* Posts by Pascal Monett

16643 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Apr 2007

Russia: It isn't just us – a bit of an old US rocket might get as close as 5.4km to the ISS

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Great link !

I'm bookmarking that.

Google sued for firing staff who claim they tried to follow 'Don't be evil' motto

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attorney-client privilege

Seems like that is the corporate-world version of National Security.

Computers cost money. We only make them more expensive by trying to manage them ourselves

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"For the rest of us, it's a case of doing our homework"

Sorry, you can't have it both ways.

You can't say that companies have cupboards full of broken laptops/screens/keyboards, then say that the solution is "doing our homework" and choosing a rental service.

If a company is not doing its homework managing its laptops, what makes you think it's going to do its homework choosing a rental scheme ?

It's a management issue. IT does have managers, you know, it's not just peons running aound and ignoring tickets. If management is on the ball about managing capex hardware, then it will also be on the ball managing opex rentals.

Besides, I've never understood this obsession with capex. You're paying either way, and don't try and make me think that a company with 1000+ users is going to save money and helpdesk resources just because the laptops are rented.

On top of that, there's the argument that computer hardware is no longer progressing at the phenominal rates we witnessed from 1985 until, oh around 2010. These days, six years is a perfectly reasonable lifetime expectation for a laptop, whereas in 2005 I know of several large Luxembourgish companies who had a 3-year replacement plan.

Heck, I only just replaced my own work laptop that I got in 2012.

I think it has returned its investment in a perfectly satisfactory manner.

Microsoft's Teams Essential tier seems designed to coax people on to Business Basic

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Trollface

Re: Global warning

Wow.

You manage to run Teams and Windows on 8GB of RAM ?

Apple files fresh appeal to stop court order demanding external payment systems in iOS apps

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"the injunction would impose irreparable injury"

Irreparable, yes, but not important.

Apple will survive even if Epic wins, and it's not like Apple will have to pay what Epic is not giving now.

Yes, Apple will make less money, but it already has litterally more money than it can spend. It is the top company in the world by market cap and is more valuable than Facebook, Nvidia and TSMC put together. It can take the hit.

Personally, I would not respond to this appeal.

Nextcloud boss: You gotta fight … for your right … to 'plug into Windows and offer the exact same service'

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I sympathise with the opinion

Choice is crucial, for sure, the The Cloud is never going to be a level playing field.

It was created by behemoths, and the little flies that flit around them will only be tolerated as long as they don't become a bother.

OneNote's integration into Windows, as much as it irks me, was obvious. Of course Borkzilla is pushing Teams and Office 365, you can't stop that.

It took over a decade and a legnthy trial to give us the possibility of having another browser than IE as default, and now Borkzilla is trying to tie Edge in again.

It's the nature of the beast.

Three key ransomware actors changed jobs on October 18 – the same day REvil went dark

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The criminal world is still a capitalist market

It is fascinating to view how criminals recreate and expand on everything legal markets have concieved of.

It sure would be interesting to see how criminals implement secure transactions - that has to be worthy of analysis.

Their only problem is that, well, they're all criminals. There's no guarantee that nobody is going to attempt to hack their own systems.

What a life.

China to create workers' paradise for ride share drivers

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"47.7 per cent said bring it on"

Well somebody has to test the things . . . to make sure they're safe for me.

New UK product security law won't be undercut by rogue traders upping and vanishing, government boasts

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Taking a local hostage

Well yes. It's not cynical, it's perfectly normal. In a world where Zuckerberg is free to ignore repeated pleas and demands for making his cash cow more palatable to the concept of morality, it is obvious that one way to make that bastard focus on the issue is to drag the local CEO muppet in front of the beak and make him sweat.

Add a bit of inside pressure to the outside pressure that apparently does nothing at all to His Zuckyness.

And you can put the name of any multinational conglomerate that has a high presence on the web and no stores anywhere in the same basket. Right now we are under the influence of American companies, but nothing says that China, India or even Russia could not, one day soon, have an outrageously successful app on the Internet that is used the world over. When that day comes, we won't have more influence over the makers of that product than we have now over Facebook.

That is not acceptable when the risk is (young) people being stalked or abused.

Microsoft: What's that? A patch for make-me-admin vuln? Sorry – can't hear you. Have a new jumper instead

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"Feeling good while you’re looking good"

You're selling an Operating System, not a Lifestyle Support System.

For God's sake do your job already before branching out into competing with Bed Bath & Beyond.

It's the flu season – FluBot, that is: Surge of info-stealing Android malware detected

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"written in Finnish [..] without Scandinavian letters"

And that is supposed to be coming from your Scandinavian Telecom provider.

Tell me that nobody is going to fall for that.

Please.

Lloyd's of London suggests insurers should not cover 'retaliatory cyber operations' between nation states

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"organisations caught in tit-for-tat nation state-backed attacks being left high and dry"

Understandable, even if it is an easy cop-out for insurers.

It is obvious that insurers, however close to lawyers they may be, do not have the funds to reimburse damages that can be attributed to acts of war.

