* Posts by Pascal Monett

19055 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Apr 2007

Forget the climate: Steep prices the biggest reason EV sales aren't higher

Pascal Monett Silver badge

Hydrogen sounds like a nice idea, but as usual, when dreams hit reality the truth gets ugly.

And, in case you wish to dismiss just one voice raising concerns, here's another.

One thing is for sure, if hydrogen is indeed the chosen future, once again we're going to need nuclear to make it happen.

Japan lacks the expertise for renewed nuclear power after Fukushima

Pascal Monett Silver badge
Stop

"an intermediary power source until the wider adoption of renewables like wind and solar"

No. Just no.

Wind and solar are stopgaps at best. They're unreliable, don't produce enough energy and they create spikes on the grid.

If we are to replace all ICE vehicles with electrical ones, the only power source that can provide the energy to do so reliably is nuclear.

That does not mean that we need to continue with the dangerous reactor needing constant surveillance that we have now. Nuclear can ba safe, especially if we push for Thorium reactors which we should.

But nuclear will not be intermediary. It is the only future.

OneDrive back on its feet, but ongoing Skype credit problem hasn't gone away

Pascal Monett Silver badge

"I feel like I'm having an aneurysm with OneDrive being down"

No, you had your aneurysm when you chose to use One Drive.

Cops chase Tesla driver 'dozing' with Autopilot on

Pascal Monett Silver badge

"whether the car has an in-cabin camera"

Yeah, like I'm going to buy a car that not only records everything I do and when and where I drive at what speed, but also be spied on by an actual in-car camera.

Sure.

Pascal Monett Silver badge

Intelligent people usually can.

Intel: Please buy these new 13th-Gen CPUs, now with 24 cores

Pascal Monett Silver badge
Coat

Re: We are not as stupid as you think

Famous last words

NASA boss says US may lose latest space race with China

Pascal Monett Silver badge

"the next two years were crucial for gaining a foothold on the Moon"

And ?

If I recall correctly, the Moon is a rather large body (as far as moons go). There's enough space for more than two, unless you're of the "everything is mine" mentality.

The real problem is going to be that, just like petrol on Earth, water is a finite resource on the Moon. It had better be managed better than the Colorado River, else there will be no long-term presence of Man on the Moon.

Non-binary DDR5 is finally coming to save your wallet

Pascal Monett Silver badge

Re: Let's get rid of this 1 GB = 1024 x 1024 x 1024 nonsense too then

Nonsense ?

It looks like you have a brilliant career in marketing waiting for you.

Meanwhile, until you redefine the byte as having ten bits, what you want won't happen.

Computing's big question for 2023: How many more questions can we endure?

Pascal Monett Silver badge
Pint

Amen

And with this brillliant article, I wish you all a Happy New Year.

May the best of 2022 be the worst of 2023.

Miniature nuclear reactors could be the answer to sustainable datacenter growth

Pascal Monett Silver badge

Re: What waste

I would love to believe you.

Could you source your argument to make it something other than just your opinion ?

Nexperia calls in the lawyers to save Welsh chip fab deal

Pascal Monett Silver badge

ASML

It was very interesting to learn that this company is the only one in the world to make the equipment that actually makes chips.

Intel, AMD, TSMC, Samsung et al, they all use ASML tools to make their chips.

So cutting China - or anyone else - from accessing ASML tech is basically freezing them where they are in the tech tree.

Not yet a death knell but, as far as militay stuff is concerned, close enough.

An IT emergency during a festive visit to the in-laws? So sorry, everyone, I need to step out for a while

Pascal Monett Silver badge

It always is.

It's disheartening to witness the sheer amount of families who just can't keep their shit together for one day in the year.

TSMC ramps up 3nm chip baking at Taiwan plants

Pascal Monett Silver badge
Stop

Oh come on

"TSMC is drawing comparisons to its N5 process, which is getting on in age, having been deployed in products for more than two years now"

Two years and it's already "getting on" in age ? Really ?

You are aware that Intel is still selling Pentium CPUs, right ? Now that is "getting on" in age.

Let's avoid pushing the hamster wheel even faster, shall we ?

