Posts by ABugNamedJune

Five years after quitting a job, developer’s former boss asked for rapid tech support

Re: Well done

At my last job we were conscripted to support a mechanical paper folding machine lol, and would routinely get tickets that a light was burnt out or a toilet wasn't flushing.

No more Java refills for Intel Macs after JDK 27, says Oracle

Wasn't it just yesterday

That I was waiting for software companies to *introduce* Intel compatibility on Macs?

Country that put backdoors into Cisco routers to spy on world bans foreign routers

Re: Ha ha ha ha ha

Can't even do that, all the vacuum tubes are manufactured overseas, and we don't want the Chinese government maliciously flipping our bits.

Qualcomm, Nvidia ready for 'AI-native' 6G, if only the world knew what it was

Re: Utter bollocks

Truly. Whenever I hear news like this I have to wonder if it's time we pump the brakes a little bit. I only got a 5g enabled phone last year, and the bandwidth is fine. My partner was running her whole house off a little 5g puck, and while it wouldn't suit my needs, it worked for her just fine to play games and stream shows.

If no one's asking for hardware updates, might as well shoe in "AI" and rake in billions from dull-eyed "investors"

Motorola partners with GrapheneOS for future phones

Kind of surprised to see this news coming from Motorola, but it is promising. I think I'm biased since I've never owned one of their flagship phones, but I have intermittently primaried MotoG Plays as work phones and getting them to allow me to unlock the bootloader was challenging to say the least. They've never seen like the type who would want anyone to actually access the hardware they paid for.

Re: Any GrapheneOS users here?

I used it as my primary phone OS for a little while, and it's fine. I switched from Lineage to Graphene and then back to Lineage. I think Graphene is great if you really want to nail down your privacy, but it's demands for the newest hardware are a dealbreaker for me. Using Lineage with several modifications gives me the privacy and security I want, and some of the added quality of life features that Graphene can't offer.

UK names Barnsley as first Tech Town to see whether AI can fix... well, anything

Re: Yea - just chuck that 1/2 million down that toilet there thanks

It's impossible to find parking in Portland, Oregon, U.S.A. but the job growth here is stagnant. You still see quite a lot of foot traffic, but if I got laid off tomorrow I'd be fighting for a position as a bagger at the local Fred Meyer. With Intel and Nike being the major employers here and them both trying to shed workers like a molting snake, things are going to get more dire in the next few years.

Firefox makes AI optional, like it probably should have been all along

Re: Not good enough

Absolutely, I entirely agree, remove the features entirely.

And barring that, I wish they'd make it opt-in rather than opt-out. Same with DDG, who I've been trying to replace as my primary search engine, but haven't yet found one that I like. I think it's great that the foxes and ducks are making these features opt-in, but I am constantly reimaging my machines and clearing cache and cookies, and it adds extra steps to a process to manually rid myself of these intrusions.

Microsoft 365 outage drags on for nearly 10 hours during bad night for North American infra

Re: Confusion Was Rife...

I've had great results with Hover, I wanted to try self-hosting my email, but just couldn't be bothered when they make it so affordable, and so easy. They've been my primary email provider for years, and I get a sick address that no one thinks is nearly as cool as me.

Truly a nightmare

I've been saying for years that migrating away from self-hosting is a bad idea, of course no one listens to me because I'm not on the infrastructure team. This outage was such a nightmare, and did not win our team any points with users because we were stuck saying "I know this is critical infrastructure, but there's nothing we can do, all we can hope is your email isn't lost in the aether."

I remember a time when tech companies advertised their insane uptimes, when an outage half this size would have cost customers, but Microsoft these days doesn't have to care about their customers, and can get away with taking down entire enterprises because they haven't heard of a test environment. I would truly love to see a migration away from Microsoft and Azure, but it seems everyone is stuck because no one has the capacity to self-host these services, and even if they did, these microsoft outages would still probably take them down since cloud integration is such a monumental "feature" that companies have been pushing for years. I wouldn't have switched away from Linux on my personal infrastructure before, but I sure as hell wouldn't migrate to Micro$oft after last night.

