Posts by Bebu sa Ware

You'll never guess what the most common passwords are. Oh, wait, yes you will

Re: How many systems allow unlimited login attempts ?

"as many goes as you like to match the hash "

And in parallel. :)

Sceptical manglement types are always (further) confounded when you show them the output from John the Ripper run over the local password store; more specifically their password.

Long passwords and lots of salt ;)

It's not too hard to come up with a phrase that probably doesn't occur anywhere else.

"I lost the donkey's bike." isn't likely to pop up in Shakespeare's sonnets.

I guess you need some imagination hence manglements' piss poor passwords.

UK space sector 'lacks strategic direction,' Lords warn

to seek out ... competent government ministers,

Not so much the mission of USS Enterprise (NCC-1701) as Mission Impossible.

The Starship Brexit's "Undiscovered Country" is less the optimistic future of the Enterprise and more Hamlet's morbid musings.

When Debian won't do, Devuan 6 'Excalibur' Linux makes the grade

"draw it [Excalibur] from the stone"

Thomas Malory has Arthur receiving Excalibur from some water tart The Lady of the Lake and the sword drawn from the stone is a different weapon.

The 21st century so far would tend to contradict Dennis' assertion that:

"Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government."

"You can’t expect to wield supreme executive power just ’cause some watery tart threw a sword at you! "

"if I went around saying I was an emperor just because some moistened bint had lobbed a scimitar at me, they’d put me away!"

As they haven't put Trump away yet, the latter statement is also debatable although, at this point, magical swords are probably worth trying. ;)

Microsoft apologizes for not explaining cheaper no-AI M365 plans, and all it took was a government lawsuit

Re: I wonder

"wait for a government law suit"

I imagine in a good many jurisidictions this bad faith† behaviour is perfectly legal, even legitimate, and the standard business operating procedure. Thinking of the US for starters.

So might be a long wait.

† arguably based on Microsoft's dismal record its fide is extremely male.

Famed software engineer DJB tries Fil-C… and likes what he sees

Re: Type checking and compatibility

Not only physical units.

You might imagine currencies being of a common type money_t and units of £, $, € etc or more precisely GBP, USD, EUR. When converting between currencies the dimensionally correct factor must be used.

eg

money_t : GBP cost = 120 : GBP;

money_t : USD payment = cost; // error

double : USD/GBP conversion = 0.76 : USD/GBP;

money_t : USD payment = conversion * cost; // ok

cost + payment; // error.

money_t : USD/widget unit_cost = 13 : USD/widget;

count_t : widget howmany = (100 : USD) / unit_cost;

Obviously for counts need some type/unit hierarchy as you might realistically add an inventory of apples and oranges as a total of fruit or masses (kg) generally.

Re: Not quite ...

Yup - Hammers are strictly used for driving screws.

I recall as kid being shown that when turning in a wood screw that when there is a ¼ to ½ turn to go, nail it in with a hammer. No idea why. Makes more sense to nail it in and give it a final half turn. Possibly the blind leading the blind.

Google imagines out of this world AI - running on orbital datacenters

"powered by a limitless stream of photons from the sun"

Not just any old photon will do - they have to be the right colour,

The rest of the particle zoo streaming out from the Sun might be more problematic especially during a solar flare.

I have the sense these tech megcorps have delegated strategic planning to the "creatives" from their marketing and PR departments. You know, the types you wouldn't trust to open a bottle of beer.

'What the hell, Microsoft?' Users hit with incorrect ESU and LTSC Win10 out-of-support messages

Ms Patch Tuesday

that would be Microsoft's thoroughly unpleasant wench more than capable of completely effing up a wet dream let alone your entire waking day.

I suppose that's then a dry nightmare.

Tesla board wants to grant Musk $1T in stock, Norway wealth fund says nope

What was the EU offer around the Brexit fiasco again ?

"Norway or nothing." I believe.

I wouldn't give the blighter the time of day, certainly not Norway so it's a well deserved nothing.

Still he is likely to get the $1T and the Norwegian fund will likely slowly divest.

I never did work out which option the UK actually got with Boris and Co. at the helm — in hindsight seems like less than nothing.

Gullible bots struggle to distinguish between facts and beliefs

LLMs understand and reason as much as a mobile phone keyboard autocorrect

A very apt analogy, if I may say so.

Autoconfuse is very much the same technology but on the microscopic end of the LM scale.

I imagine professional philosophers ...

shudder in the face of the ludicrous claims of the AI cabal and good many of the counterclaims of the justifiably sceptical critics.

After a few thousand years their discipline is still working on questions of knowledge, belief, existence etc etc (hint: 42 isn't the answer.)

