Posts by Big_Boomer

Microsoft cuts OneDrive support for older Windows 10 versions next month

Sync stopped working months ago

Yes, I use OneDrive, mostly because I was already paying for Office 365 (the Mrs uses Word and Outlook). However, my OneDrive sync hasn't worked for months despite the fact that I am on 22H2 and have extended support for Windows 10 via the same. No, I won't be renewing it once the current year ends as not interested in paying MS for stuff that doesn't work. Yes, I have already converted one of my PCs to Linux and LibreOffice and will probably be going the same route with my main PC. Not sure who I will be using for backups in the future but MS can go **** themselves up the **** with a rusty fence post.

New Horizons Pluto probe just woke itself up after 321 days of hibernation

NASA Unveils that is has achieved Time Travel

Or did their Press Release have a typo, or did ElReg insert the typo? <LOL>

David Potter, the man who put Psion in the palm of your hand, logs off at 82

RIP Dave

As a ZX81 and QL owner your products were extensively used by me and my Dad, and whilst we never got into the PDAs I always admired the technology.

The class of 2026 has heard enough about AI, thanks

"**** OFF AI"

I don't even have so called "Smart" speakers in my house and certainly don't use AI. Unfortunately it's on my phones and tablet, and keeps getting forced onto my PCs but doesn't get used by me (no, not even the Google Search AI crap) and gets disabled/deleted when it gets in my way.

The other day I got a spam phone call that asked my name, and then proceeded to use the name I gave it to build a whole sales spiel that carried on even when I told it to "***K OFF AI" and didn't so much as pause even when followed up with a stream of invective that would make a brickie blush.

I get that AI has uses and is good at some things, but like any tool it is limited and needs to be used appropriately. This "stuff AI into everything" mindset is going to backfire on a lot of people but other than it dragging down the value of my pension fund, I really don't give a crap.

Yes, I am an olde fuddye duddye and close to retirement and am becoming more and more resistant to change that adds little or no value for me. I really can't wait for the day I can turn my back on all this.

1 in 8 employees totally cool with selling work credentials

I Gave My Credentials Away For FREE!

Many moons ago I was approached whilst waiting for my train at Liverpool St. Station and asked if I minded answering a few questions. I agreed as I was bored and my train was delayed. I answered every question fully and happily gave them my user login and password,.... all of it for an entirely fictional company.

Their entire survey is just poor quality toilet paper as I am willing to bet large sums that those who gave login details made them up on the spot. I don't doubt that there are idiots out there who would sell real credentials, but they aren't going to be employed for very long if they are that stupid/gullible/greedy.

Anthropic response to 1-click pwn: Shouldn't have clicked 'ok'

It's "AI"

And is therefore inherently untrustworthy. I my experience the answers you get to questions asked of "AI"s are mostly correct, but because of the occasional "hallucination" cannot be trusted 100%. If I asked the same question of a human, then I would expect the answer to be untrustworthy, but for some reason many people seem to think that what they read online is 100% correct regardless of the source.

I actually had a colleague tell me that the "AI" said so, and therefore it must be true. When I then proved that the "AI" was talking utter bollox, he was quite crestfallen, but accepted that he would have to check everything that came from it.

The only technology that died more times than VR is AI, and that seems to have worked out

Hype

Both VR/AR and AI have their place in the modern world, but NOT in everything and definitely not for everyone. The problem is the Hype Merchants. A new technology comes along and the Marketers start the hype and then seem to compete with each other as to how much more they can hype their tech than anyone else. Cue over-investment, bubble, bubble, bubble, POP, and 95% of the investors lose their shirts. Meanwhile a few USEFUL instances of the tech remain but for a while are tarred with the failure of all the hyped dross.

Brit dual nationals grounded by border digitization drive

Errrr, it's complicated

I recently renewed my UK Passport and now have a black one (no effing way is that "blue"), but during the 3 weeks in which I didn't have my UK passport in my hands I might have had to travel abroad using my non-UK Passport and could have been refused re-entry to the UK on my return,.... so I photocopied my old UK Passport before I sent it away with the renewal. This should have been enough for me to get back into the UK.