Microsoft admits Outlook might freeze when saving files to OneDrive

It's a good thing that in New Outlook, save to OneDrive is the only option then

My advice whenever a user has any issue, no matter how small in New Outlook is to switch to Classic

Majority of CEOs report zero payoff from AI splurge

AI doesn't work, but just because you're not AI-ing hard enough

It claims that "isolated, tactical AI projects" often don't deliver measurable value, and that tangible returns instead come from enterprise-wide deployments consistent with business strategy.

Can't wait for my boss to start insisting I use CoPilot integration in Exchange Admin, an already futile application made more futile with a speak n' spell trying to create my groups for me.

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

Re: Mine updated yesterday

So did mine, and thus far I've only tested it on Calvin Tucker's Redneck: Farm Animals Racing Tournament, which worked flawlessly

Windows App forgets how to log in with first security update of the year

You can't win with Microsoft

For a cloud service provider, they're not that great at providing cloud services.

When the lights went out, and the shooting started, Y2K started to feel all too real

Re: Things went RIGHT for once

foul smelling gas? Works for both ACs

Cisco decides its homegrown AI model is ready to power its products

Re: I wonder if

"I'm sorry Dave, I can't do that right now, you'll have to upgrade to the HAL 9001 if you want continued support"

Crocs get the Xbox treatment with sole-crushing price of $80

Re: The problem

The over-commodification of everything is driving me insane a little bit. Crocs are collectors' items when just a few years ago they were more protective flip-flops bought when you forgot yours on vacation. Stanley water bottles are collectors' items, when they're famously supposed to be the last water bottle you'll ever buy. Labubu.

It truly drives me nuts, who's asking for this, and when it comes out, why tf are people buying it? Consumerism for the sake of consumerism. I'm not going to pretend I'm not a hypocrite; I've got an ALF figurine playing the guitar on my desk right now as I slack off at work, but like come on.

70-hour work weeks no longer enough for Infosys founder, who praises China’s 996 culture

Re: Outsourcing at scale ..

I'm so burnt out already pushing forty + on call, and that's with me sauntering late and hovering around the timeclock ~15 minutes before 5pm. Maybe I'm just lazy, but there's absolutely no way I could do a 72 hour work week, even if I wanted to.

Zoomers are officially worse at passwords than 80-year-olds

I'm glad that sites like The Register have checks in place for this sort of thing

I really admire the Register's robust password requirements, and check it out, they even censor your password if you type it into a comment: ***********

Isn't that cool?

Retro Games opens pre-orders for THEA1200, a full-size working Amiga replica

Re: PiDP maybe?

I'd love to get one of those. One of these days!

Very exciting, but having been burned by similar vids on Kickstarter plenty of times, I will not be preordering until they can show me actual video of the physical thing, and not just a 3D render. Don't get me wrong, I don't think that these guys are shady or anything I really hope they'll deliver, but at the same time I know how to use blender reasonably well, and Turbosquid has a higher quality model of the Amiga 1200 than they do just sayin'

Really looking forward to this coming out though, the Amiga and the PDP-11 are two machines I would love to have, but don't want to put in the time, money (and space in the latter's case) to maintaining and cherishing, I would definitely take a replica that I can plug into a standard monitor and play some Monkey Island on.

OpenAI’s viability called into question by reported inference spending with Microsoft

It's the same money caught in a loop.

I keep seeing these headlines about Open AI paying $12 billion to Microsoft, and headlines about Microsoft paying $12 billion to NVidia, and headlines about NVidia paying $12 billion to OpenAi, and I keep seeing all these ridiculously high valuations for these companies, and I'm realizing it's all just the same money caught in a loop.

I should have come up with this strategy myself, I could make my company worth a trillion dollars by just slipping a few hundred into the smoking circle and let my stoner friends pass it around.

Altman sticks a different hand out, wants tax credits instead of gov loans

Re: Workshy Layabouts

For real, why am I the one stuck on my ass yanking at my bootstraps?

52-year-old data tape could contain only known copy of UNIX V4

I've been within fifty feet of that closet!

