Posts by Pascal Monett

Search the web at least once every two years or risk losing your Google account

"The web biz has justified the change"

I'm sure it has.

Does nothing to change the fact that, once again, a one-sided promise is being broken without recourse.

I don't care that there may be people who forgot their account. I don't see that it is a problem for Google because if they're not accessing their account, then they're not using bandwidth either.

And don't bother me about the cost of storage, that's nothing these days.

What I care is that there was nothing in the sign-up that said you could lose your data if you didn't do something that didn't exist at the time. Google has no right to go change the initial rules of engagement like that. If there was a proper contract then Google could only beg users to accept new rules.

But this is the Internet. It's the companies that decide and, once again, it's the users that lose data.

Tired of this bullshit . . .

Six million patients' data feared stolen from PharMerica

So, another bonanza

For the lawyers, that is. They're going to make tens of millions.

The people actually impacted ? They'll get a few hundred pennies.

Shameful.

Don't panic. Google offering scary .zip and .mov domains is not the end of the world

If your only excuse to approving something is akin to "there are other people who throw themselves out the window too", then you need to seriously rethink your position.

EU passes world's first regulatory framework for cryptocurrency

This article says that you are right.

But that is the entire point.

I haven't had use of coins or bills since the beginning of COVID. Please explain to me why I would need a so-called digital money scheme when my official money is already digital and works fine.

Of course, I live in Europe, which has an efficient banking system.

Not like some other so-called first-world countries which actually live in the 1800s when it comes to managing money.

Yeah, anonymity with a public blockchain

Just goes to prove that when you're stupid, there's nothing to help you except a kind soul in a whit lab coat holding your hand all the way.

And that's not included in blockchain.

Australia asks Twitter how it will mod content without staff, gets ghosted

Sewer twats

Decidedly, the trainwreck that is Twitter is getting funnier and funnier.

Offshore wind power redesign key to adoption, says Irish firm

It would have been nice to give a link to support your claim.

MariaDB CEO: People who want things free also want to have very nice vacations

"finding the balance between its open source roots and the needs of investors"

There is no balance.

Investors want money. Lenders want their money back.

Open Source does not generate money. As Red Hat has demonstrated, the only money you can make out of Open Source is support.

So, either MariaDB gets revenue out of support, or it dies.

Or the code goes private and a company is created to milk it.

That would be interesting to see. A first, as such.

I doubt it would work. The code would get forked to yet another Open Source license and things would go on, most likely. The investors will be pissed.

NASA freezes ice-hunting cubesat Moon mission for good after thruster fail

"a type of propulsion system that had not previously flown beyond Earth's orbit"

Well, there has to be a first time, and first times are rarely successful.

So try, try again.

Boss fight cleared: Europe approves Microsoft's Activision takeover

This sucks

Borkzilla has an established history of fucking up everything it sinks its teeth into.

Latest example : GitHub.

Now it's going to be Activision, with Blizzard in tow.

I fear the consequences in the (not too) long run. Nothing good will come of this for gamers.

Astronomers say they've seen the largest explosion yet – and we just had to talk to them

Re: it seems that black holes are the only permanent existence in the Universe

Nope, not even. Hawking radiation means they too will fade away and disappear.

Of course, by the time supermassive black holes start winking out of existence, the Universe will be a cold, dark place because all of the stars will be long dead.

And Life anywhere as well, most likely.

But they to will disappear. Nothing is permanent, and we can only wonder what will happen to the Universe in the end of everything.

Autonomy founder Mike Lynch flown to US for HPE fraud trial

"On April 21, the High Court refused Dr Lynch's permission to appeal his extradition"

Of course. It is unthinkable that a US megacorp actually take responsibility for any bad choices.

There must be a scapegoat, and that scapegoat must pay.

Microsoft signs up to buy electricity produced by fusion, perhaps in 2028

Any version of fusion works for me, as long as it works

Good on Helion for trying to get to fusion in a different way.

Who knows ? Maybe theirs is the start down the path to hypermatter reactors . . . and turbolasers, and active shields, and swashbuckling nerf herders sassily saying "I know" to princesses (let's not go too deep there, though).

Activists gatecrash Capita's AGM to protest GPS tracking contract

"Outsourcer asked to take 'principled stance' "

Companies have one principle : making money. It is the Prime Principle (yes, I'm thinking Prime Directive).

And, as soon as start to, they forget every other principle in direct correlation with how much money they make.

Once you get to Board status with more than a billion per month, the Singularity forms and everything is swallowed down to the Prime Principle.

