Posts by Robert Grant

Creator of Linux virtual assistant blames 'patent troll' for project's death

It's not capitalism that's the problem. It's patent law created by governments.

Europe's largest council kept auditors in the dark on Oracle rollout fiasco for 10 months

Came here to say the same thing. They definitely can't all do it.

Linus Torvalds affirms expulsion of Russian maintainers

> Given this legal framework

What legal framework? Is there a law against accepting OSS contributions from Russians? I'm struggling to understand the actual compliance issue.

Keir Starmer tells regulators to chill as Microsoft exec takes wheel of advisory council

> Competitors to Microsoft and Google might point out that UK regulators can also promote growth by curbing monopolies

Generally the problem is regulations and other controls making market entry harder. Curbing monopolies directly is a massively bad idea except in extreme cases.

FBI created a cryptocurrency so it could watch it being abused

It's nice that scammers are being caught, but the trade volume thing is weaker than I thought this would be. The main message should be that using trade volumes is a bad signal, and you shouldn't use it, because it's so easy to fake. Not that you got scammed.

Domo arigato, Mr Roboto: Japan's bullet trains to ditch drivers

Re: An obvious step forward

> You'd be quite literally reboring and rebuilding entire lines to straighten them out

Not the entire line; just the platform. Still a bit job, but not nearly as big.

Research suggests more than half of VMware customers are looking to move

Re: "I think it's a shame that it's profits over anything else nowadays"

Good point. Under socialism we'd be queuing for bread, and wouldn't have to worry about virtualisation. Why worry about something that's not been invented?

AI bills can blow out by 1000 percent: Gartner

Re: Customer service is not a place for AI

> People are there for when the pre-programmed bits aren't enough to sort the issue automatically

Well, yes. But that doesn't mean some of those non-automatic things couldn't be automated. It's just that the current systems haven't automated them. There'll be some things that aren't automated but could be, and some that aren't automated and (probably) can't be. The former exists.

Datacenters to emit 3x more carbon dioxide because of generative AI

Re: If they want power and water on that scale.....

Quite a lot of data centres are put in places close to power generation, and renewable power generation at that. This isn't novel.

Google slashes maps API prices in India – weeks after a competitor emerged

Re: So, $1.50 instead of $5, and 5 million instead of 100K

They might not be making money on this, though. Who knows? Price and cost aren't that related, as long as overall price of all your products and services beats overall cost of all your products and services.

Google: We're still working to defeat Microsoft's 'anticompetitive' cloud policy

> legislation preventing a company from owning a cloud service and making software

So you mean something like have a parent company that owns a cloud services company, and a software company? Does the software company make the software to run the cloud service?

IT consultant-cum-developer in court over hiding COVID-19 loan

> Different software and hardware may be used

Oh no - not different hardware!

UK unions publish AI bill to protect workers from 'risks and harms' of tech

> AI is rapidly transforming our society and the world of work

Is it? To be honest I think the idea of regulating the setting and not the technology is right. I don't care if the kill order is given by an LLM or by a ball falling in the wrong hole in a pinball machine. It's what people do with its output that matters.

Cybercriminals threaten to leak all 5 million records from stolen database of high-risk individuals

> Sources speaking to The Register at the time claimed HSBC also may have closed the mosque's account because of a donation made to an unspecified Palestinian org during its 2015 war with Israel. In 2021, the mosque won a libel case against the news agency, which had to pay unspecified damages as its wrongful placement on the list caused banks to refuse to accept the mosque as a customer.

For anyone else who couldn't follow who "the news agency" was, it's Thompson Reuters, mentioned way up higher in the article.

AI PCs are here but a killer application for biz users? Nope

> Resist the pressure to jump on the bandwagon just yet warns, warns Forrester

The correct advice is "Don't jump on bandwagons; do what's right for your business and customers". However then Forrester wouldn't exist.

EU tells Meta it can't paywall privacy

Re: Thank you!

They won't beat them up! They'll ban them across the EU.

US Air Force says AI-controlled F-16 fighter jet has been dogfighting with humans

> stop using this tech to line the pockets of the few and instead, further mankind as a whole

How do we make dogfighting AI further mankind as a whole?

Microsoft claims it didn't mean to inject Copilot into Windows Server 2022 this week

> was hopefully no more than someone clicking the wrong option in a build tool.

People clicking options instead of doing it in source control would be insane.

Mega city council's Oracle ERP system still not legally safe, compliant... 2 years after rollout

I'm no Oracle fan.

But:

> "Members are of the opinion that they were not being given the full facts," the report said.

The members wouldn't know what to do with the full facts. They won't understand them, any more than most of us would be able to judge the results of surveys on the land they were going to bore through to make a new Tube line. They just won't say it.

Re: Recoup costs?

I'm not sure that's quite the case - there's definitely stuff left to local councils. A former employer sold into councils in the early 2000s so I had experience with a few customers, and they seemed fairly automonous.

Software glitch saw Aussie casino give away millions in cash

> at least one of them a recovering gambling addict who fell off the wagon as the "free" money allowed them to fund their activities

A recovering gambling addict in a casino?

Senator Warren slams Intuit's 'junk fees' as America's Tax Day rolls around again

I think "for free" here means "already paid for by the money you're giving the government".

AI to fix UK Civil Service's bureaucratic bungling, deputy PM bets

Re: Computers say Yes,..... Resistance is Futile and Puerile and Self-Destructive

First question: who architected this very expensive, licence-heavy FOIA IT infrastructure when flat files are almost free to host?