Otherwise, if you really want that kind of protection, imagine what your insurance bill is going to become . . .

The climate is turning against owning our own compute hardware. Cloud is good for you and your customers

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WTF?

What is this bullshit ?

"If you’re managing your own, the first question to ask yourself is, are you Google, Microsoft, or AWS? "

Oh, because of course, Google, Borkzilla and AWS are the gold standard in five nines availability ? Um, no.

And, obviously, the three are also paragons of data protection and always ensure your data remains yours ? Um, no.

Does the author of this piece have shares in all three providers ? If so, why did he not partake in IBM's cloud (it has one, FYI) ?

The Cloud (TM) has its utility, no argument there. But to pretend that everyone should just go and and rent a cloud server instead of managing things themselves is to beat a very particular marketing drum.

There are many companies that have been managing five nines, even before The Cloud (TM) existed. They're still doing so, and The Cloud (TM) still can't.

Come back with your bullshit PR argument the day The Cloud (TM) can.

Think that spreadsheet in your company's accounts dept is old? 70 years ago, LEO ran the first business app

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Indeed. An explanation like that puts in sharp relief why such a technology would be welcomed with open arms by a company. The improvement in delivery efficiency alone probably reimbursed the cost of the whole thing.

Hubble space 'scope brings its Cosmic Origins Spectrograph back online

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Re: JWST isn't really a replacement..

Agreed. It's not because the JWST has "telescope" in the name that it will do the same job as the Hubble.

The JWST is specialized for looking into infrared. It is a requirement for Science, no argument there, but the only thing that could replace Hubble would be a Hubble II.

Optical may not the best tool for Science, but it is still mighty useful.

And it gives pretty pictures.

You loved running JavaScript in your web browser. Now, get ready for Python scripting

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Wonderful news !

Now I know to be on the lookout for NoPython to install next to NoScript.

Thanks for the heads-up.

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The Board

You, me and debris: NASA cans ISS spacewalk because it's getting too risky outside

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Mushroom

"the ISS is rammed full of redundancy"

Hey BOEING, did you hear that ?

UK competition regulator to Meta's Facebook: Sell Giphy, we will not approve the purchase

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Trollface

Obviously. It's a kink in the Master Plan to control the world.

But it's fine. Meta's 3D enhanced-reality-auto-marijuana-injector-goggles will smooth over the issues and gain massive acceptance.

As soon as El Zuck can negociate the contract with North Korea.

Leaked footage shows British F-35B falling off HMS Queen Elizabeth and pilot's death-defying ejection

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"a high priority operation was under way to recover the crashed jet"

Of course. The only way to waste a £100-million-pound machine is to spend untold millions getting it back before anyone else.

Mine's the one with the black budget line in the pocket.

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Indeed.

He's probably an inch shorter now, though.

Visiting a booby-trapped webpage could give attackers code execution privileges on HP network printers

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That is not a joke. It is reality.

Microsoft adds Buy Now, Pay Later financing option to Edge – and everyone hates it

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Re: Kill it now

You mean, the 10 users using Edge ?

Sweden asks EU to ban Bitcoin mining because while hydroelectric power is cheap, they need it for other stuff

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Re: which one is actually DOING WORK that might return VALUE

The heat pumping systems. Duh.

When it's -10°C outside, I place a lot of value in my heating system.

Government-favoured child safety app warned it could violate the UK's Investigatory Powers Act with message-scanning tech

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Paving's looking mighty fine 'round here.

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Ah, there it is : think of the children

"Law enforcement bodies such as the National Crime Agency claim that wider adoption of E2EE will stop them from detecting paedophiles preying on children through messaging apps"

Because of course they do.

I'd like to know how many paedos have been caught thanks to this indispensable privacy-violating attitude.

This is the favorite excuse for snooping, but I've never heard an official declaration stating "We have caught X criminals with this technology".

So, out with it. How many are now behind bars because of your snooping in everyone's lives ?

Privacy Sandbox saga continues: UK watchdog extracts more commitments from Google over ad tech

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Re: This is a waste of time

Google hasn't wiped the floor with South Korea yet.

BOFH: What if International Bad Actors designed the vaccine to make us watch more Steven Seagal movies?

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Don't.

You'd not only be wasting your time, but also validating them by giving them a new audience and therefor lending new importance to their ravings.

Just step away slowly and never turn your back on them before you're well out of reach.

Swooping in to claim the glory while the On Call engineer stands baffled

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I'll admit that, if you change it to say : "When you have eliminated all which is possible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth", then it makes more sense.

It is also, however, less awesome.

Autonomy accounts whistleblowers may testify at founder Mike Lynch's US criminal trial

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Appeal here, appeal there

pretty soon the legal teams are all going to have new Teslas for XMas.

AWS chops data transfer fees by massive extension of free tier – 2 months after rival previewed R2 Storage

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"According to AWS chief evangelist Jeff Barr"

Chief evangelist.

Can't shake the image of someone who is just one reveal away from crying on set and begging forgiveness for having cheated on his wife.

