Posts by Denarius

Lawmakers urge FTC to probe Trump Mobile over 'deceptive' marketing

usual pattern of decline

Big powers seem to die in same way over millennia. Growth, brief stability, arrogance breeding incompetence, decline, a brief recovery leading to political/military implosion. Something breaks their internal systems, long droughts, extended cold weather leading to famine and plagues,invasions. A few cases even economic collapse due to currency devaluing. One reason Dutch East India Company lasted so long was the backing bank maintained its currency value for a century. A century ago a pommie pound was good anywhere. Even cheques (Aus spelling) were regarded as solid.

As for wannabe subsequent powers, attempting to restore the "Gories of the Past" (sic) usually means a century or 3 of disaster.

Re: Anyone with even half a brain

reminds me of Roman slogan. "Those whom the gods wish to destroy, they first make mad"

Sorry Dave, I’m afraid I can’t do that! PCs refuse to shut down after Microsoft patch

Re: How is it possible

have faint recollection of Windoze lore that every uneven release is rubbish, only even numbered releases were stable enough to use. How many decades of OS production has M$ done ? How many for the IT industry, yes, you, IBM over there in 1964 with IBM360. So in 62 years commercial OS quality has gone backwards. How long could VMS stay up and do data center moves without shutdown ? Unices doing 1000 days plus uptime not unusual. QNX being able to do patching and not need reboot 2 decades? ago

Engineer used welding shop air hose to 'clean' PCs – hilarity did not ensue

Re: BS

Full face helmets. Good Idea. Bought one after going into small hail storm wearing open face helmet with goggles. Subsequently belting along country road on my Kwaka death machine (loved its acceleration) when I went thru what appeared to be smoke. Wrong guess. Bee swarm. Fortunately wearing full face helmet and heavy leather jacket with thick furry collar. After loud hail noise subsided looked in mirrors to see a brief head and shoulders cutout in swarm. Nearly fell off laughing. No stings either. As for birds, high speed, country road run hit a bird, probably pigeon sized hit mid chest. Painful for me, fatal for bird. Even plastic zips are hard at 100 kmh. I digress. Always used vacuum cleaners to clear out computers with dirty interiors except one back from a basement in Beijing. So unbelievably dirty even opening case blackened ones clothing. Used dry air compressor in car park to remove worst of it before using vacuum cleaner in open air. Amazingly computer still ran before and after cleaning. IBM small AIX servers in 1990s were amazingly tough.

The last supported version of HP-UX is no more

Re: It will be missed

I think hpux config file location in /sbin weird. HP jfs was licensed from IBM AIX I believe. Prefered AIX but it's difficult to compile on. Hpux 9 and 10.x were easier. My first full time Unix system admin job so sentimental feelings

Starlink to lower orbits of thousands of satellites over safety concerns

1950s SciFi way to go ?

6 big geosyncrous crewed sometimes orbital relays instead of thousands of smaller satellites? Very little junk in lower orbits, stable platforms for the huge antennae needed to direct phone connection. This assumes all launch operations make sure their spent rockets have disposal process as part of launch routine. Nope, not going to work on current behavior

Brit lands invite-only Aussie visa after uncovering vuln in government systems

moving to Sydney ?

Employed real quick then job outsourced to India or Vietnam aka North Korea within a year to reduce costs. IMHO, Oz pseudo-enterprises hate local talent. Manglement, usually imported or trained overseas still think of Oz as a Sydney colony in need of guidance by Mother Country of various persuasions

Garmin autopilot lands small aircraft without human assistance

Re: Water landings are incredibly dangerous

Hear tell Finnish glider pilots prefer lakes to landing in trees. Counter initiative wheel down to reduce vertical surge in declaration. Information from a pommie gliding coach. In short, practiced pilots go where chances of survival are best. Water is at least likely to have no objects to hit on approach. Meanwhile I will stick with 1000 plus hectare harvested paddocks

Re: Hypoxia

Hypoxia tells are few, but when the lift is strong and high my tell is sudden loss of direction perception. As soon as I need to look at compass, the O2 flow is increased on regulator or I descend

T tail

Reduces drag, not improves lift. Aircraft tails actually generate stabilising downforce except in carnards. Downside is often worse stall or spin recovery. Ask any Tomahawk pilots.

