Posts by Pascal Monett

Home Office ditches legacy asylum database, keeps the spreadsheets

"some Home Office staff continue to maintain their own spreadsheets alongside official systems"

Their own spreadsheets.

Obviously in Excel, because what else ?

Once again, Microsoft proves itself to be the greatest creator of chaos the world has ever seen.

And how difficult can it be to create a MySQL database to centralize data and make sure it is accessed securely and reliably ? This isn't new tech, companies have been doing it for decades and it works.

But I'm obviously just pissing in the wind here, so I'll stop now.

'It would be good for the world' to slow down AI sprints, Anthropic says

What would be good for the world . .

. . is that all this AI hoopla dies and gets buried and that statistical analysis machines (SAMs) be turned to do what they actually can : analyse data and extract meaningful information that is useful.

For example, these SAMs have been put to good use in analyzing tons of telescope images and helping to catalogue thousands of galaxies. To do that amount of work by hand would take decades, if not more.

But Humanity does not need hundreds of those installations, which gobble up insane amounts of water and stress the electrical grid.

I'm really sorry for Nvidia, but it will not continue to sell thousands of "graphics" cards at $10K a piece any more.

I guess it will just have to go back to enticing gamers to part with $1200 for their latest.

Canada wants to make its own AI, break free from US bots

Re: They are being taken seriously as threat

Sorry, the USA are no longer a credible threat to anyone but themselves and whatever their carrier groups can reach.

“AI is here"

No it isn't.

It's just being endlessly repeated, just like Trump endlessly repeats his lies in the hope that he will be believed (which some morons apparently do, while all the ass-kissers pretend to).

Benevolent dictator Zuck will give Meta staff 30-minute breaks from keylogging privacy assault

Re: Dystopia is the new utopia

Indeed.

George Orwell was right when he wrote 1984 - except for the fact that he couldn't imagine that it wouldn't be government exerting the oppression, but corporations.

Brazil is also a brilliant work that paints Government as the source of oppression.

Unfortunately, it would seem that Government is full of idiots who couldn't organize a piss in a brewery, while Corporation is headed by billionaires who ignore law, morals and simple decency in order to increase their gigantic hoard of virtual gold.

Welcome to the 21st century.

AI heavyweights warn their tech could help terrorists develop bioweapons

"calls on lawmakers"

I'm sorry, aren't you the guys running this show ?

Why can't you do your own screening ?

Or is that contrary to your "ethics" ?

Angry devs vow to flee GitHub Copilot as metered billing takes hold

Unfortunately, not any more.

Except for one thing : with the Mafia at least, if you do what they say, they will honor your obedience.

Re: The chickens are coming home to roost...

And it couldn't happen to a nicer bunch.

I am very happy to see that this is happening. AI needs to die and, if businesses are going to start looking at the bills and leaving, then the death of AI and the end of those gigantic, useless, water-guzzling factories will finally come to be.

And I can't wait for the day.

Ohio hits pause on datacenter tax breaks draining its coffers

Re: Do you suppose that there's an actual strategy there?

Do you really think that the orange shitgibbon gives a flying fuck about anyone other than himself ?

Re: why are we subsidising billionaires?

I have to agree with you on that.

It would appear that the tax system has been subtly changed to benefit those who are already loaded with cash instead of helping those who are trying to make a living and benefit society.

It is time for that to change.

Nvidia's Grace Blackwell superchips are officially coming to the PC with RTX Spark notebooks

Re: deluge of ads

Sorry, I'm using NoScript and uBlock.

Don't have the faintest idea what you're talking about . . .

Wikipedia editors plot strike and banner sabotage after Wikimedia layoffs

Oh sure

"The WMF also stressed that no formal request for union recognition has been submitted and said it would respect the legal process if staff eventually vote to unionize."

Of course it will.

After having fired anyone that even looked like they were thinking about it.

FAA grounds SpaceX’s Starship after another launch mishap

So, 6 out of 12

That is a 50% failure rate.

Doesn't look good for an IPO, much less for getting to the Moon.

Niel Armstrong once commented on the fact that he was going to be launched on the least expensive supplier. It may have been the least expensive, but at least it worked every time.

FBI: Get to know your IT guy – extortion crews are visiting law firms pretending to be tech support

"The FBI is warning unsuspecting lawyers"

Lawyers.

The very group of people who are almost completely removed from reality. No wonder . . .

Microsoft wants safer C# without turning it into Rust

Well we're talking about Borkzilla, what do you expect ?

When's the last time Redmond was "in touch" with its developers ? It's when Ballmer was prancing about on stage chanting "Developers ! Developers ! Developers !".

Good times.

They're gone.

Re: It'd be nice if it was just assumed I knew what I was doing most of the time

I get your point, except that most idiots typing on a keyboard are also convinced they "know what they're doing", and that's why we keep getting buffer overrun bugs.

Malware dev tries to steal Claude users' secrets, writes npm slop, leaks own GitHub private token

"The GitHub account was deleted after the attack"

Whack-a-mole has started.

Have fun with that.

