Posts by QET

A modest proposal: Reformat everything to make documents more palatable to AI

This sounds like a sloperator problem being presented as a everyones problem...

Which is another way for me to say "how about no..."

Flatpak-NG sounds like bad news for systemd refuseniks

Re: About Flatpak

Well, there is installation convenience for the end-user, and fire-and-forget software release for developers.

The problem is, less-than-favorable compromises has, and will, be made for that to happen. Which inevitably leads back to good ol' "if it's worth doing, it's worth doing it right the first time" rearing its head once more...

AI is code – and can't be prompted into being smarter

Re: Hilarious article leads to question

"The question is how can we prevent things we don't want becoming input to the LLM? The solution is still being worked on"

Unfortunately, best way would be to get rid of the prompt and instead have a sanitized interface of sort which would only permit input considered to be valid to be, well, inputted.

But that requires work and effort to set up, and also greatly limits the flexibility, even if said flexibility is the epitome of "jack of all trades, master of none"

GitHub nukes 70+ Microsoft repos, breaks CI/CD pipelines, following suspected worm infections

Re: Hunting AI developers

That's the gist I'm getting too.

"AI" "assistants" built-in into software development programs helpfully assisted by making the worm propagate.

AKA fully automated "move fast and break things".

The future is grand if you're a scumbag or a sucker.

FCC warns US broadcasters their licenses are a privilege, not a right

The dumbasses-in-charge DO know this can later backfire towards Fox "news" et al, when they're no longer in charge, right?

Right?...

Anthropic co-founder hallucinates ghost in the machine

Ever heard someone defending something, where their arguments only made it worse?

Yeah, what this guy from Anthropic waffled on about is exactly like that.

Would've been better for the company if he acted like a clam and shut up instead.

Pope Leo warns AI boom can give Big Tech and the people who run it too much power

AI boom can give Big Tech and the people who run it too much power

Implying techbros (who all currently are "AI" shills in one way or another) and Big Tech don't already have too much power...

I mean it's the same with people in politics who know somewhere in-between fuck and all about technology (or generally anything negatively affecting the common populace), or just happens to be easily legally (or "legally enough") bribe-able.

Goddamnit I hate this stupid time line, making me agree with the current head of the Catholic religion.

A Russian speaker and jailbroken Gemini went on a hacking spree and emptied at least one MAGA victim's crypto wallets

Re: Only problem I see

Starting to suspect the Putin loyal hacking groups might be told to scrape together funds for the 4+ year long "special military operation", and as always, easy marks are first choice.

Because I doubt even Agent Orange's fuckup in Iran will make Russia able to sell enough petroleum products to turn the tide of the state coffers drain rate.

Besides, the US is already in disarray, so mission is already accomplished on that front.

Re: Jailbreaking?

The guardrails ain't doin' much guarding to keep things from going off-rails if they're a mere suggestion.

Were the guardrails themselves vibe-coded? Silly question, the answer is obvious...

Frustrated franchisee sues Pizza Hut over crappy kitchen AI

Re: AI?

I'll 100% bet the software shitshow is the pinnacle of vibe-coding.

Although obviously not a positive example, but that's redundant regarding anything AI that's propped up with pride like the "we're tired of listening to professionals" anti-intellectuals who are bursting with pride that they're practically drooling knuckledraggers whose outsourced their critical thinking.

Google Cloud suspended major customer Railway.com without cause, causing outage

Re: In-house

Relying on a service by another company to handle it, makes said another company a single-point-of-failure.

Like what just happened...

If they'd stitched something together themselves from rented servers from different providers all around the world, along with redundancy (including the control nodes), it wouldn't have collapsed like a house of cards.

But all that also requires in-house technical experts to set-up and maintain it, something accounting and C-suite would be giddy to outsource wholesale to cheapest option because it makes the budgets look nice'n'neat.

