Posts by Tron 1302 publicly visible posts • joined 2 Feb 2010
The Western media operate under political thumbs. If you want to leak the dirty secrets of politicians, before they conveniently 'lose' or 'accidentally' delete all their incriminating messages and e-mails, find a better way of doing it. Or just keep it safe until the inquiries begin, and then helpfully hand it over.
Leaks of government e-mails are the only way we are ever going to get any honest transparency out of the failures running our countries into the ground.
If the bar had been set at 2024 levels, how long would Steve Jobs have lasted at Apple?
If you don't have a built-in woke filter, you are going to suffer in any working community nowadays. Your best bet is a degree of self-isolation. WFH is a start, but doing your own thing is probably the way to go. There have always been barriers and glass ceilings in working environments. This is just a new one. The demand for cultural purity does have a brutal downside. As with the CCP and the demand for political purity, you lose a heck of a lot of talent.
I wrote a 3 vol. thesis using Word 4 for the Mac. When Apple became tiresome I switched to the PC and have written four novels, several plays/scripts and stacks of other stuff using LibreOffice. For shorter stuff I still use Notepad. For HTML, NoteTab.
...pre-identify outsourced projects of little value that may never actually work but which are exploited by politicians as mechanisms to syphon tax dollars into the pockets of their mates? Will it be able to spot other examples of corruption in national and local government before they happen, and will those likely to be corrupt be turfed out of office?
Just as users put their livelihoods on the chopping block storing their data on other peoples' clouds and subscribing to web-based software, the features of which, or their access to, can be pulled at the drop of a hat, MS is placing itself at the mercy of a third party with OpenAI. It may have been wiser to configure AI better as something that could be turned on or off by users, and could use multiple vendors' processing. But they didn't. And they may no longer be able to roll back.
...apparently want to go back to only buying what is available in their local shops. Assuming they have any, or know where they are.
Health and safety is a primary weapon of the state to shut down tech services.
'Proof of destruction' eh? OK. I'll take a hammer to the Lithium cell.
A better alternative to dedicated Cloud processing may be to distribute AI processing across the net using torrenting networks. All users do a bit of processing for each other. Competing front ends can handle the same data differently, rather than everyone doing everything on their own clouds.
Just as with distributed searches, data can be processed and held to be of use to more than one user/AI app, across the distributed network, or on sites that hold content. As AI should really be attributed to sources, attributing to websites acts as a user draw through AI-related search, and as a form of meta ad.
Distributed search should be the basis for distributed AI processing, but nobody is really doing distributed search. Too much innovative stuff is not being done, as GAFA is run by lawyers.
quote: We reckon that the developers of Mint, ZorinOS, Linux Lite, and Asmi would all benefit from cooperating.
The developers of all distros would benefit from cooperating with each other, hardware manufacturers and box shifters like Dell. But they never will. Herding cats.
The Linux community's failure to produce a retail alternative for mainstream users has kept Microsoft in business. If they had ever bothered to get their act together, Windows would have gone the way of CP/M decades ago.
quote: If you have an aging PC that can't run Windows 11...
Take it offline and keep using it with proper software and local storage. Move your work to a tablet on a memory card as required.
MS should still have had a recovery position, perhaps one that distinguished between stuff in the kernel that was their own/essential, and 3rd party stuff. If you like, a 'safe mode' for kernel crashes. As a previous comment said, they prioritise degrading their OS with worse versions, gimmicks, bloat and restrictions, when we would be happier to have stuck with the same OS for years longer, with better resilience being added.
So some fault to MS, but most to CrowdStrike who could not have done anything like enough testing on their code, or they would have known it was cack.
...but the HMRC portal does actually work OK. If you can jump the multiple hurdles to identify yourself and actually access it.
It will be a pity if they Oracle it. But as long as they are ready to print paper forms and send them out to everyone, I'm sure we'll cope.
If your software is standalone and works in isolation from the public internet, it should keep on trucking. If it worked on data last week, it should work next week and next year, when it enters an afterlife.
It won't if it is dependent upon vendor server calls, or cloud storage, which is a good reason for avoiding both. Anything web-based is like marrying into the mob.
