Posts by Pascal Monett

We tested all the Ubuntu remixes for resource usage so you don't have to

Thank you for the report

This kind of thing is time-consuming and not really easy to do, so thank you for the effort and the information.

TikTok wants your trust around US midterm elections data

This is going to be a nightmare

I wish good luck to all so-called social media platforms in sorting the wheat from the chaff, and I'm bloody happy that I'm not in charge of that.

Since we don't require that politicians prove what they declare on national TV (how many have said that the last election was stolen ?), I find it difficult to believe that these platforms are going to be efficient in dialing out falsehoods.

NASA has MOXIE, but rivals reckon they can do better for oxygen on Mars

Re: all the O2 requirement of one adult

So, we'll basically need to send one machine per crew member ?

Either that, or someone will have to stop breathing.

Microsoft to drop price for Teams Rooms, add free Basic tier for SMBs

"our full-set of device management capabilities, and future differentiated value"

Is that a promise, or a threat ?

Rocket Lab to search for signs of life in the clouds of Venus

"are we alone?"

That question was valid fifty years ago.

After the Hubble Deep Field experiment, the question has been answered.

If every single pixel of our sky is full of galaxies, then life is out there. The only question is : how far from us are they ?

Software developer cracks Hyundai car security with Google search

Re: Companies need to spend more money on competent individuals

Yeah they do.

But they won't.

Ransomware attack on UK water company clouded by confusion

"and by making sure employee behavior is driven towards best practices."

Of which the primary best practice is not opening the blasted attachment from somebody you don't know.

After 7 years, long-term threat DarkTortilla crypter is still evolving

What ?

"Because its primary payload is executed within memory, no evidence of the payload will be found on the filesystem"

I seem to recall that Windows Defender scans the RAM in addition to the principle areas of the system disk. I would be very surprised if the major anti-virus companies do not do the same.

Could someone please explain to me how this sentence is possible ?

That was fast: MetaGuard emerges as an 'incognito mode' for the metaverse

"Coincidentally, VRChat has its own premium subscription ..."

You really think that that's a coincidence ?

Two thirds of DNS queries for IPv6 hosts sent to Chinese resolvers fail, researchers find

Maybe don't depend on China for security ?

Janet Jackson music video declared a cybersecurity exploit

Unbelievable

Just playing a tune can crash a computer ?

Does that mean that our computers could eventually be made to crash if some evil genius found the right frequencies to put into an audio track ?

Microsoft's Secure Boot fix sends some PCs into BitLocker Recovery

"he was able to log into Azure and retrieve the recovery keys"

Thank God for personal computers, eh ?

This is the risk when you tie yourself hands and feet to a third party that has decided for itself that your hardware belongs to them.

And then they throw out the QA department and now we're here.

Honestly, if Linux on the desktop is going to happen, it'll be because of Borkzilla.

US military fuels eVTOL research with $75m contract

a 150-mile range

So, we're talking about military. That means that the passengers will be in full battle gear, right ?

So, if I by this definition, that means twelve men with whatever equipment they need.

I'm thinking that's a lot of weight for an electric 'copter.

Russian invasion has dangerously destabilized cyber security norms

Okay, so we've cut Russia off of Swift

And we're actively refusing to do business with it (at least for major multinationals).

Can someone tell me why we haven't cut its Internet access ?

Russia has at most a few communications lines with the rest of the world. If we are intent on ignoring it completely, why are we still allowing its state-sponsored hackers to use the infrastructure to annoy us ?

Cut the lines. That will end Russia's hacking.

For diplomacy, they can always use radio.

Security needs to learn from the aviation biz to avoid crashing

"The same needs to happen in security"

I agree completely.

The only problem is that, when an airplane crashes, deaths are involved and the number of specialists that analyze the issues are limited and highly experienced.

In the world of computing, a company cannot lock down a server for a full forensic examination, it needs to continue making money and it didn't foresee the expenses for a second server with the same configuration to pick up where the hacked one fell off.

Computer security is hard because you can be hacked without knowing it. If a plane has a problem, the pilot will find out and report it, and there's every chance the problem will be corrected.

Plus, in computing the experts are not always that experienced and they don't have the same moral incentive to find all the truth. So, 35 million records were downloaded ? Yeah, but no one died. It is quite possible that some people will be inconvenienced, some of them severely, but no one died.

