Posts by Boris the Cockroach

UK government overrules local council’s datacenter refusal on Green Belt land

Or more likely

after planning permission and the bit barn has been built, the AI bubble goes POP, the servers are dumped and the barn is sold to the likes of Amazon as a depot, followed by Amazon 'consoldating' their depots into one site and selling off this one to a property developer, who then can build Sunny bridge garden village, a new exclusive village of 6000 homes next to the M25 and easy access of rural england (plus a 96Mw power supply)

I used to be cynical, but been proved right too many times

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

Re: Hmm

Quote

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

I'll add another quote here

"Whats worse? maybe 10 000 dead from a nuclear accident every 50 years or 500 million dead from global warming?"

James Lovelock

If this A.I. bollocks takes off, theres no way to power it reliably from wind/solar. pumped storage hydro... our biggest one of those lasts for 8 hrs (6 if you run it at full power), so its either fossil fuels or nuclear.

And while you get your knickers in a twist over building nuclear here in blighty, please remember that 60% of the power coming from France via the interconnects is generated ....by nuclear.

Next week's SpaceX Starship test still needs FAA authorization

According to some

its called "pogo'ing" (and no it has nothing to do with punk rock era dancing).

Quite how spacex have solved this... or indeed maybe not will be quite interesting... which is why spacex have always described starship as 'experimental' unlike their boss whos just mental.

Microsoft boots 3% of staff in latest cull, middle managers first in line

Re: Jobsworths

Fire them into the sun I say

Or build a b-ark

Microsoft facing multibillion legal claim over how it sells software

Re: Open source?

Remember the old mantra : You wont get fired for buying IB sorry microsoft.

Companies know m$ stuff is mostly 2nd rate, but as everyone else buys it, then no one will dare buy anything else. and besides, what C-level inhabitant is going to listen to the oiks in the IT department when we prattle on about systemic flaws in the software?

We're only here to fix the failures when someone answers the phone to a random caller asking to reset their account name/password, then tell the caller what that is so it can be tested. (see M&S hack story)

So your [expletive] test failed. So [obscene participle] what?

Re: No Comment!

hey thats the line our old QA guy used to write on job cards when the stuff failed inspection.

And then somehow made its way to one of our customers............................

Lucky for us that that customer had a sense of humour

Icon... for what QA stamp the cards with now..

UK Ministry of Defence is spending less with US biz, and more with Europeans

A big plus for the UK is pointing out how much we pay the US for maintaining the common stockpile of trident D5s and if we get refused access, the pentagon will have to supply the missing cash.... how about that for reducing government spending?

Oh .. forgot....... trumpty really is that stupid.

Teens maintained a mainframe and it went about as well as you'd imagine

Oh god

heres comes the PTSD from having to deal with 16-17 yr olds who know everything and can wreck the most simple of jobs.

My personal favourite? was the guy unloading the robot pallets into boxes and putting freshly loaded pallets into place.... of course this is physical work so he had the bright idea of just leaving the parts on the pallet and hitting restart.... come the end of the day he reads off the number of parts made according to the robot and puts that on his pile of filled boxes. I look at the paperwork and it says 2000 parts, then I asked him to count the number of boxes(10) and how many in each box (100), then explained to him that I know what he did and not to do it again.

2 weeks later... he's sacked for doing the same thing only this time with the boss watching.......

theres the easy way to learn and the hard way to learn.... some folks insist on going the hard way

Techie solved supposed software problem by waving his arms in the air

Thunderbolts and lightning

very very frightening *

This is the sort of issue that used to plague my life... where the PC was grounded via the 240 power supply system and the machinery was grounded(if at all) by a grounding post or using ground in the 3 phase supply.

Now a decent set of opto-isolators in each RS232 cable worked wonders... however , this is el-cheapo industrial control land we're talking about.

And so when a lightning bolt hit the nearest lampost , there'd be a ground surge... so the machinery is at a different ground voltage to the PC.... and that does'nt do the RS232 interface any good at all.

