Posts by Pascal Monett

Amazon stretches working life of its servers an extra year, for AWS and its own ops

"servers have a useful life of five years"

That is interesting. I know nothing about server loads in the Cloud, but I'm guessing that they're more hammered than many on-premise company servers. Does that have a real impact on hardware life ?

I mean, sure, the disks will need replacing every now and then, but that depends on the disk, not on an arbitrarily-determined lifespan record. I've just bought a few 8TB NAS discs for my Synology. They are guaranteed for the EU-standard 2 years. They will likely have a much longer useful life, but they're spinning rust. I will use them until they fail, not until the warranty runs out.

So five years for a server, why ? CPU and architecture progress has slowed to a crawl, and I seriously doubt the newest USB protocol is a requirement for a server.

So, if you replace the disks when they fail, why throw out a motherboard if it's still working ? It's not like a CPU slows down over time, its cycles don't wear out like batteries.

So why set an arbitrary limit of five years for kit that could well do double that ?

Cisco inferno: Networking giant reveals three 10/10 rated critical router bugs

"the boxes can also be made to create DDoS attacks"

So, no National Security issues here ?

Of course not, it's Cisco, not Huawei. We're safe.

Move along, citizen, move along.

Chip shortage: Buyers sign multiyear, no-take-back deals to secure supplies, says NXP

"non-cancellable, non-returnable"

Okay good. I have one question though : the "non-cancellable" part, does that also concern the provider ?

Because, from what I've been reading here these past weeks, it's not the customers that are cancelling their orders.

Indian PM says digital rupee will facilitate creation of global digital payment scheme

"will be the digital form of India’s physical currency and will be convertible into cash"

Then what is the point ?

The digital form of my EUR currency is my credit card, and it is converted into cash every time I go visit an ATM.

Why this dogged determination to invent a new digital version of money you already have ?

There has to be a sane reason somewhere. Maybe not a good one, but a sane one.

Because this is insane.

You don't need to invent an entirely new money scheme if the only goal is allow micropayments or money transfers. Just make your credit card and your banking portals handle that with the money you've already got.

That's a signature move: How $320m in Ether was stolen from crypto biz Wormhole

So, ETH was lost to bad code, and now new ETH has magically been added

How am I supposed to give any credit to an industry where this kind of shenanigans is going on ?

They have just proven that Ethereum is actually just whatever they want it to be. It's certainly not a monetary value of any reality.

When any idiot with a keyboard can create a new brand of funny money you don't have a market, you have a clown act.

But you keep on Sticking it to The Man.

<mutter> <mutter> damn fools <mutter>

US Senate to vote on stopping Big Tech extracting 'monopolist rent' from app developers

The Chamber of Progress

A lobby group blatantly created for Big Tech interests. How these people manage to look themselves in the mirror in the morning is beyond me. No doubt a large infusion of cash is putting their conscience to sleep (supposing they ever had one).

I'm sure they will soon start bleating think of the children as a last resort.

But it is nice to see that the media is now putting pressure where it hurts : $100 million to operate, $15 billion in revenue.

There is no sane person in the world who can think that that is normal.

Privacy Shield: EU citizens might get right to challenge US access to their data

Re: rules are viewed by intelligence agencies as applying to other people

As brilliantly displayed by that scene in True Lies where Arnold's character asks for a tap on his wife's office phone to track her "affaire", his buddy/colleague starts spouting law and saying that it's illegal and Arnie smashes his fist on a window pane yelling "and we do it a hundred times a day !"

And he gets his tap, and hilarity ensues.

In real life, though, there is far less hilarity.

Nothing to scoff at: Crisps and nuts biz KP Snacks smacked in ransomware hack attack

They are cooperating with the authorities

And have responsibly disclosed the situation.

One can only hope that this will aid authorities to home in on the source and get Putin to do something about them.

With all the hacker groups he has, Putin can afford to sacrifice another one.

Former tech CIO jailed for setting up £475k backhander scam with IT outsourcing firm

The difference is that they are elected officials and, as such, practically immune to judicial action unless they really, really push too far. And if they do really push too far, it takes a dozen years or so before anything actually starts catching up to them.

This guy was s mall-timer without a lot of imagination. He's already in prison and they haven't finished stripping him of his gains.

Brilliant retirement plan.

Jeff Bezos adds some more overheads to his $485m yacht by taking down historic bridge

So they made a humongous yacht

And didn't pause for a second to ask themselves how it would get to sea ?

Maybe they should have thought about that before taking the contract.

Update 'designed to improve user experience' takes down the Microsoft 365 Admin Portal

We made an update. We fucked up. Again.

Please accept this 2% increase in contract fees due to supply chain issues. We will correct the problem as soon as we've hired enough of our old employees back as consultants.