Hypoxia

You feel fine, and are actually slow to respond and stupid. Clue in speech, slow, sometimes deeper than usual. Been there, done that, got the regulator replaced. As for Garmin software and pilots who didn't fiddle with working system on late finals, Bravo Zulu

One real reason AI isn't delivering: Meatbags in manglement

Ah yes, the advisers/ consulting firm that borrowed your watch to tell you the time theme. How about asking those who may know, such as coal face staff and instantly dismiss any manglement who insist on being included in this first stage of information gathering

Purdue makes 'AI working competency' a graduation requirement

Cory right again

the enshiitification (blush) of software //and life// continues

Amazon blocked 1,800 suspected North Korean scammers seeking jobs

chooks coming home again

the efficiencies of outsourcery again

China turns on a vast experimental network it says is an heir to ARPANET

dunno

perhaps the control on China's internal networks will still attract governments to China's technology. All governments, the less competent even more so, love the delusion of control

Ten mistakes marred firewall upgrade at Australian telco, contributing to two deaths

yank trained manglement ?

speed at all costs is familiar

AI-authored code contains worse bugs than software crafted by humans

Re: I've said it once

until some fwit removes comments to "save spacce"

Re: I've said it once

and yet, every company that has taken over the outsoucerer I was working at first thing is to strip out comments in the code. New outsourcerer than expects kids fresh from uni who learnt only one only scripting language, to understand complex code that requires deep familiarities with a specific language to understand, let alone modify.

Bishop of Hong Kong tells peers AI is not the devil's work

more like belief in AI is like religion. certainly a belief system that appeals to hardcore materialists

Re: I have no tokenized inputs and I must creatio ex nihilo

wow. Someone has read source texts and can parody them instead of repeating urban myths and other BS. Well done

US gov't launches 'Tech Force' to replace IT staff DOGE fired

Re: Isn't this what happens in the UK?

fresh blood ? you mean fresh pork ?

in short another rerun

of the 1980s/90s outsorcery to private sector using public services as feeding trough. PHBs just dont understand IT systems need staff who understand the organisation. Consequences are more fad software, vendor lockin and higher costs while the real systems doing the real work remain ancient, unsupported by knowledgeable techs and failing eventually. Consequence of that is usually big fad development which fails miserably. Seen it multiple times in Oz FedGov

Amazon keeps the pressure on Intel, AMD with 192-core Graviton5 CPU

old is gnu again

all those vendor specific CPUs for vendors OS that died with rise of Intel and AMD. SPARC, Alpha, HPs offerings, Motorolas. Now muliple vendor chips are back, just for use internally. Is it Intels turn to be one with the snows of yesteryear ?

BOFH: Forward-facing AI brand experience meets forward-facing combustion risk management

Re: "I, unfortunately, have Diabetes Pessimistus."

ROFLMAO. That turn of phrase "sugar-coated cornucopia of optimism – but I, unfortunately, have Diabetes Pessimistus." is one of best BOFH comments. It precisely expresses my sentiments on most AI and all AI boosters. Pity no car park impact from 5 floors up with no chance of survival. Preferably into a big waste skip, 5 minutes before pickup

70-hour work weeks no longer enough for Infosys founder, who praises China’s 996 culture

Re: $96 million cost

not sure about that. Iterations didn't change the look in the months I tried the earlier beta test site. and stopped due to its unusability. I could see good pointsin data density,( ie time of probable rain) in the lower layers, but was blindsided by top page being so low on information. BOM weather forecast quality has also dropped significantly. In North Queensland it is regarded as a joke with unannounced storms blowing thru. Even in my southern locality unforecast but very welcome rain has come thru this week. ( nope, not cutting hay, unlike neighbours) Now using the Kiwi WeatherwatchTV website instead. If all else fails the old site exists as http://reg.bon.gov.au

Project Kuiper becomes Amazon Leo as satellite network trickles into orbit

Re: can we fill them with...

