Posts by Bebu sa Ware

Would you like fries with that terminal?

"nobody wants a deep-fried penguin"

Not even starving shipwrecked antarctic explorers apparently. As a teen I recall reading an account of the ill·fated 1914 Shackleton Expedition (I think) where the inedibility of penguin reported by the castaways was discussed.

We are reliably informed that the flavour of Albatross (sans wafers) is f——ing seabird flavour. The mind boggles at what penguin must taste like… if it cannot even rise to "seabird flavour."

These chaps weren't exactly fine diners – they would chow down on the livers of their husky sled dogs.

Support tech caught by 'Technician Aura': the bug that only hides when you're watching

Had similar

The landline (some cisco thing) back in late '90s early '00s would interfere with the adjacent Unix workstation's sound system. I never used the sound system but just before the phone actually rang the sound system would snap, crackle and pop.

This helped to enhance my tech aura when consulting with a user, I would interrupt saying "excuse me, I have to take this call" just before the phone rang.

Plenty of perplexed users. A BoFH that can actually see the future is a window far too open for most people.

No one tumbled to it before the phone system and handsets were upgraded to some boring voip thing.

Anthropic squeezes enterprises by ejecting bundled tokens from seat deal

Overage ?

New one on me.

My dictionary had over·age adj. too old to be useful… ouch! Contrasting: under·age - too young to be legal.

Pro·sumer v. Con·sumer? Ultimately all conned·sumers I expect.

"buffet subscription packages" - smorgasbord of slop?

Even if Douglas Adams and Terry Pratchett got together they couldn't write this stuff. Of course the Patrician would have had the whole boiling summarily thrown over the Edge.

Make crappy moves around AI and face voter backlash, govts warned

"Management want to use it [AI] as a magic bullet to replace meatbags,…"

" but it doesn't actually work well enough."

Ordinary bullets would likely be more effective but that more displace than replace.

Obviously magic bullets could only be effective against magic entities such as unicorns and other equally fabulous creatures.

The whole agentic AI lunacy is a layer of glistening unicorn diarrhea painted over a pretty obvious scam - pixie dust...no more than that. When that shit finally dries the shine will have evaporated and will look just like shit … and stink.

Re: if your job can be done by a chatbot

Unfortunately even in the case of the "mind numbing exercise" jobs, chatbots are giving only the merest appearance of "doing the job."

Mostly just 2020s version of the phone voice menu mazes of yore (but without the ** option.)

Even now (and the worst is yet to come) it's nigh on impossible to get anything done by anything fronted by chatbots.

Humans being the eternal optimists forget that most tech in the past turned out to be pretty useless or a bloody silly idea from the kickoff or at best unneeded — 3D television is a fairly benign example (of the first or third?)

The dystopia that the UK faces is that an opportunistic Reform runs a populist anti·AI line and you end up with Project UK 2030 and President Faredge. The Starmer government seems about as popular as the proverbial bacon butty at a Bar Mitzvah.

NodeWeaver says its perpetual licensing beats VMware’s perpetual price hikes

Alan Conboy

An unfortunate surname in this industry - although changing the 'n' to a 'w' would almost be nominal determinism if he were a developer. ;)

CEO of a cryptocurrency or AI outfit might a bit obvious but then the not·quite·human Altman is the CEO of openAI.

Still nice to see more diversity in the virtualisation space.

Virtualisation has a few more use cases than just the typical enterprise deployments. When you have a largish collection of a wide variety of hardware to support on a shoestring, a low overhead, low cost virtualisation layer could make the task slightly less impossible.

Obsolete Google nag drowns out vital bar information at Swedish concert hall

Obsolete Google nag

I know the Maps voice assistant frequently gets on one's tits but with the advent of Gemini calling her an obsolete google nag is little ungentlemanly.

Re: Oh come on

Thanks. #2 The chocolate moose did it for me.

The Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain.

We didn't know such a thing were allowed to exist.

Arguably the ukulele ties with Scotland's bagpipes for the instrument that a gentleman notwithstanding his proficiency chooses not to play. "One just wouldn't, would one ?"

