Posts by Pascal Monett

Microsoft tells admins to autoreview your Autopatch alerts or autolose the service

Are you kidding ?

Borkzilla is just putting the onus on you to know whether or not you should patch, aka business as usual.

Borkzilla has never put its money where its mouth is. it only ever puts your money where its mouth is.

Users slam SAP's public cloud and S/4HANA migration strategy

SAP

Is the poster child for "it works the way we want it" vs "it works the way the customers need it".

I'm curious to see who will win, the immensly weathly private company, or its Fortune 1000 customers.

I'm guessing that a single Fortune 1000 company can't hold a candle to the might of all them combined.

But that's just my guess.

Notorious stolen credential warehouse Genesis Market seized by FBI

Re: I disagree

Agreed, but the war on drugs is forgetting one little thing : the lessons of the Prohibition.

Therefor, they keep the war on, and keep the drugs illegal.

That's not the way it works. You want criminals out of the circuit ? Make whatever they sell legal. And controlled. And taxed.

Criminals hate taxes, so they leave. No soldiers required.

It's part of the marketing fluff that has already been shot through with a shotgun shell. To the idiots they say your transactions are entirely anonymous, but they are stored in a public ledger.

Those who can't add 2 + 2 go on to believe the hype. The rest are in marketing.

Feds seize $112m in cryptocurrency linked to 'pig-butchering' finance scams

Re: It's called Pig Butchering for a reason

Indeed. A "verification" that costs six figures ? And needs a "final" verification, also in six figures ? I'm sorry, wasn't your first verification good enough ?

But of course, by that point the mark is desperate and the scum have got him by the short and curlies. I'm just wondering how many more times they could have strung him along before he finally twigged to the fact that an actual investment bank would only charge you a fifty for just about any verification there can be.

And actual banks only verify once. The verdict of that verification is final, even if you don't like it.

It's just sad to see that someone who managed his life well enough to retire with over two million bucks still can't just kick back and live the good life without being greedy for more.

If I had that kind of money I'd retire today and not worry about money any more.

As defense tech goes commercial, does national security miss out?

Hmm

""the pace of change is so fast that controlling it at the institutional level is just not possible anymore"

Well, and this is just a thought, maybe the institutional level didn't need to hop on to the bandwagon ?

If the Government was still working on mainframe with dedicated workstations on amber or green CRTs, I'm guessing that hackers, Russian, Chinese, Nork or otherwise, would be having a much harder time getting in.

Oh, and those pesky defense consultants with unlicensed Office versions would too. And we wouldn't be hearing so much about how TikTok is being "banned".

Now, I'm not saying that no change would have been preferable. By all means replace the CRTs with monochrome LED displays and a 1GB/s Ethernet connection, by all means. And upgrade the mainframe, or replace it with an AS/400 for sure.

But you didn't really need to get Windows.

Virgin Obit: Launch company files for bankruptcy in US

What ?

"Chapter 11 is not a liquidation proceeding [..] this means continuing an expeditious sale process that maximizes value"

So, if I read that correctly, it's not a liquidation - it's a sale.

Oh, thank you for clarifying that.

When Google cost cutting goes molecular: Staples, sticky tape, and PC sweating

"Google will no longer provide staples and sticky tape at print stations in offices"

This begs the question : are staples and sticky tape a necessity ?

If so, then where will Google provide such necessities ?

Or is Google become a BYOS (Bring Your Own Staples) environment ?

China aims to pair J-20 stealth fighter with 'loyal wingman' battle drone

They did not sink the Bismarck.

They brought the torpedoes that crippled the Bismarck's steering.

With the Bismarck going around in circles, the allied forces closed in and sunk her with cannon fire, the traditional way.

But of course, if the Swordfish hadn't crippled her, the allied forces would likely have had a much harder time of it.

Defunct comms link connected to nothing at a fire station – for 15 years

"sometimes it's worth fixing something that ain't broke"

This was not a question of broke, this was a question of administrative bungling.

It's always good to take a sharp knife to administrative issues that nobody has a hand on. Sends the cockroaches scurrying when their comfy nest is disturbed.

Now the telco, on the other hand, might have been the subject of a review from the fire department, i.e. a stern reevaluation of its usefulness and an evaluation of possible replacement candidates (which are likely not numerous).

Then again, it's a fire department. Not like they can afford to have phone issues for a week (or ten).

China sticks national security probe into America's Micron

Slowly but surely

We are well on the path of finally getting our "we've always been at war with Eastasia".

Just a matter of time now . . .

School principal resigns after writing $100,000 check to Elon Musk impersonator

As we say in French : it's the exception that defines the rule :)

Virgin Orbit lays off 85% of staff as funding deal falters

Doesn't sound similar at all.

Virgin Origin is desperate to find a billionnaire to float its boat.

Twitter is desperate to get rid of the billionnaire sinking its boat.

