Posts by Pascal Monett

UK regulator 'broke international law', says Facebook

"the CMA misdirected itself [..] and exercised its jurisdiction in breach of international law"

What international law, pray tell ?

Which international law does Facebook think means it has the right to purchase any company it wants ?

If I'm not mistaken, Nvidia has just been prevented from realizing a $66 billion merger with Arm. Does The Zuck really imagine his $400 million merger is more important ?

Of course not. It's just that, as a complete human failure, he cannot compute when he hears "no".

Microsoft prepares for its staff to return to Washington sites

Re: What they may discover instead

Well, discovering is one thing.

Accepting the results is a whole 'nother ball game.

Dido Harding's appointment to English public health body ruled unlawful

Well you've got to admit that, as far as a career in failure is concerned, she's made progress.

Yeah but, where would the drama be ?

This data center will be Europe’s first with hydrogen backup power

Re: A Step In The Right Direction

The problem is how it is made.

If you're burning coal to transform H2O into hydrogen/oxygen, then you're not getting the benefits of hydrogen because you've burned coal.

The only way hydrogen can be justified is with nuclear/solar/wind energy.

We have to shut down the coal-based power stations. All of them. Of course, we can't do that in one go right away, we first have to get ITER to work and, concurrently, get Thorium stations installed everywhere.

Between the two, things just might work out.

FTC celebrates after Nvidia-Arm deal collapses

Ah, but true capitalists are always banging the drum of competition.

Until they get to the top, at which point they talk about competition but steer towards monopoly.

Because capitalism is not about making money, it's about being the only one to make money.

Cambodia cans critics of its snoopy Internet Gateway, says every nation has one

But, Cambodia is a member.

IT technician jailed for wiping school's and pupils' devices

Well, you could ask them to supply you with one of their laptops so you can work remotely on something they have full control over.

Hong Kong Watch says its website suddenly can't be seen in Hong Kong

"Despite being unenforceable outside Hong Kong, it is applied across the planet"

Ah, so they have the USA approach to law. Good for them.

In any case, I note that "The exodus from Hong Kong to Singapore is well underway ", which is perfectly normal.

Yes, Hong Kong will become just another Chinese city. Yes, the Great Internet Firewall will be thoroughly applied. Yes, anyone with any sense of freedom and a smidgen of intelligence should get the hell out of there while they can.

There might still be money to make in Hong Kong, but it will be under Beijing's full control. Your choice.

Semiconductor market correction could come in 2024

"2023/4 looks like being a rocky year for the industry"

Well duh. With all the new chip fabs in construction or being planned, that conclusion was foregone.

I said so myself.

Nice to see that the experts concur.

Reality check: We should not expect our communications to remain private

"Saying if you don't want it on the internet, don't put it up there is too trite a response"

It is still a very valid response.

It's right up there with "don't say anything in public you might regret".

Gossip used to be the drive to disseminate information. It was the old "can you keep a secret" and the next day you hear about it at the company lunch room.

Now we have Social Media, and gossiping is in overdrive.

The solution remains the same : only say something in public if you are willing to stand up and own up to it.

Re: Before someone starts to talk about Orwell again ..

What Orwell could definitely not have imagined is that the surveillance society be implemented by companies and accepted without thinking by the global population.

Sure, NSA is tapping comms, but Facebook has access to almost everything and people are giving it freely.

It's one thing to wonder about using Signal or not, it's an entirely different kettle of fish when you post you entire life between Twitter, Instagram, FB and Tik Tok.

The end of free Google storage for education

Re: If you rely on ANYTHING by Google you are a fool

There's nothing illegal about it.

I'm sure Google included something in the EULA saying that the user accepted that the service was free and could be terminated at any time.

End of problem, bye bye court cases, you can wail all you want.

RIP Ninjacat: No longer fits in Windows 11 world

"the general concept of holding the Microsoft flag and being proud of what we're doing"

Being proud of making users test your code ?

That's a novel concept.

Full-time internet surveillance comes to Cambodia this week

Okay, hypothetical question

You're the engineer charged with implementing this National Internet Gateway, and you are quite capable (and you disagree strongly with the current regime). So capable, in fact, that you are considering building in a loophole, a backdoor of some sort, that only you know about and no one will be able to find.

You're sure you know how to do it, and you're convinced that no one will find out about it.

Do you go ahead and implement that, even at the eventual risk of getting caught (the consequences of which do not bear thinking about), or do you just do the job demanded of you and then plan on leaving the country ?

Beer for the round table discussion.

