Posts by DrewPH

Firefox 147 brings GPU boost, tidier tabs, and video that follows you around

Nothing here of value. Sticking with Waterfox which I'm very happy with.

Anthropic Claude wants to be your helpful colleague, always looking over your shoulder

After leaving countless jobs due to being micromanaged, now AI wants to do it to me as well? Fuck that for a game of soldiers.

Danish dev delights kid by turning floppy drive into easy TV remote

"Floppy disks are the best storage media ever invented," Olesen opined.

Presumably with tongue so far in cheek it was poking out of his ear.

Malaysia and Indonesia block X over failure to curb deepfake smut

I'm on the side of freedom of expression in most areas of life, but I'm having a hard time criticising Malaysia and Indonesia's actions here.

AI industry insiders launch site to poison the data that feeds them

Valid semantic points but I think we get what the issue is about nonetheless.

QR codes a powerful new phishing weapon in hands of Pyongyang cyberspies

Re: QR codes are an obvious security hole

This! A QR code is an obfuscated link. How QR codes manage to still exist is a testament to human stupidity. I've never, ever used one and I never, ever will.

Baby's got clack: HP pushes PC-in-a-keyboard for businesses with hot desks

> HP hopes to change business behavior from laptop culture to keyboard culture.

I suspect most of the targetted audience will be of the "you can prise my laptop from my cold, dead hands" variety.

The form factor is essentially a longer, faster Raspberry Pi 500 (which I'm pretty sure sells in tiny quantities compared to the main Pi 5 models) - but at least the Pi has HDMI outputs.

I just don't see the upsides outweighting the downsides for more than a handful of people.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella becomes AI influencer, asks us all to move beyond slop

"the next phase of AI acceptance"

Even one phase of AI acceptance is a problem. Pushing for another one is madness.

Users prompt Elon Musk's Grok AI chatbot to remove clothes in photos then 'apologize' for it

"I saw a couple of fratty looking dudes demonstrating something on their phones with big grins on their faces. I asked them what they were doing, and one of them took a photo of me, then used AI to generate images that appeared to put me in compromising positions – one had me kissing an imaginary woman, another had me flanked by a couple of scantily clad strippers."

Did you sue the arse off them? Because if you didn't, you're part of the problem.

Stop the slop by disabling AI features in Chrome

Speak for yourself.

For the love of..., just don't use Chrome. Why are articles like this still a thing? Honestly, nobody should be using Chrome these days. As noted, other Chromium-based browsers exist - and every single one is better than Chrome.

Keeping Windows and macOS alive past their sell-by date

Re: Don't Believe the Mac Bashing

When it looks and behaves like Tahoe, for one...

You don't need Linux to run free and open source software

> I've already decided my current Macbook Pro will be the last as I'm not going to consider non-upgradable hardware.

Same. My M1 Air will be the last Apple device I buy. Though if/when Asahi Linux has Thunderbolt over USB-C, I may dual-boot that rather than spend on another laptop. As long as I can run the new Pop OS Cosmic desktop.

For music, Strawberry is probably a good choice. I also quite like DeadBeef. They're both album/playlist based and very easy to use/customise.

Memory is running out, and so are excuses for software bloat

So many sketchy yorkshiremen in this thread. When I were a lad we 'ad a byte if we were lucky, and we programmed a complete space invaders game in it... wonderful stuff.

I'm doing my bit though...

I recently built a Pi-based NAS. Normally for Pi projects I always buy the model with the highest RAM, just because, you know, they're cheap, so why not. This time instead of getting a Pi 5 16Gb I realised the project would never use about 14 of those 16. So I bought the 4Gb one (couldn't find any 2Gb models available). Fight the "must have the most" mentality!

What the Linux desktop really needs to challenge Windows

Re: What Linux needs to be pre-installed on PCs

Entirely true. And this brings us to...

Everyone is asking how we get Linux to be on everyone's desktop, but not everyone is asking whether this is the correct goal, or even a feasible one.

Cue Jeff Goldblum: "Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should."

