Posts by Pascal Monett

Go ahead, be rude. You don't know it now, but it will cost you $350,000

Failed as a manager

First of all, he failed to notice which customer he was talking to, or didn't care.

Second, as a manager, you do not immediately defend anything. You get the customer's side of the story, then you tell said customer you'll call back. Then you go get the recording of the call and listen to it with the helldrone.

THAT is when you can decide to defend the guy, or, as it should have been in this case, drag him over the grill, then call the customer back and be all sweet and helpful and replace the doggone drive.

He deserved to lose that contract.

Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes's arguments for new trial deemed spurious – just like her tech

There's another choice ?

It's a baby. There's every chance that it can get adopted.

People like babies when they want to adopt a child.

Adopting a teenager is just asking for trouble.

Seems like she'll be right at home - except no longer on the top rung of the ladder.

Musk sows more Twitter chaos, now with Official policy snafu

"Please note that Twitter will do lots of dumb things in coming months"

Well duh, with His Muskness at the helm, we're expecting that.

Look! Up in the sky! Proof of concept for satellites beaming energy to Earth!

Re: Mad dogs and Englishmen

The article clearly states that, standing at the equator, you get blasted by four times that amount of energy.

There doesn't seem to be much economy denial going on there right now.

Re: You also get the problem ....

Nice idea, but I'm guessing that beaming energy from a geostationary orbit would require an order of magnitude in tightening the beam so as to not to have a 200km-wide reception area.

If said satellite is is low Earth orbit, it's likely a lot easier to hit a (relatively) small region on the ground.

But you're right, it is also very much more at risk of getting shredded by space junk.

Windows breaks under upgraded IceXLoader malware

"The emails contain a ZIP file"

Once again, thwarting this attack is just a question of NOT CLICKING ON ATTACHMENTS FROM SOMEONE YOU DON'T KNOW.

How many centuries is it still going to take to get the message through ?

Musk sells $3.95 billion in Tesla shares, paid eleven times more for Twitter

"It no longer publishes monthly data on the number of active users it has"

That, in itself, speaks volumes.

It clearly means that the numbers aren't good and they're being hidden so that people can't see just how bad they are.

This ancient quasar may be the remains of the first-gen star that started us all

"the so-called Population III stars"

Why do they do things backwards here ?

If it's one of the earliest stars, it should be a Population I star and our Sun should be part of the Population III category.

Twitter begs some staff to come back, says they were laid off accidentally

I feel largely close enough to the front row from here, thank you very much.

Europe wants Airbnb and pals to cough up rental property logs

It had to happen

That being said, I wonder exactly how precise those reports are going to be.

Not giving out any specifics, but I rented an RB&B flat once (a few years ago). It was such a nice place that I returned the year after that.

At that point, I had the landlord's phone number. Guess what ? He told me that, instead of going through the website, I could just call him to rent and, if it worked out, he'd give me 10% off (paid in cash because duh).

I'm guessing I'm not the only one who has that kind of agreement that completely bypasses any control.

Oh, look: More malware in the Google Play store

"Well over 50 percent .."

That, to me, says that there's well over 30% that did.

We're not out of the woods yet.

"before adding the malware back in a future update"

So how is it that said developper is not completely banned ?

He cannot say that he didn't do it on purpose.

Catching a falling rocket with a helicopter more complex than it sounds, says Rocket Lab

Then why don't they just stick with Plan B ?

This helicopter nonsense was stupid from the start and is starting to look like just an enormous waste of resources - with additional risk to the helicopter crew.

Boeing's Starliner launch pushed back again... to April 2023

"visiting spacecraft traffic at the space station"

Yeah, because there are so many spacecraft visiting the station these days . . .

US chip industry worried it may lose out to rivals over China ban

"some US companies are alarmed at the amount of revenue they may lose"

Oohh, money is starting to talk.

This is going to get interesting.

Elon Musk reportedly outlines horrible Twitter layoff process

"Twitter Complaint Hotline Operator"

I'm sorry, aren't you supposed to be managing Tesla 40 hours per week already ? Minimum ?

Oh, silly me, that's for the peons (aka everyone but you).

But really, hotline operator ?

Do you really think anyone's going to buy that bullshit ?

Well, at least you might have done one good thing for Twitter : kill it.

Re: Some people go to car races to see the accidents

You don't need to be on Twitter to see it crash.

Multi-factor auth fatigue is real – and it's why you may be in the headlines next

"sometimes the attacker will pose as part of the organization's IT staff"

Like that should work. You're part of my IT ? Then you don't need my access codes.

It's like the time, way back when, when I got a call from "my bank". After a minute of droning on about a security check, the guy asks me for my credit card number.

I said : "What ? Why are you asking me for my credit card number ? You are working in my bank, so you don't need me to tell you."

Then I hung up.

