Posts by Pascal Monett

End of the road for biz living off free G Suite legacy edition

So, advertising doesn't bring in enough money then ?

$256 billion isn't enough to offer a free service ?

I think that's called greed, pure and simple.

Wi-Fi hotspots and Windows on Arm broken by Microsoft's latest patches

Brilliant

Another brilliant justification for AutoPatch, right SatNad ?

If AI chatbots are sentient, they can be squirrels, too

"different voices for reading aloud kids books compared to horror stories"

I would really like to hear Hannibal Lecter read Little Red Riding Hood.

"The better to see you with" would gain a whole new dimension.

Plot to defeat crypto meltdown: Solend votes to seize, liquidate whale account

"emergency powers to liquidate its largest customer account"

I'm sorry, but if I had €100 million in the bank, and suddenly found out that the bank's other customers had voted to liquidate my account, I would be pissed to the extreme.

As noted, it's hilarious to watch all these "decentralize" zealots suddenly rush to centralize when their feet go cold.

I love fireworks.

There are 24.6 billion pairs of credentials for sale on dark web

Re: 6.7 billion

Likely.

Now, let's forward to when all that is "biometric" data.

Remind me how I can change my fingerprints ?

Apple update approach 'not realistic' in enterprise, but login 'shim' gets thumbsup

Doesn't seem to be the case from the article.

And if you have to go check your OS settings to ensure that you do not lose work, well I'm not impressed.

But don't worry, Borkzilla's AutoPatch is sure to bring us much entertainment in not so long.

"Apple demonstrates they don't have a deep appreciation of the enterprise"

Ouch.

That said, I'm sorry but even as an individual user, I don't appreciate the idea of losing everything I am working on because somebody else decided I have to update now.

Atos CFO to follow CEO out the door following 'Evidian' split plans

"Atos and the UK government have settled out of court in a case involving an circa $1 billion (£854 million) supercomputer contract for the UK's Met Office. The case brought by Atos was over claims that the Met Office and the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) had breached procurement law and unfairly dismissed the Atos bid, awarding the contract instead to Microsoft"

So, Atos pulled a Bezos but actually won, and is getting paid for it.

Good for Atos.

Capital One: Convicted techie got in via 'misconfigured' AWS buckets

"Quite an expensive misconfiguration"

Indeed.

And I fail to see how a "financial giant" doesn't have personnel sufficiently trained to set up a server.

Ten years ago I set up a website for the company I was an associate in. It took me all of an hour to find the data to understand and properly lock down the .htaccess file to ensure that the entire file structure of our server would not be accessible.

I'm not an engineer, just a University-level graduate. It's not rocket science.

Unbelievably clever: Redbean 2 – a single-file web server that runs on six OSes

Impressive

Even more impressive : the fact that there are still some people intelligent enough - and dedicated enough - to actually understand how our computers work and build the environment to demonstrate it.

Back in the day, I purchased the Norton's PC Bible. It was a very enlightening experience, finding out how things actually happened at the hardware level. Thanks to that book, I toyed around with creating moving objects in graphics mode on my 4-colour IBM-PC 640*320 CRT screen (that was high-resolution, back then).

These days, there is no more PC Bible, there is a PC library, and it would take years for a newcomer to grasp all of it.

Kudos to the creator of this tool.

Indian government issues confidential infosec guidance to staff – who leak it

Whoa there

"patch promptly, run anti-virus software, log off when away from one's desk, and encrypt data before transmission"

We're talking about government. That means that there's an IT department that calls the shots on patching.

As for encrypting, that would be difficult if IT has not installed and configured the tools to do so. The user is not supposed to be able to do that on his own, now is he ?

And if you think I'm logging off to go take a piss, I have news for you : I'm pressing Windows-L to lock my session and not lose my work.

I appreciate the intent, but there's a lot here that doesn't really depend on just the user.

Apple may have to cough up $1bn to Brits in latest iPhone Batterygate claim

Re: "We have never – and would never"

Well, there's this article.

Conspiracy much ? I don't think so.

"We have never – and would never"

Um, except you have.

In the Age of the Internet, it really is a bad idea to blatantly spout nonsense that can be proven wrong with a simple search.

Apparently, some companies really think that people are just going to trust whatever they say blindly.

Doesn't work like that, guys. It really doesn't.

Not even if your name is Apple.

Always read the comments: Beijing requires oversight of all reader-generated chat

"read everything and report dissent"

Xi Pooh still doesn't get it : silencing dissent does not erase it, it just pushes it underground where you cannot see it anymore.

Xi will get his clear, shining landscape of beautiful, happy citizens, but underneath there will be a festering pile of hatred and malcontent which, when it explodes (and it will), will be swift and devastating.

