Posts by Pascal Monett

"cheating – plain and simple."

Maybe if you paid your employees a proper salary they wouldn't need to go find another job.

So who's cheating ?

"using NFTs to enable access to exclusive customer experiences and perks"

Well that's me absolutely not interested.

Seems like a lot of thought went into something that doesn't have a great return.

It's a shame that some people employ so much intelligence to do such selfish things.

"We will ensure that data can be leveraged"

How reassuring.

Everyone and their dog wants to "leverage" my data.

Let's just say that I hope they didn't forget about data security.

I'm sure we'll find out soon enough.

1.4 billion people

Of course China is going to get astounding figures, given that it is a dictatorship that pushes things and that 5G is rather handy.

I have a Samsung S22, that is 5G-capable. When I'm in Luxembourg center, I'm also connected in 5G. There's just not a billion of us to do so.

"The tool then grabs document files on the compromised system"

Okay, I just have a question : this tool grabs documents in the default Windows Documents folder of the user, right ?

So, if I were to actually store my documents elsewhere, what would it actually get ?

100Pbps ?

Okay, if 1.8Pbps is more than all Internet traffic today, and knowing that the natural effect of having more of something is that you use it up, what is an Internet with 100Pbps goint to look like ?

Are we going to have petabytes of cat videos in VR ?

Section 8 of the Clayton Act

Why does there need to be a law on this ?

Simple decency says that you do not serve on the board of two competing companies.

If you are on the board of two companies and they enter into competition, the you resign from one of them.

Ah, yes, silly me : decency. That rarely exists at the Board level.

"Programming Is Hard – Or at Least It Used to Be"

Programming is still hard. I see that every time I explain basic Excel functions to a new class. There's always at least one member of the audience whose eyes glaze over.

Low code ? You still need to know the result you want to obtain, and that's where many people fail to achieve the desired result.

I'm not saying that you need to be more intelligent to program. I'm saying that, to program, you need a certain mindset and, if you don't have it, you're going to have a lot of trouble trying.

It's like mathematics. I've never been good at maths. I cannot count the number of times when I told people that I am a programmer and they answered "well you're good at math then". No, I'm not. A programmer doesn't use math, a programmer uses logic.

There may be logic in mathematics, but I've never been able to understand it beyond basic calculus.

This low-code, AI-assisted stuff ? It's just going to create another nightmare like Access databases and Excel spreadsheet infestations.

Bunker fuel

One ship can emit as much pollution in a day as 100K cars.

I think this needs to be looked into.

"an inability to determine productivity"

And that's the crux of the issue.

Managers today have to deal with the consequences of COVID, whic is mainly that their staff is no longer always there to be counted and under surveillance.

Maybe the pandemic willl have a good consequence, as in managers will start to pay attention to results, not just attendance.

But of course, that would mean that managers would actually become intelligent.

In what universe is that going to happen ?

"Like all companies"

No. What you mean to say is : "like all multi-billion dollar behemoths who have departments to waste money on".

Normal companies, like roadworks, construction and maintenance and, <gasp> accounting, they are not laying off. They are always on the hunt for new hires because they know what it is they do and they don't waste time and money with frivolous pursuits.

Your job is Windows, and now Azure.

You need 220,000 people to do that ?

No wonder updates are such a clusterfuck.

"should global annihilation ever be desired"

I'm sorry, but the days are long gone when a country could nuke another one without consequence.

What the USA did in 1945 might have been acceptable at the time, but today it would put it at the ban of civilization.

The only reason we need nukes is to deal with asteroids - preferably far from Earth so as to influence their orbit early on.

Only a madman would actually nuke another country these days. Unfortunately, there are a few with the button available.

"the threat of increasingly sophisticated cyber-attacks against vehicles"

That threat might be mitigated at the source by removing the entertainment and GPS section from the CAN bus.

But that would mean another set of comm threads in the car, so cost.

And we can't have that, can we ?

Why is age verification an invasion of privacy ?

If you want to buy alcohol, you need to adult.

If you want to enter a night club, you need to be adult.

If you want to drive a car, you need to be adult.

We have long decided that there are things children shouldn't be doing, and we have put protocols in place. Why should the Internet be any different ?

Especially since the Internet is a place where the worst of human tendancies show up.

Now, I have no idea how this should happen, but I pretty much agree it should.

"the current and growing orbital ecosystem"

Which has a good chance of being wiped out by the Kessler syndrome.

As for the James Webb, it's in a Lagrange point, so largely immune to the issue and also, largely impossible to repair.

But hey, yeah, one day we'll have to know how to build in space, so might as well start thinking about it.

Russia invaded Ukraine in February

We're in October, and the war is still going on.

I think it is clear than the military might of Russia is not what it used to be.

Yup, space is still hard

It doesn't matter how many rockets are being made, the chance of failure is never zero.