NASA may tap SpaceX to rescue ISS 'nauts in Soyuz leak

Pascal Monett Silver badge

Re: Makes you wonder what the entire financial world is for

That's easy. The entire financial world is for pointing out the Next Big Opportunity for the Big Guys to make even more trillions of dollars.

New York gets right-to-repair law – after some industry-friendly repairs to the rules

Pascal Monett Silver badge
Mushroom

"consumers should be able to easily fix the devices they rely on in a timely fashion"

How nice and reassuring.

So, when are you going to pass a bill that actually allows that ?

Intel settles to escape $4b patent suit with VLSI

Pascal Monett Silver badge

"investigate the validity of the company's patents"

Um, could someone remind me who exactly granted those patents for the US in the first place ?

Aren't you supposed to "investigate" before granting the patent ?

Well done, USPTO, another brilliant demonstration of your competence.

Stolen info on 400m+ Twitter accounts seemingly up for sale

Pascal Monett Silver badge

Re: No pay, obvious

Especially since the fool is offering "exclusivity" to Musk, but already quoting tens of thousands of dollars to individual buyers.

Sorry bud, that's not how you do things. If you offer exclusivity to someone, you give a time limit. Only when that limit has passed do you start making quotes for everyone else.

This guy is a rank amateur.

Pascal Monett Silver badge

Re: Thanks, Elon

Come now, Twitter didn't wait for Elon to be awful.

TikTok confirms it tracked journalists' locations as part of leak investigation

Pascal Monett Silver badge

"with good reason, if these revelations are anything to go by"

The only good reason any government needs is that TikTok is not useful for conducting government business on government-owned and operated hardware.

That TikTok kowtows to Beijing is irrelevant to the issue.

Pascal Monett Silver badge

How can you be open and honest if you're using secret laws ?

The only reason we know about the NSA and its egregious abuse of privacy is because of the sacrifice Snowden made.

There is nothing open, much less honest, about how the NSA has grafted itself into everything "Made in USA" (and abroad).

$69b Activision deal totally helps gamers and saves them money, says Microsoft

Pascal Monett Silver badge
Windows

"$69B Activision deal totally helps " . . . Microsoft

If anyone thinks that The Board at Borkzilla gives a flying fart about gamers I have a bridge to sell them.

You don't spend $66 billion to improve gamers' lives. You do that to increase revenue and do "your duty" to the shareholders.

I don't think that Borkzilla is going to slowly push all those franchises towards the XBox descendants (although I can't see any reason why it wouldn't), but I fail to see what benefit it will do to me.

Competition is supposed to be good, or so I've been told, and this move severely reduces competition.

So, somebody please give me reason to think positive about this (not holding my breath).

Crypto craziness craps out – and about time too

Pascal Monett Silver badge
Trollface

About time indeed

I have to say that I've been waiting for this to happen for a long while.

I'm sure there will still be pundits hyping Whatevercoin and blockchain for the foreseeable future ; it's hard to cook the goose when the feathers are so soft - or something like that.

But the fact is that everyone with half a brain can now sit back and run down the checklist of everyone they know who's been singing blockchain praises and wait for the "oh shit" face.

Get the popcorn and start taking notes. This is a time-limited event and you don't want to miss out !

Icon for my "told you so" face -->

Management of UK govt's £158b property estate held back by failed IT project

Pascal Monett Silver badge

So they wasted £2 million

Well, it looks like there's room for Oracle (or SAS) to hoover up a cool £50 million over five years, assorted with all the usual promises and below-par delivery.

Oh wait, I was confused with IBM.

Oracle delivers, it's only after delivery that it bleeds you dry in licencing costs.

Tencent CEO Pony Ma reportedly bemoans internal corruption, inefficiency

Pascal Monett Silver badge

So, a Chinaman moaning about corruption in China

What is the world coming to ?

It is a well-known fact that, if you as a Westerner wish to create a company in China, you'd better have a nice stack of brown envelopes at the ready, otherwise official approval is curiously going to take much, much longer to be obtained. As in, until you get a clue and start greasing the wheels.

This, however, is the first I've ever heard of a Chinese national railing against such an entrenched habit. Maybe some good will come of it, who knows ?

Tesla driver blames full-self-driving software for eight-car Thanksgiving Day pile up

Pascal Monett Silver badge

"ahead of the game in introducing such code to the streets"

Yeah, well personally I'd appreciate if Tesla could fall behind in the game.

