Posts by Bebu

Here we go again. And again. Musk threatens to pull Twitter, SpaceX out of California

Woke Mind Virus

new to me - is it a cross between the common garden variety earworm and ebola? ;)

Or am I confusing it with Wannabe Musk Virus?

there had been two attempts in Texas to murder him [Musk] in the past eight months.

I suspect a lot of problems might be solved if any prospective firearm purchasers were required a to demonstrate a certain profficiency in hitting a target with their chosen weapon. Probably save quite a few innocent(ish) lives.

I was wondering if it were possible to contract septicemia from a nicked ear lobe or is that too much to pray for?

If you think AI labs wouldn't stoop to using scraped YouTube subtitles for training, think again

What next, nutrition labels on cartons?

I was thinking feed this monsterous technology the various EULAs that the twisted little minds of corparate lawyers have themselves hallucinated might be its Waterloo. ;)

The commentard who promised his girlfriend in 1999, the sum of all human knowledge in her hand evoked quite a different image in my mind from the nascent mobile internet.

She gasping: "Oh! I was hoping it would be bigger."*

Although the sum of most human's knowledge could be inscribed on a single grain of rice in blackletter and still leave space for footnotes.

_{* Why was I thinking of the late Frankie Howerd, I wonder?}

Windows NT on a whole new platform: PowerMac

Still have NT4 + SP6a on a CD

although it was never users' desktop (all Win9X and hence SEP.)

Unfortunately I had to support a peculiar network license service locked to printer port dongle that only worked under windows (and required accurate or consistent timekeeping.)

Getting Win9X to keep time sufficiently well for the licensing software didn't work reliably but NT4 with a third party ntp client worked a treat.

The licensing server ran for the better part of a decade well after MS stopped supporting NT4 and was only abandoned when the new dongles (received with each new set of licenses for appluiatiin updates) was USB only.

Incidentally the USB version on any windows version was incredibly flakey. (Two steps back.)

Agile Manifesto co-author blasts failure rates report, talks up 'reimagining' project

Re: The more process you have the less agile you are.

define exactly what your users need

Perhaps defining the absolute minimum your users' roles require would have more satisfactory outcomes.

Unfortunately in most organisations roles are so ill defined that those assigned the roles are unable to unambiguously and consistently define their roles. Where the roles are a rigidly defined by the organisation they are invariably totally unrelated to reality.

People aren't at fault here. Human intelligence can take a collection of ill defined, shifting and often contradictory objectives, adapt and apply their experience and bit of realpolitik pragmatism to achieve positive outcomes which are frequently more resilient, reliable and consistent than anyone would have any right to expect. They, themselves, would have difficulty in explaining the rationale of their decisions and actions (or inaction.)

Understanding this and throwing in the wet dreams of generative AI the potential train wreck is pretty obvious.

The desire for the minimal is simply that small mistakes are infinitely easier to rectify than those of monsterous monolithic proportions. Start small but open, incrementally build in small steps on solid foundations and only in response to real needs.

I am guessing Agile started out recognising much of this - hence the choice of name - but neglected the unavoidable consequences of human nature in derailing any real progress. Once something becomes a methodology rather than just a method it's a lost cause in my book. I need both hands to rerack a server so I could never afford the luxury of sparing one for the current methological thrill.

Re: The more process you have the less agile you are.

... a team of 6 engineers *who sat right next to each other* to stand up for 15 minutes every morning to tell each other what they were working on (which often ended up as 45 minutes of two of them debating some technical issue while the others twiddled their thumbs),

Almost and exact word picture (down to the numbers) of actually witnessed for several months as a bystander. Scary.

I have too much respect for the profession of actual engineering to lump them in with the duffers who cobble code together. Software engineering is too much of a breach of the Trade Descriptions Act to qualify as an oxymoron.

I was all-but denounced as a heretic.