"Ulele" apparently means "asleep" in Zulu so I suppose UK+ ulele is rather apt.

Microsoft announces product it doesn't want anyone to buy

"you do not need to ask"

Microslop meaning "We need you not to ask."

I had thought that this perverse use of "need" had died in the bum. Apparently not.

What it use to mean (Hell! Actually does mean!) was that your request might be taken as read and was implicit that it would be seriously considered with a slight nod that it would likely be granted.

Here of course the poor sods who require such an extension actually do need.… want ? I wouldn't think any rational soul would desire any further truck with Microslop.

The MS meaning could have been clearly and economically stated with "(do not ask)" or with more actual courtesy than MS exhibits "(please do not ask)" [And as the old "No Credit" signs had it… "as refusal often offends." ]

Shoe company says it's getting into AI infrastructure and yes this is the top

minefield quarantined since the Second World War.

The scenery is likely near pristine and picturesque having been untroubled by human activity since '45.

Well slightly less pristine for a few weeks after the boss stumbles over what he oughtn't and ensanguines the nearby foliage.

WW2 diving wrecks in the Southwest Pacific could be favourite if your boss is a budding Cousteau - the sharks are rather large and I would think hungry.

Scorecard

• [✗] AI helping you do new things?
• [✓] simply shuffling work around to different people?
• [✗] saving you time?
• [✓] creating new messes that you have to then clean up later?
• [✗] actually delivering results?
• [✗] worth what you're paying for it?

If you treated the AI lemonade like a lethal poison and avoided it like the proverbial plague you could get away with just ticking the last box (nothing for nothing.)

woolen shoes for Silicon Valley hipsters

I would have thought wooden shoes for the clever clogs in the Valley - Silicon sabots if you wish. But Allbirds does/did do woolly wellies… well footwear.

Quantum footwear next? For the AI grifter that urgently wants to be instantly anywhere else after the bubble bursts and the serious money come looking… for their money - obviously. The serious part likely refers to the grief that dragons traditionally inflict on those who would pilfer from their hoard.

Agents hooked into GitHub can steal creds – but Anthropic, Google, and Microsoft haven't warned users

The Reg image for this story is too good to miss

Manglement ?

Customers revolt as GitHub Copilot 'fixes' rate limits

Re: the first hit is free…

"microsoft / OpenAI / Anthropic have bitten off more than they can chew"

Nevertheless have swallowed the relatively unmasticated bolus whole and are currently gagging on it.

I don't know about anyone else but I am a tiny bit fussy about whose throat I put my fingers down. With these buggers I would be lucky to have any fingers to count afterwards.

With just about any endeavour the last 5% notoriously takes 95% of the total effort or resources - I don't imagine agentic AI would be any different; more so in that if there is anything truly useful in the whole boiling it could only be in that last 5% and unlikely at that.

Windows takes a crash dump after one McDonald's order too many

BSOD

Bloody Stools, Odiferous Diarrhea.

You wouldn't have to be Marcus Welby to conclude that the patient had "taken a bait."

Re: Why?

"Who in their right mind would go there and eat in McDonalds anyway?"

In that delightful locale I suspect only those out of their far right mind do.

White Castle

I had never heard of White Caste but the linked web site looks highly nutritious and delicious… ok not.

Slider must be an Americanism for something allegedly edible but ultimately might also refer to the skid marks left on the porcelain.

The idea that McD has a braille menu is pure cruelty in my book.

Server-room lock was nothing but a crock

The number of machine rooms I have seen …

that have false ceilings with the ceiling void shared with the surrounding less secure rooms and often the whole floor.^†

You would think if you had decent physical security on the room's door(s) - most do - that intrusion detectors in the roof void and in the room itself would be de rigeur. Not a bit of it.

Most network cabling isn't physically secure either and often runs in the ceiling void in open cable trays. A clever eavesdropper could intercept the traffic by interposing some type of bridge/router. A decent reason for encrypting traffic at the ethernet level I suppose.

After a respectable number of decades I concluded that real security is the merest drop drowning in an ocean of performative security and has always been so.