AMD’s latest, greatest Radeon graphics card $600 cheaper than Nvidia’s top RTX 4090

Re: 68 Billion Colours ?

Indeed.

I think we were told, way back when color monitors existed and the first high-end graphics cards were born, that 16.8 million is "True Color".

This is the important bit for those who can't follow the link :

"For a display to fool the eye into seeing full colour, 256 shades of red, green and blue are required; that is 8 bits for each of the three primary colours, hence 24 bits in total. However, some graphics cards actually require 32 bits for each pixel to display true colour, due to the way in which they use the video memory – the extra 8 bits generally being used for an alpha channel (transparencies)."

So now I get it. The graphics card is no longer bothering with just 256 shades + transparency. Instead of using 8 bits per RGB value, it is now using 12 bits for every color.

12 bits gives up to 4095 values, raise that to the third power and you get 68 billion.

I doubt the eye is going to see much difference though.

China reminds world shock and ore can hurt tech supply chains

An interesting game of tug-of-war has started

Thanks to Trump and his stupidity, China has finally woken up to the fact that it has most of the resources everybody else wants.

China didn't really care about the tariffs, it wasn't the one paying them and it had barely an impact since the USA makes nothing and imports everything, so it was just the consumer that got shafted.

Now China is making sure everyone understands that it is holding the cards. Electronics depend on China at this point in time, and even if rare earths are hardly that rare, it'll take years before the rest of the world can ramp up to no longer depend on China.

Years that those fabs being built in states with the least amount of water won't have.

Tablet, Chromebook shipments come crashing down

"We firmly believe"

Well I firmly believe that the guarantee period for something that I buy should start on the day I bought it, and not on the day it left the factory.

We have a fundamental disagreement there, Mr Reith.

SpaceX's Falcon Heavy rocket launches after three-year hiatus with secret US sats

Re: five million pounds of thrust

It's also 2547.24 great white sharks of thrust, if that helps.

Minecraft's 'first luxury goods collection' features real-world $3,000 Burberry coat

"one of the most iconic fashion brands in the world"

Oh, you mean Gucci ?

Because Burberry is rated 18th here.

Google stops enforcing Play store payment rules in India

Thank you India

Now all we need is for every other country to fine Google for $250 million and we might get the PlayStore fees under control.

Ritz cracker giant settles bust-up with insurer over $100m+ NotPetya cleanup

"a stolen and publicly leaked NSA exploit"

Thank you, NSA, for your contribution to criminal organizations everywhere.

Putin must be laughing his ass off.

Meanwhile, instead of suing Zurich, Mondelez should sue Washington DC.

And, while I'm at it, there should be a law stating that a company that holds more than one brand should have its name on the packaging of every product it sells.

That way, people will know who it is they're buying from.

Two Scotts among volunteers helping NASA to track Artemis mission

Re: waste of money

Oh that stupid argument again.

I'm tired of posting links to the contrary. Go and educate yourself if you have the brains.

After spate of delays, Intel promises Sapphire Rapids Xeons for early 2023

"the delay would narrow Intel's 'leadership window' "

Intel has no more leadership window.

PR bullcrap is all very nice in announcements to the public and to investors, but the fact is that AMD, the once-eternal underdog, has taken first place in the technology race.

Intel is now running behind.

It's nice to see a change at the top.

Kioxia warns of potential cost of US chip policy over China

Re: an over centralized power in Xi surrounded by weak "Yes" men

I'm guessing you could replace Xi by Putin and that sentence would pretty much apply as well.

UK facing electricity supply woes after nuclear power stations shut, MPs told

I don't find that amusing at all.

The Greenies in Germany have been very vocal about nuclear for the past fourty years, talking about pollution and keeping our planet clean, and now they don't even squeak when new coal plants are being built ?

Fucking hypocrites.

Thorium reactors can use "used" nuclear reactor fuel in addition to Thorium, and they produce comparatively little waste which lasts vastly less long.

On top of that, they do not need active surveillance because, if the reaction gets too hot, the salt plug melts and all the reactive material just drops into retaining pans. The reaction stops automatically.

All you need to do after that is wait for the existing matter to cool down, put in a new plug, scoop it all up and start over (of course, I am aware that this is a largely oversimplified version of reality, but I'm not a nuclear scientist, nor even an engineer).

The thing is, nobody wants to do Thorium reactors because everyone wants to get the Plutonium that EPR reactors make, to make more bombs.

We have more than enough bombs.

Let's get back to making civilization function.

Can gamers teach us anything about datacenter cooling? Lenovo seems to think so

"you'd run out of power before your rack is half full"

Okay, for me that begs the question : how many 1U units can a rack hold ?

Because if 2KW units are put in a 42KW rack, it should hold at least 21 of them.

But if 21 units is less than half the rack's capacity, that would mean that a rack can hold in excess of 42 units.

Did I get that right ? How tall are those racks anyway ?