It's fortunate that you weighed a bit more than a duck as heresiarchs frequently get the same treatment. :)

Yandex sells off Russian ops, remaining Euro-biz now Putin itself about as Nebius Group

Novichok cocktail with a Polonium chaser...

I imagine Arkady Volozh is a very careful chappy these days as the current nutjob esconced in the Kremlin doesn't have a great reputation in dealing with his critics. Not that any of his predecessors distinguished themselves in this and I daresay unlikely any of his successors shall either.

Big Music reprises classic hit 'ISPs need to stop their customers torrenting or we'll sue'

Re: Due process

Lightly paraphrasing Douglas Adams

- The infringment notices were delivered...

- Delivered? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them.

- That’s the infringement notices department.

- With a flashlight.”

- Ah, well, the lights had probably gone.

- So had the stairs.

- But look, you found the notices, didn’t you?

- Yes, said Arthur, yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard.'

While forum shopping is de rigeur in the US judicial system I think α-centuri is still a star system too far.

Wash, Rinse... Repeat

There's a hole in my bucket, dear Liza...

The grand old Duke of York...

Some old songs celebrating futility never die.

Google reportedly in talks to buy infosec outfit Wiz for $23B

"Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain"

The Wiz and the theatricals of security thespians immediately bring to mind his futile plea to Dorothy.

Die Scheiße Fabrik adding more ordure to their muck heap?

Three words to send a chill down your spine: Snowflake. Intrusion. Alert

Re: For those who like to [read] rather than view

Or maybe, someone might be able to write something for us to read, based on the main points of a discussion that they had with someone. I think it used to be called 'journalism' ..

Unfortunately with the relentless twattification* of the media the ranks of journalism have been severely depleted, with those remaining finding difficulty making a living as actual or de facto freelancers and those better situated are invariably the prats that metaphorically John West rejected.

Even minuting the discussion would be better than nothing but that is also a disappearing skill.

Now there's just "Watch me talk to someone. Don't forget to like and subscribe to my YouTwat channel!"; "Here's some more videos of Twats you might like!"; <picture of a gormless face and some arrows that people apparently click on>

Not entirely clear whether its the videos or the Twats one might like? Depends the lighting and the vacuity is the same I suppose. The similarity to porntube probably not coincidential I guess.

_{* the doubled 't' only by analogy with Cory Doctorow's coinage but minus the redundant en-.}

Southwest latest to aim at electric air taxi dream with Archer partnership

I take it...

US airports, or the cities they serve, don't have the public transport infrastructure that would make these services redundant?

Strikes me that the US in particular after a century and half, is a vast and evergrowing conglomerate of the wrong solutions to the wrong problems. (An enormous midden that is a monument to human stupidity and cupidity.)

Evidence for Moon caves emerges as humans hunt for hospitable hideaway under lunar surface

H G Wells : "First Men in the Moon" (1901)

Lunar caves played a big part in Wells' novel and Cavorite would certainly rain on Star-X's parade. ;)

If I recall the novel (rather than the 1964 movie) Cavor and Bedford escaped the Selenites and returned with a significant quatity of gold plundered from the Selenites.

Some just after landing accident caused their craft containing Cavor and the gold to fly off into space.

The themes of pre 1914 imperialism, exploitation and plunder are still as fresh today as they were then. :(

ZDI shames Microsoft for – yet another – coordinated vulnerability disclosure snafu

I didn't lie saying I disabled it.

《I can disable a car by pulling the HT leads off. If someone pops open the bonnet and sticks them back on in the correct order, then it can fire it up.》

I would have nabbed the rotor arm when you weren't looking, to ensure you couldn't lie. ;)

Trump threatens to send Meta's Mark ‘Zuckerbucks’ to prison if reelected president

Re: UnDeadly to Whales or Wales

"There's the "Official Monster Raving Looney Party" in the UK.

Is there an equivalent in the USA?"

Seems there is - except for Bernie and a few fellow travellers, their members occupy all the pews in the reps and senate.

