Posts by MacGuffin

Dev taps Claude Code to craft custom printer driver for macOS

Re: It isn't as big a deal as reported

Outstanding.

Maybe bring back the sprinter feature too on printers without it.

https://www.geeky-gadgets.com/cool-gadgets-the-shrinter-printer-shreder-combo/

Trump sends the US Navy back to the steam age

Re: There are more important things for the USN

And the Jeffrey Epstein Memorial Dance Hall

Twitch feeds your streams to Amazon's AI unless you tell it to stop

IMDb.com. Does something similar

earched fo “I see dead people” via google. Landed on IMDb.com. As a result, IMDb.com immediately created an account and sent me an e-mail notification, NOT a verification.

Because of Amazon ownership/affiliation. E-mail informed me it was my responsibility to remove said account and I could not re-establish it in the future with same UID.

Went medieval an Amazon “Help” chatbot for the possibly illegal behavior. Got precisely nowhere as I expected. It kept going on about the benefits ignoring my protestations.

Enshittification meets Reverse Centaur (YOU clean it up for us!)

Tennessee congressional hopeful accused of shooting license plate cameras

Only 30 More

30 more felonies to go and also be convicted of and he’ll be president.

BOFH: Cross-department AI pitches are easier to swallow with a pint in hand

My AI Toilet gets smarter everyday.

Space Shuttle Endeavour stacks up nicely for new California exhibit

To Texas!

Maybe they are preparing it for a launch to Texas to replace the somewhat dubious transportation of Discovery...

Uncle Sam considers buying a seat on the Titanic

Re: Please give Trump a ticket on the Titanic

I "asked" to get Microslop's Coprolite to generate an image of Trump on the Hindenburg. My MS account got dinged with a warning. Along with Musk's fiddling with output directives, I have no faith in the output, whether output will faithfully generated by any AI and cannot fathom a reason why I would pay to be so restricted and directed. Alas, my reluctance to pay to be restricted is defeated. I still have to pay via taxes to physically support the players I have no faith in.

Vibe coding will deliver a wonderful proliferation of personalized software

Redundant Department of Redundancy

"integrated IDE"

So...

An integrated integrated development environment.

I'm shocked, SHOCKED! /s

BOFH: Forward-facing AI brand experience meets forward-facing combustion risk management

It may be the are fewer readers on the other side of the pond Today as they are off work due to Thanksgiving and Black Friday. I would think any BOFH worth anything would do all their comments on work hours.

GPUs aren't worth their weight in gold – it just feels like they are

I'll Keep the Gold

All GPUs will eventually be dead weight.

Trump wants to turn it on again with 'Genesis Mission' for AI in science

What a Cryme

Trump's 'Genesis Mission' will involve an 'Illegal Alien' and their baby 'Mama'. Turn it off again.

Techie found an error message so rude the CEO of IBM apologized for it

Wannabe

One of my early DB programs (1997) still running to this day displays the message "Do you really want, do you really, really want to delete this?"

LLM chatbots trivial to weaponize for data theft, say boffins

CAIs

I prefer to use HA1. Heinz A1.

It's good enough for the Secretary of Education.

Meta offered one AI researcher at least $10,000,000 to join up

Requires 20 years experience

For the rest of us, the entry level job postings will say "requires minimum 20 years experience in LLMs and AI." The DOGE Bros would have had to start while in nursery school. /s

Apple tries to contain itself with lightweight Linux VMs for macOS

Re: UTM

Like Kristi Gnome’s puppy.

Musk and Trump take slap fight public as bromance ends

Re: No room for two

Demolition Man quote:

Lenina Huxley: I have, in fact, perused some newsreels in the Schwarzenegger Library, and the time that you took that car...

John Spartan: Hold it. The Schwarzenegger Library?

Lenina Huxley: Yes. The Schwarzenegger Presidential Library. Wasn't he an actor when you...?

John Spartan: Stop! He was President?

Lenina Huxley: Yes! Even though he was not born in this country, his popularity at the time caused the 61st Amendment which states...

John Spartan: I don't wanna know. President...

