Posts by Alan Bourke

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

Re: 20 million cells?!

What, like Outlook?

Software engineer reveals the dirty little secret about AI coding assistants: They don't save much time

Luddite?

More like old enough to have been round the tech 'new dawn of humanity' carousel many times and have a keenly developed ability to detect techbro bullshite.

Microsoft: Don't let AI agents near your credit card yet

I'll ditch my credit card

before I let any form of this bollocks anywhere near it.

US government shutdown clouds an otherwise sunny ServiceNow forecast

World's greatest democracy it says here ...

This nonsense, the fact that gerrymandering is legal, the electoral college thing ...

Microsoft finance slang defines the eternal optimist: The 'hockey stick on wheels'

Will it?

I thought it was 'flying cars imminent' or was it 'Excel is dead' this year?

X to combat bot problem by showing more info about users

Bob Nazi

From Kursk

Windows 11 gets a fresh Start in latest Canary build

If you want a Windows TUI text editor

Use Micro.

UK police caught slacking off by jamming their keyboards while working from home

Re: Other Options Available

Also modern endpoint security software would be klaxoning hard once it got a look at that EXE

Stop runaway AI before it's too late, experts beg the UN

This is like when they all got in a flap about blockchain

and 3D printing. They haven't a fuxking clue.

AI coding hype overblown, Bain shrugs

Script kiddies might use it

anyone who has to produce testable code that meets compliance requirements, NIS2 etc won't be touching it.

The Notepad that knew too much: Humble text editor gets unnecessary AI infusion

Who even uses Notepad?

Your average user doesn't. Anyone with an ongoing need for a text editor has been using something else for decades.

Microsoft's first preview of Visual Studio 2026: Deeper AI and a design refresh

It's free?

And open source (ish)

Re: Why do people still want visual designers?

"credible story to tell there right now."

Indeed, the credible story there is Avalonia.

Why do people still want visual designers?

Do they make sense outside the older VB6\Winforms paradigm?

Given a declarative UI based on XAML or similar, where layout is largely based on the relationship of elements to each other in terms of position and size, what would it give you that a live preview of changes to the XAML wouldn't?

Commodore Amiga turns 40, headlines UK exhibition

Ah the good old Miggy ...

... it was no Acorn Archimedes, but still pretty good.

Every question you ask, every comment you make, I'll be recording you

If you don't know this instinctively

then I'm not surprised if you're the sort of person who peppers "I asked ChatGPT" into conversation and then expects anyone to take any further utterances seriously.

Behold the wood-block wonder of the Kilopixel display

Ah, steampunk ...

... when goths discover brown.

Microsoft promises to eventually make WinUI 'truly open source'

Re: Choices

Linux is about 4-5% of the desktop so if it's even on their roadmap to 'prevent Linux taking over the desktop*' then they're playing a very long game.

* Yes I know pretty much everything that isn't desktop is Linux or at least not Windows.

Re: Better idea.

They are but they don't run the software business use and no it's not all in the cloud.

ServiceNow eyes $100M in AI-powered headcount savings

As ever, nobody with a 'C' at the start of their job title

appears to be at risk from this bullcrap.

And now for our annual ‘Tape is still not dead’ update

Tape *is* dead ...

Like Excel and Email are dead. Real soon now. No really.

Firefox 141 relieves chronic Linux pain in the neck

Re: Disable AI bullshit

Settings\Tabs

"Use AI to suggest tabs and a name for tab groups" tickbox.

Call center staffers explain to researchers how their AI assistants aren't very helpful

This whole thing

is idiots with MBAs who understand absolutely nothing about what the workforce does, slavering over the prospect of job cuts.

Google to buy power from fusion energy startup Commonwealth - if they can ever make it work

I think the UK missed a trick here

in not having their own similar research facility called PAKAMAK

The year of the European Union Linux desktop may finally arrive

"This, in turn, means their data and meta-information will be kept in a US-based datacenter."

That's not true. It'll be in your country of residence or the closest datacenter.

American coders are most likely to use AI

It's the American way

Its' the Ozempic of coding.

Forget Vibe Coding, we're all about Vine Coding nowadays

Vibe coding!

