Posts by RJW

UK to spend £23M on AI to tell benefit claimants where to go

The money would be better spent on more and better trained staff.

Microsoft wants to replace its entire C and C++ codebase, perhaps by 2030

Why use AI to convert from c/c++ to rust?

Why would you use AI to convert from c/c++ to rust? When you could write a compiler to do it, that would do the conversion 100% right. No AI hallucinations would be introduced to your code base. Probably faster and using less data centre compute time and energy.

Another open source project dies of neglect, leaving thousands scrambling

Is the era of Open Source Software over?

Especially software maintained for free!

In what other industry do people work for free for the benefit of rich Companies that can afford to pay for products!

Capita fined £14M after 58-hour delay exposed 6.6M records

Does anyone know if Crapita paid a ransom to get their data back?

I wonder how much money this cost them to sort out?

Microsoft agrees to 11th hour Win 10 end of life concessions

Wow 850 million devices that can't be upgraded and that's just Europe.

Thats a lot of electrical waste being generated for no good reason.

Australia to let Big Tech choose its own adventure to enact kids social media ban

I think it’s reasonable for the Australian Government to be concerned about the impact of social media on the mental welfare of children.

I assume the Australian Government must have some strong evidence linking the decline children’s in mental welfare to social media usage?

There have been some high-profile coronial findings in the UK linking the suicide of children to social media usage. The one that comes to mind is the death of 14-year-old Molly Russell, where the coroner concluded she died while “suffering from depression and the negative effects of online content” after extensive exposure to self-harm on social media.

So I feel something needs to be done. But I’m not sure an outright ban on social media for children is the answer. Especially as age verification can be so easily thwarted.

OpenAI reportedly on the hook for $300B Oracle Cloud bill

Re: 5GW

Any attempts for countries to be carbon neutral are being undone by the power demands of AI.

Should UK.gov save money by looking for open source alternatives to Microsoft? You decide

Once upon a time I thought it was Government Policy to use Open Source. The project that I was once on for the MOJ which started in about 2004, used as much Open Source as it could. Apart from the database which was Oracle, I think they managed to get a good deal on that.

Field support chap got married – which took down a mainframe

Re: VAX field service engineers

BT Technicians in the days of the strowger telephone exchanges were also not allowed to wear rings and bracelets for the same reason.

The telephone exchanges were powered by a massive 50 volt battery, which could heat a ring to a high temperature very quickly.

'Close to impossible' for Europe to escape clutches of US hyperscalers

Why is the UK Government still pushing ahead with its strategy of moving government IT Systems into Azure?

I would have thought they would have been having second thoughts about this after the recent Trump chaos.

Musk’s DOGE ship gets ‘full’ access to Treasury payment system, sinks USAID

Can Trump literally do anything he likes? If so, what is the point of the Senate and Congress?

Why are the Senate and Congress not pushing back hard against this madness?

Sorry, I'm from the UK, I don't understand American politics.

UK government tech procurement lacks understanding, says watchdog

Re: Surprise.....Agile Is Not The Answer!!

Bring back the good old functional specs, I love them!

One source of truth for the Customer, BA's, Programmers, Testers, Service Management Team.

A lot easier than trying to work out the functionality of the system by trawling through 1000's of PBI's in Azure DevOps.

AI datacenters putting zero emissions promises out of reach

I would recommend you watch "The Lakes with Simon Reeves" episode 3 on BBC IPlayer. Theres a section the Sellafield nuclear waste facility.

You will be horrified!

UK businesses eye AI as the cheaper, non-whining alternative to actual staff

Re: End game?

I fully agree with this statement:

I also wonder if every business is assuming that other businesses won't be paying off staff. If we're all replaced by AI who will be the customers? Who will have money to spend.

In the short time some companies may make money. But if the workforce is reduced across the board by say 20%, that's 20% more people on the dole, whose ability to consume products will be reduced, resulting in reduce income for companies.

What the Government and our local Councils need is the AI Customer Run-around tool.

Instead of the Customer talking to real person, who then passes them onto the next department and so on, until the Customer gives up in frustration, thus preventing the Customer getting the help they need and hence saving the Council loads of money. This could all be done using AI. The AI answers the call, pretends to pass it onto another department, but just changes its voice.

Thus, saving Council staff doing this and also reducing the amount of time Council staff spend on giving the Customer the run-around.

UK unveils plans to mainline AI into the veins of the nation

Theres no way we can meet our net zero carbon plans if we allow AI data centers to be built in the UK or anywhere.