Re: UnDeadly to Whales or Wales

The 4th July was a Mistake - reinstate the British Monarchy Party ?

Benedict Arnold was a very farsighted Patriot then? :)

George III was on a good day a bit more compos than these two candidates.

Re: Where the Fat Old Crook* is concerned...

he's one step away from Bozo the Clown

I would gone more in the Krusty the Clown direction with a dollop of Sideshow Bob.

"How Embarrasment"*

Warren Buffet checked out early before a pair of old gits, one extremely disreputably, gave old age a really bad name.

Personally I think ordering a few hundred miniskips (dumpsters) filled with half bricks and excavating a pit about 4m deep and as wide as needed to accommodate Trump, Zuckerberg, Musk, etc etc (consult your little list for inspiration), then inviting all and sundry who give a toss to make their pitch with a brick or two. (Sinners are included in this invitation.)

_{* older aussie readers might recognise the reference :)}

Hey Microsoft – what ever happened to 'Developers, developers, developers'?

MS Got My Red Card....

thirty+ years ago. :)

Early unadopter I suppose. :)

While Cory Doctorow might have coined the word, Microsoft patented the recipe decades before.

The graying open source community needs fresh blood

New Cow Theory?

I have to wonder whether after thirty plus years this field doesn't hold the same attraction that it did for my generation in the 1970-90s.

At Uni In 1975 writing code for assignments I was submitting punched cards to a batch system and collecting line printer output the next day.

A few years later it was a time sharing system with teletype terminals and later visual display units.

All pretty laborious but still fascinating as everything was still new - Lisp, Simula-67 etc etc.

With the advent of affordable hardware and af "personal" computing coupled with the explosion of software for these systems including development tools a whole generation for the first time had the opportunity convert their creativity and imagination into software applications.

I suspect now the gloss has worn off and possibly less than 10% of the comparable contemporary cohort have any interest in these aspects of IT. I have a young relation who is just completing a computer science degree and to my surprise he hasn't done any programming apart from a minimal first year introduction. (0r any more theoretical aspects of computer science.) Unfortunately more manglement studies I suspect.

Fairly obvious what the old cow here would be but is the new cow generative AI? In my decline I don't know what enthuses twenty to thirty year olds other than they seem to face a much greater struggle to make their way in this world which could understandably dampen their enthusiasm for anything else.

I might guess that we had reached peak open source several years before COVID with that pandemic obscuring the fact.

This poses the question of how large will the open source community be in the future and the composition of that community? I imagine somewhat smaller and the majority employed by "for profit" concerns followed at a distance by a variety of "not for profit" entities with a very much smaller population of amateur ^* contributors. My feeling is this will ultimately be to the detriment to open source and to computing, in the widest sense, generally.

At least the problem and inherent dangers have been identified. The cloister bells are tolling.

_{^* in the literal sense (L.< amare)}

Game dev accuses Intel of selling ‘defective’ Raptor Lake CPUs

When zero isn't zero I suspect.

4096 W and 512 A.

My guess these limits are stored in 12 and 9 bits.

Zero Watts or Ampères don't make at a lot of sense here so zero probably means no limit or the maximum representable value + 1. ie (2¹²-1)+1 and (2⁹-1)+1.

Appears these chips weren't given enough magic smoke or the wrong coloured smoke so fiddling with overclocking setting and microcode updates isn't going to fix this. Everyone knows what happens when you let the smoke out of an electronic component. :)

I like the developers' touch of having their game pop up a dialog when running on these CPUs:

[ Sorry mate. You went shit^* with your CPU. :((. ]

^* Unsurprisingly the branding (^shite_inside)^® is not yet a thing despite near universal enshittification.

Smartphone is already many folks' only computer – say hi to optional desktop mode in Android 15 beta

1700 UTC is also 1700 UTC for Brits.

If Reform UK and Faredge had their way there doubtlessly would be a British Universal Coordinated Time (UTCB^*) but you would also have to know your Nones and Kalends from your Ides.

