Posts by Craig 2

Microsoft unveils 'Surace' Laptop Ultra

At this point it's just not worth the effort mocking them

The improbable music of the ZX Spectrum's one-bit speaker

Re: Expensive one bit audio option

SET BLASTER =A220 I5 D1

Microsoft finally fixing File Explorer and the Context Menu

Re: "A single freeze while renaming a file"

"Show the menu immediately and have additional items appear as/when the application is able."

Implementations such as this better not shift items around as new contexts are discovered, it drives me insane when controls jump around on the screen.

Web pages are the worst culprit - you see the item you want and then go to click just as it jumps as another item is rendered and the HTML re-flowed. IMO it's an absolute cardinal sin in UI design to render a control to the user and then move it milliseconds later.

421 bugs in Microsoft's Patch Tuesday release, and the Norks have already attacked one

The days of security by obscurity are truly over.

Lucky 13: SpaceX aims for July 16 Starship flight test

Re: Did anyone...

You can never be sure on the internet, but I think he was being facetious.

UK fraudsters using AI to doctor 'evidence' in motor insurance claims

Re: The joy of false positives

It's worse than that because if AI says dodgy, we need a human eye to decide. If AI says it's all legit then we still need a human eye to verify. So net result of AI usage is zero. (Except for a few more desert regions created on the planet)

Most generative AI and custom model projects will be a bust: Gartner

Re: How much did that little picture cost?

They generated the bullshit graph with AI of course. That's the one metric they missed - bullshit generator, one area that AI is continuing to excel.

You only have to ask a LLM questions on a subject that you have a particularly good knowledge of and you'll soon spot inaccuracies.

It's a bit like when you watch a film with computer scenes - everyone else accepts it while you're screaming "bullshit!"

"That's a Linux system!"

Iran hints it could interfere with submarine cables in the Strait of Hormuz

Pass the bills on to the US Gov, they created this shitshow singlehandedly. Chance of getting paid is zero, but it might cheer you up!

Users complain that UK Azure is having capacity problems

Re: Nothing to see here

I can't believe anyone seriously believes using a data center in a region guarantees the data stays in that region anyway. Everything disappears behind an opaque wall of APIs which can report whatever it wants. "Oh, this data is flagged as UK resident only so that's what we'll report, wherever it actually is.

/paranoid

Swarm welcome: Britain lines up 120,000 drones for Ukraine

Re: Open Standards?

I would imagine the drones come with their own control / maintenance infrastructure equipment.

The line is referring to the fact that Ukraine has pretty much invented (or at least heavily progressed) drone technology on the battlefield. So it's akin to teaching Grandma to suck eggs.

Windows Update is a torture chamber for seldom-used PCs

It's the same for Edge, if you don't use it for a month and then fire it up to check something, you have to go through the Microsoft nagging bullshit every time.

and... You have to read carefully what you're clicking: "Don't untick the box if you do not don't not want to not set as default"

Sorry, Amazon, you couldn't pick a worse time to bring a phone to market: IDC analyst

Re: while also putting Amazon shopping at the center of the experience

I usually quite like the prime video selection. As you say, no blockbusters but in my view that's a good thing! Plenty of stuff that I might not have bothered with originally and plenty of retro-tv.

Burger King turns to AI to flame broil employees who aren't friendly enough

Re: Hi There!!!

I always tell people that I just like my strictly vegan diet ultra-processed.

Into beef mainly.

UK data watchdog fines Reddit £14.47M for letting kids slip past the gate

Re: So which version is correct?

Parents should be legally responsible for their children's behaviour until adulthood. They can opt out of that responsibility if they want, but then should incur billing (or more likely, withheld benefits) for the state to take over said duties.

NASA repurposes Mars Helicopter’s ancient Snapdragon SoC to help Perseverance rover navigate

Re: Wonderful

This is also what happens when science is bogged down by budget limitations. Necessity is the mother of invention and all that.

