Posts by Pascal Monett

Taser maker offers electric-shock drones to stop school shootings

Re: Causes

I'm sorry to contradict you, but shootings did not start in 90s. They started in 2000.

My opinion on that, as I have already pointed out in these hallowed pages, is that it is the access to Internet that started this whole sorry mess.

Before the Internet, the wackos felt alone, isolated. Without access to the Internet, they did not act on their pulsions because they did not know that other people thought like them.

When the Internet became readily available to the general public, these wackos suddenly discovered that there were a lot of other wackos out there, and they were encouraged to act on their pulsions.

And now here we are.

Personally, I'm glad to live in France, where this kind of nonsense is (almost) non-existant.

Re: the problem is violent people, not items

Wrong.

It has been proven that easy access to guns increases violence. It also increases suicides. If you have a gun, all you need is 5 minutes of dispair and boom. Without a gun, you have to go through the trouble of setting up a rope, or throwing yourself out the window, or swallowing all those pills. All of that takes time, time during which you can put yourself in question and delay the worst.

Those who talk about knives have never knifed anyone. Shooting someone is a video game, knifing someone is intensly personal and real.

Besides, if you reason that Humanity is the same just about everywhere, your argument falls down because, if violent people really were that violent, we'd have reports of knifings in all countries where gun control is in place and efficient.

We don't have those reports.

QED.

Re: One of the reasons so many Americans are pro-gun

No, it's because they're fucking stupid.

The USA needs to divert 10% of its military budget to schools and education.

EDUCATION.

It's the only thing that will avoid making Idiocracy a documentary.

Amazon’s Kindle bookstore to quit China

"Amazon’s decision should [not] be taken as a sign that foreign investment in China is waning"

So I'll wait for the list of all the multinationals based outside of China that are not investing (or outright pulling out) in China to make up my own opinion ?

Maybe if China stopped forcing foreign companies to consent to placing a Chinese national they don't control, investment would start flowing again ?

46 years after the UN proclaimed the right to join a union, Microsoft sort of agrees

"Our employees will never need to organize to have a dialogue with Microsoft's leaders."

No, of course not. They can go to their manager's office and be told to get back to work on their own.

Tech hiring freeze doesn't mean people won't leave

"The good big companies are overstaffed by 2x"

Where does that metric come from ?

Who has decided that "good" companies have twice as many employees as they need ?

Who are you to define how many employees a company needs ?

Companies are generally pretty good at defining their recrutement needs - they have to pay the salaries. I don't know of any private company that decides to hire two people for same job when one is enough. If they do hire a few too much, that gets pared down in the year that follows.

Government administrations, on the other hand, is an entirely different ball game.

Starlink's success in Ukraine amplifies interest in anti-satellite weapons

"the Chinese military sees a threat that it can't easily control or disable"

Yeah, that's a big problem when your government is entirely based on dictating what people are allowed to view or say.

OpenSea staffer charged with insider-trading of NFTs

Not a bad argument. Indeed, he should have just kept the money in those accounts to use it later. Buy a car from one account, a new house from another, etc.

As usual, it's greed that is their downfall.

Greed makes you stupid.

FBI, CISA: Don't get caught in Karakurt's extortion web

Another bunch of Russian miscreants

It's starting to look like invading Russia is something that should start being planned.

Atlassian: Unpatched years-old flaw under attack right now to hijack Confluence

What ?

7.18 is more recent than 7.4 ?

Is Atlassian using a countdown scheme on its version numbers ?

Tim Hortons collected location data constantly, without consent, report finds

Tim Hortons

"identify when the user was visiting a Tim Hortons competitor"

Even if I were to admit that this information could be interesting, what were they doing with it ? Charging more the next time the customer came to them ?

This is a clear violation of every moral rule that exists. Tim Hortons is a restaurant chain, not the NSA. Where their customers go is not Tim Hortons' business in any way, shape or form.

Tim Hortons. Another company on my personal blacklist (not that it matters).

Engineer sues Amazon for not covering work-from-home internet, electricity bills

$5 million

$4 million of which will go to the lawyers, the pennies will be distributed on a first-come, first-serve basis.

BSA kicks multiple holes in India's infosec reporting rules

Interesting

BSA drops Business to become just Software Alliance. Oh well, at least in this case their mumblings are useful. The Indian government is apparently in need of a crash course in business Internet.

Small nuclear reactors produce '35x more waste' than big plants

Re: even more safer to operate?

Ooh, congratulations, you managed to cite the three problems nuclear reactors have had - two of which were caused by human incompetence and one by an act of God compounded by human stupidity.

Well done.

Now, care to cite the problems of coal mining ?

How about mining accidents ?

Nuclear power is a lot safer than any of those, and when we finally get fusion there will be no more power problems.

Get your head out of your ass.

Dear Europe, here again are the reasons why scanning devices for unlawful files is not going to fly

If your wife is 16 years old I think you have a different problem.

IBM's self-sailing Mayflower suffers another fault in Atlantic crossing bid

I'm thrilled that the hull is not breached.

