Posts by Pascal Monett

Epson zaps lasers into oblivion, in the name of the environment

Oh sure, inkjets are "green". Pull the other one, it has bells on it.

From my personal experience :

I've bought Epson inkjet printers. About every two years when I was still using inkjet. Heads clogging, ink drying, etc, as has been said above, I've wasted God knows how much ink on so-called "cleaning" procedures.

Inkjets may be fine, but only at the condition that you are printing many pages every day. If you are printing a dozen pages a month, you're up shit creek without a paddle.

I bought a Samsung laser printer in 2010. It's still working fine, even when I only print a page a month.

Inkjets are green my ass.

Doctors call for greater scrutiny of bidders for platform that pools UK's health info

It's that simple

"it would be for NHS England to come up with a process that commands the trust of the public and the professional alike"

Given the history of shambolic failures of NHS IT, I doubt any process would be sufficient to command the professional's trust, much less the public.

I don't live in England, but as soon as I hear the word Palantir outside of the Lord Of The Rings context, my brain is screaming "run !!" inside my head.

Guess the most common password. Hint: We just told you

So there's a new malware framework out there

Good to know, obviously, but since the bigger problem is all the clueless idiots who will click an attachment without hesitation, I don't see that a new malware framework is a particular cause for alarm.

You could send them I Love You again and it would work just as well.

ESA names first Parastronaut: paralympian and aspiring surgeon John McFall

"a former Paralympic sprinter with a bronze medial to his name"

Meaning that this guy, with one less leg than I have, can run faster and farther than I ever could or ever will.

Hats off.

EU still getting its act together on European Chips Act funding

"still getting its act together on [..] funding"

I take that to mean they still haven't agreed on whose pockets to line.

Massive energy storage system goes online in UK

Re: Real numbers

So you're assuming that none of them have a fireplace where they can burn wood to heat the house instead of electricity ?

Out of 300,000 homes I'd suppose that there is a portion of them that have one. That would lower their electricity consumption for heating drastically.

China declares victory over teenage video game addiction

Well I'll be damned, it wasn't a meme after all.

Too soon? Amazon commissions FTX mini-series

Re: Easier to write the scripts

Well at least somebody is going to make some money out of this.

UK competition watchdog investigates Apple and Google 'stranglehold' over the mobile market

Re: "Its study found"?

Agreed.

If Borkzilla hadn't completely fouled up, there might have been a third party but, guess what ? It's expensive to be part of that club.

Huawei is still going strong in China. I wonder if the UK competition watchdog has any complaint about how Apple and Google have barely any say over there.

HP Inc to lay off up to 6,000 staff, cut costs by $1.4 billion

"it will lay off between 4,000 and 6,000 staff"

And it will do so before XMas, to make sure that everyone ends the year on a high note.

Well done, board !

I'm sure you will feel entirely entitled to this year's massive bonus.

JWST snaps first chemical profile of an exoplanet atmosphere

Eat another half of a pie. It might help.

Windows Subsystem for Linux now packaged as a Microsoft Store app

They're not pushing enough to the Store.

I would like Windows Update to only make security updates.

The rest of their bullshit I don't need, and would prefer it to be housed in the Store so as to not pollute my PC with stuff I don't want, don't need and couldn't care less for. Eh, Cortana ?

'Pig butchering' romance scam domains seized and slaughtered by the Feds

5 people lost $10 million ?

That's an average of $2 million per person.

A far cry from the excuse that poor people invest in crypto because they can't get a loan to invest in housing.

Also, you're on a dating platform and, instead of angling to get invited for dinner, the person you're talking to starts mentioning money and investments ?

And you fork over the cash without even meeting in person ?

Damn, stupid is always managing to set the bar lower.

DraftKings gamblers lose $300,000 to credential stuffing attack

"only about 15 percent of people use strong and unique passwords"

So that means that 85% of Internet users are ruining the experience for everyone else.

Well I'm sorry, but I'm part of the 15% and I'll be damned before I allow any website to have my biometric data for security.

Not until they either 1) prove that they cannot be hacked (yeah, right), or 2) tell me how I can change my fingerprints.

Intel reveals pay-to-play Xeon features with software-defined silicon

Re: Nothing new here

Mainframes and servers are very different beasts.

Mainframes have always been tailored to customer needs, and they have always been very expensive. That is why servers took off in the first place - you could have a server for a pittance (compared to a mainframe) and their power, reliability and feature set has never stopped growing.

Now, Intel is trying to shoehorn a subscription model to its line of servers.

Good luck with that.

FAA asks for vendor feedback on $10b tech contract

I don't get it

So, only off-the-shelf software and no additional development ?

I guess that means that Air Traffic Control software is shrinkwrapped now, and that accounting software is installed pre-configured to your needs. That's nice.

