* Posts by TeeCee

9539 publicly visible posts • joined 5 Oct 2007

The launch of ChatGPT polluted the world forever, like the first atomic weapons tests

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WTF?

...only to have their conclusions challenged by Alex Lawsen, senior program associate with Open Philanthropy, with help from AI model Claude Opus.

So if he asks an AI, it says that AI model collapse isn't a problem?

Is he going to disappear up his own bumhole as an encore?

VodafoneThree's a crowd – now comes the hard bit

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...preset contractual terms for mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) customers for three years...

Ah well, three years before the party stops.

That's the real reason for the buyoutmerger. When there are SIM only deals to be had that provide 100Gb with rollover and unlimited txt/voice for a tenner a month, Vodafone's best evuh price for an iThing or similar on a two year contract starts to look very, very shit indeed.

(Hint for the hard of thinking: When you are effectively paying the very thick end of 30 quid a month for 48 months just for the handset....!)

Builder.ai coded itself into a corner – now it's bankrupt

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WTF?

A bit of novelty.

Just when you think it's all been done and gone a bit predictable, some AI startup goes titsup.com despite not actually using AI.

It's like art holding up a mirror to life, assuming the mirror is cracked and the artist crap.

Ex-NSA bad-guy hunter listened to Scattered Spider's fake help-desk calls: 'Those guys are good'

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"Do you know who I am?"

"No. Do you know who I am?"

"Er...no."

"Well you can fuck off then."

<CLICK>

Dilettante dev wrote rubbish, left no logs, and had no idea why his app wasn't working

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Re: Divers log

My favourite variation on that is to have a "best demonstrated practice" system. A place where business units can publish their home grown crap while extolling how wonderfully useful it is. Other BUs then pick it up and stick it live themselves.

It took me quite a while to work out why shite, bug-ridden, insecure crap software was virally insinuating itself into our systems globally at random.

If Google is forced to give up Chrome, what happens next?

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Re: Out of the frying pan

You just know it's not going to work as Yahoo's business model has been "We iz buy fing wot make us gud agin" for years now.

I have to say that doubling down on this shitshow to the tune of $50bn does strike me as uniquely incompetent though.

Feeling dumb? Let Google's latest AI invention simplify that wordy writing for you

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Next week:

Google sued for blatant theft of News Corp's IP.

90-second Newark blackout exposes parlous state of US air traffic control

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I have to suspect that anyone reduced to tears or suffering heart palpitations as a result of a 90 second glitch probably isn't cut out for the job anyway.

ATC is the absolute bollocks of high-stress jobs, careers are short and the burnout rate is high. This sort of thing comes free with a job where you know damned well that one cockup will result in hundreds of corpses and possibly, your execution by gangsters. It doesn't help that nobody ever notices or remembers the ones that don't fuck up.

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Re: A job that burns up people

I think you'll find that film's called "Pushing Tin".

AI infrastructure investment may be $8T shot in the dark

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"A lack of clarity about future demand makes precise investment calculations difficult."

Translation:

"We pulled these figures out of our arse.".

Google details plans for 1 MW IT racks exploiting electric vehicle supply chain

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Re: Three-phase

Er, that's actually: True/False/Wrong/Kitty/Wibble Wibble, I'm a teapot, FERTANG!

Linux in Excel? Sure, why not ruin both

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Re: The idea of...

You do know that, somewhere, there's a P&L analysis spreadsheet that's waaay more complicated than that?

Organically grown over the last 40 years, nobody understands it but, as the results are acceptable, nobody questions it.

Soviet probe from 1972 set to return to Earth ... in May 2025

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If it hits the Kremlin..

.. I'd take that as proof of the existence of God.

AI training license will allow LLM builders to pay for content they consume

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Meh

Here's how this works.

1) Non-profit proposes license.

2-99) Blah

100) Government mandates licensing.

101) AI mobs buy licenses.

102) AI mobs charge for services to cover licensing cost.

103) AI mob in (for the sake of argument) China says that decadent westerners can shove their licensing regime up sideways and carries on as before with leeching and free service.

104) Chinese AI pwns the world and everyone else goes titsup.com

This is the inevitable result of some bunch of idealistic twatspanners attempting to stuff the genie back into the bottle wth the sink plunger.

Fedora 42 has the Answer, but Ubuntu's Plucky Puffin isn't far behind

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Facepalm

In base 13, you see, six multiplied by nine is 42.

Maybe so. But more importantly, on the prehistoric Earth (notable for the copious and oft-mentioned trees), Arthur got a caveman to pull letters from the scrabble bag in an attempt to discern the Ultimate Question Of Life, The Universe And Everything.

