Posts by Version 1.0

Russian hackers debut simple ransomware service, but store keys in plain text

Re: It really doesn't make much difference if ransomware has the password in plaintext

This description in The Register is a good helpful explanation, learning how hacking is being done is very helpful so that we can all start to learn to stay safe.

Parachutists told to check software after jumper dangled from a plane

Re: Software for parachute jumps ?

There was an incident like this years ago, the guy jumping out lost his parachute on the plane tail, this was over the ocean and a second parachutist jumped quickly and flew down to catch and save the first guys life, catching him so they both landed in the sea together.

We'll beat China to the Moon, NASA nominee declares

I love looking at the moon so often and I'm walking around at night playing what I have always seen as the most glorious psychedelic song that I have always loved for about 50 years now: "Monkeys on the Moon" by Sopwith Camel ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmhJPu8dbB4

Irish Excel whiz sheets all over the competition in Vegas showdown

Re: Congratulations Diarmuid

As a young teenager we were all taught to make explosives in the school chemistry lessons in Rugby, after a few bangs we all were a lot more careful children with no more bangs in the class again. An environment where kids learn that seems to never exist with all politicians.

China using AI as ‘precision instrument’ of censorship and repression, at home and abroad

Re: Hook, line, and sinker

I agree but seeing how AI works these days reminds me of being trained 50 years ago to process collected data, we were all told never to just assume that data was 100% accurate, we were told to always "Think Twice" to check that what we saw was acutely showing was happening. In those days so many people were over-fishing by throwing an explosive into the the water and then just sweeping up everything that floated after the big bang.

Dell says Windows 11 transition is far slower than Win 10 shift as PC sales stall

How many new computers will have been created when a W75 version is used by our little kids, trying to get the new system running on their AI built PCs because the kids are old and retired, and we're all gone?

Trump wants to turn it on again with 'Genesis Mission' for AI in science

Trump IQ versus AI IQ?

I've always thought they were similar. But if Trump can end the Russia and Ukraine war actions then I'll be much happier, before the war started we had employed an excellent Ukraine programmer but the war must have killed him, no communications ever since (icon).

Rust on the Moon? Far-side dirt says yes, actually

Re: I think we know the truth ?

I think it would be fascinating to just look at every other solar system planet in the distance - our world with clouds suggests that water (H2O) in the air may have resulted in life on the world initially resulting in even us today.

Re: I think we know the truth ?

That's a good question but I think there's little evidence, given the size of Jupiter sending anything there it would be difficult to get anything back again. But I think it would be fascinating for everyone on our planet to learn more about every other world in our galaxy. We are life and we can see nothing else related to life in our galaxy or even anywhere else ... very depressing, but the possibility of life in the universe is wonderful ... that's this comment icon and my thinking about our evolution from fish originally!

I'm so happy to think about how life expanded to created fish and then us, monkeys, dogs, cats, cows, and everything!

Zoomers are officially worse at passwords than 80-year-olds

It's so easy and powerful to only use a Welsh cyfrinair (password), I've used them for years and never had any issues.

Microsoft's first Windows 10 ESU Patch Tuesday release fails for some

"business as usual"

"For Windows 10 users, it appears that business as usual is more the order of the day." - certainly because business as usual is working to generate more profits.

OpenAI’s viability called into question by reported inference spending with Microsoft

Re: It's the same money caught in a loop.

Originally Microsoft updated the operating systems to help users work well and be happy. Now that AI has appeared everything is updated regularly to make AI more money and make Microsoft happy and get all the users money.

Machine learning saves £4.4M in UK.gov work and pensions fraud detection

People processing everything have a chance to learn, machines and other processing methods show how much people have learnt to sent them up originally and then applied them to the situation. People think, but machines and coding only process the environment, and make money but never think.

As kids we all learn for years a lot to think reasonably well - machines and everything else are only updated to look like they have a good result (hopefully).

A simple AI prompt saved a developer from this job interview scam

Re: "the faker posed as the chief blockchain officer"

I'd move the malware to a small computer with a thousand copies of Jenny Talia performing FOCUS (each copy renamed to financial etc), so the fakers get my opinion that they need to FOCUS.

End of support for older Office and Windows Server versions pile on the pain for admins

Re: Office 2013

My company’s major failure was that we created software that could not be hacked, so users didn’t keep paying us for new versions to solve problems because they never saw any problems or any hacking. My company is dead because no money kept coming in.

I was inspired by Microsoft having the same problem with early software days originally, but now Microsoft is completely redesigned and getting hacked, and they are making a lot more money.

Shadow AI: Staffers are bringing AI tools they use at home to work, warns Microsoft

AI always gives you an answer to a question ... whatever it says is internally recorded as an accurate answer.

But talking with people normally gives you an answer and says, "I think this might be what caused the problem." So you can reply "No, I didn't do that" and then you can discuss the problem, often fixing it after fully discussing everything.

End of Windows 10 support is the perfect time for the Windows 11 installer to fail

No updates for Windows

It's so good because I'm still using Windows 7 Professional every day and it's working so great because no updates are ever applied (icon) or needed.

AI devs close to scraping bottom of data barrel

Another Implementation

One AI application is too many for me and a thousand are not enough, OK I guess I'm seen as a drinker with an AI problem.

UK agency makes arrest in airport cyberattack investigation

Re: What I would like to know ...

I never saw anything like this when I started flying, giving the officials a sheet of paper details to get on the plane and then smoking with everyone once the plane took off, OK that was years ago when it was not a problem to have anything sharp in your bag - I never saw problems flying around for years - these days everyone is having to work to do "Lets fix this problem and we need to start looking for the next problem!"

