Posts by Bebu

China's top Office clone copies Microsoft again – with an inconvenient outage

"Make Busy Work Easy"

I noticed on the link provided in the article that this appears to be their english language motto.

An unfortunate mistranslation from the original as busy work probably didn't mean what the translator intended... or perhaps after all it did. ;)

I recall a maths lecturer from 50 years ago who was Dutch and bit of an expert on Escher explaining the visual reference in Ascending and Descending was that in Dutch "monks' work" referred to largely pointless labour aka "busy work."

I would have thought making busy work easy was why the internet was invented. ;)

Oreon Lime is AlmaLinux with a desktop twist

Compressed swap.

a dedicated swap partition as well as ZRAM support. Simply enabling compressed swap would work better, we suspect.

Wasn't sure what was meant here - something like zcache instead of zram, or swap on a compressed logical volume (lvmvdo?)

Atlassian CEO's idea to build 4,000-kilometer extension cord plugged in

Quelle horreur!

As much I hate to write it, I think Twiggy might be right in this.

It's a fair hike through rather dodgy terrain (both geologically and politically) and I don't know whether high voltage DC has ever been sent undersea over these distances. Wiki has for this project 4500km undersea while the longest so far North Sea Link at 720km (515kV DC.)

I assume that 4500km × area of the conductors will be a fair chunk of copper unless some future superconducting technology is pressed into service.

Re: That doesn't add up

people with law degrees rather than an education.

Added to my treasury of bon mots. ;)

Microsoft rolls out one Teams app to rule them all

"one Teams app to rule them all"

and "in the darkness bind them." ;)

Russia tells citizens to switch off home surveillance because the Ukrainians are coming

Re: This attack was brilliant strategy

And their pain threshold is a lot, lot lower than ours

Surely a lot higher?

"dick-pic size is clearly going to help overthrow the government!"

One of Putin's taken with a micrometer alongside the man's little man might. ;)

UK tech pioneer Mike Lynch dead at 59

"What does Richard Dawkins say about this?"

What does Richard Dawkins say about this?

Presumably asked because Dawkins is a flag bearer for atheism.

I cannot imagine an atheist is likely to see the hand of a non-existent albeit vengeful deity in what was in the normal course of events a tragedy.

Given the unusually large number of coincidences and rare weather event, Terry Pratchett might on the Disc, have written that these alone would have brought into existence the requisite deity. Ex nihilo nisi ex necessitate?

I guess innocent victims aside, quite a few people now have three or four parties crossed off their little list.

'Right to switch off' initiative aims to boost economy by beating burnout

Have to wonder...

whether the bloom of security, network and other assorted cockups that have been served up over the last few years aren't a fairly direct consequence of employee burnout?

A chronically fatigued employee either eventually buggers off leaving a skills gap or makes avoidable mistakes or errors of judgement. Each or both can have catastrophic consequences. Think flying a 737 with viral brain fog.

Deadbeat dad faked his own death by hacking government databases

Re: Now ....

And death can and will not shield you from paying your taxes.

I imagine strictly speaking your estate. The concept of "you" post mortem would be a fairly tenuous at best. Not even the IRS could manage to have you kicked out of the heavenly choir or kicked down a circle or two of Hades (depending on your ultimate destination) for tax arrears.

This chap's (Kipf) other but related nefarious activities rather mark him as a generally bad hat.

Any amusement with the audacity of his avoiding his family law obligations by counterfeiting his own death evaporates when you realize he was just a run of the mill, dumb cybercriminal wannabe.

Gentoo Linux to drop Itanium support as Funtoo fork enters 'Hobby Mode'

Re: Now end Windows

Interesting history of WSL1. I too assumed it was based on the NT posix compatibility layer.

I recall a something like services for Unix or somesuch which used something called Interix. I assume it was based on the NT posix layer with Unix compatiibilty libraries.

Fortunately never had a lot to do with Windows but did have Cygwin X11 for Windows users that required X11 and some Unix compatibility (mostly ssh I think.)

Missing scissors cause 36 flight cancellations in Japan

The scissor graphic...

The image of the pair of scissors heading this article look like the Rolls-Royce of scissors that wouldn't look out of place in the hands of Atropos but keeping them out of her hands was what this kerfuffle was mostly about I guess.

