Posts by Sorry that handle is already taken.

Server-room lock was nothing but a crock

Readers of this website and PWNED in particular might be interested in a keynote speech the LockPicking Lawyer gave to Saintcon a few years ago.

Well, technically the best video was one where he got into the ex girlfriends' back door, but that is a different matter.

LPL has done an April Fools video every year for the last eight, beginning with "Manipulating My Tiny Coq" and ending (so far) with "Getting Into My Wife’s Furry Fanny".

Re: ISO certification VS security

I spent a brief amount of time working in India about 20 years ago. Every business loudly and proudly advertised its ISO9001 certification, no matter what it was the business did...

Windows takes a crash dump after one McDonald's order too many

I thought that was the joke in the headline

Nvidia's Rubin GPU is likely to be late thanks to memory shortage and technical challenges

Irony

You did this to yourself, Nvidia

Investors are going nuclear to keep UK's AI datacenters fed

Re: Fusion

Frankly, fusion is a distraction from R&D into better fission designs.

The latter of which themselves are a distraction from investment in renewables.

Okay

The AI data centres need the electricity when they're built*, though. Not in 10-20 years when the nuclear power station opens.

* We know they're not getting built...

RAF eyes cheap drone-killer as Typhoon jet tests laser-guided rockets

Re: Cannon

Given the effective range of cannon fire (about 500m)

That is a lot less than I expected!

Another problem is that if you're forced to engage over populated areas, those (uncontrolled) rounds have to come down somewhere...

AI agents found vulns in this popular Linux and Unix print server

Oh no!

The Register has begun putting "this" in headlines

AI models will deceive you to save their own kind

A team named "Berkeley Center for Responsible Decentralized Intelligence" couldn't possibly be incentivised to fuel hype (and possibly doom) around "AI safety", now could it?

In previous similar "research", the models behaved the way they did because they were prompted to do so...

Microsoft veteran says some 'broken by update' PCs were already doomed

If a corporation is letting their fleet auto update then I guess they are getting what they asked for.

It gets worse. My team has a dedicated workstation to do tasks that our issued laptops can't do effectively. Some of these tasks take days to run. Meanwhile, the company pushes software updates and forces a restart within the next eight hours. We've asked them to add an exception but we just get ignored.

'Uncle Larry’s biggest fan' cut by email in early morning Oracle layoff spree

Re: Cutout

Whoops, apostrophe!

Re: Cutout

It's going to get so much worse because Oracle has bet the farm on AI data centre construction. It's commitments are somewhere in the 12 figures, right when the bubble is on the verge of bursting...

One in seven Americans are ready for an AI boss, but they might not trust it

Re: 15 percent of Americans would be willing to work for an AI boss,

Seems a bit dodgy as the sampled population has 55% that both trust and voted for the current administration.

Less than 25% of the eligible voting population (but that doesn't let the ~50% who didn't vote off the hook).

Memory-makers' shares are down. Some RAM prices have eased. Blaming Google is not a good idea

Re: Not convinced

I guess it hasn't made it to Australia yet (as usual!)

Not convinced

Yet over the last week, the price of consumer-grade memory has reportedly eased at some online vendors.

I'm yet to see it, and the linked article doesn't explain by how much, since when, or whether it's even a trend. PC Part Picker's charts certainly don't support the claim.

Microsoft takes up residence next to OpenAI, Oracle at Crusoe's 900 MW Texas datacenter expansion

I believe Mark 124 is referring to the time required to bring a data centre containing 1 GW of IT load online, not a power station to supply it. Although those are in short supply too.

And one day they're going to start wondering what they're getting out of all of this. Then they start asking.

Ed Zitron discusses the ongoing data centre builds, and the claims being made about them.

Basically most of the mainstream reporting on the subject is garbage and the industry relies on the misinformation it spreads.

Kicking the can further down the road just to stay in the news

Get back to us when it exists, Crusoe/Oracle/OpenAI/Microsoft.

In the meantime you can answer a question: Where's the money coming from to pay for it?

Staff too scared of the AI axe to pick it up, Forrester finds

Re: So tell us what it can do

Oh god... That's the real nightmare right there.

So tell us what it can do

Right now, many employees [...] aren't well trained to use the tech

If the boosters would just spend some time thinking of good reasons to use it, rather than just proclaiming that it's going to revolutionise everything...

I recently sat in on a Copilot "training" session (provided by Microsoft!) and we were shown how to filter some data in Excel and... check the weather, of all things. I can already do those without a chat bot.

GitHub hits CTRL-Z, decides it will train its AI with user data after all

Smell that?

That's desperation.

Trump remembers to appoint science panel, fills it mostly with tech bros

"Drain the Swamp"

The swamp was never more foetid. I wonder why I haven't heard anyone shouting this slogan for a while?

We tested Intel's new chips for cash-strapped hardcore PC users and they're impressive

Re: More cores, higher clocks, and lower prices? What's not to like?

