Posts by Tron

Microsoft adds features to Windows 11 monthly – managing it is your problem

MS is upgrading corporate systems as if they were retail consumer releases.

Traditionally, one 'Point Zero' Windows release in three is usable. That's why folk mutter about having software that requires an earlier version. They are hoping that the witless wonders will produce a version that is stable and usable before the last possible extension of service passes for the one that worked just about OK.

I'm surprised there has not been more of a shift back to dumb terminals (even dumber than Chromebooks). New MS gimmicks are generally irrelevant to most corporate implementations of Windows. If your stuff worked, you don't really need anything new. It's not like a corporate is going to dash to upgrade for any extra features. They are implementing retail consumer techniques for an OS supply chain that has no use for them. They could instead offer them as individual upgrades (and even charge for them) if they wanted, and most admins would be really happy not to have to worry about them.

German 5G network ban said to loom for Huawei and ZTE

Ahem.

U.S. spied on Merkel and other Europeans through Danish cables - broadcaster DR.

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/us-security-agency-spied-merkel-other-top-european-officials-through-danish-2021-05-30

UK refreshes national security plan to stop more of China's secret-stealing cyber-tricks

McCarthyism 2.0

You can imagine how much time, energy and Yuan the CCP devote into hacking your local comprehensive.

Can't wait until the Tory halfwits are out on their arses in 2024. Although by then they will have broken everything worth breaking.

The only benefit of Westminster kissing Washington's arse and banning TikTok (as it did Huawei) is an entire generation of young people will hate the Tories with a passion, get up off their lazy, apathetic backsides and vote against them. We may even get some proper political demos on campuses as censoring our net crosses the line from nationalism to fascism.

The Conservative Party, 1834-2024. Wound up after failing to win a single seat in the 2024 election, the morning after which saw spontaneous parties breaking out across Britain.

Hold off on that 2046 Valentine's date, asteroid might hit Earth

Great. It's the final countdown.

We can stop worrying about climate change, plastic and using the wrong pronouns and just enjoy the last bit.

British industry calls for regulation of autonomous vehicles

UK standards - Leveraging minimalism is warehouses, shops and homes.

Post-Brexit, setting a UK-only standard on tech effectively wipes the shelves of products overnight. There is a reason why Malta doesn't have its own rules on tech products. When we were in the EU we had a say in EU standards. Now we accept large trading bloc standards or go without.

Silicon Valley Bank's UK arm bought by HSBC for 1 British pound in rescue deal

An apocalypse averted.

How would humanity have survived without Trustpilot?

So HSBC bagged over £1bn of equity for a quid. Nice work if you can get it. Wish I'd got in there quick and offered a fiver.

That would be the Hong Kong & Shanghai Banking Corporation. So how is that policy of not flogging next gen tech to the Chinese going, eh chaps?

Electronics market shows US-China decoupling will hike inflation and slow growth

Translation

America's new Cold War will kill global growth, throw the Western economy into reverse and initiate increased poverty, hunger, political unrest and conflict.

In the first Cold War, the West held all the cards supported by Middle Eastern oil. In the new Cold War, the Middle East will be independent and may not pick sides. If it does, it is more likely to pick the other side. And the other side already hold the majority of resources - energy, food, minerals.

America's Cold War 2 will be Brexit for the West. The future is not bright, but it might be orange - the glow of a bombed city on the horizon.

You are all going to miss globalisation more than you could believe.

Hey, AI hucksters. Dial down the hype. Lots of love, the FTC

About time.

AI is the Emperor's New Clothes. It has a very low functionality ceiling, can't contextualise and injects unreliability into systems that are assumed to be reliable.

It should be called 'machine learning'. as the term 'AI' infers some sort of sentient ability in code.

Welcome to Muskville: Where the workers never leave

Not entirely fair to lambast industrial new towns.