No (known) force in the Universe can stop that.

EU's Cyber Resilience Act contains a poison pill for open source developers

Re: This smells, no, stinks like a ploy..

Not like Washington D.C., right ?

India to send official whassup to WhatsApp after massive spamstorm

No need to wait for the verdict

Any program that is funneling to Facebook should be violating a law, if only the law of decency.

GitHub, Microsoft, OpenAI fail to wriggle out of Copilot copyright lawsuit

"We’ve been committed to innovating responsibly with Copilot from the start"

Yes indeed. Blatantly stealing code from your own repository is quite the innovation.

Google accused of stomping on rivals as it stamps out annoying Calendar spam

"Google should have just left the default"

So we should have all stayed on Windows XP and left protection to the various anti-virus providers and basic user complacency ?

I disagree. Spam is a nuisance and a threat, and any measure to curtail it should be welcomed with open arms.

On top of that, if you make a product that can only succeed based on someone else's product, then you shouldn't complain when new and better security measures make your life more difficult. You modify your product to improve it and integrate the necessary security, demonstrating that you have your users' interests at heart.

Wailing that everything should have remained as it was is only you not willing to evolve. That does not inspire confidence.

Let white-hat hackers stick a probe in those voting machines, say senators

A good step forward, but not enough

As long as the code is not open source, I won't trust it.

RSA encryption is open source and that works fine. It's not because you know how the code works that you can break the system.

So why isn't the foundational process of Democracy not open source ?

Because greedy companies want to make a fortune out of it, and closed source is the direct path to achieving that.

Unfortunately, closed source is also the direct path to shady deals and unknown agreements that might very well undermine Democracy.

That is not acceptable.

VA's Cerner EHR platform fails to deliver medications to veterans

Yeah, but, it's Agile !

Although apparently not enough to actually make a working product.

Once again we hear of a medical project gone wrong. What is it with the mentality these days ? Hours to review a chart ? How many out-of-touch admins and managers have added their "ideas" to the workload of people who have better things to do, all in the name of "improving administration" ?

I do not see that it is the job of point-of-sale personnel to review charts. That's a job for managers. They can put down their coffee and doughnut and get to work.

So much for Pakistan’s plan for digital economy – it’s turned off the internet

"neither necessary nor proportionate, and can never be justified"

Oh but it can be justified, when you are a military junta. It is absolutely necessary when you want to prevent protests from organizing (well, easily at least).

Just like in France, where Macron managed to pass a law against pots and pans used in protests on the basis of, wait for it, anti-terrorist laws. The poor wittle pwesident couldn't stand not hearing his bweutiful voice over the din, apparently.

Needless to say, democratic reaction was swift and lawsuits quickly quashed that rancid demonstration of dicklessness, but France is a democratic country - for now. Even so, the attempt was made.

It's pretty obvious that, in a country where democracy is just a faint hope for the future, such shenanigans - and worse - are a daily occurence.

Nvidia CEO pay falls ten percent in FY23 on missed sales targets

Because they're staff, i.e. peons. They agreed to their meager salary, they shall be content with it. It's not Huang's fault that they did not have the clout to negociate better terms. After all, he's the one that can distribute the pink slips.

You really need to read Being a CEO 101.

Ubuntu 23.04 welcomes three more flavors, but hamburger menus leave a bad taste

The hamburger menu

It's made for desktop PCs - which more and more sport at least two 24" ultra high resolution screens - and they still can't stick a true hamburger icon on it ?

Do they fear a lawsuit from McDonalds,or what ?

Microsoft puts the freeze on employee salaries, CEO pay still as hot as ever

"While we will have salary increases for certain hourly or equivalent roles . . ."

Equivalent roles.

Like CEO ?

He's paid by the hour, isn't he ?

Or is it by the minute ?

EU-US Privacy Framework could make life easier for a data biz, if it survives

Re: Delusional Description: GDPR Is Still A Joke....

You misunderstand politics, my good sir.

It's not about following through, it's all about the noise you make.

When campaigning, it is good form to invoke privacy, respect, the law and anything else on top of hugging babies. If ever something doesn't pan out, it's not your fault, it's the lawmakers who didn't do their jobs.

And when you reach the lofty position of Prime Minister, you have more important things to occupy you than a piddling privacy agreement.

But when you're campaigning, it's all gravy in the poll booth . . .

Open source AI makes modern PCs relevant, and subscriptions seem shabby

"ChatGPT looks to be losing another race"

Doesn't matter though. Borkzilla has managed to graft ChatGPT into Office and, soon, everything else it makes.