You really should not put your financial balls on the chopping block for third parties to bring down the knife when they wish. Use less software, use simpler software, use standalone software that doesn't need a net connection. It is time to start using software more selectively, and getting bespoke software produced for your needs, so you control it. And cost this stuff. Some of the sums involved are eye-watering. Paying for this stuff, often on subscription, or for a short period until EOL is declared, makes no sense if you can do it with something simpler, in Excel or on paper. Don't automatically assume that a fully fledged digital solution is the best solution. Most tech players are just after your cash. Service provision is merely a means to an end. It's not so much customer and service provider, as predator and prey. Consider an internet connection to be a security risk and an internet dependency a financial risk.
No species functions without risk and the resultant body count, and humans are just another species. There is no perfect, viable solution. We will muddle through as best we can. As for batteries being 'moral', quite a few homes and people have recently been taken out by recharging batteries going pop. Few communities are volunteering to host cell farms.
Like medics during Covid, many of the climate change scientist positions entirely ignore the social and political consequences of just manipulating/enforcing change, however many nudge units you have. Progressive Democrats pushed hard, and they created the opportunity for Trump to become President, possibly twice, whilst losing Roe v Wade. Actions have consequences, and the unintended ones can be incredibly destructive. Simple solutions usually aren't simple and consequently may not be solutions.
Regarding green hydrogen, you cannot plan for something until it exists and you have enough data on all aspects of it, and we do not yet. Politicians set a target X years ahead, so they can forget about awkward stuff for the duration of their term.
Cash, paper forms, whatever you need so that you can run your business or life when your tech goes down. Basic resilience.
This is what SAGE should be sorting out in the UK for stuff like the NHS, but all they do is whine about China whenever the USG prod them to.
And by now, Windows should be robust enough not to trip over anything that is thrown at it, particularly when booting.
Program x has an issue. Your OS will continue to load without it. Program X will not be working. etc. How come their OS is still not able to detect and pull out of a loop in 2024?
If they had stopped at Win 7 and spent the entire time since making it more secure and resilient, we would all love them. Instead they increase the complexity, lose the resilience and add pointless AI crap.
The US will treat Taiwan as it did Afghanistan once they have the FABs up and running on US soil. More of an issue is the US-planned tribalisation of tech, hardware (Huawei), software (Kaspersky, TikTok), firmware (Android bans) and IP. We might gripe about GAFA but the tech industry and the global internet have underpinned the global economy and most growth, directly and indirectly, since the 80s. Take it away with sanctions, tariffs and tribalisation, the supply chains will collapse (including food) and the global economy will tank big time. Huge inflation and artificial hikes to interest rates - much more than recently. Lots of poverty leading to political instability as unhappy people blame and take down sitting regimes. Brexit got the Tories elected, but the inevitable consequences of Brexit, the UK being about a third poorer, buried them. Now extrapolate that globally, when the USG breaks the entire economy with Brexit-like policies.
Make as much cash as you can, as quickly as you can, to protect yourself, and don't have any/more kids. The future is going to be a horror show.
quote: The only sensible way to proceed is to assume that all applications are inherently insecure.
Yes. Agreed. The tech we have is so complicated and infosec skills so thinly spread that we need to change the way we do things. Internal systems/infrastructure should never touch the public internet. Airgap them, two systems per desk if necessary. What you have left is a mix of disposable systems and stuff you need to focus on. Disposable systems, if taken down, can be ripped and replaced within hours, with minimal data loss. Consider distributed solutions, so you don't have honeypots of personal data. If you don't need to computerise something, don't. Don't go digital for the sake of it. If printed forms work, use them. Aside from anything else. archiving paper is easier and cheaper. You don't have to curate it so much, regularly checking/changing media, changing file formats. 1980s paperwork just gets dusty. Do those 5¼" floppies still work as well, or have you resaved all your media into newer formats on newer media types half a dozen times? Hybrid paper/tech systems allow you to make the best choice in individual cases. And use simpler software.
An increasing complicated and ever more bloated OS will become inherently less resilient and less secure. We need to go back and rethink how we use software, to save cash, improve resilience and increase security. Not just be led by MS, Apple and Google on to the next version on the road to digital hell.
So they want to spend £12m of public money on a box-ticking exercise covering historical data.
They are bankrupt. Sack everyone, draw a line in the sand and just begin afresh. Every other option will just waste more money.
And it doesn't cost that much to do your accounts, old school, unless your accountants are working from home in Hawaii.
