Posts by Andrew Williams

OpenAI opens ChatGPT floodgates with dirt-cheap API

Scraping any and all data as it goes

It didn’t learn from nothing, but from vast quantities of data scraped from anywhere Microsoft could get it from.

Microsoft accused of spending millions on bribes to seal business deals

Nothing has changed then

1980’s and on, Microsoft SOP

Razer ponders how to fix installer that grants admin powers if you plug in a mouse

So… Razer are fixing their installer. But Microsoft are not addressing the open window of an installer being used to hijack the system. I Mahoney quite a few naughty people will be stocking up on the “bad razer” items.

US Supreme Court rules teens cussing out schools on social media is protected speech

Seem to have given the green light to kids terroring their teachers.

What Microsoft's Windows 11 will probably look like

I look forward to the return of blue screens… the type associated with death.

Now that Trump is useless to Zuckerberg, ex-president is exiled from Facebook for two years, possibly indefinitely

Words to live by, if it’s a thing on social media… walk the other way, do not get involved. Engaging with lunatics never ever ends well for the non-lunatic.

Big Tech has a big problem with Florida passing a law that protects politicians from web moderation

Private businesses apparently cannot discriminate against people, or so the courts ruled regarding the bakers. So, why do social media private companies have the right to remove commentary that they do not like?

They dropped the “Covid came from the Chinese Lab” commentaries like they were hot. Now, they are all plausible and must be investigated.

Basically, social media needs to bake the cake that their users want to bake.

New Zealand hospitals infected by ransomware, cancel some surgeries

I have always wondered why so many people need external email. Same with external/internet access.

Freenode IRC staff resign en masse, unhappy about new management

Well, May Freenode resurrect itself, and get back to being decent.

Slack btw, is not nearly as much use as irc bot wars.

Guy who wrote women are 'soft, weak, cosseted, naive' lasted about a month at Apple until internal revolt

Angry mob rule…

That is pretty much a large part of the state of the world. The other part is the acceleration of dehumanization of everyone.

I am a widget who has no right to an opinion, and will celebrate being burnt at the stake when it happens. No rationale or reason needed.

Report: World's population of developers expands, JavaScript reigns, C# overtakes PHP

Bafflement…

I still have zero idea why these huge JavaScript and CSS black boxes even exist.

My two ideas are… raising the suicide rate, and that they must be a way of Hoovering loot out of companies while pretending they are are lean, efficient and absolutely necessary code. No proof or justification needed other than declaring it so. Oddly similar to the current “progressive” narrative where they are right and must be obeyed even if it means declaring gravity doesn’t exist, or that it’s inherently racist, because slaves… Newton.

They said it'd never happen, but here we are in the year of our Lord 2021 and Microsoft has its own OpenJDK flavour

One wonders what compelling magic they’re burying in their JDK that will make people want it? Especially seeing as it looks like their intent is to not feed whatever it is back into mainstream JDK

Director, deputy director, CTO of Free Software Foundation quit after Stallman installation

And not one of them will ever stop using stuff he made or contributed to.

Red Hat pulls Free Software Foundation funding over Richard Stallman's return

Until RedHat and the others decrying RMS divest themselves of any product he developed or had a hand in developing, they’re just a bunch of pathetic hypocrites.

'Agile' F-35 fighter software dev techniques failed to speed up supersonic jet deliveries

Agile as a brick

Understand the problem domain. Understand the problem. Produce a design. Come up with a build plan, with tests and checks etc.

Nah, duck it, let’s code something, anything and see what happens. That’s agile.

Side note. The “agile crew” at work have burnt two months and produced nothing, while the designers are now looking at a successful product launch and follow on systems.

The first rule of ERP? Don't talk about ERP: App-maker IFS reckons market has moved on

MIsh-Mash...

A mish-mash... of UI, based on a mish-mash of code based on a.... epic

Digital trust-busting time? US lawmakers mull how to tame giga-corps Amazon, Apple, Google, Facebook

Re: Sounds good to me

Apple’s message as I see it is simply,

A) You have zero reason to track those who use your app

B) We are done with “free apps” that stalk their users from here to eternity

C) We are using this measure to cull vast amounts of garbage apps from the app store

Accused murderer wins right to check source code of DNA testing kit used by police

And his credentials for evaluating software are what?