I was curious about the jpeg's name viz Leonardo AI Winged Scissors. I didn't know that a common fallacy had da Vinci inventing scissors so I am guessing this graphic is an AI generated confection from Leonardo.AI(?) gobbling up this fallacy.

Brit tech mogul Mike Lynch missing after yacht sinks off Sicily amid storms

Hardly...

I suppose a nameless tech company have enough resources and private security to arrange a disappearance...

Given we all have more than an inkling to which party this refers, I find it incredible that for the first time in a couple of decades this "nameless" firm hadn't screwed it up.

So on the balance of probabilities (you can use Baysian inference if you wish) I would bet the farm on a cockup against some insane conspiracy.

Re: Biggest Helicopter [was: Coincidence or what !!!]

The Mi-12 would have had that beat by a factor of 2, ... only 2 ever built,... both in museums

Surprising the pair haven't yet been dropped on Ukraine along with a lot of the other Soviet era hardware that Putin is using.

Re: Inference?

yacht named “Bayesian”

Seems all his priors might have caught up with him?

I imagine you would have to tread on some pretty important toes to have a waterspout (marine tornado) on your case.

Japan's Astroscale wins contract for space junk harvesting robotic arm

Re: F.T.F.Y.

"Starlink sats can ... contribute to atmospheric environmental issues on Earth"

"satellite-megaconstellations-burn-deplete-ozone"

Space Karen is unable to go to Mars, so his space cadets are converting Earth to Mars? Areoforming. :)

Developer tried to dress for success, but ended up attired for an expensive outage

Re: On-site security

"One one of those Michael Portillo ... apologized for having to reduce his visibility..."

A different sort of Portillo Moment? :)

UK farm ministry offers £27M to support legacy systems for another three years

Re: £100 per claimant per year

«There were around 180 different schemes that you could claim against at that time.»

180 schemes sounds a bit fine grained. I can't imagine nearly two hundred ways of to screw up being a profitable agribusiness. ;)

Although £2 billon distributed among +90,000 farmers averages out at just over £20,000 each so not exactly a lottery win.

I imagine a system that is slightly less rigorous for and slightly more generous to farmers might be somewhat cheaper to run overall.

If a cheesy '80s flick is a good metaphor for how you run projects, something is wrong

Re: What's in a (code) name

"anthrax botulism cholera dysentery ebola"

The manglement non impression could have been even more marked with the addition of syphilis and gonorrhea to that list.

So many transmissible diseases with no few lethal. Kuru has to be favourite as it seems to afflict the more obnoxious contemporary manglement types.

Seems like a waste of perfectly good code names not to use them.

DoD spins up supercomputer to accelerate biothreat defense

Generative Unconstrained Intelligent Drug Engineering

Generative Unconstrained Intelligent Drug Engineering

So turning hallucinating generative AI loose to create potent novel hallucinogens?

New Zealand minister OKs Kim Dotcom extradition to US

'not nice' scale of 1 to 100

Probably should be a log scale like pH or decibels. Even if we used body count as the basis of not niceness the difference between your average murdering american gun crazy, or serial murderer and your run-of-the-mill genocidal autocrat would be several orders of magnitude.

A petty crook who made the mistake of defrauding (in their view) the rich and powerful rights holders. Elizabeth Holmes can affirm that diddling the rich and powerful doesn't end well. :)

Gartner mages: Payback from office AI expected in around two years

"services that can write a report with minimal guidance"

I am wondering who or what is going to read or ingest these "reports?" More AI?

Hordes of AI "assistants" all "eating" the shite the others producing.

Even in nature that won't work out in the long run without the injection of energy from a bit of sunlight (photosynthesis;) or other energy source as all you end up with is a great pile of dead shit.

Google's ex-CEO U-turns after saying staff 'going home early' killed winning

Re: Misspoke?

execs think when they speak their mind.

Exec. No mind. No think. ... Would be a bloody good idea to go for the trifecta and: No speak.

Modern corporate america is run by Dorothy's companions in Oz - no brains, no heart and no actual courage.