_{* Temps Universel Coordonné Britanique can't trust these boffins not to white-ant you.}

One Step Back?

Standing back the primary driver of this, I suspect was the realization that most smartphones (not mine) are rather powerful machines with decent CPU and GPU specs and with reasonable amount of ram as well as non volatile storage without considering its Wifi, 5G/LTE and Bluetooth connectivity.

My take would be not to have the embedded OS (Android) offer a desktop mode when docked (wired or wirelessly) with external video, mouse & keyboard etc but for the phone to expose a hypervisor on which the docking environment could run Windows, Linux or whatever.

The user's content stored on the phone could be presented to hosted OSes in any number of ways - eg vfat formatted file system on an accessible block device, CIFS volume, NFS export, Davfs2 etc etc.

Actually even running the native Android on top of a Type 1 hypervisor isn't too silly. The Dom0 could enforce policy (security) for all hosted VMs.

A ghastly thought - in principle a deviant could run Apple's iOS on such an Android phone if the hypervisor could emulate Apple's silicon.

"when ... all the fads do a reverse ferret"

Being a mere colonial living in a location where these little sharp toothed buggers are banned I had to look up Reverse Ferret. British English certainly has the more colourful vocabulary. ;)

I wonder if Drop the Dead Donkey was based on Kelvin MacKenzie's time at The Sun?

Out here he might have suggested shove a goanna* up the weasels' trousers to experience somewhat more than just discomfort.

The various video call and conferencing technologies have always left me cold - invariably an enormous waste of (my) time trying to communicate with illiterate imbeciles whose core problem was their imbecility (not easily legally cureable, unfortunately.)

_{* monitor lizard which are said to run up trouser legs mistaking legs for trees. :)}

With users mostly happy to keep older kit, Macs just ain't selling like they used to

Re: Fix What Ain't Broke

My last Fruity purchase

"Fruity" here I took as literally fruit-like but with a bit of the sense of barmy (nutty as a fruitcake.)

On checking I find the word has six separate senses in british english alone with a few extra from north america.

Oddly they all seem to have some applicability to this pomonal vendor if only guilt by association.

I suspect the once fanatical Apple acolytes have experienced an epiphany* and in their apostasy are now saving their pennies to purchase Tesla fetishes. :)

_{* they presumably saw the (head) light as they were being run down by a Damascus bound muskmobile.}

CISA broke into a US federal agency, and no one noticed for a full 5 months

Seems like a complete shit show but...

given the funding shenanigans most federal agencies have faced in congress for more than a decade now I could imagine the agencies would have difficulty resourcing competent Solaris* (+Oracle crap) system admins and competent security staff, let alone attracting applicants in the first place or retaining those duffers they did attract.

Fairly analogous with the farce that is most SME's IT just differing in scale.

_{* Solaris admins must be getting pretty long in the tooth and not exactly oversupplying the market.}

Google can totally explain why Chromium browsers quietly tell only its websites about your CPU, GPU usage

"turn up the heat on the Chocolate Factory"

A melted mess?

Nah. Not chocolate. A disgusting confection of hard wax, pork dripping and seasoned with the other brown stuff.

Less la chocolaterie more l'atelier de merde.

SAP's bid to woo open source community meets muted response

"open source is a catalyst for innovation"

I am extremely sceptical^☆ about the motives of any corporation involving itself in any activity, for anything other than the narrowest self interest. Goes ten fold for North Americans.

If you want to catalyse innovation you really have to cast your bread upon the waters.^*

So much now mainstream open source started as a tiny, apparently boutique project in some backwater of the internet. Linux itself could fit that description.

While supporting projects that directly benefit your enterprise is clearly comprehensible, less so the idea that a proportion of that support might be directed to more diffuse goals like funding foundations that support smaller, less recognisable projects that might beneficially affect a whole range of projects including those of the first instance.