If you were lucky it would be the PC that took the shock, so it was off to Maplins to get another plug and pray RS 232 card... if the machine took the hit, then you'd get the engineer out and then he'd get the bill out to change out the main control board.... **

* if you sang that we can be friends

**At this point the rest of the lyrics spring to mind...

He's just a poor boy from a poor family

Spare him his life from this monstrosity

Brewhaha: Turns out machines can't replace people, Starbucks finds

Re: Dont ever want

Well its the strong flavour and jolt of caffine I'm after

Ideal for morning like this morning when the 'to do' list landed on my desk and its completely different to yesterday's 'to do' list that I've got 1/2 way through programming, leaving me the choice of putting down yesterdays work (with a bunch of notes and tags) and start today's list, or do I just say 'f it' and carry on with yesterdays

Of course tommorrow's list will be different again along with the boss going "Is it done yet?" and the bean counter droning on about the cost of the delays...

Wonder if the PFY would lend me her chainsaw.......

Dont ever want

starbucks after my first taste ages ago.

Sweet, sickly and never really tasted like coffee.

Mind you.. had worse..... one company had a free vending machine dispensing 'coffee' that tasted better after you put a cigarette out in it, let it go cold and then microwaved it back warm'ish.

Now its black coffee made in a french press from freshly ground beans from taylor's number 6 lava roast. or as the PFY says with a generic instant coffee in her hand "god Boris.. you're such a snob"

Infosec pros tell Trump to quit bullying Chris Krebs – it's undermining security

Maybe its time the spineless republicans in congress began doing their job and reminding trumpty that its congress that sets, raises and lowers tariffs, not the president. and reminding him that the enemy aliens act can only be used at times of war and its congress that declares war and not the president.

But then what do I care? watching the US go down is certainly a popcorn moment... the end result will be Canada west coast/ Canada east coast, and the republic of Gilead

Windows isn't an OS, it's a bad habit that wants to become an addiction

Another

view:

I've posted too many times the mantra "No one gets fired for buying m$"

The home users.. well m$ gets its £50 with every pc sold to the home users but its in the corporate world where m$ makes its money. with volume licences and cloud computing and servers etc etc etc. along with orafice. and then theres the microsoft certified XXXXX courses so people can get a job in various IT departments.

And then just so they can screw everyone for more money they release windows 11 and change the lot. again.

At work we're stuck with m$ on the laptops because the CAD software is not certified to work on anything else other than win 10, but the robots..... all of those are either on a custom OS or mostly linux now

Here at roach towers though, windows is used for games only now, the linux mint box does everything else, as for the comment about having to fiddle with settings to get everything running ok on linux... we have to do that with windows too..

Just wish we could take the current crop of OS/GUI designers back in time to a land where the OS boots from cold in 5 seconds, and has a perfectly understandable and useful GUI laid out to a set of decent design rules. especially when not hiding stuff at random

AI-driven 20-ft robots coming for construction workers' jobs

It will never work out

those robots will never do "cash-in-hand" work.

Now if someone could build one thats 10" tall , covered in black armor and equipped with 2lb mallet, a cattle prod, and knowledge of howto fix every other robot in our factory, I could be interested

10 FEET tall argghhh stonehenge moment.... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=071cXxCNj5A

Hubble Space Telescope is still producing science at 35

The downsides

to a servicing mission is the amount of heavy stuff you'll need to take up, new solar arrays, another instrument, new batteries , gyros, and computers, plus the tools and a capture workstation and possibly a robotic arm to move stuff around.

The shuttle was ideal for this, sadly the shuttle isn't flying anymore.

Best you could hope for would be a payload + platform module launched by a falcon heavy, then sending up a dragon to dock with it and move upto hubble. while dragon can make it down, all the rest of the gear would have to be dumped.

2 years to build /train the crew plus a shedload of dollars anyone ?

BOFH: The Prints of Darkness pays a visit

Re: Loved that lift.

Well its far more complex than it used to be, because you have to seperate for recycling purposes, so its fit an infra red sensor to detect a body going past, and then open the diverter to the wood chipper, chairs and desks need to goto the skip, PC, printers and moniters are sent to e-goods recycling, again by use of sensors and diverter plates, but finally , that really annoying salesman you cannot stand and who wont take no for an answer or indeed seems to be stuck in your office no matter how many times you hit him with a broom, needs to be sent to the water pit in the bottom filled with any number of sharp objects ranging from old mop handles through old wine bottles and last years glass display case to sharks and pirhanas.

