Posts by Groo The Wanderer - A Canuck

LibreOffice adds voice to 'ditch Windows for Linux' campaign

Re: Problems

The end users of those systems are most like day-to-day "grunt" employees of the company, even if they don't realize those services are runnning on Linux.

Linux on the desktop most certainly does have "fleet management" solutions available. If anything, those solutions are older than Microsoft's because the need for them is far from new; Microsoft just uses lock-in to make sure that once you're on Windblows, you're going to have some serious pain getting rid of it. The Linux versions, on the other hand, expect to be dealing with different distros for different services, and don't expect a monolithic deployment of Blah-Distro Servers like you're expected to roll everything on Windows Server nodes with the Microshill crowd.

Re: Problems

You do realize that the "curated" software is just builds for the the distro's collection of software, that most of the distros use the same definitions for apt or RPM production of the builds, regardless of whether they're "mainstream" or downstream distros?

It isn't that the distros do massive changes to the software, with the exception of software that the distro's management consider core to their mission - that might have specific enhancements and custom code that other distros don't have. But something like the GNU Image Manipulation Program is all but identical for all Debian/Ubuntu distros, and again virtually identical for all distros branching off RedHat. The packaging rules for the different package managers change, but that is about all.

The main real difference in distro repositories and support lists has more to do with the philosophy and "morals" of the distribution, not the way the packages are maintained at source.

Re: Problems

Hello, Satya! That is, as everyone knows, utter bollocks, bullshit, and outright lies.

It's worth considering any distro's legal home base, too. I don't really trust US based distro's or any which derived from them.

Far too many security risks compared to organizations based in Europe in light of the recent political climate in the US.

Re: That's bullshit

The problem is newer versions of Windows constantly mess with the boot process, destroying your dual boot, and unless you know what you're doing, you're not going to get it back.

I just wouldn't use that laptop or PC for anything else - treat it as a dedicated, air-gapped box, never to be online again.

Microsoft broke DHCP for Windows Server last Patch Tuesday

Re: Easy; Just blame AI

"Only 85% of our user base is actually affected..."

Firefox is dead to me – and I'm not the only one who is fed up

That's a problem with usability, and pointing fingers solves nothing on the ground.

I gave up on Firefox nearly 10 years ago when it couldn't be used to view content at several Canadian media sites; it gets rejected as an "unsupported browser."

Plus I find Chrome has better support for debugging/development.

Nvidia bets on Gates-backed nuclear startup to keep its AI ambitions from melting down

'Last year the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis determined that, despite the hype, SMRs were "too expensive, too slow to build, and too risky to play a significant role in transitioning away from fossil fuels."'

Edit: 'Last year the shills for the oil industry "determined" that...'

There. Fixed that for you...

Trump administration set to waive TikTok sell-or-die deadline for a third time

"Taco, Taco man! I got to be, a Taco man!

Wine me, dine me, outright bribe me

Then for you I'll do all I can,

'Cause I'm the Taco, Taco man!"

Eurocops arrest suspected Archetyp admin, shut down mega dark web drug shop

Re: And the game of whack a mole continues

Prohibition is a dead end no matter how many bullshit lies prohibitionists like you spew. Treating addiction as a medical issue instead of a criminal one allows members of society to receive treatment and rebuild their lives; incarceration only gets them in touch with other criminals to learn how to commit other crimes than the ones they've already been caught for.

Florida man expands crypto empire with new wireless service and phone

"Comes with Russian and American tracking and data collection services pre-installed!"

Put Large Reasoning Models under pressure and they stop making sense, say boffins

My 400-series "Artificial Intelligence" course in 1987 at the University of Saskatchewan was heavily focused on the expert systems implementation algorithms so we'd understand what the computer was actually doing - essentially the same kind of processing that spreadsheets do to build out a logic tree for processing cell updates (value "slots".)

I still have more faith in an expert system than an LLM for most tasks because unlike LLMs, they're consistent and predictable with their results, and you never get hallucinating outputs.

Wanted: Junior cybersecurity staff with 10 years' experience and a PhD

I'm one poor SOB in retirement, but I don't regret leaving the industry behind one little bit. The fun got replaced by irritating and irrelevant demands two decades ago

Re: Let's be clear

Yes, this has been "industry practice" since the early 2000's for all IT positions. The kicker is they call a decade of experience a "junior" when in any trades those are experienced journeymen.

Why? So they can screw you over right royally on compensation.

Danish department determined to dump Microsoft

Re: Just suppose ...

You mean like the Pumpkin Fuhrer who has openly stated he wants F35s crippled for foreign nations despite existing contracts? Or who has openly mused about "why can't we use nukes?"

If you have a fascist taking over the government, abuse of process, rights, and basic human decency are just expected. Dictators will use any tool available to hold on to power, and because they're turning over trillions to the business community that used to be government services, the companies are only too happy to do what the dictator asks to keep the revenue flowing.

The American companies aren't that bad if you don't mind having all your data hoovered for their "AI" systems and turning over 25% of your revenue to them...