And that will be paid for by user subscriptions.

So it's just the Board of the Fortune 500 that will suddenly be asking themselves why they're paying for an inferior . . no, wait, it's from Borkzilla so they won't ask themselves anything.

India calls for all mobile phones to include FM radios

Ah, feature phones

Those useful little things that could go a week without needing to recharge.

So, there's still a country in this world where the ability to phone someone is more important than the ability to tweet to nobody.

Nice to know.

Microsoft can't stop injecting Copilot AI into every corner of its app empire

Essentially

This "new" "AI" is essentially Borkzilla plugging into corporate data with the blessing of Boards everywhere.

At this point, I have one question : all that juicy data that is being "analyzed" is being sent where, exactly ?

Because I think there is this little thing called GDPR waiting in the wings . . .

Microsoft Azure CTO believes confidential computing is the future of targeted advertising

They keep on trying, don't they ?

Lipstick on a pig is what it is.

You can shuffle it in as many ways as you want, we still see the end result : we're getting profiled in ever more precise ways.

Well we don't like it, and we'll vote the laws that are needed to keep our privacy.

As soon as we find out how to write them.

Cisco: Don't use 'blind spot' – and do use 'feed two birds with one scone'

"I think it's reasonable to declare victory and move on"

Yes, please move on. The Woke is satisfied, for now. The poor itty bitty processes will never hang again, justice is done, amen, hallelujia.

So, what's the new designation for black holes ?

Meta CEO doesn't Zuck at Brazilian jiu-jitsu, apparently

So it's got a few medals in martial arts

Looks like the robot is branching out.

In any case, it still hasn't understood the basic notion of martial arts, which is honor.

The Zuck has none.

AI still fails at being human.

Microsoft disarms push notification bombers with number matching in Authenticator

Human weakness at work again

"eventually accept the login to stop the harassment"

What ? No.

The fact that there is harassment is a clear sign that a takeover attempt is active. That is not the time to just click Yes so that you can make another post on Twitter.

That is the time to contact your provider and warn them that a takeover is occuring.

Of course, it would help if you have another platform than your smartphone to do so . . . so basically only only anyone over 40 can hope to be able to respond properly.

Musk decides to bury dead Twitter accounts, warns users follower counts could sink

"but it's important to free up abandoned handles."

0h really ?

Is this an IPv4 issue ?

Is there a dearth of available handles in twatland ?

Don't think so.

This is just another load of bull. Maybe a PR stunt ?

FBI-led Op Medusa slays NATO-bothering Russian military malware network

"almost two decades"

Was that the time it took to train FBI agents ?

Two decades to stop spyware. Wow.

No medals will be awarded here.

Of course Russia's ex-space boss doubts US set foot on the Moon

He has doubts

Well then, how about pointing a telescope to the landing site and checking out for the laser reflector that is used to know where the Moon is to a sliver of a micrometer ?

Oh, silly me, that would mean that you admit that there is one . . .

India bans open source messaging apps for security reasons. FOSS community says good luck

"banned 14 messaging apps on national security grounds"

Yes, citizens talking to each other is obviously bad for national security.

But India should take a leaf out of the NSA surveillance handbook. Let them talk, and monitor everything.

Or, for something more repressive, go to China, who monitors everything and suppresses, including by arrests, anything that Xi Pooh doesn't find palatable.

Four out of five Uranus moons likely to have ocean under crust

Seafloor volcano vents ?

Zoho creates browser with 'Open Season Mode' for when you don't care about privacy

Wrong order

Following this website, the proper order is Chrome, Safari, Firefox. Edge comes after, somewhat bundled with Internet Explorer which doesn't deserve it, then you find Opera (which has .28% better share than IE).

Of course, if you go to a different site, the figures will be entirely different, and the order can change as well.

The one thing that doesn't change is that Chrome is always on top.

Ex-Uber CSO gets probation for covering up theft of data on millions of people

"having to work for some credit monitoring outfit"

I would personally prefer that he not gain additional information on how to manipulate the situation in the future. He is now tainted with not only with cover-up, but with failure to cover up.

Let him do work in an entirely different branch that has nothing to do with security.

Beware of geeks bearing gifts, so check the fine print on Cisco's latest financing deal

Well, apparently the DNA Advantage Cloud license is over $256K for the 2G 5Y version, so yeah, crazy prices are possible.

Also, you pay a quarter of a million bucks and you only get 20G ? Twenty gigabits ? I can't be reading that right.

