Posts by Tim99

The world is one bad decision away from a silicon ice age

Re: Why would China upset the apple cart?

Private islands... Assuming their private armies don't kill them?

Re: Forget the consumerware

Yes, even rolling back to the 1940s looks impractical - WW2 accelerated a lot of technological development. The 1910s may be feasible because a lot could be done then with basic blacksmithing, carpentry, and a lot of "human power" - I'm thinking in particular of the "self sufficiency" of the "Stately Home" before WW1, although much of the wealth behind them came from India etc.

I'm not certain how quickly we can get a lot of horses, etc., for agriculture and transport - otherwise: death, starvation, disease, and local warlords.

I thought that…

I’d heard that it was deployment of strategically placed thermite charges?

Windows 2000 still earning its keep running a rail ticket machine in Portugal

Re: Probably my favourite|

Genuinely - after I looked inside Vista, for possible upgrades to our Windows shrink-ware products, it encouraged me to start the process of retiring...

Probably my favourite|

We did like XP, the next version, too; but only when we set it to ’Classic’ mode when it "looked" like 2000.

Boffins probe commercial AI models, find an entire Harry Potter book

Re: Can it improve the Harry Potter books?

It may not be a coincidence that each subsequent book appears to be about twice as long as its predecessor- the last being published in two parts?

Debian goes retro with a spatial desktop that time forgot

Elderly curmudgeon here

and what is wrong with a CLI? Bash preferably, but I'll live with Zsh. I'm not a total masochist, I will often make my life easier by using things like "standard" Markup/Markdown editing and nano instead of Vim...

Mine's the one with "Unix – A history and a Memoir" in the pocket >>=====>

CES 2026 worst in show: AI girlfriends, a fridge that won't open unless you talk to it, and more

Re: Sometimes you have to

Some of us remember when wooden tea chests were easily available from your local grocery supplier (Very handy for storage and moving house, if you remembered to remove the sharp bits, nails,etc.). They were lined with metal foil...

I've posted this before - I have a 7+ year old Nespresso coffee machine. It makes coffee I like - very close to a "barista flat white" at a fraction of the cost (paid for itself in about 30 weeks). It has started to make occasional "funny noises". I considered replacing it with an updated model. The new model is harder for elderly fingers to use; has Bluetooth and an App, and apparently requires access to the internet.

I asked the nice lady in the shop if it worked without the app, she thought that I needed it - Q: Why? A: So it can download updates...

My thoughts: ...and rip off as much personal data as possible and sell it so that I can get scummy adverts?

Gmail preparing to drop POP3 mail fetching

Re: But why does it smell of piss?

Google like/worse than Microsoft? Back in the day (I'm retired) we likened Windows to a large multi-story carpark:-

Most people use it. You know it will cost money and getting out will be more difficult and expensive than you thought - It will be dingy with an underlying sense of danger, and everywhere has a faint smell of piss...

Thank you, I'm here all week >>====>

Your smart TV is watching you and nobody's stopping it

I don’t see adverts

A few years ago I bought a SiliconDust HDHomeRun TV tuner head. It is connected to a headless Raspberry Pi with an HDD. You can watch live TV directly for free, or pay an annual subscription to set it up as a recorder. I have found it worthwhile to pay for a "Channels" DVR subscription which gives me up to 4 channels to be recorded. The software runs comskip to flag and hide commercials (Channels no longer recommends the Pi, but it works well for me). The recorder can play to a Windows, Apple, or Linux PC, an iPad, Apple TV etc. It is possible, but tedious and fiddly, to create a similar open source/FOSS setup. I can’t recall the last time I watched ’live’ TV.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella becomes AI influencer, asks us all to move beyond slop

Re: Why is AI being pushed

Upvote for the Ed Zitron link. A thought-provoking long read: The Enshittifinancial Crisis.

How Microsoft gave customers what they wanted: An audience with Bill Gates

Re: I think he was too busy preventing other people stealing Microsoft innovation /s

For an interesting read, look at PJ's Groklaw (web.archive.org). The original site was my daily read at the time. The sections "MS Litigations" and "SCO:Soup2Nuts" are particularly relevant.