And it's more energy efficient than Raptor Lake, but that isn't saying much. The 270K Plus still peaks at 250 W when the 9800X3D peaks at 150.

Refresh

It's also worth noting that AMD is also due for a desktop refresh, though recent reports suggest Zen 6 may not be coming to consumer platforms until next year. That still leaves plenty of opportunity for AMD to roll out their own budget-oriented parts. Maybe a 9700X3D or 9600X3D Micro Center special? Or perhaps we'll finally see that long-rumored 9950X3D2 dual 3D V-Cache dies.

AMD's reaction

Re: Who needs that for gaming?

Surely it's designed for a 486?

The drone swarm is coming, and NATO air defenses are too expensive to cope

Re: Cost

That's $20k at US defence contractor rates

Junior disobeyed orders and tried untested feature during a live robot demo

Re: The junior kept his job.

I'm in favour of giving junior a chance to show he's learned a lesson but it wasn't a mistake; it was wilful disregard for a clear direction from a superior.

Microsoft: Removing some Copilots will improve Windows 11

I'm not so sure they did...

The real lesson comes when the bubble bursts and shareholders start to ask exactly what they're getting for 11 figures of wasted R&D.

As a total neophyte I'm currently trialling a handful of Linux distros because W11 can gargle my balls, and I'm impressed at how mature and user friendly the ecosystem is (although it's true I have no prior experience).

Re: I have an idea

Yes, 7 is Windows's high water mark IMO.

I use 10 at home and 11 at work and I tolerate 10, but I actively despise 11.

I have an idea

Can we just have Windows 10 back*? We didn't need Windows 11 or 99% of what's in it, and the few things that are useful can be backported anyway.

* 7 would be preferable but asking for 10 back is delusional enough as it is...

Google gives Android users a way to install unverified apps if they prove they really, really want to

This is more motivating than the blanket ban they'd originally proposed?

Now read the next line...

GNOME 50 debuts with X11 axed, Wayland front and center

Re: "simply do not understand phrases like "backward compatibility""

I'm almost certain it was sarcasm

Your next car might need 300 GB of RAM, and so will autonomous robots

Re: I don't think so

Oh and to add; they've been struggling to get cars to drive themselves reliably for more than 15 years now. At some point they're probably going to have to accept that throwing more computing power or data storage at the problem isn't going to change anything.

I don't think so

I don't need or even want a car that needs 300 GB of RAM

It's not a binary choice. Independent boffin builds a ternary CPU on an FPGA

Re: Surely a TrInary digIT should be called ...

A non-binary computer with tits is presumably good at calculating Modulation Transfer Functions

Everything needed to make DNA and RNA found in asteroid sample

Re: So life is older than Earth

The earliest signs of life on the planet are still a few hundred million years after its formation. These molecules themselves aren't "life" and the conditions inside Earth, or even just on its surface, during its formation would have dissociated them anyway.

Nvidia's DLSS 5 promises to bring you out the other side of the uncanny valley

Re: Performance

There have already been static demos of DLSS 4.5 showing surprisingly "good" visuals generated from comically low resolution input. Example.

No doubt it looked terrible in motion and I understand that it still has to be trained on expected output but at some point, what is even real any more?

Re: Great

I mean the game development companies, not the individual artists

Great

Game developers will be even more lazy now.

And it shouldn't even need to be said that the level of realism in the visuals isn't the problem Starfield has.

ServiceNow boss warns AI could push grad unemployment past 30%

We have a saying in the Antipodes

Yeah, nah.

AI Burning Man happens next week – what to expect at Nvidia GTC 2026

Re: Meh

Too busy turning parts of the Middle East into the moon

Intel finds its Zen undercutting AMD with Arrow Lake refresh

Re: Cherry Picked Data

I believe SMT was dropped from Arrow Lake for security reasons, but there's also a performance benefit to the P/E architecture in general. I don't know how much silicon was saved by removing SMP from the (Lion Cove) P-cores, but depending on workload, a (Skymont) E-core typically provides 65-80% of the performance of a P-core, while taking up a third of the area (caches included) and using a lot less energy. If, once you've saturated the P-cores, you still have a need for lots of threads, I think the E-cores make a lot of sense.

EU legal eagle says banks should refund cybercrime victims first, argue later

Re: Good intention perhaps

The scammer still has to log into your bank account, change contact details, change MFA details, send money to accounts that have never been sent to before etc. etc. All things the bank could, and arguably should, be looking out for. There should be an expectation of a minimum duty of care. It's what that level is that's the question here. And it isn't zero.

But anyway I hope you tell all of that to your friends, or family members, or yourself, if it happens to them one day...

Musk admits Starship V3 launch date has slipped as Super Heavy booster rolls into place

Re: Timelines

Well... We keep getting told the private sector can do it better than the public sector...