Not to brag, but I dropped out of that school not just once, but twice!

Microsoft will force its 'superintelligence' to be a 'humanist' and play nice with people

First of all...

I'm doubtful of the concept of superintelligence in the next twenty years,

And secondly, when you read/watch sci-fi, does the creator of the superintelligence ever deliberately set out to murder humanity? I feel like someone needs to give Suleyman a couple of Asimov books

Help desk boss fell for ‘Internet Cleaning Day’ prank - then swore he got the joke

Re: Has your tech team pranked colleagues?

And a couple pints for yourself and the PFY

Senate bill would require companies to report AI layoffs as job cuts reach 20-year high in October

Re: Trump's easily disproven claims

I used to live in the great state of Utah when it was illegal to buy beer at a grocery store with an ABV greater than 3.2%. But Utah is run by the Mormons and is a statistical outlier.

Copilot can replace Search in latest Windows 11 test builds, but it's not a good idea

If something doesn't work, make it worse

God damn, already when I search appwiz.cpl it'll just search "appwiz.cpl 1" on bing, I can't wait until I'm trying to quickly yank something from a user's computer and I'm going to get a six-paragraph tutorial on how to use control panel from a chat bot.

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

Re: AI rules thé world...,..

Been seeing this a lot with folks who use Google's platform. I follow a number of really niche, super tiny people on YouTube, and three of them on separate occasions have posted dedicated videos that are basically like "hey, my account got flagged for ban evasion and referenced an account that was banned fifteen years ago in an entirely different part of the world, I managed to recover my account this time, but if my channel goes dark, you can find me [elsewhere]"

Not only are people going to lost access to their personal files, we as a whole are going to lose access to a lot of built-up knowledge available only on Google, and this isn't going to do great things for Google as a platform.

Bought my mom two 2tb WD Black spinning disks and put them in an older computer in RAID-1 to get her and her pictures off Google Drive

Amazon axes 14,000 desk jobs in AI-powered slimming plan

AWS outage 2.0 in 3...2...1...

Slimming down the headcount this close to a major, embarrassing outage is cutting it a little close, no?

X says passkey reset isn't about a security issue – it's to finally kill off twitter.com

Re: Hmmm?

Thank god for Archive.org. There was such a push for multi-platform integration between 2012 and ~2018 that all of the sites from that era are just totally broken from stuff like twitter dropping the twitter domain, and I can only imagine the effort it takes to archive some notable examples of those sites. Oh to be a fly on the wall watching historians try to detangle it all in a hundred years or so.

(past 2018 it's not that there was less of a push for multi-platform integration, it's just that Facebook, Twitter, Amazon etc. decided that there should be no other platforms than theirs :/ )

Microsoft drops surprise Windows Server patch before weekend downtime

I don't think anything will happen at my org, but of course it had to be over the weekend *I'm* on call. Couldn't you have waited one more week?

Microsoft puts Office Online Server on the chopping block

It's gonna crash sometime

I think with the recent AWS outage, and the fair number of Cloudflare outages that have thrown the internet into turmoil over the past year, the shift to move everything into the cloud is insane. I know it's a ridiculous proposition to ask the question "what if Microsoft goes out of business tomorrow?" but it feels less ridiculous every day. We've had huge shakeups in the past, and with Meta dumping 600 of their AI staffers, I can't help but feel like the looming bubble will burst, throwing the tech landscape for another loop.

Once upon a time I was in favor of cloud services, it made sense when tech companies were boasting about their thousand nines availability, but cloud infrastructure is crumbling, and now that VC firms are expecting a payout, the gravel foundations so much enterprise infrastructure sits on is turning to sand as Microsoft and Amazon and the other techopolies start squeezing resources and customers to get the most value.

Amazon brain drain finally sent AWS down the spout

It was too busy preemptively buying plane tickets for Andy Jassy.