Not in Oz, the land of the late and usually wrong government body. If Starlink go direct to phone it will be worth paying a bit more to put the finger up at Big Swamp, Floptus and Vodafail and maybe even get better coverage. Whoever the NBN committee was that picked Kuiper, you can bet Musk Derangement Syndrome played a big part. As commentards calculated above, not a hope Leo will be workable in foreseeable future.

US taxpayers being kept in the dark over datacenter subsidies

all western gummints

makes me think Austrian economist are right. If you need a subsidy, it cant be done

Gullible bots struggle to distinguish between facts and beliefs

Re: Yeah, but...

Still believe in socialism but not Santa Claus.

From Intel to the infinite, Pat Gelsinger wants Christian AI to change the world

Re: Politics and Theology

Given that LLM are trained on mostly sewer pit of internet, any output will be materialist or nihilism so relax, inhale whatever

Wars of religion?

You mean the political wars where each side happened to hire mercenary armies of supposedly enemy beliefs? Bit like the devout Atheist countries fighting over national interests in the name of their prophet Marx. Bring on Judean Peoples party vs People party of Judea

Junk is the new punk: Why we're falling back in love with retro tech

so who fixes old tape players?

Have some old tapes, stored in cool dark places.Have tape players and fairly new drive bands but the tension levels on cassette capstans are either weak or excessive. Ideas ? Worn motor commutators probably best fixed by replacement

Saved you a click: Firefox 142 offers AI summaries of links

Out of here

I am also. Not more resource hogging, inaccurate, often wrong crap. No AI without a AI suitable problem to solve. FFS, If I want a summary I'll speed read. FF hangs, memory hogging followed by losing audio if more than 3 tabs open. Used to work fine until 3 releases ago. With you IGotOut. Pity, used it for years

Bank reverses decision to replace 45 customer service staff with AI chatbot

Re: opportunities for other banks to put the boot in…

other banks ? Cue mad laughter. All of them in Oz compete to be biggest wasters of time and being less competent. Unless one lurks in CBDs branches are being shutdown.

Seriously I would change banks except there is nowhere to go within 100 km

Air Force buying two Tesla Cybertrucks so it can learn to destroy them

current USA army vehicles

@ Ashentaine : Oz military called US Humvees tomato cans. If you shoot them red stuff comes out. So what is different ? I note the HV replacements are being criticized as worse.

diesel drive trains

@MachDiamond: Not anymore, at least in western ruins. Lots of computers managing engine injection, gears, digital distractions, even in HiLuxes. The newer ones are rumoured to be not as reliable as the 3l turbo diesels. I suspect that the enthusiasts rebuilding purely mechanical injection diesels from 1970s may have only working vehicles after Poo Bear, Fat Boy etc have their egos stroked enough. Anyone know what drive trains USSR/Ruskie military vehicles use ?

Microsoft researchers: To fend off AI, consider a job as a pile driver

Re: Piledrive, you say?

@Pulled Tea. Thanks for link. Brilliant article. Best rant in years. Flame of the Week winner. Also, spot on in knowledgeable critique of the whole hype circus.

Re: Klarna Rehiring

politely disagree from experience. PH in Oz sack people because Merkin PH want to please Wall street with layoffs despite more work than business can handle with existing staff. Business shrinks, customer hate rises as high skilled staff go first as they are expensive. When "Oh s***t" moment arrived and manglement tried rehiring previous staff, abusive responses were the result. New staff needed training, were less skilled and contract eventually lost due to crap performance.

The plan to make all networks optical is about to take two big steps forward

future sounds familiar

so virtualised everything ? Like AIX HMCs, probably derived from mainframe technologies ? Still, improving energy efficiency and speed useful goals. Going full photonics might finally mean something can can run Windows 12 at a usable pace /s

Banning VPNs to protect kids? Good luck with that

Re: Private or Work?

@corpse char. National Socialist Security services were atheist as all true believers. They sent believers in transcendence to the camps along with mediums and fortune tellers, contrary to movie myths. .BTW, how many meanings does fascist have these days. In 1970s it was up to 70.

BOFH: If you can't beat the AI, let it live inside you

Re: timber!

