Posts by Adair

The cloud-native imperative for effective cyber resilience

Re: "The rapid growth of cloud and AI has unlocked unprecedented agility and scale."

I would upvoter this multiple times.

The article has surely been written by a bot.

We're number 1! Windows 11 finally overtakes Windows 10

Re: 2.17%

I'm sure your 'Linux instability' is a real thing in your case. Might be worth finding out why, in the light of the fact that millions of other people find Linux as, if not more, stable as Windows.

Kawasaki and Foxconn build robot nursing assistant to tackle hospital scutwork

Re: Hello nurse!

If I woke up next to that thing I'd think I'd had I was having a psychotic episode.

The eyes! The eyes!

(see title)

Wayback gives X11 desktops a fighting chance in a Wayland world

It has to be said

... regardless of the rights and wrongs of Wayland's devs, they don't help themselves with a development process that is bordering on fusion-like timescales: it's always just n years away.

I suppose they may eventually reach some kind of Xsane-like stability, with version 0.999999, being as humble as they are and willing to admit that perfection can never be achieved, but they still ain't there yet.

Re: Fiddling about while Linux burns.

I always understood that the point of Wayland was to simplify things for machines that never ever require a GUI to be served over a network, i.e. your average home PC and a fairly large proportion of business PCs—do one job and do it well: present graphical info to the local machine. End of story.

Possibly 'religion' and 'feature creep' have got a hold since those innocent days.

Folks aren’t buying the PCs that US vendors stockpiled to dodge tariffs

Re: This isn't like Windows XP

Wikipedia is your friend, you should try it:

'Proton is a compatibility layer that allows Windows software (primarily video games) to run on Linux-based operating systems. Proton is developed by Valve in cooperation with developers from CodeWeavers. It is a collection of software and libraries combined with a patched version of Wine to improve performance and compatibility with Windows games. Proton is designed for integration into the Steam client as "Steam Play". It is officially distributed through the client, although third-party forks can be manually installed.'

Re: This isn't like Windows XP

Perhaps MS should just see the writing on the wall and concentrate on extorting money out of businesses who are well and truly 'locked in', and just let the 'domestic user' go. The 'home PC' is rapidly becoming an historic artifact, except for those with real IT interests/needs and those sorts of users are just as likely to be using some other OS anyway. Apart from gamers, and even they have other options these days.

The year of the European Union Linux desktop may finally arrive

Re: It's the final countdown.

In reality 'the bad people' don't win in the end. They die, just like 'the good people', and everyone in between. It's called 'the human condition'. The dividing between good and bad is a misdirection from the truth: we're all a mixture, and some of us are definitely worse than others, but one way or another we're all responsible for what we contribute to 'the way things are'.

By all means 'make the most of' the world we inhabit, but it's up to each of us to decide what that means in practise. Of course, we all get to experience the consequences of the choices we all make—for better and for worse.

But don't go looking for scapegoats, that behaviour is a sure sign of irresponsible, poor-me, it's all someone else's fault, 'toddler' behaviour. Plenty of us are guilty of it.

Windows 11 migration heats up... on desktops

Re: fingerprinting OS

Interesting, my desktop systems are all Linux and I have no problems logging into Rakutan Kobo to access my ebooks (for years).

Suggests your problem is particular to something in your setup - maybe corrupt file - rather than RK having a downer on Linux.

The AIpocalypse is here for websites as search referrals plunge

Why

would anyone want or need to use Google search?

It's a long time since it offered significantly better search than other sources.

The fact that loads of people use Google out of ignorance or unthinking habit doesn't make using it somehow 'okay'.

Shit is shit, with and without added glitter - why eat it?

BTW, I stopped using Google years ago. It doesn't miss me, and I definitely don't miss it.

Xlibre fork lights a fire under long-dormant X.org development

But this is absolutely primary, unexceptional 'corporatist' behaviour. The big beasts in the jungle get to do what they want, when they want, how they want, etc.

The strength/weakness of FLOSS is that nobody actually 'owns' the code—it's evolution in the raw.

But it does rely, in the end, totally on enough people and institutions being willing, and able, to fight the good fight to survive, whether through forks or other evolutionary arguments.

Very worthy code may well end up extinct, simply through 'fashion', lack of interest, etc. That's the price we pay where 'nobody owns the code' and anybody can stick their fork in it, or simply ignore it.