Rogue states are putting AI agents to work on sanctions evasion

Rogue states

Look, I am the last person to say that North Korea is not a threat.

But right now, there is one gigantic rogue state that is causing mayhem on a global scale : the United States of America.

So I think that this term requires a bit of a rethink.

Linus Torvalds to ‘start being more hardnosed’ about ‘pointless pull requests’ – some of which come from AIs

Re: It can "read" x64/AArch64 opcodes just as well as it can read C code

I seriously doubt that.

Decompilers do not have a good reputation and pseudo-AI does not think, it just regurgitates what it has already been given.

So, GIGO applies and that, to me, means pseudo-AI "reading" opcodes is a pipe dream.

Besides the fact that, even if one grants pseudo-AI the ability to read opcode, understanding how it works is another problem entirely and pseudo-AI does not "understand" anything.

OpenAI floats buy-before-your-try AI availability guarantee

"It gives customers a clearer framework"

No. It gives Altman some room to breathe.

It also demonstrates that pseudo-AI is currently on its deathbed, convulsing and drooling while the doctor is readying the paddles and praying they will will work.

The problem with an IPO is that, once it happens, you can't sugarcoat things anymore. The numbers are there for all to see.

ESA boss tires of being dragged around by NASA mood swings

"What remains are the confidence and political will to act"

And with the clowns that we currently have in positions of power, good luck with that.

Frustrated franchisee sues Pizza Hut over crappy kitchen AI

Re: people are absolutely lousy at specifying requirements

Right you are.

Having spent the vast majority of my professional career as an IT consultant, I must agree.

On top of that, I want to point out that, most of the time, the specifications are drawn up by people who will not actually be working with the end product.

That should be a criminal offense.

New York, New Jersey, Maryland, Washington DC, and Pennsylvania

Why did they file the complaint in Texas ? They have no business in Texas.

Oh, right, they believe that a Texas judge will be more favorable to their business complaint.

Yeah, maybe, but they're filing against a business, so which business will the judge favor ?

The big AI companies are going to see their margins disappear

"The big AI companies"

Could you clarify one point : what are the small ones ?

Windows boot partition runs out of space for Microsoft's May security update

Re: if you google it

And how are you supposed to google it when your PC is borked ?

Oh, right, your smartphone.

But, that requires typing, which is an effort and kids these days are trained to not make any effort at all.

Besides, if it happens on a company PC, employee drone calls IT drone, gets a coffee and waits for resolution . . .

Re: Nostradamus

God I can't upvote you enough !

Reminds me of my Win95 days.

I used to reinstall that once a year, just to be sure.

Re: Been here before…

Redmond is the best driver for Linux that has ever been.

'Big AI' is subverting regulations just like tobacco and oil firms

"tobacco firms, big pharma and oil companies"

Hmm, I wonder what those industries have in common ?

Oh, right : they make money.

AI does not. This pseudo industry is costing its makers an arm and a leg, and I can't wait for the amputation to take place.

You can shower corrupt politicians all you want, in the end, you're still bearing the costs of your folly.

Especially when you went and built your datacenters in Texas. Morons.

Linus Torvalds says AI-powered bug hunters have made Linux security mailing list ‘almost entirely unmanageable’

So many good things in this article

Once again, Linus Torvalds swipes the clutter away and gets down to essentials.

"entirely pointless churn”

“AI detected bugs are pretty much by definition not secret.”

“AI tools [..] cause unnecessary pain and pointless make-believe work”

“If you actually want to add value, read the documentation, create a patch too, and add some real value on *top* of what the AI did.”

I would have thought that the Linux community would have been immune from AI-induced stupidity, but I was obviously wrong and AI has apparently enough charm to make even supposedly intelligent people fall for it. Humans will always be humans, I guess.

That said, between Torvalds and anyone else, where Linux is concerned I will always put Torvalds' opinion on the top of the list.

Also, he appears to be going a bit soft, with age. Where is the volcanic outrage ? I think it would be rather justified here.

Enough with the AI FOMO, go slow-mo, says Domo CDO

Well duh

"If you don't understand the process and the automations and the workflows in your business"

then you are an MBA and I claim my prize.

Re: The problem with AI

Why are you n9t mentioning the principle criminals : billionnairs ?

Did you forget they exist ? Or were you more comfortable targeting the usual suspects ?

Git is unprepared for the AI coding tsunami

“The issue isn't Git"

No, it's Redmond.

Thank you, we knew that.

Re: Fire the Retrorockets!

A. Men.

Google'll grab your gigs if you don’t cough up your number

"a storage reduction for new accounts"

Well of course. One of the very few companies on this planet who are basically printing their own money cannot possibly afford to keep providing "free" storage to the peons.

It's not in the shareholders interest, you see, and Google, bing a US company, has its shareholders interests closest to its stone-dry heart.

Personally, I don't really care. I do not leave my email on Gmail because I don't trust Alphabet and I do not want my personal or professional mail hoovered up by the Google AI monster.

Just checked and I have a pitiful half-dozen emails in Gmail Inbox, accounting for 0% of my allocation of 15GB.

Because my mail stays on MY computer, which is where I can rely on it.

