Posts by heyrick

Apple to add fresh accessibility features for 2025

Re: "aging will disable all of us at some point"

I don't feel that my dexterity has suffered despite being 51, and I'm quite used to touchpads... but I'm finding the scrolly things on Linux Cinnamon to be stupidly narrow. There's a way to make them bigger, but it only seems to make window scrolls bigger, not the ones in windows for lists of stuff. Of course, half the time they're semi-hidden anyway. I don't get the logic of trying to hide functional scroll bars while a good chunk of screen is taken up with a permanent fixed menu bar. <shrug>

Automatic UK-to-US English converter produced amazing mistakes by the vanload

Breaking the spelling is only half the battle

One also needs to break the punctuation in order to be truly Americanised...

China launches an AI cloud into orbit -12 sats for now, 2,800 in coming years

China launches an AI cloud into orbit -12 sats for now

It must be AI if they just launched minus twelve satellites.

The 'End of 10' is nigh, but don't bury your PC just yet

Re: Don't

"Just buy yourself a new"

You know, some people's budgets don't always allow for "just buy yourself a new".

I got myself a used notebook PC dirt cheap

A roughly eight year old Asus, aiming firmly for the bottom end of the market what with a TF screen and baked in 32GB SSD.

It came with Windows 10. Windows 10 that would insist upon downloading hundreds of megabytes of updates, unpack them into gigabyte of small files, then choke because it has run out of space. There's no option to stage things on removable media, and at shutdown or reboot it will take over the machine to apply the updates and take something like twenty odd minutes to fail to do it. Rinse and repeat. I used Windows 10 for two days and hated it so much...heh, even their own app store fails to work, telling me I must use a supported version of Windows. I think it's because even though the most recent Edge browser was installed, there's an ancient one lurking that seems to get used by preference even when you tell it to use the new one. I went from XP to 10 and the experience has been useful in demonstrating why paying little attention to Windows was a good choice.

On a whim, I downloaded Linux Mint Cinnamon and installed it on a 32GB USB stick. It's a bit quirky (even died once with a panic about killing init - no idea why, it never happened again) and has the temperament of an angry cat, but it looks nice, it's not unfriendly (even if the scroll bars are stupidly small) and it runs far better on my old machine then does Windows. I wanted the machine to run the Arduino IDE because I can't keep using an ancient app on my phone, and my XP box takes a minor eternity to build anything for the ESP32. This machine? Takes about 15-odd minutes to build the default camera server software under Windows. Under Linux? First build takes about four or five minutes. Subsequent builds of the same project take about a minute. I'm happy with that.

Suffice to say, if you don't have a dependency on a particular Windows program, try Linux as an alternative. I'm not a Linux person, I've literally been using it for about a week, but it has impressed me for all the right reasons while Windows impressed me for all the wrong ones.

Some English hospitals doubt Palantir's utility: We'd 'lose functionality rather than gain it'

Re: Looking at this from the correct perspective

"ask if it's appropriate for an American a foreign corporation to have unfettered access"

Foreign. It doesn't matter who - Americans, Israelis, Norks - what matters is that information on citizens is routinely being handed to foreign actors. Why?

Annual electronic waste footprint per person is 11.2 kg

Re: Quality is a main issue

I have a semi-clever washing machine. No WiFi but it does monitor how the drum rotates so if the load is out of balance it'll try to correct it four times. If it's not sorted in four attempts it'll be "meh" and carry on. Hmm.

Of the more annoying thing is my water is well water and quite low pressure. I find myself having to go check on the machine to see if the red "no water" light is lit. Sometimes I want to punch the machine as I press the button and it immediately starts to empty for a rinse spin. Like, WTF?

As for the refusal to spin, your hand washed stuff probably isn't enough to balance out, or maybe it isn't enough to even be detected. What I find is useful is to fill a sink with water, soak two medium-small towels, then chuck those into the machine. Heavy enough to be noticeable, small enough to be able to balance the drum and not be a clump.

Re: Quality is a main issue

Can you take the switch and speed knob out of circuit and wire up your own replacements? If you feel up to that (punch some holes in the case for your own knobs, then hook some wires between them and the contacts on the board) you'll get your functionality back.

