Posts by Sampler

BOFH: Saving the planet, one falsified metric at a time

Re: Which side of the pond are you?

Trick question, it's from a g'n'r song...

Apple's ultra-thin iPhone flops as foldable iPad hits a crease

Re: Vindication

Not on here, I should've clarified that, reddit - but I'm glad you took the time to review my post history..

Vindication

I was downvoted to hell when I lamented it's launch saying who needs a thinner phone..

Australia sues Microsoft for misleading M365 users about Copilot subscription options

Re: Microsoft

Yeah, there's nothing that underscores confidence more in a product than a plan to hoodwink customers in to paying for it...

Who gets a Mac at work? Here's how companies decide

I worked at a marketing & promotions firm (primarily - I was in a market research team) that was all Mac, it was a fight to get a windows install on mine (as I needed some windows specific software for my role) and that absolutely kneecapped the laptop - touchpad features reduced to a single click from all the fancy wankery it did, unless you paid forty bucks for a third party app that put the drivers back in, problems with the display, keyboard mapping and power management. It really didn't want to have windows on it, they really should've just let me byod, I knew more than their IT head anyway (who recommended me for his job when he left, but f'that, what do I know about managing a fleet of macs...)

No account? No Windows 11, Microsoft says as another loophole snaps shut

Re: Microsoft have won.

The more you tighten your grip, Nadella, the more systems will slip through your fingers.

Google's dev registration plan 'will end the F-Droid project'

Re: But.....

What about non-app store apps, like PWA's, are these similarly affected?

Microsoft digs up Vista-era animated wallpaper for Windows 11. Here's how to get it

It was about the only feature I quite liked in Vista, I used to have a HTPC back then and it looked quite slick having a running waterfall as the wallpaper - vista media centre actually looked quite polished too and the epg one of the nicest I've seen to this day.

I mean, I get the rest is hot garbage and most of MS stuff is, but, you know, that one little light in the dark, even if frivolous.

These days I just rock a chromecast as that's enough for plex in 4k so no need to waste the watts on a HTPC anymore, so, no use for it now, but I liked it then.

Amazon will refund $1.5B to 35M customers allegedly duped into paying for Prime

Re: I quit Prime. You can too, eventually.

I was accidentally signed up, using the website on mobile I fat fingered the very close buttons and that was all, one click, I was in.

Took the free delivery during the free trial and then cancelled prior to being charged, so, more fool them for making it too easy to sign up, but least cancelling is relatively straight forward (once you click through all the bait of "are you sure you want to lose access to this thing we've not actually mentioned you have access to before?"...).

After deleting a web server, I started checking what I typed before hitting 'Enter'

Re: Never delete the old web site, only rename it

If you're deleting the old website to add the new, that means downtime, you have two directories "current_website" "new_website" and you update the host redirect to point to the new site, migrating with zero downtime...

Then you can do what you like with "current_website" when you've had chance to check "new_website" worked fine.

(and because I spend too much time on Reddit, before the pedantry, you wouldn't actually use "current_website" "new_website" as names...)

British spreadsheet wizard will take mad skillz to Vegas after taking national Excel crown

If you're using Excel, you're doing it wrong...

It's been a personal mantra for the past decade as pretty much every time I've come to a janky Excel implementation there was a more elegant solution that was easier to do, quicker and more maintainable.

Yet, just the other week, I created a spreadsheet that fetched data from two different systems (one client, one internal) and then sent SMS reminders to employees, so, you know, don't follow my own advice much...

AI Darwin Awards launch to celebrate spectacularly bad deployments

To quote one of my favourite anime:

To err is human, but to really fuck things up you need a computer..

-Cyber City Odeo 808

Apple's 'Awe Droppings' fall close to the tree

Re: Yes!

When I upgraded from my Xiaomi 12s Ultra to the 14 Ultra (mostly to get a global rom, the phone was still fine, even at two years old) I was a little surprised to find it was actually thicker.

Not to any degree that matters, it's still a relatively thin phone (9.2mm) but the fact they went backwards I feel is a great step, showing they prefer function over this ridiculous ever shrinking form.

But the size back in to it and fill it with battery, phones could be double the current depth, makes little difference, but doubling the battery capacity, I'd buy that.

(they don't even need to double it, just push out to be in-line with the camera bump)

Salesforce sacrifices 4,000 support jobs on the altar of AI

Re: In other news

Same Salesforce who's AI agent just let a bunch of Cloudflare data be snuck out? That Salesforce AI?

Five years – that's how long Anthropic will store Claude chats unless you opt out

Re: All together now ......

