Posts by Version 1.0

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

Re: Windows

If Microsoft still fully supported Windows 7 Professional and OneDrive then all users would be happy ... me too!

Small ocean swirls may have an outsized effect on climate, NASA satellite shows

Changes we see

Before Climate Change appeared we would see hurricanes forming in the southern Atlantic and then flow towards and into the Gulf of Mexico so hurricanes were common every year around Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi, once the storms arrived in the gulf they would sail north into the states. But that hasn't been happening much since Climate Change arrived, storms are still created but now just tend to move north up the Atlantic and moving north in the Atlantic they seem to be just local storms, not hurricanes so much.

China ups tariffs on US goods to 125%, calls Trump's war a 'joke'

Re: Who has the biggest hands

The most deadly thing in the government world is the concept, which always seems to be followed, that voters think they saw the government specify what they were going to do, and that it would be done. And that is where most of our troubles come from when governments are called successful because they have got the votes. But votes are based upon the government’s ignorance before it was elected.

Don't open that JPEG in WhatsApp for Windows. It might be an .EXE

Re: It's 2025....

You are describing a typical "bug" problem (you are upvoted, not the bug), a typical "fix" these days would be to get an email suggesting that you to drink the attached Guinness to fix it ... oh wait, that's Guinnessexe ... was it created by a drinker with a programming problem?

NASA doubles odds of Moon hitting near-Earth asteroid

Re: Our moon has protected us

We believe that when the Earth appeared it became covered in water, with only small plants evolving from tiny cells that probably also created evolving bugs. So many plants are similar and some much life (animals and us) has a slightly similar structure ... two legs/two arms, four legs and no arms, only one head and two sexual genetics etc, so we all seem to be related to fish after they appears initially, we're not plants. Working to try and understand all life's evolution is fascinating ... the creation of life on our planet might be an example of life existing everywhere in the universe (icon).

Our moon has protected us

Looking at the craters on the moon I feel so happy that they are on the moon, not on the Earth, We've had a lot of strikes in our planet's 4.6 billion years, but even more strikes could have resulted in a different Earth these days.

An asteroid impact about 66 million years ago removed all our big life (dinosaurs) and resulted in fish walking out of the sea to become us, so strikes change things! Another potential strike might result in us looking at strikes again, are we worried that the fish will need to start walking again in the future?

Windows 11 poised to beat 10, mostly because it has to

Re: Being forced

If you were a woman and Microsoft could upgrade you, would you have four arms and one very big leg? All Windows "upgrades" have been changes that were described as great, but it's often a pain to start using the upgraded Microsoft environment with your original personal item working.

Writing for humans? Perhaps in future we'll write specifically for AI – and be paid for it

Re: What's the difference between reading a book (and making note) and copying it?

We evolved by sharing knowledge ...

A young girl starting to walk on her rear legs and said, "Oh look Dad, let's eat that" ... and then Dad says, "Yes but we have to kill it first, eating a lion is not as easy as eating apples"

Shared knowledge has always helped everyone until recently.

Malware in Lisp? Now you're just being cruel

Re: plus ça change...

We have AI these days so I'm cautious of a new website appearing that would have AI encouraging everyone to visit and pay their monthly phone fees when they talk on their phone e.g. EightyAndTea.com

UK govt data people not 'technical,' says ex-Downing St data science head

Re: a training program to help civil service technologists become "AI engineers"

After training then people starting in this environment will "evaluate" the data and determine a conclusion. But the problem is that they don't double check their results to verify the conclusion. The experts are always happy to not just believe their conclusion, until they are verified it ... when they only suspect that it's accurate and check everything. The failure to verify an initial estimate is common everywhere but experts make everything work by double checking everything they think is OK.

Dell sheds ten percent of staff for the second year in a row

Re: And this year? More of the same, probably

In the USA we seem to be seeing similar countrywide effects like the UK as a result of the current presidential election. An effect on DEL that the UK has seen for years now after BREXIT, which occurred in the UK as being such a great election result like the USA has recently seen successfully.

Microsoft's many Outlooks are confusing users – including its own employees

In the old days of Microsoft clicking on an update was highly recommended by everyone (even the Register originally)

These days Microsoft is just tiny and floppy, it never got bigger and stiffer. It's never been as easy to use as Windows 7 Professional with Word 2010 ever since.

Re: Baffling

I'm still using Outlook 2010 and Word 2010 and they are still working so much better than the current "updates" - I've bought the current updates but they are not as easy (or fast) to work with everyday.

VanHelsing ransomware emerges to put a stake through your Windows heart

The malware world is making a lot of money ... but where?

