Posts by Pascal Monett

Airbus flies new passenger airplane aimed at 'long, thin' routes

Re: Nope.

I would tend to agree with you. If my flight is only a few hours (ie less than 4), a thin body doesn't bother me, but if I'm supposed to be stuck inside a tube for longer than four hours, I'd welcome the illusion of space to move in.

I have.

Good book.

Re: try to go to Australia by train...

Yeah, but, no one should go to Australia.

I have had my fill of the cattle class.

If I ever even think of taking a plane again, I'm paying a first-class ticket.

The price alone will be an incentive to stay put, but if I really, really want to get somewhere by plane, I will no longer be stuck in a seat next to a whale.

I'm 56 years old now. I'm done with putting up with constraints.

I want my comforts, and I'm ready to pay for them (just not rich enough to charter a private jet).

SpaceX reportedly fires staffers behind open letter criticising Elon Musk

"firing those involved"

Great.

Sets exactly the measure of how much SpaceX management is actually engaged to listen to its employees.

A shame, since that company is practically the only thing left at this point that can supply the ISS.

SpaceX is now the Uber of space.

Yech.

Microsoft readies Windows Autopatch to free admins from dealing with its fixes

Autopatch ? Sure. Just shoot me now.

Borkzilla doesn't have the record required for anyone to trust such a scheme. Rollback, schmollback. Borkzilla is going to fuck up, that's a certainty, and when (not if) that happens, you want your backups to be in order.

Japan makes online insults a crime that can earn a year in jail

Re: running around threatening your betters with a sword

Not to nitpick, but I do believe that, back in the day, if you had a sword, you were part of "the betters" and much more likely to have the police on your side than on the side of whatever lowlife citizen didn't.

I approve

Even if you can argue that maybe this young lady could have been a bit too sensitive, I think it is high time we put a stop to this widespread Internet habit of insulting people simply because you're not standing in front of them.

People on the Internet say things they would never dare saying face-to-face. Maybe that's something for the psychiatrists, I don't know, but it is time to clamp down on that.

Interpol anti-fraud operation busts call centers behind business email scams

How much longer is it going to take ?

How long before people finally understand that there is no Nigerian prince, no free lunch and nobody begging to give you money ?

Wake up, people. Money is earned by hard work (unless you are a member of the 1%, in which case your money is earned just by you breathing).

I was fired for blowing the whistle on cult's status in Google unit, says contractor

"If we find evidence of policy violations, we will take action"

As in, hold a sex ritual and drink a nice glass of Bordeaux ?

Where can I sign up ?

Apple may have to cough up $1bn to Brits in latest iPhone Batterygate claim

"We have never – and would never"

Um, except you have.

In the Age of the Internet, it really is a bad idea to blatantly spout nonsense that can be proven wrong with a simple search.

Apparently, some companies really think that people are just going to trust whatever they say blindly.

Doesn't work like that, guys. It really doesn't.

Not even if your name is Apple.

Brave roasts DuckDuckGo over Bing privacy exception

I'm sorry : we're talking about Bing ?

Who cares ?

Former chip research professor jailed for not disclosing Chinese patents

Honestly, guys

With all the precedents that have been set, and continue to be, you still hire Chinese nationals in national-security-sensitive or highly-demanding engineering posts ?

Shouldn't there be a bit more background research before hiring when the individual comes from China ?

You really bring it on yourselves sometimes.

Consultant plays Metaverse MythBuster. Here's why they're wrong

Re: Power ?

You didn't get it : the Metaverse is going to be all holograms. All that hardware stuff is completely ignored since El Zuck specifically said that "Your TV, your perfect work setup with multiple monitors, your board games and more – instead of physical things assembled in factories, they'll be holograms designed by creators around the world".

So, see ? You won't need any of that, they'll be holograms.

Oh, wait . . .

Tencent completes 50 million core migration of its own apps to its own clouds

"30 per cent better than the industry standard"

Hey, I'm thrilled for Tencent, but : what's the industry standard ?

Elasticsearch server with no password or encryption leaks a million records

A "misconfigured" server

Nice.

I'll have to remember that the next time I need to explain why somebody fucked up.

Big Tech begs Congress to pass $52bn chip subsidies bill

Re: Subsidy?

Indeed.

Apple has that much money sitting in the bank. So does Google. If they want something done, they have the means to get it done.

The State should keep its money for things that its citizens don't have the means to pay for, and not give that money away to insanely rich companies that have more money than a small country.

America edges closer to a federal data privacy law, not that anyone can agree on it

"which she believes work just fine"

No, it obviously doesn't.

But, no problem, another few years and millions of voters and she'll change her tune.

Musk can't tweet about Tesla without lawyer approval – and he's still fighting to end that

"He would like nothing more"

It's nice to see that billions still can't buy you the entire judiciary system.