As a paid customer (pro plan) I got this pop-up, ensured I hadn't opted in, went to my Settings > Privacy and found I was 'accidentally' (presumably) still opted in, so I'm definitely unchecked, reloaded, still opted out, will check again in several days.

Would suggest anyone else might want to just double check in case they made an "oopsy", after all, when you vibe code you don't necessarily get what you thought you did...

Claude Code's copious coddling confounds cross customers

I was worried this might be something more bothersome than the text I scan past - just switched to Claude from ChatGPT after last fridays update screwed Codex from being vaguely useful to down right annoying.

So far Claude's seemed more on the vaguely useful side, but I have only been using it half a day...

'Suddenly deprecating old models' users depended on a 'mistake,' admits OpenAI's Altman

Re: “Please use us as a business tool, even though we test and change in production.”

The changes in Codex since GPT5 came out is astounding, so much for reductions in hallucinations, every single query is now mis-understood or it changes things that were fine and didn't need changing.

Can they put a "use whatever Codex was using pre-gpt5" option?

Intel's leaders have stopped pretending – and it's about time

Hope Intel aren't banking on GPU's

As things stand, Intel is unlikely to have a competitive GPU or AI accelerator for at least a year, and that's assuming that Intel's GPU team survives the next wave of layoffs.

I picked up an A770 for my work rig and it was dire, unstable, glitchy, a driver update lost my third screen (support were absolutely useless even when provided all the information and pointing out where the driver change broke things) that I eventually pulled it out and got a 5070. The driver updates being bigger and bigger steps backwards in terms of stability was the last straw (bsod so hard I had to re-install windows).

Stuffed it in my NAS, figure I could at least get some value out of it for hardware transcoding of video, and nope, kept locking the system up and preventing me logging in, absolute waste of sand, sits on a shelf now as a reminder to never buy a v1 of anything.

Court cancels FTC click-to-cancel rule on a technicality

Re: Cancelling ....

it's ok because they only thought they'd cancelled the bill, but they forgot to click on sub-clause four or article seven so it's in fact still in progress...

Chap claims Atari 2600 'absolutely wrecked' ChatGPT at chess

Re: Not surprising

Because the people selling them, are saying they're capable of reasoning and deduction, so, claims must be tested..

Re: Not surprising

I've been playing some games against it lately to track how well it's reasoning and deduction are going - not well.

A favourite is to play "wheel of fortune" with it, I'll spin up an online game of it and feed it a screenshot and a reminder of the rules (no adding/removing spaces, no altering of the letters already in, the clue is x etc..) and. the. amount. of. times. it. breaks. one. of. these. basic. rules. is. astounding..

These aren't something I'm expecting it to know by context of the prompt, they're spelled out right in there and it can't hack it, just apologises and promises to do better. but then immediately doesn't.

I get it's not actually intelligent and pretty much just a really big complicated search, but even by those standards, it's ignoring half the search term.

Absolutely outstanding that people are willing to trust it to do bigger and more important things - had a call this morning with the boss wanting to replace our call room people with it, good fucking luck mate...

I'm just a Barbie Girl in a ChatGPT world

Re: Not for My [Hypothetical] Kids!

I wouldn't fret, with such a none announcement it sounds more like a share price pull, we'll announce we're doing *something* with ai and watch the stock go up and then wait for everyone to forget, they're just not even bothering with detailing what the *something* could be, if only there was an app that could summarise a few ideas for them...

Microsoft cuts the Windows 11 bloat for Xbox handhelds

Re: Just goes to show that they always could remove this crap...

I give 'em three months, tops, before we get Xbox Co-pilot squeezed in...

Japan's latest Moon landing written off as a failure after ispace probe goes dark

Only the one lazer?

I get weight is important for a space trip, but I'd've thought reliable landing data is importanter...

Take ChatGPT back to the 2010s and they’d think AGI arrived, says Altman

Re: Some people had never seen Eliza

Something something something Mechanical Turk..

Aussie businesses now have to fess up when they pay off ransomware crims

Re: Turnover of AUD3 million... Large companies?

I don't imagine smaller businesses would attract ransomware fraternity

That's the thing with modern automation and crawlers, you don't have to be an attractive target, they'll just set the systems going and if they find a known vulnerability you've not patched you're popped. There's actually been a big pivot from targeted exploitation to a wider scatter gun approach, even if only a small percentage pay out, if you hit enough, it's worth it and sadly, it seems to be given the numbers seen.