Doesn't GIMP, in its proper native form, shotgun its windows all over the screen—and expect them to be where they were next time?

/e/ OS 3.0: Slightly less clunky, slightly more private

Re: The most important question

We all have to take personal responsibility for our chosen level of paranoia.

Danish department determined to dump Microsoft

Just to give an example back at you: I was involved in a hospital (8,000+ staff) changing it's primary patient record handling software. This is not a trivial matter on many levels and requires a really good answer to a major question: "Do we really need to do this, because almost everyone is going to really hate it, and however organised we are there are going to be some really hard problems?"

Project went ahead, with two/three years preparation, then finally zero day arrived. As predicted the weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth could have been heard from the Moon (assuming atmosphere from here to there). Despite ample training opportunities on the new system a considerable proportion of the staff using the system relied pretty much completely on 'muscle memory' alone, i.e. have no understanding of IT systems—a computer might as well be a magic box.

Six months later, it might as well have never happened. The outrageous, unusable 'new' had become everyone's 'normal'.

The question is: is your change really needed, to justify the pain and anguish that must be gone through in order to achieve the goal? Get the answer right, and there is a good chance the goal will be achieved, and the pain worthwhile.

As for 'power users'—it's a junk term, that describes nothing useful.

Re: No Discussion Here About Communication.....

'...a lot of people do use them for real reasons...'

Yep, and a lot of people use them for real reasons VERY BADLY. As I experience on a regular basis, having to 'deconstruct' formatting where the creator is clearly still using a typewriter (in their mind), although they have managed to embrace Bold and Emphasised.

A lot of 'business' documents created in any WYSIWYG word-processor are an absolute shambles. So many people have either never been trained properly, or simply can't be bothered to learn how to use the tools they have to work with beyond the absolute basics. 'Notepad', or equivalent, would do them just fine—a digital typewriter.

To reiterate, in my experience and view, 'power user' is a junk expression that only means anything to someone using it about themselves to massage their fragile ego.

Are you a 'power user', am I? Where is that qualification to be found and taken seriously on any CV?

And, institutional change is difficult, but where it is justified and for the good of the institution and it's service anyone worth their salt gets behind it and makes it happen, whatever the whining from 'power users'.

Change that is unjustified, merely to massage someone's ego, or their efforts to claw their way up the status pole, or about political in-fighting, will be rightfully resented, resisted, and sabotaged.

No one is under any obligation to agree with the above, but in my book anyone describing themselves as a 'power user' gets an immediate question mark next to their name.

For a start, 'powe user' is a bullshit term that has nothing to do with IT professionals.

And secondly, I'm talking about change for good reasons, not arbitrary manglement power games.

Any 'power user' who can't cope with change (and do it with enthusiasm and creativity), by definition, is NOT a power user. Rather they are sad, self-important people who probably deserve to clear their desk and find a job more suited to their talents.

£127M wasted on failed UK nuclear cleanup plan

Re: The TOC of nuclear energy

Oh, look, £14B of national treasure ponied up for 'Sizewell C'.

Who in their tiny little right-thinking mind believes for one moment that that figure is in any way remotely in touch with what will be the actual cost of construction, let alone in contact with the reality of the overall cost of creating, running, decommissioning and final safe disposal of everything that constitutes 'Sizewell C'?

It's a scam, with added vain political posturing. Yes, it will, probably, eventually generate quite a lot of power for a few years. That's about all we can say. The rest of it is just a game of buck-passing, while certain entities parasitise the national common weal.

Nothing remotely new in that, but the dishonesty of it is a shame.

Re: The TOC of nuclear energy

O dear, the point being—which I am sure you are sensible enough to understand perfectly well—that 'the numbers' are irrelevant, it's the 'actual cost' two/three/four/... generations down the line that has any meaning.

In the present the politicians and money grubbers are desperate to kick the 'actual cost' can down the road and leave it to those later generations to deal with. Those numbers are not 'imaginary', or 'make believe', and someone has to pay.

The TOC of nuclear energy

Take an imaginary number, multiply it by another imaginary number, then ask your third generation descendants what it has cost—so far.

It's a lovely technological exercise; but a financial black-hole—with huge efforts going into hiding that fact from the paying public, especially from that they pay at the meter.