Trump threatens to add formal Apple Tax on top of the 'Apple tax'

An Offer That Can't Be Refused

Perhaps Apple can rename the "Command" button to "Executive Order" button to avoid the tariff and appease the orange one.

Techies propose the Agent Name Service: It's like DNS but for AI agents

Re: Good thinking, Max

IP address 86.99.86.99 maybe? There's another number I can think of to put in there, but I don't want the FBI or the Justice Department around.

GAO finds billions in possible government savings, all without Elon's help

Thumbs down. Shocker. See recently fired Librarian of Congress. One year left and fired.

That is irrelevant. Comptroller could have 3 seconds left in term and will STILL be fired.

ATMs in the Amazon: Edge is crossing its tipping point, says SUSE CTO

Glorified Sensors Are People!

I came to the conclusion long ago that we "ugly bags of mostly water" are in fact the remote sensors used by the "the cloud".

Think about that the next time you fill in the umpteenth captcha.

Cheap 'n' simple sign trickery will bamboozle self-driving cars, fresh research claims

Old Meatbag Here

From the time TSR meant Terminate and Stay Resident....

Altnets told to stop digging and start stuffing fiber through abandoned pipes

Taking the Lead

By that I mean lead (Pb). String the fiber through the lead water service lines into the customer's domicile. Get caught up in even MORE bureaucracy... Maybe the electrons will pick up the lead particles and feed them straight to our brains via our eyeballs. Never mind the water department coming by in a year or three tearing all of it out preventing my free speech on Xitter...

Tech jobs are now white-collar trades that need apprentices, not a career crawl

First

When I hear "First" declared by anyone, I run. "Cloud first", "America first", "Family First"....

I know any conversation or discussion are useless.

The other side's mind is made up. End of discussion.

To me "first" is a signal that an opposing opinion or potential conflict will be immediately ignored

Cos.. "First!"

NASA's on-again, off-again job cuts – what's the plan?

Re: Artemis 3

Someone is in trouble for that and I suspect it will be "remedied" soon.

I'm trying to locate an easy link where a US congressional law from 1866 forbade putting live people on currency (thus "dead presidents" referring to money), but the link found no longer works on the US Treasury web page. Dead link below.

https://www.treasury.gov/about/history/Pages/1800-1899.aspx

UK government using AI tools to check up on roadworthy testing centers

Some SUVs already have Truck Nuts.

Google exec sees enterprise quantum app on closer horizon

Event Horizon

might be more accurate than closer horizon as time expands into infinity.

Resulting in Deepwater Horizon.

Trump scrubs all mention of DEI, gender, climate change from federal websites

Granted

The Federal government can do that with their web sites. The federal government also distributes grants to the States and many other organizations. I imagine before to long those grants will be modified unilaterally that as a condition of accepting the grants, all mentions of DEI be removed from all websites and materials.

The argument may be made that money is fungible, so the grant funds would not be used to support DEI in those organizations. No amount of separation of those funds from their intended purpose will stop accusations that federal money is used to fund DEI in some way, shape or form.

Replace DEI with any other out of favor term you like.

As Trump slugs Canada, Mexico and China with tariffs, industry groups hope trade war weapon isn’t pointed at their feet

Manipulation?

Imposing tariffs and then pulling them back. Sound like market manipulation.

Let's see if the DOJ charges him with that...../s

You begged Microsoft to be reasonable. Instead it made Copilot reason-able with OpenAI GPT-o1

This Would be Truly Magical

When I can tell Microsoft's AI Tools to block all images and videos of a selected person or persons in Edge...

THEN I will believe AI is a real thing.

I'll start with Microsoft's biggest AI Tool first.

Trump’s tariffs, cuts may well put tech in a chokehold, say analysts

Re: That's the point

The chickens will not come home to roost because they will be dead, killed by avian flu.

Apple auto-opts everyone into having their photos analyzed by AI for landmarks

Don't

"Please don't do that."

"OK. We'll inform you that we are doing it instead."

"Don't Do That! We want you to STOP. We do NOT want informed consent instead!"

"Here's our 'Explanation of Benefits'."

Wash, rinse, repeat....

Microsoft won't let customers opt out of passkey push

Re: Better security doesn't just stop the scammers

I cannot rely on Apple ID.