_{† Raised or false floors are often just as bad.}

Cops hand Motorola £25M no-bid deal to keep 2000-era radios alive

"Car 54, Where are you ?"

Just reminded of that ancient shitcom.

"Police Digital Service" also stirs something but I cannot put my finger on it. ;)

12 years late and a GBP 3 billion budget blowout has to be a UK public sector record but sadly I suspect it is nowhere near the money in that horse race.

Don't let the bot play doctor! AI gets early diagnoses wrong 80% of the time

We have a winner…

your quaddie came in

• a cough
• tickly throat
• stage 4 lung cancer
• degenerative brain disease

you could have all four.

Seriously consulting AI for a diagnosis certainly ticks Nº 4.

Diagnosis and treatment is usually a process rather than a tick·a·box answer sometimes an endless round of tests and treatment adjustments.

The graveyards are full of early entrants that engaged in self diagnoses and treatment even before the advent of the internet - The Merck Manual would have more than a few notches on its belt.

The more reputable resources on the internet can be a useful adjunct to understanding your diagnosis and treatment. Without a basic knowledge of anatomy and physiology even this is doubtful and in the face of ubiquitous general ignorance probably dangerous.

patient with seasonal depression was prescribed Medical Assistance in Dying

Given the current state of the world might well be best practice. Certainly a 100% efficacious cure for depression or any other ailment.

Decades-old Linux UI bug fixed by dev younger than the window manager

Finished

Perhaps completed as in colloquial English "finished" also has the sense terminated, possibly prematurely. "You're finished !"

Ideally an application with a precise and complete specification might actuallly be completed. Unfortunately most software is fortunate to have anything vaguely resembling a written specification. Most are like an itinerary that instructs the traveller "to go somewhere" perhaps with an implicit "to buggery" which is roughly where the unfortunate traveller would likely arrive if software development is any guide.

Full marks to Mlle Szewczyk — from her web page a talented young woman https://iczelia.net/about/

Fission impossible: Uncle Sam wants nuclear reactors in space by 2031

… for a spacraft to scrape up space as it went and use that as a fuel

Makes as much sense. Do all these blithering generals escape from a Roger Ramjet cartoon ?

"A whole civilisation will die tonight"—Fucking up a reactor in low orbit or during lauch could well give the orange idjit his wet dream.

Having the move fast & break things crew on the job will certainly do the FA and unfortunately we will the ones carrying the FO can.

Raspberry Pi OS ends open-door policy for sudo

Might make Pi owners read the sudoers(5) man page.

Pretty easily to reinstate the original behaviour or have passwordless sudo for a restricted set of commands.

Perhaps also not obvious that sudo can run commands as another non-root user.

You can also ssh-agent forwarding to auth with sudo which is very convenient if not terribly secure.

Certificates (SSH ones) are apparently "the way" to do this stuff… with a dash of 2FA. Unfortunately there were never enough hours in the day…

Anything is better than the suid root wrappers that just exec a shell that I have encountered over the years.

Michael W Lucas' "Sudo Mastery" at 200 pages probably covers more of the subject than most need or want.

You can finally control serial devices from Firefox

Re: Serial links?

"telnet:// URI"

I didn't believe that the first time I saw it in the late '90s where users on Win9X(?) boxes used IEexplorer to login into my Unix server to read their email with pine.

In essence only a convoluted desktop bookmark or shortcut to the Windows telnet client.

Re: NO!

Mr Inchbald really went to town with html5.

Unforgivably, he is probably right.

Html + css (any version and combination) always seems like a dogs breakfast (or vomit) to me, with java/ecma·script to rub your nose into the mess.

Fortunately I never had to concoct anything that required more than some basic html and css - using vi of course.

I suspect more than a few "web designers" are on a permanent secondment with the pixies. The highly dynamic and graphic web site that the designer thought text might be best styled dark fecal brown on a pitch black background would be effective - not presumably meaning readable - is enough to turn a life-long opponent of capital punishment.

"pwwwnd I tell ye!" - Certainly dooomed!

