Posts by Denarius

AI in the enterprise: AI may as well stand for automatic idiot – but that doesn't mean all machine learning is bad

not again

AI, so far, is slightly more flexible Expert Systems. Narrow set of tasks, narrow field of "knowledge", narrow application. In the set field the expert system may do well. That does not mean it fits any useful definition of intelligence

Oh what a feeling: New Toyotas will upload data to AWS to help create custom insurance premiums based on driver behaviour

Too Late

Toyota just planning ahead. In the ever extending hunt for money, gummints are looking at distance traveled for registration fees. Supposedly to "reduce" costs but as in Oz, the GST removed none or few of the more nefarious state taxes it was sold as removing. No doubt with AI, implemented as simple inference engine, fines will be automated from compulsory data. All for our own safety of course.

Former HP CEO and Republican Meg Whitman – who split HP with mixed success – says Donald Trump can't run a business

Pot, meet Kettle

says it all

Pot, meet kettle: Google claims Australia's pay-for-news plan could see personal data put to nefarious uses

Pedantry

nope, comma is correct as it is a list signaler, indicating a break in context

Australian government wants power to run cyber-response for businesses under attack

From the ministry most associated with Tech troglodytes

Ah yes, the gummint that outsourced its own IT to foreigners so focused on cutting costs that patching slowed, software, hardware and OS became years out of date, jobs sent overseas. Yep call in experts, if there are any. Twanky described the rest of issues well. Another distraction from the creeping totalitarianism infesting the ruins of western civilisation

Steve Wozniak at 70: Here's to the bloke behind Apple who wasn't a complete... turtleneck

was it that long ago

we lost Dennis Ritchie ? A good and great in computing. Pity some sales weasels death swamped news of a sad day

Snortical warfare: Wild boar launches amphibious assault against German beachgoers

Re: Over Here

Jake, interesting post. In the Oz NT the belief was the bigger the caliber the better as big pigs can have small caliber bullets bounce off head. No-one eats big wild porkers due to the multiple diseases they carry. Young ones are cooked in ground oven. Bow hunting seems to becoming more popular here also. Probably because its quieter so newly arrived townies taking up hobby farms are not disturbed by unaccustomed sounds. Anyone who hunts wild pigs with a bow and lives uninjured has my respect.

indeed

even pet pigs bite is serious. Friend of daughter had pet pig severely damage her wrist while she was separating dog and pig. Just after a big tree had bisected their house completely, in the rain and wind. Not dark tho. Did I mention in Oz even the trees try to kill you ? If the falling branches don't, the whole tree might by incineration or crushing.

An irritating itch down the back of your neck? Searing midsummer heat? Of course, it can only be SysAdmin Day

Sysadmins mate ?

I thought they were mostly mutants

Two large flightless birds walk into a bar... The pub's owner was not emused *ba-dum tsh*

Re: Toilet as a verb!

Indeed, Users flush with success

media

Pub owner trying to reduce offense. This to Oz journos. Local excuse for a broadcasters "entertainment" seem to have comedians (allegedly) who F bomb routinely. Weird how outback characters once noted for being a bit coarse now are more restrained in speech than inner city dwellers.

Camels vs Emu

In NW WA emus are noted for their destructive affect on vehicles. Seems direct hits results in a legless bird with attitude beside you in car and a very borked windscreen. Not a drop of booze in sight either. Roos just smash front up. Nearly hit camels once. Also not fun. Yet to hear of the very large feral pigs which even live south of Canberra (oblig jokes expected) which at nearly 2 meters long and meter high could be expected to outwombat a wombat for destructiveness. Love Oz, deadly wildlife, shark infested seas, stupidest and cheap politicians with some wild weather to keep boredom at bay. Look up rainfall figures for Oz SE coast this week.

Hats off to the brave 7%ers who dived into the Windows 10 May 2020 Update within a month of release

OTGH

Update blew away the linux dual boot installation by adding a 450 MB WinRE hidden partition out of the space used by / on a sandpit box. Same on HP laptop of little use.

No warning, just no linux installation. Seems to be designed to enforce EUFI and preventing dual boot on traditional BIOS dual boot. As for Windows, the little I use it, nothing to make it desirable. Still have to find 3 drivers for Nvidia and a couple of other chips. All Win 10 Pro versions.

OTGH

it blew away the linux dual boot installation by adding a 450 MB WinRE hidden partition out of the space used by / on a sandpit box. Same on HP laptop of little use.

No warning, just no linux installation. Seems to be designed to enforce EUFI and preventing dual boot on traditional BIOS dual boot. As for Windows, the little I use it, nothing to make it desirable. Still have to find 3 drivers for Nvidia and a couple of other chips. All Win 10 Pro versions.