W-H-A-T-D-O-Y-O-U-G-E-T-I-F-Y-O-U-M-U-L-T-I-P-L-Y-S-I-X-B-Y-N-I-N-E is what emerged.

"Six by nine? 42?"

"I always knew that there was something fundamentally wrong with the Universe..."

Booby-trapped Alpine Quest Android app geolocates Russian soldiers

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Since the analysis was provided by a Russian mob, I doubt it's doing anything at all these days.

Trump kills clearances for infosec's SentinelOne, ex-CISA boss Chris Krebs

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Facepalm

Apparently, Trump is playing 5D chess.

He doesn't have a chess set, so he's using draughts.

He also doesn't have a chess board, so he's using a piece of paper.

He's been told that there's a gulf in class between the games, but he ignored that as nobody could tell him what the gulf was called.

(No, the world is not laughing with you...)

M365 Family users wake up to notice 'Your subscription expired'

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Facepalm

That message comes up all the time...

Usually in the spam folder though.

Oracle says its cloud was in fact compromised

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Meh

...enlisted CrowdStrike to straighten out this mess.

Let me guess, Oracle are going to get them to completely bollocks up everyone's machine so nobody can see the stolen data and that'll make the problem go away.

That massive GitHub supply chain attack? It all started with a stolen SpotBugs token

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Re: KISS

Or, in other words, the easier and more convenient it is to use, the more vulnerable it is.

Trouble is, people like the convenience of all their disparate pieces of shit being able to talk to each other. The upshot is that if you do produce rigidly secure, tightly scoped, siloed systems, you'll get arseraped in the market by some bunch of trendy "workflow" friendly swiss-cheese-security products.

NASA doubles odds of Moon hitting near-Earth asteroid

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Coat

Re: Our moon has protected us

It's been done. In the words of Paul McCartney:

Mull of Kintyre / With fish strolling in from the sea....

Meanwhile, in Japan, train stations are being 3D-printed in an afternoon

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Flame

I wonder...

...how many attempts they needed to get what's in the picture, rather than most of it and a rat's nest of random strands?

Yes, I do have a 3D printer. How did you know?

Microsoft tastes the unexpected consequences of tariffs on time

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Mushroom

Just out of interest..

..is there actually anything at all out there where a decent set of written instructions/information for it, with illustrations, doesn't kick the living shit out of a video trying to convey the same information?

NASA's inbox goes orbital after email mishap spams entire space industry

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Meh

Email?

It's not exactly Rocket Science you know..

CISA fires, now rehires and immediately benches security crew on full pay

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Re: President Musk is incompetent

Ah yes. The Poundland Medvedev.

I'd forgotten about him... just like everyone else.

The ups and down of a virtual trip to the Moon in Zero G's 727

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"...anyone who goes to space should do a Zero-G flight first."

Yup. Get the pizza topping out of your system where it can be easily sorted when the gravity comes back on.

Microsoft signed a dodgy driver and now ransomware scum are exploiting it

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Coat

Re: Didn't Paragon donate this code to the Linux kernel ntfs3 driver?

Hence the old saying: "Beware of geeks bearing gifts.".

Does terrible code drive you mad? Wait until you see what it does to OpenAI's GPT-4o

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Terminator

...which did not go off the rails to advocate human enslavement...

Scientific method says that it's equally as likely that well-trained AI systems know to bullshit this one.

They did test for that... right?

US Dept of Housing screens sabotaged to show deepfake of Trump sucking Elon's toes

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Meh

Fakery.

Musk has two left feet for example...

Also not webbed. Even more of a giveaway that.

NASA's on-again, off-again job cuts – what's the plan?

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Meh

Re: The reason is in there.

Maybe, but the psychotic nazi pulling Trump's strings isn't telling him to make China's space agency look like the world leader.

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Black Helicopters

The reason is in there.

NASA is also the very definition of soft power..

Which means that he's going to have to really fuck it up to give Roscosmos the lead.

I'm afraid that it's becoming obvious that the ex-Soviet guy who outed Trump as a KGB asset the other day was telling the truth. Fortunately for Putin's little bitch, he's already made sure that any organisation that might investigate this is now run by one of the most lickspittle of his toadies.

Los Alamos boffins slap blinkers on satellites so we know who to blame in a crash

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Black Helicopters

Re: Fetch the tinfoil now!

I'm guessing that these scientists are actually Evil Geniuses For A Better Tomorrow then.

I wonder who's pulling their strings..

Hundreds of Dutch medical records bought for pocket change at flea market

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Facepalm

Obvious, really.

...used to be based in Breda before going out of business.