Re: I know this one!

"Measuring my heartrate …"

The slippery slope; the thin end of the wedge… as sir Humpty would have said.

Before long pornhub et al. wiil be interrogating your cardiac pacemaker to determine whether the requested "instructional" video might be safely played. "Sorry Dave, I can't do that."

Orbital datacenter startup CEO admits launch economics don't fly, presses ahead regardless

"No reasonable person would consider a Musk"

to be a source … of anything that ought not be peremptorily flushed. A brush for the skid marks and an air freshener recommended.

Re: "roughly the size of two halves of a tennis court "

10,000 of those playing dodgem cars in orbit might be a tad messy.

AI-powered mainframe exits are a bubble set to pop

"difficulties finding staff to operate mainframes,"

I would imagine if you recruit graduates, train them up, sign them to long term contracts binding on the employer with renumeration linked to total C-suite compensation, then you wouldn't have this difficulty.

In future attracting anything - other than a complete retard - to the IT sector, especially the more technical areas, will be nigh on impossible given the extremely shabby treatment recently meted out to the retrenched, by enterprises intoxicated from sucking the spiked lemonade from the AI tit.

Commitment has to work both ways or nothing works for long.

Re: Gartner

"pointing out the emperor’s lack of clothes."

… and his limited endowment.

Physicist reckons two-button calculator can do all elementary math

Re: My slider rule...

The distance between the venerable slipstick and your common garden variety dipstick possibly not that great.

I don't doubt that there is some probably deep mathematical cleverness, blindingly obvious to the pure mathematician - if not the applied - but to my naive eye I am not sure that heavy lifting isn't being done by Euler's e^¡θ = cos θ + ¡sin θ (⇒e^¡π =–1)

My guess is that you can go a fair way with any g(x, y) =_def f(x) ★ f^–1(y) The choice of binary operator ★ probably the more crucial of f,★ but some journeys are also merely a distraction. ;)

Re: Godel, Escher, Bach...

Interestingly EGB was written against a background of another rather more rational flush of "AI."

Still very readable especially for the extracts from Lem's Cyberiad if you have read his work.

The introduction to formal systems is extremely gentle and effective.

I lent/lost my copy - probably 1st ed. too - years ago. :(

The only technology that died more times than VR is AI, and that seems to have worked out

The only technology that died more times than VR is AI

Both worse than vampires and equally blood sucking; bloody hard to be rid of permanently.

Don't also imagine neither is too keen on being illuminated by honest bright suniight.

The glassholes are undoubtedly are so deficient in sense to eventually queue for a Neuralink or similar brain implant to implement and biological/electronic VR etc inside their otherwise empty skulls. Everything their eyes look at and ears hear might be streamed to some global AI/VR cabal.

Re: AI, and that seems to have worked out

"…the Jury is shuffling in, slowly. And they are sad…"

Reckon the Judge will be asking for his black cap?

California ghost-gun bill wants 3D printers to play cop, EFF says

some talk about Making America Great Again?

I think for the rest of the planet it is understandably more the wish "to Make America Go Away."

Be great in another Universe might be favourite at the moment.

Zombie Microsoft bugs rise from the dead, pave way for crims and ransomware scum

Zombie Microsoft bugs rise from the dead, pave way for crims and ransomware scum

I parsed that wilth an extra comma.and reading "bugs" as a verb (as in to bother or annoy.)

Zombie Microsoft, bugs rise from the dead, pave way for crims and ransomware scum.

.

Linux 7.0 debuts as Linus Torvalds ponders AI's bug-finding powers

adds code for *ancient* Alpha and SPARC CPUs

Ancient. Ouch !

Perhaps "senior architectures" or "emeritis processor technology" might be more generous. ;)

France’s digital directorate dumping Windows desktops, adopting Linux instead

"Problem is that the UK govt still has the fantasies that Britain is a world power"

Also increasingly looking like

Problem is that the US govt still has the fantasies that America is a world power

China wants AI to prepare school lessons and mark homework

"China wants AI to prepare school lessons and mark homework"

What's that saying about not distracting an adversary… ?