Look at Microsoft creating malware fixes to help all users and telling everyone that they need to buy a new computer to use the new version of Windows. I suspect the malware folks are making a lot less money than everyone else working to create and sell malware fixes.

AI agents swarm Microsoft Security Copilot

Re: Your data into Microsoft's hands?

Is there any evidence that Windows 11 with AI running 100% doesn't make SPAM phone calls?

I don't have any evidence but I do suspect that the massive number of junk SPAM calls has started to appear once AI became universally distributed. I've seen nobody saying that AI can stop SPAM calls.

Museum digs up Digital Equipment Corporation's dusty digital equipment

When DEC systems appeared I saw everyone using Apple and MSDOS ... the DEC systems were so much better and way more powerful and DEC was always explaining how their systems worked so well, I wonder if their explanations to help their users resulted in a lot of other companies saying, "Oh look if we do that then our systems will be so much better"

The DEC systems were technically complex and physically complex but quite easy to work on them to resolve problems - that kept me employed to fix things around the world for years!

Schneider Electric plugs into AI's power hunger with Nvidia digital twin tech

What really happens in an AI datacenter?

"AI programming is like a eunuch in a harem; AI knows how programming is done, AI sees programming done every day, but AI is unable to program 100% effectively" (AI sees that "accurately" as 1000/0).

Microsoft isn't fixing 8-year-old shortcut exploit abused for spying

"We told Microsoft but they consider it a UI issue, not a security issue. So it doesn't meet their bar for servicing as a security update ..."

If we just block all email .LNK files, and other infectious attachments, and make every browser block them too then we might have a slightly better environment.

Don't want Copilot app on your Windows 11 machine? Install this official update

Re: Finally

A major "feature" is that the current Windows versions are getting hacking attempts and are busy working to break them. The hackers have abandoned working to attack the older versions of Windows so if you are using Windows 7 etc then you're quite safe and working well without having to worry about updates ... hacking "updates" and Copilot updates etc.

Saturn runs rings around Jupiter

Re: What is the lower mass limit for a moon?

Monkeys on the moon, See how they bounce from dune to dune, Came a long way in a gold cocoon. All the way from a green balloon. Look out pa, there's monkeys on the moon! Saturn is blinking, Jupiter's winking, All the kids are singing a tune, "Look out pa, there's monkeys on the moon!"

LOL, I've always loved that song, was this a Guinness voice?

Re: too early to have killed the dinosaurs by at least 30 million years.

So a large rock wandering around our solar system is probably going to be attracted by the large gravity planets well away from us, so this is a good and very helpful discovery. It suggests that the chance of a very large strike on the inner planets (Mercury, Venus and our Earth) is lower because there are three very large, high gravity, planets further away. Since our solar system rotates around our galaxy every 200 million years there are occasional other risks if we pass another solar system.

iRobot may be iDead in iYear

Re: Question

I've used an iRobot cleaner for years with no network connections at all - it's still working so well and so easy cleaning all the cat fir drops up in the whole house. It would work with a network connection when I bought it but I disconnected every home connection keeping us all safe. I don't think that the iRobot had any issues but I was just shuting down everything.

Printers start speaking in tongues after Windows 11 update

Re: The most valuable tech commodity you can own...

We've seen a few Microsoft printer update problems for years so this is no change in the computing world.

But if you are still using older versions of Windows then you'll never see any more update problems, everything is working fine for me.

Earth's atmosphere is shrinking and thinning, which is bad news for Starlink and other LEO Sats

Re: An increase in space junk...

Is this what happened on Mars 4 billion years ago? The Mars atmosphere started thinning, then the Mars seas disappeared and only a few satellites (ours) on Mars these days. I wonder if aliens are seeing our environment and saying, "Oh look at that again, we've seen it so often."

Surprise! People don't want AI deciding who gets a kidney transplant and who dies or endures years of misery

Re: A simple rubric for automating decision-making

I just drive carefully when there's a Dense Fog Advisory, I'd never be driving and trying to ask a Google question.

Medical work by people has always been better

The icon is for all the doctors I have worked with for years

"Views expressed by participants sometimes changed as they pondered their decisions" is a good description of medical workers doing analysis. I'm not a medical worker, only a technician, but I was taught in my first big job to fix medical Holter monitor (EKG recording) problems. I was told to always think twice, never assume that my "solution" worked, I needed to always verify that it worked, never just think that it worked.

I see quite a bit of AI these days that looks OK but when you review the result they can be small or even major differences from what is 100% accurate, I'd guess that AI makes a "decision" and then just repeats the same procedure to be "accurate" ... that not like thinking twice, it's just running the same routine twice.