Scratch any Linux (and BSD?) distribution and you will find any number of components that lack a current maintainer - the XZ fiasco might be the clue stick that crystallises the inherent hazards of unmaintained software.

_{^☆ I strongly recommend burning all wooden horses outside the city's walls. :)}

_{* Eccl. 11:1 qv}

Singapore's banks to ditch texted one-time passwords

I wouldn't mind a keyfob...

compared with the sms/texts currently used.

A device using hotp could be very low powered and the battery last for years or even charge from ambient light like Citizen's Eco-Drive or Seiko's Solar wristwatches.

I would even mind if the institution used totp (and permitted the user to supply the secret in a supervised context.)

Plenty of authenticators for pretty much any platform that support totp.

Even easy to knock out a linux etc command line version - useful if you want to script a vpn connection that requires this 2FA. Not very secure but was par for that particular course. ;)

China pushes for network upgrade blitz as IPv6 adoption slows

A long term PRC goal might too be at play here

Even with the PRC's huge population the size of IPv6 address space (128 bits) means its entirely conceivable to assign a distinct routing prefix to each and every individual (and every other entity.)

It's not inconceivable that when an individual connects to a network service they will be required to authenticate and part of their assigned prefix used to route traffic through this connection. (Splitting the prefix would permit concurrent multiple distinct connections for users. eg home, travel, work.) Probably also requiring IPSec isn't a big step after this.

With no NAT and all traffic having an identifiable source or destination even using a vpn will quickly attract the attention of the red thought plod.

I can see in the PRC, access to satellite comms and networks will be stomped on rather heavily in the near future if it's not already the case.

I don't believe for a minute that the PRC can pull this off - as far as I can see they are, despite all attempts to project otherwise, governed by a mob of duffers that wouldn't have distinguished themselves from the members of the last UK (Tory) government and in that event, certainly not by a surfeit of competence.

Re: I'm surprised their adoption is so low

Anyone know why the adoption is so low when it seems from the outside like they should be able to get both the mobile and fixed numbers above 90% with little difficulty?

I would have to guess somewhere in the path between the end systems (typically "hosts") there are components (IS) that don't yet grok IPv6, or just as likely - or more likely - that those components haven't been configured for IPv6 or there isn't anyone that knows how to, or possibly where or how to access the device.

If the Middle Kingdom isn't overflowing with networking engineers that are the full bottle on routing in nation state scale IPv6 networks you might suspect its not all IPv6 down to the backbone :)

'Gay furry hackers' say they've disbanded after raiding Project 2025's Heritage Foundation

Re: "Christian values" - Right Wing Evangelical flavour.

《Maybe these right-wing nutters should be renamed from "Christians" to "Paulines".》

I am sure this suggestion would resonate doubly with aussies. ;)

Re: They're not even hiding it

《The presumptive nominees for either party are literally demented*, and the independent candidate needs a tinfoil hat and dried frog pills.

*suffering from dementia, not having their souls sucked out by a dementor》

One might be dementia affected but the orange one probably has received the attention of a dementor and the bursar (Dr AA Dimwiddie) would be a realistic candidate in comparison with the independent.

Where are the likes of Vetinari when this world needs them most?

That the agenda of Project 2025 aren't just the delusions of half a dozen dribbling, lunatic basement dwellers, but are clearly supported by more than a few americans, some of whom are applying their wealth and power, doesn't bode well for america's future.

As Lincoln quoting biblical text stated: "A house divided against itself, cannot stand."

BOFH: It's not generative AI at all, it's degenerate AI

"Grovelling obsequiousness is a skillset that AI has yet to convincingly master"

I suspect that is actually a rather profound observation.

It's too easy to overdo and ineffectual if too subtle.

I am confident a LLM Uriah will eventually be trained as there is apparently always a market for flatterers, grovellers, fawners, bootlickers, toadies, sychophants, browntongue lizards, and the myriad synonyms that english finds the need to describe the variety of specimens of this genus of despicable objects.

