Posts by Potemkine!

Braking news: Cops slammed for spamming Waze to slow drivers down

When cops twist the rules to fit their will, abuses are on the way.

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Woman forced to sell 4-bed house after crypto exchange wrongly refunded $7.2m

If a pot falls upon a stone, woe to the pot; if a stone falls upon a pot, woe to the pot; either way, woe to the pot.

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Voyager 1 data corrupted by onboard computer that 'stopped working years ago'

Another achievement for Voyager: the farther bug correction.

That's incredible. Well done chaps.

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Cloudflare tries to explain why it protects far-right forums that stalk and harass victims

Far right extremism get a lot of protection when it is a real danger and kill people in many countries.

Far right is responsible for massacres on many continents. Pinochet, Franco, Tōjō, Papadópoulos, Videla, Stroessner, Pétain, Montt and others have killed scores of people. But some still believe that allowing the people supporting their actions and propagating their ideas should be protected. That's nonsense. Al qaeda's free speech is not protected, far right extremists shouldn't be protected either.

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FBI: Look out, crooks stole $1.3b in cryptocurrency in just three months this year

"The explosive growth and high returns of the DeFi ecosystem have lured many early adopters to embrace blockchain technologies, such as smart contracts," Oglesby told The Register. "However, early investors should be wary. Most DeFi systems have little protection or safety nets in place to prevent catastrophic loss from a fraudulent attack."

But we were told that blockchain was the future and the solution to everything. .

I wonder if Gartner isn't in fact an NK proxy...

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California to try tackling drought with canal-top solar panels

This article would be interesting and understandable by most if it didn't mention those medieval units used everywhere except in most countries

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China-linked APT40 gang targets wind farms, Australian government

Just to be sure

Boycott everything coming from Rupert Murdoch's media empire.

It is malicious, even without Chinese intervention.

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Startup wants to build a space station that refuels satellites by 2025

It's a good idea. Throwing satellites away because their tank is empty is a waste and there's enough junk in space.

Northrop's Mission Extension Vehicle is an interesting solution too. Maybe would it be also possible to add a "plugin" to existing satellites to extend their lives?

Anyway, it goes in the right direction.

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Source: IBM disguised Watson Health layoffs as a 'redeployment initiative'

Another proposal

Inglorious B'stard Managers

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AI detects 20,000 hidden taxable swimming pools in France, netting €10m

Side note: I've seen the cost of this little thing in another article: €24M for 2021-2023.

Cap Gemini is really good at stealing gaining money from taxpayers.

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These pools are not 'secret', they are undeclared to avoid to pay taxes.

Talking about "Artificial Intelligence" for an image-analysis software is a little bit far fetched, isn't it?

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77% of security leaders fear we’re in perpetual cyberwar from now on

77% of security leaders fear we’re in perpetual cyberwar from now on

This would mean that 23% of security leaders are in a deep coma.

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Sephora to pay $1.2m to settle Cali privacy law claims – and why this is a big deal

If lawmakers weren't corrupt, they would make 'opt-in' mandatory before sharing personal information. Most of the privacy problems would be addressed then.

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BOFH and the case of the disappearing teaspoons

As a request, I'll add this in all my posts:

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Germany orders Sept 1 shutdown of digital ad displays to save gas

Less ads is not that bad.

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Meet the CrowPi-L – a clever, slightly rustic, Raspberry Pi laptop chassis

Interesting article, thank you!

As said by other commentards, it doesn't seem to be a valuable alternative to a second-hand laptop.

Pity the left-handed.

We are the invisible minority (~_~;)

Infosys reduces employee bonuses after execs promised better profit margins

50th Anniversary

Money, it's a crime

Share it fairly, but don't take a slice of my pie

Money, so they say

Is the root of all evil today

But if you ask for a rise, it's no surprise

That they're giving none away

Japan reverses course on post-Fukushima nuclear ban

It's a big step in getting rid of power plants burning fossil fuels, which is great.