Thank you for testing our applications in our place.

Welsh home improvement biz fined £200,000 over campaign of 675,478 nuisance calls

Re: Anyone got an popcorn ?

I'm sorry, you want jail time only if they don't pay up an insignificant fine ?

They actively called people they knew they shouldn't. They lied and passed themselves off as other companies. They are crooks and should be thrown in jail now, whether or not they pay the fine.

I am sick and tired of companies getting caught behaving like scam artists only to get a few tens of thousands in fines.

The company manager knew and, if he didn't know, he's still the company manager. He either goes to jail for condoning it, or he goes to jail for being incompetent.

CEOs in jail is the only way we are going to stop this nonsense.

Working in Arm's engineering team? You're probably happy with your pay rise

"our people are core to our success"

Indeed they are, and you have just demonstrated that there are several layers to your core, meaning some people are more core than others.

Engineers are already, and logically, the best-paid employees in a company. Giving everyone a fixed percentage of bonus means that engineers will get the most.

Engineers will agree with that.

But fiddling around with the bonus level following what department you are in just demonstrates the true importance you give to said department. That means that IT is valued at half the engineering department at Arm. I can understand that from a beancounter point of view, but the truth is : if engineers stop working, you can still make and sell what you've got. If IT stops working, you're not making or selling anything any more.

So who's more important ? Discuss.

Absolutely fabless: Chip startup funding reaches record $20bn in 2021

Like me, you will learn to filter him out of the comment section.

I have wasted enough of my life trying to make sense of his keyboard logorrhia. He won't fool me again.

Worried about occasional npm malware scares? It's more common than you may think

"1,300 malicious JavaScript packages"

Everything JavaScript is malicious. Either it takes over your computer, or it destroys proper HTML rendering and linking.

NoScript is the only defense.

Android devices, demand in China help keep Qualcomm from worrying too much about losing Apple

Re: Snapdragon

I think it's a . . snappy name.

Google's DeepMind says its AI coding bot is 'competitive' with humans

So it can code the creation of a string

Wow. I'm impressed. No, really. If it took the description of a problem and turned out a working bit code as a solution, that's a good thing.

Now, my current problem is the statistics of how fast users respond to an email recieved. Responses and forwards of said email need to be taken into account.

So, what's the solution to that, AI ?

FBI says more cyber attacks come from China than everywhere else combined

"the USA and its allies have had some wins"

And the only "win" you can provide is Huawei.

You needed a racist President and an entire Government to get that "win".

I don't think your other actions are as useful as you want people to think.

It would be better if you directed infrastructure companies to harden access to their innards, like by not allowing it from the Internet in the first place.

European watchdog: All data collected about users via ad-consent popup system must be deleted

"Banning personalized ads would severely impact an increasingly important economic sector"

Oh it sure will. It will severly dent the revenues of those scoundrels that harvest everything they can in order to produce pitifully weak "targetted" ads that are only capable of telling me what I bought yesterday.

You don't deserve money you useless fuckers.

Now, if I buy a UPS in January 2019, and you are capable of reminding me in 2026 that I might be interested in a replacement battery, then that would be another story. Frightening maybe, but at least useful.

But no. I buy a UPS and on the very next page you try to make me believe that I might want another one.

Bunch of wankers, the lot of you.

Breath of fresh air: v7.3 of LibreOffice boasts improved file importing and rendering

Download failed

Interesting. While reading this article I launched my LibreOffice and checked for updates. It opened the official site with a download button on the latest version, which I clicked on.

The download progresses to almost the end, then indicates Failed. No file is recorded in my Downloads folder.

Seems like they have something to correct.

America's EARN IT Act attacking Section 230 is back – and once again threatening the internet, critics say

Yup, that's democracy. The least harmful political system.

Which doesn't mean that, sometimes, living with a benevolent dictator is not a better solution.

Oracle Linux appears somewhere unexpected: The Windows Store

A Linux distro from the Windows Store ?

If I am going to install a Linux distro, I will do that on my own, thank you very much. I don't need or want Borkzilla's interference in any way, shape or form.

And if I am to use a VM, it will be on a Linux machine hosting a Windows VM. Seems much more secure to me.

German regulators nix Taiwanese titan GlobalWafers' acquisition of Siltronic

Hmm, China

A major deal with Taiwan scuppered.

Seems like politics are at play, here although, obviously, when you're talking real money, politics are always at play.

India to adopt digital rupee and slap a 30 per cent tax on cryptocurrency income

Blockchain does not scale

A nationwide digital currency does not need blockchain, and blockchain is only going to ensure that it will fail.