Just a short question like "what precisely is a fact ?" - and how do you distinguish a fact from a non-fact - clearly don't have single, simple knockdown answers. Unless you are a fundamentalist nutjob, facts are clearly not eternal absolute verities.

If in trying to define a fact you grasp at the straw of "truth" you soon discover not only are you out of your depth, you are now actually drowning.

To my mind the question of what constitutes knowledge is even more vexed. Clearly not just a collection of facts - an encyclopedia is hardly knowledgeable.

Asserting AI/LLM is capable of "knowing" or "believing", or even possessing a decision procedure that can discriminate between knowledge and belief — is completely delusional or from a mendacious vendor of oleum serpentis.†

_{† Ne inducas nos in temptationem sed libera nos a malo.}

"maybe Stepford" ...

Who is not partial to a bit of hot crumpet ... on the side ?

Palantir CEO celebrates one cash culture to rule them all

"We're left to wonder which cultures Karp deems worthy."

A purely rhetorical question surely ?

Elvish video conferencing system hacked by the evil Sauron

The Third Age version of the decidedly Orcish Microsoft's Teams ? Screams ?

The picture of the "Dark Lord" doing "stand·ups" with Saruman — both with glass balls betwen their hands. It's "Carry on up Gondor" material.

Google yanks Gemma after US senator says model ‘hallucinated’ her committing crimes

"result of ideologically biased training data"

Court records ?

The prior for a US President being a convicted felon is currently > 1/40 — appreciably higher for a Republican president, one suspects.

At least the pair weren't acused of bothering dogs, or molesting sheep ... or heaven forbid each other.

If as a result this lot decide in their infinite lack of wisdom, that AI is intrinsically "woke" or somesuch and should be banned, I wouldn't complain. The ineffable manus dei ?

China's president Xi Jinping jokes about backdoors in Xiaomi smartphones

Xi has a sense of humour

so did Stalin, apparently—according to Hugh Trevor-Roper albeit a grim one.

Xi also plays Go presumably competently which is in stark contrast with the "leader of the free world" who would taxed not to lose a tic-tac-toe game.

Sorry I missed the Alpaca/Llama story. I imagine a cartoon of Pooh riding an Alpaca will result in the cartoonist's instant "re·education." :)

MIT Sloan quietly shelves AI ransomware study after researcher calls BS

"When 80% of Ransomware Attacks are AI-Driven"

Without fear of contradiction I would say 100% of Ransomware Attacks are money driven — your money at that.

I imagine a fair number of papers in this area are similarly driven.

"The incentives are… not well managed here, and the industry is very sick,"

One might say that of the nation as a whole — "the unrelenting drift into grift."

Re: Even AIs don't agree?

"To paraphrase Christine Keeler, well it would say that wouldn't it"

Mandy Rice-Davies surely ?

Christine is the one sitting astride a chair in her birthday suit. (_{unfortunately there isn't a cold shower icon.})

Cisco suggests a stubby chassis, shrunken servers and router, to tame the edge

"designed so staff without IT skills, such as managers in a retail environment"

That should be interesting ...

Actually store managers are likely to run a proverbial mile (1.6km) before messing with this stuff.

It's the new hires or work experience kids who reckon with the assistance of ChatGPT or StackExchange, they are the full bottle on IT that would give me nightmares.

— "Noli futuis quod non intelligis."

Google Cloud suspended customer's account three times, for three different reasons

"He now thinks SSLMate needs to ditch Google Cloud."

Presumably on the three strikes principle.

Curious if Alphabet offers a similar (ie competing) service through one of its subsidary acquisitions ?

You can be certain such sharp business practices are perfectly legal in USofA and de rigeur.

Debian demands Rust or rust in peace for legacy ports

Alpha, pa-risc and m68k

if we are talking desktop systems from late 1990s or very early 2000s even back then running Linux on the DEC and HP systems, from experience, was very slow - mostly memory constrained I suspect.

Realistically unless you have server hardware with plenty of ram, running a modern distribution is going to be unusable - the linux kernel ported to wasm is faster.

Probably firmly in retro·computing territory now.

I don't know how much of this hardware is still functional - sdf.org have [HP-UX hkypux B.10.20 A 9000/715 (ttyp1)]† but I don't know whether that is an emulator or hardware; likewise for their Alpha.

_{† ssh [e-mail] icm/ICMguest}

VodafoneThree to offshore UK network jobs to India

Self Inflicted

"look at how they're suddenly crying that the chinese population is predicted to 1/2 & that they only buy locally built products now after being trained by european and US companies who, chasing non stop unlimited growth (a know like cancer) thought they'd have a forever source of customers"

In a sense capital moving to less developed regions causes its own demise by developing industrial and post industrial production thereby facilitating rapid urbanisation and, possibly unintentionally, raising levels of literacy and education generally, which uncontroversially, lead to a rapid decline in birth rates.