Meta sues 'nudify' app-maker that it claims ran 87k+ Facebook, Instagram ads

Gee, maybe AI approved ads are a bad idea and human beings should be doing the processing of ads....

AI coding tools are like that helpful but untrustworthy friend, devs say

Re: Haaaah-hahhhh-ha-ha-ha!!

Most surveys and studies are paid for on the sly by the AI vendors themselves; you can't trust the likes of Gartner & co. any more than the AI generated code they're trying to shill.

Ubuntu 25.10 and Fedora 43 to drop X11 in GNOME editions

Re: Stupid

It's completely useless for remote access to systems, and to be honest, Vulkan drivers are the only thing aside from good old stable X11 and OpenGL that interests me, and that is only because of gaming.

I saw no difference in application availability under X11 and Wayland other than a lot of display issues with Wayland.

We never did need Wayland, so with this move, I can now add Gnome, Ubuntu, and Redhat to the list of things I neither need nor want.

Just what IS the Gnome team smoking anyhow?!?!?

CIO wants to grow tech team by cloning staff as digital twins and AI agents

Yes, of course I'll train the AI to do my job so I can be laid off 3 months later and find that the company is now selling "digital me" so no one will actually hire me anymore.

Take ChatGPT back to the 2010s and they’d think AGI arrived, says Altman

Re: AGI is not like dark matter

Technology and science facts are not subject to a popular vote despite the nonsense we're seeing in the US right now.

Re: Editor anyone?

That's what "Grammerly" suggested...

Altman is the most egregious self-wanking specimen I've ever seen in existence. All he ever does is spew utter and complete nonsense about what LLMs are actually capable of.

Him and Musk's garbage about FSD both need to result in stock manipulation and fraud charges from the authorities against those individuals personally. Jail time is definitely in order for this magnitude of stock pumping.

Altman fluffs superintelligence to save humanity as OpenAI slashes prices

I usually accuse someone who spouts the kind of nonsense that Altman and Musk spew of smoking CIA supplied crack, but Altman has taken the leap into "experimental" chemicals that mess up your brain far beyond what anything sourced from nature could ever be.

And I expect his models to be every bit as bad for society at large as those chemicals are for him.

This is a man who will screw over anyone, anywhere, anytime to pad his own wallet, same as any other hard drug dealers. He flat out doesn't care if you live or die once he has your money.

Trump administration's whole-government AI plans leaked on GitHub

Re: First time?

You expect the Americans to read a history book?

"Shh. The game's on..." *drool*

Re: Gov and AI: What could go wrong?

The novel "1984" should be ringing alarm bells in every mind right now. These idiots are treating it as a project plan!

Europe's cloud datacenter ambition 'completely crazy' says SAP CEO

Really? You don't think the EU's internal market is comparable to the Chinese internal market that Baidu courted to build a business equal to Amazon? There is no reason the EU couldn't support an Amazon of their own if they chose to.

You buy the American bullshit because they advertise the shit out of it, promise you pie-in-the-sky-dreams before they tank your income stream and redirect it to theirs, and keep playing the fool for the tech bros and politician's bald-faced lies.

Yeah, no "benefit" other than ensuring it complies with EU law, unlike the Americans who keep giving you the finger about the retention and privacy laws.

AI's the end of the Shell as we know it and I feel fine … but insecure

Another LLM-tard prophesizing the "benefits" of a dead-end futile hunt for artificial intelligence that instead delivers only artificially ignorant statistical summaries... WTF do you think the LLMs do except invoke system applications and utilities under the hood using the same syntax and shell commands as the command line?

Schneier tries to rip the rose-colored AI glasses from the eyes of Congress

Re: centi-billionaire Elon Musk

You expect them to understand simple math and measurements? You are an optimist!

BT won't budge over pay hike for manager grade employees

Any company that gives more to dividends than staff pay deserves to die...

Enterprises are getting stuck in AI pilot hell, say Chatterbox Labs execs

It is no different than any other "new technology" that companies bought into because slick sales reps conned management into signing up with promises of "big savings."

I'm retired now but after almost 30 years in the trenches I've lived through at least three such "big things" that fizzled and disappeared over the decades.

Industry reacts to DuckDB's radical rethink of Lakehouse architecture

Re: Vested interest nonsense

The problem is there is no truly portable solution to the need for "the database" to handle the database storage of the metadata for DuckDB's proposal. I agree with the Apache committees - that is a non-starter. Metadata must be available in a text-only format that can be versioned along with the configuration files of the system so you have a proper recovery point. You can't easily do that with an active RDBMS. Nor do I know of any widely-accepted RDBMS that can be guaranteed to handle the sheer volume of requests that a large data lake system can be presumed to be dealing with.

Musk and Trump take slap fight public as bromance ends

Re: "Mercurial Billionaires"

And the closest most people get to mercury is either sucking on it or stuffing it up their posterior in the form of a thermometer. But the thermometer is only symbolic of what happens when a billionaire or purchased politician is around and you're not pulling in a 7-digit income...

Re: No room for two

There are plenty of toys for the kids to play with. The fight started because they both want the red sippy cup...