What has changed since my last renewal is that being a dual-national I was required to send photocopies of every single page of my non-UK Passport along with my old Passport. I am not 100% sure why that is now required. I did as requested as in theory it should future proof me in case I need to return with the "wrong" passport.

I did have one instance of confusion when travelling where I presented my non-UK Passport when arriving there, only to be told that I needed to show my UK Passport because that was what I had registered with the airline. So, I showed them my UK Passport as well and after much checking and discussions with his manager, he decided I was allowed into the country I am a citizen of. I then took the manager aside and filed a formal complaint during which he agreed with me that their "processes" needed an enema, so it's not all UK based incompetence.

Every day in every way, passwords are getting worse and worse

Re: Security vs convenience

The problem is when you have to simultaneously access 10+ different systems each of which has a separate login and you get REALLY bored of having to lookup a password every time, so you reuse passwords. I personally have well over 300 passwords I have to remember for work and probably close to 100 personal ones. I try not to reuse, but I'm not perfect.

Passkeys only work from a particular device so are very limited in use, even if they are more secure.

Whenever this comes up I am reminded of the fact that the most secure computer is one that is not connected to anything and that nobody is allowed to use. 100% secure, but also 100% useless. So we are always down to allowing some connectivity and some access and trying to maximise usability whilst minimising exposure. Many IT depts get that balance badly wrong because they become security obsessed, although that usually ends in unemployment when the day comes that the CEO is locked out of his laptop due to over-zealous security.

Work experience kids messed with manager's PC to send him to Ctrl-Alt-Del hell

Evil pranks

Back in the late 90s a colleague used to leave his PC unlocked and unattended when he went for a fag break or a visit to the loo. So, one day I installed some remote control software (in the days before such were picked up by AV systems) and waited for the opportune moment. That moment came when we had a visit from the company CEO over from the USA. I waited until the office touring CEO was on the other side of the partition from my colleague and then remote opened a browser and started opening porn sites. My colleague spent a FRANTIC 30secs closing windows only to realise that more were opening all the time, at which point he demonstrated a high level of intelligence and switched off his monitor and went to the loo, presumably to scrape out his underwear. When he came back the CEO had moved on and his desktop was back to normal, but he knew he'd been had and soon found the software. I held my hands up and after a stream of invective that would make a sailor wince, he finally laughed and forgave me. No, he NEVER forgot to lock his desktop after that,... and neither did I,.... because I really didn't want to find out what his revenge would be. <LOL>

Open-source AI is a global security nightmare waiting to happen, say researchers

FTFY

"AI is a global security nightmare waiting to happen, say researchers". Open Source has nothing to do with it.

Autonomous cars, drones cheerfully obey prompt injection by road sign

QR Codes

Better still, show it a big QR Code and have all kinds of code and instructions injected into the control system. They fool many people, so AIs should be a doddle.

House of Lords votes to ban social media for Brits under 16

Make the Parents responsible for controlling access to anti-Social Media?

I nearly swallowed my pen when I read that in one of the comments. Are these the same parents who have no idea how their phone/tablet/PC works and have to get their 10 year old to fix it for them, and yes THAT is the majority amongst non-Techie parents? And that is for parents who actually care about their kids (which to be fair is most of them), but there are plenty of parents who just don't give a crap and see the inevitable results of their bareback shagging as an inconvenience and a resource drain, so they are never going to spend any time with their kids, let alone educate them or read to them, and they all expect the school system to do their job for them.

Notepad will now tell you all the ways Microsoft has enshittified it

Answers on a postcard to,...

Please post your suggestions for a new name for Notepad. (BloatPad? AITookAShitPad?) Really get creative with it! <LOL>

Global economy shrugs off US tariff shock, tech spending does heavy lifting

Re: Trick

Which the seller/sender promptly rolls into the price on the next item they send to the USA. Trust me, only the buyer is going to pay OrangeBaby's Tariffs, and since they are all import tariffs that means US residents. Customs might get away with that "trick" for a few items but pretty soon the sellers are going to either raise their prices or stop sending to the USA.

A few years ago the idiot UK government started requiring overseas companies to pay the import duties on sales under £135 and the result was that most small overseas companies simply refused to send to the UK. Before that I used to buy regularly from a small business in the US that supplied what I needed all from one business, but afterwards I had to source it all locally.