Rather spectacularly in China aided by the their historical one child policy. The subcontinent might not be too far behind.

Where next ? Latin America ? Africa ? Antarctica with AI augmented penguins ?

In the meantime nations like the UK are reducing their customer base through the systematic pauperization of a great swath of their population.

Developer puts Windows 7 on a crash diet, drops it to down to 69 MB

Re: Weather...

It was 85 Wednesday and today (Halloween Friday) it dropped to 52 at 7pm. It's now past 10pm and it's gone back up to 62.

In °C, for the civilized world, 85°F, 52°F, 62°F => 29°C, 11°C, 17°C.

(Makes FL appear rather uninviting from subtropical AU but already was. :)

Colorado launches lawyers at Trump admin over space base relocation

Re: Alabama

Where it's still legal to marry your first cousin!

AFAIK First cousin† marriages have been legal pretty much everywhere in Christendom since the reformation although generally not encouraged.

† Share common grand parents or equivalently your parent's nephew or niece..

Microsoft gives Windows 11 a fresh Start – here's how to get it

Re: Hold that thar pig steady

"Hey, what you lookin' at me like that for, Jethro,?"

"Uncle Jed, aint cousin Ellie purty enough ?"

"Hell no, Jethro! Ellie's growed and runs too fast."

Uncle Sam's new power plan will plug AI farms into the grid faster

Re: Bah!

"So A.I. will hang all the new wires needed?"

Curiously the drones that are now being used to haul cable probably do use machine learning in some far saner form than Altmans's wetties.

This diktat from the secretary is bit Harry Potter·ish as it seems to imply that you can magically connect tens of gigawatt loads to the grid and simultaneously create and connect the neccessary generating capacity all in 60 days.

Better the whole fantasy evaporates sooner rather than later, before any more significant resources are wasted. Investment in basic grid infrastructure was probably already needed if only to handle renewables and wiser energy executives would try and deflect some of any investment in that direction.

Sora makes slurfect deepfakes of celebs spewing racial epithets

Hideous asymmetry

"Is it too much to ask, to instead have of some the already plentiful global arseholes spout love, peace and understanding, for a change?"

You could generate technically perfect deep fakes but no one would suspend disbelief for one nano-second.

You could on the other hand have a obviously fake Dalai Lama going full on I hate "knitters" and half the US population would swear to its authenticity.

Windows Insiders get special anniversary desktop wallpaper

"a secret hint for users wondering which operating system to consider."

"Secret hint." No bloody great penguin on the wallpaper then? Shame.

Google porting all internal workloads to Arm, with help from GenAI

Re: Amazing what maths can do

The preprint is worth a quick read just to appreciate the scale — 100,000 applications to port !

To get the floating point output to align between arm64 and and64 they appear to have rebuilt applications to use absl::float128.

The ultimate problem isn't with the ticklish problems they catch and solve but with those subtle differences hiding in plain sight that they and their AI code buddies fail to detect. But that is likely no different from new code and probably orders of magnitude less for coded ported from well tested applications.

I imagine if I were a googol sized cloud operation thinking of moving from a legacy architecture to a new one that I could specify I would seriously think about retaining the commonalities that don't affect performance or at least make the new architecture a runtime configurable superset of the old architecture in respect of those features. Porting ginormous codebases might well be the largest cost component from now.

Ruby Central tries to make peace after 'hostile takeover'

Re: R

Ratfor isn't too bad.

_{Rational Fortran. See Software Tools - Kernighan and Plauger, Addison·Wesley 1976. :)}

AI: The ultimate slacker's dream come true

"up and down or across the organization's hierarchy"

"e-procrastination, the tactic of slowing down progress by sending emails. These may be requests for information or clarification, or the presenting of information that looks relevant but isn’t. Anything that justifies waiting for a reply. AI is very good at this, up and down or across the organization's hierarchy. It can effortlessly recast existing facts in a new way, which can be used to elicit a confirmation or, even better, a further request for clarification in return."

This reminded me of MC Escher's Ascending and Descending where the cowled figures are meant to suggest monks which in turn according my (Dutch) Maths lecturer fifty years ago who was a fan of, and rather the full bottle on Escher, the phrase monks' work which apparently in Dutch decribe exactly these pointless tasks.

UK may already be at war with Russia, ex-MI5 head suggests

Re: Not to mention political interventions

"intellectuals ... of the SWP"

Reading the Wiki entry for the SWP they would have to be the toxic sludge found at the bottom of any third rate political think tank.

