Posts by Pascal Monett

"high levels of non-compliance"

Hardly a surprise when HMRC cannot be arsed to explain the rules properly.

"get the feel of a larger screen"

I'm pretty sure my laptop already has a better resolution than that.

Besides, I need reading glasses now, so this gadget will be completely useless for me.

But hey, it's nice to see that all those VR headsets have been practically kneecapped by this new toy.

So, ex-NSA spies are sanctioned

In other words, when you are an NSA employee, those actions are fine, but as soon as you leave, you're toast.

What is an "active" cable ?

A cable is a cable. It's a bit of wire with certain mechanical properties, mainly, the ability to transfer current.

Our technology allows us to modulate that current to transfer data, but that has nothing to do with the cable and everything to do with the bits the cable is plugged into.

So, what is the difference between an "active" and a "passive" cable, given that the cable isn't given the choice ?

Okay, AI chatbots - so how would this work out ?

I had my FTTH line snagged by the local farmer's tractor - don't ask me how but apparently it had been installed a bit low on the pole across the street.

The line was intact, but it was on the ground. So I still had my connection, but the line was on the ground.

I had to explain three times to the helpdesk drone before he got the message. The line is intact, yes, but it is physically on the ground. Please come and hang it back up again.

I even got a visit from an actualy supervisor (yes, in person) who came to check on the situation.

Didn't make any difference though, they left it on the ground until some vehicle passed and wrecked it a month later. Oh, then they were there in two days to redo the whole installation.

So how could I explain this to an AI bot when actual humans took an hour to understand and then still didn't do anything until the line was actually physically cut ?

"get professional financial advice if in doubt"

Here's some professional advice for free : don't.

Only time will tell ? Really ?

It's been well-nigh 14 years since BitCoin started burning the world and nothing good has come of it, or any of its siblings, since.

However, the number of exchanges run by crooks or idiots has been revealed to be, well, practically all of them.

This is a case where you should actually throw the baby out with the bathwater.

No honor between thieves, then ?

It seems that Tiversa was a front for a bunch of miscreants playing "ethical" hackers, but with the intent of extracting money from another bunch of incompetents pretending to do medical analysis.

Smells like Theranos. It would seem that this is a trend.

In any case, I'll be enjoying the popcorn.

"the US government last week banned AMD and NVIDIA from selling some AI kit to China"

Okay, fine, but how difficult is it actually to set up a few shell companies that end up selling kit to China ?

Not that I'm saying Nvidia would do that, but China might.

Orbital refueling station

An interesting idea, but one that is probably going to have to wait a few years before being useful.

And I mean, a few years after it is in orbit.

I don't think that todays' satellites are capable of being refueled - but I don't know for sure. Once the orbital station is in place and has published its fueling procedure, maybe satellite makers can take that into account but, today, nobody has planned for that and planning is everything where a satellite is concerned.

It's a good idea, for sure, but I have the feeling the company is going to need to survive at least twenty years before actually starting to make any money.

"decisions about health data sharing should not be taken by politicians"

I'm starting to think that there are a few other areas that should be off limits to politicians.

Like state policy, for starters.

Let's just say we keep them around for visiting politicians from other countries, or to send them off to visit politicans in other countries.

They know how to hold a glass of wine, and that's about it.

"Block – the digital payments giant formerly known as Square"

Digital payment giant ?

Never heard of it.

Given that its founder is also the founder of Twitter, I'm not surprised about this breach. He was too busy tweeting to actually run his company.

No pity from me. You get the big salary, you accept the responsibility of your failure.

What ?

"thousands of creditors struggle"

"already well-compensated employees"

I'm sorry, what's the deal here ? You have thousands of creditors ? And you declare that your employees are well paid ?

Good for you.

You still failed, which, since you were a funny money scam, is not surprising.

"$2 billion per launch"

Thank God it's reusable.

Oh wait . . .

"we can't just block AWS"

No, you can't.

Watch me.

"the mention of the strcpy function immediately raises red flags"

So, how is it that the strcopy function hasn't been updated to avoid the issues ?

If it is such a massive risk, one would think that there would be people to correct the problem.

"Google plans to revise its search algorithm"

And all SEO salespeople are planning on decrypting that revision and modifying their courses accordingly.

"no other agency is trusted as much by the public as us"

True. And that is valid world-wide.

Still, $100K for a nine month study with 15 experts ? That's around $700 per month per expert, if all the money is going to them which it logically won't be since there will be other costs.

So these experts will be working for peanuts.

Nice of them.