Both actually. One sharpens the chain chisel cutters. Chainsaws dont have saw teeth, (except the very early ones many decades ago) but chisels. These are the usually 30 degree angled flat bits with a leading semicircular front. The round file, special ones, not metal working ones, should create a sharp edge under the chrome plating. A flat file is used to lower the depth gauge in front of cutting tooth and to reduce risk of kickback, round depth gauge off. A square top to depth gauge is dangerous. Special chains such as slabbing chains have 10 degree of none angle.

The actual bar should be straight, with exactly equal levels on side of channel for chain. Stihl have an excellent combined tool which has both. Buy one to fit chain size, ie 325.3/8 or 404 for the macho guys and forestry machines.

Thanks Simon for another round of laughs. Manglement with a chainsaw has so many many possibilities for pleasant deserved disaster with these dangerous but lovely tools IMHO

The Smoot – How an MIT prank became a lasting unit of measurement

Re: the thickness of screw threads was not fully standardized in the US

Impressive trivia knowledge. Having been cursed with ownership of a BMW RG1000GS I was astonished/gobsmacked at the number of different bolt or screw heads on the thing. My 1970s BMW was vanilla metric and Allen keys. Possible to assemble tool kit for going bush. Mostly provided with new bike. The 2010s equivalent required a truck of tools for the same. Why ? Anyone got a list of the types of screw and bolt heads lately ?

German team warns ChatGPT is changing how you talk

any worse than last 50 years ?

droolingly incompetent drivelers on TV, whatever passes for music and song, then mangling of English in SMS, antiSocial media and most significantly, the descent of teaching from "expert" faddisms to trendy or fashionable incompetence. With the lost of Western culture and citizens never being taught their inheritance of language what else than the ignorant being trained by unthinking machines.

Bring back the trivium. Yes, grumpy old man. Why do you ask ? What relevance is it ? Ah, pandering to your prejudices response

Nvidia hits the gas on autonomous vehicle software

crap, the lot of it

Just had to drive new 4WD to near Sydney and back, a mere 230 km each way. Have a similarly configured unit in unit 5 years old which is a pleasure to use and very useful. The new one has every fault known to the shiny flashy brigade. Lane detection addicted to following ONLY the solid white line on edge of highway so constantly in dirt, pot holes and leaning on wheel against the software. Beeps, flashing lights often, usually when turning very tight turns on potholed roads or for now reason going straight and level on freeway. Everything in driver assists is a hindrance. Oddly, driving a new unimog was nowhere as near annoying despite coming from Europe, which shows it can be done.

Comparing this to my flight management software shows just how bad vehicle UI designers are. XCSoar and its relatives tells you what you need to know in context aware part of flights. No unneeded alarms, doesn't have the capability to modify control inputs.

AFAIC, good engine management systems is as much as I want. And not too clever so its unrepairable without a capital city dealership.

Mozilla frets about Google's push to build AI into Chrome

one more bit of software made unreliable, unusable

just No. Dont.

Sergey Brin promises next generation of Glassholes will be much less conspicuous

typical

ignore elephant in room and focus on shiny not so shiny. Still means more glasses wearers will be banned from public places in fear of privacy breaches. So more eye lens inserts to avoid glasses and misidentification of vision correction for spyware.

Microsoft-backed AI out-forecasts hurricane experts without crunching the physics

blow me down

does this indicate the old long term staff seen as an excessive cost by manglement might actually have useful rules of thumb/historical local knowledge not in the manuals or models that enables them to better estimate likely outcomes in complex systems ? Machine learning of this by studying the same historical events seems to be doing the same thing.

Unending ransomware attacks are a symptom, not the sickness

perhaps change incentives at top ?

Instead of shares and bonuses for CEO and boards fir just doing their job, how about a base salary and fines for not doing their job ? Also return to laws forbidding share buybacks to reduce incentives to fiddle financials to increase stock price artificially.

Pentagon declares war on 'outdated' software buying, opens fire on open source

Re: Morons Are Governing America

so whats changed ?

seriously ?

Only SAP, Oracle and M$ can be bought, except for special institutions. All of this is kept updated weekly or monthly /s

Feeling dumb? Let Google's latest AI invention simplify that wordy writing for you

Re: Tldr

other way around