I can see that and I'm not even a historian, much less a psychologist.

International operation takes down Russian RSOCKS botnet

"the site has been seized by the FBI"

Okay, good thing, but what about all those IoShite things that are still compromised ?

They're just waiting for the next bunch of miscreants to start all over again.

UK Home Office signs order to extradite Julian Assange to US

"a hard-hitting investigative journalist"

I disagree. Assange is not and never has been a journalist of any kind, let alone an investigative one.

He is an asshole, but that's beside the point.

All he did was recieve information and publish it. The US Government didn't like that, but that's not necessarily a reason to slam a foreign national into a US jail.

After all, the US jealously guards all its nationals that did hideous things in other countries, so what goes around should come around.

DeadBolt ransomware takes another shot at QNAP storage

So, they're going after NASes now

I have a Synoloy DS414j.

I've checked my IP address on Shodan.io and I am not visible.

My NAS unit is up to date.

Do I have to worry ?

US must adopt USB-C charging standard like EU, senators urge

There is confusion indeed

My wife has a Samsung Galaxy A3.

So do I.

Yet, because her model is a year before mine, she doesn't have the same connector.

I will readily admit that I am fed up with these shenanigans. I have been forced (business reasons) to use a mobile phone since 2006, and not a single one has come without a specific charger and cable.

If you want to plug a desktop PC, on the other hand, the same cable has been in use for the past twenty years.

Stop the insanity.

Airbus flies new passenger airplane aimed at 'long, thin' routes

Re: Nope.

I would tend to agree with you. If my flight is only a few hours (ie less than 4), a thin body doesn't bother me, but if I'm supposed to be stuck inside a tube for longer than four hours, I'd welcome the illusion of space to move in.

I have.

Good book.

Re: try to go to Australia by train...

Yeah, but, no one should go to Australia.

I have had my fill of the cattle class.

If I ever even think of taking a plane again, I'm paying a first-class ticket.

The price alone will be an incentive to stay put, but if I really, really want to get somewhere by plane, I will no longer be stuck in a seat next to a whale.

I'm 56 years old now. I'm done with putting up with constraints.

I want my comforts, and I'm ready to pay for them (just not rich enough to charter a private jet).

SpaceX reportedly fires staffers behind open letter criticising Elon Musk

"firing those involved"

Great.

Sets exactly the measure of how much SpaceX management is actually engaged to listen to its employees.

A shame, since that company is practically the only thing left at this point that can supply the ISS.

SpaceX is now the Uber of space.

Yech.

Microsoft readies Windows Autopatch to free admins from dealing with its fixes

Autopatch ? Sure. Just shoot me now.

Borkzilla doesn't have the record required for anyone to trust such a scheme. Rollback, schmollback. Borkzilla is going to fuck up, that's a certainty, and when (not if) that happens, you want your backups to be in order.

Japan makes online insults a crime that can earn a year in jail

Re: running around threatening your betters with a sword

Not to nitpick, but I do believe that, back in the day, if you had a sword, you were part of "the betters" and much more likely to have the police on your side than on the side of whatever lowlife citizen didn't.

I approve

Even if you can argue that maybe this young lady could have been a bit too sensitive, I think it is high time we put a stop to this widespread Internet habit of insulting people simply because you're not standing in front of them.

People on the Internet say things they would never dare saying face-to-face. Maybe that's something for the psychiatrists, I don't know, but it is time to clamp down on that.

Interpol anti-fraud operation busts call centers behind business email scams

How much longer is it going to take ?

How long before people finally understand that there is no Nigerian prince, no free lunch and nobody begging to give you money ?

Wake up, people. Money is earned by hard work (unless you are a member of the 1%, in which case your money is earned just by you breathing).

I was fired for blowing the whistle on cult's status in Google unit, says contractor

"If we find evidence of policy violations, we will take action"

As in, hold a sex ritual and drink a nice glass of Bordeaux ?

Where can I sign up ?

Brave roasts DuckDuckGo over Bing privacy exception

I'm sorry : we're talking about Bing ?

Who cares ?

Former chip research professor jailed for not disclosing Chinese patents

Honestly, guys

With all the precedents that have been set, and continue to be, you still hire Chinese nationals in national-security-sensitive or highly-demanding engineering posts ?

Shouldn't there be a bit more background research before hiring when the individual comes from China ?

You really bring it on yourselves sometimes.

Consultant plays Metaverse MythBuster. Here's why they're wrong

Re: Power ?

You didn't get it : the Metaverse is going to be all holograms. All that hardware stuff is completely ignored since El Zuck specifically said that "Your TV, your perfect work setup with multiple monitors, your board games and more – instead of physical things assembled in factories, they'll be holograms designed by creators around the world".

So, see ? You won't need any of that, they'll be holograms.