Gtk2-NG, next generation of Gtk 2, comes back to life

Re: CTK for GTK3 fork

Worst part is, I can understand the reasoning behind Waylands existence (although definitely not the implementation), since the first sentence that comes to mind regarding X11 is "load-bearing technical debt".

While SystemD from the get-go seemed like the brainchild of people who couldn't handle criticism and always thought they were correct.

Those types of people are almost universally wrong until proven otherwise, but in this special case, they have the clout to force their thing onto everyone else.

Bun posts Rust porting guide, says rewrite is still half-baked

With a cherrypicking flavored whataboutism comment like that, I can safely say I see why you chose to be AC...

Re: "no human contribution allowed"

That image is how I imagine someone convinced Elon Musk to do all the drugs that he does.

"

Whether Bun migrates to Rust or not, Sumner is convinced that open source software (OSS) will make increasing use of AI. Commenting on Zig's AI ban, he said on X: "I expect OSS to go the opposite direction: no human contribution allowed." People will still discuss issues and prioritization, he said, "but the actual act of writing code, of submitting PRs, of replaying and addressing feedback, of implementation will be LLMs."

"

Is he completely ignoring the fact many flock to OSS due to the high amount of focus on ethics?

Ethics like "AI" trained on content without explicit and verbose permission for each and every bit of code-base hoovered up for training is not only prohibited, but hard-stop one of the biggest sins imaginable?

Zed team releases version 1.0 of Rust-built editor: Traditional editor and AI tool

I've only met very few people who I've immediately thought "they should have their arms forcibly amputated, because otherwise they're a danger to not only themselves, but everyone else", and he's definitely one of them.

Sounds like he's not using them anyway, so no big loss tbh.

Microsoft boss tells investors the company is working to 'win back fans'

Re: Personally I think the rot started with Ballmer

Well Win8 happened on his watch, so yeah.

Though that seemed like it originally came to be because upper echelon at MS felt their desktop & laptop OS was threatened by Android & Apple tablets, which IMO was the dumbest assumption they could've made.

Instead of sticking to what they knew well and spicing it up with what the users actually wanted...

Basically what people genuinely want is windows7++, with all the "innovations" after 7 being optional & granular user-installable add-ons.

All that requires effort though, which post-Nadella MS is chronically lacking.

Unless it's effort in fucking functioning things up.

Re: Fans! Fans! Fans!

Some ol' fashioned manure spreaders were basically just directing a stream of liquid shit towards what's essentially a centrifugal fan in order to spread it on the field while being towed by a tractor.

Nowadays though, it's more tactical, in that it's directed out to hose ends that are almost drug along the ground right above the plants roots.

Less nutrients loss and also less stank.

Cybersec is a thankless job: expanding workload and shrinking pay packet

I'm not at all surprised that management neglects roles that essentially are about prevention.

As the late Trevor Kletz often said regarding the chemical industry: "if you think safety is expensive, try having an accident", which IMO should be chiseled into the forehead of everyone in a management position.

Ex-AWS legend explains what enterprises need to make AI actually work

The days when customers would accept poorly designed products are gone, Domo insists.

Microsoft and big tech as a whole, "AI" sloppers and "AI" shills beg to differ...

Microsoft tackles quality control issues. Just kidding, it's encouraging experienced workers to leave

The irony obviously being that for quality to quantitatively improve, the irredeemable sloppers and related "use AI" incentives are what actually should be on the chopping block, followed closely by the senior devs training the bright and young ones who's not "AI" addicts.

But this is modern day MS, where the OS no longer is the primary income source, but rather a way to retain market share.

Trump to UK: Stop taxing our big beautiful tech corps or face tariff tsunami

Re: Booting Spain out of NATO.

Didn't he last time people in the US made the mistake of voting for him, threaten to pull the US out of NATO?

I mean hypocrisy is expected from him, but most literal cartoon villains are at least consistent with what they want.

You can now run WSL on Windows 95, in case you're crazy, too

Windows 11's existence can best be described as brute force & ignorance incarnate.

Ignorance in what the users of the operating system wanted and/or needed, versus what the powers there be at Microsoft decreed.