CompSci student bitten by fox after feeding it McNuggets

Re: Let them eat rabbits

Antron, not quite. Some of the flies carry truly fearsome gastro diseases. In an Oz summer, that is deadly if not treated quickly. So yes, even our flies can kill

Once caught

Most of us shoot the damned things,caught or otherwise. Brought in by some pom major whining "farmer always dislike a gentleman's pastime" Haven't found his grave yet to spit on it. Also, judging from the airhead city dwellers I have had to work with, or worse, meet at polling booths, most of them seem to think Disneys cartoons like Bambi are nature documentaries. Much prefer the Mr Hell show parody of Lion King.

Ex-barrister reckons he has a privacy-preserving solution to Britain's smut ban plans

population bust

OK, Singapore. And for fun, DRC noting problems with age demographics from 2050 if not earlier thanks to 1 child policy, hence now 2 is OK.

What did it take for stubborn IBM to fix flaws in its Data Risk Manager security software? Someone dropping zero-days

takes me back

to AIX 3.2.5. rlogin bug 30 years ago. Lovely being able to log into any box without authentication as root user. IBM ignored warnings until finder went public. You can tell the RAs did not hit the PHB levels. Almost as entertaining as HP Bug of the Week from late lamented Kernel Panic. Some of those were as gobsmacking. Now if only MS decided all objects arriving by mail were untrusted bt default, 40 years after Morris Worm we might be getting somewhere.

Offtopic, why has concept of bastion host vanished ? Data theft is much harder if clear separation of private/internal machines is maintained, yet so many intrusions seem to work because a mere firewall, if that, is between the Interweb and the internal servers. Or am I just too old because I think internal stuff should not be accessible from outside without at least TPA and external devices being clean slated every month or less. Stuff the BYOD policy. Recipe for leakage.

Microsoft 365 and Azure outage struck Australia and New Zealand just as business rocked up for a new week

back up

my NSW stuff works at least, complete with MS advice of all is now well. The reliability and resilience of the Cloud, full failover, no need for on site IT staff etc. Not

Facebook caves to Australia's call for explanations of News Feed algo changes

futile anyway

Given most of the local media, such as it is, has no news worthy of the name, so what.

Oz media seems to be obsessed with Trumpery, (ABC mostly) fatuous CGI objects (seriously, most of the characters in reality TV series look like good CGI fakes), and entertainers babbling fashionable buzzwords of the day. Al Jazeera, El Reg and a few other internet sites have become many citizens source of news, in all adult or nearly so age groups. The general skepticism about pollies extends to news purveyors with the added comment that it is always depressing so why bother. For you Poms, commisserations. It is sad how low quality the BBC world news has become.

Mortal wombat: 4 generations of women fight for their lives against murderous marsupial

Re: to be honest, I think this is a beatup

No, not a beat up. Some seem to be insomniacs and can be seen during day.Saw one wander across a glider winch launch rope just as Take Up Slack given, which was rapidly followed by Stop Stop Stop. Time: Around noon in middle of big clear paddock, a long way from burrows. Local ones are mostly evening and early morning, not nocturnal. And given rural Ozzies being used to space, perhaps wombat got cabin fever from the lock down, like the rest of us.

Re: Wombatnado

according to local lore, wombats do attack lower leg to snap/cut archilles tendon. Why I don't know. Perhaps one of the big ones killed by climate change 20K years ago was carnivorous. Would match the Aboriginal Bunyip legend anyway

Re: Dubbo is afraid

there are such things as licensed wombat removers, so wombat worriers are a thing

Don't panic: An asteroid larger than the Empire State Building is flying past Earth this weekend but we're just fine

wot, no panic now ?

A chance to panic, scream and curse blaming someone for stuffing up and you say "Dont Panic "? What is this, Hitchhikers Guide ? You are hurting the Woke. Oh the pain, the shame

Astroboffins peering back in time with Hubble find stars may have been flickering into life even earlier than thought

Re: Unhelpful sugestion

Also, no mechanism for Pop 3 starts to form. Simply assuming cooling gas does not work, much as most theorists want it to

Re: We're special

A follower of Arp then ? Fine, but still sound a bit confused. Sure you read his papers correctly ?

Devuan Beowulf 3.0 release continues to resist the Debian fork's Grendel – systemd

Re: "It solves a problem that people have."

James, why is this a problem ? Never had it in my HPUX boxen. One script, two links for start and stop and a third option for restart which simply call the stop start functions in the script. Not hard. AIX with its init scripts services manager and a strong preference for iniitab as in other unices. /etc/inittab had stop start respawn of services also if one died. No need for any stuffing around with scripts. AIX had a group of services which was neat and clean. Being able to restart all NFS rand related network services occasionly at one site was very time saving if unusual.