I agree with the spirit of the idea, but if the industry took security seriously we'd already know.

Still, it doesn't do any harm to speak about it.

FAANGs failing on keeping user data safe from bug hunters

"Don't send private information over email"

When will people learn that email is to be treated like shouting in the street ?

PAY ATTENTION.

If you're not sending mail to someone you know personally, it is a professional email and its contents should be controlled.

Court voids 34,000 unfair Fuji Xerox contracts

"Fujifilm will invoice the customer for licensed software irrespective of delivery by Fujifilm."

Irrespective of delivery ?

You mean to tell me that you'll be billing me for software that you didn't actually give me ?

And you're hoping that I'll swallow that and keep quiet ?

Well, that's another company on my blacklist.

Intel, Amazon, and SpaceX asked to tuck into DARPA's Space-BACN

"seamless communication between military/government and commercial/civil satellite constellations"

That also means seamless hacking avenue for miscreants.

I'm not sure a satellite can be hacked, but I'm pretty sure there's no reason to make it easier.

Cisco admits corporate network compromised by gang with links to Lapsus$

Once again

Somebody clicked on a stupid attachment, and miscreants walked all over Cisco's IT.

I would say kudos to Cisco's security team for at least detecting them, but unfortunately they still got off with data.

Ideally, they should have been blocked before that.

Now the question is : why on God's Green Earth didn't they deploy an encryption tool ?

Did they save that for next time ?

Meta privacy red team lead: Does your business know its privacy adversaries?

"a holistic privacy program"

Bollocks.

Meta does not have a holistic privacy program.

It is just intent on being the sole benefactor of all the data it hoovers up.

Microsoft joins India's monopoly-busting e-commerce multi-mart

"ONDC will also charge vastly lower commissions than its commercial rivals"

And just how much of "vastly" are we talking about ?

Economic uncertainty can't stop cloud growth

Re: God help us all

The Cloud^TM is the new normal.

Submit, citizen, and accept your assmilation.

You'll soon be able to ghost a WhatsApp group without making everyone hate you

"It's so stupid but people take offense to it."

Well buy yourself a pair and leave anyway.

Social media : teaching people to be cowards.

Elon Musk sells Tesla shares worth $6.9b as Twitter lawsuit looms

"Elon Musk has sold $6.88 billion worth of shares"

So I guess his lawyers have finally convinced him that, since he was stupid enough to sign a contract without escape clauses, he's not going to escape.

Microsoft asks staff to think twice before submitting expenses

"think twice before submitting expenses"

No, what you mean to say is think twice before incurring expenses.

If I have to go somewhere to do a job, I'm not going to think twice before submitting the expense.

However, if you refuse to pay my expenses, then I'll definitely think twice before going again - in other words, I won't go.

No expense, so you'll be happy. The customer might be less so.

The sins of OneDrive as Microsoft's cloud storage service turns 15

OneDrive

Sorry, but I'm not going to make even more easy for the NSA to access my files.

Not that the NSA should be interested, but it doesn't appear to be very picky.

Businesses should dump Windows for the Linux desktop

Re: LibreOffice is not as good as MS Office

True, but how much do you really use in MSOffice ?

I would say that LibreOffice has 99.9% of what everyone needs to actually work.

It's only manglement that needs those pretty charts to make themselves feel like they are important.

Report slams UK plan to become 'science superpower' by 2030

Re: if "hard Brexit" comes

I think that ship has already sailed.

Brexit is as hard as it's going to be, and you are stuck with it.

Quantum chemistry ?

That exists ?

Unity game engine attracts big cash from China's tech titans

"Unity will retain majority ownership of the resulting joint venture"

Which will absolutely not matter if the local Chinaman with the Baton of Power decides otherwise.

Frankly, I just don't get why companies absolutely want to risk their IP in a country that makes everything possible to steal it, including not being able to fire the head honcho if you don't like him any more.

Russian anti-satellite test added to a 'pressing threat to security' in space

"internationally-established consensus best practices for space operations"

Yeah, well this is just a demonstration of how well we play together : badly.

Selfishness exists at all levels, individual, department, company, and country.

