Posts by phuzz

Next step for LINK spacecraft – a software update that won't make things worse. Are you listening, Microsoft?

Re: Rescue spacecraft needs rescuing :o

It'll definitely use more fuel, but hopefully they've got a margin they can use

Techie lured out of retirement to support software only he remembered

At which point I'll already be dead, because average life expectancy has been shrinking at the same time as retirement age has been rising. I'm assume they'll have crossed over by the time I get there.

As someone born in the 1980's, this talk of 'retirement' makes the story sound like fantasy.

Sci-fi authors Scalzi and Stross decry AI's dystopian impact on their craft

Re: It's worth thank we think...

The only way that Claude could have this level of knowledge would be if Anthropic had trained the models on the actual source content of the books themselves.

That level of knowledge would require understanding the text rather than just processing it. Far more likely is that it was trained on usenet and forums (possibly including this very forum) where those things were spelled out by someone.

I'm sure they did train on the books themselves, it's widely reported that Facebook torrented 82Gb of ebooks* for AI training, but the knowledge came from humans explaining things to other humans, not from an in depth comprehension of the books.

* (It doesn't count as piracy because they have lots of money for lawyers)

Re: "having a copy of the Oxford English Dictionary on the shelf"

I remember my English teacher trying to interest me in Lawrence Durrell, but I could never take him at all seriously after reading his brother's accounts.

LinkedIn realizes its users have been bathing in AI slop, offers a shower

Re: How did they find out?

This probably also explains why so many businesses went all-in on trying to use AI, because to the CEOs who made the decision, AI slop sounded just like the prose they read all day already.

Brighton gig screen goes One Step Beyond with an update pop-up

The real answer, (because the poor techie sweating bullets in the middle of a live show, almost certainly did not get to choose the OS), is to drag the window right to the bottom of the screen so that only a few pixels are visible.

A requiem for Optane, Intel's KV cache killer that could have eased the RAM price crunch

Ah yes, then it would be completely free for anyone that had a billion dollars worth of chip fab, just lying around unused.

US Marines' latest anti-drone toy is an AI turret that uses regular machine guns

Re: Mind that big gaping hole in the middle

It's not just the missiles, the interceptor also needs (probably multiple) radar units that can detect a ballistic missile, distinguish it from everything else it can detect, and plot it's course quickly enough to send an interceptor missile at it.

Re: So its back to WW II technology

It's older than WW2 technology; the M2 machine gun was designed before WW2, and some of the guns still in service were manufactured then. (Here is one in US service that was manufactured in 1933). The Browning 50 cal was just so well designed and built, that it's not worth replacing with a modern firearm.

Personally I quite enjoy that modern technology like an autonomous anti-drone turret, will be using a gun designed the 1930s,and possibly even built then too.

Comment in code read 'Dear future me, sorry I wrote this'

Re: hidden characters

Notepad++ might not fix Windows copy/paste, but at least you can turn on non-printing-characters and be able to spot changes. And it's got a very good find/replace for fixing problems.

Musk promises purge after Grok Build caught sending entire repos to the cloud

Re: Bool would not approve

Perhaps they employed some of the Microsoft engineers who came up with the Group Policy items where you have to work out if disabling "Turn off X" will actually turn on X, or turn it off, or perhaps leave it unconfigured. And then the next policy will be phrased "Do not enable Y"...

At last, a good reason to buy an AI PC: Reining in runaway token bills

Re: Gartner thinks

In a rare case of Gartner not talking nonsense:

By 2030, 70 percent of the corporate PC installed base will be capable of running some local GenAI workloads.

might even come true. As long as PC manufacturers haven't got bored of jumping on the AI bandwagon by then, and we define "capable" carefully.

Whether anyone will actually be trying to run AI models locally in 2030 is a completely different question.

RISC-V firmware project wants every board booting from the same hymn sheet

remind me again, who gets to install UEFI keys?

You do, using mokutil on Linux (there's probably a way to do it on Windows but I'm not sure why one would?). You don't need to install a shim either, you can sign your kernel yourself, and import your own keys.

Of course, most people don't, for exactly the same reason most people don't compile their own kernel, but the option is there if you feel strongly that there's some benefit to you.

Photovoltaics are still running after a year under Swiss trains

Most house roofs are also at the wrong angle, but panels are still cheap enough that it's worthwhile

Re: The real challenge is regulation

In the UK 22 people were killed trespassing on railways in 2024-2025, so possibly that would offset some of the thievery?

Microsoft intros tech that rebuilds dead PCs without requiring local copies of Windows

Re: Johnny come lately ?

Microsoft have had their own PXE server for many years now, which works fine for re-imaging machines locally*..

I suspect this new feature doesn't use PXE, but instead boots from the recovery partition on disk, allowing it to download it's install image from the internet. This would allow it to work on basically any network, not just one where PXE (and DHCP option 66 etc.) have been set up.