Australia to refund $720m in 'debts' determined by dodgy algorithm

Re: Why single out the Aussies?

fair call. In Oz the basic reason is simple enough. The tertiary miseducated managerial wannabe elites (term used loosely) believe anything technical is simple. Most of them seem to still believe the myth of computers as magic. ie using a computer does not require the sort of thinking and planning as any other complex tasks. It just happens.

As a result, outsourcery to the smoothest talking. lowest prices vendor (perhaps with a donation here or there) and a cheap ill-trained and equipped staff take on the task with the usual results. With all the IT knowledge gone, the bureaucrats are entirely at mercy of the suppliers so they are frightened or gulled into not enforcing contract conditions. Perhaps the usual golf course conversations occur. Add in indifference and near complete lack of understanding of the consequences of wrong financial conclusions you get robodebt stuffup. That some of the Cabinet ministers were unable to grasp that 4 hours on hold demonstrated completely inadequate staff levels in Centerlink simply shows the levels of incompetence in managing the country that all major parties demonstrate in and out of power. Spent decades in the system, watching it get worse as Howard and successors like Rudd screwed the nation over.

HP Ink sales are in the red: Total revenue down 11 per cent as CEO says coronavirus knackered supply chain

wouldn't be products ?

something about borkware code in printing supplies annoying customers ?

Before IBM started axing staff, it told them Q3 2020 would be super-busy with post-lockdown catch-up jobs

did you write

IBM think about something ?? Implausible

IBM's sacking spree reaches Australia – and as staff wait to exit, they're offered AU$4k to find new workers

Re: Does IBM still exist ?

read them, hence concluding that PHB persistent mass sackings are an example of OCD.

upcoming news

<sarc> In view if IBMs move to decrease capacity, further outsourcing actions of critical Oz government IT will be immediately transferred to the efficient cost effective services of IBM. The contract will state how secure citizens data will be because its recorded on dead tree carcass. No need to specify what country it is stored in. </sarc> I wish I was going to be wrong but the PHB layer in Oz is so trusting, so naive, so confident. Yes, idiots

Does IBM still exist ?

waiting for the news article about IBM, HP[E,I] sacking 20,000 more staff than they employed so the stock price booms as company ceases to exist

Internet of Tardiness: Microsoft puts on a brave face as IoT boat prepares to set sail

so MS are using the Ignite label ?

so has HP buried HPUX completely with its bootable image for server cloning also known as Ignite ? Personally, prefer AIX mksysb as bit more configurable once one knows which files to edit. Read no recent reference to ElRegs pithy Itanic perjorative either so assumed entire post ParaRisc plan a complete failure

Apple, Google begin to spread pro-privacy, batt-friendly coronavirus contact-tracing API for phone apps

Re: It's a sad day

however, the world gets weirder by the year. Whats next ? FBI or NSA being identified as t.rr.r.sts ?

Already known to have indulged in criminal activity. That is, if anyone else did it. I await the release of M$ Linux with the APT package manager and RPM packages, requiring alien, scripted in PowerShell. Local cats and dogs already live together in harmony

IBM to GTS staff: Not volunteering to leave with a redundo cheque? We'll give you a helping hand

Re: The root cause of this issue started for IBM some years ago.. back in 2010-2012

I think it was earlier. About 1994 when an outsider CEO came in who did not understand mainframe business model and merely saw a chance for a big one of bonus. management droid bonuses seem to be the motivating force for very short term decision making. To regenerate industries bonuses should be scrapped. One should not need institutional bribery to do the job one is paid for.

for what it is worth Cringely has done many articles on IBMs slow death

Re: When they did this at...

takes me back a decade or two. CSC (remember them, I thought not) tried this at Y2K bubble burst. InHuman Remains were deluged. Call was cancelled after a day or so in Oz. Odd how the best and brightest were first in queue to go. Corporate amnesia could be an interesting study for a psych student of big organisations. The valuing of mass stupidity make anti social media look normal

What do you call megabucks Microsoft? No really, it's not a joke. El Reg needs you

From a Lucas joke

Vacuum since their products usually suck so much

Options, so many options

BABB Bashing Android Big Brother

BABS Boasting All Blue Screens

WILT Windows Intimidating Linux Traders

BUY Ballsed Up Yanks

A slightly more convoluted one from the huge infrastructure of support firms and individuals needed to keep MS products working roughly as hoped for

MEM Massive Ecosystem Manglers.

Perhaps a description of what usually happens in an IT monoculture.