Beware the big bang in the network room

"Lessons learned after event tend to be the toughest ones"

Indeed. You can't go back and sort things out anymore so, more often than not, you're looking at one of your failures. Or, if you're really, really lucky, one of your closest brushes with disaster.

IBM looked to reinvigorate its 'dated maternal workforce'

Well it's certainly not a hardware firm. Not unless auditing has really changed a lot in the past decade.

Facebook exposes 'god mode' token that could siphon data

"will take action as appropriate"

Oh, so you'll do eff all ?

As usual.

Intel chases after Bitcoin miners with dedicated chip

"Intel will start selling a chip to mine bitcoin"

What's the point ? Bitcoin is nearing end-of-life, the number of minable coins is almost depleted.

Once again, industry is reacting once the forest has burned down.

Make a chip to mine Ethereum, that thing that redefines what it is on a whim.

Fibre broadband uptake in UK lags behind OECD countries

"53 per cent in Belgium"

That figure is significant because, around 20 years ago, cable was 99% in Belgium if I'm not mistaken.

So that's almost a 50% decline in two decades.

UK regulators accept Google's Privacy Sandbox promises

"questions remain"

Um, no they don't.

You seriously think that Google, whose revenue depends on ads, is going to propose a system that cuts its revenue stream ?

Think again.

'Boombox' function sparks Tesla recall

"The company disbanded its media relations unit in 2020"

So now the company relies on court cases and government directives for its communication ?

Is Tesla that shitty ?

No help for IT contractors on IR35 tax errors

Okay

Is it time to finally declare IR35 a clusterfuck yet ?

Ransomware crew dumps stolen Optionis files online

"Optionis previously claimed to have 13,000 contractors on its books"

I wonder how many they will claim next time.

UK government's chief digital officer departs

Emailing a spreadsheet

What could possibly go wrong ?

Coming soon in On Call : my UK Gov agency got hacked by an Office attachment . . .

France says Google Analytics breaches GDPR when it sends data to US

And the penny drops.

You're not a user. You sir, are a customer.

Real-time software? How about real-time patching?

Yeah, like don't go to work for a company who sells software made by the summer intern ?

Apple tweaks AirTags to be less useful for stalkers, thieves

What the hell ?

"they transmit alert notifications to let nearby iPhone users know someone else's active AirTag is, unbeknownst to them, reporting its location"

And just who decided that that was a good idea ? Why should I care that someone put an AirTag in their luggage ? What right do I have to know that ?

Technology : it's not because you can that you should.

Singapore signs for Azure-hued sovereign cloud from Microsoft

Sovereign clouds

I rather agree with that idea.

And basically I'll agree with anything that keeps the NSA away from my data.

Since I cannot prevent or forbid anyone from putting the data they gather on me in a cloud, well a sovereign cloud is the least bad option.

Of course, that presumes that the NSA doesn't have its claws in it in the backend somehow - and that might be quite a presumption.

Especially if the cloud uses Cisco hardware.

This malware gang plants incriminating evidence on PCs, gets victims arrested

"malicious Microsoft Office attachments"

Dear me, it is sad that there are still people falling for that.

And I still blame Borkzilla for this since it decided to hide extension names by default.

Indonesia's new mega-telco to build 18,000km submarine cable to the US

240Tbit/sec

Wow. That's a lot of cat videos, to be sure.

Given that this is going to be a brand new cable, I'm guessing it will use the latest tech, signal multiplexing etc etc. We've seen articles here on transfer speeds in the lab, so what tech is actually going to go into this new batch of special fibres ?

We need a kitty icon.

CIA illegally harvested US citizens' data, senators assert

"the Agency is very keen on protecting civil liberties"

Just like the NSA, we know.

They both want to keep civil liberties closely protected.

Very closely.

UK government gifts new £250m hosting contract to its own joint venture

Brilliant !

Government creates for-profit enterprise to supply government, then decides that it can bestow contract on it without public tender.

No way anything can possibly go wrong with that.

Next you'll be telling me that there are absolutely zero MPs or parliament officials involved on either side of this deal.

Is Dido Harding lurking anywhere near ?

Microsoft adds Azure AD Join to Windows 365 Cloud PC

Oh goody

I wonder how long that will take to fall over.

Use Zoom on a Mac? You might want to check your microphone usage

"it looks like it's safest to only run Zoom while on active calls"

Wow. People have had to actually been surprised to come to this conclusion.

I must really be a cave troll. I only activate mobile data when I decide I need it. I only activate WiFi at home. I only activate BluTooth when I'm driving.

That means that I shut down mobile data when I'm done. I shut down Wifi when I'm done with it. I shut down BluTooth when I park the car.