I suspect that AI in the medical world can be seen like talking to someone, "You've done a great job chopping down all those trees, this patient has breast cancer so you can fix it." - this is not a joke. Basically just using AI might be helpful making sure the surgery tools had been cleaned for example.

Axiom Space and Red Hat to take edge computing into orbit

"Space is an ideal environment for edge devices"

If NASA makes a decision then I will go with it, I worked with a former NASA engineer years ago and was always totally confident in everything he did because he instantly explained every thought or review mistake I had. They are excellent engineers in a "working world" not just a "need more wages by selling data" world. Whatever they do will be excellent, normally much better than everyone else's understandings ... I always thought my understanding was good but always quickly realized that he'd seen, fixed and helped me for years by explaining my wrong view - helping me learn much better

NASA gets the icon.

Ex-NSA grandee says Trump's staff cuts will 'devastate' America's national security

I love these TRUMP stories

Because I have MAKA the "Make America Kittens Again" feature added to the web viewer. So I see pictures of Kittens and Cat and can ignore all the posts!

UK must give more to ESA to get benefits of space industry boom, says Brian Cox

Re: UK must give more to ESA to get benefits of space industry boom, says Brian Cox

We're all people on our world so "scientific and technical cooperation" needs to be worldwide to support our future. The risks are the future of our sun in billions of years, it might die and we need to work out a method to move around the universe which will require scientific and technical cooperation worldwide. As fish we originally climbed out of the sea and a few of the fish became monkeys, eventually evolving to walk around our world and these days post on Facebook etc ... lets evolve some more to visit and start to live in other solar systems in the universe.

Brian Cox is very smart, it's always good and helpful to listen to his science views.

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

Re: Generative AI models have passed the Turing Test ...

So what is the normal AI IQ level? Looking around at AI everywhere is looks like it's IQ level is about 55 to 85, never any higher. We're using AI everywhere these days but never see anything indicating that its' IQ level have been determined, like ours was in school when we were kids.

I'd probably be happier with AI if it was closer to my IQ level or even higher. I expect we'd all feel happier if we knew AI IQ was close to ours.

Nope. You probably can't cash in by turning your office or farm into a datacenter

Re: If you want to process an AI workload

Use AI to tell you how many feet above the current sea level you need to keep the new AI data-center not flooded ... looking at the current climate change predictions it looks like being at least 35 feet above the sea level would work, so I guess no chance to a setup in the Netherlands?

Windows 7 lives! How to keep your favorite fossil running

Re: ref = &pink_floyd

Early memories of the Pink Floyd concerts had upgraded my hearing ever since. Standing in front of their loud speakers in an performance with Syd Barrett being great has made listening to events ever since to be so easy! I'm sure our problems driving home were only a result of the massive sound level, not what we were smoking.

Microsoft's updated Windows battery indicator rollout runs out of juice

Re: Good to see in advance . . .

It's helpful to review the history of everything happening in the past ... for example here's a very old quote that indicates how little we might expect ...

"Microsoft has a new version out, Windows XP, which according to everybody is the most reliable Windows ever. To me, this is like saying that asparagus is the most articulate vegetable ever." - Dave Barry

I'm still using Windows 7 Professional everywhere - these days "no updates" keeps everything working fine.

Hurrah! AI won't destroy developer or DBA jobs

AIre search

A fun AI search that documents AI functionality is do a search for "ore stabit fortis arare placet ore stat" and you see a load of what are errors ... until you set the search for images.

I lived in Oxford and remember working that out years ago ... you only need to read, and say it, as "o rest a bit for tis a rare place to rest at" ...

AI can't figure that out these days, but I couldn't understand it the first day on the bench either.

Malware variants that target operational tech systems are very rare – but 2 were found last year

A Great Detailed story again!

Jessica, I'd give you a beer! The Register malware documentation for years now has been super helpful, making me aware of what is happening in the world so I can start working to block any issues personally. Thank You.

Microsoft's drawback on datacenter investment may signal AI demand concerns

Re: Tech gets smaller

How much a contribution to our current climate change is a result of the universal AI power consumption technology levels in our world?

Maps of terrestrial fibre networks aren’t great. The Internet Society wants to fix that

A fibre network at home

I've been using fibre at home for years now after waking up one morning and finding all the internet connected PC's dead after a lighting strike on the garden tree. A few local strikes since then have not resulted in problems.

A big AI build has ‘stalled’ and won’t happen this year as funds and GPUs prove elusive

Re: A big AI build has ‘stalled’

I get junk AI spam calls every day in America, I always answer, "HELL ...Oh..." and most of the calls disconnect immediately but my friends reply "Oh it's great to hear you speaking English" and we have happy conversations again ... born in England, I've lived and talked in America for 40 years.