And brute force in how it's being forced through despite user-base pushback and negative feedback.

This is so stupid and so goddamn crazy.

Hell, it's batshit insanity incarnate, which no sane individual would ever attempt.

And yet, I love it...

American farms have a new steward for their safety net, disaster programs... Palantir

Given that Peter Thiel et al of Palantir is idealogically similar to Elon Musk, except without strong self-sabotaging tendencies, my nicest and least foulmouthed response to this can be summarized as: "uh no, how about NOT doing that..."

Linux may get a hall pass from one state age-check bill, but Congress plays hall monitor

Re: another reason to block linux

Outsourcing causing trouble for everyone else yet again, in this case though, it's parenting.

Users complain that UK Azure is having capacity problems

Re: Users forget

This can only be Weapon of Mass Destruction class satire, because the cognitive dissonance required to sincerely believe that, would severely impede the ability to coherently type down a long sentence...

Such a shame all the big tech & techbro companies went balls-deep on cranking up "AI" datacenters instead of minding the actual need of their customers...

Although in this case, it's probably a rack row or aisle that had a oopsie, so the hard load limit naturally had to be lowered.

Though I'd laugh like a unrestrained maniac if it wasn't the latter, and the whole "AI" craze has caused MS to treat their cloudy biz in the UK like how a deadbeat parent would, criminal neglect and all...

Brussels tells Google to hand rivals its search crown jewels as privacy row brews

Let's be real here, it's data Google also ethically and morally has no business of having.

So the only logical outcome is for said user tracking data to simply not exist. As in hard delete, and no further user data harvesting.

Which IMO is a punishment much more fitting than pittance fines.

Re: Sounds like BS

Google has multiple times been proven they're not above dirty tricks, which most of the time were (at least at the time) technically legal on vague technicalities.

Which implies that a part of their supposed success is achieved such way that's basically best described as dirty tricks.

So it's the best way to level the playing field rather than more fines, which if constructed correctly, will actually hurt Google where it stings.

The whole "user tracking privacy" part just implies that even Google shouldn't have been using that kind of data in the first place.

So if Google isn't using the "think of our users privacy" defense to just keep on truckin' as usual, they'd "rm -rf"d that data already.

Re: Sounds like BS

Government overreach?

This is a case of regulatory bodies having been dragging their feet for about 15 years and FINALLY got its shit together to do something...

Locked-out iPhone user tells The Reg that Apple is scrambling to fix character flaw passcode bug

Re: Apple...Or Someone Else?

Would be mighty embarrassing if a 3LA can fix a obscure yet monumental fuckup on Apple's part, and at the same time, point out more security flaws.

Though I'd bet the agencies in question would really prefer to keep those known software loopholes for juicier targets.

QUIC will soon be as important as TCP – but it's vastly different

Re: elephant in the room (or web page)

The amount of user-side scripts used to deliver content is in some cases mind-boggling.

If it wasn't for a good part of that being "user tracking and fingerprinting" and slinging adverts, I'd say they're wholeheartedly trying to offload the actual need for a non-static-content web-server into your browser.

Bonus points if its content that's static web-page suited, just to really crank up the absurdity.

Loud, power hungry – opposition grows to datacenters as Maine passes bit barn ban

Re: Maine

It being cold outside is actually a advantage for datacenters, less energy is wasted on transporting the generated server heat outside.

The snag though is the humid climate doesn't lend itself well to evaporative chilling, which is a favorite of every "fuck you, got mine" datacentre developers who're depleting the available drinking water nearby.

Not to mention that once a datacentre has been constructed, it needs minimal amount of "human support", which is also why a "AI" bit barn popping up in your vicinity is all around a bad deal.

So ignoring evaporative cooling, and cynically, Maine isn't that bad of a place to plop one down

Notepad sheds Copilot from toolbar as Microsoft gives subtlety a try

Re: It's not all bad...