I'm just surprised theres enough room in the lift shaft for the actual lift itself (although in a cost cutting measure you could always sell that )

As ChatGPT scores B- in engineering, professors scramble to update courses

Maybe

course work is not the be all and end all that some in the education system seem to think it is.

And that results by exam(s) would be better (no smartphones, dumb calculators only)

Icon because students need to learn how to deal with a problem while under time pressure and no backup (debugging some non working code while the boss is screaming about a non functioning website/database/robot/flight control/nuclear reactor safety system is also a good teacher of howto work under pressure... )

ICE enlists Palantir to develop all-seeing 'ImmigrationOS' eye to speed up deportations

Re: Hearing back from ICE

Quote

"Don't worry, you will, that'll be them, knocking on your door sometime after midnight."

Ahh the good old Nacht und Nebel tactic.

I'd put a joke icon..... but its not really

Hacking US crosswalks to talk like Zuck is as easy as 1234

Re: And the new password is....

Too complex

Its now 1

But in a cunning plan to defeat terrorists, saboteurs, hackers and other such threats to America , you have to enter "one" eekekk people at the door..... no no not the bag over the head mmmfmfmfm mfmfmfmfmf

Need a Linux admin? Ask a hair stylist to introduce you to a worried mother

Re: Experience

Do your best to support her (without being too much of a 'helicoptor' parent :) )

Because thats where my PFY came from, sort of interested in techie stuff, and listened to her uncle(our former production engineer) jibber on about robotic manufacturing, made it quite clear at the interview that she thought the job was worth trying out for, and we decided to take a chance (after all my former PFY left because someone offered him a better position) and thus the dark lady of the robots* was born.

And has been a very good learner, a quick study, and has learned almost all I'm prepared to teach her(we have to keep a few secrets back from the underlings). plus taken up archery and made sure everyone in the factory knows how good she is at it.

* nobody calls her that within earshot unless they want to get shot

Krebs throws himself on the grenade, resigns from SentinelOne after Trump revokes clearances

Next week :

declaring him a non person and sending him on a vacation to central america.

... until some bright spark notices it costs 8 hrs flight time to send a plane there yet 1 hr to send it out over the ocean and back...

Uncle Sam kills funding for CVE program. Yes, that CVE program

Quote

"1. Those here illegally that have committed crimes. (btw, being here illegally IS A CRIME!)"

no person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; US constitution 5th amendment

nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.; US constitution 14th amendment.

Seems that under the US constitution, those illegally in the US still have rights until found guilty of said offences after due process. IE up in front of a judge and not some ICE official who sees a real madrid tattoo.

Another quote

"2. Those on student visas engaged in anti-American activity. As a guest in our country, they should respect our country."

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances ; US constitution 1st amendment

Also read the 2 amendments quoted above.

Whether you deem it 'anti-american' or not, anyone in the US is entitled to the the same rights given to regular citizens, after all if foreign students in the US were suddenly given a $50 000 demand in order to keep their student visas, how would they be able to protest such a decision if they were'nt covered by the amendments? or is it your idea that all foreigners are 2nd class people not deserving of any rights?

Tech tariff turmoil continues as Trump admin exempts some electronics, then promises to bring taxes back

There wont be any "tens of thousands" employed in said factories, even if you could build them in time or even manage to import the machinery to put in them.

The time of mass employment in manufacturing is OVER . it is dead and it is gone. (and good riddance)

From now on its robotic machines galore.. I've got 1 job running at the moment, previously it would be 2 setters and 3 operators, the setters set the 3 machines and the operators do the work.

Now I use 1 machine tool and it does the job complete from a 3 meter long bar. now our job is occasionally check the parts, and check the bar magazine is'nt getting empty 1 person. (plus they get other machines/programming work to do as well.. or sneak off for a smoke ) but 1 operator looks after 4 cells, his job.... change the trays of parts, and check some of parts coming out. you're looking at 10 plus peoples jobs in the good old days now we do it with 1.