Apparently, if IBM was responsible for it, that boat would have sunk in the harbor at launch.

Electrical problems

And here I am thinking that electricity is not all that hard. A failed switch ? Did it get water on it or something ? How does a switch fail ? I'm supposing they didn't install the 30 cent version from Costco, so how did that happen ?

In any case, as I said before, the AI on that ship is learning that meatbags are useful things to have around.

AWS launches fresh challenges to on-prem hardware vendors

I know Cloud is salespoint

What I don't get is why established companies are so intent on putting their servers in the hands of a single-point-failure scenario (not talking about startups or one-man shops here).

Yes, your server can fail in your own server room, but when that happens, you have sysadmins and assorted underlings who are on the ball immediately and get to work fixing the problem. Status reports are a question of going to the server room and asking how's it going.

When you put your server in the hands of cloud giants, you are at the mercy of their availability in case something goes wrong and if they don't publish any info, phone calls won't give you more. You just have to sit on your hands and wait it out.

I really don't get the appeal of that.

Quantum computing startup probed in report, securities suit

Re: Is it wrong?

Don't panic just yet. Quantum computing isn't getting out of the lab any time soon, and we still don't know how to program the damn things yet.

Elon Musk orders Tesla execs back to the office

Careful. Microsoft could give it a shot.

Amazon not happy with antitrust law targeting Amazon

"some Democrat senators believed it all may backfire on them in the mid-term elections"

I'm sorry, are you making laws to protect US citizens, or are you making them to look good and get re-elected ?

I absolutely hate that kind of argument. Politics is not about getting re-elected (okay, it shouldn't be).

US ran offensive cyber ops to support Ukraine, says general

"they were lawful and complied with US policy"

Because of course he would say that.

Unfortunately, up to now, the US was bashing Russia for doing those sorts of things.

Now it would appear that the US has shot its moral leg in the foot. I'm not expecting the US Government to be bothered by that, though.

Metaverse privacy maturity lags enthusiasm for new virtual worlds

"not think of it in a bad way"

Sorry, but no, I'm thinking of it in a very bad way.

My medical data being intercepted by Joe Schmuck ? An invisible someone listening to my private conversations ? No thank you, I'll pass.

Where I am is something my phone reveals by necessity and I guess I'm okay with that. If that helps determine where traffic jams are, that is good I will agree. But Real Life^TM is pretty clear : if I'm having a conversation in a public place, then I am aware that anyone can listen (and I shape my words accordingly), whereas if I'm at home having a drink with a friend, my conversation is private and nobody else is privy to that.

Call me back when the Metaverse can handle that.

Immersion cooling no longer reserved for the hyperscalers, HPC

"it eliminates the need for air-conditioning units to cool servers"

I don't understand how you can say that.

Liquid cooling is just using a different medium - more efficient - to transport heat away from the microchips.

You still have to cool down the liquid and, in the absolute, you still have the same amount of heat to evacuate.

Liquid cooling is fine, but there will still be radiators. Maybe they'll be outside ?

Watch out for phishing emails that inject spyware trio

So, you're not opening an email in Excel

That sentence puzzled me. Even if you're using Outlook/Office365, you open mails in Word, not in Excel.

"an email arrives with an Excel file that contains malicious macros"

That is the proper sequence of events. You get a mail from someone you've never met, download the attachment and leave your brain dead while you double-click it and ignore all warnings.

Because of course I'm going to open this attachment from some random stranger I've never met. He sent me this file, it must be important. What's the worst that could happen ?

Oh.

UK opens up 'high-potential individual route' for tech worker immigration

Sure, blame Brexit

IR35 certainly has no impact, right ?

Scribble to app: Microsoft's Power Apps VP talks us through 'Express design'

Automating everything but the logic

So basically you've automated nothing.

I'm glad to know that you can make making a form a tad easier for non-programmers, but no application can perform any useful function if the person "scribbling" it can't imagine what he wants from it and how to get there.

So I imagine that this will be how manglement presents their bright ideas to actual programmers. "Here's the form I want, make a database out of it".

Well, I can live with that.

Logitech's MX Mechanical keyboard, Master 3S mouse

I have a G15

My home keyboard is the Logitech G15 and I love it. Keys are backlit, the clicky is subdued and tactile is simply marvellous.

The one issue I have is that Logitech retired its original keyboard management software, and the replacement is not aware of the 6 additional function keys nor the three profiles that I used to be able to use. Oh well.

VMware customers have watched Broadcom's acquisitions and don't like what they see

EMC, Dell and Broadcom - one of these does not go with the rest

IIRC, EMC was a data management company. It got bought by Dell, which is, of course, primarily a hardware company.

Broadcom is in the semiconductor industry. It is a completely different mindset. Broadcom does not do software, it does microchips. And, apparently, it is the kiss of death for every company it acquires.

I'm not very optimistic about VMware's future is what I'm saying. They might as well have been bought by IBM.

Oh well, someone else will come along and create a new virtual management landscape. Some day.

China’s top court calls for blockchain to record vast number of transactions

Blockchain does not make sense. This is just another ham-fisted bright idea to use "modern" technology to "solve" a problem that doesn't exist.