I mean, yeah, if we include third-party utilities, this is the situation where anyone sane would instinctively reply: "Notepad++, now what was the question?"

"Copilot button is reportedly missing from the latest Windows Insider build of Notepad. However, the omission speaks more to how toxic the Copilot brand has become than to the company rethinking its strategy of spraying AI across its product line."

So how long before the" AI" related buttons are gone from laptops and OEM desktop keyboards?

Re: It's not all bad...

That's WordPad territory...

Google Chrome lacks protection against one of the most basic and common ways to track users online

Well d'uh, that's by design...

Hell, the times Google proclaimed they were doing something about user privacy & "fingerprinting", it was in-the-end only to keep competitors out (IE: other web-user tracking companies).

But when anti-monopoly watchdogs came a'sniffin', Google, predictably, gave up instead of protecting the users against themselves (Google).

Microsoft developer chief Julia Liuson is logging off

Re: Pride

Delphi is surprisingly still popular with some demoscene groups.

Though they're the anathema of modern software development, in that they take pride in squeezing as much performance as possible out of hardware, unlike almost every rank-and-file developers.

I vibe coded a feed reading web app. It was enlightening and uncomfortable

Re: Ad as article

Only because of market inertia due to existing user-base, and brute force & ignorance.

Especially the very last bit, oh so much of that...

Chatbots are great at manipulating people to buy stuff, Princeton boffins find

Re: Amazon search sucks

Genuinely feels like that with Amazon's web bazaar, you're better off using a bog standard search engine instead with " site:Amazon.com " appended at the end of the search string.

Hungarian government creds left in the safe hands of 'FrankLampard'

Re: losing "ai" datacentre race.

Oh no, anyway...

Not like that isn't the perfect case of something that 100% needs to be retroactively nerfed to shit with proper regulations, instead of the usual techbro laissez faire BS.

I'd bet the "compromised" accounts are akin to leaving a spare key under the third flowerpot to the right of the front door for the Russian intelligences benefit.

IE: fully intentional, despite the denial.

NHS staff resist using Palantir software

Re: Exactly why we did the Opt-Out form

"hard backups" on paper is still common because you can't 100% trust a computer.

And the part of medical services that are 100% about helping the patients and not at all about profits for board members or shareholders, "trust but verify" reigns supreme.

Which is a surprisingly sane and sensible approach in the modern "move fast and break things" IT age that's also being infected with "AI"

But the more you blabber on, the more you're putting your ineptitude on display for the world to see.

Like the knuckledraggers who think asking ChatGPT why their car makes a occasional clunky sound makes them a master mechanic.

It also seems very strange that a gay man like Thiel would associate with fascists.

I'd not be surprised if he genuinely believes it's OK when he does it.

After all, you don't get to where you are with a company like Palantir, without immense hypocrisy and moral disconnect from society.

In fact: that's a feature, not a flaw.

Artemis II astronaut: 'I have two Microsoft Outlooks, and neither one of those are working'

Are we talking about Outlook, the desktop E-mail client suffering from a cocktail of neglect and enshittification? Or Hotmail, which got foolishly renamed to the same name as afromented desktop E-mail client?

WSL graphics driver update brings better GPU support for Linux apps

Re: integrated 32 and 64 bit WINE?

Late AF, but probably the same fashion ZFS gets around licensing differences with Linux, by using DKMS.

Which could also work for ported, simpler open-source drivers, but complex ones are going to be a whole different story.

Microsoft shivs OpenAI with three new AI models for speech and images

Not gonna be surprised if MicroSlop is using its old "embrace, extend, extinguish" regarding OpenAI.

Claim to be its buddy, while backstabbing them, so when bankruptcy happens, MS can buy the sorry leftovers dirt cheap.

Claude Code source leak reveals how much info Anthropic can hoover up about you and your system

OpenAI would clobber baby seals while cameras are rolling if they thought it improved their models with a few ppm's.

Whole "AI" gold rush is that psychopathic, and the masks hiding ir are slowly sliding off.