Caveat: I may be biased - some of my correspondence with PJ on "open source" matters is contained there (under my real name).

The most durable tech is boring, old, and everywhere

Re: In the raw

This one: commonmarkup.org/help - Gruber/Swartz standardized…

I believe that almost all of the derivatives follow the simple asterisk formatting that I posted, probably even those that expect the underscore delimiter for italic - the worst that will happen is that you will see the asterisks, which would still emphasise the delineated text as ’special’.

Re: In the raw

Unadorned txt files - Yep, no line breaks, at least one line between paragraphs and three lines for sections. Quotes are OK. IF you really need emphasis, 1, 2, or 3 asterisks delimiting the text (opening the file with a Markdown reader will give italics, bold, and emphasised) and the file will still be readable in plain text.

Re: Open Source

The ISO specification is available at no cost here: pdfa.org - ISO 3200-2. Personally, I have found it best avoid Adobe software.

An early end to the holidays: 'Heartbleed of MongoDB' is now under active exploit

OK

I'm retired and out of this, but I have never seen the attraction of MongoDB (Is Web Scale - Youtube, NSFW). Many "real world" applications could probably run with SQLite or, failing that, a larger SQL based system (Postgres?) - Unless you really don't care about your data?

BOFH: The Christmas spirit has run dry – time to show some chiller instinct

Re: Hot Cross Buns Here

One of the mysteries of living in Western Australia is that Spiced Fruit Buns (complete with crosses) are available in ALDI all year round. Closer to the day, they have Fruit Hot Cross Buns 6 Pack; and, a particular favourite, Mini Fruit Hot Cross Buns 9 Pack. Strangely the (superior?) buttered/toasted teacake is unknown.

One real reason AI isn't delivering: Meatbags in manglement

Re: Try understanding the problem BEFORE solving it

I'm long retired, but I installed several small LIMS systems in the 1980s - Installed a large proprietary UNIX system, then wrote and sold my own (smaller custom systems). Here is some (unwanted?) free advice...

If you buy a commercial system, change your procedures to match it; try to avoid Oracle (I bear many scars). Alternatively, write and support your own, making sure that you employ and train sufficient staff to keep it running, and expand it if necessary - preferably using standard (FOSS?) tools, or at least (if you really have to) "industry standards".

Under no circumstances, buy a commercial system, and then change/add to it, even if the changes are done by the supplier, in a few years time you will have an unsupportable mess. The supplier will have upgraded their software, and left you stranded.

Microsoft wants to replace its entire C and C++ codebase, perhaps by 2030

Re: If it aint broke...

When I was a Microsoft customer (and wrote Windows shrinkware), I often thought that I was an alpha tester…

Poisoned WhatsApp API package steals messages and accounts

Oh dear, how sad, never mind

BSM Williams, It Ain't Half Hot Mum, BBC1 TV.

pearOS is a Linux that falls rather close to the Apple tree

Re: Midwinter? (Checks calendar) .. happier days

OK, posting about cricket again. As a citizen of both countries, I know that "my" team will not lose; but I do miss England attempting to stay in on day 5 for a draw, or hoping for rain. Unfortunately that "excitement" is denied in the short-form versions of the game.

User found two reasons – both of them wrong – to dispute tech support's diagnosis

Re: Related issues

If only it was just ’’the past week or so". My experience is that if you have ever touched it, whatever the problem is now, it is your fault - Even if you looked at it 2 years ago, and everything has been OK since…

Affection for Excel spans generations, from Boomers to Zoomers

Re: How many Excel users does it take to format numbers?

February 29 1900

Re: When you need a spreadsheet...

"...where I am logged in on a local account (and not logged into anything MS or Google)" - Based on current performance, how long do you think it will be before MS make you log in to your online account to use your "local" spreadsheet?

Electric cars no more likely to flatten you than the noisy ones, study finds

Re: I'd have thought this would be obvious

A rubbish clock?