South Korea orders 'Star Wars' lasers to blast Northern drones out of the sky

Pop a few shitty balloons

I imagine putting a hole in a balloon wouldn't require such high powered lasers. Something industrial might be adequate to drop NK's crap on their side of the DMZ.

The drone threat is now a clear and present danger which these laser systems are one of the more cost effective countermeasures.

There must be a few (older) americans that are thinking that Dugout Doug had the right ideas with respect to NK and the PRC. ;)

Big Tech's eventual response to my LLM-crasher bug report was dire

Not True Lies Then?

They are FALSE FACTS

As against T^RruE FaꞰt_S?

Hervie Krumpet (qv) had a notebook attached to a lanyard in which he recorded his FaKts presumably to make sense of his chaotic world (which is sadly now being recapitulated eighty years later.)

"ChatGPT is bullshit"

I think this is the Springer link ChatGPT is bullshit.

I would think in this context that a lie is asserting a proposition that is contradicted by the premises.

A hallucination would then be "randomly" selecting and asserting a proposition whose validity cannot be determined from the premises.

Although codswallop would cover the gamut of AI's repertoire.

China’s homebrew openKylin OS creates a cut for AI PCs

Re: Homebrew OS?

Linux was a copy from an OS printed in a Prentice Hall text book

Not really true, or fair to Linus but I wouldn't be too concerned as he has a thick hide by all accounts. :)

Speed limiters arrive for all new cars in the European Union

"Ghastly,... it all is. Absolutely ghastly."

Not much more than two decades ago a normal consumer vehicle was constructed from components that any moderately intelligent person could understand the individual functions of, at some level. Likewise the "control systems" were also fairly comprehensible (accelerator, brake, steering wheel, [clutch].)

Now it's all fly by wire with software of the usual dubious quality inserting itself between the driver and his/her control of the vehicle. Consequently no one really understands what's happening under the hood.

When the software or electronics needs a wee lie down, or is pining for the fjords, you have several hundred kg of metal that isn't going anywhere in the near future.

While cleaning and regapping spark plugs, cleaning and reseting the points in the distributor, mucking about with timing and carburetor (aka tuning), etc were a pain you had a real hands on feel how your vehicle worked which is now lost.

Those vehicles taken as a whole are remarkably resilient and typically degrade fairly gracefully. Basic top level fault diagnosis is a fairly short mental checklist.

I imagine some day there will be a market for "classic" vehicles as has been for vinyl discs, perhaps in the not too distant future. :)

My current (and final) vehicle is 20+ years old and its only modern concession is a basic electronic ignition system.

Curious: is it possible for a Tesla driver to perform a handbrake turn? ;)

America's new Sentinel nukes mushroom 81% in cost. Pentagon says it's all good

If the cost keeps rising....

it might be cheaper a more effective application of the current inventory to deploy the entire current stock to the target markets.

Users rage as Microsoft announces retirement of Office 365 connectors within Teams

Re: Rely less on software.

You would avoid a doctor who has been struck off. You wouldn't hire a mob lawyer.

You might retain the doctor to "care" for an aged wealthy great aunt and the lawyer to take "care" of the other beneficiaries.

A Beer for Mictosoft :)

My bloody autocorrect kept micro-ing the micto.

Apart from the latin root related to urination we have the cognate old english: micga urine, meox dung, filth which rather says it all really.

HP to discontinue online-only e-series LaserJet amid user gripes

Good Riddance to Bad Rubbish

Sometimes english has just the right idiom.

Windows Notepad gets spell check. Only took 41 years

EIGHT TIMES the size.

I vaguely recall when I was deluded enough to own a Windows SDK* (Win 2.x - Win 3.x) [[ghastly]] and a copy of the Zortech C++ V3 compiler [[nicer]] that amongst the SDK sample source code a notebook like application was mostly a small amount glue code for the frameworks in the SDK which I imagine were standard Windows DLLs.

