Posts by David 132

Contain your Windows apps inside Linux Windows

Re: hiding virtual machine

“…forwarding a pci ethernet card for the MAC addresses linked to licenses”

Most hypervisors allow the mac address of the virtual Ethernet adapters to be manually specified/overridden, or am I misunderstanding something?

It’s been fixed.

Future visitors to this page will have no idea what we’re all on about.

Yes, that gave me a double-take as well. I don't think "consumer desktop virtualization on an x86 PC" was even a thing in '94, although I'm sure someone'll chime in to prove me wrong :)

The article that the quoted text links to says 2024, so I'll assume it's a typo or brain-fart on the part of the author.

AI agent seemingly tries to shame open source developer for rejected pull request

Re: intent

'And how does "*It has been 60 years after all." make you feel?'

>_

30+ Chrome extensions disguised as AI chatbots steal users' API keys, emails, other sensitive data

Re: more unexplained wierdness

Funny name for a cat /dev/random ...

Re: Rats

Which is why it's super important to only use browser extensions from the leading AI companies like OpenAI and Anthropic.

These malicious extensions from unknown criminals exfiltrate all your personal info without any scruples or regard to consent, sending it off to who-knows-where for unknown purposes, despite the extension writers' convincing-looking public presence and pinky-promises of having only the highest morals.

Whereas offerings from the aforementioned leading AI companies... um...

Err.

I think I may have become confused. Perhaps I need to reconsider the distinction.

Re: more unexplained wierdness

When I read it, I briefly wondered if the article author was a) speaking in tongues, b) writing for a Wookiee audience, c) using steganography, or d) suffering from a severe throat infection.

But I think they're actually alphabetic UUIDs for the Chrome extensions.

Reviving a CIDCO MailStation – the last Z80 computer

Re: Nostalgia meets modern hardware

My ZX Spectrum Next (3.5-to-28MHz Z80, 2MB RAM) uses a Pi Zero (1GHz ARM, 512MB RAM) as an accelerator board. At the moment all it does is accelerate the loading of certain compressed tape files, but it definitely has potential for more.

How Microsoft's legal eagles wrangled Happy Days for Windows 95

Re: How the Wheezer musicvideo was precieved in Germany first...

Knight Rider yes...

Because of the Hoff's God-like celebrity status in the German-speaking world?

Seriously, I was in Basel circa 1995, and it seemed like there was a poster of him on every shop wall.

(as an aside, being a fellow fan of 80s US TV shows like that, I was highly amused that in the recent Megan 2.0, there's a bit where the two human protagonists get into a car that's under the control of the AI... and the Knight Rider theme music starts to play. Most appropriate and amusing!)

Yay!

Not as good as his 25 Ways To Quit Smoking though :)

I recall there was a Bill Plympton animated advert for Windows ‘95 at around the same time. My memory tells me that it was included on the CD or the Plus! Pack too, but then, 30-year-old cerebellum is about as reliable for data storage as 30-year-old floppies, so don’t take that as gospel.

Memory price explosion triggers PC buying spree

I knew my mum was canny to spend £50 on that 16KB Sinclair ZX81 RAM pack back in 1982!

Notepad's new Markdown powers served with a side of remote code execution

Re: Sheer lunacy

Edlin, for weenies who can't just use echo text >> file.

(Edit: yeah, yeah, obligatory XKCD)

AI connector for Google Calendar makes convenient malware launchpad, researchers show

Re: Desktop Commander, an MCP server for granting terminal access

For an assistant that will blindly do what it’s told, with no moral judgement as to whether its instructions are good or evil, may I suggest “Igor”?

Kyndryl to review accounting practices as several execs leave

They've obviously not learnt from their parent and failed to sacked enough over 40s

Logyn's Ryn?

>I guess no shared success bonus this year

Well, not for the general mass of employees, obviously; money's tight, we're all in this together, we need to make shared sacrifices, etc etc.

But for Kyndryl senior management, who are having to deal with the inconceivable stress and pressure of these very important & difficult decisions, obviously some small bonuses are necesssary - the company has to pay the best to get the best, right? So a few $million each would be only fair, I think we all agree.

(Note icon. I, too, think this stinks.)

Anthropic's Claude Opus 4.6 spends $20K trying to write a C compiler

“A l’eau, c’est l’heure!”

Microsoft dials up the nagging in Windows, calls it security

Re: Crawl

Indeed, does @ThatOne think we're all made of money? 64GB?!?

More than 135,000 OpenClaw instances exposed to internet in latest vibe-coded disaster

Re: Clueless Users

Pfft. N00b.

“swordfish” or “********”.

Workday CEO Carl Eschenbach clocks out amid job cuts and market jitters

Re: Oh dear

Also:

The company later said it would rehire different roles and skills, intending to "ultimately have the same amount of people working,"

(my emphasis)

Nothing says “we regard our employees as a fungible, hired-by-the-kilo resource” quite like the phrase “amount of people”.

NUMBER of people, fgs.

Summoning the spirit of the BBC Micro with a Pi 500+ and a can of spray paint

Re: Cheaper to get an original Beeb

And neither of you have any idea how much I wanted a Microvitec Cub at that time. Impossibly clear and bright compared to the various TVs I was obliged to use for my Spectrum, and later Amiga, at home.

Re: Memories

a selection of BBC games to go with it...

Fond memories here of playing Repton, and Frak!, the latter in my case with its optional jolly hornpipe music (IYKYK...)

UK council digs deeper into capital assets to keep Oracle project afloat

It prefers to be addressed as "Lord Mandelson".

Microsoft sets Copilot agents loose on your OneDrive files

Re: Windows' Search

Yes, broken, and since Windows 10-or-whatever, further enspittified by the integration of web search.

