Posts by aelfheld

Junior techie rushed off for fun weekend after making a terminal mistake that crashed a client

Re: AS/400

S/36 came out after the S/38 - it (the S/36) was a replacement for the S/34 which was, IIRC, announced at the same time as the S/38 but came out about 4 years before the S/38.

OpenAI asks Uncle Sam to let it scrape everything, stop other countries complaining

Re: Hi ! We want to steal everything...

Don't like the price, don't buy it. Intellectual property is still property.

Eggheads crack the code for the perfect soft boil

Science!

This was a taxpayer-funded exercise, wasn't it?

Democrats demand to know WTF is up with that DOGE server on OPM's network

Given the

number of massive U. S. government agency data breaches that have occurred over the past couple of decades it's a safe bet China & Russia have more information on the workings of the U. S. government than those congress-critters having performative conniptions.

Musk’s DOGE ship gets ‘full’ access to Treasury payment system, sinks USAID

Musk can't be

a bigger security risk than those at USAID.

The congress-critters are just upset to have their trough upended.

Humans brought the heat. Earth says we pay the price

Say what?

"As top climate scientist Michael Mann of the University of Pennsylvania [...]"

The same Michael E. Mann of the University of Pennsylvania who falsely claimed to have been awarded a Nobel Prize?

The same Michael E. Mann of the University of Pennsylvania who refuses to pay a judgment for costs levied against him in The Supreme Court of British Columbia?

The same Michael E. Mann of the University of Pennsylvania who, along with his co-conspirators at the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit, 'hid the decline'?

The same Michael E. Mann of the University of Pennsylvania who uses other peoples money to pursue lawfare against those with the temerity to notice his duplicity?

Thanks are due Myslewski - by treating Michael E. Mann of the University of Pennsylvania as a reliable interlocutor he has made it possible to save the time needed to read the article, knowing it's propaganda dressed up in scientism.

Beijing claims it's found 'underwater lighthouses' that its foes use for espionage

What maritime secrets? The ones they stole?

Russian court fines Google $20,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000

The fine's in rubles so that comes out to around 5.75USD. After penalties and interest.

Musk, Bezos need just 90 minutes to match your lifetime carbon footprint, says Oxfam

Oxfam? Isn't their primary source of funding the UK government? Which spews more pollution than Musk or Bezos ever could? Sounds like Oxfam is trolling for increased subvention.

It's true, social media moderators do go after conservatives

Huh?

Conservatives say socialism works?

BlueAnon is just as full of it as QAnon. Russian collusion anyone?

No way? Big Tech's 'lucrative surveillance' of everyone is terrible for privacy, freedom

Incentives

On the balance, when it comes to intrusive surveillance, I rather favour Big Tech than government. Big Tech has some incentive to keep your information under their control. Government? Not so much. If memory serves, the biggest exposures of private data have come from government databases being pilfered.

France charges Telegram CEO with multiple crimes

"The arrest of the president of Telegram on French soil took place as part of an ongoing judicial investigation. It is in no way a political decision. It is up to the judges to rule on the matter."

"Also, I have some Arizona coastline for sale, cheap."

Before we put half a million broadband satellites in orbit, anyone want to consider environmental effects?

The amount of potentially toxic material in the satellites isn't going to be much & what there is will likely disperse during re-entry to the point of being immeasurable. Exposure to anything seems unlikely unless you're hit by one de-orbiting.

Correction

"The US Public Interest Research Group (US PIRG), a federation of self-absorbed wankers on the make [...]"

Energy buffs give small modular reactors a gigantic reality check

Conflict

Seems a bit suspect when an organisation devoted to making energy expensive carries on about something being "too expensive, too slow to build, and too risky to play a significant role in transitioning away from fossil fuels."

What's riskier? A nuclear reactor with all the safeguards producing reliable or intermittent, unreliable, 'renewable' power?

'Well, the operation was a success . . . right up until the wind dropped and the machines shut down. Sorry about your loss.'

Underwater cables in Red Sea damaged months after Houthis 'threatened' to do just that

Unserious militaries, serious consequences

The military establishments of the West have long been more focused on fighting phantasms in their ranks than on fighting their nation's enemies.