Trump admin says tech companies are abusing H-1B visas, slaps $100k a year to allow entry

I was sent to the US from the UK in the 70's to keep the British company medical equipment working, Initially I had to fly from the US to the UK regularly every year to renew my visa. The company paid that every time for years and then saved money by paying the cost of getting my permanent US working residency so with a US passport as well as my UK passport I had no problems living in the US. This year I've quit the US and returned to the UK (icon) so I'm happier now.

Microsoft keeps adding stuff into Windows we don't want – here's what we actually need

Re: First of all...

Jamesit, that's just a very good illustration that "You are Damned if you do and Damned if you don't "

Sysadmin cured a medical mystery by shifting a single cable

Re: Network plans

"There are many things that we would throw away if we were not afraid that others might pick them up." - Oscar Wilde ...

A very old quote, so I'm just saying that we're not seeing anything new these days. I'm not complaining, I worked for unrelated but similar upsets years ago in the medical environments.

Cybercrooks attached Raspberry Pi to bank network and drained ATM cash

Re: Banks have zero security

I don't work in a bank but in the early cyber-crime days my company was hacked, I reset everything and spent a month learning to hack my entire company, just becoming my own cyber-criminal and after learning how to hack everything and then preventing it, we were never hacked again. Every company could be protected if they employed someone in the same environment to prevent hacking after initially learning how to do it in the local environment - and then creating protections after learning the abilities to hack all local hardware and software access.

Panic buying ahead of Trump tariffs added $825 million to Apple's sales last quarter

I'm getting half a dozen spam calls every days that say that Medicare has been enhanced by Trump and wanting me to sign up with a new medical support company, I suspect the calls are all AI talking with a female voice.

So I reply each time, "I'm a vegetarian so I can't eat politicians but I'm too fucking healthy so I don't have any medical issues and I'm drinking Guinness to keep me healthy" - I see my potentially stupid reply as matching the spam calls and keeping me laughing.

Bitter fight over 2020 Microsoft quantum paper both resolved and unresolved

Re: "15 separate controls that define where to look for Majoranas."

"I’ve finally learned what upward compatible means. It means we get to keep all our old mistakes." - Dennie van Tassel (Computer scientist)

'It looks sexy but it's wrong' – the problem with AI in biology and medicine

Re: It's worse when AI Slop pretends to have medical knowledge

I've worked fixing humans with a few problems in the technical medical world for about 40 years now. I don't see AI as making very different decisions to peoples' decisions, but when people make a decision in virtually all technical worlds then the human experts review their decision and verify that it's accurate and correct, not just assuming that they are correct - but AI seems to normally just assume that it's correct. When people do that then we see it as a frequent issue ... for example being told "Take these pills to make you feel better" and an expert saying the next day in hospital, "Oh he took 20 pills, but you only need one to fix the problem!"

AI errors often match people errors.

Microsoft-owned GitHub: Open source needs funding. Ya think?

Re: Digital sovereignty

Originally the statement was: "Every operating system out there is about equal, We all suck."

That was Microsoft senior vice president Brian Valentine describing the state of the art in OS security, 2003. Thank God it wasn't an AI statement (icon).

How to get rid of useless keys in Windows and turn them into something helpful

Windows 7

A wonderful Microsoft world is the old Windows versions, I've been using them originally when Windows appeared and now have several laptops running Windows 7, all working perfectly with no problems and working with the old Office versions everything is easy with no problems.

The only problems I've seen for years now have been Microsoft updates, so I've stopped all updates to continue keeping everything working so much better than the current world.

The real reason why Trump is killing the Mauna Loa observatory in Hawai'i

Re: Erm

It's the current world, not much different from the past ... the story only makes me think of an old quote that I've always respected ...

"When I came back to Dublin I was court-martialed in my absence and sentenced to death in my absence, so I said they could shoot me in my absence." - Brendan Behan

Malaysia closes a back door that may have allowed US-sourced AI chips to reach China

If you buy nothing that says "Made in China." then a lot of time you just need to pay for an update to keep it working? Looking at everything politically today (I'm living in America) I see China as much nicer ... maybe as a result of my so many great visits as a European guy to China.

AI coding tools make developers slower but they think they're faster, study finds

Re: I'm surprised how good the non-AI estimates were

I don't use AI but I expect that AI coding is designed to be good (icon) but it's the original environment before AI appeared.

That was the situation in my early medical analysis programming days, programs were created and expected to work but never verified that they were always working in every situation. My experience as Windows XP appeared and started to be extended was that creating code that used Windows XP DLL features eventually resulted in some issues, so I made everyone create code that never accessed and used external Windows DLL's. After a few minor updates originally every program is still fully functional with so many users updated to all the new Windows releases - the programmers were always verifying and checking everything, never just assuming that it would work.

Trump tariffs turn techies topsy-turvy as US braces for PC tax

Re: Idiotic tariff nonsense

After working in Brazil a lot years ago, I'm still drinking Yerba Mate a lot more often than Tea. I'm happy with Tea, Coffee and Yerba Mate too, each drink reminds me of happy drinking around the world ... LOL (icon), I'm still drinking Guinness too!

US Department of Defense will stop sending critical hurricane satellite data

So start using the Windy app

You can estimate and expect what will happen if you just look at the wind rotations and the overall movement. The Windy app and a lot of other weather apps will help you guess what's likely to happen. But that other side of this is that since "Climate Change" appeared then the original monthly storm environment in the Atlantic has become a lot lower.

Originally hurricanes appeared multiple times every year and the storms moved into the Gulf, but that's only happened a few times for years now.

Climate Change is observable, not predictable for years yet, Climate Change is a lot bigger than government intelligence.

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).