US tech titans rejoice in $600B Saudi shopping spree

so why 'fighter jet'?

Because it's a jet that is happy to roll up its sleeves and kick some arse, and the fighting part is perceived as being more important than the jet part so it is said first?

Icon, because...

CERN boffins turn lead into gold for about a microsecond at unimaginable cost

Re: Odd how what was "nonsense" is now fact.

Dark matter is basically the souls of the dead [*] floating around waiting for bodies to inhabit.

* - Note that I specifically didn't say dead people. Think in a celestial scale.

Marks & Spencer admits cybercrooks made off with customer info

Re: I don't really give a fuck that they got hacked...

It's quite common for retailers to ask that - in return they offer special crap on your birthday...

Britain's cyber agents and industry clash over how to tackle shoddy software

Whitehouse put forth the idea of perhaps punishing vendors that fall short of expectations

How about we start with Oracle and their numerous well-paying local council contracts that swell in size but don't deliver?

Then cast an eye over Fujitsu. Is everything else they've done as bad as Horizon was?

If the big guns aren't seen to be held to account for their failures, one shouldn't be surprised if others don't give a crap.

US Copyright Office found AI companies sometimes breach copyright. Next day its boss was fired

"will have a dodgy background that people find out about within 4 seconds of searching X and have to step down."

I think you're living in the past there. Look how hard Cummings tried to pile the dirt on Johnson and how little effect it had. MPs resigning in shame is a forgotten concept. As long as snouts are in the trough (arguably Farage's entire MO), honour will be sidestepped.

If Google is forced to give up Chrome, what happens next?

https://github.com/ungoogled-software/ungoogled-chromium/tree/master

See title.

Culture comes first in cybersecurity. That puts cybersecurity on the front line in the culture wars

I feel soon the UK is going to have to pick a side. Let's hope they choose wisely.

Teens maintained a mainframe and it went about as well as you'd imagine

Have you hired kids and regretted it?

How much time needs to pass before DOGE appears in Who, Me?

Soviet probe from 1972 set to return to Earth ... in May 2025

Re: Eventually….

Or here for an explanation: https://lesoeuvres.pinaultcollection.com/en/artwork/la-nona-ora

The Telegraph jumps the gun on World War III

It's the Torygraph

So they're probably running some random "We're all DOOMED!" nonsense to deflect from the fact that the idiotic grifter Farage is finally getting people into places (instead of voters flocking back to the Tories).

Techie solved supposed software problem by waving his arms in the air

sometimes a zero or a one was read wrong at the other end

This, kiddies, is why you never shove important data down a wire without some form of active flow control - even if it's something as simple as breaking the information into 128 byte blocks (or whatever is convenient) and then sending a checksum.

Smarter protocols may combine that with some degree of built in error correction, but whatever, assuming that what goes in matches what comes out is a rookie error.

Re: I was called in ...

Well, if the two machines are powered from different phases of a three phase supply... yeah... not good.

Does UK's Online Safety Act cover misinformation? Well, that depends

Re: "Bollocks and Lies"

What's the difference between misinformation and disinformation? They're facts that are false presented as the truth, or as Jamie succinctly puts it: bollocks.

Re: Speed?

Doesn't phBB have a reputation system? If enough people downvote something, it'll go away.

It may even (or maybe it's the other BB system) have a user reputation system whereby if a user attracts too many downvotes then they'll just end up shouting at the moon.

Open source text editor poisoned with malware to target Uyghur users

Re: Who could possibly be behind this ...

"the same way as the Taliban were set-up by the CIA"

That went so well they thought they would do it again? I would be inclined to credit the spook agency with a modicum of intelligence (it's in the name after all) and not fuck up in exactly the same way twice...as that's a job for the electorate.

Swiss boffins admit to secretly posting AI-penned posts to Reddit in the name of science

Re: In other news

Gee, can I attempt to rob my bank in order to test if their security systems are fully operational? With the way the economy is nowadays, it's crucial to conduct a study of that kind even if it means disobeying the rules...

Re: "Manipulating people in online communities using deception, without consent"

I rather imagine that if one were to push a button that would make the bots and the biobots (*) vanish, Reddit would be a whole lot quieter.

