Posts by Ian Johnston

Engineer used welding shop air hose to 'clean' PCs – hilarity did not ensue

Re: Good lord

A degree with "business" in its name is no indication of intelligence. In fact it's precisely the opposite. See also: "studies".

Bankrupt scooter startup left one private key to rule them all

This sort of thing is going to be needed on a rather larger scale when Tesla goes bust. Or if Elon Musk simply decides to brick every car in Europe when the shooting starts in Greenland.

Wine 11 runs Windows apps in Linux and macOS better than ever

Re: What?

The free software people aren't going to all this trouble to create ms compatibility, then stopping 1 inch short of the end just to be <gratuitous sexist slur>

It is not simply a matter of compatibility. Equation editing is not compatible between MS Word and LibreOffice, for whatever reason, but is also far, far better in Word, not least because you can enter LaTeX. Of course LaTeX itself is better still.

From bitter experience ... trying to edit documents with equations in them on both LibreOffice and MS Office Just Does Not Work. And Office 365 doesn't offer equation editing at all. For that reason alone I had to get a Windows laptop from $FORMER_WORKPLACE alas.

AI may be everywhere, but it's nowhere in recent productivity statistics

Re: Rustbelt?

Nobody has yet produced Artificial Intelligence stupid enough to take on HR roles. You just can't get silicon to drool.

Re: Don't follow the IBM route if you care about productivity

Everything done by a government is paid for by the current workers.

So what happens to the income tax I pay on my pension? What happens to the 20% of almost everything I spend which goes to the government as VAT? My pension is deferred wages. Just because I am not working for the money right now does not mean that someone else is working for it any more than someone else is working for you when you're asleep or on holiday.

Re: Blame it on video games

Whether AI will continue that trend I can't say

Narrator: AI did not continue that trend.

... vice president and principal analyst ...

That's about one step up from "makes the tea", isn't it?

Firefox 147 brings GPU boost, tidier tabs, and video that follows you around

On the mobile version you can't - any more - set it for new page either. Functionality which was built into NCSA Mosaic, and which Mozilla saw fit, quite recently, to remove.

India’s flagship PSLV rocket fails for the second time in a row

The other version [of nominalism] specifically denies the existence of abstract objects as such—objects that do not exist in space and time.

Which means that nominalism itself does not exist. "Oh, that was easy," says Man, and for an encore goes on to prove that black is white and gets himself killed on the next zebra crossing.

See also: post-structuralist true believers, who claimed (or claim, if there are any left) that there is no such thing as "meaning" and that Jacques Derrida's books explain this.

AI and automation could erase 10.4 million US roles by 2030

What jobs. precisely? Load of bollocks.

Tories vow to boot under-16s off social media and ban phones in schools

Re: Just noise

The Greens are just a leftie version of Reform: inexperienced leader opening wholly impractical policies to impress a fan base. Their "unlimited immigration" policy is as far as Reform's "no immigration" one.

That's in England and Wales. The Scottish Greens are a wholly owned subsidiary of the SWP, which is why they are middle class, authoritarian and misogynist.

Cloudflare CEO threatens to make the Winter Olympics a political football after Italy slugs it with a fine

Re: Please allow me...

Could we avoid the clearly gendered insults, though?

Debian goes retro with a spatial desktop that time forgot

What happened to copying files to a USB stick and then using gparted to make it bootable and startable?

Help desk read irrelevant script, so techies found and fixed their own problem

Rather dated, as will be obvious, but true:

Me: Can you let me know the VAX queue name for the printer in Room 1023, next to my office?

Helpdesk: Have you tried rebooting Windows?

Ransomware attacks kept climbing in 2025 as gangs refused to stay dead

Re: Solution is to make it illegal to pay ransomeware

The solution is to make it illegal to pay ransomware.

It's already illegal to implement it. Fat lot of good that does.

GNOME dev gives fans of Linux's middle-click paste the middle finger

Re: Hipsters indeed

A friend of mine who teaches at a European School (ie an EB one, not just a school in Europe) says they use Luxembourg keyboards because they are the most convenient for English, French and German. I'm happy with AltGr + [ or ; or ' or # for my accent needs.