Static electricity can be shockingly funny, but the joke's over when a rack goes dark

We never did like

static.

Partly because it could hurt, partly because the room we were in was filled with expensive gear. but mostly because the room itself had 3 very thick concrete walls, a lightweight roof and a light weight 4th wall

Icon.... for what could happen >>>>

Windows 2000 Server named peak Microsoft. Readers say it's all been downhill since Clippy

Re: Ah, ya know what?

I diss m$ because I'm from the era when the OS ran in the background and did its job with little fanfare leaving us mere mortals to get on with creating the latest and greatest software(or crashing hard)

The shame is that m$ could have been saved from being a PITA in 2001 when the US government had the chance to break it up , hopefully into an OS company and an applications company so that the OS company concentrates on making the Windows OS the best they can, while applications creates for the best platform it can, with the chance that other application developers can compete with m$ applications on a level playing field thus forcing m$ applications to make their stuff the best they can.

Instead we still have the monolithic m$ where no one gets fired for buying m$, and pretty much forcing everyone to use m$ win/office because the bar to entry into that market is so high that no one can compete with it. plus m$ can re-design it it and make everyone pay for the update whether they wanted to or not.

The we have the well known security problems (not saying linux does'nt have these, but the OS design of linux can limit the damage)

Finally the infamous BSOD: this morning for me... windows 10 work box, switched on. boots up. BSOD. reboot. whats changed from yesterday afternoon? nothing.

Users hated a new app – maybe so much they filed a fake support call

Pointless waste of time

number 435.

I stalk into the office after yet another 5 min walk to the other end of the factory.

PFY asks "whats up?"

"I just dealt with the most pointless IT fix ever..... they complained the laptop screen was darker than yesterday........ I pointed out they left the charger switched off and it was in battery mode"

"I'll do you a favour and deal with them myself... but I need a favour back", she paused for a moment as if steeling herself "I need to know the language of .... fanuc macro B"

The sun darkened for moment.

"You know not of what you speak"

"I've looked on the internet and the dark web, all I can find is that 6 books were printed, 5 of them I've located in various locked archives of museums, and that they were translated from the original japanese into english by a man who spoke neither language" she countered "And that japanese man died shortly afterwards"

"Yes, they found his headless body in a room locked from the inside with 2 sword cuts to the back of his neck" I replied.

"But I must know" the desperation edging into her voice "And the 6th book I've tracked down to being sold locally to someone"

"But are you aware that merely touching that book will cause the skin to fall from your hand, and that reading a page will drag your very soul into the darkest abyss leaving nothing but a hate filled husk behind?"

"Yes and I am prepared"

"Then do me the favour and use the stick of corrections on those idiots down by cell #2 and be ready to learn the darkest secrets of programming robots" as I unlocked the secret drawer in my desk and the room blackened as the book of fanuc macro B was brought into the dimming light......"

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

Re: No relation

Quote

"Just because they dont have a criminal record in the US does not change that, but at the minimum they are criminals in the US. And the Supreme Court has allowed deportation to continue."

Yes but did you bother reading the rest of the judgement that said "But deportees are still allowed the right of due process"

Which means the immigration people have to show up in front of a judge and argue that said deportee is a criminal and not just some random citizen they've dragged off the streets because he looks like a criminal.

I refer you hence

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h2gP5P7OhoU

Trump thinks we can make iPhones in the US just like China. Yeah, right

Re: Trump doesn't think

Yet another correction : President lettuce

Commercial space station outfit plans two Orbital Data Center nodes by the end of 2025

Will give them

whole new options when it comes to ridding themselves of beancounters, consultants, lower managers and other such lowlifes

Trump doubles down, vows to make Chinese imports even more expensive for Americans

I bet

the maga crowd gonna be pissed when they find out all the maga gear they buy doubles in price overnight.

Who put Homer Simpson in charge?

Dev loudly complained about older colleague, who retired not long after

I'm not

really comfortable with this sort of thing.