I just hope that in the design of the new reactors they will take into account the fact they may have to face earthquakes with a force of 9 on the Richter scale

Re: Mountains of coal ash

For the coal, it already does. Particles produced by coal-fired power plants are dispersed in the atmosphere and go also in my garden, as well as in my lungs, and so even if there are close to none coal-fired power plants in my country.

Coal kills, and a lot.

Bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange Voyager to pay $1.6m bonus to key staff

Sorry, but I don't fell bad for the ones betting on cryptocurrenshits who lose in the end.

Python tops programming love list – but if you want a job, learn SQL

Javascript is a programming language? I thought it was a big pile of crap.

BTW, HTML is not a programming language. Even if it's awesome.

NASA's Space Launch System rocket is on track for August 29 liftoff

the time and money needed to build the vehicle have far surpassed initial estimates

Is this intended? Is this a common strategy to have projects accepted?

Standing 322 feet tall, and weighing 5.75 million pounds

Feet? Pounds? Miles?

The Middle-Age phoned and asked for its units back :-P

UK's largest water company investigates datacenters' use as drought hits

It isn't limited to UK only:

Drought-stricken Holland discovers Microsoft data center slurped 84m liters of drinking water last year

[...]

Microsoft, and the municipality of Hollands-Kroon, had previously said the Middenmeer facility would only need 12m to 20m liters per year, but local news outlet Noordhollands Dagblad uncovered classified figures which revealed the site, where Microsoft runs multiple data centers, used 84 million liters

Megatechcorps would lie? Unbelievable, isn't it?

US Army drone crashes hours ahead of breaking flight duration record

Re: Wait....what?

Another achievement from those two guys: they needed 64 days to find the drone and shoot it down, so their record still stands.

SI Police

WTF are feet and miles?

Twitter savaged by former security boss Mudge in whistleblower complaint

The timing raises questions

But I won't be surprised these allegations are nonetheless true.

$50m+ contract for crime-fighting IT system won by Fujitsu after no one else bid

The National Law Enforcement Data Service (NLEDS), which is being designed to replace both the PNC and the intelligence-sharing Police National Database (PND), was supposed to be up and running in 2020

Ask Meta, they probably have all the data already.

Meta offers $37.5m to settle location tracking lawsuit

If GDPR exited in the US, Meta could be slapped with a fine up to 4% of their worldwide revenues for this infraction. It could help Meta to get it right with privacy.

Novant Health admits leak of 1.3m patients' info to Facebook

When you make a deal with the Devil, don't be surprised to end in Hell.

OVH to hike prices, blames 'l'inflation'

Re: OVH based in a major nuclear country has trouble with Russian natural gas prices ?

As stated in the article, "Since 2000, production losses due to high river temperatures and low river flows have represented an average of 0.3% of annual production.". It's peanuts and doesn't explain the shortage.

The main reason is the maintenance of older power stations. 27 reactors are stopped on the 56 in France for a planned maintenance. In that context, closing a nuclear power station two years ago was not a good idea. The main reason stays it's the lack of investments to build new reactors to replace the older ones which causes today's shortages. This requires a long-term view that politicians haven't, as they look only to the next election.

Re: OVH based in a major nuclear country has trouble with Russian natural gas prices ?

Add also that because of the blindness of our deciders for the last 30 years and the negative influence of pseudo-greens against nuclear energy, no major investment were made to build new nuclear reactors. The old ones need more and more maintenance and must be shut down.

Closing Fessenheim was a mistake for instance and we'll collectively pay the price soon.

Re: OVH based in a major nuclear country has trouble with Russian natural gas prices ?

It's because of an European rule made to favour producers over local consumers interests.

cf https://www.politico.eu/article/why-europes-electricity-is-so-expensive/

"The markets follow a marginal model, which means the final price of electricity for the following day is pegged to the price of the most expensive fuel required to meet projected demand. The system is designed to provide utilities with the opportunity to recover investments and operating expenses.

If 100 percent of demand can be met with wind, solar and nuclear, which have very low generation costs, the price of power can be very low or even negative — this happened during the spring of 2020, when electricity demand was low and renewable energy production was high.