As for the Tangerine Muppets latest threats of tariffs, bring them on. The rest of the world is now 100% sick of his bully-boy tactics and bored of pandering to a spoilt narcissist. Even if our governments do nothing many people I know are now actively seeking non-US products, even if it costs them more. Imagine if the rest of the world starts doing what Canada has been doing since his tariffs. If the USA wants isolation, the world will give it to them. No doubt you can take Greenland by force, but you will crash your economy and effectively secede from NATO, and all because the brat you elected threw a temper tantrum because somebody dared to not give him what he wanted.

Your smart TV is watching you and nobody's stopping it

Funny

Yes,... funny. Here you all are moaning about your TVs watching you when you have been walking around with the perfect surveillance device in your pocket/handbag/hand for years. It has microphones to listen to you, several cameras to watch you, and is almost always connected to the internet. I know that they are being monitored for nefarious use but that has never stopped anyone as they find ways that do not get detected, or else it is your government who is doing the watching.

User found two reasons – both of them wrong – to dispute tech support's diagnosis

Walk away

Having worked in Support for several decades, it's the only way to deal with know-it-alls. I had one start on me when I walked out of his office and I told him straight to his face that since he knew it all already he didn't need my expertise. He then tried to badmouth me with my boss and with the company CEO, both of whom knew better. Several hours later he asked me politely if I would help him with his problem and in 15 mins it was fixed. The twat never apologised and from then on we stayed away from each other. I am not perfect and I do occasionally make mistakes, but I will not put up with that kind of treatment from anyone.

BBC tapped to stop Britain being baffled by AI

Less and less relevant

I like the BBC, I like programmes like QI and Red Dwarf and Monty Python and many others that probably would never have been made on commercial TV. I don't listen to BBC radio much any more but grew up listening to R1 & R2. However, these days they seem to be screening more and more repeats and cheap documentaries full of padding and time wasting drivel. As a consequence I find myself watching less and less TV as I actively HATE most commercial TV with their race to the sewer programming and constant nagging to buy sh!t that nobody wants. Even Discovery seems to be headed to the sewer with it's endless promotion of fantasy crap like "ghost" or "Bigfoot" shows and a seemingly non-stop chain of programmes about Gold obsessives. I am glad I grew up in the 70s and 80s when TV was good. The TV is on most nights, but for most of the evening it is quiet and acting as moving wallpaper.

Microsoft research shows chatbots seeping into everyday life

F*** OFF!

Gemini on my phone & Tablet, Copilot on my laptop and desktop, and every single day one or the other of them gets told to F*** OFF after asking if they could help with what I am doing. I don't have the option or currently want to use Linux so please don't start preaching that again. What I would like would be to be able to 100% delete all such "AI" garbage from my devices so I don't have to waste my time every day telling glorified F***ING CLIPPYs to F*** OFF!!! Roll on retirement day when I can wipe everything and go Linux, although knowing my luck by then that will also come with a nice helpful "AI" that want's to be my friend. Please let the sodding bubble burst soon so we can get shot of all this crap we are being force-fed. If you love "AI" then good for you. I don't want it and I RESENT having it constantly pushed at me because some marketing A-HOLE thought it would be a good idea.

Britain plots atomic reboot as datacenter demand surges

Short-sighted politicians

Our incompetent politicians chose short term electability over long term energy security and so let our home grown nuclear industry die out, and now they and everyone else are bemoaning what was done. My Dad worked for TNPG on Hinkley B back in the 70s and saw what was coming so transferred to a US nuclear power company, but even that faded away in the 90s. Too many NIMBYs wanted cheap reliable electricity but they all wanted it generated in someone else's backyard.

Then we had Chernobyl where a poorly built nuke in country that lacked reasonable safety precautions blew it's top (non-nuclear but effectively a big dirty bomb) and now everyone wanted nuclear power banned everywhere, regardless of whether it was well built, safe, and reliable or not. In Japan money grubbing cheapskates decided NOT to listen to the engineers who told them to put the emergency generators on the roof of the containment vessels, and that (helped by the Tsunami) gave us the Fukushima meltdown.