Hands up if you want to volunteer for layoffs, IBM tells staff

> "All corporations tend towards the IRS (HMRC -- UK) business model. All collections, no product....."

Of course - those organisations are what you get if your product is "we don't lock you in a box for not paying us".

Elon Musk can't wriggle out of SEC Twitter fraud inquiry

> however you believe we can do 4 things, it's just the 5th one that is a problem

It might be a problem - anything can be a problem to someone - but it seems not on the same scale of things as the others. I don't think 5 is a problem if anyone does it. I think it's particularly distracting when large, unnatural steps forward can be made in multiple areas.

Can we just pause car electrification, non-Soyuz rockets, internet anywhere, and missions to Mars and focus on the investors who saw a tweet and wanted a quick buck?

Fujitsu will not bid for UK.gov business until Post Office inquiry closes

How did they change things from how they were before?

Gaia-X project doesn't have a future, claims Nextcloud boss

> How did this go from lofty goal to discarded concept?

Even simple goals need a lot of hard work, and hard work needs money to pay for it. And the best way to get money is to make something people want more than what they have today, so they pay you for it.

IT needs more brains, so why is it being such a zombie about getting them?

Re: qualities HR doesn't like

Hah. good point :)

Re: qualities HR doesn't like

First they throw half the applicants in the bin, as they don't want to hire unlucky people.

Re: My AI's better than your AI

I've not experienced that level of law fee pain, but even conveyancing seems like something ripe for disruption. Why do I wait for searches that could be presented as part of an automated house-buying process?

Google exec: Microsoft Teams concession 'too little, too late'

Re: Hmmmm

This is whataboutism. In this area - corporate IT - Microsoft has a position and stance that is very close to anticompetitive. The only thing holding it back is how bad Teams is.

SQLite creator crucified after code of conduct warns devs to love God, and not kill, commit adultery, steal, curse...

Wow.

> not murder, steal, nor sleep with their colleagues' spouses

Well clearly I'm not welcome here!

Aspiration to deploy new UK nuclear reactor every year a 'wish', not a plan

Re: Summary of the UK's future climate/energy strategy

> Euro 6 (2014) for diesel cars

Er no - it's September 2015 for diesel. 2014 was for tyres.

I agree that most middle class people will have a newer diesel car, and it's only the diesel plebs who will have to pay.

Re: John Bull presents Little Englander Nuclear

I didn't vote for Brexit, but there's no reason why the UK can't trade with its nearest neighbours, just as other countries trade with the EU. Being in the EU and trade aren't the same things.

Uncle Sam accuses SpaceX of not considering asylees and refugees for employment

Meanwhile, from NASA

> Other than extremely rare exceptions, you must be a U.S. citizen in order to work for NASA as a civil service employee.

Ref: https://www.nasa.gov/careers/working-with-nasa

Oracle pours fuel all over Red Hat source code drama

Things start to break when there are two sources of truth. Why not update the licence wording instead?

> Lawyers do not understand "spirit" at all. Especially when they are royally paid not to.

I don't like this outcome, but how can a lawyer divine the spirit of something? What if two people disagree on the spirit?

Or perhaps there's a need for a new GPL.

Amazon confirms it locked Microsoft engineer out of his Echo gear over false claim

You'd have no chance if you had to pee in a fabricated bottle. Got to be plastic.

Ariane 5 to take final flight, leaving Europe without its own heavy-lift rocket

Re: But wait! There's more...

> Using taxpayers money to create jobs is an efficient use of it.

No, taking less tax so people spend more directly is an efficient use of it. Having people decide on a whim what jobs should or shouldn't exist to buy votes is the exact opposite of efficient.

Multi-tasking blunder leaves UK tax digitization plans 3 years late, 5 times over budget

This is all entirely unsurprising, and why no one should want the government to handle any more things than the bare minimum...

But...

I will say this: the less time businesses have to spend on fake activity like tax affairs, and the more time they can spend on doing useful things for their customers, the better off we'll all be. So the estimates on the benefits might be under-egging it.

FTC pulls emergency brake on Microsoft's marriage to Activision Blizzard

If MS were canny, they'd have done the Bethesda titles for the Playstation as well, but done a bad job of it, so the MS platforms were the premiere experience. Glad they didn't, but it's surprising that wasn't their move.

Microsoft’s Azure mishap betrays an industry blind to a big problem

Re: If a tiny typo brings down half of Brazil, perhaps we’re the nuts

The systems aren't monoliths at all, but the configuration application is. And DNS, which is often the culprit for cloud outages.

Microsoft's big bet on helium-3 fusion explained

Re: Fake

No need to not do both. And fusion would make the electric car charging actually cleaner, not just carbon credits cleaner.

I've no idea if this will work, but I think it's a good idea. Investments backing moonshots is what's got us electric cars, much cheaper rocketry, Starlink, etc etc.

MariaDB CEO: People who want things free also want to have very nice vacations

Re: consult

> Hasn't happened in the history of capitalism

Hasn't happened in history. Starvation is overwhelmingly more a feature of non-capitalist societies.

Who loves programming robots? Who wishes it was easier? Here comes Flowstate

> Our mission is in short to democratize access to robotics

The hard bit in this task is the robots, not the software.

Dyson moans about state of UK science and tech, forgets to suck up his own mess

This stuff is the middle class version of everyone down the pub watching football and knowing more than the manager does about football. Except even they don't pretend to know the manager's secret motivations and emotions.

GitHub code search redesign can't find many fans

I found it really annoying that the search would bring back results from multiple branches. I generally didn't want that.