"Citizen Smith " would be a veritable Einstein amongst that lot.

Orwell's pigs had much the same idea but generally had far more of a clue but arguably they were actually fascists.

BOFH: HR discovers the limits of vertical mobility

"people move from the HR offices to OUR office."

Doubtless these insurgents would have been given the plum desks beside the conveniently open windows in anticipation of their vertical integration (with the carpark asphalt.)

Personnel Consultants/Advanced Technology would recall IBM's PC/AT which would also have benefited a quick trip to the skip in the carpark.

I'm out, says OpenSUSE: We're dropping bcachefs support from next kernel version

In a sane world ?

"In a sane world all the Unix beardies would be running a cross between Plan 9 and Inferno, and the rest of us who know a variable from a filename would have some modern incarnation of a Dylan-based Lisp machine, or a Smalltalk box (see Self, Newspeak, etc.) or something else that was at least 1980s or 1990s tech rather than than the 1960s tech we're lumbered with."

For a fairly idiosyncratic meaning of "sane" I suspect. If Smalltalk were the answer I would harbour grave doubts about the question. It's a fun environment to play in - I enjoyed Digitalk V back in the day - but I would think very seriously before constructing a non trivial application with it (although I know there are big commercial systems using ParcPlace ST.)

Perhaps I would pay "saner world" but that is coming off a currently very low base (stark raving mad is probably optimistic.)

India hails 'first' home-grown chip as a milestone despite very modest specs

Re: Was it designed for space?

The quote below claims that it was specifically designed for radiation resilience in space applications.

Another curious point is it has an Ada based tool chain with C support coming soon. Usually C support (even a subset compiler) is intrinsic to bringing up a new CPU.

The NDTVPROFIT article implied that ISRO used Ada for their development which is rather reassuring as I doubt NASA does to any great extent.

semicon-2025-what-is-vikram-32-bit-processor-all-you-need-to-know-about-indias-first-indigenous-space-grade-microchip

"Unlike commercial off-the-shelf chips, the Vikram 32-bit processor is designed to withstand the extreme conditions of space missions.

"The processor uses a custom Instruction Set Architecture, supports floating-point computation and enables programming in Ada, a high-level language commonly used in aerospace applications.

"All associated software tools, including an Ada compiler, linker, assembler and simulator, have been built entirely in-house by ISRO. Work is also underway to expand its compatibility with a C language compiler, opening the door for broader applications beyond aerospace.

Trump stomps feet, pulls out 't-word' again over China rare earths ban

Re: We have tremendous power over them, and they have some power over us

"China is not in a stable position and could easily fall into a counter revolution if things got bad economically."

The way things are developing I suspect applying s/China/US/g to the above might be just as likely.

Everybody needs good neighbors – especially ones who sell you solar energy

Re: Peer to peer electricity sharing - the practicalities

"You cannot use the grid to share"

I am guessing that because in AU the distribution (poles and wire) are separated from the energy generators which are in turn separated from the wholesalers and retailers that a communal power entity arranges access to the distributors assets (as it is a consumer already pays a separate itemised supply fee) and subsumes the role of the retailer. As long as the participants aggregate feed-in is greater than their usage the billing for use is largely arbitrary - any excess power can be written off.

In principle the participants in a communal power sharing arrangement wouldn't need to be adjacent or even in the same city but presumably connected to the same distributor which very roughly means the same state.

Currently we get 3¢/kWh and paying 32¢kWh but since our usage is mainly during the middle of the day the PVs supply that and heats the hotwater. If we added an 8kWh battery our imports would be close to zero but with TCO of battery and the distributor's supply fee probably not a net win although the government subsidy might tip the balance.

Having lived on acreage in a regional area I can see a lot of residents going off grid as they have the space for 20kW PV arrays and matching batteries and generally already have diesel generators for the frequent [grid] outages expected during the summer storm season.

How that will play out is not entirely clear.

Microsoft kills volume rebates in name of 'transparency'

Re: My Way

"We're not Burger King - you have it my way or not at all!"

At least you would be able to sit down after that culinary and unlike the Microsoft offerings you probably enjoyed the chips. [fries]

_{This "My Way" chippy wasn't "The Highway Seafood Shoppe" or some such?}

OpenAI's GPT-5 is here with up to 80% fewer hallucinations

Re: Slightly OT (or is it ?)

What was the percentage increase in circulation of News Today from the _end_ of the first year to the end of the third?

