Posts by Jason Hindle

Microsoft revives DOS-era Edit in a modern shell

I think there's a lot to be said...

For just learning to use and configure Vim or Emacs really well. Certainly Vim if you spend a lot of time talking to strange computers over a network.

Microsoft open sources Windows Subsystem for Linux – well, most of it

Re: Why?

I use WSL because I find (VirtualBox-hosted) Linux VMs a bit sluggish on the corporate Dell*

* 7 years old - an absolute overkill of a beast when it was provided back in 2018, and still very adequate.

Open Document Format turns 20, but Microsoft Office still reigns supreme

Re: Markdown Anyone?

I've no idea what all the downvotes are for. I write all my documentation and notes in Markdown and treat office software as a presentation layer, which is, quite frankly, as it should be. Converting Markdown to just about anything else is trivial.

Devs sound alarm after Microsoft subtracts C/C++ extension from VS Code forks

There will be alternatives

If I type the name of any language in the LSP manager of my Neovim setup, there is always more than one solution.

Man with artificial heart survives over 100 days outside hospital

From 100 days to a lifetime?

This is impressive. What a heart does is pretty straightforward in engineering terms, so any breakthrough in materials science/tribology could lead to something more practical and longer-lasting than a human heart transplant, which comes with all manner of risks and complications.

Signal will withdraw from Sweden if encryption-busting laws take effect

So many ways to hide evil intent without encryption

However, there is only one way to adequately protect your personal (especially financial and medical) data online. Governments are losing the plot.

The software UK techies need to protect themselves now Apple's ADP won’t

Re: Move iCloud to a EU country?

For iMessage, presumably, an EU mobile telephone number also (though that bit is easier than the address and bank).

Hey programmers – is AI making us dumber?

AI the teacher?

The most complicated things I've asked AI to write for me are bits of code to illustrate how concurrency is done or simple REST clients and servers in a new (to me) language. In this respect, I've found the LLMs I've used to be a kind of useful teacher that helps me get to a point faster than with traditional methods. With rare exceptions, I write the code that solves the problem! The exceptions? I occasionally need to automate something in MS Office and have zero interest in learning a dying macro language. And let's face it, some work (e.g. writing a resignation letter) is grunt work and might as well be done via AI.

Diversity, equity, and inclusion is not an illusion, but it soon might be

Re: Other people's bias.

You get a like from me. My view on recruiting for a smaller company is that you look for overlooked talent. That is usually the curious people who don't look like the models on the milk round posters. Assuming the milk round is still a thing...

Openreach tests 50 Gbps broadband – don’t expect it anytime soon

Re: How does the back end support this?

Yes, my first thought when reading the headline was fewer bandwidth constraints. This is as much about future capacity as it is about future speed.

Palantir designed to 'power the West to its obvious innate superiority,' says CEO

I think Godwin's law is cited mostly by closet Nazis these days.

BT fiber rollout passes 17 million homes, altnet challenge grows

Been running an Alt-Net in parallel with BT FTTC for the past six months

And now the BT contract is up, I'm making preparations to leave (just waiting for a Cisco VoIP box to arrive so I can test with an A&A account). I will be paying significantly under half what I pay BT for Broadband + Landline + Mobile (and that is taking into account a price hike at the end of my first year with the Alt-Net).

Re: Ah, yes, those altnets

The Alt-Nets will end up doing one of two things:

- Consolidating.

- Or rending their infrastructure to other ISPs, as is perfectly normal with OpenReach.

Whatever their plans, this is not an undertaking undertaken without a plan for profitability or an exit strategy.

US AI shares battered, bruised, and holding after yesterday's DeepSeek beating

Moving the wall...

I agree that what Nvidia makes will still be in demand. Last year, the talk was of LLM development hitting a plateau of diminishing returns, or a wall. The compute cost of o1 seemed to bear that out... DeepSeek potentially moves that wall into the distance. And it's FOSS. Anyone can take it, study its guts and improve it. I think it also points to OpenAI in particular being a massive fake it 'til you make it scam.

DeepSeek limits new accounts amid cyberattack

It's just let me sign up

Earlier, it wouldn't let me sign up using Google, and wouldn't send a code to another email account. Once in, it correctly answered a couple of the classic questions that stumped the previous generation of LLMs.

What happens when we can’t just build bigger AI datacenters anymore?

Those who do more with less will likely win in the longer term

The compute cost of doing anything with OpenAI's most advanced model is horrendous, yet others get close with far fewer resources. As anyone who squeezed a flight simulator into 1k will tell you, scarce resources can drive efficiency and innovation.

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

Devin is just another fake it ‘til you make it outfit

Alongside Open AI. There’s more interesting and useful stuff floating around the world of AI (none of which will put developers out of the job*). Just ignore the shouty ones who are after unlimited money and resources.

* Well, accept at Meta where Zuck has been drinking the cool aid, I look forward to that.