Re: "Safety Technologies"

My 7 year old VW Golf does. I was in a car park when a teenager ran out directly in front of me from behind a large SUV, I was travelling at about 10 km/hr. The car braked harder and faster than I probably could, and missed them.

Australia bans teens from social media, but nobody thinks it'll really work

It's a Five Eyes country - every online citizen can be tracked already...

As a citizen of both countries, I know that my team will win (or draw?).

Porsche panic in Russia as pricey status symbols forget how to car

But, but, but

I thought we were worried about "the Chinese" bricking these new fangled EVs?

Tech leaders fill $1T AI bubble, insist it doesn't exist

Tulips?

Irish Excel whiz sheets all over the competition in Vegas showdown

If this is approximately correct

I have posted this link before: Rob Easterway's 2019 talk to the Royal Institution. He postulates that many (most?) spreadsheets are wrong. I have certainly come across many. He'd found the information on the European Spreadsheet Risks Interest Group "Horror Stories" section.

Think of the poor sods who have been laid off in an organization because a distant bean-counter's main work tool indicated "too expensive".

MongoDB talks up its AI chops by talking down PostgreSQL

Pause for hysterical laughter

MongoDB and AI together, what could possibly go wrong? A new example of write-only data?

Soup king Campbell’s parts ways with IT VP after ‘3D-printed chicken’ remarks

It’s the egg, produced by something that wasn’t quite a 3D printer chicken?

Seven years later, Airbus is still trying to kick its Microsoft habit

Re: Regulatory Compliance

Acid free archive paper should be good for hundreds of years. Paper degradation became common in later Victorian times when large amounts of cheap sulfite paper became available for popular books (penny dreadfuls). Many 16th century artwork prints on rag paper by Durer, Cranach, and Baldung are in excellent condition with little degradation.

Microsoft's fix for slow File Explorer: load it before you need it

Re: reminds me of Windows prefetch

Yes, the replacement for my machine now requires an internet account with bluetooth/WiFi. I just want a cup of coffee...

Self-destructing thumb drive can brick itself and wipe your secret files away

Software? Yes…

This may be against "accepted wisdom", but I now use microSD cards in a reader for storage rather than thumb drives. In the past six years or so, I have never had a failure. Several thumb drives did bork themselves. I suspect that it might be because of the prevalence of microSD cards in video security and dashboard recorders, where continuous recording/rewriting is required? Thumb drives do indeed tend to be WO devices - Try booting and running a Raspberry Pi from a thumb drive compared to the microSD; it will run much hotter...

Linux admin hated downtime so much he schlepped a live UPS during office move

Re: Ok

Possibly: the TV head receiver, WiFi modem router, and a Pi backup server are also on the UPS. Running them all, the UPS runs for >150 minutes, more than long enough to record a program.

Ok

I have a headless Raspberry Pi 5 Lite TV recorder, thinned out so it only has what is needed. It is on a UPS and regularly goes for >200 days uptime. I do admit to a slight feeling of disappointment when I reboot it.

Memory boom-bust cycle booms again as Samsung reportedly jacks memory prices 60%

Re: Sliderule

I bought my Otis King in 1970, it still works: vintage calculators.com. Based on current UK wages it cost me the equivalent of ~£120, or >5p a week. I'm pretty certain that won't apply to my phone, which has almost completely replaced it...

Developer battled to write his own documentation, but lost the boss fight

Appropriate?

In the 1990s I wrote some software from scratch for a Federal Government initiative designed to help heritage organizations capture and manage their data. It was also taken up by State Governments - Often used by volunteers, one of its design imperatives was that it could be configured with different levels of functionality based on the experience of its users. I thought it was fairly simple and self-explanatory having only 5 main screens. I was wrong. Fortunately, a business partner, who had been a professional teacher wrote most of the manual; ~275 A4 pages long, but broken down in to sections with appropriate cross referencing, examples and screen shots.

My first reaction was that it was too complex, but users really liked it. The only problem (for us) was that a "small change" to the software required significant changes to the manual. Many customers did not have access to cheap printing, so we had to distribute them as insert sections to go in the original ring folder. As printing became more available, they were just distributed as MS Word or PDF files. Of course, these days updated versions are on a web server operated by the new owners. Lots of refinements, but still recognisable as a direct descendant after 30 years...