Because of the Calder Hall/Windscale fire in the UK we were one of the first to regulate the nuclear industry and rightly so, but that regulation has now turned into a monster that needs cutting down to size. So, here we are with nearly no nuclear power industry of our own and having to buy ours from the Americans, Chinese and French. We currently have 4 sites generating power, Hartlepool, Heysham (1 & 2), Torness and Sizewell B, but 3 of those will probably end power generation in the next 5 years, which leaves us with Sizewell B. France on the other hand has about the same population level as the UK, but has 56 (soon 57) nuclear reactors generating power versus the UKs 10.

Brits believe the bots even though study finds they're often talking nonsense

Gullibles gonna gullible.

The gullible are always going to believe/trust whatever they are told, especially when the info comes from a source that they already believe/trust for whatever reason. It is the basis of Religion and Government since forever. The problem here is that they are believing/trusting a piece of software that has as much integrity as a wino on LSD, and yes some of the worlds people/organisations also fall into that same lack of integrity. My pet hate about AI is the inevitable consequence that it's users will stop thinking about things themselves, and instead rely on the AI to do their thinking for them. So, whoever controls the AI's, control the gullible. Anyone for Big Brother Mind Control?

You'll never guess what the most common passwords are. Oh, wait, yes you will

It's a random Friday in November,.... it's The Register's Passwords Article Day 2025.

People are, have always been, will always be terrible with passwords. That is because the idea of passwords itself is flawed and insecure. 2FA is better but is clunky and difficult to use. No, I don't have any ideas on how to identify people in a more secure and easy to use way, but a good start would be for such identification to only be required for very few websites and applications. As it is every TomDick&Harry website requires identification so that they can spam the crap out of you with marketing garbage.

Network operator ponders building a new submarine cable – on land

Why?

If they need more capacity around South Africa, then add more capacity there. Trying to build it across land on the least politically stable continent on the planet is going to be damned near impossible. Even once in place and operating, a regime change in any one of the nations it traverses will end up with threats to cut it unless $$$$ are forthcoming. Also, chances are that laying the cable around South Africa will be WAY cheaper than building a reasonably secure over/under land cable.

NHS left with sick PCs as suppliers resist Windows 11 treatment

Not at all surprising

What many outside the medical devices field don't know is that most medical devices require extensive testing and approval to ensure that they won't cause unintended effects to staff and patients. That testing costs a ****ing fortune, takes years to complete, and has to be done for each and every region where your devices will be sold because of course every region has different requirements for testing and documentation. So, MS announce that they are ending support for Win10 in just over 1 year under the massively flawed assumption that everyone can just jump to their latest shiny-shiny at will. Most medical device companies typically operate on a 5-10 year refresh cycle depending on the device, and MS and their marketing people can just go sit on a massive **** and rotate if they think otherwise.

Ours run the latest versions of Win10 LTSR and Win10 Embedded and we will get them to Win11 when the testing/documentation is done and not before. Many such devices sit behind their own firewalls and have other protections so the fact that the OS is flawed and requires constant patching if exposed to the internet is normally not an issue.

And before the Linux/Unix people start bleating on about using that instead, some of our devices do run on certain flavours of *nix but there are other issues there that make life difficult such as the fact that the user base are all Windows people.

Microsoft gives Windows 11 a fresh Start – here's how to get it

Open Shell

I've been using Classic Shell and more recently Open Shell for many years now. It means I get to have a stable menu layout how I want it. As others have said, since the abortion of a Start Menu introduced in Win8 MS seem to have completely lost the plot and are now desperately trying anything and everything. Their best bet would be to allow people to customise their Start Menu how THEY want it, rather than how some Marketing twonk wants you to see it. I use Open Shell with Win11 with no problems at all, but I don't use a top or side Taskbar so can't comment on those. I have a nice Win7 style Start Menu in a lairy lime-green with what I want, where I want it.

Everyone needs an AI phone. No, don't hang up, it's true

I already regularly have to tell my phone to Fark Orf as it pops up "helpful" little suggestions on how to do something other than what I am actually doing. I also waste probably 30 mins per day doing the same on my PC where it "decides" that I am doing something it feels it can help me with, so I then end up having to undo what it's done and then try to figure out how to disable that function. I don't know who decides what is warranted interference in what I am doing, but I would be quite happy to ""re-educate" them,..... with a large HAMMER!