A government does not need a public ledger. It is itself the guarantee of proper handling of data.

The Bitcoin ledger is currently flirting with a size of 400GB. I am supposed to be able to use BitCoin to buy stuff. Do you think I'm going to be able to store a 400GB ledger on my smartphone to pay for my baguette ? I don't.

Am I supposed to have 400GB of data on my PC to order to pizza ?

Fuck that.

Blockchain instead of a server

And massive amounts of transactions too.

I look forward to reading about how long the lowly official needing to record something has to wait for the petabyte-sized ledger to update.

France levels up local video game slang with list of French terms to replace foreign words

That's an interesting way of putting things.

But don't worry, if Serenity is anything to go by, soon all Earthlings will be bilingual Chinese/English and there will be no other languages.

Well, maybe on Mars . . .

Now that is a fine example of administrative busybodies

Long ago I remember hearing that said Commission declared that "weekend" was to be replaced by "fin de semaine".

Yeah right. Everybody says weekend.

I'm guessing this new publication will only be important in the offices of those who wrote it.

Australian digital driving licenses can be defaced in minutes

Well let's face it : we're going 100% digital

Whether we like it or not.

Governments love it because control.

We'll just have to put up with it because sheeple. I'm just wondering if we won't end up with some other thing than a smartphone to prove our identity.

But of course, that's a ridiculous idea. After all, everyone has a smartphone or three, right ?

Quantum internet within grasp as scientists show off entanglement demo

"the quantum internet 'could become a secure communications network' "

One question : what does the NSA have to say about that ?

Re: Can you split photons into 3?

So, where is your PhD-level award-winning paper on this subject ?

Shanghai lockdowns to end, perhaps easing tech supply chain woes

Waiting for next week's news of the sudden surge in new COVID cases in Shanghai.

We've never even built datacenters using robots here on Earth

Lonestar Data Holdings

Proof that there are idiots that have way too much more money than sense.

Getting $5 million for spouting the idea of a datacenter on the Moon - at this point in time - means that we, as a civilization, are too rich for our own good.

That said, I have an excellent idea of a series of telescopes on the Moon, Mars and Ganymede. Anyone want to give me a few million to talk about it ?

BOFH: Where do you think you are going with that toner cartridge?

Yes, but it just so happens that the industry is relearning the value of putting money into storage in order to better manage supply chain shortages.

We'll have another talk about this in ten years or so.

You missed the troll icon (since we don't have a sarc icon).

Re: Too Often...

That's a ridiculous waste of resources.

What was wrong with just storing it ?

Re: Printer Maintenance Contracts

Nice tactic to never get another contract after that.

About half of popular websites tested found vulnerable to account pre-hijacking

Um, it's the password that is 24 characters, not the email.

And no, I don't use xkcd because, indeed, hackers can read it too. And I'm not going to tell you how I forge my passwrods because hackers can this too.

Trust me. My passwords have 192 bits of entropy.

Experts: AI inventors' designs should be protected in law

"Governments [..] should pass intellectual property laws that grant rights to AI systems"

No, no and no, governments definitely should not.

I believe judges are just going to roll their eyes and throw this stupidity out of court without a parachute.

How can one be in a position of academics and be so stupid ? Oh, I forgot. They're in academics. Reality is outside their window.

Even with the laws they propose their job has no reason to exist.

Talos names eight deadly sins in widely used industrial software

"Malicious USB devices"

Sorry, but I am less worried about that than I am worried about state-backed miscreants infiltrating and wreaking havoc from afar.

The rule is always the same anyway : once local access is possible, all bets are off and the system can easily be compromised. A malicious USB means some traitor has decided to usurp his position and authority in order to do evil. There are safeguards against that, but the best safeguard is treating your personnel properly and paying them fairly. If they work in a serious branch of industry, they should know the importance of their position and that should be sufficient.

Workday nearly doubles losses as waves of deals pushed back

Re: " Our products are not choices."

Indeed, quite a curious way to say something. Your products are not choices ? What are they then ? Mandatory ?

UK monopoly watchdog investigates Google's online advertising business

We're worried

"We're worried that Google may be using its position in ad tech to favour its own services to the detriment of its rivals, of its customers and ultimately of consumers"

Oh, so you're worried ? Well it's about bloody time. If Alphabet is today's 4th ranking company by value, it's not because it's been playing fair. Google has always played fast and loose with the rules, because it's Google that has made the rules. And now you're worried that Google might not have have established a fair and level playing field when there is nothing in the law that has given it the slightest incentive to do so ?

Duh.

Private companies do not government policy make.

Microsoft slows some hiring for Windows, Teams, and Office

"new hires in that division must first be approved by bosses"

As long as Borkzilla still refuses to have a Quality Control division, I couldn't care less.

This Windows malware uses PowerShell to inject malicious extension into Chrome

More of the usual

"ChromeLoader creates its scheduled task via injection into the Service Host (svchost.exe), using functionality from an imported Task Scheduler COM API"

Typical Borkzilla. More full of holes than Swiss cheese.