* Posts by Pascal Monett

16741 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Apr 2007

AI energy draw from Chicago datacenters to rise ninefold

Pascal Monett Silver badge
Thumb Up

"industry is exploring nuclear as an alternative"

Good. Anything that will decrease the insane amount of coal plants that we are collectively using is a Good Thing in my book.

Please base them on Thorium, for added safety and availability.

WhatsApp, Threads, more banished from Apple App Store in China

Pascal Monett Silver badge

Re: YouTube is available in China?

Indeed.

What's to bet that it's a "filtered" version ?

Wing Commander III changed how the copy hotkey works in Windows 95

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I can only encourage you to read them. You will learn that the authors thought things through way more than could be shown on TV.

Simple example : in the books, you learn that, when fighting on spaceships, the guns use bullets made of plastic so as to not punch holes through the ship hulls.

They thought of that, and of many other things besides.

It really is an awesome story.

Pascal Monett Silver badge

Ah, The Expanse.

I was so enamoured by the TV series that I bought the books - and read all of them.

I understand now why the TV series stopped when it did. It still gave a positive message, but eschewed the following 50-year plotline that the rest of the books described.

The book series is awesome, to be sure, but trying to get everything after the Slow Zone was colonized would be a mind-breaker for production and for most viewers.

Some things are best left in print.

Pascal Monett Silver badge
Thumb Up

Agreed. I remember playing WCIII, it was fun.

But X-Wing was the game that finally decided me to buy a joystick. And Alliance was just everything a Star Wars fan could want at the time.

Awesome games, awesome gameplay, fun and engaging. Terms that more than few modern so-called blockbusters have utterly forgotten.

Unintended acceleration leads to recall of every Cybertruck produced so far

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Facepalm

"press the brake pedal if the accelerator ever gets stuck"

Wow. This actually had to be said.

Is it just me, or is Humanity's IQ diminishing ?

Cybercriminals threaten to leak all 5 million records from stolen database of high-risk individuals

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Mushroom

"work is underway to further protect data"

Then, when the next breach occurs, further work will "be underway".

Sometimes it would be so nice to be able to just stand those idiots in a line and slap all of them in one fell swoop.

I don't care that security is hard. You know that the database is critical. Get yourselves an $800 million dollar budget and secure the damn thing.

Some smart meters won't be smart at all once 2/3G networks mothballed

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Facepalm

So, smart meter joy is continuing

This train wreck keeps on derailing, apparently. That's exactly how it was programmed from the start.

Now, all those people who didn't want anything to do with 'em are going to have the joy of watching the technician come back and do it all over again.

Planned obsolescence at its finest.

Ransomware feared as IT 'issues' force Octapharma Plasma to close 150+ centers

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Re: don't want to pay for, the resources to protect themselves

Not a problem then. Those Vulture Capitalists will just have to continue paying the danegeld until they get fed up with doing so.

Nothing educates like pain.

Crooks exploit OpenMetadata holes to mine crypto – and leave a sob story for victims

Pascal Monett Silver badge

"avoid using the default credentials"

I'm sorry but, in this day and age, if you are a company installing a product and you use the default credentials, you deserve all the pain you get.

Stability AI decimates staff just weeks after CEO's exit

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Re: winners and losers

And "with enough money"

NASA will send astronauts to patch up leaky ISS telescope

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Re: Why design it to be attached to the ISS

Electricity from the ISS's solar panels ?

Pascal Monett Silver badge

So how did it "develop a leak" ?

Was a very small micrometeorite the cause, or did the incessant heating/cooling from orbiting the planet 20 times a day finally create cracks in the telescope tube ?

Inquiring minds and all that . . .

IBM accused of cheating its own executive assistants out of overtime pay

Pascal Monett Silver badge
WTF?

"retaliating against them for accurately reporting their working hours"

So, I see that IBM has finally gotten rid of the dinosaurs and is now grinding down the rest of its employees.

I wonder how long this will last before nobody but college freshmen applies for a job at IBM anymore ?

Google fires 28 staff after sit-in protest against Israeli cloud deal ends in arrests

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Take this as a lesson

Google will not allow anything to get in the way of it making money.

You have ethical problems ? Fuck you.

911 goes MIA across multiple US states, cause unclear

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Trollface

Biden ?

185K people's sensitive data in the pits after ransomware raid on Cherry Health

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Flame

"In an abundance of caution"

You mean, the abundance you did not put into securing your network and training your people ?

And I see that you have found the boilerplate yada yada for failling to ensure the security of the data in your care. Well done. It sounds just as reliable now as it has the last million times we've already heard it.

You might want to actually put some millions behind your words soon, because it has cost some other health company $800+ million just to clean up.