Linux Foundation tries to play peacemaker in ongoing WordPress scuffle

Re: Doomed; Mullenweng wants control and money

You're right, it's only a question of the point at which enough people have had enough of the self-serving game playing and take drastic action, a la 'OpenOffice' => 'LibreOffice'.

Of course, that point may never be reached, or there may never be sufficient people with the capacity to make the fork, but that is simply the reality of 'open source' code. Just as the 'proprietary/hidden-code' model has it's plusses and minuses, so does 'open source'.

There's no point us whining when what we have knowingly 'bought into' occasionally turns and bites us.

Evolution is highly effective, but no one ever suggests it's quick, or always successful.

Re: Doomed; Mullenweng wants control and money

Two things:

1. in principle 'Open Source' indicates the code doesn't 'belong' to anyone, and

2. there is always the option to stick a fork in it and simply flow around the obstruction.

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

Reality speaks

... in a room full of sycophantic ideological idiots.

Does reality get taken seriously?

Japan's latest Moon landing written off as a failure after ispace probe goes dark

Re: Only the one lazer?

Uptick for the LASER pointer

Downtick for having a sense of humour bypass when it comes to failing to appreciate the importance of 'importanter' in the context of the article and El Reg.

Ukrainians smuggle drones hidden in cabins on trucks to strike Russian airfields

Re: We know what was destroyed, Treaties not planes.

Time to get a new sock-puppet, I think. Content by 'GNU SedGawk' is now irredeemably assigned to the category of 'Malicious Drivel'

The world is a difficult enough place without people like you adding to the general misery.

I am sorry you have nothing better to do with your time; you are certainly wasting mine, so this will be the last from me.

Re: A remarkable raid

Very sadly true, and the raid wasn't ultimately all that useful in terms of 'loss of production capacity', but it was certainly audacious.

Re: Meanwhile

Ye gods, have the blaggard black-balled immediately!

Re: What I noticed...

Nothing much wrong with Signal, but some of its users? Well we all know about people, especially 'arrogant idiots'.

Re: To quote a fictional

The only militaries who are targeting civilians are the Israelis

Looks like you really need to climb out of your echo chamber and re-join reality, otherwise you're in serious danger of harming yourself, if not other people.

Or, maybe you're just a very sad example of a disinformation troll.

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

Re: Thanks but no thanks

Indeed, which highlights the arrogance and egregiousness of the attitude that insists on the fingerprinting of people who are merely 'transiting' between aircraft for destinations in other countries, i.e. have absolutely no intention of 'entering' the US.

Gave up going via the US years ago. Dubai/Singapore offer a far more sane and humane transit experience.

Very droll.

'If you think people are smart enough to NOT want the dark ages, you are naive.'

Where did I imply anything of the sort, or anything at all? It was a straight question, without implication or pre-supposition. You seem to have read into it what you wanted to.

My question to the OP remains: what exactly do they imagine will replace the status quo?

And, we can add: do they imagine it will be any better?

Re: Thanks but no thanks

The first part of your comment matches my own position, except that I have only ever been in 'transit'.

They can't seem to cope with the reality that not everyone wants to actually 'visit' 'The Land Of The Free'.

To be replaced by what?

Some signs of AI model collapse begin to reveal themselves

Highlights the problem of 'Artificial Intelligence' ...

a. it's 'artificial', so, by definition, removed from 'reality', and

b. it's not intelligent.

'Close to impossible' for Europe to escape clutches of US hyperscalers

Re: Well

'Lots if Eurocrats are deeply corrupt'

Either that is self-serving bullshit, or a description of bureaucrats in general because, you know, human beings.

So, quit your whining and get out there and do something that is both useful and good. At least you will keep your integrity, and may help others to do the same.

'...we do have to conclude that technological progress is very, very likely to happen.'

But not as a continuous unbroken upward progress, as you acknowledge. That is a problem.

Three hundred years from now no one anywhere may have a clue, or anything like the technical capacity, to manage a rotting nuclear pile.

Thousands of rotting wind turbines are nothing much to worry about, likewise solar panels, but a nuclear legacy isn't such a happy gift to descendants.