Many of the new towns built in the industrial revolution were very good, lifting people out of filthy slums, providing sanitation, schools and low cost food. They were rolled out with good intentions by well-meaning dissenters who had largely been excluded from public life because of their religion. The pro-temperance stance of many prevented working men from drinking all they earned at the expense of their families. They were years ahead of their time in terms of social welfare, often supporting co-operative ventures. Working conditions weren't great in factories because mass production was new. It would take time to understand the consequences. Many of those behind the new towns were instrumental in fighting for a better deal for working people. Set against the (many) horrors of the industrial cities, the new towns were as utopian as you could get for the working classes.

Company housing is more common than you might think, even today. We think of 'mining towns' with the houses being built around the pit, but in Japan and China, employees often live in low-cost company-provided housing today.

Here's how Microsoft hopes to inject ChatGPT into all your apps and bots via Azure

Over to you, 4chan.

If the bros create and upload vast amounts of incorrect and explicit text (in Trek, Wikipedia with a beard), these apps will eventually start trolling users. You will ask your PC to turn on Radio Bland Classics and it will reply: 'Not your personal army'.

But don't panic. Anyone with an IQ greater than their age knows that the first thing you do when a new Microsoft 'feature' is rolled out, is turn it off.

I really think we need to lobby governments for anything with 'AI' in it to come with a 'Turn the AI off' button, by law.

US plays Whac-A-Mole with Inspur subsidiaries to close China sanction loopholes

There will be a slight delay in your order...

...as we have to erase our logos and ship the long way round.

Meta confirms decentralized Twitter rival in the works

Inevitable.

Distributed social media is inevitable. You can do about 90% of Facebook by extending an e-mail client to include encryption and rich media. Because you are using the e-mail protocol, you lose the costs and the govt/activist aggro of paying for central servers, bandwidth, censorship and spying on users. You can still monetise your service, but with a user-friendly, consensual advertising model.

I've been advocating this for ages now. I'm just disappointed that GAFA is doing it. It would have been a great opportunity for someone else to become part of GAFA 2.

Chinese boffins call for research on ‘countermeasures’ to US chip bans

Own your playing field and you make your own rules.

If China remained part of a single, globalised economy it would increasingly have to play by the rules. Once the US divide the world between the bits they control and the bits China controls, China can ignore Western patent portfolios and rip off whatever IP it wants. The US will set Chinese tech free by locking it out of the West. This is not the brightest move, but US politicians are not the brightest bunnies in the hutch. GAFA and the NSA will also lose access to Chinese-leaning systems when Cold War 2 kicks in and the Chinese replace Western stuff with home grown stuff.

Chipmakers threaten to defect to US, EU if UK doesn't get its semiconductor plans sorted

Re: Meanwhile

350 jobs. A new call centre?

£2B in UK taxpayer cash later, and still no Emergency Services Network

Waiting for GODOT.

Government Origin Disastrously Outsourced Tech.

Here's what happens next.

2023. Dido placed in charge. Budget goes up to £20bn. Several more years of delays due to war in what is left of Ukraine.

2024 Alpha build delays when cases can no longer be sourced from China due to national security and plastic concerns. Budget: £22bn.

2025 Alpha build and wooden Scots Pine cases completed. System turned off by E-On Smart Meters. Back to the drawing board. Budget: £25bn.

2026 Beta testing delayed due to Porton Down variant of Covid 26 emergence and war in Moldova, Lithuania, Finland, Sweden and Poland. Budget: £27bn.

2027 Everyone takes a year off to save cash as Sterling now worth 75c. Budget frozen at £29bn.

2028 Entire engineering team fired for Mother-in-Law jokes at Les Dawson themed virtual AirBnB party in metaverse. Budget now £32bn.

2029 Working systems rolled out. Everyone gets headaches (and splinters) using them. Fixes promised. Budget: £34bn.

2030 System complete and working but 4G phased out. 5G replacement bought from Radio Shack for $2bn (£4bn). Mission accomplished. Bonuses all round. Total cost: £49bn.

Semiconductor industry: To Hell with the environment, start building fabs already

Nationalism isn't free.

Replicating everything China does in half a dozen other countries will cost a fortune and hammer the environment.

But nationalism is trending and the clowns are back in charge, spending unlimited amounts of MMT. So it looks like the environment is going to take a hit to MAGA etc.

