Posts by Pascal Monett

Diving DRAM prices are a problem not even AI can solve

"a great time to snag an SSD"

Hmm, now there's a good point. I'll have to keep on the lookout for that.

This US national lab turned to AI to hunt rogue nukes

I'm sure that, with a trip to Putin's Russia and the application of a generous amount of dollars to a local general, you too can have your very own king-sized snowcone maker.

FTX cryptovillain Sam Bankman-Fried charged with bribing Chinese officials

Lock him up ? Completely agree.

The major difference between the OHSG and Biden is that Biden cooperated every step of the way. The asshole, on the other hand, lied every step of the way (as usual).

That's why nobody is talking about Biden's case any more. There's nothing more to say.

US cyber spymaster calls TikTok China's 'Trojan horse'

And, of all the sources of this protectionaism, it's the very agency that doesn't give a flying fig about privacy.

Talk about ironic . . .

Google again accused of willfully destroying evidence in Android antitrust battle

"an appropriate remedy for a later time"

I would say about ten trillion dollars.

I'm sure that that would make Alphabet pay attention.

Because if you don't deliver an uppercut, it will just be defined as cost of business.

Well sorry, but this should not be a cost of business. This should definitely cost you your business.

Microsoft enlarges its cockpit of Copilots to include security

Well thank you, Borkzilla

It's so nice of you to demonstrate once again that security is an afterthought for you.

US police have run nearly 1M Clearview AI searches, says founder

"Crimes Clearview has helped solve include murder"

Well that's nice.

So, how many murders, exactly ? How could they not have been solved by "traditional" police work ? And what is the threashold that makes this invasion of privacy acceptable ?

Jack Ma is back, and he has some feelpinions to share

"humans have a 'heart' "

Unfortunately, not all of them.

No 'decoupling' here: Apple, Samsung, and Qualcomm sing China's praises

But from a corporate point of view, slavery is fine.

Case in point : there is no shareholder movement against slavery, and nobody with any Apple sharers is standing up to say "Hey, cut it out with the slavery stuff. I don't mind making shiploads of cash, but no slavery".

Nope, they have the shares, hang on to them for dear life and wait for the money. How that money is made is not a problem. And that's where the problem is.

At some point, all this capitalism is going to have to accept that money does not excuse everything.

I won't hold my breath though.

Botched migration resulted in a great deal: One for the price of two

Getting a refund

Yeah, I can well imagine : zero success.

And the argument cannot go both ways, I think. Provider A was switching top floor access to Provider B. Company made a new contract with Provider B for ground level. The two are not linked, and the provider is not responsible for a connection that is never used.

Maybe, just maybe, Provider B could have sent an inquiry after two months, wondering if it was normal to have no activity on a connection, but come on - we all know that, as long as the bills are paid, there is no problem.

So, yeah. Check your billing.

And was the accounts deparment billed for the lost revenue ?

Because I would have taken that from its budget.

BOFH: The Board members are looking very ill these days

I did not need to learn that . . .

Cisco, Huawei, Ericsson on the hook for Philippine telco's $880M overspend

"Few businesses can endure [..] $880 million of unplanned expenditure"

If the Prime Minister loks at that the first thing he thinks is "Pff, amateurs".

There's one sure winner in the AI explosion, say analysts: Dutch outfit ASML

"a sharp increase in GPU [..] demand"

I'll just hope that NVidia doesn't sell all that demand to funny money farmers.

Microsoft breaks geolocation, locking users out of Azure and M365

The important words are : We're reverting a recent change

Once again, fat-fingered keyboarding without proper checking results in massive pain for many people.

Ah, to think that, in the good ol' days, if a sysadmin goofed it would only affect the users of that company's network.

Today's sysadmins can affect people all across the globe.

Yay progress.

Where in the world is Terraform Labs villain Do Kwon? Montenegro, actually

"as true as Kwon's tweets"

Another fine, upstanding member of the funny money criminal underground.

Oh wait, there is no underground in the funny money market. It's all right there, above ground, and yet many people still don't see it.

Accenture puts 19,000 staffers' heads on the chopping block

"include over 800 of our more than 10,000 leaders"

I'm sure that, if you look properly, you could find another 5,000 "leaders" to lay off, easy peasy.

Come on, make an effort !

Critical infrastructure gear is full of flaws, but hey, at least it's certified

But they said it's Huawei that's the problem

OT equipment certified but vulnerable ? Hey look : Huawei ! Huawei is the danger !