Do these people ever turn off the lights ?

Geomagnetic storm takes out 40 of 49 brand new Starlink satellites

Yeah, sure. Because hooking satellites up in space is just that easy.

NASA's InSight probe emerges from Mars dust storm

It really is a shame the boffins couldn't work in a brush on a stick.

Not blaming them at all, I'm sure they thought of the problem.

It's just a shame they couldn't get one in.

English county council blasted for 'inept project management' in delayed SAP replacement

"The application supplier assured the southern-England council these changes could be accommodated"

Okay, point 1 : the application supplier lied. What a surprise.

Point 2 : the application supplier mismanaged the project. Everybody knows that you accept a project on a given list of points. Anything else is punted on to the v1.1 to-do list.

Well, if you know how to run a project, that is.

That's hardly the same problem. The company decided to lose money. It can be strategically justified.

The council did not actually choose to lose money.

Of course it was incompetent, but hey, it's a council, not private business.

Top Chinese Uni fears Middle Kingdom way behind on tech – and US sanctions make catching up hard

Wait, what ?

"Other areas cited where the US exceled within IT were OS kernels"

I'm sorry, am I supposed to believe that the Windows 1 0 kernel is a point of excellence ?

Apple's iOS might be slightly marginally better, but I would still not call it excellent.

Linus Torvalds is the only person I know of who could be called excellent at OS kernels. The fact that he lives in the US now is just a coincidence.

Now, China may be behind on tech today, but thanks to the rampant and very public xenophobia of the previous US resident in the Oval Office, it has recieved the impetus it needed to start getting up and standing on its own two feet.

China might be suffering now, but the tech landscape will change and the US (and Europe) is going to have to learn to fight tooth and nail with quality, not just bluster, diplomatic backhandedness and aircraft carriers.

The dragon is waking up, and that is going to shake the market like nobody can imagine today.

Microsoft offers 'open' app store to draw regulators away from Activision takeover

That's a nice list of bullet points

One I'd like to see Apple adopt.

So nice to see that the worst enemy of the richest company in the world is the next-richest company in the world (they're in that ballpark anyways).

Ah, to think that there was a day when Apple was only 5% of the market . . .

Swipe left: Snoops use dating apps to hook sources, says Australian Five Eyes boss

Yes it's done in plain sight

Trump was a fucking asshole for four years in front of every camera he could find. And he was more of an asshole when cameras weren't there.

I agree with your point, Fox News is atrocious and should be banned and every so-called political figure that can't even read the Constitution should be jailed.

But until the voting public wakes up and stops watching the playoffs, it's not gonna happen.

Citrix says benefits are safe for staff – except maybe visa holders

"their benefits aren't in immediate peril"

You've got to love that phrasing. You're not in immediate peril. We'll be arranging that later.

Instead of declaring something actually reassuring, like "your benefits are safe".

Well, apparently they are not. Time to polish up the CVs.

Microsoft says the internet is the nicest it's been since 2016. Obviously they didn't look at The Reg comments

Re: What about Twitter and it's ilk

Sorry to disagree, but the Internet has been violent ever since the plebs have had a connection.

Remeber Swatting ? That didn't happen last month.

When it was only academia that had access, sure, it was a lot more civil, but then the hoi-polloi got on the bandwagon and ever since the first XBox we've has 12-year-olds threatening everyone else's mothers.

Violence on the Internet is hardly a new thing.

"I see less tolerance of other people"

I've never seen much tolerance of other people on the Internet, to be frank.

Sure, there are some commentors in these hallowed pages who are generally an example of how everyone should behave, but they are not enough to hide the ugly selfishness of many.

Still, El Reg is the only place I go read the comments, so that's saying something.

Labour reminds UK.gov that it's supposed to be reforming the Computer Misuse Act

Yeah, but the UK and Russia have a special relationship

Mainly, everything that happens in the UK must be signalled to Putin immediately, but secretly.

So it's a bit difficult to put restrictions on data or somesuch without openly revealing this "special link".

Toshiba decides Twoshiba's the best strategy, cans plan to create Threeshiba crowd

"Management listened"

Well duh, when the investors speak, manglement had better listen.

Arm's $66bn sale to Nvidia is off: Deal collapses after world's competition regulators raise concerns

his firm will "continue to support" Arm as a "proud licensee for decades to come."

And that's all it needed to do.

I am glad of this decision.

To err is human. To really tmux things up requires an engineer

Ah, incompetence by divine right.

Those are the bastards I hate the most.

Icon, because obviously.

Re: wrong system ... D'oh!

Experience is the best teacher.