Apple update looks like Czech mate for locked-out iPhone user

Case of acute cleveritis ?

Stick with the 7 bit ASCII subset you will never go wrong. Apple is unlikely to remove the 'A' character. ;)

The "Principle of Least Surprise" when dealing with computers (and people) is usually the best policy - you don't want to over·tax the limited capacities of either.

Why cell phone users don't back up their prized photos - they don't - is beyond me. I can understand why you might not backup an iphone to iCloud etc but emailing etc your valued snaps to yourself is simple enough and restricts what is backed up. Personally I never had much time for photographs and with the advent of digital photography pretty much a Douglas Adams' Electric Monk^† for remembering places and events for you as I guess AI is one for thinking for you.

I wasn't going update my SE (~2017) from 18 in any case; doubly so now.

_{† I think the Electric Monk was Adams' extrapolation of the then current VCR which watched TV for you; the Electric Monk believed things for you.}

Hungarian government creds left in the safe hands of 'FrankLampard'

In the HU military their brass…

after buffing, is the brightest thing about them. Like everywhere I guess.

Suits won't quit AI spending, even if they can't prove it's working

"All aboard for the Stone Age."

I cannot imagine too many of the population up to knapping a chunk of flnt or some Mall princess starting a fire without a lighter. Lightly grilled over a wood fire the latter might make a succulent morsel.

Even recreating pre·industrial technology is beyond 90% of the population in most parts of the planet.

Once critical infrastructure starts failing cities rapidly become unlivable and with the loss of potable water, food and health services the mortality could quickly rival the Black Death.

Snowflake manager explains the 'Spider-Man' theory of AI agent data access

Snowflake manager

I read that as in addition to the usual failings of manglement this one is guaranteed to melt in the face of the heat of any contradiction or opposition.

An obvious misreading. Perhaps.

BOFH: If the meatbags can't agree on aircon, AI will decide for them

"temperature was controlled by opening … a window"

I should imagine that was tantamount to issuing a death threat at Chez BoFH.

Legionellosis is too subtle, untargeted and impersonal for Simon.

Re: I just knew this was going to come up

"females have different sensitivities to heat and cold and those sensitivities change with age."

Tell me about it !

Red Hat RHELocates its Chinese engineering team to India

RHELatives

If the PRC had a need for a more or less RHEL compatible distro they could easily pick up Alma or Rocky and run with that even downstreaming a custom Chinese version from one (or both.) Even SuSE would be an option.

My guess RHEL systems in PRC organisations are less prevalent and less important than they are in in other nations.

I imagine the discarded staff might find work locally with third party support and localisation-customisation services for Linux software and distros.

Peace President's Iran war piles more pain on already battered PC market

Re: I for one...

"There are many nice people in both Israel and the USA who are utterly appalled at their country's warmongering and killings."

Many; undoubtedly true; but not enough.

The same equally could have been said of 1938 Germany.

Unfortunately in nations like AU the concurrence of Zionism with Judaism (both the religion and the ethnic identity) is ~100% so any opposition to the policies of Israel or to Zionism itself is equated with anti-semitism and now with potentially severe legal sanctions.

Publically uttering or displaying "a flumine ad mare" can get you two years not that our plod ever aced the classical tripos. Pretty much any questioning of the legitimacy of the modern state of Israel might get you even more grief, even though historically the question isn't without legs.

The irony is that Zionism was as much a product of the late 19th and early 20th century Wilhelmstraße in attempt to thwart British imperial ambitions in the Levant prior to 1914, as of the aspirations of a section of European Jewry. British governmental involvement was largely opportunistic and towards the end of WW1.

No amount of history can ever justify the atrocities commited today. History might provide a lesson but never a justification.

I cannot help thinking that there are parallel between contemporary Israeli policies and many of the mistakes of the Outremer (Crusader States) which ultimately resulted in their destruction.

the Secretary of Defense ?

I was under the impression whole kaboodle was rebranded the Department of War and that this former cut lunch commando would be the Secretary of War.

Hardly nominal determinism but it does pay to take care how you named things.