We've forbidden Huawei everywhere, we're safe ! Safe, I tell you !

ChatGPT, how did you get here? It was a long journey through open source AI

So, NotOpenAI is monetizing ?

Vote with your wallet, people.

D-Wave hello to another quantum pioneer warned over possible delisting

"including but not limited to a reverse stock split"

It's nice to not limit your options, but how many do you really have ?

I mean, if nobody is buying, then your only real option is having less stock.

And that's just a stopgap because again, if nobody is buying, your stock is still going to fall.

So, when you only have one share left per investor at 90 cents, what's left to do ?

Because apparently garnering interest or excitement is already out of the picture . . .

Microsoft admits Azure Resource Manager failed after code change

"Gotta love the cloud"

Well it's not like we have much of a choice, now is it ?

Every supplier is is pushing or dragging us there, and kicking and screaming about it doesn't seem to work much. Eh, Adobe users ?

First-known interstellar Solar System visitor 'Oumuamua a comet in disguise – research

"led some folks to believe it was alien spaceship"

Umm, come on, there will always be some folks to believe that.

Croquet for Unity: Live, network-transparent 3D gaming... but it's so much more

"it's tiny, efficient, fast, lightweight, and in places, surprisingly simple"

So you're saying that Microsoft had nothing to do with it, basically ?

B-List celebs including Lindsay Lohan fined after crypto shill probe

Lindsay Lohan has millions of followers ?

Two would already be a lot. Millions ? Unthinkable.

In any case, I see she's still riding the elevator down, down, down . . .

Ellison's healthcare obsession carries risks for Oracle

Re: FUBB

Far from me to defend the Big Red One, but really, you're right. It is particularly petty to complain about a $12+ billion in revenue when you were expecting a mere 300 million more.

Techie fired for inventing an acronym – and accidentally applying it to the boss

Re: it's Florida

Where everything goes to die.

Start with sanity and go right on down.

Got Conti? Here's the ransomware cure to avoid paying up

The data hardly needs to be on the Internet to be vulnerable.

All it needs is some clueless luser who clicks blindly on every attachment in his Inbox without questioning for a second why this person he doesn't know and has never met is sending him an xslm file (or pics of a scantily-clad female).

Dual Tesla lawsuits pull Elon Musk into right-to-repair war

The comparison is incorrect.

No company has a copyright on any part of the human body - yet.

Feds arrest and charge exiled Chinese billionaire over massive crypto fraud

"a state-backed misinformation campaign"

As soon as he became a friend of Steve Bannon, that campaign was no longer misinformation.

Hands up who DIDN'T exploit this years-old flaw to ransack a US govt web server...

Re: And just when I thought replacing all my Adobe Flash controls with Telerik

Who could possibly think that it wouldn't cause problems ?

Google stops selling its biz-grade augmented reality specs

This obsession with "enhancing" our vision

In Sci-Fi, it looks great. Holographic screens, near-weightless glasses that do real-time augmented reality without any lag, stutter or power issues, magical interfaces that interpret exactly each and every wave of the hand or keyword spoken to it and doesn't get confused by conversations going on around or in front of it, Sci-Fi shows the awesome power of what could be. If there wasn't that pesky thing called reality, that is.

Reality means that you need a helmet on your head in order to have your eyes covered by a screen. Said helmet needs batteries, and those things are not lightweight. It mostly needs to be tethered to the workstation as well, or you won't be using it for long.

And you can get physically sick.

But the idea endures. Even when it has been killed by public apathy, like the zombie it rises again as soon as some new tech makes someone with deep pockets believe that it could be feasible.

It's the tech that just won't die, because Sci-Fi makes it look so cool.

Meanwhile, almost everyone is getting bored with Cortana.

Go figure.

Anyone want an International Space Station? Slightly used

Re: I've got a better idea...

Orbital mechanics are complicated, you need engineers to calculate things right.

I think that gaining altitude is a lot more costly in energy than losing altitude, but I am far from being an authority on that question.

I'm pretty sure that, if NASA wants to de-orbit the ISS, it's likely because that will be the least expensive option.

Russia's Roscosmos

"will also be responsible for disposing of their own parts safely"

Somehow I very much doubt that Russia will be doing much about the ISS any time soon, it seems to be a bit more preoccupied by Earthly matters at the moment.