BT unplugs plans to turn old cabinets into EV chargepoints

BFE...

What a missed opportunity. In Britain, many a Gregg's Jumbo Sausage Roll is sold to EV drivers waiting for a top-up.

Shove your office mandates, people still prefer working from home

Re: Just a thought

Then your boss should fire you, hire someone in Bangalore, and see how it goes.

Re: I'm surprised some companies don't want to embrace WFH...

"We always notice that it's the large companies that put out these mandates - it seems rare that smaller companies are discussed, except when they're citing larger companies."

Correct. My smaller employer stopped paying for an office during lockdown. I'm sure we'll have something small and reasonably priced at some point, but there's no stomach for paying rent on something large enough to take the whole team at any given time.

Microsoft, PC makers cut prices of Copilot+ gear in Europe, analyst stats confirm

All those TOPS

"Copilot+ PC is Microsoft's branding and specifies systems with an NPU that performs at 40 TOPS or more, where TOPS is one measurement of AI performance."

But what are they all for? If you use Chat GPT, Claude, Copilot or Gemini, online, those TOPS don't make a difference. Perhaps some of the cloud processing will be distributed out to local machines, but when? Far from being a killer application, Recall is wanted by nobody.

If I needed a new Windows laptop, tomorrow, I would probably buy a Copilot laptop. I don't need a new Windows laptop tomorrow.

Google and Linux Foundation form Chromium love club

Is America's next government really going to force this through?

Assuming Pichai has kissed the ring, of course.

The ultimate Pi 5 arrives carrying 16GB ... and a price to match

It would be nice to see the 6 give us something upgradable

I thought my MacBook Pro's 16Gb storage would be enough for the next ten years when I bought it in late 2021. Then, local LLMs became a thing.

How a good business deal made us underestimate BASIC

I found Amiga Basic surprisingly decent

Notwithstanding the occasional Guru Meditation.

CAPTCHAs now run Doom – on nightmare mode

Why bother with Doom?

Just get the user to identify the squares with effing traffic lights twenty effing times as I found when I wanted to change the password to my rather important* AOL account. Can modern AI really not prove it is not a robot with the current tests?

* My iTunes and later full on Apple ID from the turn of the effing century onwards. One of life's regrets.

Eight things that should not have happened last year, but did

Dyslexic delivery drivers

The local drivers seem to have developed dyslexia. We live at 32. A number of our parcels have gone to 23 in the last year.

Guide for the perplexed – Google is no longer the best search engine

Down but by no means out

Google has released Gemini with Deep Research which is similar to Perplexity but not as fast because it does more (and takes quite a bit longer).

I hope Perplexity finds a morally good way of becoming the new king of search. It excels at quickly coming up with a number of decent sources you can throw at Notebook LM type products. A Pro account comes with my currency card and I now use it more than Google for day to day searching.

Badass Russian techie outsmarts FSB, flees Putinland all while being tracked with spyware

Re: "Always keep a second passport"

Yes, the UK government were pretty stringent and required a letter from my employer. My reasons were:

- Lots of business in the Middle East (and possibly Israel also).

- Occasional need for a manager* to apply for a Visa on my behalf when I was already in another country.

- Later, business in Uganda and DRC (who don't get on).

Back in the day, it was nice to have the side benefit of turning up somewhere like the US with a passport with zero dodgy stamps.

At the next renewal, I will surrender my second passport (I don't need it anymore).

* I trusted one manager to keep the concurrent passport in his safe.

Re: "Always keep a second passport"

I have two British passports, all legal and above board, but I understand British authorities are something of an outlier in this respect.

Why Google's Chrome monopoly won't crack anytime soon

Re: No one else can afford to maintain Chrome

It's pretty much either Chromium based, Firefox or Safari. Most Browsers are Chromium based. Microsoft moving Edge to Chromium is lamentable. We need a higher degree of diversity and compatibility.

Whomp-whomp: AI PCs make users less productive

Re: AI uses - writing emails, transcribing meetings, managing files... wtf?

AI works pretty well with emails. Including the important ones.

Study suggests X turned right just in time for election season

I hope Bluesky keeps the feed simple

If anything, it drives up engagement compared to Twitter and Threads. As for X/Tw@tter, I occasionally post something to keep my account alive.

I'm surprised Xitler hasn't sued the Guardian for leaving his platform.

Microsoft starts boiling the Copilot frog: It's not a soup you want to drink at any price

A cull of badly run businesses?

There will likely be a huge difference between businesses that use AI well and those infested with pointy-haired types who use AI without the vaguest hint of self-awareness. Perhaps we will see some sued to oblivion when they use AI-generated output that happens to breach A.N. Other's copyright.

The sad tale of the Alpha massacre

For what it's worth, I've done that on an Alpha

Not quite as bad as that - just the directory I was in and all subdirectories. Bad enough that it was all of our software on a remote production system in Brentwood (over a 56k modem connection) - the customer in question did notice. The rather more experienced boss got me out of the shit that day.