Oddly I visually parse the abomination misspoke as miss poke which I assume arose by analogy to misspelt or misstep. The dishonesty in this word is the implication that the misspoken words were unrelated to the speaker's thoughts or beliefs and were ejaculated randomly and accidentally. Bollocks!

This prat said what he was thinking, believed and intended to say. The worm should own it and argue his case and, if or when he concedes he was wrong, apologize explaining why he was wrong.

Disney claims agreeing to Disney+ terms waives man's right to sue over wife's death

I think the word for this Mickey Mouse effort is...

tawdry.

Twitter must pay over half a million to unfairly dismissed Irish exec

So "glory" is brown then?

Twitter is truly covering itself in glory at the moment

and rather malodorous I should think.

'Digital arrest' scams are big in India and may be spreading

Says a lot about Indian law enforcement

If the woman accepted implicitly that her husband would not be charged with an offence if she paid a "fee", it doesn't say much for the trust the people have in their law enforcement or the administration of justice generally.

Without respect for the rule of law a society is little better than anarchy. A point that shouldn't be lost to those not on the subcontinent.

AI or bust? Only one part of US tech economy keeps growing, says analyst

bite him on the gluteus maximus.

words that might easily come back to bite him on the gluteus maximus.

Or those mordant words could similarly miscalculating, leave Pichai singing the soprano parts.

I guess the bookies are taking wagers whether this latest craze will make it to 2028. Probably an even money bet at the moment but to 2030 you would be tying wings to your hard earned. ;)

India shuffles away draft law treating influencers like real broadcasters

Where and how do you draw the line between Extreme Right and Extreme Left.

Reminds me of an observation of British historian made many years ago, so possibly Trevor-Roper, positing that difference between the Führer and Stalin was that latter actually possessed a sense of humour albeit a somewhat gruesome one.

Perhaps the contemporary extremes share the same delusional disconnections from reality with the possible exception the nutters of the right might have a residuum of sense enough to come in out of the rain, those of the left pointlessly arguing whether that would be a sexist afront to the conceptual pluvial goddess, and whether goddess is denigratory etc etc ad nauseum.

AI stole my job and my work, and the boss didn't know – or care

All really rather tragic.

I cannot really believe that vacuous automata of AI/LLM can absorb the contents of a Nature paper and produce an accurate article which the non-specialist reader might understand.

Back in the 1970s I remember reading an article in the Scientific American, which presumably was targeting a similar readership as Cosmos, on Bell's Inequality after which I could appreciate the fundamental wierdness of this aspect of the quantum world.

What ChatGPT would make of On the Einstein Podolsky Rosen Paradox*, J.S.Bell, Physics Vol. 1, No. 3, pp. 195-290, 1964, but a complete hash springs to mind.

If this abomination doesn't quickly pass we really will need statutory certification of material declared free of any non-human contamination. By analogy with GM Free or Organic certification.

Make Organic Journalism your first and last choice. ;) I trust the Vulture will remain entirely organic.

IRS has loads of legacy IT, still has no firm plans to replace it

Re: Who wins the replacement contract, X or TIktok?

"mainframe-based"

I was thinking a cluster of GE645s running Multics. ;)

Ticks all the boxes PL/1, defunct processor, ...

If Orangeface win the presidential lottery, tax farming might be in the agenda. :(

GitHub rolls back database change after breaking itself

Re: 30 minutes to decide to do a rollback?

I am thinking it might have taken 30' for the changes to propagate to the full extent of github's infrastructure.

From bitter experience hastily reversing an undesirable change midway through that change taking full effect is often just adding another locomotive to the train wreck.

Taking time to collect the evidence and think through everything before potentially compounding the felony is one of the hallmarks of experience.

BTW Bayes for the typo Beyes.

Palo Alto Networks execs apologize for 'hostesses' dressed as lamps at Black Hat booth

Just don't grok it at all

I guess one has to be a (male) american to see any connection between an firm flogging network security hardware and two slender wenches with branded lampshades covering their undoubtedly attractive features. Totally beyond me.

At least the lampshades would have spared the two young women the tedium of being chatted up by semi-intoxicated, overweight middle aged attendees.

If they were handing out corporate literature or branded memory sticks it makes some sort of sense but with the issues of exploitation and sexism etc etc remaining for disputation.

