites could become military targets

Re: Russia is bluffing

He's already been very publicly humiliated by Ukraine, which didn't just roll over when Russian troops came to invade. What a surprise.

70 years of NATO doctrine stated that the Russian army was a formidable adversary. Six months of Ukraine says they're incapable of anything but retreating and waiting for General Winter.

It would seem that Putin has let the Russian army languish in 1970. He doesn't have the means to meaningfully harm any satellite constellation, either militarily or financially.

But let's cut to the chase : space will become a battlefield, because there are just too many selfish pricks in positions of power that cannot resist doing that.

For its big comeback, Intel needs to spend money – and it's making less and less of it

Re: Investment

Totally agree.

How can you not be happy that the CEO has a solid plan to get back to profits ?

Yes, it will take some time and your revenues will decline, but do you prefer that the company just fold right away ?

Investors. Worse than beancounters.

Gelsinger takes ax to Intel after chip sales slump, profit nosedives

CEO Pat Gelsinger

Was that a picture of him on stage ?

Is there an unwritten rule that says that now, all CEOs on stage must dress like their teenage son ?

Why isn't he wearing a suit ?

He's the CEO of a company that brought in $79 billion in 2021.

Steve Jobs is dead. Wear a suit.

Origins of mysterious marsquake settled: It was a meteoroid what done it

Impeccable timing

So Mars has protected Earth from at least one asteroid impact, and Bruce Willis can rest easy for a while longer.

Now, I'm guessing that an asteroid that's only 0.54 brontosauri wide is kind of difficult to detect beyond the orbit of Mars, but doesn't this mean that, when Musk will be living on Mars, he's going to need to have some form of asteroid alert system ?

And now I've just realized : on Mars you'll never see a shooting star.

Apple exec confirms iPhones will switch to USB-C because 'we have no choice'

"the company will follow the [EU]'s requirement for mobile devices to use USB-C by 2024"

Of course they will.

If they want to continue making money in the EU.

Sometimes, corporate behemoths don't have the last word.

I like that.

IBM India tells employees they can moonlight – but only for good causes, with permission

"cheating – plain and simple."

Maybe if you paid your employees a proper salary they wouldn't need to go find another job.

So who's cheating ?

It's 2023, let's check in with the metaverse... Nope, still doesn't exist

"using NFTs to enable access to exclusive customer experiences and perks"

Well that's me absolutely not interested.

Purpleurchin cryptocurrency miners spotted scouring free GitHub, Heroku accounts

Seems like a lot of thought went into something that doesn't have a great return.

It's a shame that some people employ so much intelligence to do such selfish things.

Google's Alphabet to review every project after $6bn decline in profits

Oh, shareholders are demanding results

I am absolutely devastated for them. Those poor billionnairs who are being deprived of 0.1% of the revenue they might have expected.

Please tell me where to send my wreath.

Twitter's most valuable users are ghosting the platform

"the world's richest man"

Why does he need to borrow money ?

2023: The year SK Hynix expects profit-whacking dip to end, and 238 layer RAM to debut

"Our plan is to mass produce 238 layer by 2023."

238 layers ?

I'm missing something. There can't be 238 layers. It must be some technical 2-3-8 or something like that.

Finance watchdog warns of long-term risk Big Tech poses to competition

"understanding the impact of Big Tech on industry competition"

Oh, great.

It's only been 30 years or so, nice to see that Administrative Time is waking up.

Government IT provider UKCloud goes into liquidation

Re: I don't get it

Local providers can guarantee that your data stays local.

Amazon & co may say so, but you only have their word for it and, personally, their word isn't really enough.

UK.gov finds billions in cash for big data contracts

"We will ensure that data can be leveraged"

How reassuring.

Everyone and their dog wants to "leverage" my data.

Let's just say that I hope they didn't forget about data security.

I'm sure we'll find out soon enough.

India's – and Infosys's – favorite son-in-law Rishi Sunak is next UK PM

Re: Cahuzac ? Only 60 grand ?

Now that is shameful.

He should have at least been hoarding 600 grand.

Philips axes thousands amid financial loss

Only 4% ?

Hey Roy, why not go all-out and sack 40% ?

You'll be hailed as a visionary and the "other stakeholders" (ie shareholders) will be overjoyed by the drop in costs.

Oh, there's just the little problem of sustaining sales but, if you keep the marketing department, that shouldn't be a problem, right ?

Chinese carriers collectively claim to have cracked a billion 5G subs

1.4 billion people

Of course China is going to get astounding figures, given that it is a dictatorship that pushes things and that 5G is rather handy.

I have a Samsung S22, that is 5G-capable. When I'm in Luxembourg center, I'm also connected in 5G. There's just not a billion of us to do so.

Shareholders slam Zuckerberg's 'terrifying' $100b+ Metaverse experiment

"a 0.1 percent stake"

And that is exactly how much your opinion is worth to El Zuck.

Firefox points the way to eradicating one of the rudest words online: PDF

I disagree

"The days when users have to know there's even such a thing as a file format, let alone how to handle one, should be long gone"

It is exactly the ignorance of the file format that allows miscreants to trap the clueless into clicking on attachments.

You cannot drive without a driver's license.

You shouldn't be able to use a computer without a computer license.

Know what you're doing.

To build a better quantum computer, look into a black hole, says professor Brian Cox

"a black hole does it"

A black hole does one thing : it swallows everything that passes by.

This idiot apparently thinks that black holes share things. They don't. They swallow.

Hawking radiation is not sharing information.

Microsoft's Chinese website reveals free PC Manager utility

It's exhausting

Microsoft, you build an Operating System.

The goal of an OS is to launch the programs the user wants to use.