New solvent might end winter charging blues for EV owners

In what world?

"As the popularity of electric vehicles increases [...]"

Yeah, that explains why all the electric vehicle manufacturers are pulling back even when that costs them extensive government subsidies.

The 'nothing-happened' Y2K bug – how the IT industry worked overtime to save world's computers

Not much to speak

"[...] US senator John Cornyn, who in 2022 took to then-Twitter to speak his brains."

Yes, well, given that he is one of the senators from my state, I can assure you he hasn't much in the way of brains to speak.

"[...] either due to memory constraints or perhaps laziness."

Few seem to remember how expensive data storage used to be or how few developers expected their code to be used for decades.

Bricking it: Do you actually own anything digital?

Optimist

"They're off to the digital dustbin as soon as I'm under the ground."

Don't bet on it being that far in the future.

England's village green hydrogen dream in tatters

Stock up on wool

"They will need to be replaced by heat pumps [...]"

Anyone who's had experience with them knows heat pumps don't work well when it gets cold enough outside.

Shame about those wildfires. We'll just let the fossil fuel giants off the hook, then?

Oh geeze.

First off, the Union of Concerned Scientists is a former USSR front group that can't accept the failure of the USSR. Like all communists, they lie and, when called on it, lie even more.

Second, the wildfires everyone is worked up about are, in the US, the result of some of the absolute worst forest management possible (soon to be made even worse by new US Forest Service rules).

Third, US carbon emissions have been declining for decades.

All of this is groundwork for giving even more power to people and organisations poorly suited, at best, to wield it.

Wireless powersats promise clean, permanent, abundant energy. Sound familiar?

"It all started with Tesla – Nikola, not the car company – who got fixated on the idea at the start of the 20th century and built a giant tower to test it out. He spent all the money and never made it work, although his disciples still cling to the wreckage. Not that anyone has learned."

There were numerous eye-witness accounts of wireless power transmission in Tesla's New York City workshop. Wardenclyffe was an experiment that perished due to lack of funding.

Hacking is not a crime – and the media should stop using 'hacker' as a pejorative

Not much concerned

about the 'feelz' of someone committing criminal trespass, virtual or otherwise.

Bill Gates on climate change: Planting trees is not the answer, emissions need to be zeroed out to avoid disaster

No Marcus Licinius Crassus

Gates may be rich enough to afford his own army, but he's made the modern mistake of thinking his wealth grants him expertise.

With depressing predictability, FCC boss leaves office with a list of his deeds... and a giant middle finger to America

Re: Off Topic

As an American I had to downvote it because, honestly, it's tedious.

Re: Off Topic

Considering the government's demonstrated inability to spend money 'appropriately' citizens' distrust is justified.

Oh dear

"Pai will, of course, be most closely associated with the reversal of net neutrality rules. Not only did he undercut the FCC’s own rulings made just two years earlier but he pushed through a predetermined outcome, often with almost comic pretense to running a proper policy process."

McCarthy ignores a couple of things here (actually he ignores or distorts rather a lot but time is limited).

The FCC's ruling that Pai & the other FCC commissioners reversed was itself questionable. What is certain is investment in broadband in the U.S. collapsed with the implementation of 'net neutrality' recovering only after it was reversed.

Pai may not have been perfect, but McCarthy is indulging in partisan excoriation rather than providing an assessment.

Trump's gone quiet, Parler nuked, Twitter protest never happened: There's an eerie calm – but at what cost?

Re: Twitter is acting entirely properly, the problem is in relying on twitter

That explains why PBS & NPR are just distant memories.

Public access cable was killed on by the cable operators, not 'the right'.

Not paying attentioln

"Those same companies that have spent a decade fighting any effort to limit their users' content [...]"

Only if you're counting that decade as being 2006 through 2016. Those 'same companies' started suppressing their users' content in 2016 & the recent actions are just an escalation of what they've been doing for years now.

Well, that's something boffins haven't seen before: A strange alien streaks around Jupiter

Re: It's probably full of Moties

Should we all be digging heffalump traps?

Re: Looks like a job for...