Techie ended vendor/client blame game by treating managers like toddlers

I enjoy those moments when I get to gloat and on a few occasions I have hung up on a support call, and after making 100% certain that the call has ended, have shouted "I ****ing told you what was causing the problem right at the beginning, but you would not listen to me because you were certain it could not possibly be YOUR equipment at fault!". As others have said, I am quite happy to accept that the fault might be in my companies equipment and I fully expect that the customer also accept that it may also be in their equipment. Whenever I hear people telling me that it couldn't possibly be in their kit, I detect the stink of someone covering their own arse, or at best someone who can't be bothered to do their job.

The air is hissing out of the overinflated AI balloon

Bubble, bubble,....

bubble, bubble, bubble,.... and yet many are so "invested" in it that we will keep on having it thrust at us for a long time yet. <sigh>

AI skeptics zone out when chatbots get preachy

Gullibles

The gullible believe what they are told, especially when they are told something that confirms their existing biases. The source is pretty much irrelevant as we have seen since the advent of "social" media. The rest of us disbelieve pretty much everything until we have checked what matters to us. Yes, we also probably suffer from confirmation bias but even there we are sceptical and willing to change our view should it be proved to be wrong. "AI" is just another source of lies, distortion, and outright bullshit to go along with the media, "social" media, national "intelligence" agencies, marketing, etc.

One in six US workers pretends to use AI to please the bosses

Tool

I see "AI" as a tool. When I need that particular tool I will use it. In the meantime, the tools I have are doing the job just fine. I have tested the use of AI in support of what I do, and whilst one AI produced data faster and more efficiently in one specific area, another AI hallucinated stuff that does not exist and generated outright bullshit. A decent search engine can do the former.

This whole "everyone must use the company AI" has the same stink as all these return-to-office mandates. Somebody invested too much money/ego into it and is determined that everyone see what a great idea it was of theirs. What is going to be really funny is watching the panic amongst the "AI" promoters and advocates when the bubble bursts.

Science confirms what we all suspected: Four-day weeks rule

Apples and Rutabagas

A 4 day week may well work better for some people in some roles, and a 3, 5, or 6 day week may be better for others. The point is FLEXIBILITY. Back when most peoples jobs involved repetitive production line work having people there to do the work was necessary. Now it no longer is and comparing modern jobs to that type of job is comparing Apples to Rutabagas. "Office" jobs in particular are in no way comparable to factory work any more than they are comparable to farming, bricklaying, etc. My job is Tech Support but I am not required to be on call most of the time so there is no need to be available all of the working week. I do need to be able to contact customers during THEIR working hours, but where I do that from and for how many days per week very much depends on my workload and the customers needs. My work hours are flexible because often customers cannot assist with fixing issues during normal work hours, so I am flexible about when I work and I fully expect my employer to be flexible concerning work hours as well, and they are. Expecting everyone to fit into one mould/pattern is a sign of incompetent management and an inability to move with the times.

AI creeps into the risk register for America's biggest firms

Who would have thought,....?

Huge amounts of money wasted on this mostly useless "AI" garbage and some are still throwing money at it. Oh well, some will make money from it and the rest will write the cost off and then lay off staff to recoup the money they wasted. Bubble-bubble-bubble.

C-suite sours on AI despite rising investment, survey finds

Predictable

All I can do is shake my head and laugh. Everyone I know of that has half a brain has been talking about the bubble on "AI" hyper-hype for years. Oh wait, listening to anyone other than shareholders and other C-Suite people is not possible for them. Oh well, at least they will soon get kicked out with a nice fat severance package only to be replaced with another clone. <sigh>

Game, set, botch: AI umpiring at Wimbledon goes long

Something else that AI is just as bad at as Humans?

I'm shocked I tell you, shocked that AI can be just as crap at something as us meatsacks. Sounds like a lot of investment for nothing,.... yet again. Bubble-bubble-bubble <LOL>

Ordnance Survey digs deep to prevent costly cable strikes

The sooner the better,....

but it will probably be shit and incomplete.