India can perfectly well invent itself a digital currency if it wants, although it could also very well create its own version of VISA with certified banks participating and its roupee would go full digital at the press of a button (ok, slight exaggeration there).

Money is already digital. 99% of my transactions are bonking my credit card on a contactless reader or, for paying bills, an IBAN transfer. I haven't used actual bills and coins since 2019.

So why this blind adoration of blockchain ? It doesn't bring anything banks are not supposed to handle, it does not scale, and if I have to lug around a terabyte of ledger data to buy a loaf of bread, it is insane.

Please explain this insanity to me.

Google Cloud started running its servers for an extra year, still loses billions

So where's the problem ?

Revenue is trending up, losses are trending down. Everything's fine.

Alphabet has enough in the bank to survive until Google Cloud gets in the black, and it will.

I'm not sweating over the fact that one bit of Alphabet is not contributing to the increase of its already absurdly large money pile.

He ain't heavy, he's my brother: Bloke gives away SpaceX ticket because he was over weight limit

"tastier than any restaurant or takeout"

Apparently you don't have any good restaurants in your area. Or you call McDonalds a restaurant. It isn't.

A good chef in a restaurant is hard to beat. Yes, there are definitely people who know how to cook at home (my wife is one), but just saying learn how to cook and you'll do better than any restaurant chef is a rather tall order.

And, if you do, you can always open a restaurant ;)

UK government told to tighten purse strings or public will have to foot the bill for nuclear decommissioning

Don't worry, all those electric cars that are being planned are going to ensure that coal-based generators will be severely swamped, and as for wind, well I'll get a kick out of seeing how many people have to stay home because their car didn't charge enough during the night.

Without nuclear, we as a society can kiss goodbye to all the power-hungry amenities we have grown used to. There will not be enough juice to power the fridge, the freezer, the aircon, the TV box, the laptop and two smartphones per person, and on top of that, two electric cars per household.

Because people don't want nuclear, but they do want all the gadgets and "smart" doorbells and all the rest.

In 1950, people had a fixed-line telephone, a TV set, a radio, a fridge and, maybe, a washing machine and a dryer. Plus a few lightbulbs. If we go back to that, we could probably do without nuclear. But today ? And IoT on top of all the stuff we have ?

There's no way we can make do without nuclear. Fusion would be better, but that's 30 years away, as we all know.

Comcast fixes broadband cables 'peppered' with holes after Oakland drive-by shooting

I don't know about Dave Chappele, but Chris Rock said pretty much the same thing in one of his stand-ups.

Attack on Titan: Four Japanese Manga publishers sue Cloudflare

So, in Japan it is forbidden to review a film ? If you're a nobody, that is.

Well that's just nuts.

Russia's naval exercise near Ireland unlikely to involve cable-tapping shenanigans

"It is considered deeply unfashionable to talk about Western cable tapping"

Of course it is. We're The Good Guys. We do cable tapping and comms intercept just like The Bad Guys, but it's for you're own good.

Not like Them, who do it for nefarious, evil purposes.

See ?

All good now.

Machine learning the hard way: IBM Watson's fatal misdiagnosis

Ah but they never it worked, they just hyped the potential.

Re: Sigh

I am but a lowly programmer, however, when a customer asks me to export data from a data store, I find it incredibly important to know what that data is in order to be sure that I export it correctly.

And if the customer is asking me to import data, then it's time to sit down and map every single piece of data that is supposed to come in and where it's supposed to go.

If you're working with data and you think that you don't need to know what it represents, you need to change jobs.

Re: When the three year old is just very quiet and floppy

Whenever I have witnessed a three-year-old, the words "quiet" and "floppy" have absolutely never come to my mind.

Not when they're awake, in any case.

Shazam! Two world-record lightning events recognised

17 seconds ?

Was that 17 seconds of flash from starting point to ending point, or was it a bolt that started and then "travelled" to its endpoint ?

Imagine witnessing a lightning bolt like that. Flash ! Hey, lightning. Wow, see how long it is ? Whoa, it's still there. Hey, I even have time to fish my phone out of my pocket and snap a pic.

Waymo sues California's DMV to block autonomous car crash data from publication

"the data is a trade secret"

Not if the accident happened on a public street it aint.

Not if you had to report it to the authorities.

That is public information and I hope the judge is going to throw that lawsuit out with prejudice.

Ever-growing volumes of data mean computational storage is becoming crucial for HPC, say boffins at Dell's tech chinwag

Re: If the "AI" is that good...

There is no AI, it's just marketing malarky.

Statistical analysis is good, and it's a good thing that companies are warming to it, but there is no more "intelligence" in there than in a block of granite. It's all down to who programs the stat functions so, once more, the only intelligence is that of the engineer or "AI techinician" who is experienced enough to lay down a useful set of rules for the CPUs to blindly follow.

