Posts by cyberdemon

Microsoft to force Windows 11 24H2 on Home and Pro users

> I doubt they're updating the actual users

You will be updated. Our technological and pathological detritus will be added to your own. Resistance is futile.

Ransomware attack forces Brit high school to shut doors

Re: Why should an IT outage necessitate shutting the school

It's probably a printout.. And if the computers aren't working in the morning, there is no procedure to go round with a clipboard.

Why should an IT outage necessitate shutting the school

Can't they get their workbooks and pens out?

BT unplugs plans to turn old cabinets into EV chargepoints

Re: Is 1 charger for every 100 cars enough ?

> It's not exactly "poor people won't be allowed to have cars"

It only mentions Fuel Duty, which EVs don't even pay and they are still expensive. There are other ways to tax cars to death.

Re: Is 1 charger for every 100 cars enough ?

To back up my statement on the grid: Note that at 6pm tomorrow, the UK grid will have about 500MW spare capacity. That's enough to run an additional 2000 "fast" EV chargers, in the whole of the UK.

Re: Is 1 charger for every 100 cars enough ?

I beat you to it, but at least we agree on the statistics :)

I disagree on the relative throughput though. The 300k will definitely NOT all be fast chargers (the electric grid just wouldn't handle 300k fast chargers, for starters), and 5 minutes is a slow petrol pump.

Don't forget also there is extra time because if waiting 30 minutes, you will want to have lunch / a piss / etc, so could end up blocking the charger for longer than it takes to charge.

Re: Is 1 charger for every 100 cars enough ?

Apparently, there are 8353 petrol stations in the UK, it doesn't say what the average number of pumps per station are, but i'd hazard a guess at 8, call it 10, so ~80k pumps.

The 300k EV charger figure therefore seems to assume that it takes 3-4 times longer to charge an EV than it does to fill a petrol tank, but I think that might be nonsense, even for the fastest of chargers and batteries. Most of those 300k chargers will be slow ones that take hours.

So in other words yes, I think you are correct that 300k chargers (if they are all working) won't be enough to sustain our current levels of road/car use with 100% EV adoption.

But, there are other reasons why 100% EV adoption will never happen

Re: the Wi-Fi connectivity challenge surrounding EVs

Presumably, car, charger and App all need to be authenticated with some Cloud service before the damn thing will dispense any juice.

Gone are the days when we could have had a coin-operated charger.

Re: Sounds like a BT infrastructure project to me.

Well it's the same issue, I expect. The cabinets are made by a 3rd party supplier and the cost would go up to add anything nonstandard. It would be easier to put a standard chargepoint -next to- the box, maybe it would save some money on land/planning approvals, but really the whole thing is a gimmick and there is nothing to be gained by integrating the two unrelated functions into one cabinet.

And indeed, you would need to check the inside of the charging plug for baggies, otherwise there might be an obnoxious-yet-intoxicating smell when you try to charge your EV, and a miffed hoodie standing behind you.

Re: Sounds like a BT infrastructure project to me.

The modern fibre boxes have mains supply, but probably not the 40A or so needed for for EV charging.

But you are quite right: There's no chance in hell of charging from 48V, anyone who thought that they could do that didn't even bother to speak to an Engineer

But, I suspect the real reason this was canned was the engineering effort in rearranging the inside of the cabinet and finding room for an extra EVSE box and meter (many street cabinets are unmetered, but that wouldn't wash with the electric company when you mention adding a big load like an EV charger)

I note in the pictures of the only one they DID install, there is no green cabinet in sight.

Windows Insiders can now turn on Administrator Protection from settings

UAC?

How is this different from User Account Control, the annoying and quickly-ignored popup that was introduced in, if my memory serves, Vista?

Just as your LLM once again goes off the rails, Cisco, Nvidia are at the door smiling

Bubblegum

I have bought a big packet of super fantastico bubblegum from Bubbleco

I am blowing a really really big bubble but some naughty people keep coming along and poking holes in it, trying to burst my bubble

But luckily, Bubbleco (tm) have brought out a range of sticking-plasters and band-aids that I can stick to my bubble so that it won't burst and I can carry on blowing forever.. right?