But when the expected demand exceeds the supply capable of being generated by clean power, costly fossil fuels have to be used to meet demand, and the price of power is pegged to that value. That's why the spike in natural gas costs is bad news for power prices."

Many ask the EU Commission to change that for months. It would help consumers in countries where electricity isn't produced by fossil fuels, as in France, but not the others that may in the end pay higher prices. It's the argument used by the Commission to refuse to change that rule. Because of the pressure of citizens, I think that in the coming months France could decide unilaterally not to follow the EU rules, at a cost of a European crisis.

Big Tech is building the metaverse of its own dreams. You don't want to go there

They may succeed

There are so many idiots out there they could find enough suckers to go into their dystopian alternate reality.

Many people prefer the blue pill to the red one.

NSO Group CEO steps down, 100 employees let go too

Best argument ever

"No, I wasn't trying to attack that bank with a gun, it's a misunderstood joke!"

We were promised integrated packages. Instead we got disintegrated apps

But...

WIth a rocker, it would be much harder to ask us to pay a monthly subscription to be able to turn on or off the bulbs in our house. They call that "the progress".

Add to this it would be harder for miscreants to turn your lightbulb in a zombie to attack other devices...

In the future, our whole could be ransomwared. You don't pay, you can't enter it, neither warm it nor light it. What a dream.

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

Much better to plant a few million trees

Question: how many trees are required to absorb the CO2 in the atmosphere and reach the level of 1900?

Yes, but the reason we got the excess CO2 in the first place was that we borrowed...

As you say, we haven't that energy source, and even if, it won't be used in a near future. CO2 production will rise in the next years whatever Europe does, so the only solution in a new future is to remove the CO2 from the atmosphere.

I don't understand the question

You're right, I didn't read carefully enough and didn't see CO was produced, something that isn't good enough as CO is toxic to us.

As the device consumes CO2, could it be used also on Earth? In that experiment, what does the carbon become?

NASA builds for keeps: Voyager mission still going after 45 years

I thought New Horizon was faster than Voyager, but I was wrong

Re: Spacetime

That will be an exciting mission.

I've recently seen a documentary on French TV, named the "NASA's 10 Greatest Achievements". NASA still makes us dream - No man is a prophet in his own land!

Software developer cracks Hyundai car security with Google search

I wonder if this developer could get into legal troubles for kreaking a secured device... I hope not, but everything is possible in the MegaCorps World.

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

Re: I hope they are consulting with NASA

Slowing a probe down enough to prevent the balloon from being torn to shreds is rather tricky but not impossible.

Wasn't that achieved by the Vega missions?

UK launches 'consultation' with EU over exclusion from science programs

Did all these countries unilaterally change the term of an agreement they had with the EU? I don't think so.

As far as I know, their words value isn't zero.

Vous chantiez? Et bien dansez maintenant

Let those ministers do their claims. It's all about bragging and speaking out loud.

EU has enough problems and doesn't need to spill money in a country who decided to leave the Union and who unilaterally change the terms of the agreement between the two. UK cannot be trusted as long as its leadership will say the same. If the UK citizens want to keep it, no problem, it's democracy. But there's no need to the EU to bend and comply to the wills of such jerks.

Philippines orders fraud probe after paying MacBook prices for slow Celeron laptops

Did you see those flying pigs?

An inquiry is the best way to bury little dirty secrets.

I expect no one in that government or in the previous one be indicted following that inquiry.

Modeling software spins up plans for floating wind turbines

Knowing a little bit about computational fluid dynamics, congrats to the software developers, it must have been tricky to do.

Dinobabies latest: IBM settles with widow of exec who killed himself after layoff

If laws were broken, why isn't there any public inquiry against IBM? Aren't Prosecutors interested in defending people when a big company is involved?

When will the UK take another giant leap into space?

Try saying that after too many drinks.

Try understanding that after too many drinks. ^^

Nuclear power is the climate superhero too nervous to wear its cape

No cape

Capes are way too dangerous

CIA accused of illegally spying on Americans visiting Assange in embassy

Assange, right now being held in a maximum-security British prison

Waoh. I didn't realise Assange was a super-villain who had to be triple-locked to ensure the safety of the World