Apple ID does not exist anymore.

It is now Apple Account.

Steam cuts the cord for legacy Windows and macOS

Nothing more borong than a Vacation Slide Show

"which allows players to save sessions and share clips with friends."

Greybeards remember being bored to tears going to friend's homes and being subjected to slide shows of their friend's vacations. Actual kodachrome slide shows, not the infinitely more painful slide decks of powerpoint.

I have no desire (kill me please) to watch someone's clip of a steam session.

Play? Yes. Watch? NO.

All bark, no bite? Musk's DOGE unlikely to have any real power

Re: Dodgy

Or “doosh”

Uncle Sam may force Google to sell Chrome browser, or Android OS

and Apple/iCloud

If your AI does the crime, you'll do the time, warns DoJ

Re: Artificial Xenophobia

Is there a reason the SHOULD work just as well?

Re: Two tier justice

US President’s AI is already fullly immune. As SCOTUS.

Apple ropes off at least 4 GB of iPhone storage to house AI

I like the lock down too. For now. I find with each update, ios and ipados get more difficult to use and navigate.

Google files first ever complaint with European Commission against Microsoft

Re: Weapons and Big-tech

If only we had and endless supply of money rather than the endless supply of stupidity.

CrowdStrike apologizes to Congress for 'perfect storm' that caused global IT outage

"Pre"defined

"Pre" is sometimes the "prefix" for before. Prewar. Prehistory.

"Predefined rules" might work here because the the rules may have not been defined (before definition).

No Definition? No rules. Nowhere to go.

Fail.

Don't apologize to congress. Apologize to the world.

EU AI Act still in infancy, but those with 'intelligent' HR apps better watch out

Misguided Innovation

Too often I find that “strangle tech innovation” means there is “concern” that regulation will “strangle” new innovative tech ways to collect fees and lock in subscriptions. The “innovations” are not for the general populace. Most “innovations” I have witnessed are innovative ways to block access, throw up paywalls or siphon off the revenue stream.

An example “innovation” would be transaction fees where your phone and credit card get fees for the “convenience” of not using actual cash. Or “cashless” payments which basically require a cell phone plan to participate. THe cell-plan plan itself is an innovative way to extract funds by by making having a plan mandatory.

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

Just one final change

TeXla….

Release the hounds! Securing datacenters may soon need sniffer dogs

Demolition Man Revisited

I may need to rewatch “Demolition Man” tonight. I keep thinking of the quote “Why don’t you shove a leash up my ass?” after Sly is informed he’s chipped.

Elon Musk to destroy the International Space Station – with NASA's approval, for a fee

Re: Language

“Deplane! Deplane!” Bring back Mr. Roarke’s sidekick, Tattoo..

Samsung teases investment to get into the GPU game

GPU Packed With Ads

Given their TVs, I'm not sure I would want a GPU that spends most of its time serving up ads and calling the mothership. No worry really. A Samsung GPU may well last as long as their refrigerators do.

Nearly 20% of running Microsoft SQL Servers have passed end of support

Nothing for the Upgrade

The PFY from tech school working on the hot new SQL server and application/cloud will get promoted out of the project and into manglement within 6 months because of the whizz-bang "skills" in new and shiny.

The grizzled greybeard tasked with updating the obsolete MS SQL DB Server and the accompanying apps because only they have the skills and training will take multiple years because of all the "concerned parties", long after the PFY above becomes their boss.

Feel free to say that does not happen. Please say that does not happen...

Please?

Can AI models trained on human speech help us understand dogs?

Crotchety

This will only work when AI develops “smell-o-vision” and can crotch dogs.

Samsung takes bite out of Apple over its mega marketing misstep

The Samsung Avalanche

That being the same Samsung that buries you in an avalanche of ads on their Smart TV hardware? The same Samsung whose “Smart Things” app won’t function without a connection to the mother ship? Whose smart TV also requires a connection to the mothership?

I’ll call that mighty creative for Samsung, but not the consumer.

Microsoft really does not want Windows 11 running on ancient PCs

Re: What happens when

"need replaced"?

"need to be replaced" or "need replacing"