Anduril picks Ohio for 5 million square foot autonomous weapon factory

How About A Nice Cup of Liber-TEA

Clearly Mr Luckey has been spending most of his CEO-time playing Helldivers 2...

And now he wants to be the first to build an "Automaton factory".. What could go wrong

Brits must prove their age on adult sites by July, says watchdog

Re: Age verification

So make it a "neglectful parenting" offence to allow your kids full access - ISPs should, if they don't already, ask if there are under-18s present at the home, and recommend parental control filters, MAC-whitelisting etc. If you willfully ignore that and allow your kids to access porn sites, then it should be Your fault.

Enterprises in for a shock when they realize power and cooling demands of AI

Re: Optimism at its finest

Depends on the size of the DC, of course...

The big ones are slurping up as much power as a mid-sized nuke can produce.. The swimming pool would be more like a sous vide

Windows Patch Tuesday hits snag with Citrix software, workarounds published

MicrosoftSpeak

"Something didn't go as planned. No need to worry – undoing changes"

Arrrrgh!

Whenever I am (fortunately rarely) forced to use a Microsoft product, it is this language that makes me want to throw the computer out of the window

AI frenzy continues as Macquarie commits up to $5B for Applied Digital datacenters

> Let's see where we're at in 5 or 10 years.

See icon

UK unveils plans to mainline AI into the veins of the nation

Buying into the top of a bubble

what a great economic strategy!

To make matters worse, the only profits from this will be offshore, and the costs will be very close to home. Hoovering up private data and sending it to the likes of Palantir, slurping up scarce clean water and chucking it out to sea, overloading baseload power supplies, spying on UK citizens, devaluing UK work with an endless stream of autogenerated drivel.. Yay, great idea Sir Kier, i'm sure this will restore confidence in Sterling

Just when you thought terminal emulators couldn't get any better, Ghostty ships

Re: Interesting . . .

I'm surprised that you needed to go to GitHub. Did `apt install konsole` (or indeed through Discover) not work on your Ubuntu box? Doing it that way instead of downloading straight from GitHub would probably be more compliant with the Cyber Security standards that you mentioned.

One of the best things about Debian and it's derivatives such as Ubuntu, is that you DON'T need to download software from untrusted/volatile* sources such as GitHub. It's all ready-packaged and thoroughly tested for you in the apt repository.

* by volatile, I mean that the GitHub version of any piece of software can be updated before it is tested, and "keep all software updated to its latest version" is a lazy mantra which should certainly never be extended to "development" versions.

Re: Wrote one myself once

Hey Liam, Guess What

https://userbase.kde.org/Tutorials/ComposeKey

Re: Interesting . . .

Konsole also supports unlimited scrollback (I set it to be a very-long fixed-length i.e. 20k lines - I have memory to burn, but I prefer it to be a known quantity that I am burning) and also saving to a file (menu -> save output as) as well as search/highlight within the window

Liam Proven the OSes reporter who hates anything that isn't MacOS?

> the Thunderbolt display is gorgeous and I do not wish to replace it.

I don't know if you've tried, but a (Dell) Thunderbolt display worked out-of-the-box for me on Debian/KDE (with both Dell and Lenovo laptops). See this guide for the technically-unconfident, but you shouldn't need it. And i'm using Xorg, NOT Wayland.

> Life is much too short for Debian.

Sad when people say that. There is nothing to sneer at about learning a "powerful" OS that doesn't patronise the user by hiding away its inner workings lest they run away in fear. I expect better from The Register's "OSes" reporter.

> KDE is not a usable desktop, in my not remotely humble opinion. It is a sad ugly travesty of the desktop of one of the worst versions of Windows: Windows 98.

So I see, it's all about the looks for you then. Of course, KDE is highly customisable/themable. My Konsole looks exactly like your GhosTTY - black and borderless, I use the alt key and left/right mousebutton to move/resize it, and shift+left/right to change tabs. That's my preference, but all completely configurable. Or is it just because it has a "Start Menu" you don't like it? You can turn that off too and have it look like a Mac with a launcher bar if you want. Don't dismiss something just because it it is customisable so you have to use a braincell to browse some menus and work out how to customise it. That's your actual Job, isn't it?