It all seems rather sketchy...

What's that you got there, AMD? More Ryzen chips? Yeah, OK, we could do with some of those

Intel...

They reportedly are paying a lot to fabricators to make their kit. This is likely squeezing out AMD being able to get stuff made in quantity.

Buggy code, fragile legacy systems, ill-conceived projects cost US businesses $2 trillion in 2020

Context knowledge is missing

You cannot write decent code if you do not understand the context. As in, the business, the workflow, what the code should actually do.

How many coders (or anyone involved with coding) ever have that type of knowledge?

Bugger all is the answer. So, this naturally leads to the result that all you get is an “Agile” serving of bad spaghetti.

Linux Foundation, IBM, Cisco and others back ‘Inclusive Naming Initiative’ to change nasty tech terms

Pay me to be their censor

Pay me a lot.

Scala contributor: Open source and diversity key to tackling dev skills shortage

The magic 500,000 jobs...

That are pretty much not going to be filled by Americans. Largely because they do know who they want, and it’s not Americans.

There’s also the collateral damage of this approach. Salaries offered are low (H1b targeted) so a lot of stupid HR think that that is the “going rate” for such a job. Add to that the ludicrous cost of living anywhere near the USA tech hubs, and you’re not going to get these jobs filled.

Developers renew push to get rid of objectionable code terms to make 'the world a tiny bit more welcoming'

Context...

But then context is probably a trigger word.

Anyhow, it’s all bollocks and wasted effort to boot.

Making code better and making better code is probably a more pressing need.

Assange lawyer: Trump offered WikiLeaker a pardon in exchange for denying Russia hacked Democrats' email

Bollocks

Obama/DNC are after him, and there’s the Chelsea Manning event which had everyone after him.

Assange will say/do anything to stay out of the USA. Tossing Trump’s name out there is a bit of desperation on his part to escape extradition.

LibreOffice 6.4 nearly done as open-source office software project prepares for 10th anniversary

This will be year of TeX

Make it so...

ACLU sues America's border cops: Tell us everything about these secret search teams targeting travelers

Obama...

2015 everything was down to him.

Even the chump who was detained must have known that.

Microsoft follows up those licensing hikes by snipping away costs for Azure Archive Storage

Microsoft, Amazon...

Were the leaders of the pack decrying IBM and other mainframe providers as locking you in, cranking up prices.

What was old is now new again, and today it’s Microsoft, Amazon and Google rather than mainframes.

Mmm, instant Java: Visual Studio Code 1.36 brings tasty updates – unless you run 32-bit Linux

Hoovering?

Being a product from the vacuum cleaners of Redmond, does it hoover up everything you do to the great dust-bin in the Microsoft cloud? Kept securely, and perused at their leisure?

IVE HAD ENOUGH! iQuit. Jobs done. Jony cashes out at Apple to run his own design biz

Re: Ave Ive

Well, people are expected to pay Microsoft for Windows 10, so $999 for a stand does have s certain attractiveness to it.

Bill G on Microsoft's biggest blunder... Was it Bing, Internet Explorer, Vista, the antitrust row?

I would aim at Word

The single most diabolical piece of poo ever created.

This isn't Boeing to end well: Plane maker to scrap some physical cert tests, use computer simulations instead

Boeing Management death wish

That’s what this is.

Maybe they want to get out of the aerospace business.

Ever used VFEmail? No? Well, chances are you never will now: Hackers wipe servers, backups in 'catastrophic' attack

I’d look at people...

Who are in serious legal troubles or know they are about to be.

Evidence? What evidence?

HMRC: 30 months to prep Northern Ireland backstop systems, 24 for customs

Re: Muhahahaha...

30 months = they have no intention to even try.

The curious sudden rise of free US election 'net security guardians

Google, Facebook, Microsoft etc...

They are in the business of making as much money out of their user data as they can. That’s not going to even slow down. So, systems to protect information from “bad guys” pull the other one.

It's been 5 years already, let's gawp at Microsoft and Nokia's bloodbath

Re: Nokia was a phone company that couldn't make the transition

Microsoft never had those concepts on even a “that would be nice” list

Blood spilled from another US high school shooting has yet to dry – and video games are already being blamed

Well, in the UK it's all about being stabbed.

