* Posts by Someone Else

3572 publicly visible posts • joined 9 Dec 2009

Qualcomm unveils Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 with Eye-of-Sauron camera

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So...

Slower 5G comms, a snoopy camera and hallucinated photos and videos. Someone (above the age of 16) please explain how this is a good thing?

Ad agency boss owned two Ferraris but wouldn't buy a real server

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Re: The owner has two Ferraris. They have that kind of money

You win the interwebz! (For this week, at least...)

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Re: The owner has two Ferraris. They have that kind of money

In the immortal words of Donkey (from Shrek):

I think somebody's compensatin'!

Microsoft forges One Teams App To Rule Them All

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Say what?!?

From the article:

[...] until you get your hands on Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26080 which, as Microsoft today announced, includes "a preview experience of the new, unified Microsoft Teams experience on Windows."

Oh-comma-goodie! We're being offered a preliminary experience of an experience! Or stated another way, a recursive experience. Now hooda thunk that the Micros~1 marketing geniuses even knew what recursion was, much less how to slam several snippets of gibberish together to implement it? Maybe they just got lucky (or, more likely, they managed to cajole Clippy the AI Paperclip to generate it for them).

In either case, this will not end well.

To understand recursion, you must first understand recursion. Good luck wi' dat, Micros~1!

The end of classic Outlook for Windows is coming. Are you ready?

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Re: Thunderbird is the replacement for Outlook Express

If your idea of a major GUI update is to "make it look like <insert name of favorite Micros~1 or Goooooogle abomination here>", then fucking no thank you, thank you!

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Re: fine, change it

Call it "Perspective" or "Standpoint" or something.

"Standpipe"?

Trump 'tried to sell Truth Social to Musk' as SPAC deal stalled

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Re: How much?

How is entity going to be worth billions? I am totally lost as to where that valuation is coming from.

From Uranus.

No, seriously. It's social media, donchano. It's value is whatever the seller says it is.

...and we all know by now that t'pineapple has a penchant for overvaluing his ass sets [sic]....

Intern with superuser access 'promoted' himself to CEO

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Re: First in, first out!

Shortly thereafter I learned that the contents stored in my home directory, including this spiffy fakemail script, were available for administrators to see. And that is how I not-so-proudly was one of the first two students to have Internet access revoked.

Ooops! Damn!!

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Re: This is where technology lets you down

In which socialist country was that?

Not sure "socialist" is the right word to use in this context.

But I'm pretty sure it is the term that Fox Noise would want you to use in this context.

Climate change means beer made from sewer water, says North Carolina brewery

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American Lager anyway...

OK, time for my favorite Coors joke:

Back in the day when you couldn't get Coors (Banquet; this was before the time of that awful swill smugly referred to as Coors Light) outside of a 500 mile radius of Denver, an enterprising gent wanted to find out what it was about Coors that made it so popular. So he took a sample of it and sent it off to a lab. After two weeks, he received a reply from that lab that opened thus:

Dear Sir,

We're sorry to report that your horse has diabetes.

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Maybe...

We should use the wastewater in those datacenters and/or for AI.

Job interview descended into sweary shouting match, candidate got the gig anyway

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Re: Certification test

Quite some time ago, I interviewed for a position at a firm that a friend of mine was already working for, and who had suggested that I interview. Naturally, there was a competency/capability test, that had to do with some Windows programming problems, using C++. (No, Not "Visual C++"; there is no such thing.) Got to the second question, and I looked at it hard...something didn't seem right. There was a syntax error in the source code submitted as the question. The question was along the lines of, "What would be the value of variable 'x' at the end of this function?" My answer was along the lines of, "Variable 'x' would have no value because this code would never compile. This line here would raise a compiler error. Now if the intent of this line were to read like this... then 'x' would be yadda-yadda..."

Well, I soon found out that I had committed blasphemy, because no sooner did I submit the test, but my friend came into the interview room saying that I had created quite a ruckus, and that folks were arguing about it, somebody was compiling the example to prove me wrong, and the junior folks were having quite a chuckle at the expense of the tech lead, who was reputed to have made up the test himself. My friend was called out of the room and I was left to cool my heels for about another 10 minutes. Then, the division head (with whom I had met briefly before the test), and the tech lead both came into the room. The division head, a large man, had a big smile on his face, while the tech lead, a rather nerdy looking gent, had this bemused look on his face. The Division head stuck out his large hand, and enthusiastically shook mine, and said, "You're hired!", and started talking about when I could start, then left to fetch some paperwork. The tech lead told me after he left that they had been using that test for over two years, and no one has spotted the error.