I wanted to put up a fence in my front garden and queried the gas/electric/water companies as to where the feeds for my house would be. They answered that they didn't know as the builders fitted those and they had no data. So, I went ahead and fitted the fence posts with 600mm long spikes and,... yup, you guessed it, one of them nicked the gas feed pipe and my house filled up with gas. It turns out that gas and electric feeds are only required to be buried 375mm (2 bananas) deep and worse still they can be buried together and are often not where you would expect them to be. I opened all the doors and windows and disabled anything that could cause a spark and called the gas board who responded impressively (we had 4 vans there at one point). After shutting off the gas feed to the area, they dug down to where I had hit the gas pipe and the electric feed was right there next to it. 30mm one way and I would have been at the centre of a big badaboom! The pipe got fixed PDQ (impressive what they can do) and I got billed £1000 for my sins. I consider it a cheap price since I still have my life and my house, but 375mm is NOT deep enough for something as dangerous as gas & electric feeds and detailed mapping of where they are placed should be required for ALL installations.

BOFH: Peeling back the layers of the magic banana industrial complex

Bananaman ROOLS!!!! (drools?)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bananaman

The AIpocalypse is here for websites as search referrals plunge

That's just ****ing HILARIOUS

So, Google AI results have decreased the footfall on the very sites of those who pay Google to INCREASE that footfall? That is a fucking epic example of shooting yourself in the genitals <ROTFPMS>. Well done Google, you created a market and now you are destroying the same market. So, what are your AI's gonna scrape for info when everyone blocks your scrapers because you are costing them money and giving nothing in return. The worlds biggest Freetards hoist by their own idiocy.

European consumers are mostly saying 'non' to trading in their old phones

Why recycle?

I always keep my previous phone as a backup should I have a problem with the current one. By the time I no longer need it (5+ years old) the best offer I get from the "recyclers" is a couple of £ so not even worth the hassle of dropping it into a supplied/postage paid bag and dropping it into a letter box. I gave up subsidising the credit industry years ago when I started buying my own phones and have never looked back. I see adverts for S25s & i16s for £50+ per month and wonder why. I have an S25 as a work phone and it's no better than my personal Poco X4 I paid £300 for 3 years ago.

Brain activity much lower when using AI chatbots, MIT boffins find

No big surprise

Asimov predicted exactly that in his Robot series of books some 70 years ago. If you don't use a muscle, it atrophies, and the same holds for the brain. I have no problem with using AI to perform drudge jobs, but using them to pass any kind of test is utterly pointless as you will have learned nothing. It reminds me of the endless streams of certificate bearing idiots I have had to work with over the years. Having a degree/diploma/certificate does not mean much if you can't do the job you were hired for. They used to be an indicator that you were capable of learning, but in my experience they are becoming more and more worthless and the advent of LLMs is only going to hasten that.

Ship abandoned off Alaska after electric cars on board catch fire

Re: Bulldozers

I was on that ship. It was a trip across the Bay of Biscay. The ship hit a big storm and a crane snapped it's chains and tipped onto several cars. Our Volvo 145 was pancaked and we only managed to get our suitcases out after they cut the roof off with angle-grinders. I don't remember much of the voyage apart from puking my soul out. I was 10 or 11 years old.

Google co-founder Sergey Brin suggests threatening AI for better results

Disable, uninstall, deactivate

That is my attitude to AI. Microsoft, Google, etc. They all seem hell bent on ramming this garbage down our throats but so far it can be avoided if you try hard enough. I have resisted switching browser for ages, but it seems that enforced AI is finally going to achieve that. I may well be a grumpy old fuddy duddy but I find it just gets in the bloody way just like that infernal fucking Clippy disaster back in the late 90s. Google search results are now utterly useless even if you scroll past all the AI and sponsored shite, and Bing is much the same. So, I'm disabling it as best I can and if that fails, then it'll be replaced with another browser.

Apartment living to get worse in 5 years as 6 GHz Wi-Fi nears ‘exhaustion’

The cause of the problem is poor design of WiFi Access Points. I live in a typical, crowded, English housing estate (subdivision for the Americans) and I can see the WiFi routers for my 6 nearest neighbours on most of my devices. However all of our AP's have decided to use the same channels when there are at least 3 possibilities each at 2.4 and 5Ghz. So, I manually changed mine to an empty channel, and guess what?.... Yes, the automatically managed APs changed to follow mine. Two of them didn't so I assume that they were manually set. Even having only 4 on the same channel has improved throughput so I have left it there for now. Living in an Appt block must be a nightmare. At least 6Ghz signals won't carry as far as 5Ghz. I have CAT6 cabled all of my devices that are easy to cable (PC's, TV, set-top-box) because they don't move, but tablets and phones and such are via WiFi.