You have that kind of money ? If so, carry on mouthing your platitudes.

Microsoft claims it didn't mean to inject Copilot into Windows Server 2022 this week

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Trollface

"appears to have been accidental"

The only thing accidental was the drone who clicked on the "Start Taking Over The World" option ahead of schedule.

EU tells Meta it can't paywall privacy

Pascal Monett Silver badge
FAIL

It's Zuckerberg

I will not trust that individual to respect anything he promises.

I trust that he will find a way to track people who have subscribed and opted out of advertising, will get caught and try to brush it off with another "Oops, sorry Your Honor, we made a mistake. Won't happen again, pinky promise."

And then it will happen again.

Novelty flip phone strips out almost every feature possible to be as boring as possible

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Thumb Down

Bummer

Just when I read a title that tells me : this is my phone for when I retire, the rest of the article says I won't get it.

Grrr.

Crypto conferences liquidated after biblical flooding in Dubai

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Trollface

$270 for a cab

Good.

Those funny money apologists are obviously swimming in it, so they can afford it.

Whistleblower cries foul over alleged fuselage gaps in Boeing 787 Dreamliner

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"We are fully confident in the 787 Dreamliner"

Well duh. It's not like you're going to actually say anything like : "well we are considering grounding our entire fleet for an extensive security review".

That would basically shut down the company. Permanently.

So no, head chief engineer and all spokesdrones are going to be "confident" in their planes - even though they avoid flying on them.

Devaluing content created by AI is lazy and ignores history

Pascal Monett Silver badge

I vote for "well and truly lost"

Shoulda woulda coulda yada yada. It's all very nice to request the public to be responsible, but the public isn't and it's not being given the tools to be responsible about AI.

Those decisions are all being made at the Board level by people who, frankly, do not have the public's interest at heart in any way, shape or form.

So the only tool the public has is blind disregard for anything AI. Once the Board suits will have understood your message and understood that it is in their interest to show the public what has been 100% human-generated versus what has been "facilitated" with pseudo-AI, then we have a better environment where the public will be able to gradually accept and integrate that, indeed, pseudo-AI is not going away and there are things that might be better for it.

But until then, only shunning AI is going to have any effect on Boardroom discussions.

YouTube now sabotages ad-blocking apps that stream its vids

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"I have a hard time believing"

I don't.

We live in an age where multinational behemoths believe that they have the right to define how we go about our daily lives and, for Alphabet, that means it has the right to track our every move. It will do any and everything it can to ensure that that "right" is enforced.

Poor Mr Orwell. He thought it would be governments . . .

NASA confirms Florida house hit by a piece of ISS battery pack

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Trollface

It happened in Florida

Nothing to see here, move along. Watch out for the alligator on the sidewalk. Move along . . .

Micron says it's first to QLC NAND with over 200 layers

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Windows

Re: we're sacrificing reliability for convenience yet again

Convenience will be the death of our civilization.

Mark my words.

And get off my lawn !

Change Healthcare’s ransomware attack costs edge toward $1B so far

Pascal Monett Silver badge

I wonder just what level of security you can get for $872 million.

I'm thinking the Board might be well advised to start budgeting a few tens of millions in that direction - because otherwise, there's a good chance that they'll be budgeting another few billion in payouts in not too long.

Google location tracking deal could be derailed by politics

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Trollface

"could be derailed by politics"

You mean, politics other than lobbying efforts ?

Those are the worst, ain't they ?

NASA needs new ideas and tech to get Mars Sample Return mission off the ground

Pascal Monett Silver badge

Re: So they got samples ..

You do realize we're talking rocket science here ? Things that have never yet been tried ?

Step by step, grasshopper. That is how we advance.

Intel's effort to build a foundry biz is costing far more – and taking longer – than expected

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Ohio

Now that is an intelligent choice for a chip foundry.

Just below the Great Lakes, water in abundance, it is a much better choice than Arizona.

Good on Gelsinger for having done that. Now why did he have to go and put two fabs in the driest place of the US of A which is subsisting only because it is sucking up an entire river of water that is failing ?

CISA in a flap as Chirp smart door locks can be trivially unlocked remotely

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I'm guessing that that number is going to go down.

Pascal Monett Silver badge
Facepalm

"application software to remotely control compatible locks"

How is it that people looked at this possibility and thought : "now that's a great idea" ?

I am not interested in remote-opening my front door. I want to open it when I get there, not before and certainly not after.

And if I am renting something with this, I will tell the owner that I am replacing the lock. If he objects, I will look elsewhere.

Open source versus Microsoft: The new rebellion begins

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Trollface

Re: The 3 assistants with fantastic people skills who effing hate computers

Um, sorry but, if they hate computers, switching them to Linux is not going to do any harm.