But it did explain why there was a wide variety of answers to that particular question.

Turns out cops are super interested in subpoenaing suspects' push notifications

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He knew somebody...

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Yeah. Instead we get Lindsey Graham, Josh Hawley and Mike Johnson. <sigh />

Copilot pane as annoying as Clippy may pop up in Windows 11

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Re: Closing Windows

I think they already are

And yesterday was "Super Tuesday" on this side of the pond, so....

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And you haven't tried Wine?

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Is Micros~1's marketing dept. out of their ever-lovin minds?

Seems everything they're doing in the last, oh say 5 years or so, has been directed at running the last users with an IQ above room temperature off the platform permanently.

Maybe their marketers have been infiltrated by an Apple sleeper cell....

YouTube workers laid off mid-plea at city hall meeting

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Re: These were CONTRACTORS on the Day their Contracts Expired.

Excuse me AC, is your real name Donald?

...or Elon?

World-plus-dog booted out of Facebook, Instagram, Threads

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From the sub-head:

Those trying to log into Meta's Facebook, Instagram, and Threads for their social media fixes are facing panic this morning after being locked out of their accounts.

Hello travelers. Welcome back to Reality. That blinding light you see is called the Sun; in limited quantities it is not dangerous and can result in seeing things clearly (once your eyes adjust...). Those tremors you're experiencing will subside in due time. Oh, and those other things you see moving around are called "people". With a few exceptions, the tend to be sociable, and can be engaged with using a simple construct called "conversation". It may take some practice reviving this lost skill, but you'll be surprised at how quickly you'll remember. Enjoy the rest of your day.

IP address X-posure now a feature on Musk's social media thing

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Re: Not using Twitter(X)

From the article:

How to protect yourself on X

The safest, most sanity-maintaining way to use X is not to [...]

Truth in Advertising!

FCC: April is last month for Affordable Connectivity Program payments

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Calling a spade a spade

The US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) made the announcement on March 4, 2024, after months of protests failed to persuade lawmakers the MAGAts currently infesting the halls of Congress that keeping the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) running was worth the expense.

Nobody with an IQ above room temperature could possibly mistake a Republican as a "lawmaker".

Legal eagles demand $6B in Tesla stock after overturning Musk's mega pay package

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Re: Prediction

That said, it's hard to decide who to root for here

Well, not really. El Muskrat has been rightly and mightily smacked down, so rooting for that is wasted effort (the world already won). So it becomes a matter, IMHO, of rooting for or against the unbridled greed of a handful of scheisster lawyers. Doesn't seem like too difficult of a choice to me. (YMMV, of course, especially if you are a scheisster lawyer with unbridled greed....)

BTW, rooting against the scheissters is not the same a rooting for El Muskrat.

Tiny Core Linux 15 stuffs modern computing in a nutshell

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Happy

"Swiss Army Chainsaw"

Love. It.

It's that most wonderful time of the year when tech cannot handle the date

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Re: Oh, come on - this is elementary

Actually I was the one who filed a bug report to Micros~1 when the released that abomination laughingly referred to as "Quick C" complaining about how they buggered up the time_t and related structures. One of the problems was signed values; another was keying the beginning of the epoch at 1Jan1900 (which, because of yet another bug, was really 31Dec1899). To the best of my reading, nothing in the C standard (up through C99) requires the epoch to start at 1Jan1970, nor requires signed (or unsigned) time_t values of any magnitude. A time_t could be a 64-bit unsigned integer, and be standards compliant (unless, of course, C-standards beyond C99 changed, that...but I doubt they would).

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As for 2100 - there's still a push from some to get rid of leap years/days, [...]

Are these the same nimrods who want to get rid of Daylight Saving Time/Summer Time, and want to make pi equal to 3 (because either of these are soooo inconvenient...)?