Homeland Security boss says CISA has gone off the rails, vows to set it right

Totally predictable.

Ancient Orange and his flunkies rely on misdirection, half-truths, and even outright lies, so they can't possibly have somebody independent and trusted point out their "inaccuracies" can they? I mean it makes them look incompetent at best and downright criminal at worst. Expect more of this kind of thing over the next few years as they dismantle all the checks and balances that keep the USA a democracy. Soon to become the Peoples Democratic Republic of North America if he carries on like this for the next 1360 days.

Generative AI is not replacing jobs or hurting wages at all, economists claim

So, massive investment but no real effect on productivity,..... so what is the ****ing point? Other than better pattern recognition than humans I have yet to see a single real world use for "AI". Perhaps it will show just how much of a waste of space so many people in business really are but I don't hold out much hope for that either. Even as a toy "AI" is seriously flawed, but at least there it doesn't really matter, except that people believe it's bullsh!t without bothering to check. Just this last weekend a non-technical friend stated a "fact" that he had been told by a certain browser manufacturers "AI" that turned out to be a complete load of hogwash.

Elon Musk makes another cut – to his time at DOGE

He's full of Russian Seamen?

Fixed that for ya ;-)

Trump's tariff turmoil leaves IT projects in deep freeze

FOLLOW THE MONEY!

Who is making money from Ancient Orange's on/off/on/off tariffs? Somebodies are making a killing from the stock-markets yo-yo every time he spouts yet another pronouncement.

Personally I am so bored of hearing about him and his drivel that I am starting to switch off the news and regularly avoid articles like this one.

Procter & Gamble study finds AI could help make Pringles tastier, spice up Old Spice, sharpen Gillette

Another week, yet another desperate attempt to validate their investment

Oh well, the Tawny Tariff Tosser will soon make it all moot as spending on AI will plummet when world trade slows dramatically.

EU: These are scary times – let's backdoor encryption!

EU, UK, USA,... all dumbfuqs

This is just the latest round of government dumbfuquery. They don't understand something so they make grandiose statements on how to fix it (despite advice to the contrary) until eventually someone either explains it to them using words of less than one syllable, or else they get fired/voted out. As for the anti-EU comments above, you should be proud that a Brit thought of this stupidity first!

Americans set to pay more on all imports: Trump activates blanket tariffs

Re: Econ 101

Spot on, and it is because they are neither Communist nor Socialist no matter what they claim. As for not having gulags in the USA, tell that to the 1.8 million people in prison (0.7% of US population). Oh wait, I can hear the excuse that they are criminals and yet we hear the EXACT same excuse from North Korea, Russia, China, etc.

Re: Econ 101

VAT & GST are SALES Taxes. You know, the one that in the USA you have to add to everything depending on which state you are in. The ONLY difference here is that it is charged at the same rate everywhere in the country (countries that are about the same size as a US State) and is included in the price you pay rather than you having to calculate it yourself. Items are Zero rated for export simply because it is assumed that Sales taxes get charged where they are sold to the end user.

As for your comment about "Liberals", can I remind you about Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Francisco Franco, and Ferenc Szálasi, all of whom were Fascist Right-wing Leaders. Being an insane genocidal maniac isn't a left or right thing, they are all batshit mental and need putting out of our misery. Real "Liberals" believe in caring about/for others and helping people who cannot help themselves regardless of nationality, colour, creed, or religion. We have this thing called EMPATHY where you try to imagine how it would feel to be in their place, and how nice it would be if someone helped you, and how you could then go on to help others. Your lot only seem to be able to think with their wallets as GREED is your God! You are selfish and see everyone else as a drain or cost that you shouldn't have to pay for even when you have WAY more than you need. And no, I'm not a "gawd-damned Commie", nor even a supporter of Socialism, but your idea of greed politics nauseates me.