Its not really the job of of <insert domain expert here> to critic and point out the deficiences of fellow employees, because once you get a reputation of doing that, your fellows will look at you with an air of distrust and suspicion.

Ok the guy was older and being a bit of dunderhead, but surely you could of helped point him in the right direction.

After all, my PFY sometimes says "why dont we do it this way?" to me, with a resulting argument about who's in charge, and a final response of "f you old git I'm doing it this way anyway"

I've taught her well

Icon... because that who I am now

NASA doubles odds of Moon hitting near-Earth asteroid

Re: surely

You just wait until the odds reach 1 in a million.... because as we all know 1 in a million events crop up 9 times out of 10

I blame pTerry

Trump fires NSA boss, deputy

"How

is he getting away with dissolving the senate and imposing martial law?"

"Hes spent the last 2 years putting his people in the right places."

Babylon 5 :point of no return

How do you explain what magnetic fields do to monitors to people wearing bowling shoes?

Shortest call

And most abuse .....

2 weeks ago.. ish.

Called by a user 'machine dont run' right in the middle of urgent activity (IE pretending to program while snoozing off the pub session.)

Stalked down there... turned the mode switch from "single run" to "full auto"

Explained to the operator exactly what I thought of him(I said there was a lot of abuse) and stalked back to the office to try and resume the snoozing

More beer needed >>>>>

Microsoft to mark five decades of Ctrl-Alt-Deleting the competition

My view

microsoft high points : the price they charged for their software

m$ low points: the quality of the aforementioned software

Worst part of m$ : no one ever gets fired for buying IB... .. sorry microsoft

To avoid disaster-recovery disasters, learn from Reg readers' experiences

And theres

the oft hilarious tale of the guy who made a disaster recovery partion on his single hard drive to save his valuable data in case of failure... yeah we know where this one is going.... failing to account for his HDD failing....

"Hello Boris... can you have a look at my computer......"

Wheres the "head banging into a wall" icon ?

LLM providers on the cusp of an 'extinction' phase as capex realities bite

Re: Yup

Quote

"The market is just gamblers betting our money on the lies of snake oil salesmen. And just like gambling addicts, even though the facts are staring them in the face, they refuse to admit their mistakes, and roll one more dice, because this time....."

the reason they do this is because they dont want to miss out on being part of the next google/amazon/farcebork where an initial small'ish investment results in the big pay off. also they need that 1 big pay off to cover for the 99 projects they've thrown money at that turn out to be complete bollocks.

In the meantime, small/medium companies like the one I attend struggle to borrow money..........

Windows 11 roadmap great for knowing what's coming next week. Not so good for next year

Windows 12

confirmed

UK govt data people not 'technical,' says ex-Downing St data science head

I think

I've selected the right icon for this story.

But going back to my time in government service, having the senior bods sign off on buying some guns worth £10 000 a piece, then having to argue with the accounting department because no ones budgeted for ammunition for the squadies to train with.

Tech support session saved files, but probably ended a marriage

Quote

"Not quite as exciting as finding a CEO's stash of heroin hidden on top of a removable ceiling tile, but that's another story!"

Now thats a story worthy of 'on-call' and we must have it , yes we must my precious

Signalgate storm intensifies as journalist releases full secret Houthi airstrike chat

They're already

starting to describe the journalist in question as a far left radical democrat supporter.....

So I guess it wont be long until he's arrested and disappeared to a central americas jail.

And to think those folks charged with securing their nations secrets are all going "WTF!" at all this.

But will the republicans in congress/senate grow a spine and some balls.... somehow I doubt it

US Army’s laser obsession continues with yet another drone-zapper deal

Quote

"However, near the frontline remember what those 2.5km range .50 Barrett-style anti-materiel sniper rifles are made for. "

With 2.5 second flight time from firing to target it wont be easy to down a drone, those 50 cal rifles are designed to stop light armored vehicles and get targets hiding behind them.

Better way would be to link the artillery to radio source spotters and lob some 155mm rounds down on where the operators are...