And someone somewhere in this discussion said (I'm probably paraphrasing) "the market generally has room for 2 of anything". As in, Windows / macOS, Android / iOS, Labour / Conservative, Democrat / Republican, etc etc. Third options always struggle.

Me, I love Linux. I have 5 computers and 4 of them are running it. But I appreciate it's an acquired taste that may not fit every use case, much like my good self.

Re: What Linux needs to be pre-installed on PCs

Finally.

What we need is Acer, or Dell, or Lenovo (or better, all three) offering a budget range, all with the same distro preinstalled and a bunch of popular apps.

What that distro would be, I have no idea (I have my own preferences but that's not important to my point). But I guess that's part of the problem. Until a single distro is targetted by multiple big PC vendors as being suitable for preinstalling and marketing, this whole discussion is moot (or possibly moo if you're a Friends fan).

Re: The reason is Office

"Anything? Right click on the desktop. From the menu select link to file or directory or Link to application."

And here be dragons. Why 2 options? Shouldn't be necessary. And why not call it a shortcut when that is now the most common term? It just adds friction.

Re: I suspect a commercial entity may end up with "the win" for Linux on the Desktop...

I'm not convinced Valve can build enough inertia from 10 million units but the upvote is for making me think differently about the whole issue.

Re: Mint

They take it to the neighbour's kid.

OK, so those people aren't the target of this discussion.

If there are (just a silly illustration to make my point) 5 million people who will never touch Linux for this reason, and 20 million who potentially will if the offer is right, you focus on the 20 million. Don't you?

pearOS is a Linux that falls rather close to the Apple tree

Re: Liquid vomit

Ha! That Reddit post speaks on more than one level.

Re: I get the concept but:

These days I think a really good guide to customizing KDE Plasma is probably more useful to more people than still more distros.

Want a Windows look? Plasma + some tweaking

Want a macOS look? Plasma + some tweaking

Want something else? Plasma + some tweaking

Liquid vomit

I was curious so took a look at the distro homepage. That liquid gel thing (the little animation half way down the page) looks even worse than macOS Tahoe - a feat I thought wasn't possible in the realm of user interface design.

Tired of sky-high memory prices? Buckle up, we're in this for the long haul

Citation or

STFU

Waterfox browser goes AI-free, targets the Firefox faithful

Re: Sound of spraying coffee

Postscript: now on Waterfox. Everything transferred over including my userChrome.css, all extensions working, all configs configged. Happy Drew.

Re: Sound of spraying coffee

And I see that the macOS download of Waterfox is currently at version 6.6.6 which I will take as a good omen.

Sound of spraying coffee

TheZeldaZone owes me a new keyboard...

Good article. I like need FF's isolated containers but hate AI so may try Waterfox. Thank you.

AI-authored code contains worse bugs than software crafted by humans

Re: I've said it once

It may have been said in jest but 100 times this.

When I write a new class method or something, it will start off as the method declaration and delimiters (name and brackets since I work in PHP), and then I'll write comments, in good English (proper sentences and all!) until I have described all the code I believe I need to put in the method. Also its purpose and parameters etc. Sometimes I'll end up with 30 or 40 lines of descriptive text within the delimiters.

Only then do I start coding. While coding, I always need to edit the comments a bit but easier to edit and refine while coding then try to add in good comments right at the end.

Devs say Apple still flouting EU's Digital Markets Act six months on

Re: Want Crapple to comply?

I suspect the downvotes were for calling the company Crapple much like a 4-year-old might. Doesn't add much intellectual weight to the discussion, does it?

Reddit sues Australia to exempt itself from kids social media ban

Freedom of communication

And yet Reddit won't let me access it via a VPN. Go figure...

Vibe coding will deliver a wonderful proliferation of personalized software

Re: I read a Google "vibe coding" gush-agrada thing last night...

Contoso yes (never heard of it in my 25+ year dev career) but was really hoping (or is that fearing) to know what gush-agrada means.

Re: I read a Google "vibe coding" gush-agrada thing last night...

Is there any chance you could provide an English translation of this comment?