* - Incels crapposting stuff that only ever happened in their lurid imaginations and often taking a stance just because they enjoy pissing people off. They are technically human but they might as well be bots.

The one interview question that will protect you from North Korean fake workers

The key to fixing this

...is that once a person is beyond the initial selection and a viable candidate:

1, insist upon an in-person interview at the business premises.

2, give them very restricted access to company systems in the beginning.

3, related to 2, include a honeypot to see if they go poking around where they shouldn't.

Maybe the FBI, rather than warning about Norks, ought to be asking some serious questions about what sort of company would employ a person sight unseen (no, a video call doesn't count) and send them company hardware (potentially to a completely different address) and give that employee unfettered access to company systems?

808 lines of BBC BASIC and a dream: Arm architecture turns 40

Anybody know if that 808 line program is available?

See subject. ;)

Blue Shield says it shared health info on up to 4.7M patients with Google Ads

Re: Blue Shield should be sued into oblivion

They will be sued. But it'll be a class action that will make a headline of millions. However most of that will go to lawyers and the victims will get enough to buy a Happy Meal.

What should happen, in any respectable place, is if a company fails so entirely to respect any sense of patient confidentiality, they're shut down. No if/but/maybe. There's an implied duty of care with medical records and sharing any of that with random third party advertisers ought to be a business ending event (and ban mangement from holding managerial positions for an appropriate length of time).

Hey Google, if Chrome is going to be single soon, OpenAI is interested

into what an AI-first experience looks like

Translation: Bye, Chrome...

Europe hits Meta, Apple with €700M in fines for flouting DMA

Re: Let us congratulate the EU on their Pyrrhic victory.

He's doing an amazing job of creating havoc without any trumped up excuses.

which has made clear that it wouldn't hesitate to hit back at foreign governments that hamstrung US tech firms

Putting it in as simple words as I can: Fuck Off.

If tech firms wish to operate over here, they follow the rules that apply over here. If this means that extra steps are necessary because the US has piss-poor privacy and a general acceptance that everything is to be monetised (shall we talk about the culture of self service tills asking for a tip?!?), that's just NOT how things are over here and boo-fuckin'-hoo if there's official level pushback against these shady practices.

It takes one click to join Uber One, but quitting might need 32 actions

Re: So my conclusion is

I have Netflix as I live alone and winter can be rather boring otherwise given its pitch black all the time I'm not at work.

Never used Uber and never will, and I don't Meta on principle (or Tweet, or that one with the square photos). I'm not very sociable unless it's a small furry critter with four legs, so social media isn't for me. The fact that it's all run by massive arseholes is just the cherry on the cake.

Re: Not just in the US

Read down the linked page, it says they do not need to provide any information if (and I quote) "it would involve a disproportionate effort to provide it to them".

Without specifically clarifying what "disproportionate effort" actually means, it could be taken that "getting up of my arse to answer you" is a legitimately disproportionate effort, hence your request will fall on deaf ears, and the ICO is even deafer.

Upvote for the link, anyway. More of us should point to this and demand justification.

Re: Why 48 hours ?

Here in France I have two bank accounts at different banks. As long as I transfer less than €1000 per day, money sent from one account is immediately available in the other.

If a bank can manage this, what's Uber's excuse?

Re: Sadly, very often is "cost of doing business"

Toss the CEO in jail for a few weeks and then ban him from being board or director level of any company for a decade.

Sounds harsh? Well the buck stops with him so make the buck stop exactly right there. If these people's livelihoods were on the line for company wrongdoing, things would clear up pretty quickly.

Re: Not just in the US

Year of birth, okay. All of the rest of it is just a data grab and wouldn't be GDPR justifiable. If only there was some sort of organisation one could complain to...

Today's LLMs craft exploits from patches at lightning speed

Rated 7.1 severity high? Sounds important...

America's cyber defenses are being dismantled from the inside

"hope that the European Union also sees this as an opportunity"

Me too, but the EU is going to have to first get around to making two huge changes.

The first is voting for stuff in days and weeks rather than years and decades.

The second is to accept majority vote rather than an absolute agreement, because certain countries that don't share European values (and look to the east) can stymie things by their obstinacy.