If Biden doesn't give them a pass, Trump will most likely get in and abolish all environmental laws.

Sadly, the environment requires a globalised approach - one species working to save one planet. But globalists are now enemies of the people. Nationalists only value what happens inside their borders. What is beyond the walls can be trashed.

White House ban on US chip cash going into China ruffles South Koreans

Clause 1: Vassal states must behave like vassal states.

Traditionally, SK and JP used to get a free pass on trade sanctions as they are so dependent upon China and to some extent upon Russia and China-leaning bits of Asia. Japan managed to hang on to some energy projects in Russia recently, but with Cold War 2 on Washington's agenda, they may not get a free pass this time. That will be eye-wateringly expensive for SK and JP and have political implications for both. The US wants to have their cake and eat it - pay for security pacts, pay to host troops, be used as an airbag/human shield/aircraft carrier, and gut your own economy by building a wall between yourselves and China - even more economically damaging then Brexit has been for UK/EU trade. In Europe they are clearing out Chinese tech by leaning on each country in turn. First the UK, now Germany.

If the US can clone Taiwanese tech on US soil, they will let China have Taiwan and use any takeover as an excuse to build the new Cold War wall. That will make SK and JP entirely dependent on the US for everything they used to get from Taiwan or China. I guess Washington has never forgiven them for making better consumer electronics than Radio Shack and better cars than Detroit.

Signal says it'll shut down in UK if Online Safety Bill approved

A world-beating internet from the people who brought you Brexit.

Blocking all those companies run by Johnny Foreigner and all that nasty encryption. People will still be able to post comments on edgy sites like mumsnet and El Reg - their posts will simply be checked by civil servants, manually, before they are forwarded to the official mail address of the relevant web site by Royal Mail.

All UK web sites (the only ones remaining visible in the UK) will need to be manually checked by a government regulator to ensure they won't offend anyone, each time they are updated. This might take a while, but patience is a virtue.

And a world-beating way of protecting children: The internet will only function between 9pm (the watershed) and 6am, when all of Britain's under 18s have had their cocoa and are tucked up in bed.

Adidas grapples with $1.3B in unsold Yeezy sneakers after breaking up with Kanye West

The small print. Do it better next time.

Most large companies now expect comprehensive damages should they have to cancel anything because you offended the activist hordes on social media. This is the new normal. Even your ultra safe, family friendly tarento might queue jump when you least expect it.

Cop warrant orders Ring to cough up footage from inside this guy's home

Every breath you take, every move you make...

The internet has already been repurposed as a system of state surveillance. They will ban TikTok because they don't want to put their spyware on the servers of a Chinese company.

The pivot to digital and the use of apps, digital money instead of banknotes. Dashcams. Doorbell cams. Social media. GPS on your mobile device. They know absolutely everything about you 24/7/365. They can remember it for you wholesale. Maybe if we get dementia we can try a FoI request to recover some of our lives from them.

Sorry Sir Tim - your Oppenheimer moment may be inevitable.

India teases AI plan to 'catalyse the next generation of the internet'

AI, the medicinal compound of our times.

AI is 'learning' from historical (out of date), inappropriate and inapplicable datasets and using it as a crystal ball, hoping the future repeats the past, every single time.

In the 70s you could buy a little card device that would allow you to spin two disks according to the past points tallies of football clubs, in the hope of bagging 8 score draws on your coupon.

AI is the modern version of that, with smoke and mirrors, lots of hype and a big fat price tag.

In short, AI is the Emperor's New Clothes.

There will be a dataset bubble until it all inevitably goes pear-shaped, and then AI will (finally) vanish from politicians' speeches, adverts and presentations.

Intel rattles the tin for another €5B in subsidies to build German fab

Bend over and pucker up.

Governments are operating by nationalist rules now. That's expensive. Replicating Taiwan in the US before it pivots to China. Replicating Uncle Sam in Europe for when the US cuts the world in two.

Chipmakers should work out how much they need for a free ride, double it and add a zero. If politicians are going to be idiots with public money, that's their business. Let them wreck global trade and the global economy. Bag enough of a subsidy and you can buy your own island, one not run by clowns.