Windows 11 update breaks localhost, prompting mass uninstall workaround

Re: Of course we all know the permanent fix

I don't think it's Linux's fault directly, I think it's one of marketing. There are operating systems like PopOS!_ and Zorin that I'd feel comfortable sticking on my mom's laptop with the assurance she's not going to call me any more frequently than she does currently. The problem is if her laptop catches fire and she goes down to Walmart to get a new one, she doesn't have a real choice in operating system. It's not that Linux is hard or unsightly or non functional, it's that the average layman doesn't realize they have alternatives, and Microsoft, retailers, and manufacturers aren't going to give up their win-win-win OEM deals anytime soon.

Re: "Microsoft's quality control department"

testing was outsourced to users, and actual coding was outsourced to Altman's Speak 'n Spell

Everyone wants a fancy phone – even the folk buying them second-hand

Re: I must be a weirdo

same. I would kill for an old slider that's built like a brick with a full keyboard, and since those don't exist anymore, I've been using a Unihertz JellyStar because I miss phones the size of the iPhone 4

OpenAI IP promises ring hollow to Sora losers

"once we make a profit, you'll get a slice"

Isn't the whole Silicon Valley MO to never make a profit? Aren't they supposed to nurse off VC funds forever?

Considering OpenAI's response I'm genuinely surprised at the reaction from Disney, and even more surprised that I haven't heard Nintendo weigh in. Sora gets a polite "no thanks," but the stoner on Venice Beach airbrushing t-shirts of Mickey gets his life ruined.

Techie found an error message so rude the CEO of IBM apologized for it

We made Amiga, they fucked it up.

College student went on a destructive rampage, then confessed to ChatGPT, cops say

I am not a lawyer, nor have I ever smashed a shit ton of windshields, but I would assume that the vehicle owners will initially get paid out by their insurance, this kid will have to pay a fine to the court, and then the insurance companies will sue him for reimbursement.

Cashless society could be why fewer kids are eating coins and sticking things up their noses

Still swallowing money though.

Without access to a quarter or pennies to swallow, I had to take my toddler to the emergency room after he got my Bitcoin-wallet-hosting Kioxia CM6 stuck in his throat.

Imgur yanks Brit access to memes as parent company faces fine

Imgur still exists?

I assumed it stopped existing after Reddit finally got around to hosting images themselves. Who the hell is still using Imgur?

If you can't use AI then it's bye bye, Accenture tells staff

it's not about actually making money, it's about making money on paper

Just like RTO, I don't think companies actually really care that much about AI. I think they want to shed excess staff to boost margins on paper as is the way in our private equity fueled economy these days. They don't care if AI can't actually do a job, they just want to include AI hype on their quarterly reports, and this way they can do that and also boast about how much money they saved by sacking half the company.

Workers: Yes, RTO makes sense. No, we’re not going to do it

based on my time in the hell desk, I absolutely could not do call center work from anywhere else but my bedroom. having to deal with the periodic dickheads who call in while trying to pretend to care about Shannon's marital problems and the humming fluorescent lights up above? awful.

Google unveils master plan for letting AI shop on your behalf

The woods are calling.

Every day I come closer to donning my tinfoil hat full-time and I've been keeping my eye on the local hollowed-out-stump real estate market.

After deleting a web server, I started checking what I typed before hitting 'Enter'

Re: Never delete the old web site, only rename it

At my last job I inherited a database with .old configs stretching back a decade and a half to 2007. Didn't dare delete any of them the whole time I was responsible for it.

Salesforce sacrifices 4,000 support jobs on the altar of AI

"For English, press 1. Para español, presione 2,"

after that, please god give me a real person.

We all live in a virtual machine, a virtual machine, a virtual machine

This comment isn't really related to the article, but I hate the current licensing model of basically every piece of proprietary software. When setting up my own infrastructure for non-critical applications, I want to be able to set it and forget it, not have to remember to upload new licensing info twice a year. I miss when you could buy a piece of software and it was yours.

Sysadmin cured a medical mystery by shifting a single cable

Re: Two octane

Depends on the CT scanners. I took home a Sun Ultra-45 discarded from a CT scanner after upgrades a few years back. I don't use it for anything lol, it just sits on my pile of antiquated computers I can't bear to get rid of.