Safe CEO: AI is an assistant, not a replacement

Re: Not convinced

Some microwave ovens can do clever - if not intelligent - things by measuring the weight of food placed in them and changes in air humidity as power is applied. Mind you, so can my rice cooker, except for the "measuring weight" bit.

Use of the word "agentic" is a very useful indicator that the piece containing it is pure bollocks.

Hong Kong’s newest anti-scam technology is over-the-counter banking

How can this possibly work? Everybody who reads the Daily Mail knows that all Chinese people look the same.

When the AI bubble pops, Nvidia becomes the most important software company overnight

Re: Follow the money

Sure, a $200 a month subscription to Cursor sounds OK, and is cheaper than hiring an extra engineer.

Or would be, if you didn't have to hire an extra engineer anyway to find and fix Cursor's cockups.

Sam Altman is willing to pay somebody $555,000 a year to keep ChatGPT in line

Re: How about improving what we have already first?

Google Maps often doesn't know about footpaths and routes pedestrians along roads. In Milton Keynes, for example, it has little or no idea about the Redway system of shared-use cycle/foot paths.

Marketing puff. He has to keep pushing the idea that "AI" is powerful and threatening to keep the wheels on for a bit longer.

What the Linux desktop really needs to challenge Windows

A quick look at Waterfox suggests the Linux install is a tarball. Not ideal.

It also does not support older processors, which is a shame, because I would really like an AI-shit free version of Firefox,

I'm not an expert with Windows because I don't use it because every single computer I own and use (three desktops and three laptops at the moment) runs Linux.

Re: The reason is Office

Interesting. I have replicated it on three machines. Are you running Linux Mint?

I have prodded but, as I said, everyone blames someone else for it.

Re: {+Audio

There are three different drivers (USB/WIFI/LAN) available, depending on connectivity? Golly. I only see one. And yes, the printer has a static IP address.

Re: ChromeOS Flex - free download, install on anything, FTW

As someone who has been using Mac/Win/Linux for many decades, since Mandrake came free in CDs in magazines

Coo. That brings back memories. Mandrake was the first Linux I ever tried, and it did indeed come free with a magazine. I tried to add it to a computer which was already dual booting OS/2 and Windows (the happy days of chained bootloaders) and its installer scribbled so comprehensively over my MBR that I had to rebuild the entire system.

I posted to uk.comp.os.linux to ask for advice and was instantly told that I was clearly a lying Micro$oft shill, because there was no way Linus could possibly do what I had just seen it do. So it was a good introduction to the Linux community as well as to the OS.

I gave up on Linux then, returning to it some years later with Ubuntu 6.06. which played very nicely with my system, including sharing a JFS volume which was both D: and /home

Re: Free has a cost.

I think the ideological battles fought by RMS and his acolytes have probably done more to hamper Linux than anything else. Association with a bunch of shouty men in beards rarely inspires confidence.

Re: Too much still requires shell

Want to set up hibernation for your Dell laptop

Hah. My other half has a Dell laptop on which I installed Linux Mint. Even when told not to suspend or hibernate it still does so if the screen is closed, and so completely that it can only be brought back to life by a hard reset. Very impressive.

Re: Yawn "Too many Linux DEs is bad"

What system-wide management tools, appropriate to large organisations, can Linux offer?

Re: What Linux needs to be pre-installed on PCs

Back in the 1990s, OS/2 was a better OS than Windows 3.x and 9x, in terms of technical merit. But it didn't matter, because it was starved for applications and hardware driver support.

I finally jumped ship from OS/2 (by then eComStation) in 2006 because when I tried Ubuntu 6.06 it had no problem with either by graphics card (for which I had had to buy an OS/2 driver) or my audio chipset (which had never worked under OS/2).

Having the choice is far, far more important that having Linux or some other Unix variant take over the world.

See also: left wing political parties and the history of the presbyterian church(es) in Scotland. The quest for ideological purity never leads to widespread success. That may be a good thing.

Re: required literacy

Which OS is easier to install? On reasonably common hardware, it's Linux, by a country mile.

