Posts by Pascal Monett

I also had an encounter with a magnet issue. One of the wife's friends had a son who called me one day about his Mac laptop. It would seem that it wasn't starting any more. I alerted him to the fact that I didn't know all that much about the Mac software environment, but agreed to go take a look.

When I got to his room, I started checking out the laptop and asked him when the issue had started. His answer was to point to a large lump of metal, about the size of my fist, in the form of a cylinder and said that it had fallen on the keyboard. I took one look at the thing, with its nails, paper clips and other assorted "decorations" clinging to it and told him that his disk was wiped and probably dead. He looked at me as if I was telling him the sky was green and asked me why.

That's when I had to explain to him about magnetic storage and how it doesn't do well with ginormous magnets in the immediate vicinity.

So yeah, not knowing about cassette tapes is likely a cause of ignorance of the issue.

I have one question

How does Google know what content is against climate change ? How is Google going to be able to target those pages, but not the pages that discuss the claim ?

If Google can actually do that, then Google has far more information about the Internet than I feel comfortable with.

"Facebook’s algorithms [..] put immense profit before safety and society"

Wow, what a surprise.

Not to diminish the testimony in any way but, honestly, US senators are the only ones who are going to feel a revelation here.

"D-Wave claims"

Not a problem. We'll just wait and see what D-Wave delivers.

And, as far as quantum computing is concerned, even if D-Wave is a year late, it will still be an accomplishment.

"Unsecured Elasticsearch clusters are relatively common"

Is it time to declare ElasticSearch a security threat yet ?

If not, when ?

"Do CBDCs improve existing business?"

In a word : no.

Businesses today have no technical issues paying their invoices or getting their customer's money. A so-called digital currency is not to help with that, so the entire exercise seems quite useless to me.

On top of that, if you want to make me download a terabyte of blockchain data on my smartphone just so that I can bonk it on a payment terminal in order to get my croissant, you can fuck right off.

The Great Wall is being extended

And that is fine.

If Beijing wants to wall its companies and money-makers inside its borders, it is free to do so and that will trouble no one.

If China wants to make life more difficult for multinational behemoths, that's fine as well. The multinationals have largely enough money to cope, and largely enough analysts to define when too much is too much and it's time to pull out.

Keep raising the wall, China, and you'll find yourself alone behind it.

"an upgrade will have to happen in the coming months or years"

Why ? Because Borkzilla says so ?

Windows 1 0 was supposed to be the last Windows. Frankly, I see no reason why there should be a Windows 11 - there's nothing in there that can't be handled by a patch.

Borkzilla is going to have to come to terms with the fact that companies are not there to endlessly stop working just so the latest, "greatest" Borkzilla software can be installed.

You know what people like with computers, Borkzilla ? Stability. There's no reason an OS should last less long than the hardware it runs on.

"Neither is currently capable of achieving orbit"

And as long as they can't, they're just toys for (billoinnaire) boys.

Billionnaire will billionnaire, but their toys are going to have to become useful if they want to make anything out of it.

People are not going to pay $100K to spend two minutes at the edge of space.

"Epik happily hosts services and individuals who hold those views"

On the one hand, I'd like that platform to be shut down.

On the other hand, it's a treasure trove for the FBI.

So go free speech. Let those assholes hang themselves.

the Nobelium gang

Putting more pressure on OS makers, industry and IoT-shite makers to secure their platforms.

As bad as it may seem, in some cases this pressure might not be a bad thing. It is going to push industry to better safety practices, maybe cleaning up their act and doing a better job overall. That will benefit everyone.

Oh, and maybe, just maybe, all those unsecured cloud databases will become a thing of the past. I can dream, can't I ?

But attacking hospitals for money should mean a bullet in the head. No pity there.

"some customers have been sent an outstanding balance notification in error"

I know that, where email is concerned, it is really easy to fuck up even when you're trying to do things right.

However, it must be said that it would make things simpler if you could compare the recipients actually generated to the list you're expecting before sending out the mailing.

I do not know of any tool that allows you to do that. Of course, you could use Word and generate the mails before sending them off to Outlook, but that is you doing the job. I'm thinking of something integrated in your mailing tool that does the job and flags any discrepancies before proposing to send it all.

Justice and Russia

Those two words just don't go together.

The Law is just a tool for the State to wield in order to crush whoever it is that is getting in the way. Putin will lift his phone, say "I want that guy to go down", and all the judges and police will do their best to find anything they can pretend to make stick.

State treason ? In Russia it is state treason to not like Putin.

Progress, of sorts

We have achieved videoconferencing for the masses. We can even use our smartphones for that now, something that the phone industry promised decades ago but failed to deliver.

The result ? Everybody hates it.

Now, we are witnessing a new gimmick : pics which have some depth to them. To make it work, you have to have bespoke hardware. That is very much going to limit the market. Yet another thing with batteries to follow.

It's an interesting idea, but I want it on my 26" widescreen.

Not a vulnerability

As long as you play nice and only talk to servers you trust.

Hey, Borkzilla, did you know there is this thing called hackers ?

They tend to not play by the rules you dictate.

But okay, I understand that that is not your problem.

I quietly disagree

"You just do not get the same level of job satisfaction or client adulation when supporting clients remotely, do you? "

I feel fine working from my home office. I have a new customer that wants me on site now, and the highway and parking experience are every bit as horrible as I remember FBC (From Before COVID). Thankfully, that customer only signed for 3 days a week, and it would appear that, some days, I might be able to work remotely again.

I must have been a cave troll in a previous life.