Amazon can't build AI capacity fast enough, throws another $200B at the problem

Re: *Pop* Go The Weasels

The thing is they are growing because they're selling AI to their customers who are then putting it on the front end of their e-commerce etc sites where it drivels over everything.

It's gonna take time for it to filter through that the end-users (ie. paying customers) don't like it and try to avoid using it. Then it's all going to be cancelled because it's a massive waste of money.

Hopefully (for them) they're not all in Oracle-style contracts that even Houdini would have a hard time getting out of...

Microsoft admits Outlook might freeze when saving files to OneDrive

Error metrics

A more fun metric might be "the number of news articles per day reporting what we broke now"

I would say 2026 is definitely trending higher for Microsoft. I hope it's paying some bills for El Reg staff, so no complaints from them I guess!

Wikimedia’s 25th birthday gift: Letting more AIs scour pages volunteers created

Re: Wikipedia is quite good

I've also corrected grammatical errors or vandalism and not had them reverted, so I guess my anecdote cancels out yours and the integrity of Wikipedia remains unchanged...

I believe Wikipedia is on the whole a force for good, it's not perfect but then, what is?

Techie turned the tables on office bullies with remote access rumble

That must have come after my time, we had PET computers before the shiny new BBC micros arrived. I think we were learning how to use them at the same time as the teachers....

The BBC Econet * commands were most fun at school. *remote *view etc etc Especially on half-competent teachers.

AMD clocks in with higher CPU speeds, leaves architecture untouched

All these transistors being wasted on AI features :(

IPv6 just turned 30 and still hasn’t taken over the world, but don't call it a failure

Re: The real reason nobody wants to use it

My god you've basically typed my exact intended comment word for word....

User insisted their screen was blank, until admitting it wasn't

Re: Error message

Yes this happens regularly to me - "A box popped up with a message and now (something) doesn't work." Ahh right, what was the message? "No idea, I just clicked ok"

Bitcoin bandit's £5B bubble bursts as cops wrap seven-year chase

I can't believe anyone could expect to criminally accumulate billions and then ever get to enjoy it without being caught.

She could have possibly stopped at a few million and got away with it and lived happily ever after but of course greed means that never actually happens...

China's president Xi Jinping jokes about backdoors in Xiaomi smartphones

Hidden in plain sight

All the talk about stealth spyware installed on phones makes me chuckle when in reality users sign up voluntarily for every tracking service available....

Microsoft's OneDrive spots your mates, remembers their faces, and won't forget easily

I would bet if you turn it off and then back on again it deletes and then re-creates the training data at great expense of electricty usage. Imagine if a few million (insert onedrive user numbers joke here) people constantly turned it off and on again... MS datacenteres would be glowing.

Unlike most of Musk's other ventures, Starship keeps it together for Flight Test 10

Re: "Did Not Affect the Mission"

Concern is not really your main err.. concern. If your car had 33 wheels and you lose one, you would still make it to your destination. THAT is the goal - design for resilience, not perfection.

Malware-ridden apps made it into Google's Play Store, scored 19 million downloads

Data Sanitization 101

"The APK uses a corrupted archive to hide a file.... has invalid compression and encryption flags"

NEVER accepting corrupted and invalid data is the number one thing you learn in coding.... If it can't be scanned - black flagged.

Short circuit: Electronics supplier to tech giants suffers ransomware shutdown

How, exactly, would you go about that?

Real estate agents use the power of AI to command plumbing, layout to disappear

Surely they opening themselves up to massive legal action here. Misrepresentation when house buying is taken very seriously, even for hiding minor things. Estate agents could be liable from both the buyer and seller!

Florida Man earns five-year sentence for $100 million telco fraud

Re: "watching porn in ours. Then you know, takes notes on paper."

It's a scoring system for the squirter niche...

India gets its turn on the Trump tariff train: 25% levy to start Friday

RE: It is called BRICS.

He said the FREE world...