We really need to develop better, simpler systems. Not these universal packages that just don't work.
The only people less competent than central government in running and outsourcing things in the UK, especially tech, are local government. Devolution means that the gravy train will become a veritable shinkansen of loot moving from tax revenue to private pockets. And every local authority will deploy their own unique apps for car parking, LTN tolls, bridge tolls, tram tickets, local discount cards and all the rest. Driving across a county border will require a great deal of research, planning and handing over of cash. If you thought losing free movement across the EU was bad enough, you ain't seen nothing yet.
A problem occurs when the elected officers do not have enough baseline competency to determine whether the 'expert' advice they are getting is actually any good. All experts are not equal, and if you put two in a room, they are unlikely to agree. El Reg comments are full of experts disagreeing with experts. In the circumstances, I would like to see simpler solutions employed, airgapping internal and net facing systems, using simpler software and using less software. Printed forms that you can post are a cheaper solution than a digital system that can get hacked, fall over or cost zillions.
We need to start using less and simpler software. And we need an alternate, stable platform. That is a platform that does not have or need regular updates to be secure or viable for as much as five or even ten years through careful design.
So someone else gets the blame.
The skills required to protect systems like this are simply too thin on the ground for the number and complexity of installations.
Users should be able to expect their software to be secure by default and to be patched automatically by the vendor when new vulnerabilities occur.
Given that this is unlikely to ever be the case, all internal systems should be airgapped from the public internet.
We may need simpler OSs and software. The more basic the system, the fewer ways there are to crack it.
Some considerable time back I was scribbling a spec for a standard recharging dock. Using Bluetooth, a cable or a cable to memory card slot adaptor, your iPhone or Android screen would be duplicated on your PC monitor. You could use your keyboard and mouse to use any mobile app on your PC [or Mac] screen - it would be working on your mobile at the same time. You could expand the screen on the PC monitor up to the limits of each field on the mobile app. You could also copy and paste between your PC files and your mobile in its window. I felt it would be good for office use of mobiles. Walk in, slot your mobile in the recharger, and all of your mobile functionality (including telephony) would be accessible on your PC (or laptop). I wondered why it hadn't been implemented as standard from the early days of mobiles as it seemed like an easy and simply solution for interoperability. There would be no need to have a Mac for an iPhone or a PC for an Android as the PC/Mac app would be copying the screen functionality. Three input fields for text, eight buttons etc. The mobile would then accept the relevant interaction as you typed and clicked. Any device and any app would work on any desktop or laptop. It would be OS agnostic.
But not my thing as I don't use smartphones much, so I didn't really pursue it.
The UK really needed that wet winter/spring as its reservoirs and groundwater were parched. Thank your lucky stars it was damp.
And hardly anyone in the UK has aircon. Unless someone can come up with a unit so tiny it fits in UK properties, which were never designed to have the wall space for one, we are all going to expire in our homes a few summers down the line.
Given the date of the election, 4th July was independence day here too.
As for the Pi - get a retail Pi PC out there. Open the box and go. That would give the mainstream some independence in tech too.
I said something similar on another thread. You cannot rely on software when vendor behaviour declines. Use the simple off-the-shelf stuff, but don't bet your functionality on your software vendor behaving decently. You would avoid a doctor who has been struck off. You wouldn't hire a mob lawyer. If you consider your software vendor to be unreliable, change the software you use and the way you use it. Given that the industry is not renowned for benign behaviour towards users, consider using the least software for the maximum benefit, and fill in manually.
I send paper invoices. Rarely, one gets lost. A couple of my customers switched to digital only and I complied for them. They now have the highest rate of lost invoices. They shouldn't of course, but they do. Tech is only beneficial when it works, reliably, and doesn't get hacked. If you rely on complex packages, your vendor has you over a barrel. That's how a fixed fee contract to produce software in 2 years can turn into a decade-long soap opera costing five times as much. Treat software like a prescription drug. A small amount will be useful. Getting addicted to it, will screw you over. Audit how you function and find ways to use less software and simpler software. You will make your company more resilient and reduce your costs. Reducing your costs increases your profit even when the wider economy is dying from the failure and ideological insanity of politicians.