NASA tries to jog Voyager 1's memory from 15 billion miles away

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I'm sure they'll get it working again

Space may be hard, but NASA engineers are the bee's knees and, if they say there's a chance, I'm sure they'll fix the problem.

That said, there will come a day when even they won't be able to fix the problem. It will be a sad day, but what a record !

US House approves FISA renewal – warrantless surveillance and all

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"passed the House with bipartisan support"

Because of course it did. Warrants are just a nuisance when you can drape yourself in the mighty righteousness of National Security.

This bill will always pass. All the hoopla around respecting privacy is just theater.

AI spam is winning the battle against search engine quality

Pascal Monett Silver badge

There is only one solution to oppose scams and malware : intelligence.

Check the link. If it goes anywhere you're not familiar with, don't click.

Nobody is going to offer you millions to just click something. Sorry, that Nigerian billionnaire does not exist. Play the lottery, you've got better chances.

No one you know is sending you an attachment you should open. If someone you know does send you an attachment without you expecting it, contact the person and make sure it was meant for you. In every other case, trash the mail. It's a weapon.

It is so fucking simple, and yet so many are still caught by this.

Sometimes I dispair of Humanity.

Loongson CPU that performs like 2020 Core i3 makes its way to Chinese mini PCs

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Re: Probably not exactly a bargain.

Because you think you'll be able to buy one ?

This is Chinese tech, for the Chinese market. Your opinion is irrelevant. What is important is that China now has Core I3-level tech.

They will improve.

Apple's failure to duck UK antitrust probe could bring £785M windfall for devs

Pascal Monett Silver badge

So, the fruit cart is facing legal trouble

Looks like the days of Cupertino riding high on other people's work are coming to an end.

5% is enough for Apple to still gain money and provide Store services at their current level but, of course, why settle for 5 when you can gouge six times more ?

Well six times more is too much, and the rising number of lawsuits tends to prove that Apple is going to have to lower that ratio permanently.

It might choose to do so on its own terms before having to bow to a law (ie set the bar lower to appease everyone before you're forced to set it really low).

Pascal Monett Silver badge

One case at a time.

Microsoft gives Hyper-V ceilings a Herculean hike

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So it's a cloud option, right ?

Because there ain't no motherboard that can handle that level of hardware.

I shudder to think of the monthly cost for someone who actually signs up for 2000 CPUs and 240TB of RAM. Some beancounter somewhere is going to have a heart attack.

VMware's end-user compute products probably have a new brand: Omnissa

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It is going to create a mess

Artificially tight deadline created because the Board has decided something stupid ?

You bet it's going to create a mess. The gun is going to meet the foot and Broadcom is going to demonstrate how little it cares about the users of the product it has paid a fortune to destroy.

Support contract required techie to lounge around in a $5,000/night hotel room

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So, a nice week-end then

The client was an idiot. If the decision was to not do anything before Monday morning, the client should have arranged for him to arrive Sunday night.

Oh well, I'm sure that the beancounter shook his head at all this.

British watchdog has 'real concerns' about the staggering love-in between cloud giants and AI upstarts

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Windows

"[158] lobbying entities focused on AI"

In 2023.

So now there are more. Talk about 1st-world problems . . .

Apple to allow some iPhones to be repaired with used parts

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Trollface

"it plans to begin"

Oh great. Sounds like me when I tell my wife that I'll be mowing the lawn "this week".

The only difference is, I will, 'cause if I don't, it'll only get worse.

We never agreed to only buy HP ink, say printer owners

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I ditched inkjets for laser.

You don't actually need to print in color.

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The onus is on HP to show us the law that says that its printers can only use its ink.

Ink is ink. If it's good for one printer, it's good for all of them.

US 'considering' end to Assange prosecution bid

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"the seven years he spent holed up in Ecuador's London embassy"

The souvenir of which Ecuador's ambassador is still desperately trying to drown out in alcohol . . .

Netherlands arm of KPMG fined $25M for cheating in exams

Pascal Monett Silver badge

Re: Why do companies think that taking shortcuts is a good thing?

Because, in the short term, it works.

And in the long term, your high-level MBA will have already moved on to wreck another company.

Pascal Monett Silver badge

Hilarious

"failing to prevent its financial auditors from cheating on exams "

What I note is not that KPMG failed to prevent cheating, it is that KPMG's auditors cheated en masse.

Goes a long way to say just how reliable their auditors are . . .

Boffins deem Google DeepMind's material discoveries rather shallow

Pascal Monett Silver badge

Put your ear to the woodwork. The bugs are positively crawling in that space and, if you go to LinkedIn, the sound is deafening.