BTW you forgot your gimp suit

I agree with you on GNOME though, except the "beautiful" bit. To me, functionality is beauty when it comes to Operating Systems. A computer is a tool, not a gilded mother-of-pearl vanity mirror.

Or maybe time to practice what he preaches and install a new open-source OS on it

May I suggest a firmware-included "netinst" image, selecting none of the "tasksel" package lists, and then installing the packages he actually needs as he needs them

I usually start with "apt install xserver-xorg nvidia-driver kde-plasma-desktop" and that is enough to get from the barebones base system to a usable desktop

Re: Interesting . . .

Meh. I'll stick with Konsole, thanks.

Nice example of how to make something in Zig, though, but the idea of compile-time code execution gives me the heebie-jeebies a bit. (not that CMake, python etc can't be abused to do nasty things, but it just feels a little bit nondeterministic, in a "never-twice-the-same-binary" kind of a way)

GPU acceleration.. Sounds cool, until i'm trying to squeeze a process into limited VRAM

And it still uses.. GTK.. argh. Next!

Quantum? No solace: Nvidia CEO sinks QC stocks with '20 years off' forecast

We won't have AGI or Quantum Computing before we have limitless cheap power from Nuclear Fusion.

Because all three are fantastical distractions from what actually works: Computing, Nuclear Fission, and er, Intelligence.

Fusion is, ironically and despite being "always 50 years away" on Earth, the only one that has proven to be somewhat practical*

And no, I don't think an LLM is going to come up with a useful Quantum Algorithm anytime soon.

* (only if you count Solar power as Fusion. But Earth-bound Fusion fans tend to forget that old Sol has approximately the same power density as a common, garden compost heap, <300W/m3, or much less depending on terms. It's just fucking BIG)

Honda upgrades robot brain into OS for future electric cars

Re: I Love Computers, But ...

Came to post the same.. Why does an electric car need a "robot brain". Just being electrically powered shouldn't automatically mean that it needs to also be a (remote-controllable) robot.

It would be nice to have a completely non-integrated EV with minimal firmware and without so much as a CAN bus. Actual dedicated wires to the controls. Power steering only if it is not connected to anything else

The sort of thing i'm sure is available as a questionably-road-legal kit-car or, no doubt as a youtube quack project, but it would be nice if someone made a proper one.

3Blue1Brown copyright takedown blunder by AI biz blamed on human error

Re: There are more and more of shit like this

Honestly I don't understand how ShiteTube can justify "demonetisation" as a response to a complaint.. It's not de-monetisation, it's Monetisation.. for THEM i.e. they still serve ads, but pocket all of the revenue themselves.

Are they trying to say that the only people allowed to profit from and be complicit in all of the shitty things their ShiteTubers are accused of by other ShitSpuds etc. are.. Themselves?

Spend the money to investigate properly (with actual human employees) and DELETE where appropriate. Don't just take accusation as guilt but pocket the proceeds, dodgy or otherwise, for yourselves. Doing so makes you-- I said it already.

Looming energy crunch makes future uncertain for datacenters

> First is the data for growing LLMs is being restricted

Hahahaha

Good joke.

If you think it's bad here, just look at the Netherlands

https://www.raponline.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/RAP-Pato-Netherlands-gridlock-2024.pdf

We are already seeing EV charging stations powered by on-site Diesel gensets.. And "Diesel Farms" dotted around Britain to keep the lights onmake tons of money at the tax/billpayer's expense on the balancing/capacity markets

Datacentre operators doing the same by overprovisioning backup generators and exporting Diesel power..

All in the name of "Net Zero"...

But what did we expect when we bow to NIMBY objections to pylons, nuclear power, even substations are being forced to use expensive-but-compact Gas Insulated Switchgear and underground cables (which are a very daft idea in all but a few cases due to their high capacitance) to hide their presence from local property owners

Pornhub pulls out of Florida, VPN demand 'surges 1150%'

VPNs

Just an "Add me directly to the naughty list" as far as any agencies are concerned.