I guess AI is working for its users and helping me too (icon).

Hey programmers – is AI making us dumber?

Re: Right on the mark Steven

I started with a new Intel 8080 microprocessor, having to wire it up and digitally creating a eprom to make it do my work. Then I moved to FORTRAN on new computers, BASIC and C ... languages kept changing to new ones so these days I expect that AI will be replaced in a few years too. That's how our programming environment has evolved for years now with "new" languages ... the older languages were not bad, they just got frequently replaced.

Chinese spies suspected of 'moonlighting' as tawdry ransomware crooks

A crew identified as Microsoft appears to have started moonlighting as a operating system replacement player – further evidence that lines are blurring between nation-state profits and financially motivated management making all users discard their computers and buy new computers so they are never seen as cybercriminals, only fancy rich management.

This is not political, this is just a filthy rich coincidence between the USA and China these days.

Techie cleaned up criminally bad tech support that was probably also an actual crime

Re: Many a decade ago ....

In the early 80's the company I was working for moved me from doing mechanical repairing to start reviewing the electronics data collected as a result of my mechanical work and I was taught that I must always think twice - the instruction was related to the EKG data that we were collecting "Never assume that data that looks good is good, always verify that the data is accurate because if it's not accurate than you must review your work to fix it"

Learning to always think twice, after working to fix occasional Holter monitor heart rate data problems, in the early days has helped me ever since.

Datacenter energy use to more than double by 2030 thanks to AI's insatiable thirst

Re: A modest proposal . . .

"There are three reasons for becoming a writer AI: the first is that you need the money; the second that you have something to say that you think the world should know; the third is that you can't think what to do with the long winter evenings." - updated from Quentin Crisp (icon) in the days before AI was created.

LinkedIn accused of training AI on private messages

Re: Why am I not surprised ?

Creating an accent completely solves all the spam calls I receive ... both AI calls and local human spam callers quit when I respond that I'm not helped, "Och U cun t'ell pee"

Re: Why am I not surprised ?

Whenever I talk with AI eg, "An tuig AI rud sam bith a tha mi ag ràdh" then AI seems to have no idea.

Intel pitches modular PC designs to make repairs less painful

Re: Hey Intel, the 1980's called

It's so much easier to unplug the CPU and EPROMS, occasionally replacing a tantalum capacitors too on S100 boards ... the quick fix is normally swap the EPROM and replace the board, then repair the nonworking board with a little soldering. The only complex issue with the old boards is to make sure you plug the component in the right way around. Originally everything was created to be kept working easily after initially being designed to work.

Years ago I was told that a PDP-11 shipped to Brazil was not working so I was flown from the US to Salvador in Brazil with the new CPU board to fix it, when I pulled the original board out I saw that the CPU had one pin loose so I pulled the CPU out and straightened the pins, plugged it in and everything worked. And the people in the lab took me out to dinner every day for a week while we verified it was working well.

Lovely eating Brazilian local food, a big dish of fish soup which enabled us to see the fish at the bottom of the dish when we drank all the soup together - it was great!

Tool touted as 'first AI software engineer' is bad at its job, testers claim

Re: If you want to know why these things will never work well

Definitely, I remember when Visual BASIC appeared and we saw so many of the same type of issues as we see with AI. I was watching programmers using Visual BASIC coding to create new Basic programs, mostly they worked until they were used. So we're still trying to create stuff that works ... the programming change hasn't effectively changed much.

Ransomware scum make it personal for Reg readers by impersonating tech support

Re: Sangria Tempest or Carbon Spider

I agree, but we'll start seeing new apps like a Software Common Universal Media app recommended for a quick download ...

This is not a joke, it's probably only the infected world these days.

Microsoft to force Windows 11 24H2 on Home and Pro users

I have no Microsoft functional problems

I'm still personally using Windows 7 Professional, the environment that no longer supports Google Drive and OneDrive is completely secure and works completely easily with no user problems or infection risks. I have to work with the newer versions occasionally to help users but the newer versions are always uncomfortable. I created a lot of applications years ago, starting in the Windows XP environment, that eliminated all Microsoft access requirements (DLL's etc) and the applications still run fine in the current Windows versions because they were written to work in the Windows world, not use Widows.

CISA: Wow, that election had a lot of foreign trolling. Trump's Homeland Sec pick: And that's none of your concern

A positive view of democracy

"There is only one difference between dictatorship and democracy. In democracy, you vote and then take orders, in dictatorship you don't waste time voting." - Joseph Stalin

Has democracy become democrazy these days? It looks like Stalin made an accidentally accurate statement.