And it should change the Full Self Driving name to If You Dare.

Micron plans staff decimation as demand dips to Great Recession levels

Pascal Monett Silver badge

What ?

"when using standard accounting practices"

When you're not using "standard" accounting practices, you're using "non-standard" practices, also known as "cooking the books", a practice which should and will land you in jail if you proceed long enough, so what's the point of that part of the sentence ?

FCC calls for mega $300 million fine for massive US robocall campaign

Pascal Monett Silver badge

Re: Dropped by 99%...

It's a good start though.

FTX CTO and Alameda Research CEO admit fraud, pair 'cooperating' with Feds

Pascal Monett Silver badge

Reminds me of a saying

Something to do with rats and sinking ships . . .

Pascal Monett Silver badge

Re: That must hurt

It's just another proof of the Dunning-Kruger effect in full swing.

When you're too stupid to know that you're stupid, you end up on the wrong end of the plank.

They can thank their lucky stars that they weren't dealing with Russian Mafia. That would have put a serious limit on their life expectancy.

Apple accused of censoring apps in Hong Kong and Russia to maintain market access

Pascal Monett Silver badge

Not really a surprise

Apple only takes a stand for freedom and justice when its CEO does not run the risk of ending up in jail.

In China, he would.

So he kowtows to Beijing and, in return, gets to rake in the dough.

Conscience ?

That's for those who can be fired.

It's time to retire 'edge' from our IT vocabulary

Pascal Monett Silver badge

Re: What exactly is the edge?

In my experience, it's a piece of kit with vastly overblown resources that is being repurposed for things it was never initially supposed to take care of but, because it has all this CPU and RAM, it now can.

I find it curious that, now that fiberoptic connections are almost everywhere in the business arena, stuff with more resources that they ever should have are also popping up everwhere.

It would have been vastly more efficient to have those "edge" resources back when a 1Mbps line was considered the height of tech, but here we are.

Lawyer mom barred from Rockettes show by facial recognition tech

Pascal Monett Silver badge

"MSG's use of facial recognition"

Apparently, MSG is not using facial recognition for the security of its guests, but for its own.

How is that legal ?

Godfather malware makes banking apps an offer they can’t refuse

Pascal Monett Silver badge
Mushroom

"a malicious application hosted on the Google Play Store"

Thank God Google scans all apps it hosts, right ?

Being one of the 1% sucks if you're a Rackspace user

Pascal Monett Silver badge

Rackspace Chief Product Officer Josh Prewitt

With a friend like that handling corporate communications, who needs enemies ?

Oh, you're aware that Rackspace has lost the trust of its customers ? No kidding. I'll wager that Rackspace lost a lot more trust when you openly stated that it's "just 1%" of your customers that have been impacted.

And I'm thrilled that you're committing to a full disclosure - when the time is right. When you're ready to. In the fullness of time, as Sir Humphry would say. Except that that is not how it's done when you want to show that you're actually committed to transparency and want to demonstrate that you're doing everything you can to get everyone back on their feet.

Vague promises of "the vast majority" is just a load of hot air, and you're blowing very hard right now with nothing to show for it.

Refrigeration failure at Hong Kong datacenter takes out Alibaba Cloud and others

Pascal Monett Silver badge

"the vast majority of customers" . . .

. . believe what Marketing told them : that The CloudTM was a magical place that took care of all their worries for next to nothing and they could Just Use It patent pending.

Of course, the monthly bills should have been a wake-up call, but people are like that. They prefer to believe the hype even when the ugly truth is staring them in the face.

Microsoft patent eyes ads in streaming online games

Pascal Monett Silver badge
Mushroom

"options that would provide a richer gaming experience"

I can think of a dozen things that would enrich my gaming experience, but ads are nowhere in that list.

And since when are ads the answer to "immersive, personalized content" ?

Just take the marketing department out behind the chemical shed and shoot the lot of them.

Eurozone plans to formalize passenger data, improve security

Pascal Monett Silver badge

Re: Border, what border?

Yeah, but it's all about catching criminals.

You know, the guys who traffic women, drugs and weapons and, in order to do so, have to spend hours in airports buying multiple tickets in cash to try and muddy the waters.