Please tell us Reg: Why are AI PC sales slower than expected?

The problem is I have an RTX 4070 Ti. It is far more capable than the so-called "AI PC" LLM capabilities are, at 12GB of memory and many more gigaflops (fractional teraflops?) of processing power as well. Yet still the only LLMs I can run are brain damaged 9GB models that are useless for anything except prototyping code because they hallucinate like psychopathic daydreamers with delusions of canned solutions for the "hard parts" the LLM can't "solve".

Just use this non-existent library/jar/maven package and all thine problems shalt go away... in LLM fantasy land.

The presence of "Recall" on so-called "AI" PCs is reason enough to not upgrade.

If it can’t double our money, we’re not building it, Intel Products chief says

Just a little out of touch with the realities of modern pricing for both consumers, hobbyists, and enterprise-level superscalars... nobody earns those kinds of margins except NVidia, and that is only because their "competition" hasn't proven themselves capable of going toe-to-toe with NVidia's hardware, especially at scale.

Intel has AMD as a competitor that has been eating Intel's lunch in the server space for some time now...

Microsoft will stop pestering Windows users about Edge in EU

You want to get in a scrap with Windows 11 on install with the 24H2 builds? Just try to use the same email account for logging in and as an email provider for that non-Microsoft account...

I eventually was able to check my mail with their mail client, but it sure wasn't because their setup and configuration was smooth and easy to set up... So much for "user experience" nonsense.

US to deny visas to foreign officials it says 'censor' social media

Re: Countries that censor social media, hmmm...

But of course the Pumpin Fuhrer is concerned about the rising tide of fact checking and disinformation yanking.

How is he supposed to his garbage out there if people fact check him?!?!?!? :)

Nvidia is cozying up to China with Shanghai R&D lab plans, Senators cry

Re: Support for autocratic regimes

NVidia has no choice but to deal with the Drumpf Regime, and it costs them far more pride and loss-of-face to do so than to deal with China! At least China honours their deals instead of tearing them up the second time they're elected like Drumpf did the free trade agreements with Canada and Mexico that HE SIGNED on his last go round at office! :o

Microsoft's May Patch Tuesday update fails on some Windows 11 VMs

Microsoft Fails. Not News at 11:00.

Google co-founder Sergey Brin suggests threatening AI for better results

Re: "junior programmers who've read a lot of books"

I didn't say professional juniors were common. But like a trained, ideal junior that doesn't exist, I've found that the models I've used (primarily free Claude 3.5 with the VSCode plugin) do a good job of citing standards, software release changes, and pertinent articles on coding practices and styles. I found OpenAI models far less knowledgeable about coding practices.

YMMV

Realistically, the best way to tackle using an "AI" is the same as working with skilled junior programmers who've read a lot of books but have no practical experience using what they've read about.

Be clear with your requests. Be precise with your corrections. Argue in the philosophical sense if need be to "convince" the AI to do things your way when it comes up with a "bright idea" that doesn't work.

Skip the epithets, the cajoling, the whining, and for crying out loud: remember this is not an actual intelligence capable of learning unless allowed to treat scrapable web information as "fact," when we all know that 80% of what is out on the net is absolute crap, and that sites as focused as The Register are rare. Most either are flooded by people extolling the virtues of their (non-functional) solutions and dated approaches to coding. Very little good content of any kind, especially in the internal corporate software repositories, exists. Most is boilerplate copy-paste-modified from something vaguely related to the problem at hand.

The original mainframe concept of a "CopyBook" never went away; it just went online.

Trump tariffs ruled illegal within minutes of Musk announcing end of government role

The entire GOP is ignoring the US Constitution they swore to uphold, yet no one is being charged with treason despite the blatant illegality of the administration's actions since Day 1.

Ex-CISA employee: 'This culture of fear started permeating the agency'

This is just classic Fascism. Cut everything and turn it over to rich business owners. Pick any Fascist in history, and this is the playbook...

Microsoft is opening Windows Update to third-party apps

Gee, 20 years later they're catching up to Linux - both RPM and apt and a host of other package managers have been available for a long time and open to membership by simply submitting software for consideration in the standardized catalogues, or providing instructions and signing keys for adding your distribution servers to the client's repositories.

Betcha Microsoft has a fee associated with doing so, though!

MIT boffins claim liquid sodium battery could one day power aircraft while sucking up CO2

It is definitely an idea worth pursuing, but I have a bone to pick with their weight-based comparisons. Weight has to include any and all retention, warm-up, cool-down, or other ancilliary hardware required for the fuel to be safely transported by the vehicle in question, whether it be Lithium, Sodium, Hydrogen, or Hydrocarbon based. Hydrogen isn't all that light when you also include it's cartridge and all the metals in those cartridges, nor the prewarming circuits required in cold weather climates. Sure Hydrogen itself is the lightest of the elements, but it's transport is weighty.

German court parks four Volkswagen execs in jail over Dieselgate scandal

I wish they'd do that here in Canada, ideally starting from the very top of management with the CEO's and CFOs