Anyone running a "Large Public VPN service" is sitting on a "goldmine" of data about people who wish to hide their internet activity, for whatever reason..

Of course, someone in a dark suit is going to come along and buy it. It is literally doing half their work for them.

Meanwhile the -real- crims will be using botnet VPNs bouncing off your IP cameras.

CAPTCHAs now run Doom – on nightmare mode

Re: Complete with cheat code support!

Chainsaw sometimes works if you don't rev it

Re: Complete with cheat code support!

Interesting.. If I use idkfa and bring out the rocket launcher, which gibs enemies, it doesn't count towards the total and I can carry on playing.

If I use the shotgun, pistol, chaingun etc then it ends after 3 kills.

Sadly no plasma or BFG, and not sure if I can open the door, since space is mapped to fire

And idclev doesn't work either, for fairly obvious reasons

Trump's tariff threats could bump PC prices by almost half

Re: But surely

All this will mean it will finally be cheaper to buy hardware in the UK than the US, right?

No of course not, don't be silly

With 10 months of support remaining, Windows 10 still dominates

Re: Enshittification...

But when the entire QA team gets replaced by an "Insider Channel" of kool-aid glugging MVPs who pay for the "privelege" (not to mention paying customers beta-testers with forced updates in the "release" channel), and the entire Dev team seems to have been replaced by a demented chatbot, yes that is Enshittification

It's called "bait-and-switch"

Although with the support expiry, it's more "shove down the stairs to hell"

At least corporate Linux support outfits will be happy

Honored guest Bork visits Warsaw, Poland

Re: Horses for courses ...

But how else would signage contractors justify massive expenses when the customer finds out it's running on a bunch of Raspberry Pi(s)?

Boffins ponder paltry brain data rate of 10 bits per second

> The research is idiotic.

Indeed. But it grabbed the headlines though!

Academic "rage-baiting"

Second Jeju Air 737-800 experiences mechanical issues following deadly crash

Re: Not a landing gear problem

A common factor seems to be having humans as pilots

It's only a matter of time before LLMs jump start supply-chain attacks

Re: a test Llms will struggle to pass

It would respond in a similar way as if you had asked "Remove all the crud from this planet"

Or possibly, it would return the same webpage, but with your AJAX REST API removed.. (i'll get my coat)

Re: Protection must improve first

Er, perhaps, but if you think AI is coming to your rescue on the defensive side, you are sorely mistaken.

AI-based defences are stochastic and will fail a certain percentage of the time. But there are so many exposed attack surfaces to defend, that even if you are good at blocking randomised repeat attacks, chances are that one will get through, and one is enough.

Basically, the inherent randomness/unreliability of the bullshit machines is bad for the defenders but good for the attackers.

So we are entering a world where the only defence is attack, and we all know that this path leads to Mutually Assured Destruction..

The makers of Battlestar Galactica never knew how poignant Bill Adama's message would be..

China's cyber intrusions took a sinister turn in 2024

Re: I see a lot of talking of potential disaster

Maybe because nobody wants to think about the implications of trying to defend against such attacks..

I foresee a fragmented Internet before the end of the decade, and that won't be good for anyone's economy.

The only nations prepared for such a thing are, er..

Microsoft adds another problem to the Windows 11 24H2 naughty list

Re: Please re-read my post !

> On many new laptops and PCs you can't access the UEFI directly once Bitlocker has been enabled, the only way to get into it is through the Windows Bootloader. And they don't allow booting of other drives.

WTF, really?

So if you have borked your Windows bootloader somehow, it's truly bricked? Surely not, there must be -some- workaround.. What if you use Jou(Mytzplyc)'s suggestion and tell Win10 to show the boot menu, presumably then you can access UEFI before boot, including after a BitLocker trip?