We should put a stop to AI until it can be implemented without using so much computing power and energy. There should only a few AI centers for research until the energy issue is sorted.

It's crazy how the Government has jumped on the AI bandwagon. More waste of tax payers money, when there's more urgent things to spend our tax payers money on like sorting out social care.

How a good business deal made us underestimate BASIC

Re: But

The IEEE-488 bus - I was trying to remember what that interface was called when I wrote my comment.

It was like an ancient predecessor of the USB bus.

My favorite flavour of Basic was HP Basic. Which came on HP computers in the 80's early 90's, which connected their various electronic measurement devices that they sold. HP basic came with matrix operations. The language was very advance, not basic at all.

Million GPU clusters, gigawatts of power – the scale of AI defies logic

The amount of energy that AI needs is going to de-rail any attempt for the world to move to being carbon neutral.

New nuclear energy plants are going to need to be built just for the energy consumption of AI.

Top 10 billionaires make nearly $64B in post-Trump election stock surge

It seems so unfair that billionaires have such a powerful influence over our world. Elon Musk used his money to support Donald Trump and has now made every penny he has made back. And is now likely to have a position in Trump's government as well.

AI's thirst for power keeps coal fires burning bright

Our society needs to decide what is more important, our environment or access to AI.

We have managed without AI for millennia, maybe AI should be abandoned until a way of using AI with significantly lower power demands can be found.

Kelsey Hightower: If governments rely on FOSS, they should fund it

OK this is a crazy idea, but maybe we should throw the concept of Open Source Software in the bin.

Everyone should get paid for their work!

Why are people working for free on these projects? How are you going to put food on the table if you are not earning money.

If you are working for free, surely you are putting some one out of a job somewhere.

By working on Open Source Software, you are providing you services for free to thousands of organizations who could afford to pay to pay you.

If every PC is going to be an AI PC, they better be as good at all the things trad PCs can do

Surely Microsoft are trying sell stuff that 99.99% of the population don't need. They are trying to find a market for AI that just doesn't exist.

I think we need to rebrand AI as Artificial Ignorance, that will stop this AI nonsense. Every other company CEO is trying to get on the AI band wagon.

Before we put half a million broadband satellites in orbit, anyone want to consider environmental effects?

Do we really need all these satellites?

Re: Plus the effects of thousands of reentries burning up metal in the stratosphere and above

It feels like we have found yet another way to damage our planet.

So much for green Google ... Emissions up 48% since 2019

Is using the Ecosia search engine better?

Is using the Ecosia search engine better option? I know they plant a lot of trees. But are their data centres using less carbon than Google?

UnitedHealth CEO: 'Decision to pay ransom was mine'

Constant War

Having a company with x number of employees is like trying to protect a castle with x number of doors. You only have to leave 1 door open, and your castle is breached. With an attack occurring every 70 seconds, surely, it's inevitable that every company will eventually succumb to a cyber security breach. It’s like a constant war of attrition.

JetBrains is still mad at Rapid7 for the ransomware attacks on its customers

I think Rapid7 behavior is disgraceful. They are no better than unethical hackers. Publishing this information was just malicious.

If I was a Company whose computer systems had been exploited as a result of their disclosure I would be suing them.

There's no way that 5 hours would have been enough time for everyone to get their servers up to date.

Can AI shorten PC replacement cycles? Dell seems to think so

Short replacement cycles are not good for the environment, think of all that electronic waste that is being generated.

I just had to move to a new laptop due to a fault on my existing one. It took me over a week to re-install all my developer applications and a month later I'm still discovering that I'm missing stuff. I don't want to go through that pain again any time soon. Long refresh cycles for me!

Maybe there should be more focus on making existing software run more efficiently, so that it can continue to run on existing hardware.

Lurie Children's Hospital back to pen and paper after cyberattack

Targeting a hospital - how low can people get?

RIP Fred 'Mythical Man-Month' Brooks: IBM guru of software project management

Reading of the book "The Mythical Man-Month" should be mandatory reading for every project manager, in fact anyone in software development.

UK's Online Safety Bill drops rules forcing social media to remove 'legal but harmful' content

We need to ask ourselves what is more important?

We need to ask ourselves what is more important:

the mental well being of our children?

or the ability for people to view porn websites or post harmful content without the risk of being identified?

I feel that the mental well being of our children is extremely important and that social media should use age verification to prevent children accessing harmful content.

Re: The Chiling Effects of Age Verification

Surely it is possible to do age verification and still remain anonymous. A third party website could verify your age without giving your personal data to the calling website. It’s no more difficult than third party authentication.