Posts by bud-weis-er

SQL king Larry Ellison becomes sequel sultan with controlling interest in Paramount Global

Lucky sperm club

Sorry for putting an image of Larry's jizz on your minds.

And in your faces.

ESA prints 3D metal shape in space for first time

Saying this with respect..

From my viewpoint, all the cool stuff is happening in the space industry at the moment.

Just incase I'm missing anything, anyone know any other "cool" industries (apart from AI/ML, I'm strictly a power user of these and use other peoples' work)?

Salesforce now owns Own Company after $1.9B bargain hunt

Anyone use salesforce?

I know sales people love it, but as a techy.... it just seems incredibly shit

WHO-backed meta-study finds no evidence that cellphone radiation causes brain cancer

Re: Dr WHO

I carried on like nothing was happening... went to work, ran, cycled, got coffees... met a mate in the park a few times a week and we'd sit and drink beer. Damn they were happy times.

Was aware lots of idiots were locking themselves in their houses and turning on people who were capable of a bit of independent thought, but, well, you never got to see them.

Funnily enough, got chatting to a lot of people, especially old people, who'd come out desperate for company. We kept our distance - just incase - but had some real nice chats. I reckon I helped a lot.

Re: Dr WHO

Damn, look at those downvotes.

El Reg readers are certainly good, conforming citizens..

'Uncertainty' drives LinkedIn to migrate from CentOS to Azure Linux

"NT is a good kernel and a good OS"

With respect, some clarification on this would be valuable. Because honestly, I have never heard anyone say that since a Microsoft Program Manager made the claim to me in 1996 and I laughed then.

Didn't el reg run an article sometime ago saying - along the lines of - the kernel suffered as security was added as an afterthought?

Also, given MS often give their product away for free to trap people into using it... why isn't anyone using it for anything other than staff desktops?

[Microsoft's in-house professional networking site is moving to Microsoft's in-house Linux.]

Microsoft are a sales and marketing org, not a tech company (or at least, not a company that creates good tech).

I suspect this was more about "not even Microsoft use Microsoft Linux".

Zen Browser is a no-Google zone that offers tiling nirvana

I think we all got the author's point, don't you?

If someone asked for "a version of windows that worked" we would know exactly what they meant.

Starliner's not-so-grand finale is a thump in the desert next week

Not taking away from his achievements, they're awesome despite him being a complete frigging dick, but isn't SpaceX ran by someone else?

As the Apple Watch turns 10, disabled users demand real accessibility

Yeah, I like mine, but there is plenty of weirdness.

- I get congratulated for standing up all day, even though I'm mostly sitting down

- The later models have the screen on all the time, but I keep mine off to save power. It doesn't always wake when I look.

- Find my devices is completely ****ing useless and rarely can see the devices. It's great on the phone and Mac.

- I barely pay using mine due to the number of times I'd get to the front of a drive thru, try and pay, only to be told "card updating". However far away from me you live, you'll have heard the cursing.

- No idea about Siri, it's shit on every device.

There's plenty more. They're off the top of my head.

Microsoft sends Windows Control Panel to tech graveyard

Re: cue the wailing

omg I LOVED 2000. It was a really high quality piece of work and made it look like Windows was going to mature into a really good OS (lol, hindsight eh?).

I did a contract in 2005 and they still used it, I was delighted.

Re: cue the wailing

"you are a young sniveling coward"???

Jeez mate, person expressed an opinion, there's no need to throw rocks.

And they're right, XP did suck - big time - until SP2. So it's more the later users that think it was something wonderful.

China's rideshare champ Didi gives users the option to report stinky cars

option for females to choose female driver

Surprised it's taken so long, I always thought that would be a good idea.

Kinda makes me sad there are so few female drivers.. I don't blame them one bit, it reflects how messed up society is in this area.

LibreOffice 24.8: Handy even if you're happy with Microsoft

Recently started using this on my Mac. It's awesome, and 100x better than that shite word processor and spreadsheet Apple make.

UK tech pioneer Mike Lynch dead at 59

Damn, when tech barons fall foul of the Chinese authorities they just disappear for a few months.

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

Re: Lifestyles of the rich and famous...

Boat couldn't have had an Australian owner, otherwise you'd have heard them yell "C**T"!

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

> Tight deadline is typically a management f-up.

Absolutely. Like someone in the Sopranos (Tony / Silvio ?) said; "shit runs downhill, money rolls uphill"

Jeez yeah. I get my phone bill paid - which I'm grateful for - but nothing gets installed.

Call me a dinosaur (I probably am), but there's nothing that requires me to "trust" my organisation.

Hang on, people don't ignore messages from their boss outside working hours??? Fakkkk....

Who needs GitHub Copilot when you can roll your own AI code assistant at home

Jeez yeah. If any company was ripe to have its market share ripped off it, it's google.

I like LLMs (totally respect anyone who disagrees), and am happy to pay $30 per month for the best. Shame Google has sold its soul (read: those damn adverts / sponsored links) and can't offer a cash-paid service for best of breed search.

This is cool stuff, thanks for posting.

I was coding the other day using google to find information - suddenly had a "moment" where I realised I was being an old fart, and went back to LLMs. They're not perfect, but wow they get you results that you consider brilliant (so not good for beginners) very fast.

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

Ok, not a lawyer in any sense, but I was under the impression that Ts&Cs can't actually override actual laws.

Like when a place has "the management are not responsible for loss or injury"... yes they are when the law says they are.

Microsoft pushing, pushing, pushing Edge in Defender slammed as a 'dark pattern'

Re: What's new?

Yeah, was helping my kid do his homework on his school windows laptop (daddy uses linux and mac).