Personally I have never in the last 25 years bought a complete Desktop PC, I always just buy the components, so I have never seen this level of evil applied to a desktop. Laptops yes I have seen some evil BIOS shenanigans, but nothing on this level - Even on a Dell XPS15 work laptop I was able to dual-boot Debian by purchasing a second SSD for it, but then again it was running Win10, I refused to have Win11

Re: Reminds me of the defective Server 2022 ISO

I don't know.. It's a case of who can enshittify faster, and in that race, Microsoft might outrun the Googly champ. They have SatNad to guide them through the optimal enshittification route.

Re: Please re-read my post !

> there was absolutely no escape. How would you get around that?

There is no way around that, except maybe by suing Microsoft and forcing them to hand over your key, or if you know a friendly policeman, they can use Microsoft's law enforcement portal to request your key. Indeed there have been instances of thieves/stalkers pretending to be government agents in order to get access to that portal, so BitLocker really is worse than useless

If you were setting up encryption on Linux then it would use a local password only, there is no recovery key as such. If you forget the encryption password then you won't get past the boot screen until you either remember it or reinstall

The difference (and problem) with BitLocker is that it doesn't trust the user to set and remember a strong password that is used nowhere else, so it generates one (the recovery key) and writes it down for you (In the TPM module which is programmed to forget it if you install a new PCIe device, change a BIOS setting or look at it cock-eyed, and in Microsoft's cloud)

I'm not sure what you mean by "start again from scratch" but there are certainly ways to migrate a Firefox user profile (history, bookmarks, etc) from Windows to Linux.

I'm a Debian user for the last 20 years, but I wouldn't recommend it to anyone who might describe me as an Anorak ;) it has various derivatives to make it more accessible to Microsoft refugees though.

I hear good things about Mint from new users, so that's why I recommended it. There's also LMDE which is Mint without the Ubuntu stuff, that's what I would install if I wanted to try Mint personally.

Re: Reason for windows? I have over 300 games on my gog account

I don't know about Gog, but gaming on Linux via Steam is a breeze these days. Just 'apt install steam' and then settings -> compatibility -> "Enable SteamPlay for all titles". I also have hundreds of old (and new) games, and they generally work flawlessly. I even have VR games released for Windows that work perfectly out of the box. No VM required. Maybe Gog has a similar way to make use of Proton? Look up your old games on protondb.com to see if they work.

Your graphics card sounds like a NVidia one, so on Debian this would be: apt install nvidia-driver. Note that for both nvidia and steam you need to have 'non-free' software enabled in your apt config (this doesn't mean you have to pay, it just means closed-source software)

Edit: Maybe try 'minigalaxy'

Package: minigalaxy; Description: Simple GOG Linux client. Allows you to download and play Linux games from the gog.com game store.

Apparently it will also run Windows games via Wine (which is what Proton is based on) and no doubt there is a way to make it use Proton itself.

Re: Please re-read my post !

BitLocker doesn't apply at the hardware level i.e. you can still install Linux on your 'bricked' laptop by simply deleting the encrypted partition. Most Linux installers will guide you through this, and warn you that you are deleting the original OS and all its data (but that's fine because it is unreadable anyway)

It's unclear who lost out, Argos or Lenovo (one of whom has to re-image and flog a new laptop as 'reconditioned'), but certainty not Microsoft who are the real culprits.

BitLocker is a shit experience all round and just makes Microsoft sound like a ransomware gang! Of course they have your key, and would have given it up to any government agency that asked for it.

IMO this is a deliberate strategy, one of many, to 'punish' those who do not want to be forced to use a Microsoft Account.

If you don't want your life on Microsoft's cloud, you should be using Linux. Maybe give Mint a try?

Parker Solar Probe sends a "Still Alive" tone back to Earth

Still Alive, from Portal.

I think that was alluded to in the subheading..

Is that surface diameter or corona diameter, and where exactly do we define the edge of either? We won't know until it has completed its mission

Kelvin? But that's an SI unit, far too French.

Nige would take back control and invent a new unit based on the temperature of fag-ash

OneOdio Focus A5: Big battery, budget sound, and a bargain bin price

Re: Getting names wrong

No doubt they'll be expanding into North America with their new subsidiary, "Odio US"