'Cause it ain't those CPUs doin' the thinkin'.

Blistering bandwidth: JEDEC pushes out HBM3 memory specs

So, DDR is out and HBM is in ?

That's going to be nice and confusing for the consumer. How does HBM compare to DDR 5 ? Sure, it's new, so it's supposed to be better, but comparing CLs is already a headache, what more do we have to learn now to choose the best RAM for our budget ?

Hands up who ISN'T piling in to help Epic Games appeal Apple App Store ruling

Re: Next up, Google

Well if they can take Apple down a notch or two, Google just might be next.

Internet Society condemns UK's Online Safety Bill for demonising encryption using 'think of the children' tactic

So, 0.2% eh ?

"a specifically broken-out category of warrants granted for child abuse image offences made up just 0.2 per cent of surveillance applications for 2019 – having remained at that insignificant level for 10 years"

And for those 0.2% we get government mouthpieces actively trying to subvert our civil rights because think of the children.

Well I'm a normal guy. I don't think about the children, I think about women.

And I want my privacy back.

HPE has 'substantially succeeded' in its £3.3bn fraud trial against Autonomy's Mike Lynch – judge

"The finding is a massive victory for HPE"

And a clear signal that doing your own research and paying attention to due diligence isn't worth the paper its printed on.

Well done to the judge. Brilliant way to demonstrate that whining is a better strategy than paying attention.

How to get banned from social media without posting a thing

Oh but he has reasons.

He's just not letting you know what they are.

El Reg is most definitely not social media.

There are intelligent people here.

BOFH: On Wednesdays, we wear gloves

Another masterpiece of plausibly-deniable manipulation

This was a pleasure to read, and even more to imagine.

Well done !

Targeted ransomware takes aim at QNAP NAS drives, warns vendor: Get your updates done pronto

"if your NAS is internet-facing"

If it is, you're a fool.

I don't care what excuses you have, allowing Internet access to your own treasure trove is asking for trouble. You are not an Infosec expert (on average) and you have no idea of what kind of nasties are floating around with the sole goal of finding your kit and ruining your day.

Convenience be damned, secure your data and cut that NAS from a world of hurt.

Toaster-friendly alternative web protocol Gemini attracts criticism for becoming exclusive clique

Re: I'm just an old & crotchety luddite

Welcome to the club.

I do prefer Notepad++, though.

Instant Ump: HP Inc's subscription ink services hiking prices from next month

Eliminate ink anxiety

I already have, thank you.

First of all, I don't have an HP printer, and second, I have a laser printer, so toner, not ink.

Curiously, toner makers haven't gone all Big Brother and required a chip to validate that your cartridge is kosher - yet.

Carked it, Diem? Zuckerberg's grand cryptocurrency thing may sell off assets for $200m

Re: What is the point?

Yup. You're missing the fact that the banking industry is so crap in the US that they've had to go and invent PayPal to try and have something useful that doesn't cost an arm and a leg to transfer money (funny money actually fails on that point, with the transfer fees costing an astounding amount for just writing a few bits into the blockchain).

It's like the telephone industry of the US : so shit that calling someone in another state requires that you call an operator to handle it first. And woes be to you if the person you want to call isn't using the same telco as you. At least, that's how it was back when I last visited a decade ago. Who knows ? Maybe they've improved on that.

Meanwhile, in Europe, I can call anyone in the world without bothering with anything more than the country code before the actual phone number. I can use my banking portal to send almost any amount of money to any IBAN number. In short, I am free to talk to who I want and send money to who I want. You know, like a person should be in the 3rd millennium.

US DoD staffer with top-secret clearance stole identities from work systems to apply for loans

"He faces up to 20 years behind bars"

Good. I hope he'll get all of them.

Now there's one thing I'd like to know : how did he get caught ?

The article states clearly what he did, but there's no mention of how he failed to keep his secret.

I'd appreciate an addendum on that.

USA kicks out China Unicom, but FCC still in pursuit

As usual, no mention of National Security letters

Everything the US can accuse Beijing of being capable of the US has already done, and is likely actively doing now.

Any company based in the US is subject to recieving a National Security letter commanding it to hand over data or grant access to US spooks so they can check whatever they want. If you get such a letter, it is forbidden by law to talk about it and you must obey its contents.

It is quite rich to see Uncle Sam blaming Chinese companies for being subject to Beijing when the US has enshrined its own total dominance in its judicial oversight.

How can we recruit for the future if it takes an hour to send an email, asks Air Force AI bigwig in plea for better IT

That's still $350 million that need to be found.

Not exactly pocket change when you're not a billionnaire.