"keeping 15 percent"

Lighthouse duties are fine, but those 15% had better start polishing their CVs now.

Leaked IT contractor files detail Kremlin's stockpile of cyber-weapons

"Google-owned Mandiant helped interpret the documents"

So that was the 5th intelligence agency. After the CIA, the NSA, the Energy Department and the FBI, I was wondering.

Oh, and now we know that Google has the data.

NHS Highland 'reprimanded' by data watchdog for BCC blunder with HIV patients

GMail allows you to recall a mail sent.

For about three seconds . . .

Honestly, if you are a major organization and still have, in this 3rd millenia, a mail server that blindly allows you to send CCs to more than a dozen mail addresses without a verification check or outright refusal without prior authorization, then I guess you have what you deserve.

It's been over a decade that we've all learned the hard way that Reply All should be practically banned, and sending mail to hundreds of external recipients at a time requires a process and overview that excludes any single operator.

But, as usual, the lesson still has to be learned the hard way.

Oh well, it's NHS. Par for the course, then. Carry on !

Pro-Russia cyber gang Winter Vivern puts US, Euro lawmakers in line of fire

"a category of scrappy threat actors"

So, like Scrappy Doo then ? Except even more despicable (and that's saying something).

Today's old folks set to smash through longevity records

"life expectancy in [the USA]"

It might improve the day you guys no longer have an entire supermarket aisle devoted to upteen flavors of potato chips.

Just a thought . . .

Re: Sshhhhh!!!!!

Always makes me laugh.

What's the point of raising retirement age when you can no longer get a job after 50 ?

So you want to integrate OpenAI's bot. Here's how that worked for software security scanner Socket

We are already so screwed

"Applying human analysis to the entire corpus of a package registry (~1.3 million for npm and ~450,000 for PyPI) just isn't feasible"

So the only thing the miscreants really need to learn is how to stay under a pseudo-AIs radar.

Simple ? Maybe not, but when they do get there, there will be plenty of time for mayhem before somebody twigs the coup and solves the problem. Then the miscreants will find another way.

Sword and shield, always.

Azure blunder left Bing results editable, MS 365 accounts potentially exposed

"to reduce the risk of future misconfigurations"

Because obviously Borkzilla cannot ignore that there will be future misconfigurations . . .

TikTok: Is this really a national security scare or is something else going on?

"Nations are one by one banning it from government-owned devices"

And ?

Where is TikTok useful on a governmental level ? Are we also going to go into a tizzy about how governments are banning Angry Birds on their PCs ?

Why is it sooo important to relay the fact that governmental institutions don't want TikTok on their hardware ? Are we also going to hear about how banks are banning TikTok ?

Of course not, banks already have their hardware locked down.

So the lesson is : governments don't know how to lock down their PCs.

Am I supposed to be reassured by that ?

Google (sort of) loses in Indian antitrust appeal

"50 instances [were] copied and pasted from a European ruling for similar charges"

Ooh, so not fair ! You're blaming us for the exact same thing this other guy is !

Um, how can I say this. If you are looking at two lawsuits on two different continents with the exact same charges, you need to rethink your position.

Like, from Not Guilty to Guilty.

Smugglers busted sneaking tech into China

Why should it ?

Intel isn't losing any money here, those CPUs were sold.

The NSA is freaking out, though.

This US national lab turned to AI to hunt rogue nukes

"helped law enforcement home in on targets and speed up investigations"

Yikes. How many investigations of this kind are there ?

Is there that much suspicious radioactive material being sent by snail mail these days ?

I'm sure that, with a trip to Putin's Russia and the application of a generous amount of dollars to a local general, you too can have your very own king-sized snowcone maker.

Diving DRAM prices are a problem not even AI can solve

"a great time to snag an SSD"

Hmm, now there's a good point. I'll have to keep on the lookout for that.

FTX cryptovillain Sam Bankman-Fried charged with bribing Chinese officials

Lock him up ? Completely agree.

The major difference between the OHSG and Biden is that Biden cooperated every step of the way. The asshole, on the other hand, lied every step of the way (as usual).

That's why nobody is talking about Biden's case any more. There's nothing more to say.

US cyber spymaster calls TikTok China's 'Trojan horse'

And, of all the sources of this protectionaism, it's the very agency that doesn't give a flying fig about privacy.

Talk about ironic . . .

Google again accused of willfully destroying evidence in Android antitrust battle

"an appropriate remedy for a later time"

I would say about ten trillion dollars.

I'm sure that that would make Alphabet pay attention.

Because if you don't deliver an uppercut, it will just be defined as cost of business.

Well sorry, but this should not be a cost of business. This should definitely cost you your business.

Microsoft enlarges its cockpit of Copilots to include security

Well thank you, Borkzilla

It's so nice of you to demonstrate once again that security is an afterthought for you.