So slash to 2GB if you want. Go ahead.

And if ever you decide to stop supporting POP, I will stop using you.

There are enough other email providers for my needs.

KDE bags €1.3M as Europe realizes it might need an OS of its own

Re: Nobody runs just the kernel

That is definitely true. However, if you're running Windows, you're running an environment that is made of Swiss Cheese when it comes to security. Kernel is a word that Redmond still has to come to grips with.

In the Linux world, the kernel space and the user space are very much seperated. The user can go and run any stupid thing he wants, the kernel will, by and large, remain untouched.

Delete the user profile and the computer should be secure.

Of course, as always, there have been a few memorable exceptions to this rule where some very bright hacker managed to circumvent kernel security from user space.

In the Linux world, it happens about once a decade and is quickly patched.

In the Windows world, it happens once a week and patches take weeks to come out and they themselves can wreak untold havoc.

I know what universe I prefer to be in . . .

UK government prescribes Single Patient Record for NHS data chaos

Re: This could work but won't.

You're being intelligent.

You won't survive this century.

Dissatisfied: Three-fourths of AI customer service rollouts are a letdown

Re: surprise

Good point.

Re: terrible

Thank you for posting that. I will refer to your post in any future conversations I may have with starry-eyed AI-lusting managers.

Not that it will do much good, those stars are the bonuses they see coming.

Microsoft aims to speed Windows with 'leap forward' in WinUI 3 perf

Re: Task Manager

Totally agreed, but Redmond doesn't care about your figures.

Google users fight for refunds as unauthorized API usage bills soar

"It's just draining my money !"

Hey, what did you think The Cloud^TM was, something to help you ?

It's there to pump you while finding nice excuses to ignore you when it's down.

You used to be able to pop down to the server room and yell at your IT that they need to get on with it while ignoring the fact that your yelling at them kept them from actually getting the fuck on with it.

Now, you have the luxury of paying for faceless IT drones you can't even yell at because, when it's down, you can't talk talk to them, much less yell at them.

I hope you're happy with the result.

Microsoft researchers find AI models and agents can't handle long-running tasks

"can't handle long-running tasks"

So, a lot like Windows, then.

GitLab promises a different kind of layoff as biz pivots toward AI

"biz pivots toward AI"

Bye bye, GitLab.

HP stuffed a PC into a keyboard. We took it for a spin

Not to mention that their keyboard isn't even a full keyboard.

What ? You want me to pay $1500 for a portable computer keyboard and you can't be arsed to offer a full numpad and a proper set of arrow and orientation keys ?

You want me to believe you didn't have enough space ?

And, on top of that, I'd have to also lug around a screen.

A niche product ? Oh yes. It's specially destined for idiots with more money than sense.

Hungarian cops cuff suspected swatter after two-year FBI probe

18 months ?

18 months for having forced x number of agents move in urgency to resolve a serious matter with lethal force if required, imposed such force upon unsuspecting, innocent people who did nothing wrong and could very well have been killed in the operation and all the costs associated ?

No. He deserves much more than that. At minimum, he deserves to pay for the costs he incurred.

Either that or he should be SWATted himself and see how it feels.

Custom PC worked in the lab, failed on site – and so did the angry client

"They were quick shocked, and offended, to discover that web hosting didn't include ISP services

Quite (ahem).

It's very much like when you ask someone what browser they're using and they answer "Google".

I have spent twenty of our 36-year marriage educating my wife as to the difference. The Internet is the highway. Your browser is the car. Google is just a roadmap.

You don't sit on your roadmap to get to your destination, now do you ? If only we could.

That said, my dear better half has actually clicked to this message and, when she has yet another problem on one of the many shopping sites she is regularly on (hey, she's retired - gotta do something with all that time, right ?) and I ask her what browser she is using, she now correctly responds Chrome, or Brave, or Firefox as is the case. Then we get on with troubleshooting whatever the flavor of the problème du jour is which, more often than not, happens to be due to some stupid modification in the website that has nothing to do with the Internet or her laptop, but hey, I'm the (literally) resident IT guy, so . . .

"quite the embarrassment for the angry client and boss"

In his place, I would have made quite a show of it.

Point to the network cable coiled up on that wall.

Go over and stand next to it, like a hostess on The Price Is Right, and pose next to it while displaying it with both hands.

Taking it off the wall and plugging it in.

Standing next to the now-connected computer and, once again, showing it with both hands.

One can only dream . . .

AI layoffs backfire as cutting staff doesn't cut it, firms warned

Well whaddya know ?

Finally a Gartner report that I like.

I've got to check the nearest pig farm for feathers . . .

Minister gives Palantir's NHS platform a clean bill of health

Re: Response from an MP

AKA : not my fault, it's the previous guys who decided. I might take time to think about it 'round about next time I'm up for election.

Arctic Wolf kicks 250 employees out of the pack to save money for AI

"Cybersecurity vendor Arctic Wolf has laid off 250 workers [..] to invest more in AI"

In upcoming news : Cybersecurity vendor Arctic Wolf files for Chapter 11 after all its customers fled to other vendors.

If only that could be true