Maybe a quicker way to catch them would be to track who is buying more than one ticket for different destinations on the same day and check on those people.

An honest person is not going to book a flight for Berlin and Rome on the same day in the same timeframe. A top-level marketdrone might need to go to Berlin in the morning and Rome in the afternoon, but that will likely be rare.

OneCoin co-founder pleads guilty to $4 billion fraud

Pascal Monett Silver badge

"As Ignatova allegedly put it in an email to Greenwood"

Why did this stuff need to be put in writing ? Didn't the two shysters know what they were doing, or was the lady giving an ABC to a newbie ?

It baffles me how criminals seem to universally love documenting their crimes to one another. Oh, look how smart we are, we're pulling this scam on stupid people with money. Ha Ha, life is fun, isn't it ?

Sure, real fun. Right up until the prosecution pulls out that email destroying your defense based on "not my fault, Your Honor, I didn't know this was going on".

In any case, the smart one obviously has the skirt in this case. Though I'm willing to bet she's blonde now.

Elon Musk starts poll with one question: Should I step down as head of Twitter?

Pascal Monett Silver badge

Indeed he did.

It's just that the term is getting shorter, apparently.

BBC is still struggling with the digital switch, says watchdog

Pascal Monett Silver badge

To further your conclusion, I learned not long ago that France is dropping the TV tax that was in effect since forever.

For the French government to actually remove a tax is almost as groundbreaking as finding life on another planet.

Microsoft Teams: A vector for child sexual abuse material with a two-day processing time for complaints

Pascal Monett Silver badge

"will depend on whether those that make policy decisions are aware of what computers can do"

We're doomed.

Corporate execs: Get back, get back, to the office where you once belonged

Pascal Monett Silver badge

"they'll take a hardline approach and fire those that refuse to come back"

And we will take a hardline approach and document the names of companies that do so.

Good luck finding tech replacements . . .

Musk bans private-plane-tracking @Elonjet on Twitter, threatens legal action

Pascal Monett Silver badge
Stop

Re: I'm appalled

And I am appalled by the continued insistance to conflate this issue with privacy and personal attention.

What part of "it's the plane that's being tracked" do you not understand ?

What part of "the information is publicly available" goes above your head ?

We're not talking about some guy with a camera and an absurdly expensive telephoto lens climbing on top of a hill to snap pics of someone beside a private pool, we're talking about using official public data to record the whereabouts of a piece of equipment.

Climb down from your soapbox already, you're off-subject.

Pascal Monett Silver badge

Re: Crazies jumping around on the hood of your car

Alledgedly.

There is no proof provided as of now.

Malicious Microsoft-signed Windows drivers wielded in cyberattacks

Pascal Monett Silver badge
Megaphone

"it has suspended several third-party developer accounts that submitted malicious Windows drivers"

Hey Google ! Are you paying attention ?

Meta, Google, TikTok and friends sue California to block kids privacy law

Pascal Monett Silver badge
Flame

Interesting

It's slightly astonishing how, in the USA, any measure destined to legally protect children online is immediately met with ferocious resistance by corporations who, on any other subject, immediately spout things about "thinking of the children".

Limitation of Free Speech ? Violation of the First Amendment ? Really ?

What I conclude from all of this is that US corporations are perfectly willing to think of the children, as long as it doesn't hit their bottom line.

NIST says you better dump weak SHA-1 ... by 2030

Pascal Monett Silver badge
Trollface

Re: Are there woolly horses?

Do Llamas count ?

China reportedly bars export of homebrew Loongson chips to Russia – and everywhere else

Pascal Monett Silver badge

Yes, Putin is getting some weapons from Iran. It woud appear that the quality of said weapons leaves something to be desired.

That being said, Iran is going to get some useful battle-conditions data out of this, so it is entirely possible that their next generation of weapons be more efficient.

Pascal Monett Silver badge

Re: Israel's obstinance where Iran is concerned

I believe it is Iran being way more obstinate than Israel.

Iran is so hell-bent on annihilating Israel that it has even made its Arab neighbors tired of it.

The only thing Israel is being obstinate about is surviving. Can't blame them for that.

Pascal Monett Silver badge

I don't think they ever left that point of view.