US police have run nearly 1M Clearview AI searches, says founder

"Crimes Clearview has helped solve include murder"

Well that's nice.

So, how many murders, exactly ? How could they not have been solved by "traditional" police work ? And what is the threashold that makes this invasion of privacy acceptable ?

Jack Ma is back, and he has some feelpinions to share

"humans have a 'heart' "

Unfortunately, not all of them.

No 'decoupling' here: Apple, Samsung, and Qualcomm sing China's praises

But from a corporate point of view, slavery is fine.

Case in point : there is no shareholder movement against slavery, and nobody with any Apple sharers is standing up to say "Hey, cut it out with the slavery stuff. I don't mind making shiploads of cash, but no slavery".

Nope, they have the shares, hang on to them for dear life and wait for the money. How that money is made is not a problem. And that's where the problem is.

At some point, all this capitalism is going to have to accept that money does not excuse everything.

I won't hold my breath though.

Botched migration resulted in a great deal: One for the price of two

Getting a refund

Yeah, I can well imagine : zero success.

And the argument cannot go both ways, I think. Provider A was switching top floor access to Provider B. Company made a new contract with Provider B for ground level. The two are not linked, and the provider is not responsible for a connection that is never used.

Maybe, just maybe, Provider B could have sent an inquiry after two months, wondering if it was normal to have no activity on a connection, but come on - we all know that, as long as the bills are paid, there is no problem.

So, yeah. Check your billing.

And was the accounts deparment billed for the lost revenue ?

Because I would have taken that from its budget.

BOFH: The Board members are looking very ill these days

I did not need to learn that . . .

Cisco, Huawei, Ericsson on the hook for Philippine telco's $880M overspend

"Few businesses can endure [..] $880 million of unplanned expenditure"

If the Prime Minister loks at that the first thing he thinks is "Pff, amateurs".

There's one sure winner in the AI explosion, say analysts: Dutch outfit ASML

"a sharp increase in GPU [..] demand"

I'll just hope that NVidia doesn't sell all that demand to funny money farmers.

Microsoft breaks geolocation, locking users out of Azure and M365

The important words are : We're reverting a recent change

Once again, fat-fingered keyboarding without proper checking results in massive pain for many people.

Ah, to think that, in the good ol' days, if a sysadmin goofed it would only affect the users of that company's network.

Today's sysadmins can affect people all across the globe.

Yay progress.

Where in the world is Terraform Labs villain Do Kwon? Montenegro, actually

"as true as Kwon's tweets"

Another fine, upstanding member of the funny money criminal underground.

Oh wait, there is no underground in the funny money market. It's all right there, above ground, and yet many people still don't see it.

Accenture puts 19,000 staffers' heads on the chopping block

"include over 800 of our more than 10,000 leaders"

I'm sure that, if you look properly, you could find another 5,000 "leaders" to lay off, easy peasy.

Come on, make an effort !

Critical infrastructure gear is full of flaws, but hey, at least it's certified

But they said it's Huawei that's the problem

OT equipment certified but vulnerable ? Hey look : Huawei ! Huawei is the danger !

We've forbidden Huawei everywhere, we're safe ! Safe, I tell you !

ChatGPT, how did you get here? It was a long journey through open source AI

So, NotOpenAI is monetizing ?

Vote with your wallet, people.

D-Wave hello to another quantum pioneer warned over possible delisting

"including but not limited to a reverse stock split"

It's nice to not limit your options, but how many do you really have ?

I mean, if nobody is buying, then your only real option is having less stock.

And that's just a stopgap because again, if nobody is buying, your stock is still going to fall.

So, when you only have one share left per investor at 90 cents, what's left to do ?

Because apparently garnering interest or excitement is already out of the picture . . .

Microsoft admits Azure Resource Manager failed after code change

"Gotta love the cloud"

Well it's not like we have much of a choice, now is it ?

Every supplier is is pushing or dragging us there, and kicking and screaming about it doesn't seem to work much. Eh, Adobe users ?

First-known interstellar Solar System visitor 'Oumuamua a comet in disguise – research

"led some folks to believe it was alien spaceship"

Umm, come on, there will always be some folks to believe that.

Croquet for Unity: Live, network-transparent 3D gaming... but it's so much more

"it's tiny, efficient, fast, lightweight, and in places, surprisingly simple"

So you're saying that Microsoft had nothing to do with it, basically ?

B-List celebs including Lindsay Lohan fined after crypto shill probe

Lindsay Lohan has millions of followers ?

Two would already be a lot. Millions ? Unthinkable.

In any case, I see she's still riding the elevator down, down, down . . .

Ellison's healthcare obsession carries risks for Oracle

Re: FUBB

Far from me to defend the Big Red One, but really, you're right. It is particularly petty to complain about a $12+ billion in revenue when you were expecting a mere 300 million more.