Rideshare giant moves 200 Macs out of the cloud, saves $2.4 million

Re: And people….

Ignoring the rest, it is a reasonable précis - A YouTube video of his IBM presentation is here.

He is now SVP & CIO at Cisco (like IBM, not necessarily near the top of my favourite companies) YouTube update 2023.

Re: And people….

The JNUC presentation by IBM CIO Fletcher Previn? Multiple links including: easytechsolver.com.

I had a close contact who was a very senior tech person at IBM who confirmed that the majority of people he worked with used Macs and Linux until a couple of years ago (when he retired) - He used mostly used macOS. The Windows users were generally those who supported customers' Windows based stuff...

Re: Multi-user?

Because: sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't; and when it is, it may be several distinct types (web, application, and database), and I have several other Pi5s which also alternate roles. Possibly, also, the servers I deployed when I was working cost somewhere between $thousands and $hundreds-of-thousands? I forget that I am old, and that the Pi5 is roughly 1,000th the price and 10,000 times more powerful than the DEC VAX that I wrote stuff for when it was a general SQL, file, and application server back in the 80s - Somehow it doesn't seem right...

Multi-user?

MacOS is a (heavily?) modified UNIX based system. I run my iMac with several different accounts, does anyone know if you can use multi GUI users on the same remote machine? Like I do with VNC on a Raspberry Pi5 "server".

You'll never guess what the most common passwords are. Oh, wait, yes you will

Netware

Back in the day, some standard Novell 68/86/2 systems expected a complex password changed every 40 days (Biblical?). Our users, like many others, solved that problem with Post-it notes on the screen. After they were told to stop it, they adapted by putting the Post-it under the keyboard...

Microsoft, Alphabet throw more cash on the AI bonfire

A Modest Proposal (Wikipedia)?

England's local government shake-up promises to be a massive tech headache

It worked so well before...

My late father was a senior local government officer who started work for his local council before WW2. Following the Redclife-Maud report and the Conservative's Local Government Act 1972, he came home from work one day and said he was (semi)retiring - He was in his 50s. I asked him why, and how that was going to go? He said that, at that time if there was, say, a query about local planning, the chief surveyor would pick up the phone, and ask to see him. Over afternoon tea and digestive biscuits (they were both officer war veterans, and knew that all important decisions needed to be made over tea and biscuits) they would look at the problem, and come up with a solution. So the total time and cost was a couple of minutes for a phone call, a 15 minute meeting; his secretary's time to make the tea; 4 biscuits, tea leaves, milk and sugar. My father would then write up the meeting and, if necessary, present it to the Council where it would almost certainly "pass on the nod".

After reorganization, he said it would go something like this: A lowly administrator in the planning officer would process the query, write it up, pass it up to their superior, who would then précis and rewrite it in longhand, it would then be typed up, go back to the superior, who would then put it in the internal mail for a senior officer in the planning department, who would perhaps edit it, before it was submitted to the committee; who would then pass it on to the equivalent of my father's department; who would delegate it to "some-one" to action it; it would then be written up again, typed; then back up the department for approval and then back to the planning department. My father reckoned that the 50 "person-minutes" or so that it would have taken before, would probably take several months for a final outcome.

My father said that his RAF war service would count towards his final pension (he may have had to make a personal contribution?). He spent the next 17 years doing a little bit of paid work, and quite a lot unpaid for local charities/clubs/not for profits; and of course, as it was a country area - barter: a quick VAT return for a meat joint, vegetables, and the odd bottle of spirits at Christmas.

Interestingly, when he met ex-colleagues at their Christmas "does" who were still working, they told him, that yes everything was much slower, and the number staff needed had increased dramatically: See the Second meaning of Parkinson's Law: Wikipedia.

Google says reports of a Gmail breach have been greatly exaggerated

MRDA?

Mandy Rice Davies Applies: Wikipedia.