Spooky Pillars of Creation snap reveals a dark side

Agreed. That first image makes me think of two monsters with giant mouths and tiny arms lunging at their prey somewhere off-focus.

Google kills forthcoming JPEG XL image format in Chromium

Yeah but, Chrome is for market dominance.

Google will never let that go.

Re: This is bad.

This cjxl tool, is it recent ?

Don't use GitHub, don't know how to check and the various version posts don't have a posted date.

Because, if cjxl is recent, or at least more recent than unicode, then it is a bloody shame they can't handle it.

NASA details totally doable, not science fiction plan for sending Mars rocks to Earth

Here's hoping that it will work out

The difficulties in landing anything on Mars is demonstrably non-negligeable - and that is just for stuff that was never meant to take off and come back.

This time, they want to send a robot that not only has to land intact, but must also rejoin the rover, extract the sample tubes, store them safely, and then take off and come back to Earth.

And all of that, practically on its own.

The difficulty of this mission is exponentially higher. If the engineers manage to pull this off, that will be one hell of a feather in their cap.

Russia says Starlink satellites could become military targets

Re: Russia is bluffing

He's already been very publicly humiliated by Ukraine, which didn't just roll over when Russian troops came to invade. What a surprise.

70 years of NATO doctrine stated that the Russian army was a formidable adversary. Six months of Ukraine says they're incapable of anything but retreating and waiting for General Winter.

It would seem that Putin has let the Russian army languish in 1970. He doesn't have the means to meaningfully harm any satellite constellation, either militarily or financially.

But let's cut to the chase : space will become a battlefield, because there are just too many selfish pricks in positions of power that cannot resist doing that.

For its big comeback, Intel needs to spend money – and it's making less and less of it

Re: Investment

Totally agree.

How can you not be happy that the CEO has a solid plan to get back to profits ?

Yes, it will take some time and your revenues will decline, but do you prefer that the company just fold right away ?

Investors. Worse than beancounters.

Gelsinger takes ax to Intel after chip sales slump, profit nosedives

CEO Pat Gelsinger

Was that a picture of him on stage ?

Is there an unwritten rule that says that now, all CEOs on stage must dress like their teenage son ?

Why isn't he wearing a suit ?

He's the CEO of a company that brought in $79 billion in 2021.

Steve Jobs is dead. Wear a suit.

Origins of mysterious marsquake settled: It was a meteoroid what done it

Impeccable timing

So Mars has protected Earth from at least one asteroid impact, and Bruce Willis can rest easy for a while longer.

Now, I'm guessing that an asteroid that's only 0.54 brontosauri wide is kind of difficult to detect beyond the orbit of Mars, but doesn't this mean that, when Musk will be living on Mars, he's going to need to have some form of asteroid alert system ?

And now I've just realized : on Mars you'll never see a shooting star.

Apple exec confirms iPhones will switch to USB-C because 'we have no choice'

"the company will follow the [EU]'s requirement for mobile devices to use USB-C by 2024"

Of course they will.

If they want to continue making money in the EU.

Sometimes, corporate behemoths don't have the last word.

I like that.

IBM India tells employees they can moonlight – but only for good causes, with permission

"cheating – plain and simple."

Maybe if you paid your employees a proper salary they wouldn't need to go find another job.

So who's cheating ?

It's 2023, let's check in with the metaverse... Nope, still doesn't exist

"using NFTs to enable access to exclusive customer experiences and perks"

Well that's me absolutely not interested.

Purpleurchin cryptocurrency miners spotted scouring free GitHub, Heroku accounts

Seems like a lot of thought went into something that doesn't have a great return.

It's a shame that some people employ so much intelligence to do such selfish things.

Google's Alphabet to review every project after $6bn decline in profits

Oh, shareholders are demanding results

I am absolutely devastated for them. Those poor billionnairs who are being deprived of 0.1% of the revenue they might have expected.

Please tell me where to send my wreath.

Twitter's most valuable users are ghosting the platform

"the world's richest man"

Why does he need to borrow money ?

2023: The year SK Hynix expects profit-whacking dip to end, and 238 layer RAM to debut

"Our plan is to mass produce 238 layer by 2023."

238 layers ?

I'm missing something. There can't be 238 layers. It must be some technical 2-3-8 or something like that.

Finance watchdog warns of long-term risk Big Tech poses to competition

"understanding the impact of Big Tech on industry competition"

Oh, great.

It's only been 30 years or so, nice to see that Administrative Time is waking up.

Government IT provider UKCloud goes into liquidation

Re: I don't get it

Local providers can guarantee that your data stays local.

Amazon & co may say so, but you only have their word for it and, personally, their word isn't really enough.

UK.gov finds billions in cash for big data contracts

"We will ensure that data can be leveraged"

How reassuring.

Everyone and their dog wants to "leverage" my data.

Let's just say that I hope they didn't forget about data security.

I'm sure we'll find out soon enough.