NWD New World Disorder

I would suggest a cultural reference like a Borg derivative but it is inappropriate. Borg stuff usually works better than Federation hardware to the point the Feds copy or steal Borg technology. How about a few suggestions from the viewpoint of the Borg, referring the MS habit of being just close enough to common standards to confuse the gullible, but different enough to break the existing standards ?

NIHSI Not Invented Here, Steal It.

TMC Tomorrow Never Comes or is that a movie title already, referring the the Next Big Thing, which inevitably disappoints. Or is that IBM ?

Back to the fencing. A much more visible and useful post. Those broken wires can be seen at least. Mines the one with mud stains

There's a black hole lurking within 1,000 light years of Earth – and you can see stars circling it with the naked eye

Re: Dark Matter

@Richard: yes I remember a report ona MACHOs search concluding there are not enough massive Compact Halo Objects to be Dark Matter. Published about a decade ago. That left light stuff like neutrinos, aka WIMPS. Even they were ruled out. Where, cant recall. So we have the kludge of Dark matter and Energy to make the sums work right. I cant help feeling something is wrong with the models but no idea what . MOND does not feel right as it involves "special" conditions of a sort. But what would I know ?

Intel is offering more 14nm Skylake desktop processors, we repeat: More 14nm Skylake desktop processors

Intel has lost it

Still stuck on 14nm. Competition down to 7 nm. RISC devices much smaller again. Has Intel rewritten the Minix code running the silicon badly to mitigate design flaws leading to Spectre et al ?

Australia didn't blame China for parliament hack in case it upset trade relations – report

Re: Our happy Clappy creepy Christian PM

AC, not as chilling as a previous government noted for its materialists adoring the zombie of marxism that allowed known organised crime figures into country, then defended it with ethnic bigotry accusations. BTW what exactly is creepy about his private beliefs ?

Forget tabs – the new war is commas versus spaces: Web heads urged by browser devs to embrace modern CSS

history reruns

OK, back to VT340 and curses libraries. Simple, light and no Fush.

Royal Navy nuclear submarine captain rapped for letting crew throw shoreside BBQ party

Re: Optics

RE Gekke.*

correct. In Oz after AIDs pandemic built up and mandatory testing began it was found the Navy had the lowest infection rate.

Elevating cost-cutting to a whole new level with million-dollar bar bills

remote diagnostics

Many years ago working for a department with overseas branches, the customers at very remote site complained that sometimes their local unix computer was slow.

Dialed in and checked sar. No load to speak of, just system processes and an idle database. I did note screen refreshes were sometimes slow. Thinking network noise I tested network with ping, steadily increasing packet sizes from 64 bytes up to 4K. At 1 Kb size 50% of all packets were being dropped. Bigger and almost all dropped. A nearby colleague had visited the site in previous years, and mentioned it was down a long dark corridor in deepest subbasement basement. I rang the site admin and suggested they check the corridor fluorescent lights. On a whim I suggested about 75% of the corridor length. Two hours later a phone came in asking how the hell I knew a light was blinking on and off in seldom used corridor. Ah, the joys of deduction and luck

similar story

All second hand but, long time ago in Sydney, an expensive minicomputer was being unloaded by specialist computer/fragile equipment specialists from truck loading lane, outside the premises where precious computer was to spend next decade. Sydney taxi in a hurry rounded corner in left lane and high speed. Collected computer and half reloaded it back into truck. Write off natch.

You have one job, Australian PM tells contact-tracing app, and that’s talking to medicos

Re: Morrison primer

and your point is ? He is a pollie, so what ? Not as scary as bad news messengers of the Green Grinches and their ilk. BTW, what has he said as an evangelical that is odd or do you have a secular sanctified belief system disguised as calm rationality that you wish to avoid defending ?

New York Attorney General probes Charter over claims it forced staff to work in offices amid coronavirus pandemic

except the CEO ?

One may suppose the patients should be protected from the Cloud of Stupidity that clings to some of the PHB class. I was going to say Cloud of Unknowing, but that would offend Pommy mystics.

Australia to make Google and Facebook disclose ranking algorithms and pay for local content

odd isn't it

Oz fed gov wants mass surveillance via metadata retention, more snooping by nominally military focused chairbourne divisions but wants the hoi polloi to carry a fairly benign battery draining app to track virus infections. Meanwhile, Slurp, F*bitch and goggle have more than enough data on our movements from the Android and PC slurping built in. One would think a match made in hell. Then this morsel thrown out for News Corp. Ironically I know of no-one outside of ABC advertisements who trusts any of the mainstream media so whole issue is of little significance in long run. Unless this is cover for the slurps to quietly deliver all the required data and more to bored bureaucrats and po faced policedroids in the TLAs. Nothing like a fake fight to cover close co-operation. Or am I paranoid ?