Top Trump officials text secret Yemen airstrike plans to journo in Signal SNAFU

A view from the side

An old US navy friend said if he'd done as this group of idiots (what is the term for group of idiots btw?) has done, he'd have been marched off his boat, court martialed, followed by 6 months in Leavensworth and a dishonorable discharge.

If I did it in government service, I'd get fired and get a 2 year vacation, full bed and board provided, in one of his majesties hotels for the naughty.

And now various trumptyists are saying "well it wasn't actually classified info" well apart from being war plans oh and slagging off our allies again.

But I'd listen to people from trumpty's first term who all say that he's a complete asshole who should never have been allowed to stand again

Still coming soon Nuclear bingo...... where trumpty posts random numbers on 'truth' social and the first one to get a full card launches america's nuclear arsenal.

BOFH: Have you tried forcing an unexpected reboot?

Re: I with

We were all PFYs once.... then our elders left/retired/died

Still..... theres always the news headlines to consider

"Plucky woman makes it in a manufacturing world"

although its 50% likely to be :

"Woman mass murderer imprisoned for life in Broadmoor after chainsaw rampage in factory"

I with

the people who suggest not having the lift there at all, then the photosensor 1/2 way down the lift shaft thats set to detect the infra red signal of a passing body can then activate the panel that swings out to divert said body from the lift shaft down into the wood chipper.

And the first person I'd try it on would be the tech who came in a few weeks ago to change a HDD, and didnt bother 1. seeing if the manufacturer had loaded the correct version of the software and 2. applied the correct service pack to it (I think its at about 15-16 now)......

Still, distracts me from my current set of problems.... engraving sequential serial numbers on the bits with leading zero suppression and the correct justification so the last number ends up in the same spot each time and the added bonus of the robot not remembering the current part number on power down unless its written to a data file, and then adding a macro routine so that 1 in 10 parts can be checked by the robot with in-program adjustments and automatic replacement of worn out tooling, to which the QA department said when they found out..."we want a measuring log added too" despite the fact that they'll not even look at it when the robot is running...

And all because the min wage operators we get prove time and time again that they are only worth min wage. can I retire now... please... pretty please....

Boeing's Starliner future uncertain as NASA weighs next steps

Can only

back this comment.

Having suffered a "I'm a manager and I dont need to know what you make because I'm here to manage" type manager.

Give him due, he did start well in raising the prices of some basic stuff we were making at a loss. then we lost the customer completely, why? because we were making some high end and high profit stuff for him as well as the loss making crap. soon as the total price went up.. off he went. closely followed by a bunch of other aerospace customers who all had their prices raised.

he lasted 3&1/2 months before being fired , sadly 30 other people lost their jobs as costs were cut to save the company.

As for the infamous "sack the bottom 10%" way.... I hope its going to be done on the number of lines of code per programmer. just been dying to use

N=0

Add A,N

Add N, 1

Add A,N

Add N,1

etc etc etc upto N=3000

rather than a simple for-next loop

HP Inc settles printer toner lockout lawsuit with a promise to make firmware updates optional

Why cant

they make a decent quality printer, sell it at price , then they could afford to reduce the price of ink/toner to the point where no one would even bother with 3rd party?

Stop laughing I was being serious.

Political poker? Tariff hunger games? Trump creates havoc for PC industry

Bring

manufacturing back home?

Guess who exported it in the first place.. and more to the point.

When it comes home, whos going to be doing it?

If the company I attend can produce more with 18 people spread across 2 or 3 shifts than we ever could 30 yrs ago with 55 people, no jobs will be created apart from a very few highly skilled ones.

The rest of manufacturing is like that too... eg steel roll mill... 6-8 people per shift where before it was 100.... etc etc etc

Those manufacturing jobs are GONE. why employ 6 people and 4 machines to make something that takes a barely attended robotic cell to make better and quicker?

US tech jobs outlook clouded by DOGE cuts, Trump tariffs

Its ok

we can be replaced with AI chatbots.

Court filing: DOGE aide broke Treasury policy by emailing unencrypted database

Re: Clearance?

Most of my former colleagues signed that aged 16-17 when they started, I was lucky... never signed it until I was 21, mainly because there was no need. and because HM government didnt decide to employ me until then :)