Keep in mind "To Serve Man" is a cookbook.

Rogue ADT tech spied on hundreds of customers in their homes via CCTV – including me, says teen girl

Juvenal

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

NASA boffins tackle Nazi alien in space – with the help of Native American tribal elders

Re: Space 1999

Ah, but the beard was even better in 1980.

The NAZIs used

air too, as do the alt-right.

Is that to be banned next?

Be still, our drinking hearts: Help Reg name whisky beast conjured by Swedish distillers and AI blendbot

'Azure Ruin' would be my favourite.

Allowlist, not whitelist. Blocklist, not blacklist. Goodbye, wtf. Microsoft scans Chromium code, lops off offensive words

Ambitions beyond the asylum

Why in Heaven's name are we allowing people who are incapable (or lay claim to being) of bearing the slightest adversity - 'safe spaces', 'crying rooms', 'puppy therapy' are not the hallmark of a robust, sane individual - be allowed to distort the language? This is aggression masquerading as powerlessness.

Re: This is stupid

Your use of the term 'whitewashing' is a red flag.

Which likely also has been attributed negative connotations.

Poor Mr. Blair

Pity he was unable to see, & hear, Newspeak realised.

Must watch: GE's smart light bulb reset process is a masterpiece... of modern techno-insanity

It's little things like this that make me ever so glad I laid in a supply of incandescent bulbs.

No fax given: Blighty's health service bods told to ban snail mail, too

"The rest of the world runs on email [...]"

If the Health Secretary supposes that, the Health Secretary law is a ass - a idiot.

Pentagon's JEDI mind tricks at odds with our 'values' says Google: Ad giant evaporates from $10bn cloud contract bid

Huh!

Google has principles?

Do they keep them in a lockbox?

Wannabe Supreme Brett Kavanaugh red-faced after leaked emails contradict spy testimony

Re: Yet Another America - Fall Of Rome - Moment

It's totalitarianism enhanced by technology.

Re: Yet Another America - Fall Of Rome - Moment

Possibly.

But how would you know? You wouldn't be allowed out either.

Motes & beams

Point the first:

"The emails are labeled "committee confidential" meaning that they should not be shared beyond the committee. But on Thursday they were leaked to the news media and some were then later publicly posted by Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ), who argued they were of such significance that their release was warranted due to the broader public interest."

The e-mails were cleared for release on Wednesday per Booker's request & with his knowledge. His (Booker's) claims of putting the public ahead of partisan interest was itself a partisan sham (admittedly, not something alien to Booker).

Point the second:

That Kavanaugh was an associate in the White House during the Bush 43 administration is known, as is his work before & after. His role was to coordinate between various entities in the administration. That he handled documents regarding surveillance post-9/11 is utterly unsurprising & in no way demonstrates knowledge of the actual programs put in place, let alone contradicting his testimony.

Point the third:

Kavanaugh is arguably less a partisan choice than Elena Kagan (I'd be curious to see McCarthy's published objections to that nomination) as Kavanaugh has over a decade on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit whereas Kagan had no prior experience as a federal judge.

It's not difficult to conclude Kieren McCarthy is attempting to manufacture a controversy where none exists to further his own partisan & ideological views. It's not his views that are objectionable but the obfuscatory manner in which they're presented.

Now that's a dodgy Giza: Eggheads claim Great Pyramid can focus electromagnetic waves

Just what I was thinking.

Trump 'not normal' FCC commish reveals amid Sinclair-Tribune mega-media-merger meltdown

Move along. No bias to see here. Move along.

FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel was appointed by Obama &, oddly enough, expressed no objections to his ham-handed interference when imposing 'net neutrality'.

Boss helped sysadmin take down horrible client with swift kick to the nether regions

Sorry to see you leave

Congratulations & felicitations on the new situation.

Julian Assange said to have racked up $5m security bill for Ecuador

Re: How can it possibly cost them $66K per month?

Government.

It makes everything more expensive.

It's his nature

Scorpion, meet Frog.

Frog, Scorpion.

FBI slams secret Nunes memo alleging Feds spied on Team Trump for political reasons

I would have said Talleyrand.