This storm of debris demonstrates a country-level of selfishness that is, unfortunately, not surprising.

Alibaba mimics Amazon by slashing jobs after poor results

"6,000 fresh university graduates"

Or, to put it bluntly, 6000 minimum-wage slaves to replace 10000 experienced and expensive employees.

Can't deny that Chinese companies have well learned from American companies just how to keep costs down.

Tesla Full Self-Driving 'fails' to notice child-sized objects in testing

Re: You're supposed to...

Oh of course not.

And they're definitely not going to go take a nap on the rear seats while leaving the car drive itself.

Right ?

I mean, how stupid would you have to be to imagine that that would be a good idea . . . oh wait.

Re: It just proves that a hell of a lot of people are just plain STUPID

And, in other news, bears shit in the woods.

Sorry, but you're not exactly revealing a scoop here.

Microsoft's fix for 'data damage' risk hits PC performance

Bite the bullet

What an apt expression.

Like give your handgun a blowjob.

Same result.

Ah, Borkzilla. Will you ever stop borking ?

Probably not.

How TSMC killed 450mm wafers for fear of Intel, Samsung

So, who's up for a 700mm wafer ?

Size is everything, right ?

Google hit with lawsuit for dropping free Workspace apps

The lesson is :

If you want something reliable, roll your own.

Yes, it costs money. If you have a company, you're supposed to make money.

So host yourself, or be subject to the whims of multi-billion dollar behemoths who change their minds without you having any say in it.

I wish you luck with your complaint. I'm pretty sure there's some small text in there somewhere that will get Google off scott free.

Clean up orbit first, then we can think about space factories, says FCC

"has the potential to [..] mitigate climate change"

Mitigate climate change ?

How exactly is setting fire to a gigantic, $100+ million firecracker to fling something in orbit going to help mitigate climate change ?

Have we decided that space now replaced fairy dust ?

Remember the humanoid Tesla robot? It's ready for September reveal, says Musk

"this year, I swear."

Didn't your mother teach you that swearing was not a good thing ?

Honestly, with all the stupid things you've said for the past twenty years, one would think you'd have learned to shut up by now.

But no, obviously you don't learn a thing.

By the way, how's that Hyperloop going ?

Oh, yeah, it's not.

Somewhere south of Brussels.

Either that, or check the nearest disco.

Enough with the notifications! Focus Assist will shut them u… 'But I'm too important!'

Re: Windows System Sounds - office hell!

Nope, sorry.

You can turn the sound off.

It's pretty easy, there's an icon on the taskbar.

What you can't turn off is the marketroids making their phone calls in an open floor.

One of these days, I'm going to murder one of them.

Lane warnings

I'm 56 years old.

I have already driven 1.5 million kilometers ( I counted ).

I know how to stay in my lane, thank you.

I completely agree, and I am quite fed up with this situation.

I work in Luxembourg, I live in France. I am what is called "frontalier" (trans-border worker).

I am waiting for the day when a gendarme will stop me and say that I was 10kph above the 80kph limit.

I will then make it my duty to point out that the panels at the border on the highway still specify that the speed limit on national roads is 90kph.

You want me to do 80 ? Put up a speed limit or fuck off.

Re: just because you can, it doesn't mean you should

Words to live by.

That's hilarious.

Thank you for the laugh.

I put my mobile phone in airplane mode after working hours.

I like sleeping at night.

Apple tells suppliers to use 'Taiwan, China' or 'Chinese Taipei' to appease Beijing

"we were only following orders."

Yeah. That argument worked so well in Nuremburg.

So it's official now : the fruity company has no balls.

Oh well, join the herd I guess.

Because the bully happens to be making 90% of what you buy.

So bend over and take it.

Russia: Hey, don't act surprised if we're still on the ISS in 2030

"built and ready to use until 2028"

I think 2028 is massively optimistic for Russia to build its own space station.

Mir apparently took 10 years to be fully assembled, and that was back when Russia had a space program that wasn't running on fumes.

I am very sceptical about Russia being able to launch and assemble a working space station in the next 6 years.

Very.

Warning! Critical flaws found in US Emergency Alert System

"patching has been known to cause problems"

Yeah.

Especially when patching Windows.

Mine's the one with the one-month delay on installing new patches.