First search brought back results off the internet when he was looking for a local file. Then, in word, he started getting messages that he'd used all his grammatical suggestions and to get more required a different plan. wtf?

Techie told 'Bill Gates' Excel is rubbish – and the Microsoft boss had it fixed in 48 hours

Re: Excel is still rubbish

Access doesn't get the credit it (somehow) deserves. We all laugh - kind of rightly - but there are still tons of working applications using it that were written almost 30 years ago. By any measure, that's pretty cool and deserves kudos.

Re: Icons

I hate to say anything nice about billg, I really do, but I know someone who was in the final code review for the old windows Program Manager and apparently bill spotted bugs that everyone else had missed. Then - return to form - roasted them all :D

HP Inc loves China – but wants to reduce the risks it presents

Re: "we continue to grow in China and with China"

Totally agree. I'm a bit cynical about it to be honest, it's like someone buying a house near an airport then complaining about the planes - err, yeah, that was going to happen.

Everyone knows what happens when you play in China and very, very few come out of it happy. I think the West pulled its pants down for years over this, and ignored what was happening. Some of it fuelled by that 80s/90s/00s garbage of "China can only copy". Governments obviously thought that "democracy and the free market will prevail".

US 'laptop farm' man accused of outsourcing his IT jobs to North Korea to fund weapons programs

We're not worthy

We can all learn from this fella... frigging genius

Google paying to be default search on phones is totally against antitrust law, judge rules

What do you use? Asked with respect, no interest in an el reg forum bun fight.

This is good. It will force google to make people *want* to use their search engine - which is currently at about the standard of yahoo, altavista and all the shite they replaced 25 years ago.

Would you rather buy space broadband from a billionaire, or Communist China?

From a Billionaire nutcase who wants to impose economic servitude on you, or Communist China.

San Francisco set to ban rent-hiking algorithms used by landlords

Re: I suppose...

I think you're confusing technology and progress, with capitalism. That's the mistake those towards the right would like you to make.

I heard sewers and clean water extended our lifespan more than anything else. Neither of them were the result of capitalism.

Most great leaps in technology have had government backing.

Re: I suppose...

"he understood basic economic principles"

Given the shit state of the world from following the free market and basic economic principles, maybe we should do the opposite?

Is AI going to pay its way? Wall Street wants tech world to show it the money

Re: Tech Bubbles

Good stuff came out of the Dotcom bubble though, just once all the BS had been purged.

Re: It's the journey, not the destination

I view LLMs as allowing a person to create what they consider to be "very good" / "excellent" in a very short time.

If you know what you are doing, or what excellent looks like, an LLM will give you great results. Maybe first time, or maybe with a few iterations.

If you are a beginner at whatever you are working on, or don't know what you are talking about, you will get very convincing crap.

Can't get Minecraft, MongoDB Cloud, others to work today? Blame that Azure outage

Hi, I heard this from Security SMEs at other cloud providers. I found it hard to believe azure networking was developed in China, as the political "situation" has been present for some time.

This is reflected in job ads though, seems to be load balancing in the geo I'm in.

Word is the azure networking dev team was based in China. MS are moving it elsewhere - distributed worldwide - due to the current political "climate". Lots of their job ads support this.

That's not going to go smoothly.

Microsoft remains massively profitable, investors await AI payoff

Re: A New World

Hell yeah. First version was wtf??

Re: A New World

"since Windows 10"? :D

Since Windows 2000. One other one was alright though, think it was 7. I'm long off it. Mac and Linux for me.

Customer bricked a phone – and threatened to brick techie's face with it

Jeez I miss those days

CrowdStrike file update bricks Windows machines around the world

Re: Related?

Gawd yeah, I remember being able to leg it out of work in London, jump on the first available train to wherever I was going, and the guard / ticket officer would sell me the very best return ticket for my journey. No issues, no problems, just two adults discussing options and working things out.

Then a couple of years after privatisation, WOW... it was like they'd fired all the good guards overnight and replaced them with ***holes. Jump on a train without a ticket and you'd be charged the absolute most expensive option for where you were going.

Re: Related?

LOL, I clearly did use them. Yes, there were strikes - there were strikes everywhere (more due to us vs them on both sides, and an absolute inability to work together), yes, the coffee was awful (like it was everywhere back then), but there wasn't the chaos there is now.

But the trains were more reliable, and while old they had a lot more room. And you could always get a seat (outside rush hour in London I presume, I wasn't there then) - remember those days?

Re: Related?

yeah, not so fast, that "privatisation is great" argument has worn thin worldwide.

And the trains and service were way better back then.

Musk deflects sluggish Tesla car sales with Optimus optimism

Re: Charlie Brown's Teacher

It's amazing though, they fall for it! Would love to understand the psychology.

Re: Baby you can drive my car

Or the smell of cut cheese after someone has "freshened the air".

Re: Energy generation?

Jeez, yeah. It's best-in-class at that moment in time, nothing more.

And it's a lot easier to copy and improve on something than it is to conceptualise and create it fresh.

Apple's Clamshell iBook G3 at 25 – not just a pretty case

I read an interview with one of the Psion team years ago, and they said the 5 wasn't the success it deserved to be because the 3 was too good. Wow they were good tech.

Nothing I own now seems to come close, they're either too big to be portable and with me all the time, or too useless to do anything except consume media.

I always felt that once you'd seen the Psion 5, the iBook looked a little lame.

Sam Altman's basic income experiment finds that money can indeed buy happiness

Re: Alt. UBI

That's frigging funny :D

Microsoft's CISPE settlement includes a suspension of audits for members

I know Microsoft and Oracle weaponise audits, but.... wow!

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

Damn, remember in the early Tesla and SpaceX days when Musk was a frigging hero??? Fella's gone nuts.