Fujitsu promised to sit out UK deals ... then Northern Ireland called with £125M

Re: Totally trustworthy and....

It's not up to them to withdraw their bids - if the government had even the remotest iota of technical competence they would have understood the gravity of what happened and then blacklist them from any pending and future contacts and begin auditing all current contacts.

European biz calls for Euro tech for local people

Dear President: FAFO

See title.

CVE fallout: The splintering of the standard vulnerability tracking system has begun

Re: China

"is the sort of tunnel vision the US would dearly continue to propagate"

I rather imagine that all this butthurt is happening precisely because China has moved from low wage labour making our stuff to innovating with their own designs. And that terrifies the administration because if China isn't beholden and starts doing stuff for itself, what's America's role?

Bank of England flirts with offline digital dosh

Re: Digital ID by the Back Door

"all conveniently sent to the government’s centralised database"

Well there's your first problem. The NHS digitisation is a sorry excuse and local councils are pissing away millions because having anything be "central" will require everybody to agree on what it is and how it works, which I highly doubt would actually come to pass except for a highly broken over-budget and far-too-late shitshow thrown together by Fujitsu...

Re: Just say no to CBDC

"Why is it necessary to use a bank"

Because when one relies upon an established currency, both you and the seller understand the value of that currency at the time of making the purchase, knowing that - largely - the currency will be fairly stable and will have much the same value the day after and the day after that. This is important because that company will take that currency and either pay it on to the actual vendor (and possibly not immediately) or they will use it themselves to buy more stuff to sell. In addition the bank usually provides various additional protections. How and what depends upon the bank and the payment method.

Offline currency?

Gee, now isn't that little pieces of rectangular not-paper with the mug of some royal on one side?

Whistleblower describes DOGE IT dept rampage at America's labor watchdog

Re: Attempts to log in from a Russian IP address within 15 minutes of account creation

Why bother to hide if you don't give a crap and nobody can come after you?

Apple: Since you care about yOuR pRiVaCy, we'll train our AI on made-up emails

Re: How do you do, fellow kids?

"It's a ham-fisted, dry, asinine and tone-deaf attempt at mimicking human communication."

Here's a novel idea. How about just read the damn email rather than some asinine machine generated "summary"?

I don't recall the movie, as I look up a fair few before deciding whether or not to watch, but I do recall that the "helpful" Google suggestion said that the positives were an engaging plot and well developed characterisations, while the negatives were an incoherent storyline and one dimensional wooden characters.

That, to me, seemed to sum up AI summaries. Just don't.

"WPOR in War Games"

"War Operation Plan Response", so WOPR, and intentionally a play on "whopper". I'll get my coat...

ActiveX blocked by default in Microsoft 365 because remote code execution is bad, OK?

ActiveX?

That's still a thing? Next you'll be telling me some important site still relies upon Flash...

EU gives staff 'burner phones, laptops' for US visits

Re: Good practice

How far do you think you're going to get when the border troopers demand it? What is written and what happens are two entirely different things - just ask those who wete/are unlawfully detained "because"...

Tech tariff turmoil continues as Trump admin exempts some electronics, then promises to bring taxes back

Re: US companies did this to us

"Something seriously wrong there to spend much more for worse health outcomes."

Does America have something resembling the NHS? Because if they're part/whole paying the ridiculous rates being demanded by the for-profit medical services, that's why they'll be paying more and getting less.

Dot com era crash on the cards for AI datacenter spending? It's a 'risk'

Actual use cases?

There are some use cases for "AI", like my camera's intelligence where it mostly correctly recognises things and sets up the shot accordingly. Or the photo editor where I can remove things in a way that isn't too horrible - including entire people. It's not perfect but it can do a better job that I could in a fraction of a second.

For the LLMs, it's a toy mostly. Various images from textual prompts that might sort of resemble what you envisaged. It's a quick way to make little images to drop into blog posts to jazz things up a bit. Or a chat bot that sort of gives an answer in the ballpark of correct, if not actually correct. But, then, a few minutes trawling StackOverflow would result in much the same.

It's a fun thing to play with, but I use free offerings with the implied restrictions because fun doesn't justify paying because it isn't a necessity. Therefore, what's the actual business case to justify the vast amounts being spent on hardware and electricity?