Having once had a look at one their top of range products the impression of confused obfuscation was pretty overpowering. Two of the appliances were purchased (very expensive) but sat doing nothing for more than a year because no one could figure out how to configure them. Probably still doing SFA.

Intel's microcode fix to save Raptor Lake chips may only work with default power settings

Re: Eee, when I were a lad...

The PDP-8, for example, had supplies of +10V and -15V (and logic levels of -3V and 0V)

I was wondering what tech required these voltages - apparently Diode-Transistor Logic (DTL) circuits typically require these. I vaguely remember DTL from an undergraduate "electronics for scientists*" course in mid 1970s (probably in the textbook (Mano?))

_{* I was probably the only one in the prac course that managed to keep the smoke inside the electrolytics when powering up my bridge rectifier circuit. ;)}

Re: Eee, when I were a lad...

Aye, but in Yorkshire, 'lad' is any young chap not yet working...

Which I suppose explains why Arkwright often referred to Grandville as the lad.

DEF CON badge disagreement gets physical as firmware dev removed from event stage

A Bit of a Clown Show

Clearly the kiddies cannot play nicely together.

These are exactly the sorts of individuals who are responsible for the creation and maintenance of all the fine software we have grown to love.

Explains a great deal does it not?

Is Lenovo a blind spot in US anti-China security measures?

"choose which horse to ride or maybe try to ride both."

choose which horse to ride or maybe try to ride both.

Perhaps an opportunity to sharpen one's pencil and pen The Dummies Guide to Medizing: A Practitioner's Manual which could be a best seller in the near future especially when updated to include chapters covering the application of AI to this domain. :))

Perhaps the sale of Lenovo by IBM to Legend was a case of the Trojans dragging the Achaeans' gift within their walls.

Still waiting for a Pi 500 and wondering what do this summer?

If you want pretty...

I guess you have to be patient.

I, being more of the Heath Robinson persuasion, opted for a AUD4.00 plastic food storage container with a lid big enough to bolt on a USB SSD and four sawn off plastic masonry plugs as standoffs from the container's bottom for the RPi5. A few holes in the sides for the power and peripherals and cooking with gas.

For pretty you might Velcro® the box to the back of the monitor which I did with an earlier RPi2 version after I discovered the monitor's USB port could supply enough current for the Pi.

I believe the USB SSD isn't that much slower than NVMe HATs and compared to booting off a SD card much, much faster with both Raspberry Pi OS and AlmaLinux 8. The networking wifi, ethernet just worked.

A mechanical keyboard, decent monitor and mouse the system is actually quite usable.

Of course I have prettier, cheaper refurbished x86_64 units that have NVMe, better graphics and much faster but if you want to tinker with something a bit different or with an element of challenge these systems, RPis and their like, are rather attractive.

Horses for courses.

Trump campaign cites Iran election phish claim as evidence leaked docs were stolen

Re: My personal theory

«A goodly portion of the GOP know damn well that Trump is not suited for any government service greater than picking up papers on the side of the road.»

I suppose Plan B if all else fails is to convince the electoral college to cast their votes for any pair other than these two depraved clowns.

«picking up papers on the side of the road.»

Not even that. I was thinking the title role in The Man Who Never Was but he could even screw that up.

Re: From just the first line

Although clearly some self-identify as Tuftons.

Like many I come here for the snark but also broadens the mind and widens ones vocabulary.

I now know what a Bufton Tufton is - not an erotic molester of toy fluffy bunnies as I first imagined although the Tories have historically exhibited rather wide ranging tastes in matters (quasi) erotic.

Re: A formula?

East coast Trumpers only just having breakfast or getting to work (07:30), Texas 06:30, West coast ...

"From sea to shining sea!"

(Apologies to Katharine Lee Bates.)

For Orange man's pursuit of gain,

For the purple lying mountainous travesty

Above the fruitcakes made plain!

America! America!

God shed this disgrace from thee

And uncrown this pedlar of falsehood

From sea to shining sea!

Re: A formula?

Trump supporters who read this esteemed forum ... coming out of the woodwork.

A bit like dry rot? A destructive fungus that perniciously destroys previously sound structures.