Wannabe space 'superpower' UK tosses £1.6M at eight research projects

Modest proposal.

American space agency: NASA.

European Space agency: ESA.

Japanese space agency: JAXA.

British space agency: BRASSIC.

Before the Brexit referendum, £1.6m would have been $2.64m.

Boris doesn't get out of bed for that sort of money.

Texas mulls law forcing ISPs to block access to abortion websites

Too much risk.

No company wants to deal with that level of risk. ISPs can simply axe service in Texas. If you are ruled by Taliban types, you can enjoy the retro buzz of the period between the Middle Ages and 1991. Or you can depose them and get a proper 21st century government in place instead. As we very well know from our recent experience in the UK, if you elect clowns, you live in a circus.

German Digital Affairs Committee hearing heaps scorn on Chat Control

You're missing the point.

They are offering people a chance to air their views before ignoring them. Your government is determined to spy on everything, everywhere, all at once. And they will. If it breaks stuff, that's OK. They do not consider you to have a right to privacy from government oversight. If it breaks the economy, that's OK too. After years of losing control to corporates, consumers and the markets, the Empire has Struck Back. The only way of gating access to kids is for all adults to ID themselves when using tech. That makes spying on your citizens so much easier.

We need to switch to distributed systems asap. We are already a lot more Chinese than we would like to be, and state control of the net will soon be comprehensive.

Can we interest you in a $10 pocket calculator powered by Android 9?

Point of order.

You might have got a $12 phone then, but you probably can't now, this side of the Great Trade Wall. Expect the same thing to happen in other technologies.

Still, I expect to see someone on here in a few months who has built a Beowulf cluster out of Chinese calculators and is using it to power their Stargate.

Arm co-founder: Britain's chip strat 'couldn’t be any worse'

Game over.

quote: we are waiting for the government to come out with a semiconductor strategy.

Why are we waiting? Everything the British government touches, fails. Especially in tech. They are the last people you want to involve themselves in your sector.

Nationalised tech has always been little more than a sexy version of British Leyland. I guess they want free money to build a chip plant and replicate what half a dozen other countries are now doing. The nationalist dream is not very green is it? It also costs billions and takes a decade. The UK doesn't have the cash any more and Sterling is worth 25% less courtesy of Brexit and everything is priced in USD, so what we do have doesn't go so far.

The UK needs better water management. It needs green power and EV infrastructure. It need to grow more fruit and veg. All of this needs subsidies. What do you prioritise?

Maybe the biggest problem is that VC in the UK works like an ATM. Money in, money out. Never much of an attempt to build a GAFA-style business. The US have Google. We have Crapita.

We do have great innovation. Sir Clive was attempting to build electric vehicles decades before Musk. Imagine what a decade or two of development in association with someone like Lotus might have come up with.

Does the UK even need to be technologically self-sufficient, when we build bugger all? We were brilliant in the 80s. But aside from the Raspberry Pi, how much retail tech do we build here? The jewel in the crown, ARM, got flogged off, with big payouts for some folk.

The future is not in AI, but it may be in distributed processing. Only nobody is trying to build GAFA 2.0 by doing that. And it is actually quite cheap - no subsidies required.

quote: Europe and the UK needed to have access to critical technologies so as not to be dependent on other countries such as the US.

Why clump Europe and the UK together? The EU is now a competitor. A dependency upon the EU is no different to a dependency upon the US or Japan. We jumped out of the window and we haven't even hit the floor yet. The UK is now isolated. It doesn't have enough people to dig up carrots, it can't afford the energy to plant tomatoes and some hospitals are ending gas painkillers for giving birth - switching back to old school screaming I guess. This is (badly) managed decline and you want free cash to build a miniature silicon valley here? Building anything increases your carbon footprint at a time when people are being fined for driving into cities and have to crawl from A to B in residential areas at walking pace in their EVs. Drought incoming for the summer again, despite plenty of warnings. This country has no future. You want to do well in tech, emigrate.

Arm swans off to Nasdaq despite UK gov pleas to IPO in London

Brexit.