When you're so shit at being a script kiddy that you can't even cut and paste something together!

Danish department determined to dump Microsoft

Well good luck, seriously ...

... but see you all back on El Reg in two years where they just couldn't make it work and slinked back to 365

AI coding tools are like that helpful but untrustworthy friend, devs say

If you think that in terms of the coding world it is or ever will be

anything more than a useful tool for doing autocomplete or finding examples or refactoring, and you think you'll be able to use it for developing mission-critical, tested, maintainable line of business software then I have a Tower Bridge to sell you.

Europe warns giant e-tailer to stop cheating consumers or face its wrath

SHEIN is like when you order AliBaba

off Temu

SAP users grapple with 50% premium for industry-standard service levels

Re: "We get extraordinarily positive feedback"

*does Jimmy Hill chin rub*

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

Cue a million replies

confusing anecdote with data.

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

And the Labour Party

have a hardon for letting these goosestepping pricks get their mitts on the NHS

ActiveX blocked by default in Microsoft 365 because remote code execution is bad, OK?

Re: ActiveX?

Yes, it's still a thing in the real world where companies use stuff that has been working just fine for them for a very long time because why would they go through the ballache of changing. Which isn't to say that it shouldn't die immediately, but the real world doesnt' work that way.

Worry not. China's on the line saying AGI still a long way off

Can't remember who said it ...

... but they said something to the effect that what if we have now in the 'AI' sphere is like getting a person into Earth orbit, then AGI is like interstellar FTL spaceflight.

Musk’s DOGE ship gets ‘full’ access to Treasury payment system, sinks USAID

World's greatest democracy

it says here.

Shove your office mandates, people still prefer working from home

Re: Just a thought

Like that on its own would be the dealbreaker for an employer. If they're already in the mindset of looking at Bangalore they're looking at paying peanuts where possible, the fact that you're not in the office is irrelevant.

Windows 11 24H2 strikes again – Outlook might not start with Google Workspace Sync running

"Automate it to send emails?"

"Bahahaha. You delightful young booby."

AWS says AI could disrupt everything – and hopes it will do just that to Windows

Ah yes just like 3D printing

blockchain, VR and so forth.

A new dawn of humanity? Or the latest tech that will have uses in some areas being furiously pumped by the tech sector because line must go up.

Outlook is poor for those still on Windows Mail, Calendar, People apps by end of year

No meaningful automation options

... so your desktop apps that automate it to send emails are screwed.

Re: OUTHOUSE(OutLook)

*Alan Partridge shrugging GIF*

Bluesky keeps growing, and so do its problems

Aw diddums

Is your anonymous hating getting you blocked?

Microsoft hits back at claims it slurps your Word, Excel files to train AI models

I can see this outside the EU on the home versions of Windows.

Would be sceptical of it happening inside the EU or on enterprise SKUs.

Microsoft starts boiling the Copilot frog: It's not a soup you want to drink at any price

The old IT saying 'garbage in, garbage out'

... was never more relevant.

Qualcomm's Windows on Arm push would be great – if only it ran all your software

"... when users run legacy applications."

They're not legacy applications any more than native ARM binaries are legacy applications if run under emulation on x86

Python dethrones JavaScript as the most-used language on GitHub

Re: Bollox

A jazzed up search engine that spits out boilerplate? Fine, it's a time saving tool for certain things. I'll take that.

Old, lazy developers? They've seen hype bandwagon-pumped alleged new dawns of humanity four or five times overt their careers probably, so are healthily cynical.

91% of polled Amazon staff unhappy with return-to-office, 3-in-4 want to jump ship

Re: not again

Calm down Alan Sugar. World has moved on.

HPE CEO: 'Best interest of shareholders' to pursue $4B damages from Lynch estate

Re: A storm off the coast of Sicily

Oh there's a batshit insane conspiracy theory behind everything these days.

Apple owes billions in back taxes over Ireland state aid rule break

Re: General Court erred

Except that's not what happened, Brexit Boy.

Ah well at least we'll be able to afford a few more bike shelters for politicians ...

https://www.rte.ie/news/2024/0902/1467936-leinster-house-bike-shed/

"Answers needed from OPW over €335k bike shelter"