* Although apparently they've deliberately blocked it from deploying Win11, thanks Microsoft.

New tool gives CLIs a warm and GUI feeling instead

Re: Cheat sheet

Handbrake is already basically a GUI wrapper for ffmpeg.

Security boss thought MFA would be too much security

Re: CYA

In the UK they can show a penis on the evening news, as long as it is post-9pm and flaccid. (I don't think a penis ever has been shown on the news, except perhaps Michelangelo's David or similar)

Re: CYA

I do hope that they have a UK tribute act called Zed Zed Top.

Connect, disconnect, or just have a lovely beer

Re: It does look like the Disney castle

Full credits to the builders then, managing to build it a hundred years before Disney, maybe they used a time machine?

Raspberry Pi OS gets a new kernel but apparently not a new version number

Re: Numerology

This was one of the reasons given for Microsoft jumping from Win 8 to Win 10, too many programs were looking for a '9' at the start of the version string, and assuming that meant Win 95 or 98.

Blue Origin insists New Glenn will rise from the ashes this year after explosion deleted launchpad

Or to put it another way, even SpaceX themselves aren't confident yet that they can relight the engines for long enough to reach orbit, and then safely de-orbit. Given that one out of three engines failed on their most recent test flight, they're probably correct.

Sysadmin broke hardware worth more than he made in a month – and lied his way out of the mess

I used to work at a PC manufacturer, and one day I had to fetch a bunch of hard drives for imaging. They were in the warehouse, and were in a box on an upper shelf, just above my head. I managed to drop one, from above head height, directly onto a plywood floor.

Somehow it imaged just fine, and the finished computer passed QC, so I guess some hard drives are pretty tough. Or maybe it failed after a few weeks and the customer had to send it back. It wasn't my responsibility by that point.

BOFH: Amnesty means never having to say you're sorry

Re: The Colour of Magic…

Last clear-out we got rid of a machine that a senior dev had be hoarding holding onto for decades. It had been running Windows XP.

He never did need it for anything...

NASA management wants a word and won't say why

Re: Ages to get ready

Blue Origin do have their Mk 1 lander mostly ready to go, except that is designed as a purely robotic mission, and doesn't have a docking port, or an airlock etc etc. They're proposing to build a sort of Mk 1.5 ship, with a crew section and docking port, but lacking any of the other bits it will need to land on the Moon. (And might be launched on a Falcon Heavy if New Glen isn't flying again by then)

Which sounds a bit half-arsed until you get to:

Space X's contribution to Artemis 3 will apparently be a Starship with a docking port attached (but nothing behind the docking port).

There don't seem to be any plans to test the space suits outside, so they could just use the promo/PR models they have right now.

See, if you lower your expectations to rock bottom, then they're much more achievable!

Tesco is sprinting to quit VMware and Broadcom despite rapid migration risks

Broadcom execs have told The Register they have an enormous dislike for providing extended support for old products

Maybe they should have thought of that before they bought VMWare and all their perpetual licenses.

Still, I'm sure the executives that decided to torpedo their own business like this, have all received bonuses and will feel no negative effects

Commodore gets into the phone biz with Sailfish-powered retro 'Callback'

For me, the Commodore name evokes chronic mismanagement and bungling. The good hardware they produced was almost in spite of the company, rather than because of it.

Of course, this company isn't the original Commodore, but personally I'd have tried to buy the Amiga brand, instead of Commodore.

This is your BIOS speaking. Please fix me. Your PC is broken

I had to look up the error codes for an almost-new Dell just last week, although they blink the power LED different colours instead of using a beep. My home machine has a swanky motherboard with couple of 8-segment displays, which display a hex code as it boots.

If your sex life is dead, you can blame Steve Jobs

Re: The bait of the clicks

My thoughts as well, but it doesn't explain why the rates didn't decline before the iphone was introduced.

Listen up, England. The Health Secretary is going to be data controller for everyone's Single Patient Record

Re: NHS App

pay a monthly subscription to a third party software provider to facilitate your tax returns

but it works so well in the US!

/s

'Please do not vibe f--- up this software': Broken backups spark AI coding row in rsync project

Although, I've known a few people who have made good money by writing code that nobody except themselves can maintain.

Techie expensed a bag of oranges and then juiced up a stupid security incident

My last job wouldn't let us use our own cars (because most people's insurance didn't cover driving for work, just commuting) so we'd either get a hire car, or be told to take one of the manager's company cars. After all, they were already being paid for by the company, so it was technically cheaper than a hire car.

All sorts of fast Jags, Mercs and Beemers were 'tested' on site visits. I'd usually leave the manager an empty fuel tank to fill too. As they also had company credit cards, and it saved me having to fill out for expenses :)

Plex appeal fades as Lifetime Pass jumps to $750

Re: How does "pay for remote access" work exactly?

I don't know how prevalent it is these days, but remote access used to be widely used for piracy. Set up a media library, then charge people for remote access and you've got your own pirate Netflix.