Adobe turns subscription screw again, telling users to pay up or downgrade

Re: Adobe turns subscription screw again, telling users to pay up or downgrade

I have the "Photography plan (20GB) " that's going from $14.29 AUD a month to $23.99 AUD a month, a sixty percent price hike for the exact same software.

(as we already have ai gen. bullshit, that's developed, paid for, in there)

It was already a rip paying monthly for the same product, but this is the straw that broke this camels back, screw adobe, there's plenty of perfectly cromulent alternatives out there, I already own a lifetime Luminar Neo licence I got on a humble bundle the other year, I'll just switch to that and pay nothing no more.

Computacenter IT guy let girlfriend into Deutsche Bank server rooms, says fired whistleblower

Re: "What was the plan, showing her his big iron?"

I remember working for ComputaCenter pimped out to a large UK building society (now bank) and to gain access to the server room you needed high level sign off, relinquish mobile devices at the gate and were tracked via CCTV constantly, my work sheet was for Hall B, I accidentally turned right at a junction for Hall A as my mind was elsewhere only to get a correction over the tanoy, that's how seriously they took it, and that was over two decades back, DB should be in the dock for this one.

Ninite to win it: How to rebuild Windows without losing your mind

Great article, been using it for over a decade, probably from reading one of the earlier articles, have told every tech I've come across to use it and no complaints.

RIP, Google Privacy Sandbox

Re: Do we even need cookies?

I've had a few little problems where I've needed to re-enable third-party cookies for a site (such as getting my Telstra discount on Event cinema tickets back when they offered that) but outside such things it's been pretty plain sailing having third party cookies disabled.

Developer scored huge own goal by deleting almost every football fan in Europe

Re: It never gets old

Back when I worked at HBOS (Halifax Bank of Scotland, now Lloyds) there was a guy in UAC (User Account Control) who went to delete an account and accidentally started deleting every account, (alphabetically by surname).

It's been a few decades but I believe he got a good half way through the alphabet, at least past H for Andy Hornsby, the CEO of the time.

Best bit of the story is though; soon as he realised his error, he didn't tell anyone, just picked up his things and walked out, knowing it was probably the last thing he was doing at the company anyway..

New SSL/TLS certs to each live no longer than 47 days by 2029

Re: Why not...

Why not just do it themselves, why does it have to be a rule for everyone? If Apple want their certs. to expire every five minutes, that's on them, why should I be forced to arse about?

Meta's AI, built on ill-gotten content, can probably build a digital you

Re: Caprica

But surely information taken from social media has, let's politely say, a bias?

People are not their authentic selves online, there's nuance to understand, that just chucking their post history in to an LLM isn't going to understand.

I look forwarded to this expensive experiment flopping as hard as most meta products.. (may be we can post about it on threads..)

Introducing Windows on arm. And by arm, we mean wrist

Re: Windows on Arm has been around since the Surface RT

So you're saying... developers?

Developers..

Developers.

Developers!

DEVELOPERS!!

Microsoft to kill off Defender VPN this month

Re: Well there's your problem

I like to think of myself as fairly tech savvy - I even did a bit of search recently for a vpn solution for an need I had (went with Tailscale, simple set-up across platforms; linux, android and even, indeed, windows, can't fault it, especially for the price of nothing) and even after reading many articles, forum suggestions and searches, I've never heard of Defender VPN...

Tesla's numbers disappoint again ... and the crowd goes wild ... again

Re: Car sales, an entirely unscientific survey

I've said this before, but we're heading towards the end of car ownership.

When they get robo-taxis working well enough that the profits outweigh the lawsuits then the cost benefit of ownership erodes.

$120k for a car becomes hard to swallow when it spends most of its life on a driveway, you can pay a few bucks to robotaxi anywhere you're going (as the driver's the most expensive bit). More and more people making this switch means your local dealership folds and the mechanic as robo-taxi services will have in-house, so cost of maintenance goes up along with purchase price with fewer competitors. As fewer people drive, the cost of insurance soars with less people to spread the risk and more people switch away. Driving instructors can't afford to stay in business so the cost of entry climbs, cutting off the next generation.

Then comes the pivot, when the robo-taxis claim all their accidents are caused by the humans in the other cars and their cars would be better without them (whether true or not, statistics can say what you want), when enough people are in tobo-taxis and few left actually owning a car it will no longer be political suicide to outlaw driving because "won't someone think of the children" (and their pac) and you're toast, whoever owns the biggest fleet of taxis simply uses this position to monopolise or cartel with a few like minded to have the air of accountability and we get America ISP level of service in car form..

This is what Musk is salivating over, every trip you take is money in his pocket, selling your tracking data is the cherry on top..