Oh, wait . . .

Tencent completes 50 million core migration of its own apps to its own clouds

"30 per cent better than the industry standard"

Hey, I'm thrilled for Tencent, but : what's the industry standard ?

Elasticsearch server with no password or encryption leaks a million records

A "misconfigured" server

Nice.

I'll have to remember that the next time I need to explain why somebody fucked up.

Big Tech begs Congress to pass $52bn chip subsidies bill

Re: Subsidy?

Indeed.

Apple has that much money sitting in the bank. So does Google. If they want something done, they have the means to get it done.

The State should keep its money for things that its citizens don't have the means to pay for, and not give that money away to insanely rich companies that have more money than a small country.

America edges closer to a federal data privacy law, not that anyone can agree on it

"which she believes work just fine"

No, it obviously doesn't.

But, no problem, another few years and millions of voters and she'll change her tune.

Musk can't tweet about Tesla without lawyer approval – and he's still fighting to end that

"He would like nothing more"

It's nice to see that billions still can't buy you the entire judiciary system.

Yet.

South Korea's space ambitions stuck on the launchpad

I would tend to agree but, politics.

GPUs aren’t always your best bet, Twitter ML tests suggest

"Twitter’s head of graph learning research"

So Twitter has a graph learning research division.

Is it for finding a way to do content moderation ? Because if not, I don't really see the point.

US to help Japan make leading-edge 2nm chips, possibly by 2025

So, we're now at 2nm

What's the unit smaller than a nanometer ?

Are we going to start counting in atoms ?

Because, correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought I had already read that we are approaching the physical limits of the Universe. Just as you can't do colder than absolute zero, you can't go smaller than the size of an atom.

So, are we there yet ?

Tesla Autopilot accounts for 70% of driver assist crashes, says US traffic safety body

"a recall of 830,000 Autopilot-equipped Teslas"

That's going to be a whole bunch of smug rich people pissed off.

Microsoft continues cyber security spending spree with Miburo buy

The Borg is feeding again

So this is the latest spending spree from Borkzilla.

Oh well, I'm confident that this will not change the "quality" of Windows in any way, but I'm welcome to be (positively) surprised.

HPE ordered to pay Oracle $30m for Solaris IP infringement

"evaluating its options"

So, nuclear ?

Snowflake pledges row-based storage engine for transactional data

What's the difference ?

"no longer see it as a mere cloud data warehouse and to view it more as a platform for sharing data and data-analytics applications"

What is the function of a "mere" cloud data wharehouse ? To have data accessible in The Cloud^TM. So how can a cloud data wharehouse not share data and whatever else is running there ?

This is nothing but a marketing announcement, and nobody but salespeople and amoebas with one brain cell are going to buy into it.

End-of-life smartphone? Penguins at postmarketOS aim to revive it

Re: 'we' actually do need the profit companies make by making people consume more than they need

First of all, what we need is companies that pay their taxes.

And my whole point is that we need to rethink this situation.

Just saying that we need Apple to make ever-more-expensive shiny tat that ends up landfills is not a solution.

53.6 million tonnes of e-waste

It might be time for us, as a society, to start re-thinking this endless yearly product cycle.

We do not need a new Iphone model every year. A phone should be able to last five years without trouble, so make your new model cycle over five years and everyone will be happy (well, except for those who absolutely have to spend a thousand bucks a year to prove that they are better than everyone else).

Qualcomm wins EU court battle against $1b antitrust fine

Vestager

It would be nice if we could have some competent people in areas of resonsibility.

That would make for a welcome change.

Threat of cross-border data tariffs looms over WTO

"taxing e-commerce the same way that [..] physical goods traded internationally"

In truth, I have to admit that that does not seem unreasonable.

At the condition that the trade is made internationally. Currently, I make purchases on Amazon.fr. That, to me, means that whatever international taxation there is has already taken place. If that's not the case, they should clean that part up, but I fail to see why I should be contacted for international taxes when I'm buying stuff stored in France from a French web site.

Looks like another storm in a teacup from where I'm sitting.

Lenovo to form venture with Hong Kong comms conglomerate PCCW

Hold on

"Lenovo has struck an agreement with Hong Kong China comms conglomerate PCCW"

TFTFY

Microsoft fixes under-attack Windows zero-day Follina

"Disabling macros in, say, Word won't stop this from happening"

Ah, Borkzilla, the malware gift that keeps on giving.

Intel delivers first discrete Arc desktop GPUs ... in China

So, only in China, eh ?

I doubt that gamers everywhere are holding their breath, desperate to get their hands on this new kit.

We'll wait for the benchmarks, as usual, and Intel hasn't ever really given gamers any reason to be clamoring for its GPU products, so . . .