Yet.

South Korea's space ambitions stuck on the launchpad

I would tend to agree but, politics.

GPUs aren’t always your best bet, Twitter ML tests suggest

"Twitter’s head of graph learning research"

So Twitter has a graph learning research division.

Is it for finding a way to do content moderation ? Because if not, I don't really see the point.

US to help Japan make leading-edge 2nm chips, possibly by 2025

So, we're now at 2nm

What's the unit smaller than a nanometer ?

Are we going to start counting in atoms ?

Because, correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought I had already read that we are approaching the physical limits of the Universe. Just as you can't do colder than absolute zero, you can't go smaller than the size of an atom.

So, are we there yet ?

Tesla Autopilot accounts for 70% of driver assist crashes, says US traffic safety body

"a recall of 830,000 Autopilot-equipped Teslas"

That's going to be a whole bunch of smug rich people pissed off.

Microsoft continues cyber security spending spree with Miburo buy

The Borg is feeding again

So this is the latest spending spree from Borkzilla.

Oh well, I'm confident that this will not change the "quality" of Windows in any way, but I'm welcome to be (positively) surprised.

HPE ordered to pay Oracle $30m for Solaris IP infringement

"evaluating its options"

So, nuclear ?

Snowflake pledges row-based storage engine for transactional data

What's the difference ?

"no longer see it as a mere cloud data warehouse and to view it more as a platform for sharing data and data-analytics applications"

What is the function of a "mere" cloud data wharehouse ? To have data accessible in The Cloud^TM. So how can a cloud data wharehouse not share data and whatever else is running there ?

This is nothing but a marketing announcement, and nobody but salespeople and amoebas with one brain cell are going to buy into it.

End-of-life smartphone? Penguins at postmarketOS aim to revive it

Re: 'we' actually do need the profit companies make by making people consume more than they need

First of all, what we need is companies that pay their taxes.

And my whole point is that we need to rethink this situation.

Just saying that we need Apple to make ever-more-expensive shiny tat that ends up landfills is not a solution.

53.6 million tonnes of e-waste

It might be time for us, as a society, to start re-thinking this endless yearly product cycle.

We do not need a new Iphone model every year. A phone should be able to last five years without trouble, so make your new model cycle over five years and everyone will be happy (well, except for those who absolutely have to spend a thousand bucks a year to prove that they are better than everyone else).

Qualcomm wins EU court battle against $1b antitrust fine

Vestager

It would be nice if we could have some competent people in areas of resonsibility.

That would make for a welcome change.

Threat of cross-border data tariffs looms over WTO

"taxing e-commerce the same way that [..] physical goods traded internationally"

In truth, I have to admit that that does not seem unreasonable.

At the condition that the trade is made internationally. Currently, I make purchases on Amazon.fr. That, to me, means that whatever international taxation there is has already taken place. If that's not the case, they should clean that part up, but I fail to see why I should be contacted for international taxes when I'm buying stuff stored in France from a French web site.

Looks like another storm in a teacup from where I'm sitting.

Lenovo to form venture with Hong Kong comms conglomerate PCCW

Hold on

"Lenovo has struck an agreement with Hong Kong China comms conglomerate PCCW"

TFTFY

Microsoft fixes under-attack Windows zero-day Follina

"Disabling macros in, say, Word won't stop this from happening"

Ah, Borkzilla, the malware gift that keeps on giving.

Intel delivers first discrete Arc desktop GPUs ... in China

So, only in China, eh ?

I doubt that gamers everywhere are holding their breath, desperate to get their hands on this new kit.

We'll wait for the benchmarks, as usual, and Intel hasn't ever really given gamers any reason to be clamoring for its GPU products, so . . .

Adobe apologizes for repeated outages of its Creative Cloud video collaboration service

"we have been hard at work"

Translation : Cloud is difficult and, apparently, not just for consumers, but for providers as well.

On that note, talking about alternatives is a bit useless. If Adobe had serious alternatives, it would already be dead.

Microsoft's sought-after tabbed File Explorer gets closer to release

Re: Running out of ideas ?

Of course not.

Borkzilla has purchase many ideas. It's just waiting for the next purchase.

Indian government signals changes to infosec rules after industry consultation

"the six-hour reporting requirement that India insists is a global standard"

Uh huh.

As usual, you measure noon by the shadow at your door.

Unfortunately, this is tech. Tech doesn't have a noon. With the Internet, there is no noon. You conform to technical requirements, or you can get lost.

This is starting to feel like those US idiots who tried to legislate that PI was 3.14. You can't legislate mathematics, you morons, and you can't legislate the requirements of server logging. You need to start by understanding the problem and all the dependancies - something a minister and his cabinet is going to have a heck of time getting into.