Linus Torvalds affirms expulsion of Russian maintainers

Re: Hmmm

It's not about whether any individual Russian is bad or not. Any given Russian may or may not be a bad actor on behalf of their government. Bad things happen to good and bad people who live in bad countries.

Want to feel old? Excel just entered its 40th year

I was an early user of VBA in Excel

Not by choice, but my employer wanted an Excel-based reporting tool that would query a back-end Informix database. The JavaScript-based alternative/replacement seems somewhat nicer, with none of the security blockers that make VBA impossible to run in some situations. I never thought I'd write that about JavaScript*. Modern Excel isn't too awful, and if, like me, you're not a power user, AI/LLMs can make surprisingly good coaches when wandering into the unfamiliar.

* I've never read a bit of JavaScript that didn't look hideous to me, but OfficeScript and its Google equivalent might convert me.

Arrow Lake splashdown: Intel pins hopes on replacement for Raptors

Re: Low end?

I miss the Atom chips. When you saw Intel Atom written on a laptop, you knew exactly what to do...

Copilot's crudeness has left Microsoft chasing Google, again

I've been impressed with Notebook LLM

I wrote a hints and tips sheet on setting up WSL a while back and thought I'd have a play. I fed this to Notebook LLM and told it to produce a presentation. Now, it did have a limitation - it would produce the text of the presentation but not then chuck that into Google Slides. We're not quite there yet*. But I could also tell it to augment the simple instructions with benefits, drawbacks and use cases. Not bad - I have an extra training presentation for recruits to go with minimal effort.

Contrast this with the corporate Microsoft account... A lot of what Google Bundles costs nothing extra. Caveat: do not recommend feeding anything confidential or proprietary into any of Google's AI tools.

* Likewise, Gemini in Google Slides will produce a slide but not the whole presentation.

If Dell's Qualcomm-powered Copilot+ PC is typical of the genre, other PCs are toast

Regarding the flaws, please repeat after me

Lenovo! Lenovo! Lenovo!

(Though they aren't the only ones making better laptops than Dell; more of a default.)

Cloudflare beats patent troll so badly it basically gives up

Well, that cheered me up no end.

Microsoft hits go on Windows 11 24H2: Fresh features, bugs, and a whole lotta AI

Paint me surprised. It performs better on the 2020 Thinkpad I bought as a dev laptop (when I select Windows at the boot prompt).

Musk dreams of launching five Starships to Mars in two years

Seems a bit ambitious

Bearing in mind he's only just managed the first civilian space-peep.

Desktop hypervisors are like buses: None for ages, then four at once

Re: Hyper-V Type1

I must admit I had assumed Parallels was Type-1, given the performance difference between it and VirtualBox. I'm pretty sure KVM *is* Type-1.

For test automation, it's worth trying Docker. I now have a Docker file that, when built, installs all the language and build tools, downloads the auto-test software from our repo, copies in the configuration for the system under test, and runs the suite of tests. I have another file for spinning up a dev environment.

That said, KVM, you are a step closer to OpenStack, and that's no bad thing bearing in mind VMWare's long suicide.

The future of software? Imagine a bot, stamping on a human face – forever

Re: The reason PowerShell exists

And there was me thinking the whole point of the thing was to make doing stuff a little longer.

Missing scissors cause 36 flight cancellations in Japan

Sounds OTT - reminds me of a meaty meal I had in Gordon Ramsey's joint at Heathrow

I asked for a toothpick after eating and was told they could not supply them for security reasons. It all goes a bit overboard bearing in mind many people carry things like pens when travelling.

Multiple flaws in Microsoft macOS apps unpatched despite potential risks

Re: Is it ethical...

It is certainly motivating.

Google's ex-CEO U-turns after saying staff 'going home early' killed winning

Re: An Ex-Googler says...

Google still lacks a coherent chat app strategy, which is a pity—they should have the best overall hardware/OS-agnostic ecosystem that isn't Apple!

Is Lenovo a blind spot in US anti-China security measures?

Should they go the Huawei, I’ll miss them

When I buy a Windows/Linux laptop, I don't consider anyone else. That said, Lenovo is Chinese and must obey Chinese laws and regulations.

Google brings more Gemini AI features to Android, saves the best for Pixel 9

I pre-ordered the 9 Pro

Having skipped a couple of generations as a very happy (none-pro) 6 user, the 9 crosses the line for me with its improved camera features, the main one being that 50 megapixels can now mean exactly that. The 6 can already just about replace a real camera if I must travel light, while the 9 Pro makes travelling lighter more appealing.

The AI features? I'm all for the ones I don't see (I'm all about the photography, and if an NPU makes that better, I'm fine with that), but the flashy, visible stuff leaves me nonplussed (though I'll doubtless find uses for some of it).