I have only twice recently had to install Windows - Windows 10 on other people's computers. It was an absolute doddle in both cases. A Linux Mint install is significantly more complicated.

Re: Audio

It's the unpredictability and unreliability which is the issue. You simply can't rely on Linux (Mint, to be precise) to work on a given printer, even when it's supported.

Re: Audio

I am writing this on a Lenovo desktop attached to a Brother laser printer. Elsewhere I have an identical Lenovo desktop attached to an identical Brother laser printer. Both printers are connected by USB and are also on wifi. This computer will only print over USB. The other one will only print over wifi. Of my two laptops here, one sees the printer but won't print to it; the other can't even see the printer.

And thanks for confirming that yet another Linux audio project hopes to make that side of things work. My point, neatly made.

Re: Mint

Until they have to decide what to do about UEFI. Been there, done that.

Re: snapflatimages

And that is precisely why it will be a cold day in hell when I have snapd installed on any of my computers.

Users should not have to be tech-literate to use a computer, and more than drivers need to be tech-literate to drive a car or "Dr Who" fans need to be tech-literate to watch the telly. The days when "Newnes Practical Television, by Dictron" was essential reading for anyone with a TV are long gone, bit the Linux world still thinks there is virtue in obscurity.

Re: The reason is Office

Want some fun with LibreOffice under Linux Mint? Simply type a few words into a text document, set 'em to 96 point, zoom in a couple of clicks ... and log in again, because your desktop session has just crashed, losing all work from all open apps. LibreOffice devs don't care. x.org devs don't care. XFCE devs don't care. And Linux Mint devs don't care because their answer to everything is "that's an upstream issue, nothing to do with us."

Re: Audio

Audio on Linux is still a shitshow. Printing on Linux is still a shitshow. Linux is a shitshow, it's just less of a shitshow than Windows. Not a high bar, but one it clears.

Besides the usual security crap – 41 zero-day CVEs so far in 2025 at the time of writing – there have been new features such as Microsoft Recall, a privacy disaster disguised as a feature. Then there's the way Microsoft is forcing AI functions down our throats.

I run Linux Mint on three desktops and three laptops at the moment. Each one has required about 2GB worth of updates this month alone. My current issue is finding a replacement for Firefox without the spectacularly enshittifying amount of AI which Mozilla think justifies their CEO's salary.

Snap? Fuck right off with that. The whole security philosophy of Linux has been to make use of libraries so that when an issue is discovered, every piece of software using that function is effectively updated in one fell swoop. Use Snap and every single package has its own version of every library and whether these get updated depend on the competence, whim and continued existence of the developers. Storage is cheap; having umpteen potentially insecure versions of libraries is potentially very, very expensive indeed.

The Roomba failed because it just kind of sucked

I have three Henries, all cleaning domestic carpets most effectively, using either the standard head or an Aerobrush. However, what you are really trying to say is that your carpet is more luxurious than mine. Nice try.

Ever seen a professional cleaning company use anything other than a Henry? There is a reason for that.

Conman and wannabe MI6 agent must repay £125k to romance scam victim

One is not supposed to victim blame, but dear Lord some victims don't do much to help themselves.

pearOS is a Linux that falls rather close to the Apple tree

I suppose we can hope that good ideas in WunderkindOS will be adopted by better resourced projects.

The trouble with these distros - like all the ones produced by 13 year old Wunderkinder on which El Reg has reported - is that they seem very unlikely to receive any maintenance, let alone updates and new releases, so while fine as toys but not for actual use.

Waterfox browser goes AI-free, targets the Firefox faithful

Just tried it under Linux Mint but alas it does not support my processor - Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU E7400, says dmidecode - so I must search on for something without the AI crap which now makes Firefox all but unusable.

Faith in the internet is fading among young Brits

Remember that when these people say "mental health" they actually mean "happiness", to which they believe they have an absolute right at all times, regardless of circumstances or their own actions.

GAO report details faltering Veteran’s Administration records upgrade program

I thought DOGE had sorted all this out in a couple of weeks last February.