Giant outsourcer keeps work from home, loses tax breaks. Government says 'good riddance'

This sets a dangerous precedent

This is absolutely unacceptable - for the shareholders.

This is going to set a very dangerous precedent. Who knows what the consequences might be ? We might even stop subsidizing entirely, and then where would our poor farmers be ? They might actually have to start selling their produce at cost+margin, and then the entire supermarket industry would have to, wait, raise their prices ?

Madness. This is the path of madness and the ultimate downfall of civilization. It needs to stop now.

Google engineer suspended for violating confidentiality policies over 'sentient' AI

Re: Emergence

AI is nothing but statistics. I did the Google course on that - well, the first six modules that is, after that it got way too mathematical for me.

This is a machine. It's based on PC hardware and can be flipped off with a switch.

There is no emergence here. It is not intelligent. It has no feelings and doesn't even know what a feeling is.

Let's keep your comment for when we have finally fully understood how the human brain works and have managed to replicate that in silicon.

That day, we'll turn it on, ask it a question and it will answer : "Hey, do you mind ? I'm watching YouTube !"

THAT will be the day we have finally invented AI.

Astra fails, sends NASA's Tropics weather satellites back to Earth

Re: It is all about the terminology

Yeah, but, scientifically.

TSMC and China: Mutually assured destruction now measured in nanometers, not megatons

What was that ?

"with no detectable economic or political strategy for attracting fabs to its green and pleasant cloudy and rain-soaked land"

TFTFY.

Meta slammed with eight lawsuits claiming social media hurts kids

My wife once took an account on FaceBook

I told her not to, but she wanted to because that way, she said, she could post vacation pics for her close friends.

Fine, I thought, after the vacation, we'll shut it down.

Well, not exactly, obviously. It took two years, but she finally told me one day that she was shutting down the account because she had noticed she was wasting much too much time on it and the other posters (ie morons) were constantly making her angry.

She shut it down because she was tired of being angry.

Hallelujah.

UK competition watchdog seeks to make mobile browsers, cloud gaming and payments more competitive

Re: No. They obtained first mover advantage

Re-read my post.

I never said that they were good at it, I specifically said they built the market.

As such, we are in agreement.

"Apple and Google have substantial and entrenched market power in mobile operating systems"

No surprise there, they're the ones that created the market.

Borkzilla, late to the party as usual, tried to muscle its way in but didn't have the balls to follow through. It rarely does when it's not the one dictating the rules.

Nokia was there for long time, but didn't manage to get to grips with smartphones and failed.

Competition is possible, but will not come from government dictate. Given the cost of entry into the market, there's every chance that the future competitor on the market will be from China, because that is where it is growing right now, safe from meddling by either of our two incumbents.

Maybe India could grow one too, who knows ?

Intel details advances to make upcoming chips faster, less costly

The best player will win.

This is tech.

If China comes out with a new x86 design that is blisteringly fast and efficient, that's what people are going to buy - politics be damned.

Whatever you do, don't show initiative if you value your job

Where were the procedures ?

I agree that James launched himself into his own troubles, but where were the documented procedures on how to do what ?

Of course, this was back in the day and this is exactly the kind of thing that made people understand how important written procedures are.

Record players make comeback with Ikea, others pitching tricked-out turntables

Re: That vinyl sound

The analog sound is digitized ?

Maybe it is today, but back in the day (ie when I was young), the process was to make a master record, then use it to imprint the production line to make copies.

There was nothing digital in that process. They didn't have the technology for that yet.

I think.

Microsoft forgot to renew the certificate for its Windows Insider subdomain

Re: Certbot

Yeah, but that was not Made In Borkzillaland.

OVHcloud datacenter fire last year possibly due to water leak

Interesting article marred by dreadful time formatting

"The fire was subdued around 1000 after the electrical network was cut off and a pump boat arrived"

Around 1000 what ? Seconds ? Minutes ? Or is it supposed to be 10:00 A.M. ?

Military timing is all good, but a : every now and then wouldn't hurt.

Activision to begin union negotiations with workers from Raven Software

"Workers were also told they could not discuss sexual harassment and discriminatin lawsuits"

The company does not have the right to impose that.

If you don't want your employees to talk about lawsuits, you need to make it so that there are none.

And I don't mean by silencing the victims.

OMIGOD: Cloud providers still using secret middleware

"they also add new potential attack surfaces"

Okay, is it time to stop the bullshit about The Cloud^TM being easy to use ?

When it is working (which is not all the time) you have to track your usage (otherwise the bill at the end of the month is a punch in the gut), you have to ensure secure access, and now you also have to ensure against attacks you don't even know about.

I have a revolutionary idea : how about housing that server in your own server room ?