I use a PC with no camera. The only time I've had to use a moving facial image was the UK gov, either the Covid app or a passport application - I can't remember which. A right pain to get it to work on a smartphone I rarely use. Restricting people to using phones rather than PCs by demanding biometric IDs is daft and will exclude even more people than tech already does. Governments are going to use MFA and biometric IDs to track and monitor citizens. But the more ID info we hand over, the more will get nicked.
The treatment of users by MS has just sunk another notch. Expect pre-Copilot+ hardware to hold its value on the second hand market as more people avoid the new stuff.
This may be time for large organisations to consider de-computerising some aspects of their business, especially if their software isn't going to work without spending serious cash on an upgrade. Computers are great, but not if the year on year costs outweigh the benefits against doing things manually. Shifting to a basic Works package offered benefits back in the day, but the cost, lack of resilience, downtime hit, and constant maintenance and upgrade costs of having a complex cross-enterprise, customised package may not be worth it (ask Birmingham). Corporates and governments probably don't care how much they spend on this, but anyone smaller needs their computing to be cost effective. There is only so much damage a business can take. The UK is about a third poorer post-Brexit, thanks to the hit on Sterling and increased people/goods mobility costs. Savings have to be made somewhere. The government may want everyone to live on trackable apps, but they aren't paying for it. We may need to ask ourselves how much of our tech we can do without. Do we really need gigabytes of data covering every aspect of our business. Can we simplify how we do stuff. Printed forms, call centre flow charts and biros cost pennies, don't need IT staff and they don't get hacked. Computers and off the shelf software will still be hugely useful, but maybe we don't need to be addicted to the silicon drug. We don't need tech everywhere doing everything, and might want to see just how much money we can save using less.
If you rely on tech, you must have a working manual fall back for when it falls over. And you need to test it like a fire or quake drill. The idea that you just stop functioning because your tech is down is not acceptable. If you can't function without tech you shouldn't be insurable and shouldn't be trusted with life or death facilities.
And if stuff is life or death or basic infrastructure, your tech should never touch the public internet. It should be air gapped. Two systems, two screens on every desk, whatever it takes.
There is no excuse not to have better resilience in enterprise tech, and no excuse if you don't have a manual fall back. Whatever you do, you have a duty to devise and train staff for reversion to manual.
The same goes for schools closing because their tech is down and their 'safeguarding' doesn't work. Pathetic.
Farage is a populist and will have pulled Labour/Brexit voters and otherwise non-voting chavs, racists and general malcontents to his cause, not just Tories. Many Tories just stayed at home. Reform went from zero to a heck of a lot of votes in a matter of weeks.
If Starmer keeps to the centre, Farage and the Tories might split the right. But if after a year or two, Labour activists challenge Starmer and replace him with Kahn, using Boris's route into power, Labour will move to the left. That would lose them votes and inspire the right. Then Farage can take control of the whole of the right, the way his idol Trump took control of the Republican party. By then, Labour will be an unpopular sitting regime, and they could be taken down by a populist. The UK's PMs could be Starmer, then Kahn and then Farage.
There is very little talent in British politics, particularly in managing and rolling out viable policy, which makes it unstable (and butchers the economy, standard of living, quality of life).
I doubt there will be any investment in Hydrogen, green or otherwise. The Germans are the crash test dummies for that, and it is proving to be insanely expensive. Switching UK gas infrastructure to hydrogen is, ironically, a pipe dream, as everyone would have to go without it for the transition. The expensive and intrusive stuff that requires labour (not available post-Brexit) like heat pumps, just isn't going to happen either. The green transition will be switched to whatever is cheap and do-able, so expect a switch to green electricity to heat homes.
Also note the almost complete absence of mentioning Brexit by the BBC. Brexit lies got the Tories into power. The real world consequences of Brexit erased them. Is there a D-notice on mentioning any downside to Brexit in UK media, or are they self-censoring?
It eats batteries. My Sony Walkman lasts for ages with a single AAA receiving FM. The resilience of the DAB signal is also rubbish compared to FM.
Take away FM in the UK and I won't be listening to radio any more. All those retro radios stretching back nearly a century will become paperweights. And a major route into electronics for youngsters vanishes into a surface mount black box.
Damaging peoples lives has a cost to it. Check out the next election in the UK, and see what happens to those who are hated by the general public for damaging our lives and taking things from us.
Leave FM alone.
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