10K Docker images spray live cloud creds across the internet

Re: developers' rush to adopt AI

Sadly a brief scroll through LinkedIn would suggest that, in fact, developers ARE rushing to adopt AI. Either that or they're just as full of bullshit as marketers.

Space-power startup claims it can beam energy to solar farms

Aim carefully

I'm old enough to (fondly) remember SimCity 2000, where the microwave power plant would periodically fry your city unless you turned off disasters...

Microsoft research shows chatbots seeping into everyday life

Re: F*** OFF!

Er, the energy spent on this rant could instead have been spent in disabling them. Not difficult.

Congress quietly strips right-to-repair provisions from US military spending bill

Is anyone surprised?

Western economies are based around triggering and funding wars, after all. They don't call it the military-industrial complex for nothing.

How to answer the door when the AI agents come knocking

“Because of AI agents’ autonomy and nondeterministic actions, they represent a new type of identity that is neither fully machine nor human. AI agents raise new governance, authentication, and authorization challenges — so IAM architectures and the IAM solutions that implement them must embrace AI agents as a new and unique identity type and protection surface.”

False premise.

IAM architectures do not have to embrace AI agents. They can simply reject them. And they should, as should we all.

Block all AI browsers for the foreseeable future: Gartner

Re: or a wrong flight might be booked

"As it was I did opt for their optional "prime" subscription in return for 20 quid off. Supposedly cancel within 21 days from the account page to avoid the annual charge."

And you will regret this foolishness for the rest of your life.

AWS admits AI coding tools cause problems, reckons its three new agents fix 'em

D'oh

I wish we could post a "D'oh!" icon on a whole article.

MongoDB talks up its AI chops by talking down PostgreSQL

Mongo comparing itself to SQL?

In other news, a zebra compares itself to a bungalow.

Whatever legitimate places AI has, inside an OS ain't one

I think I heard something about such a mythical beast... I can't remember the name now... ended in 'nux' I think? Can't be sure. It might have been a dream.

India demands smartphone makers install a government app on every handset

Hello this is Gupta from the government...

It looks like you're making a scam phone call to the UK, we'll help with that if you cut us in on the profit.

Cheaper 1 GB Raspberry Pi 5 lands as memory costs go through the roof

Re: I see the future and it's some very thin clients

As we all realised, apart perhaps from werdsmith.

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

Re: Work-life balance

Yeah but India cannot reasonably be called civilised.

Latest Servo release hints at a real Rust alternative to Chromium

Re: Midori?

Thanks, some good comments. But what I'm always most concerned with when deciding whether to try a different browser, is whether it will let me install Bitwarden or (insert your favourite must-install extension here).

The Midori site doesn't give me that information (either in the positive or negative) and that was the point I was making.

Midori?

You mentioned Midori but Astian's Midori web page is semi-broken and the "Revolutionary Features" panel refers to VeloxBrowser instead of Midori - not sure what's going on there. And they seem very cagey about whether Midori supports Chrome extensions.

Whatever your job, mentoring is your job – and the one that matters most

"Whatever your job, mentoring is your job – and the one that matters most"

I'll go ahead and take issue with the article's title.

I'm a self-employed developer and consultant, working remotely to build and support private cloud apps (they used to be called intranets!) for clients. Apart from scattered video calls I work alone, I research alone, I have no junior devs, and I report only to my clients, most of whom operate thousands of km away from my physical location.

There is no mentoring of any kind in my life, and as a neurodivergent person, that's exactly how I like it. I certainly don't have the patience or desire to teach anyone or get someone to learn from me, and my preferred learning mode is reading and experimentation without being observed or monitored in any way.

TL:DR; When you assume, you make an ass out of you and me.

Mastodon CEO steps down with €1M payout and a deep sigh

Hmmm

Building something where the clear goal is to become a global social network, then saying it grew beyond your expectations, seems somewhat disingenuous to me.

Chinese web giant Tencent can't buy all the GPUs it wants

Good.

Good.

Firefox adds AI Window, users want AI wall to keep it out

Fuck off, Varma

If this appears in my Firefox Developer Edition, it's back to Vivaldi for me.