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Re: Oh, come on - this is elementary

That's 2200 years ago so why hasn't the world learned to take things like leap years into account yet?

Well, we can thank in part the Millennial mindset that anything that happened before they were born is not important. Factor in the corollary that they can do anything better than the previous version (even if they don't have the slightest idea how to do it).

You know, something from 200 BCE just isn't shiny enough.

Lightweight Windows-like desktop LXQt makes leap to Qt 6 with version 2.0

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Can someone man'splain this to me?

From the article:

In 2014, LXQt 0.8 switched to Qt 5, and currently it uses Qt 5.15. However, that reached EOL in May 2023. So, just like KDE Plasma 6.0, the project must now change tack to the current Qt 6. [Emphasis added]

Why?

I mean, its not like the Qt shared libraries (I was going to say DLLs, but this is Linux we're talking about, and in that environment, "DLL" is a dirty word (and rightly so)) are some how going to suddenly and summarily stop working, or self destruct like in some Tom Cruise movie. Qt 5.15 is rock solid, and just works. So, other than chasing the shiny, why "must [one] now change tack to the current Qt 6."? What ever happened to the Prime Directive of SW development: If It Ain't Broke, Don't Fix It? I guess that just isn't whizzy enough for today's Yout'.

Speeds and Feeds. Coming real soon to an OS near you!

OK, I'll go back into my hovel, grumbling quietly to myself...

Texas judge turns out the lights on federal survey of cryptominers' energy consumption

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Re: The Lone Star State ...

Sounds like the "Texas Blockchain Council"1, and especially Riot Platforms, was doing a bit of judge hunting. Yeah that's supposed to be illegal, but this is Tejas, after all.

1The "Texas Blockchain Council"?!? Really??? I was going to say, "You can't make this stuff up", but I guess you can...

Americans wake to widespread AT&T cellular outages

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Re: Well that's interesting...

If not for the last part (regimentation ....) I'd say it describes the current USA quite right.

Uhh, no. It does very accurately describe a visible, vocal minority of USAsians (we call them 'MAGAt"s). But they're not in charge. Yet. So stop projecting.

Oh, and as far as regimentation is concerned, I'd say that is quite well underway in our more backwater third of our country.

Self-taught-techie slept on the datacenter floor, survived communism, ended a marriage

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Re: Daily!?! RFC begs to differ

I dunno. You can't fix stupid.

Dave's not here, man. But this mind-blowingly huge server just, like, arrived

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Re: After booting for the second time

Gummies, FTW!

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Re: Jazz Cabbage

Dates back to the early part of the 20th century, that does.

I'm sure it does. So that rather begs the question: where did our illustrious El Reg hack find a thesaurus that contained that entry?

'Scandal-plagued' data broker tracked visits to '600 Planned Parenthood locations'

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Re: altars of greed and pridefulness

Man is to religion as fish is to bicycle.

An oldie but goodie, and one of my favorites.

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OK, enough of the BS, already

The article starts out with:

A pro-life group was able [...]

Enough with the marketing bullshit. These people are anti-abortionists, they are most assuredly not "pro-life". If they were truly "pro-life", they would be in favor of:

* Social services and a safety net for those born to poorer (or homeless) mothers.

* Gun reform, so that it's harder to do mass killings. (Are you listening, Kansas? Missouri? Florida?)

* Making adoption easier, especially for same sex couples, or even singles.

* An end to the death penalty.

None of which these anti-abortionists are in favor of. Enough of the feel-good euphemisms; let's start calling a spade a spade, OK?

Forcing AI on developers is a bad idea that is going to happen

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Coffee/keyboard

Re: "JetBrains' own developers are, well, developers"

I dunno, maybe they're sad that they missed out on the enormous success of blockchain and web3. Oh, wait.

Stop it! Now! - - - - >

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Re: "JetBrains' own developers are, well, developers"

Who knows, maybe even JetBrains' developers thought their users would love this.

I suspect that JetBrains' developers (if they are like developers practically everywhere), cleave into basically 2 sets: Those who are easily dazzled by the shiny, and who froth at the mouth at the opportunity to imbue their latest opus dei with the latest way bitchin' k3wl whizzy-du-jour, and those who have been burned by the latest shiny, and are therefore more prone to take a measured approach. The former set tends to be populated with the new young bucks, while the latter tends to be populated by more 'seasoned' practitioners of the black arts and sciences of software development. (Yes, this is a generalization, and counterexamples abound.)