So, all you really need to do is get Office 365 licensed across all your PCs and you're good to go, right ?

Bollocks.

There isn't a company in the world that use Salesforce out of the box (let's not even think about SAP). There is no company using Excel that doesn't have at least half of its business-critical data lying around in Excel files of various complexity. All those files are regularly touched up to respond to changing business decisions - touched up by people who most likely have no training and learned on the spot how to use Excel formulas. If you're using a mainframe, you are developing/maintaining software every day.

Proposing a contract for software with zero development included just means that you're going to have to propose another contract for development, or beg the supplier to "help" you configure and tailor whatever software you bought to your needs.

And that'll likely cost more than if it came along with the procurement contract.

Software company wins $154k for US Navy's licensing breach

"Bitmanagement [..] disabled the copy protection software on BS Contact Geo"

And that was the beginning of the problem.

You bought X number of installs ? You get X number of licenses.

You want to install more ? Buy more licenses.

As much as I would love to rip on the US Navy on this occasion, it's more of a global administrative issue. Administration is very picky about what the peons that it controls do, very much less on what happens inside its own walls.

So don't go and give them any slack. They get what they pay for and no more.

Watchdog warns UK health data platform could damage patients' trust

Be on the safe side : go ahead and protest pre-emptively.

Besides, if it ain't happening now, it'll happen later.

Those board positions don't fill themselves, you know.

Locked out of Horizon Europe, UK commits half a billion to post-Brexit research

"the UK remains open to association"

Oh, isn't that nice.

Unfortunately, it's the UK that pushed for a rule that excludes non-EU members from getting EU funding. So yeah, go ahead and blame the EU for not wanting to "cooperate". The EU is just using the rules it has, rules that the UK is more than partially responsible for.

And, since you're no longer part of the EU, you can't go and have the rule changed.

But you've taken back control, so all is well, right ?

Microsoft's attempts to harden Kerberos authentication broke it on Windows Servers

Another brilliant demonstration of Borkzilla testing procedures

Oh, and "engineers were trying to resolve the problem".

How nice of them to worry after the fact.

Re: Word to the wise

Yeah, it would be nice, but don't count on it.

France says non to Office 365 and Google Workspace in school

Re: You can't sell for less than cost in France

Yeah, at least that's the theory.

IIRC, OVH customers who had paid for redundant hosting in different locations had no issues.µ

It's only the small fry who thought they didn't need it who caught flat-footed when the fire broke out.

Serendipitous discovery nets security researcher $70k bounty

Booz Allen

Booz.

Aptly named. Apparently, they have a rather drunken approach to operational data security.

Are those the same clowns who employed some guy who's Office version was hacked and not registered ?

Here's an idea, Booz : stop putting all your data into easily-accessible Excel files and use a real database with proper access controls.

Oh, sorry, silly me, that would mean work.

US Supreme Court asked if cops can plant spy cams around homes

Just one question

The ACLU wants a warrant to be served for installing police cameras on utility poles.

My question : to who do they serve the warrant ?

When the police have a warrant to investigate a house or an appartment, they serve it to the occupant of said habitation. That's normal.

So, who gets to see that warrant when it's a utility pole ? The mayor ? The inhabitants 100 meters around the utility pole ?

Former Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes sentenced to 11 years in prison

"His sentencing is scheduled for December 7, 2022"

So, they'll both be behind bars for XMas.

Boo hoo.

iFixit stabs batteries – for science – so you don't have to

Interesting video

Now, can we get back to the Good Ol' Days ^TM where you could replace the battery in your "smart"phone ?

Boffins are studying Martian clouds to avoid another Opportunity episode

Re: Please correct the glaring inaccuracy

The ISS not even out of Earth's atmosphere, and what we are sending to the Moon is our fault (and it likely wouldn't survive on the lunar surface anyway).

Every bit of life we know of depends on Earth. That is fact.

Which is why it is scientifically a monumental thing if ever we discover even the smallest of bacteria somewhere else - anywhere else.

World's richest man posts memes as $44b Twitter acquisition veers off course

By my calculation, it just has.

Multi-tasker Musk expects to reduce time at Twitter, seek another leader

"a CEO will be hired"

Good luck finding someone stupid enough to take the fall for you.

Windows 10 – a 7-year-old OS – is still having problems with the desktop and taskbar

"The latest fix comes after a number of other problems were resolved this week"

Ah, Borkzilla.

Seven years into The Last Windows Ever and not only is it not the last, but you have four different versions of it running on customer PCs and they all have endless bugs to correct.

One might wonder if the Development department is not introducing new bugs just for job security.

Re: Maybe it's time for M$ to shitcan half its workforce as per the current trend?

Shhh.

You don't want to tempt the beast into saying "hold my beer".

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.