From what I can tell, there's only one person working on Jellyfin's Android client, presumably for free, so it feels a bit churlish to criticise it. That said, it does need some work, I just wish I had the faintest idea of how to contribute.

PostgreSQL backup tool gets some backup of its own after sole maintainer sounds alarm

Given how much money Amazon have made from AWS, it must be really hard for them to pay a fraction of a a fraction of a percent to someone to support the software that's made them millions (billions?).

/s

Mystery Microsoft bug leaker keeps the zero-days coming

Re: Windows is a single point of failure.

Linux is the single point of failure where I work (been updating a lot of kernels the last few weeks).

If you only use one OS, then by definition you have a SPoF.

On-call techie decided job was done and hit the bottle – just before his pager went off

Re: Crash of a different sort

My brother had a TV that would start up without any red, unless thumped moderately-hard with the ball of your thumb (palm slap was too soft, punch was too hard) in a right hand direction, on the top left corner. To get the speaker to stop it's occasional buzzing took a soft palm slap upwards on the lower right side.

Some times percussive maintenance requires a lot of calibration.

NASA fleshes out Artemis III, the Moon mission that won't go to the Moon

So, I imagine they'll almost certainly postpone if neither lander is ready before SLS, but there's going to a be a whole lot of posturing if one lander is ahead of the other. Neither lander has flown yet, and I'd put money on both being only partially finished even if they are used on Artemus 3 (ie just manoeuvring, docking, air lock and basic life support and not much else).

And of course, each is being run by one of the world's richest men, both of whom have fragile egos and hate each other.

There's going to be so much bribing lobbying on both sides to try and influence NASA one way or the other, and this is just the warm up for who's lander will be used for the crewed landing...

Lab worker built a fake PC to nuke his lunch

Every single lab I have been into*, has a sign on the break room fridge saying words to the effect of "Do NOT put experiments in the fridge! Food only!".

Which is why you should never trust scientists near your packed lunch.

* Even particle physics labs, which honestly raises even more questions.

Re: reheating water in a microwave

I remember watching an old guy I knew pop his cold coffee in the microwave to heat it up, then forget about the coffee for a while, then remember again and pop the microwave back on for another 30s, over and over again.

Eventually he remembered what he was doing and took the coffee out of the microwave. He went to drop a sweetener into it, and as it hit the top of the, now superheated, coffee, it exploded straight upwards to hit the ceiling. He was lucky that his hand was mostly out of the way, so he only got a couple of small burns.

For those that haven't encountered this; it's possible to use a microwave to heat water to much hotter than 100C, without it boiling. It just sits there looking like slightly hot water, until it's disturbed, whereupon it basically explodes, spraying scalding water/drink everywhere. It is not something you want to be anywhere near, so please be careful heating drinks up in a microwave.

BOFH: Nothing says 'business continuity' like a dry wooden broom

Re: Outages

I got through three noname PCI modem cards, all fried by lightning, but they all did a great job of taking the hit and leaving the PC just fine.

Re: Outages

Zip-ties have their place too, and they're water proof.

(To be clear, their place is NOT attaching network cables to a rack, and definitely not if you're going to cut the tail off at an angle, leaving me a sharp edge to cut my hands on)

The network password was a key plot point in one of the most famous movies of all time

Re: First ElReg article… Lack of IT literacy and clarity…

"The customer said the staff were having problems remembering it, so can you change all the passwords to 12345 please".

Actual email I have received.

Did I do it? Yup.

After making sure I had it in writing, and mentioned it to my boss of course. You can only lead users to water, you cannot make them drink.

Chrome silently installs a 4 GB local LLM on your computer

Re: Opt out of what?

In Settings>System there's a toggle for "On-device AI" that you can turn off.

Re: "Google Chrome will steal 4 GB of disk space ... unless you opted out."

It does a 'performance' check first, and I assume that includes a check on free space.

(PS, it's stored in ~/.config/google-chrome/ in Linux, or at least it is on my Mint systems)

Unexpected item in Windows' bagging area

My nearest pharmacy is inside a supermarket, so honestly it probably won't be too long before they start offering testicle chekups.

Privatising the NHS seems to be a cross-party goal these days.

User found the perfect formula to make Excel misbehave

Re: Analogue clocks

And then someone types 10.50 and you have to guess what they meant.

Britain's £6B armoured sickener Ajax cleared for duty despite injuring troops

That description also covers basically every existing tank and APC etc. and presumably those don't have the same problems?

Although I wouldn't rule out some of the symptoms being the combination of a somewhat noisier and bumpier ride than the soldiers are used to, and the suggestion that they might feel ill.

Ubuntu Resolute Raccoon spits out Xorg, but still lets you run X11 apps

Re: systemd and Canonical have both embraced age/identity verification

"long term, the only hope is Hurd"

Ah yes, long term. When will it be production ready?

At the same time as the Year of Linux on the Desktop of course.