People have called me a pessimist for saying this in the past, but, we're heading towards it - I've not owned a car in eleven years, as renting out the parking spot in our apartment has yielded more income than I've spent on rentals and taxis each year (partner's an accountant, there's benefits to dating someone who's even more of a nerd than I am. they do the math every year, each year we are over a thousand of dollars up..), if you really look at the cost of car ownership vs the driving you do, you may come to a similar conclusion before the floor falls out of Uber and the eliminate all their "ride partners" for "AI"...

Azure, Microsoft 365 MFA outage locks out users across regions

Re: Don't put your tackle on someone else's chopping block.

I'd love to, but all the ones all the monkeys are trained to use won't sell them to me anymore without a cloud subscription to make things less reliable with fewer updates as they don't need to innovate a new feature to upsell me to the next iteration...

Shackleton's Endurance sets sail for polar peril in Lego

Re: The Joy of Assembling

I recently got an off-brand Johnny 5 with full remote control, it was a lot of fun to build and I loved that film as a kid.

It has just sort of sat on the kitchen table since though, need to find a nephew to hand it over to (and a copy of the film).

OpenAI plans to ring in the New Year with a for-profit push

Re: Don't worry about it dear investors...

Open* AI*...

^{*terms and conditions apply...}

Police arrest suspect in murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO, with grainy pics the only tech involved

I wonder

If he'd disposed of the incriminating evidence, if they would've had enough to hold / prosecute him?

Hey, you sorta look like this grainy video pic wouldn't have gotten far with the type of lawyer one would expect a guy of his background to be able to afford.

Seems like a bit of a dumbass thing to do (especially if the 'ghost gun' is homemade and therefore replaceable) - to have gone to some good lengths in the plotting to commit, but not what to do to stay out after the fact?

M4 MacBook Pro shows Apple is still glued to the idea of unfixable laptops

Not a lot of pros for the device on the whole, but my Surface Pro 9 is thinner and has replaceable storage (under a magsealed cover, so only one screw holding the ssd in needs removing).

This is just so Apple can straight up gouge customers on the different prices of drives (same as MS did with the SP9 - I bought the 256gb model and a 2tb sabrent drive for the price of the 512gb model...).

Not that I'm the target audience for Apples consumer electronic devices disguised as computers, but I'd never buy a device without being able to at least be able to replace the storage (as it fails - ideally the battery and RAM too, but given I bought a Surface, clearly not as staunch on that stance).

I also don't see why everything has to be so thin, phones included, we're long past the point where it was useful to be smaller, these days I'd be happy if they gained a few mm and I could have ports and more battery, but especially something like a laptop, it's not like being more svelte is going to help a 17" device fit in my back pocket...

JPMorgan Chase sues scammers following viral 'infinite money glitch'

Exactly, if you absolutely have to allow cheques to be drawn instantly, it should at least be a capped amount until it clears - some people may be minorly inconvenienced, oh no...

Australian e-tailer digiDirect customers' info allegedly stolen and dumped online

That explains it - started getting spam calls since mid September, and I do shop with them a bit (either they or Georges tend to have the best price in Australia for camera gear and have a physical presence you can go and talk to someone about if it has problems).

Shame the shitty way they've dealt with customers..

SuperHTML is here to rescue you from syntax errors, and it's FOSS

Re: HTML still works.

Because universal search which will push sites you visit regularly to the top of the results?

Or for actual users trying to find information who've never heard of you before?

The billionaire behind Trump's 'unhackable' phone is on a mission to fight Tesla's FSD

Re: What's the point of a secure phone for Trump?

Yeah, sorry, I'm not proud of myself...

...I mean, it won't even be true, to 69 you'd have to do something for someone else and we all know the orange one ain't doing that..

Re: What's the point of a secure phone for Trump?

ivanka69?

Critical hardcoded SolarWinds credential now exploited in the wild

Re: Hardcoded credentials? Really?

Ubuntu: Turns out distro is actually just Windows Vista with a few custom themes..

And I guess that explains why there's no comment section on xkcd...

Uncle Sam accuses Aussie AI startup boss of financial fakery that duped investors

Re: For the record

But would international readers know what a VB is? Or a Coopers for that matter..

CrowdStrike apologizes to Congress for 'perfect storm' that caused global IT outage

"Perfect Storm"

Of us making boneheaded coding practices combined with little in the way of update testing? That sort of perfect storm that absolutely no one could see coming?

Musk dreams of launching five Starships to Mars in two years

Re: I'm pleased to hear this!

Given the ships current record, it'll be a guarantee - though one feels somewhat the opposite of a titanic sub..