Posts by Pascal Monett

"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.

Incredibly delicate technology

The amount of things that must be checked to ensure that any airplane can fly is mind-boggling.

Kudos to the eagle-eyed crewmember who spotted that tiny detail.

Yeah, they're investing

In Texas, which is going to run completely dry when they've all finished building and started using 4 billion gallons of water a day.

Good luck with that bonehead decision.

This is going to be a nightmare

I wish good luck to all so-called social media platforms in sorting the wheat from the chaff, and I'm bloody happy that I'm not in charge of that.

Since we don't require that politicians prove what they declare on national TV (how many have said that the last election was stolen ?), I find it difficult to believe that these platforms are going to be efficient in dialing out falsehoods.

"are we alone?"

That question was valid fifty years ago.

After the Hubble Deep Field experiment, the question has been answered.

If every single pixel of our sky is full of galaxies, then life is out there. The only question is : how far from us are they ?

What ?

"Because its primary payload is executed within memory, no evidence of the payload will be found on the filesystem"

I seem to recall that Windows Defender scans the RAM in addition to the principle areas of the system disk. I would be very surprised if the major anti-virus companies do not do the same.

Could someone please explain to me how this sentence is possible ?

"he was able to log into Azure and retrieve the recovery keys"

Thank God for personal computers, eh ?

This is the risk when you tie yourself hands and feet to a third party that has decided for itself that your hardware belongs to them.

And then they throw out the QA department and now we're here.

Honestly, if Linux on the desktop is going to happen, it'll be because of Borkzilla.

a 150-mile range

So, we're talking about military. That means that the passengers will be in full battle gear, right ?

So, if I by this definition, that means twelve men with whatever equipment they need.

I'm thinking that's a lot of weight for an electric 'copter.

Okay, so we've cut Russia off of Swift

And we're actively refusing to do business with it (at least for major multinationals).

Can someone tell me why we haven't cut its Internet access ?

Russia has at most a few communications lines with the rest of the world. If we are intent on ignoring it completely, why are we still allowing its state-sponsored hackers to use the infrastructure to annoy us ?

Cut the lines. That will end Russia's hacking.

For diplomacy, they can always use radio.

"The same needs to happen in security"

I agree completely.

The only problem is that, when an airplane crashes, deaths are involved and the number of specialists that analyze the issues are limited and highly experienced.

In the world of computing, a company cannot lock down a server for a full forensic examination, it needs to continue making money and it didn't foresee the expenses for a second server with the same configuration to pick up where the hacked one fell off.

Computer security is hard because you can be hacked without knowing it. If a plane has a problem, the pilot will find out and report it, and there's every chance the problem will be corrected.

Plus, in computing the experts are not always that experienced and they don't have the same moral incentive to find all the truth. So, 35 million records were downloaded ? Yeah, but no one died. It is quite possible that some people will be inconvenienced, some of them severely, but no one died.

I agree with the spirit of the idea, but if the industry took security seriously we'd already know.

Still, it doesn't do any harm to speak about it.

"Don't send private information over email"

When will people learn that email is to be treated like shouting in the street ?

PAY ATTENTION.

If you're not sending mail to someone you know personally, it is a professional email and its contents should be controlled.

"seamless communication between military/government and commercial/civil satellite constellations"

That also means seamless hacking avenue for miscreants.

I'm not sure a satellite can be hacked, but I'm pretty sure there's no reason to make it easier.

Once again

Somebody clicked on a stupid attachment, and miscreants walked all over Cisco's IT.

I would say kudos to Cisco's security team for at least detecting them, but unfortunately they still got off with data.

Ideally, they should have been blocked before that.

Now the question is : why on God's Green Earth didn't they deploy an encryption tool ?

Did they save that for next time ?

"ONDC will also charge vastly lower commissions than its commercial rivals"

And just how much of "vastly" are we talking about ?

"Elon Musk has sold $6.88 billion worth of shares"

So I guess his lawyers have finally convinced him that, since he was stupid enough to sign a contract without escape clauses, he's not going to escape.

"think twice before submitting expenses"

No, what you mean to say is think twice before incurring expenses.

If I have to go somewhere to do a job, I'm not going to think twice before submitting the expense.

However, if you refuse to pay my expenses, then I'll definitely think twice before going again - in other words, I won't go.

No expense, so you'll be happy. The customer might be less so.

OneDrive

Sorry, but I'm not going to make even more easy for the NSA to access my files.

Not that the NSA should be interested, but it doesn't appear to be very picky.

"Unity will retain majority ownership of the resulting joint venture"

Which will absolutely not matter if the local Chinaman with the Baton of Power decides otherwise.

Frankly, I just don't get why companies absolutely want to risk their IP in a country that makes everything possible to steal it, including not being able to fire the head honcho if you don't like him any more.

"internationally-established consensus best practices for space operations"

Yeah, well this is just a demonstration of how well we play together : badly.

Selfishness exists at all levels, individual, department, company, and country.

This storm of debris demonstrates a country-level of selfishness that is, unfortunately, not surprising.

"6,000 fresh university graduates"

Or, to put it bluntly, 6000 minimum-wage slaves to replace 10000 experienced and expensive employees.

Can't deny that Chinese companies have well learned from American companies just how to keep costs down.

Bite the bullet

What an apt expression.

Like give your handgun a blowjob.

Same result.

Ah, Borkzilla. Will you ever stop borking ?

Probably not.

The lesson is :

If you want something reliable, roll your own.

Yes, it costs money. If you have a company, you're supposed to make money.

So host yourself, or be subject to the whims of multi-billion dollar behemoths who change their minds without you having any say in it.

I wish you luck with your complaint. I'm pretty sure there's some small text in there somewhere that will get Google off scott free.