Company goes bust, receivers flog off any assets, creditors and shareholders get almost bugger all back. There usually isn't much by way of handover of the assets concerned and the process tends to be along the lines of "auction it off and ignore any objections".

Looks like there may be a bankruptcy shaped loophole in the legislation governing data destruction.

SpaceX Crew Dragons swapped so ISS crew can go home early

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Coat

Bloody typical.

You wait nine months for a Dragon and then two turn up at once.

Tiny Linux kernel tweak could cut datacenter power use by 30%, boffins say

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Facepalm

Well, well.

So getting your code optimised by people who have a deep understanding of the language, know how the hardware works and know what they're doing makes it more efficient?

I'm afraid this missive from The Department of Stating the Bleedin' Obvious is going to go down like a cup of warm sick in India.

Boeing, Boeing, burned: Over half a billion dollars by Starliner in 2024

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Alert

It should be worse for them.

...were instead left on the International Space Station (ISS)

As this is entirely their fault, NASA really should bill Boeing for the overtime and cost of the return taxi.

Poisoned Go programming language package lay undetected for 3 years

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Facepalm

...a single cryptocurrency project with just seven followers.

Looks like someone's get rich quick scheme failed to take off.

Guess who left a database wide open, exposing chat logs, API keys, and more? Yup, DeepSeek

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Facepalm

Journalism.

I see you asked Deepseek the company for comment and they haven't said anything.

Why didn't you ask Deepseek itself? That would have been interesting. I'll bet there's no point now because it never happened, just like much of China's recent history according to Deepseek.

Ransomware scum make it personal for Reg readers by impersonating tech support

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If I were to impersonate you and rip a load of people off, who do you think they would blame?

Likewise, if some bunch of rancid shitstains impersonates your IT support team and.....(etc)?

First Foxconn, now Microsoft: Wisconsin town dissed by big tech

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See elsewhere for details.

That pause for planning changes due to new technology?

Tenner says a Small Modular Reactor for a decent low-carbon greenwash.

Telco security is a dumpster fire and everyone's getting burned

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I wish them luck.

Now, I have to suspect that anything important is being covered by end-to-end encryption, so they're getting the trivia.

I'm sure they're loving Mrs Miggins' 2 hour call to her friend on the subject of her lad's piles.

Ransom gang claims attack on NHS Alder Hey Children's Hospital

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Facepalm

Re: No mercy for vermin who attack healthcare

Meanwhile, Syria is up to 500,000 odd so far.

But then Iran don't have a dog in that fight and aren't getting their stooges to stir up the "useful idiots" and make a fuss about it.

NASA's X-59 plane is aiming for a sonic thump, not a boom

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Re: Thump, not Boom, was what Concorde sounded like

I found myself underneath one when it was at high angle of attack on final to land, while I was sat in an MGB with the top down.

Once it got to about a mile ahead of me, I got pressed into the seat by the confined sheet of air producing the additional lift effect off that ogee wing. Very impressive bit of work that, making it produce waaaayyyyy more lift when it's most needed without resorting to variable geometry, like everyone else did.

Tech support chap showed boss how to use a browser for a year – he still didn't get it

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Staffing problem.

...the company employed a driver who took its directors' cars to the petrol station...

I'd have thought they'd be able to run to a secretary to click the boss' Internet Explorer icon for him then.

Supply chain management vendor Blue Yonder succumbs to ransomware

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Coat

Blue Yonder's customers, however, are reportedly suffering.

Suffering as a Service?

BOFH: The devil's in the contract details

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Re: The view

Or the roof:

"Oh that? It's a trebuchet. My assistant does stuff at the weekend with some very odd people and this is the best place to keep it.. of course you can have a closer look.".

Helpline for Yakuza victims fears it leaked their personal info

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Meh

He cut off the internet...

And now he gets to cut off his own little finger.

Rust haters, unite! Fil-C aims to Make C Great Again

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Facepalm

Memory safe language number scramson.

Do you know why C and C++ remain so popular?

Because there's only one of each of them, so you don't have to start from scratch whenever the flavour of the month changes.

Airbus A380 flew for 300 hours with metre-long tool left inside engine

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Re: "as it would pass through the rotating blades during flight"

Probably more a capon or a small duck.

UK government plays power broker with small modular reactor suitors

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Facepalm

Dunno why they bother.

They apparently have to have competitive tendering. This means dragging other companies into the design / build process and pissing a load of time and money on the wall.

Then they go with the lowest bidder, which makes no difference as the project will come in waaayyyyy over budget anyway like all public-sector crap.

It'd probably work out cheaper and quicker to just pick some mob who chuck a decent bribe or whose CEO's kids go to school with the minister's and give them the job.