Each of these groups tend to project their biases onto their perception of the user base. One could therefore suspect that more of the JetBrains devs fall into the former group. That may be the case, but I also suspect the vast majority of the JetBrains marketdroids also fall into that former group as well. A natural alliance formed within the JetBrains corporatocracy, and the rest, as they say, is history.

What is yet to be written is how will that set manage to stomach the crow that the backlash from real customers is serving them, and how will they respond.

Popcorn, anyone?

Moving to Windows 11 is so easy! You just need to buy a PC that supports it!

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Re: cool beans!

Answer: Because we're Micros~1, and we can!

Next question?

Drowning in code: The ever-growing problem of ever-growing codebases

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Re: Spot on Liam

From the article:

("AI" is another big lie, but one I won't go into here.)

Cant wait for when you go into this whole-hog. Will be staying tuned (as they say on this side of the Pond...).

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Re: Remember 'The Last One'?

I strongly disagree with his take.

I can see why, but I'm not ready to hop on that bandwagon.

I think Andrew is making a distinction between "coders" (which I take to be someone who can cobble up a program more or less by rote; think copy-pasta practitioners), as opposed to "programmers" (those with more highly tuned abstract problem-solving skills, who also know how to manipulate a programming language or two; Andrew refers to "elite programmers" in his tome). I actually think that he is correct in this dichotomy. Those with low problem-solving skills who can slap together a few lines of spaghetti-looking javascript will (and should) be in lesser demand, while those who can design (and implement) more complex systems will still be sough after.

So, if making your kids "learn to code" means plopping them wholesale into the former group, Andrew's premise (as I take it) is that you're doing no one any favors. If that is indeed his take, I agree.

And if it is not, OK, I need to improve my reading comprehension skills...

Angry mob trashes and sets fire to Waymo self-driving car

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One of his earliest and most radical ideas, and one that cemented his reputation as a Master of Scientifiction(sic).

Not to be confused with a Master of Scientology, which I'm pretty sure he would want no part of.

Microsoft's Notepad goes from simple text editor to Copilot conspirator

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Re: B-b-b-b-b-but how else can we justify the BILLIONS spent on "AI"?

It's time for the Microsoft shotgun of functionality. We've created something but have no idea what use it could have or whether it even works, so we will throw it at everything and see if any of it sticks doesn't suck (too much...). [...]

There, FTFY

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Re: Why?

They'll ruin it even without wanting to....

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CoPilot is to Notepad as steamroller is to underpants.

Mitchell Baker logs off for good as CEO of Firefox maker Mozilla

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Re: And the decline continues

When Cal Paterson did that analysis, Firefox market share was around 4.9%, in Dec 23 it was 3.35%, by Feb 24 it was 3.13%. Yes, a 7% loss in the last two months.

But...but...but...today is February 9th 2024. So this Cal guy is prescient? Or is he just making shit up?

Please install that patch – but don't you dare actually run it

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Rock please meet Hard Place!

More like: Brain, please meet Damage.

Microsoft embraces its inner penguin as sudo sneaks into Windows 11

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Just sudo?

Why don't they simply implement a proper bash shell (that includes sudo, of course), and take that Warm, Steaming Heap that they laughingly (and smugly) refer to as "power shell" out back and shoot it?

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Re: Shirley...

"sodudu"?

SAP hits brakes on Tesla company car deal

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Re: Are they kidding?

That should have been a huge red flag to investors.

"Investors" can have quite a bit of tunnel vision, especially after an appropriately large dose of Kool-Aid. Also, they (especially the industrial ones) are basically stupid.

Iran's cyber operations in Israel a potential prelude to US election interference

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The main threat to US election integrity is the DNC tRump (a.k.a. "t'pineapple").

There, FTFY

Developer's default setting created turbulence in the flight simulator

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Re: Fuses?

Is initialising variables not done anymore ?

Not unless the practitioner has been either berated by a senior team member, or has been burned by not doing it. They just don't teach these things anymore.

And the result is ...web apps...