NASA is going to have to shoulder that burden, I fear.

Re: Mir

I think Mir was a bit smaller.

Samsung to splurge $230B on five new chip plants for South Korea

"a wider $380+ trillion [..] investment plan"

Don't anyone ever tell me there isn't any money going around ever again.

This is definitely in the "a billion here, a billion there, pretty soon you're talking real money" domain, no doubt about it.

SVB collapse's mix of money, urgency and uncertainty makes it irresistible to scammers

The fan is rotating, the sewage is coming in fast

It looks like this is going to be a shitstorm of major proportions.

Batten down the hatches !

Bing AI feels like ChatGPT stuffed into a suit – not the future

"what makes search useful today"

Point #1 : fast results.

Google has never made me wait a few seconds before giving a result. Results are near instant on Google. The few times I did try Bing, results were rather quick as well.

I doubt people are going to accept waiting for anything more than a second, generally. If this BingBot needs to put down its coffee before getting to work, people will not be using it for long.

China debuts bonkers hybrid electric trolley-truck

Re: Nice until

Oh, so like Germany, then ?

Tough luck, Brits: Binance suspends UK deposits and withdrawals

"a prudent decision on our part taken in an abundance of caution"

So, not the usual decision-making process, then ?

Did you have an excess of caution in your reserves to use ?

And don't you just love being part of the "less than" 1% ?

Yes, Samsung 'fakes' its smartphone Moon photos – who cares?

Re: Photography today = digital manipulation

The camera has been lying since day one.

Ever since images have been captured, people have been looking for ways to influence the result to their need or desire.

And with digital, it has simply exploded.

Including some cloud manipulation is par for the course these days.

Samsung is lying, bears in the woods, call me when something new is actually happening . . .

So, basically the marketing is working ?

The UK's bad encryption law can't withstand global contempt

Re: Use of encryption was illegal in France

Not quite. Encryption itself was not illegal, but strong encryption was.

As such, the French version of Notes 3.x had 64-bit encryption enabled, but only used 40 bits effectively. The first 24 bits had been handed over to the French government, so that it could be easier for them to decrypt emails (because the French government only had itty bitty CPUs to decrypt stuff with and nobody actually knew how anyway).

Thankfully, this nonsense fell out of fashion and, since R6, everyone is using full-fat 128 bit or better encryption.

Check it out here.

Techie wiped a server, nobody noticed, so a customer kept paying for six months

Re: Obvious which company this is

Even Twitter did not invent all the mistakes.

Yes, it has invented a pile of new ones, but this kind was old before the Internet was born.

And I'm sorry, but when I'm told to unplug something, it's not my job to ensure data or function continuity. You said the Sharepoint team was now in charge and the Notes database could be wiped ?

It's wiped. Go cry next door.

I disagree. Getting paid five times my normal hourly rate because some idiot chucked me out and couldn't be arsed to know just what his job was just makes me feel good.

I don't care whose purse it comes out of as long the money goes into mine.

US government says Silicon Valley Bank depositors can get their cash on Monday

"What did he know two weeks ago?"

Whatever it is, he'll have to very carefully and completely justify it to the SEC if he wants a chance to keep the money.

Catholic clergy surveillance org 'outs gay priests'

Ah but Catholic priests do not take the vow of chastity, they take the vow of celibacy.

It's the nuns that take the vow of chastity, demonstrating once again the positively Midieval mindset of the Roman Catholic Church. Men ? Don't marry, but you can diddle. Women ? Ain't nobody touching you but the Holy Ghost in your dreams.

Personally, I couldn't care less if a priest is gay or not.

Just leave the children alone.

Two tech-centric banks strike trouble, spooking markets

"as the Bank is not in significant trouble – it just needed to find $21 billion in a hurry"

Reminds me somehow of that famous exchange in Cloud City :

C3PO is lying in pieces in a box

Calrissian : "Having trouble with your droid ?"

Solo : "Trouble ? No. Why ?"

WANdisco suspends shares pending fraud investigation

"the company is now flying headfirst into a potential cash crunch"

Quick ! Someone call Michael Bay ! There's an Oscar to be had here !

UK Prime Minister wants £800M to spend on big British iron

10 exaflops of "AI performance"

Is that enough to give us "42" as an answer ?

If you think that 1.6 million is enough to bring any country to the status of superpower in anything, I have a bridge to sell you . . .