But the real lie about nuclear is that it is cheap. It isn't even 'reassuringly expensive' in a good value for money kind of way. It is basically a massive rip-off of tax payers' money, based on hubris and greed.

A sad testimony to the dark side of 'technological progress'.

Welcome to Sol III.

We always get this, "if only they wouldn't fritter away the money on other things nuclear would save the day".

But still the 'Total Cost' of nuclear is quietly ignored. It is a fabulously expensive way to generate electricity, and not just in pure money terms. The level of technical skill is huge, all the way down the line, from start to finish. That, in itself is 'unsustainable' and adds fragility.

Any idea that nuclear is 'the answer' is just fantasy. It may well have a place, but by any reckoning it's not a sensible long term bet, certainly not for sustaining the bulk of the world's electricity needs.

We seem to have this odd idea that technological progress is an inevitable given. That things can only get better, despite all the historical evidence to the contrary, and the evidence playing out in front of our eyes that there's a decent chance we are really going to stuff up our civilization. Maybe we won't, but I wouldn't be counting on nuclear to save the day on the energy side of things.

'if climate activists had stopped complaining about nuclear being too slow to solve the problem'

Well that's self-serving bollocks for a start.

The fact that 'nuclear' has, and always has had, massive cost-effectiveness questions hanging over it, always seems to get swept under the carpet.

It was a case of: we've got this technology for making very noisy explosions, but it's epically expensive—we really need some way to make it cuddly.

IDEA: power too cheap to meter.

RESULT: epically expensive power to the masses, with added creativity to keep as much of the expense as possible as far away from the meters as possible.

AWS says Britain needs more nuclear power to feed AI datacenter surge

Re: Hmm

You expecting 'catastrophe' to happen at your convenience?

In the geological scheme of things 100 years, or 1000, are pretty much the same—a mere breath. And within that time you and I will have been and gone.

So, how quick do you want ecological catastrophe to be?

If it happens, whether it's all over by tomorrow, or still rolling out in a thousand years time, it will still be 'ecological catastrophe'.

Better stock up on the popcorn—could be a long wait (for one human lifetime).

Re: Hmm

Just because we can do something doesn't make doing it sensible.

Nuclear fission as a source of power is entirely dependent on a 'hi-tech' society able to pay the enormous costs in construction, maintenance, decommissioning, and safety all down the line for generations afterwards.

There is absolutely no guarantee whatsoever that such a society, let alone civilisation, will exist in 200 years, let alone 500 years plus.

Basically a very expensive, irresponsible technological, positivist wet dream, for those who can afford it - for a while.

Burning stuff to generate power on a global level is, in its own way, clearly just as dumb and selfish.

But never underestimate human capacity for actions that are dumb or selfish, and frequently both.

Good things also happen. ;-)

Re: Hmm

Nuclear fission (and fusion at present) is basically a gigantic moneysink, with a lethally toxic legacy to hand on to many generations to come.

Fossil fuels aren't much different in terms of consequences.

Which really leaves us with learning to make the best of energy sources that really don't stuff things up for people (and creatures) down the line who had no say in the selfishness, ignorance, and stupidity of their ancestors.

AWS is welcome to start spending on nuclear build

... just not in my backyard, or anywhere else on the planet.

Nuclear may be a very pleasant and interesting technical exercise (and even eventually delivers—up to a point), but as a socially responsible exercise in affordable financing and practical sustainability: FOAD.

I listened to the interview on this morning's 'Today' and the guy came across as just another self-absorbed money-grubber, i.e. "You (the people) take all the risk, and we'll take all the money. Cheers".

Microsoft winnows: Layoffs hit software engineers hard

The MS Enshitiffication Project

... gains speed, as it takes strategic steps to ensure its survival and ultimate victory.

Sci-fi author Neal Stephenson wants AIs fighting AIs so those most fit to live with us survive

Re: imagination - what some people are better at than others...

'or your dog food'

Semantically and grammatically this phrase doesn't parse with the rest of the statement. Presumably you meant to say: 'or you are dog food', which could be informally expressed as: 'or you're dog food'.

Whether our pearls of wisdom are handwritten or typed it does pay to at least think about the rules to ensure clear transmission of meaning.

I mean, think of the LLMs, poor things.

Trump says he has a problem if Apple builds iThings in India

Trump has a problem

That certainly is the truth.