You have no business telling the user what he should use.

Fuck off and do your job already.

Most Metaverse business projects will be dead by 2025

Gartner

"Gartner reckons that by 2026, a quarter of the world will spend at least one hour a day in the metaverse shopping, working, socializing or learning"

Well I'd say that's the nail in the coffin then.

NASA picks its UFO-hunting – sorry – unidentified aerial phenomena-hunting team

Absolutely agree.

In the 80s, when one person in a million had a camera and was able to take a shot, the UFO phenomenon was enormous.

Now that 99% of the population has the ability to take a pic whenever they feel like it, suddenly UFO pics are no longer a thing.

Wierd, isn't it ?

Could you not? BlackByte ransomware slinger twists the knife with data stealer

"The tool then grabs document files on the compromised system"

Okay, I just have a question : this tool grabs documents in the default Windows Documents folder of the user, right ?

So, if I were to actually store my documents elsewhere, what would it actually get ?

Boffins shatter data transmission speed record

100Pbps ?

Okay, if 1.8Pbps is more than all Internet traffic today, and knowing that the natural effect of having more of something is that you use it up, what is an Internet with 100Pbps goint to look like ?

Are we going to have petabytes of cat videos in VR ?

New measurement alert: Liz Truss inspires new Register standard

Ouch.

Although I have to say, I find it a bit unfair to mix the Queen in with that bag of nuts.

To make this computer work, users had to press a button. Why didn't it work? Guess

Re: If I have to look in the manual (absolute last resort of course) it's a really bad design!

I would go get a simpler alarm clock.

That one sounds way too complicated for the intended purpose.

Oops, web trackers may have leaked 3 million patients' info

Re: Google is all seeing

That's why I like NoScript.

Mine's the one with the browser that keeps my habits private.

Hardware makers criticized for eco double standards

"environmental sustainability"

That's a nice idea, but in a civilization that creates almost everything to not be repairable (looking at you, Apple), it's going to be a bit difficult to achieve.

Yes, in a car you can replace almost everything, but cars cost a lot of money and people will very quickly get very mad if they're told that thay have to buy a new one because the left axle broke down.

Anything with a circuit board ? Forget it. If it breaks, you buy a new one. The industry doesn't encourage ripping it open, testing what's broken and replacing it. Apparently, it's not "customer-friendly".

So you're going to need a nice, big salmon to slap the CEOs of those companies who sell stuff that basically can't be repaired, and use that salmon until they get a clue.

SolarWinds and Dynatrace directors resign over antitrust concerns

Section 8 of the Clayton Act

Why does there need to be a law on this ?

Simple decency says that you do not serve on the board of two competing companies.

If you are on the board of two companies and they enter into competition, the you resign from one of them.

Ah, yes, silly me : decency. That rarely exists at the Board level.

AI programming assistants mean rethinking computer science education

"Programming Is Hard – Or at Least It Used to Be"

Programming is still hard. I see that every time I explain basic Excel functions to a new class. There's always at least one member of the audience whose eyes glaze over.

Low code ? You still need to know the result you want to obtain, and that's where many people fail to achieve the desired result.

I'm not saying that you need to be more intelligent to program. I'm saying that, to program, you need a certain mindset and, if you don't have it, you're going to have a lot of trouble trying.

It's like mathematics. I've never been good at maths. I cannot count the number of times when I told people that I am a programmer and they answered "well you're good at math then". No, I'm not. A programmer doesn't use math, a programmer uses logic.

There may be logic in mathematics, but I've never been able to understand it beyond basic calculus.

This low-code, AI-assisted stuff ? It's just going to create another nightmare like Access databases and Excel spreadsheet infestations.

NASA AI shows slashing sulfur in shipping fuel cut air pollution at sea

Bunker fuel

One ship can emit as much pollution in a day as 100K cars.

I think this needs to be looked into.

How GitHub Copilot could steer Microsoft into a copyright storm

Just one question

Why would you publish copyrighted source code on a platform you do not control ?

Github is, AFAIK, open source. If your code is copyrighted, why is it available there ?

Upstart Ransom Cartel linked to REvil veterans

Re: API hashing ?

Now that is an interesting link. It's going to take me some time to wrap my head around that.

Thank you.

API hashing ?

How on Earth does that work ?

I get code obfuscation, I get memory management, I get encryption, but how do you hash an API call in a way that allows you to get a useful answer ?

I've used APIs before. If you don't send exactly the properly formatted call, you get an error in return.

So ?

Global smartphone sales come tumbling down as reality bites

About frakking time

Nobody needs to change their phone every year, and no phone is exponentially better than last year's version.

Eventually, I can accept changing every five years. Eventually.

I had to buy a new smartphone in 2012, because job change. It was a Samsung A3.

This year, all of a sudden it could no longer connect to my professional Gmail account, so I had to go and get a Samsung S22 (because no, I am not an Apple addict).

So, 2012 - 2022. That is a proper duration for a smartphone.

CEO told to die in a car crash after firing engineers who had two full-time jobs

"an inability to determine productivity"

And that's the crux of the issue.

Managers today have to deal with the consequences of COVID, whic is mainly that their staff is no longer always there to be counted and under surveillance.

Maybe the pandemic willl have a good consequence, as in managers will start to pay attention to results, not just attendance.

But of course, that would mean that managers would actually become intelligent.

In what universe is that going to happen ?

UK government in talks with datacenter operators over blackouts

Re: Odd if this isn't the case any more

Not really.

Beancounters have been on the rise for the past twenty years.

Why do you think there's a component shortage ? Because Just-In-Time delivery, which removed stock (which costs money), and beancounters are notoriously adverse to spending money.

Well they're going to be real happy now.