At least 36 people have been fatally stabbed - and 62 overall killed - in London since the beginning of the year.

Met Police records show 37, 443 recorded knife offences and 6,694 recorded gun offences across the UK in the year up to September 2017.

In London, the problem was even more pronounced than the rest of the country, with 12,980 knife crimes taking place in the capital - 2,452 more than the equivalent year.

Four teenagers were stabbed to death in London on New Year's Eve alone, and 22 were killed in March - meaning the capital now has a higher murder rate than New York.

It's a long time since ANY media did journalism

Mostly it's just spin to fit the outlet's prevailing narrative.

Brexit threatens Cornish pasty's racial purity

Is this piece a joke?

Because it is either a shocking piece, devoid of any thought or research, or it is... No it's not April 1, so there's a fail there too.

Java evangelist leaves Oracle to save Java

Nope

It would lessen your suffering. Hence it is not an option.

Hillary Clinton private email server probe winding up – reports

Re: What was going through Clinton's head?

Powell and/or Rice have problems if they didn't do the "20 day" thing with their private emails as required.

Currently, Clinton should be in front of a jury or whatever, not campaigning.

Easter Islanders didn't commit 'ecocide' after all, says archaeologist

Re: There was no evidence they were primitive Jeremy Clarksons

Well, it depends. There is of course only one Clarkson. However, there is the witty one, the racist one, the violent one, and even more! Primitive though? Well, I'd have to say that is evidenced by his guest choices (presuming he had any choice).

Boozing is unsafe at ‘any level’, thunders chief UK.gov quack

Well, she probably is more worried about bacon or Star Wars

As apparently drinking "14 units" of alcohol a week is no more dangerous than watching a film or eating a bacon sandwich. Clearly her statement is a ruse to deflect from these much more serious problems.

Remember Windows 1.0? It's been 30 years (and you're officially old)

1.0, 10.0, and... well... yes...

I think they've almost managed to scale the heights of 1.0 (again).

Hillary Clinton: Stop helping terrorists, Silicon Valley – weaken your encryption

I guess this provides evidence that Clinton has passed her "use by date"

Weaker encryption makes the world safer from Isis... In other news inviting a few fully weaponised Isis muppets to the White House would accomplish the same safety goal, or perhaps not...

Nice try, Apple. The Maxi Pad is no laptop killer – and won’t scratch the Surface

Re: Just a thought, but...

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought Surface was costing Microsoft zillions, not making them.

Global warming stopped in 1998? No it didn't. If you say that, you're going to prison

Re: I hope they are ready...

You're so right about it being in its infancy.

I might add that I suspect that most of the luminaries of AGW have little if any statistical or computational training.

Re: So if I understand this correctly...

Yes, I do have a problem with "Software Engineering." I am a victim of it every day. It is an odd coincidence that the car I use, the roads I use, the buildings I live and work in and most of the planes and boats I've had occasion to use have orders of magnitude less failures than I experience with the products of "Software Engineering."

I suspect it has to do with the rise of hacker culture, where getting things to work in a sometimes, somewhen manner is the height of "Software Engineering" practice in the modern world.

At this point in time I am wondering how long it is before some evil bastard decides to remote control my car because of frankly inadequate "Software Engineering."

Don't want Windows 10 FILTH on the company network? Step this way

One wonders about the bedlam that would ensue

If the plank that wrote this piece woke up tomorrow to discover he needed W10 to run his AD.

Actually, waking up is probably needed, as he/she/other seems to be living in a dream world.

Real work?

What, you mean playing Solitaire and Minesweeper 24/7?

One imagines that you would have to spend some time in A&E if someone used Linux and Macs, with followups in a psych ward of course.

Edge out rivals? No! Firefox boss BLASTS Microsoft's Windows 10 browser brouhaha

Deja vu all over again

Same kind of shenanigans Microsoft pulled all those years before. Same type of "But Microsoft can do what they want", "But Apple/Google/Whoever does it, so it is ok" pap. Wrong is wrong, no matter how many people do it.

I do wonder whether corporate W10 systems will have their data hoovered into the cloud or not. I hardly think the likes of [Any/all large corporate] are going to be too orgasmic if said hoovering is going to happen. And if it's not going to happen to them, why the little guy/guyette/other?

It's almost as though Ballmer has risen from the dead...