Microsoft will stop pestering Windows users about Edge in EU

Well it did work to a certain extent. It was to break the monopoly that Microsoft had with IE. Unfortunately, another monster came along and created another monopoly (Chrome).

In reality, Microsoft was broken so effectively that they don't even have their own browser any more, just a Chrome skin!

Go ahead and ignore Patch Tuesday – it might improve your security

"Imagine if this was a serious discipline"

Yes, just imagine if IT systems were pervasive throughout the entire planet and critical infrastructure relied on them, often for life and death. Then, just then, we might consider it "serious"!!

Hacking US crosswalks to talk like Zuck is as easy as 1234

"no indication that Polara's network has been compromised"

It's compromised by design, idiots!

Microsoft lists seven habits of highly effective Windows 11 users

How to get the best out of Windows, abridged edition...

Turn off every piece of shit bolted on since NT.

Um, almost the entire Scots Wikipedia was written by someone with no idea of the language – 10,000s of articles

Re: Send them to Scotland for a few years...

"a reliable source that had inaccurate information"

A beautiful oxymoron.

Jeff Bezos can now taunt Elon Musk: I'm building a moon rover for NASA, when can Tesla do that?

It's the soft landing that's the tricky bit, something even the local Evri drivers struggle with here on Earth.

Crew-9 splashes down while NASA floats along with Trump and Musk nonsense

Should we be worried that dolphins are taking an interest in spaceflight? Next thing is they'll be leaving us coded messages disguised as tricks.

China's EV champ BYD reveals super-fast charging that leaves Tesla eating dust

Re: "Works for me"

FFS you don't have to be young or fit to walk a mile. I guess it's much better to claim your PIP and get an SUV though...

France offers US scientists a safe haven from Trump's war on woke

The comments make a great read on Tribalism and why the planet is never going to get along with each other. I think the only thing that could unite the people of Earth would be colonies on the Moon & Mars. Then we could unite to look down on them. (Maybe throw in some asteroid belt mining communities à la The Expanse to really look down on)

Oh Brother. Printer giant denies dirty toner tricks as users cry foul

Re: Xerox seems to be OK..

Same here, have a couple of Xerox Versalinks and the only mention of non-geniune toner is when you look in the maintenance menus.

Windows 11 adoption picking up speed, but older sibling still ahead

Are we going to have one of these articles on Windows 11 adoption every week until October?!

Hisense QLED TVs are just LED TVs, lawsuit claims

Hisense defense lawyers:

Specious argument. Anyone buying a Hisense TV is not concerned with quality to begin with.

Ad-supported Microsoft Office bobs to the surface

Re: What's the point?

"Cue the suggestions to switch to Libre Office in"

It's almost as if they might be on to something...

Here's the ugliest global-warming chart you'll ever need to see

Re: No more USAID

Definitely a logic flaw here!

Imagine the solar panels were not there, what would happen to the energy from the sun striking the ground?

Solar panels are net-zero (ignoring the energy used to create them from fossil fuels)

We use solar panels to (try) prevent locked up CO2 in fossil fuels being ADDED to the atmosphere.

BOFH: The USB stick always comes back – until it doesn't

Every time I've performed open-heart surgery on a broken USB stick I've told the customer to back everything up on multiple devices. Had one person come in with a snapped stick and I asked if they had backups - "Oh yea, I've got multiple folders on there with backups every week" !!

Amazon, Google asked to explain why they were serving ads on sites hosting CSAM

Re: Reported to the FBI?

and do you know, the DEA watches drug dealers transporting and selling drugs across the country for months and do NOTHING! They might as well be killing `Muricans themselves!

Google's 7-year slog to improve Chrome extensions still hasn't satisfied developers

Google's 7-year slog to prevent Chrome extensions blocking adverts is working

Fixed the title for you

WFH with privacy? 85% of Brit bosses snoop on staff

Re: "get away with a bit of Netflix"

Didn't the child of an MP's use their government-issued iPad to watch football over a VERY expensive data connection abroad?