Mine's the one without a Bible in the pocket.

Academics tell Brit MPs to check the software used when considering reproducibility in science and tech research

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"an acute issue that can be swiftly resolved"

So a crisis is something that can be quickly resolved.

Then climate change is endemic to our civilization.

Yup, sounds about right.

UK.gov emits draft IoT and smartphone security law for Parliamentary scrutiny

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Re: until the last device stops working, and how would they know?

Well, telecoms companies could compile a monthly list of all phone models that connect to their network and make it public (just the model is not PII or subject to GDPR).

Companies could then base their support towards all of their models on the list.

Of course, that is just a practical idea, so it will likely never see the light of day.

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Shouldn't be that difficult

Online reseller sells you unsecure product. You get pwned. You sue online reseller. Online reseller sues maker.

Problem solved.

ESA's Solar Orbiter will swing past Earth this week – sure hope nobody created a big cloud of space junk up there

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"I prefer not to think about it too much."

Indeed, that is my approach as well concerning anything I can do nothing about.

Microsoft extends 'outage mode' for Azure Active Directory to bake more resilience into cloudy services

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Re: any significant (resulting in loss of life) application on Azure

I would be very concerned if any hospital ran any of its IT on any cloud whatsoever.

If your software can be responsible for loss of life, it is your responsability to ensure 100% uptime, with redundancies and failovers.

There is not Cloud that ensures that today, or even pretends to.

Kremlin names the internet giants it will kidnap the Russian staff of if they don't play ball in future

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"Western governments detain people too"

Indeed they do, but not for apps on smartphones or comments on social media.

Criticizing your government is a right enshrined in the Constitution of any democratic country. As soon as you start cracking down on people who say they don't like you or what you're doing, Democracy has gone out the window.

Although there never has been any Democracy in Russia to start with, so . . .

Theranos' Holmes admits she slapped Big Pharma logos on lab reports to boost her biz

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"This work was done in partnership with those companies"

Then it's simple :

Powerpoint Slide 1 title : "Our Partners". Then you list the partners, and like that you can probably even use the logos.

You're over 30, don't try to make me believe you've never seen this before.

US bans Chinese firms – including one linked to HPE’s China JV – for feeding tech to Beijing's military

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Trollface

"you will find it rather difficult to do lawful business with American organizations"

But you will still be able to buy guns and ammo. First ammo shipment free !

Giant Japanese corporations to launch bank-backed digital currency

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Okay : step 1 in getting rid of cash

Mint or burn, ie transfer to or from a bank account into a digital wallet. No more mining and 1 Digital Yuan = 1 RL Yuan.

Make things interoperable ? Laudable goal, but that's just the plausible excuse.

In reality this is just another step forward to ensuring that the government gets to see all of our cash transactions. The end goal is to make sure the government gets its cut.

Apple, Amazon fined to the tune of €200m for colluding over Beats headphones sales

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It's a proven fact that as soon as you attain a majority of the market you become extremely hostile to anything that makes you work to keep it that way.

Apple's Pegasus lawsuit a 'declaration of war' against offensive software developers, says Kaspersky director

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Re: Offensive Researchers

Indeed. Vitaly missed a golden opportunity to shut his mouth.

The NSO is not your garden variety of software developer. Conflating NSO state-approved malware writers with "software developers" in general is just muddying the waters.

Shame on you, Vitaly.

NASA boffins seem to think we're worth saving from fiery asteroid death so they're shooting a spaceship at one

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Re: Impacts are not always bad

Yeah but the next impact will be a lot less nice for us.

Best we avoid that.

How a malicious Android app could covertly turn the DSP in your MediaTek-powered phone into an eavesdropping bug

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Re: Eavesdropping bug

"I consider all Android powered smartphones eavesdropping bugs"

There, FTFY.

Yeehaw, y'all! Texas done got itself a honkin' new Samsung semiconductor plant

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"because of our world-class business climate and exceptional workforce"

You're going to be having a world-class water shortage, and I'm waiting with the popcorn to enjoy it.

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Re: In Texas?

Practically anywhere else might have been better.

China trying to export its Great Firewall and governance model

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"what information should be shared"

Ideally, none.

Germany, much less China, does not need to know about my surfing habits in France.

This sickness about sharing data is the beginning of the end of freedom and democracy. The NSA is running roughshod over everybody's rights and nobody is controlling it.

I absolutely agree that a country's citizen's activity should stay in that country.

The only data that should be shared is data concerning Interpol and global police operations - which have warrants to justify their activity.

Should be easy to win the rights to .tv when you're name-checked in the contract's tech reqs – right, Afilias?

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"Afilias has ignored [..] our offer to let it tell its side of this story"

It doesn't need to tell it's "side of the story".

It's going to get the deal and that's all that matters to the Board.

Apple sues 'amoral 21st century mercenaries' NSO for infecting iPhones with Pegasus spyware

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Re: Throwing phones away regularly also helps

Thank you for helping to increase the amount of toxic waste third-world children have to deal with.

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Not really.