So I would think the notebook.exe would be mostly overhead such as run time (dynamic) linking info.

Fortunately I quickly learnt the error of my ways and Microsoft and I parted brass rags.

* A whole box of documentation in folders including the IBM CUA.

Founder of Indian ride-share biz Ola calls for 70-hour work week

Re: Walking to School Barefoot in the Snow, Uphill Both Ways

_{1. He's simply lying about his working 20 hours/day, 7 days/week.}

_{2. He has the ability to work in in his sleep.}

_{3. He's using Bolivian marching powder to stay semi-conscious 20 hours/day, and it's making him mentally unbalanced.}

_{4. His innate God-like genetics allow him to transcend the biological need for sleep.}

Probably the superposition of all four.

This box wallah is decidedly doolally (Deolali.)

If he and fellow travellers were to have their way the poor working sods on the subcontinent would probably have been better off under Clive (perhaps not quite, but still...)

The insane, patently unwinnable war on the past serves only to distract the deluded polloi from the ills of the present, their contemporary causes and potential remedies, usually to the enrichment of the warmongers.

Fear of commodity chip flood sparks EU probe into China's silicon ambitions

Globalisation... just pining for the fjords

Who would have thought it? Unconstrained globalisation might negatively impact sovereignty and national interests?

Protectionism and ideological blok interests are back with a vengeance... what's old is new again.

You currently have PRC armed forces training in Belarus with belarus (and russian?) units so I don't think you have to be a latter day Mercator to draw the geopolitical lines betweem them and us as it were.

As the russians discovered if you cannot get commodity ICs for your MIC and have to cannibalise consumer goods, you have a problem. Its always the better option to learn from the mistakes of your adversary than belatedly from your own.

Outback shocker left Aussie techie with a secret not worth sharing

Re: 100Amp

My favourite fuse fact: given a sufficiently high current, some fuse types will vaporise and continue to allow current to flow through the metal vapour.

Given a sufficiently high current, some types of fools will vaporise and continue to allow current to flow through their carbon vapour.

_{I imagine a fairly gruesome carbon arc lamp.}

Re: Ouch!!

switch off mains sockets to stop the electrify leaking out.

When I was a kid I remember old ladies inserting plastic three pin plugs into the wall sockets to prevent the electrickery from leaking (even with the switch off.)

I never saw these plugs in the usual shops so I imagined there were specialist boutiques for this clientele: Dotty Old Dears 'R' Us.

I just realized that these plugs were probably sold to parents of enfants to prevent, or deter their offspring from inserting needles, hair pins and other conductors into the active of a mains socket.

Teenagers presumably don't hang about in nursery shops - gymslip brides perhaps excepted.

ITER delays first plasma for world's biggest fusion power rig by a decade

"well connected to a funding stream"

"Do not cross the [funding] streams!"

"This can cause a chain reaction, which may lead to total protonic reversal.^☆"

Sort of what we want but more likely in this case to "defunding."

_{☆ could not resist Egon's line from the original Ghostbusters.}

"they seem to have cracked time travel"

"On the positive side they seem to have cracked time travel while they've been waiting for self-sustaining fusion"

If only! Wouldn't have to stuff around with dodgy 6kilotonne superconducting* magnets - just use time tech to send the escaping H/He ions back in time to the reaction initiation and in space to centre of the chamber. Although I am not sure if you actually end up with an H bomb but you will find out, but only in the negative, when you hit the start button.

_{* I assume chockers with liquid He? A quenching 6kt magnet doesn't bear thinking about.}

Algorithmic wage discrimination: Not just for gig workers

Just one more turd in the toilet bowl that is our enshittified world.

Once people are treated as things, whether customers or employees etc, eventually there won't be much left worth a toss no matter how "valuable" the lunatics, sitting on the pedestal befouling the world, think it will be.

The same nut jobs who think in that event they can slope off to Mars or into their tropical bunkers.