Brexit was always going to relegate the UK's financial sector, and it has done. It's game over. Stop pretending we are still premier league. This is the second company to do this in the last week. There will be more.

Windows 11 update breaks PCs that dare sport a custom UI

This would be lovely...

Satya Nadella breaks his front door key. He asks a locksmith to make him a new one. When he tries it, it doesn't work. He complains to the locksmith.

'There is nothing wrong with your upgraded key, Sir,' replies the locksmith. 'Unfortunately the paint on your front door is incompatible with it and you will have to access your house through the toilet window for the next few months until we can get around to sorting it out'.

BAE Systems handed £38m Border Force intelligence contract

Ignoring the oxymorons that pepper this piece...

...can we assume that, being British, this will be a world first - the first AI system to go on strike for more memory and a faster processor?

LockBit's Royal Mail ransom deadline flies by. No data released

Royal Mail should get on with it.

How hard is it to accept parcels at post offices and transfer them to a courier until they can get their 386 PCs working again? Get on with it. Pathetic. It has hammered small businesses.

UK prepares to go it alone on post-Brexit science plan

Relax. It's the final countdown.

Sometime in 2024, the Tories will get wiped out. They may win fewer seats than Sinn Fein. They might not win any. Then these things will get sorted out.

Until then, be amused by the level of political failure on display. You can tell your grandchildren that you were there to see the end of the Conservative party. And that it served them right.

Creator of Linux virtual assistant blames 'patent troll' for project's death

Another one bites the dust.

-$100,000 on injection molds.

Just put it in an off the shelf box.

Difficult to do ventures without venture capital. Maybe crowd fund for non-commercial test systems (less patent grief) and use them to get a sack of VC from SoftBank.

Japan may go easy on China over export bans on chipmaking equipment

The sanctions won't make a difference and Japan will get a free pass.

The Chinese will smuggle stuff in via third or fourth parties or outsource to chipmakers in other countries. And as the ban is political, the Chinese government will fork out the extra cash to ensure supply. Japan usually gets a free pass from Washington to dodge sanctions required of other vassals as they would function as a US aircraft carrier/giant airbag in any Pacific Rim conflict. China couldn't hit the US but it would cheerfully hit Japan and the US airbases there. But having your bento and eating it is getting harder as Cold War 2 kicks in. Japanese companies are still partnering with Russian energy projects and would like to keep importing Russian timber (which the construction industry relies on). Chinese tourists were a huge source of revenue pre-pandemic, and Tokyo was hoping that they would soon return post-Covid Zero en masse. Despite any political rhetoric, they would like to stay on economically amicable terms with the CCP. It's likely that Japan will still get a free pass denied US companies and European vassal states, but they will have to keep a lid on it or others will be jealous.

https://www.euractiv.com/section/energy/news/sakhalin-exception-the-russian-energy-japan-cant-quit/

Ring system discovered around dwarf planet Quaoar leaves astronomers puzzled

Quaoaeaiar.

Why are astronomers giving unpronounceable names to things, when they could use simple to pronounce names? That's the job of doctors (or the military when the doctors are on strike).

OpenAI's ChatGPT is a morally corrupting influence

Don't blame tech.

It is just code. The quality of what it poops out, depends upon what is fed in.

Twitter tweaks third-party app rules to ban third-party apps

Sensible response.

Build a distributed, encrypted social media platform by forking an e-mail client and moving data, encrypted, using the e-mail protocol. Standardise data for each type of interaction. Most are viable. Folk can then release their own compatible modules to handle each type of interaction or just use the default ones. You can monetise it with optional advertising, allowing individuals to choose their own adverts/discount offers. Users can also choose what content they wish to block. With no central server, there would be no centralised censorship or data scraping. There would be no centralised bandwidth or oversight costs either.

Musk's response isn't a surprise. Apple didn't respond well to clones, then it licensed them, then it didn't.

If you really want, you should be able to offer a reconfigured Twitter front end easily using a browser plug-in, pulling the data from Twitter's plain vanilla feed and pushing it to your own version. But Musk has a lot of lawyers, so the new distributed client would be wiser. Eventually, GAFA will tick off enough people for developers to replace all of their software with distributed alternatives, becoming GAFA 2.