Seems to me that, for a quarter million, I can buy myself two super-pro NAS units (€11000 each) with 12 8TB SSDs for €1000 apiece, store each one in a datacenter a thousand kilometers apart and securely connect to them both via Internet.

All that for a total of €46000, plus connection costs. Leaves more than enough to pay for years of bandwidth.

Could somebody remind me why this cloud stuff is supposed to be so useful ?

I mean, for me.

Strike three: FTC says Meta still failing to protect user privacy

"This is the third time"

And the only answer will be "We're sorry, we goofed. Won't do it again. No need to fine us."

Of course The Zuck is going to fight. Selling access to data is what made his fortune, and that is more important to him than anything else.

Slap him in prison for five years, that might shake some sense into his thick skull.

Microsoft cries foul over UK gaming deal blocker but it's hard to feel sorry for them

I think it must be said that Activision is at fault here - never should have accepted the deal in the first place.

But obviously, it's the shareholders that were ready to accept the deal. They're not gamers, they're in it for the money.

And Borkzilla promised plenty of that.

Biden proposes 30% tax on cryptominers' power bills

"compared crypto's electricity usage to that of video games"

Specious argument.

Video games are useful. They are a hobby and a pasttime, just like watching TV. Nobody is going to ban TV either.

Funny money is just a burden that does not help society in any way, and gives scum a lot of ammo to actively harm society.

It is a bad thing, and the quicker it disappears, the better.

Go ahead, forget that password. Use a passkey instead, says Google

So, the smartphone is the password now

Biometric, schmiometric. All this is just trading a biological weakness for a hardware weakness.

The passkey is tied to the device ? Great. Lose or break your smartphone and you've just lost all your accesses permanently.

I can create a passkey on my non-laptop PC ? Great, as soon as I upgrade it that passkey is toast. And installing such a thing on a Windows system is madness in the first place. Or are you actually expecting Borkzilla to handle that 100% efficiently ?

Oh well, passwords still work, they say. Good, because I'm sticking to that. And good luck to the phishing attempt that tries to get my password. Yes, I'm a savvy user but, more importantly, I know that there is nobody that needs any of my passwords, so there should be nobody who asks. And if they do ask, the answer is chocolate.

The answer is always chocolate.

A lone Nvidia GPU speeds past the physics-straining might of a quantum computer – in these apps at least

"no more than two weeks to solve"

Um, sorry, but isn't quantum computing supposed to be instantaneous ?

With all possible results instead of just one ?

We've been told that (current) encryption would be literally destroyed by a quantum computer. The NSA would be swimming in decrypted SMSs and emails.

And now it takes two weeks ?

The more time goes by, the less I understand quantum computing.

And now it's useless anyway.

Feds rethink warrantless search stats and – oh look, a huge drop in numbers

"an indispensable tool when it comes to fighting terrorism"

What terrorism ?

You have had one terrorist attack in your entire history, and the only reason it succeeded was because the CIA didn't do its fucking job, not because of the FBI pulling an NSA and illegally surveilling everyone.

The end of Microsoft-brand peripherals is only Surface deep

Re: Was the Strategic Commander...

Let's just say that I think you missed out.

Microsoft's peripheral business

There is another rarely mentioned Microsoft peripheral : the Strategic Commander.

It's a gaming complement, a secondary keyboard that is also a mouse (or you can configure WASD if you prefer), which is unbelievably useful. It is so useful that I just can't understand why nobody else has taken up the idea.

In a world where many of today's top-selling titles are of the 1st-person shooter variety, the ability to have your movement and essential commands under your left hand, and your targetting and firing in your right hand gives you the freedom to concentrate on gaming without cramping your W finger one bit. You play better for longer, and you don't really need to learn the game keys since your Commander profiles do the job for you. You just know that, to jump, it's the middle top button - what the game actually needs has been configured and you don't have to worry about it. That makes it easier to switch games as well, but that is true for any configurable gaming keyboard. It's the mouse ability that really sets this peripheral apart from the rest.

And yet, Microsoft has dropped it and nobody else has taken it up after all these years. Surely the copyright has lapsed now, given that it has been abandoned ?

I really would like to be able to buy a new one. The one I have is now more than 20 years old, still running fine but one fine day, the keys will wear out or something. I'm afraid of that day, because gaming will no longer be the same without it.

UK emergency services take DIY approach amid 12-year wait for comms upgrade

Hint : if you cannot readily agree on what the thing is, it seems pretty obvious that a bunch of civil servants are not going to be particularly efficient in defining what the upgrade should be.