Perversely I make it 125%

Working:

Start of first year circulation 1000 [say], end of first year 2000 (doubled), end second year 6000 (trebled), end of third year 4500 (25% drop)

Increase from *end of first year* to the end of third year: 4500 - 2000 = 2500

Percentage increase: 2500/2000 × 100% = 125%

I must have got it wrong somewhere. If you cannot trust the HMRC to balance the nation's books, who ... sorry I'll get my coat.

JetBrains previews Kineto for vibe no-coding

Re: The unglamorous elephant in the room...

Who maintains and updates the code that's been churned out by systems like these?

Probably create the craft of AI whisperers that can sweet talk these AI coding systems to modify an existing application when the creator has departed the organisation or this life.

All rather like releasing a djinni from the brass bottle^† and hoping for the best. ;)

_{† I can easily foresee a considerable number of these no-code adopters turning into asses.}

Long live the nub: ThinkPad designer David Hill spills secrets, designs that never made it

Re: The nub?

"hey you got one with the g spot!"

I can't help thinking the young lady initially thought you meant the spot was below and between the G and H keys and a few seconds after your winking massage of the nub did the penny drop that Ernst Gräfenberg's claim to fame was the intended reference.

Coffee laced projectile laughter the inevitable consequence.

Microsoft gives in to Chromebook bullies and drops Windows 11 SE

businesses that have a long-term plan ... gives you real confidence.

Undertakers^† I imagine but not many others nowadays.

If Nadella and co. were in that line of business you would cremated instead of the burial requested and the redundant headstone would be of a complete stranger still living; decorated with a nonsensical AI Generated epitaph.

_{† Funeral Directors.}

UK needs to pick up handsets for troubled Emergency Services Network project

I think you're quite wrong in regarding the UK as 3rd world

I think banana republic might be more accurate - 3rd world meant non-aligned^†, not underdeveloped - except the UK is a monarchy and outside Kew Gardens might find growing bananas a challenge.

"our {cough} leaders have created a whole new 'otherworld' category."

A demented and I daresay discordant version of Brigadoon or a Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell world of magical thinking ?

_{† as Stephen Fry pointed out on QI, at the time Eire was the nearest 3rd world nation to London.}

First release candidate of systemd 258 is here

Re: hold on there

"Is there any truth to the rumor that Systemd release 259 will include a spreadsheet and word processor?"

Those two applications are typically already baseline crap so probably no.

Next up is incorporating one of Microsoft's LLMs into systemd to second guess your system calls and shared library bindings amongst other unsolicited AI assistance. :)

COVID-19 pandemic accelerated brain aging – even if you didn’t catch the virus

Re: "The researchers aren't sure why subjects' brains aged so fast during the pandemic"...

Daytime drinking ?

The paper's authors mentioned that along with other dietary factors some of which I imagine might have been exacerbated by the Brexit.

AI creeps into the risk register for America's biggest firms

Re: O dear...

"Don’t forget the Darien Scheme. Scotland still feeling the aftermath of that more than 300 years later."

In fairness another Scotsman, John Law gave France the spectacular "Missassippi Bubble."

AI coding tools make developers slower but they think they're faster, study finds

Re: Just wait for the push-back

"I will be investing in needle production and marketing to sell needles that can and will pop the inflated AI balloons."

I think low power IR lasers work just as well as needles in balloon bursting with the advantage you can stand on the other side of the room and feign surprise at the balloon's pop.

Looks like 1,300 Indeed and Glassdoor staffers will need their former employer's websites

Re: "We're going to have more agentic experience" ?

> "Agentic experience " is that what the tossers call it now ?

AKA 'Hands on experience'

Trump tariffs turn techies topsy-turvy as US braces for PC tax

Re: The funniest thing I heard about this

Yet when the Japanese trade delegation did actually turn up, nobody would see them. So they went home.

Perhaps not the best time for a holiday in Hawaii. :)

History casts long shadows.

Re: Idiotic tariff nonsense

"Are you sure Starbucks use real coffee beans? I'm not sure they do.........."

Recall the coffee fad a few years ago (pre COVID) where Vietnamese coffee beans that had been ingested by the indigenous monkeys^† and passed through those simian's digestive system intact were collected and marketed as something rather special for the discerning coffee connaisseur ?

I might wonder whether Starbucks with typical American "enterprise" might go ape-shit and just omit the coffee bean part of this simian centred process.

Adding a whole new layer to the concept of enshittification.

† Not quite accurate but see https://www.helenacoffee.vn/monkey-poop-coffee/

_{As a student a cup of the caterers blend coffee aka "scrapings^‡", purchased in the refectory was claimed to contain 43 rat droppings but was generally held that if that were the case it would have tasted far better. ‡ For better digestion don't eat with medical students.}