Bringing cakes into the office is killing your colleagues, says UK food watchdog boss

Rebel! Eat Cake!

I smell the nudge unit at work. In response to this, I shall be buying a large chocolate cake this week, and humbly suggest that this should now be known as Cake Week in perpetuity.

For the record, I exercise regularly and have a below average BMI.

Maybe it is time all government ministers and government scientists were regularly weighed and placed on strict diets if they are obese. After all, they have very important jobs and must remain healthy for the nation!

UK Online Safety law threatens Big Tech bosses with jail

Cybrexit.

Getting rid of all those dangerous foreign Web 2.0 social media services. No doubt all to be replaced by 'world-beating' domestic alternatives, such as www.FriendsReunited.rip. Wikipedia has been corrupting the British people with facts and information on MPs' past misbheaviour for too long. The Long March back to Prestel begins here.

Half of environmental claims about products are full of crap, says EU

95% of politicians' claims about policies are full of crap, says Tron.

Can we have a directive on honesty in politics? With compensation and jail time?

Microsoft and community release scripts to help mitigate Defender mess

At least they didn't break printing this time.

'Don't worry about these minor teething problems. This update opens up a world of new opportunities.'

[B. Johnson, Micro$hit PR.]

Royal Mail, cops probe 'cyber incident' that's knackered international mail

Pathetic.

Pathetic security from the Royal Mail. Pathetic lack of coverage and updates from El Reg. So many businesses depend upon this. It is a lot more important than half the stuff you are covering. Switching to couriers is particularly expensive for smaller businesses. Where are the updates? Where is the 'Plan B'? If your tech goes down you should still be able to function. Those responsible for dealing with this should be fired.

Virgin Orbit doesn't

Something else to add to the Brexit Britain Epic Fail Compilation.

Presumably the thrusters went on strike.

Isn't it cheaper to practice with dummy payloads until it actually works? Satellites cost money and take a lot of effort to build.

Maybe there is a reason that NASA use rockets rather than 747s.

Microsoft 365 faces more GDPR headwinds as Germany bans it in schools

Bring back the 1990s.

It really doesn't matter if MS can see German school work. But perhaps all this weird data nationalism may push us back to having software on local media, storing files on local media, rather than the cloud. Which would be much better than subscriptions for online services that can have features removed at the drop of a hat, charging you every month, and storage of your files on someone else's server, that can be accessed and scanned by third parties such as your own government, via back doors.

Bring back the 1990s. Just not those AOL CDs.

Someone has to say it: Voice assistants are not doing it for big tech

This won't end well.

I hope they keep producing them for visually impaired folk who need them. But the likelihood is that they will simply axe them entirely due to 'inflation/covid/supply chains/Ukraine'.

US military goes zero-trust on software

4FA and a certificate of moral purity...

...or your computer will not turn on.

EU still getting its act together on European Chips Act funding

Meanwhile, in the UK...

The government have handed over an initial £100m of public money to consultants to assist with the development of a world leading Bakelite factory.

Locked out of Horizon Europe, UK commits half a billion to post-Brexit research

If you are not in the club, you don't get the perks.

Third world isolation beckons. Everything that the remainers said would happen, is happening.

It's across the board from academia to trade. Hull's fishing fleet is down to one trawler. Does that qualify as a fleet?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-humber-63676965

If you want a piece of the pie, join the brain drain and move to an EU country.

France says non to Office 365 and Google Workspace in school

So much BS.

It is obviously a serious national security issue if 30 kids' essays on 'Wuthering Heights' are held, encrypted on servers in the US.

If your data is properly encrypted you can host it in Beijing.

Nationalist data rules are just a way of building digital walls and carving up the internet, blocking data at national boundaries so that governments can spy on it and prosecute people over it. Such idiocy will eventually be used to end the global internet.

As we are moving to Chinese style politics and a Soviet economy in the West, it probably doesn't matter what kids do at school nowadays. They may as well write in exercise books. They haven't got much of a future in undeveloping Brexit Britain.