Posts by Pascal Monett

Re: there are strange folk who actually like cats

Yes, there are. People who like the purring of a cat sitting in your lap, especially on a cold winter evening. People who find it fun to see a cat lying in the sun, giving that impression of utter exhaustion only a cat can achieve. Oh, and farmers who like the free pest control around their grain reserves.

I love cats. I've always had a cat around since I was 5 years old. Not the same cat, obviously, but there always is a cat. I like it when they come for cuddles and push their head against my knuckles to scratch their cheeks, purring all the while like a motor boat.

I don't mind dogs, but they don't purr.

Re: looking for the easy life

It seems to me that they already have the money for an easy life. Those $100+ millions they sold ? They invested that first. They likely needed a fair amount of millions to be able to sell those shares for that amount.

If I had $50 million, I guarantee there would be no VCing for me. I'd shut down my company, kick back and enjoy taking my wife to the restaurant every day of the week, spending the rest of the time gaming, YouTubing and generally being retired.

But I don't have that money.

Well he stuffed the Supreme Court with all the Republicans he could find and they shot him down anyway, so I'm not sure him being vastly more intelligent (twice of nothing is still not much) would make much of a difference.

That article does not make clear how the data was accessed. Of course, obtaining personal, intimate data on up to 14 million government workers is very much a bad thing, but there is nothing that says that an FTP password was at fault.

Solarwinds can explain all it wants, the fact that it has rubbish password security is now established and that is a stain that is not going to go away quickly for a company that is supposed to deal in Internet security and network monitoring.

Re: your own selfish ilk

Funny, I don't remember saying that I do download 365 days a year.

Re: adding ~ 1 million tons of lava to that area every day

There is nothing in your linked article that states how much lava is being added. Personally, I think a million tons a day is a bit much.

This page indicates that the Long Mountain, aka Mauna Loa, has not erupted since 1984, although it also specifies that the threat level is very high.

I don't know how to parse that information.

If workers are forced to riot to get paid, then there is a problem that needs solving - wherever it happens.

It is not about capitalism, it is about basic human decency. You do the work, you get paid.

Re: Too logical...

I think that, if a manufacturer refuses the right to repair, it should automatically be obliged to extend the guarantee to the lifetime of the product.

Oh, and I mean the real lifetime, not the projected, expected lifetime. Guarantee until the thing breaks down physically.

I can't repair my own kit that you took my money for ? Fine, you do it then. For free and for as long as I have it.

I disagree

This is the EU. More importantly, this is Eurocrats we're talking about. They live in a special world, one where money did not keep them from drafting laws that furthered Human Rights and the respect of privacy. GDPR, much ?

Lobby money will change nothing. The EU is setting up the legal framework to ensure that everyone plays nicely. It is not a threat in itself. If Apple, Facebook & co play nicely, nothing will happen.

But, if they don't then WHAM! and then they have to explain to shareholders why results are down by 6%.

Suits me.

Re: That reminds me <nostalgia mode>

A UPS is not only there to take over in the event of a power cut - it also smooths the voltage and ensures that the equipment is not subject to power spikes.

Well, if you buy a good one, that is.

I live in northern France, not far from a nuclear power station. When i started getting heavily equipped in computers and peripherals, some twenty years ago, I quickly noticed that, despite my being less than 30km away from the source of all power in the region, I was getting micro-drops in power that would freeze my computer regularly. I'm talking about several times a week.

I pride myself in always buying the best I can afford, so I was a bit miffed that my power supply was likely to damage my equipment.

I bought an 800VA UPS in 2001 and never experienced any problems again. When that one died of old age in 2009, I bought a new 1000VA UPS, and when that one died in 2019, I got a 1400VA model.

It's not just the power cuts that count.

I think it would be more because 51 years ago, nobody had the means to test 650000 variations in anything resembling a human lifetime.

Cryptographic experts today have likely not invented new ways of decrypting things, how to decrypt was known decades ago. It's just that, today, computers make everything faster so you can try more things and stumble upon the solution.

This was a brute-force hack. Beck then, they didn't have the means to do it.

@Headley_Grange

I have a friend like that. I've been educating him on web security for almost twenty years now. He uses Firefox with an adblocker and NoScript, like I taught him, except that, a few weeks ago, he admitted that he had disabled NoScript.

It annoys him because he cannot access his usual sites likes he likes to.

WTF ? I explained how you can just Allow the sites you work with. Where's the problem ?

I think the problem is that many people just can't be bothered to think things through - at least, not where computers are concerned. It annoys them and <i<they don't want to know</i> .

I spend my life on computers. It's my job, and my hobby. I breath bytes. I cannot fault other people who like other things.

I can, however, feel dismayed by it.

From the article

"The GCP Cloud Run defaults also played their part. "The max-instances is preset to 1,000, and concurrency set to 80," he said. If he had corrected this to small values like 2 and 1, the bill shock would not have occurred. "

So he did find the setting and understand its importance. Only he checked after the bill, not before.

When he read the phrase "Terms and conditions may not apply in China " he just saw the word China and knee-jerked all over the keyboard.

Thank you for the link. I've learned something.

You could have referenced that to start with, though.

You're the one who clicked the article. If you don't like it, go somewhere else.

You know how to vote ?

Then you know what you need to do.