Posts by dadbot5000

Brewhaha: Turns out machines can't replace people, Starbucks finds

American here. I know it's hip and trendy to bash on Starbucks, and it's not entirely undeserved, but I go to my local Starbies on the regular and find the quality to be just fine. Black drip coffee has improved dramatically. It's not sludge anymore.

Secondly, I occasionally visit a 7-11 near my home that has robot coffee drink makers and I have found that for less than half what I pay at Starbies for a fancy drink I get a good coffee drink. I could see a half-dozen of those robots pumping out fancy drinks that rival handmade ones, especially at a lower price point.

Finally, unionizing Starbucks would only lead to decreased quality and higher prices. Besides who want to work as a barista as a career?

T-Mobile US CSO: Spies jumped from one telco to another in a way 'I've not seen in my career'

Re: Any political repercussions?

These are significant acts of sabotage and acts of war and should be treated as such.

White House’s new fix for cyber job gaps: Serve the nation in infosec

~200 jobs listed, none are remote. All I needed to know is this is sponsored by the White House to know it was a joke.

Feds claim sinister sysadmin locked up thousands of Windows workstations, demanded ransom

I wonder what he was disgruntled about.

Uncle Sam sues TikTok for 'extensive' data harvesting from millions of kids

Surprise, surprise, surprise! The Chinese spyware on your kid's phone isn't playing by the rules. The sooner we can get TikTok sold to an American company or killed altogether, the better.

Google apologizes for breaking password manager for millions of Windows users with iffy Chrome update

This is why I don't use browser based password management. I use a password manager with an extension for my browser so I know google or firefox or MS isn't snooping or worse.

Oak Ridge casts nets in search of Frontier supercomputer's heir

Imagine the Oak Ridge Leadership Computational Facility using Microsoft in the cloud for supercomputing just to have it laid low by a Crowdstrike foul up or Azure error. Oops there goes our nuclear simulation we spent months on.

GNOME head honcho Holly Million steps down

Re: So she didn't leave to "spend time with her family" ?

She was brought on to raise money for GNOME. She probably got in there and realized that raising money is hard in a down economy and quit. Her LI page describers her as a down-to-the-bones healer, real hippie dippie stuff in San Fran. Cannot imagine what GNOME was thinking bringing her on except her Harvard background.

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

Wow, I didn't know Celine Dion had so many songs in French.

Re: "is therefore equally liable for IP theft"

I think you are right. The recording industry has been decimated by Spotify and the death of physical media, so lawsuits are a way to maybe make a buck. Today's modern cut and paste music "artists" all sound the same. The days of Metallica and Prince selling millions of profitable tapes, CDs and records is over forever. Perhaps the death of the traditional music studios will foster a new generation of talent that can compare to what has already come and gone.

FBI gains access to Trump rally shooter's phone

If the government wants into your phone, they'll get into your phone. That's why the US needs privacy laws like the EU has, although even that probably wouldn't stop them.

Windows: Insecure by design

Re: how much punishment are you willing to take?

I think Windows really went downhill when it became essentially free. Rather than making money off licensing, MS now makes it from SAAS and advertising and using Windows as spyware. You gets what you pays for.

Screwdrivers: is there anything they can't do badly? Maybe not

Re: Royal navy sayings

Speaking of paint and the navy, I recently read a book on the US navy in the south pacific during WW2 and it mentioned that sailors were kept busy scraping paint and repainting to avoid the risk of the built up paint layers burning during combat. That must have been a real drag.

That's usually an expensive option.

I don't have any good misused tool stories but I do know this:

Torx>Philips

And Philips screws should be banned forever.

Boeing's Starliner finds yet another way to not reach space

Apollo went to the moon with the equivalent computer power of a pocket calculator and returned safely (excepting Apollo 13 of course) but this thing can't get launched due to its multiple redundant safety systems. Safety has been made paramount but at what point does risk become acceptable? When it comes to everyday passenger jets like the 737 Max risk has to be absolutely minimized, but does it have to be with space flight?

China pushes its payment platforms towards an international presence

Share my foreign credit card or debit card info with the CCP? No thanks. Maybe if China would play nice with the rest of the world and allow ApplePay or other forms of electronic payment it would grease the skids of their economy.

Hold up world, HP's all-in-one print subscription's about to land, and don't forget AI PCs

Re: Just print, damnit!

Credit card info to finish installation? That sounds like a mafia racket to me.

Uncle Sam tells nosy nations to keep their hands off Americans' personal data

So we're finally doing something about TikTok?

China breakthrough promises optical discs that store hundreds of terabytes

Where's the backdoor that copies all your data to CCP servers for later perusal?

Hands up who wants a PC? Lenovo reports declining returns

When Lenovo can convince American buyers that their hardware isn't sucking up data and sending it to the Chinese Communist Party their sales numbers will increase.

Misfiring Lenovo hires Ford director to help with revamp

Unless he can convince the US that Lenovo's AI isn't feeding private data directly to the Chinese Communist Party, he will fail.

Turning a computer off, then on again, never goes wrong. Right?

Re: Reminds me of an old (early '80s) AI koan ...

I like to call it the Aura effect. Just my aura is enough to fix most user issues.

Microsoft signs 1.5 million seat contract for Office 365 and more

34 months? They mean forever. Once staff starts using 365 and get all their documents and info tied up in it how can they get out? Also whoever the sales guru was at Bytes Software Services, I hope they know a good realtor in the south of France to help them spend that huge commission check.

Metaverses are flopping – hard – says Gartner

The more I hear about VR/metverse flopping the more I imagine Zuckerberg pouring more money into it and worrying. More and more Facebook Inc. looks like a one-trick pony.

If you want a big brain, make a habit out of daytime naps

Normalize napping now!

UK launches SKYNET – not a doomsday plot, just shopping for improved satellite comms

TBF Skynet is a pretty great name.

Cunningly camouflaged cable routed around WAN-sized hole in project budget

This is why the vikings took over Europe.

FBI abused spy law but only like 280,000 times in a year

Disband the FBI.

US sanctions cut Huawei profits by half in first quarter

Use Huawei equipment, expect your data to be piped to the ChiComs. Moving away from Huawei in the free world can't happen fast enough.

Microsoft's big bet on helium-3 fusion explained

So Helion is on their seventh generation design and it still doesn't work? What other technology gets to seven iterations with no success and still attracts massive investment? I'm sure their are some, but I remember reading about fusion reactors in grade school in the 80's and it was just 'ten years away' from working.

Microsoft signs up to buy electricity produced by fusion, perhaps in 2028

Fusion is a pipe dream. I cheer the researchers and the things they have learned from this process, but the time, energy and money would be better spent on building safe fission reactors that will actually work.

Support chap put PC into 'drying mode' and users believed it was real

This seems like a very harmless prank, which is the best kind when it comes to messing with humorless coworkers. My concern was that the floppy drive motor would burn out from the unloaded spinning.