He of the visage orange, is clearly Tommy Rot revenant.

Re: Having promised a reward

"German tanks heading for Kursk again"

Not often the tabloid media amuses* but this one really tickled my fancy and makes me wish I could read German if Bild publishes such gems.

I believe this fish wrapper also referred to the then DDR as the Soviet occupation zone (Sowjetische Besatzungszone) the validity of which subsequent history rather confirmed.

As for Russian tanks arriving in Berlin those would be the same imaginary tanks that occupied central Kiev in early 2022 then? Or the remaining fragments of the wrecks that tried.

_{* Page 3 excepted, of course. ;)}

SpaceX tries to wash away Texas pollution allegations

Re: tit for tat riot/revolution comment

We might have to find some drugs that morph us into giant worms that can fold space

I read that Space Karen is personally working on this one at least I can believe the giant worm part.

Google-commissioned report claims early adopters already enjoying fruits of gen-AI labor

Re: This is all in how they ask the question

As was pointed out elsewhere, the main people to benefit from a gold rush were the ones selling the shovels

Likewise during a particular lethal epidemic like the black death which this gold rush may, in an economic sense, become.

InSight data suggests plentiful water lies beneath Mars' surface

The American Way...

Drill a hole down a couple km (err... miles) send down a nuke, detonate. Rinse and repeat.

US accuses man of being 'elite' ransomware pioneer they've hunted for years

'J.P. Morgan' practiced ‘extreme operational and online security’

Really rather ironic.

Sounds as though Silnikau was orders of magnitude better at security than contemporary practitioners but that would not be difficult.

Although I would be suspicious that the extreme operational and online security might be used by prosecutors to excuse that a lack of substantive evidence. Given the parlous state of the US (criminal) justice system they might as well lock him up for being suspiciously foreign.

US standards body proposes atomic clocks in lunar orbit to keep Moon time

Re: I wonder

The Moon is tidally locked to the Earth. Does this mean that a clock on the surface of the Moon closest to the Earth would keep ever so slightly different time to a clock on the surface furthest from the Earth, and if so, do we have atomic clocks accurate enough to measure the difference? el Reg's Boffins please advise.

While not the full bottle on relativity (a pretty empty one I suspect) I would note that the moon is in free fall in its orbit around the earth (equivalently the earth around the moon.)

To my mind that means the moon is in an inertial frame with respect to earth's gravity so leaving tidal forces arising from the differences between two points of how space-time is bent by the masses involved.

So my take is that the clocks shouldn't vary from the variation of the proximity of earth to the moon.

Brings to mind Arthur Dent's regret that he wished he had paid greater attention in one of his school classes and when asked by Ford Prefect what he had missed - Arthur responded that he didn't know because he hadn't paid attention - similarly I feel I ought to have paid more attention in Physics classes. ;)

NIST finalizes trio of post-quantum encryption standards

NIST ... encouraged system administrators to start transitioning

NIST mathematician Dustin Moody encouraged system administrators to start transitioning to the new standards ASAP

I was wondering how feasible this was currently.

A quick search revealed it's fairly straightforward to add new algorithms to openssl 3 by reason of its modular architecture and that the developers at Open Quantum Safe have tracked the drafts of these new standards.

So I imagine these new standards will be integrated into the usual suspects like openssh etc if it's not already the case.

I think the point that adversaries have been accumulating encrypted material against the day the technology might be able to decrypt that material suggests that all encrypted material ought to be secured from unauthorised access as though it were unencrypted.

For example, storing your encrypted backups or archives on an internet accessible server probably not the greatest idea.

Biden tries to cut through fog of confusion caused by deliberately deceptive customer service tricks

Re: A bit dated

I recall Washington Irving's writing complaining of the sharp practices of yankee dickering but perhaps in the persona of Geofffey Crayon or Diedrich Knickerbocker.

Given Irvine died 1859, definitely antebellum, and clearly now a long standing complaint. :)

Twitter's former chairman sues X over unpaid options

Re: The Million Pound Note

melon husk

:) of the thin skinned variety of the musk melon (Cantaloupe) viz Charentais.

According to the wicked paedia "The shelf life of the Charentais melon is about four days."

All sort of adds up.