I was fixing a friend's PC via AnyDesk last week; it's vanilla unmodified Windows 11, and by golly, I'd forgotten how much of a PITA that is.

I wanted to see if he had a particular program installed, so searched for the first few letters of its name in the start menu Search box. Bingo, instant result, the correct icon and everything, so I clicked it... and was taken to a Bing search for the program name. Aaaargh, grawlix grawlix grawlix.

The actual program was installed, it's just that Search hadn't found it because it was buried in the extremely obscure and unusual location of C:\Program Files, I mean honestly, who expects programs to be installed there...

DWP finds Copilot saves civil servants a whopping 19 minutes a day

Re: Copilot is a waste of time

Ouch, you’ve triggered me there. I was in Word the other day when it suddenly popped up in the top-left corner asking for my location. Why? The document’s author swears she didn’t embed any location tracking. What gives? As you said, why TF should Word need to know my location??

“…and now, seeing your email on my phone, I am genuinely conflicted as to which hand I should use to wipe.”

SpaceX halts Falcon 9 flights after second stage anomaly

*Nobbs

*voonerables

Tch, tch. Someone with the username “Patrician” should know these details :)

EU's fishy digital certificate system leaves exporters floundering

Another fintech failure?

(seriously, I am disappointed that the Reg missed that very obvious pun)

Perhaps a QR cod?

DIY AI bot farm OpenClaw is a security 'dumpster fire'

Re: Use case?

though he may have missed some of the - nuances of the job.

"THOSE WOMEN WERE IN THE NIP!!!"

They've bin watching carefully.

Re: Use case?

Just ask Pat Mustard!

Help! Does anyone on the bus know Linux?

Re: Sorry, Not In Service!

>Stuck at rescue prompt means dbus won't even start

The wheels on dbus go round and round, round and round...

OpenClaw patches one-click RCE as security Whac-A-Mole continues

Got to keep that hype-train running until the AI techbros have bled the rest of us dry with increased RAM prices, electricity costs, etc. and cashed out!

Microsoft spends billions on AI, converts just 3.3% of Copilot Chat users

Re: This is amusing

More AI-triggered job-losses and economic destruction, I see.

In this case, the Underpants Gnomes, who would ordinarily be handling the intermediate ("???") step.

Edit: Hah, I left the page open for 40 mins whilst dealing with another issue; this'll teach me to refresh the page before commenting. I see that in the interim, Charlie Clark beat me to a very similar point!

Ah well, I'll leave this up anyway as a testament to my poor commenting-discpline.

Systemd daddy quits Microsoft to prove Linux can be trusted

Re: Honest question

Well, I guess we've found the person responsible for anonymously downvoting all the comments above that dare to criticise Systemd. Keep tilting at those windmills!

Re: Succession?

Gods, no.

Within a week he'd have (badly) reinvented the straws, with his new implementation being 16' long, porous above 220 kelvin, and requiring a complete reformulation of all the drinks in order to maintain compatibility. Reports of severe gum & lip damage from users would be brushed off.

Re: Feature creep

Knew which XKCD that was before I even clicked on it. Good one!

Parachuted - requires networkd, dhcpd, logind, atmosphered, and Flatpakd. Inexplicably fails to work as expected, #WONTFIX.

...and whether he'll share?

Seriously though, I avoid impugning the Reg writers; I think that in this case, the author was just trying to be even-handed and avoid sparking the usual Systemd/Poettering flame-war. And who can blame him?

Re: Feature creep

Bug report: using the command unexpectedly encrypted all my data, my possessions, and even my cat!

Developer Response: Works for me. #WONTFIX.

Beat me to it. Ditto the phrase "leading light" used later - if he is, it's only in the sense that smugglers in Ye Olden Days would set up false navigation lights to lead merchant ships onto the rocks!

Agents gone wild! Companies give untrustworthy bots keys to the kingdom

Long-term thinking?

...AI agents "tend to want to please," and this presents a security problem when they are granted expansive access to highly sensitive corporate info.

"How are we creating and tuning these agents to be suspicious and not be fooled by the same ploys and tactics that humans are fooled with?" he asked...

Confronted with Skynet with its metaphorical finger on the nuclear Armageddon button, or HAL9000 with full control of the vessel... which would you rather deal with, an AI that "wants to please" and obey, or an AI that is suspicious, assumes that you're wrong and it's right, and refuses to comply?

OK, perhaps a silly example, but part of me wonders if enough thought is being given to the fundamentals of AI alignment, given that - if the AI tech-bros' fever-dreams are realised - today's Claude and Grok will become tomorrow's ubiquitous Skynet.

Ah, I'm probably not expressing myself too well. Sucks to be out of coffee!

Crossrail? More like Borkrail...

Re: What's wrong with 'The Circle Line'?

Been there, done that, I'm glad I'm not the only one. Although eventually, I worked it out for myself rather than having someone point it out. I may be slow but I get there in the end :)

Who says Microsoft doesn't innovate?

Give them credit for designing a BSOD screen such that the frowny emoticon :( has its meaning clear whether in landscape or this portrait orientation!

'Ralph Wiggum' loop prompts Claude to vibe-clone commercial software for $10 an hour

Re: Sounds awful

le mi varkiclaflo'i cu culno lo angila

:)

Voyager 2's close encounter with Uranus wasn't in the original plan

Every Futurama fan knows…

…that to stop all the childish jokes, the planet was renamed in the future.

To “Urectum”.

Claude can now disgorge interface elements from other apps

Dorothy Parker, AI analyst 'avant la lettre'

"What Fresh Hell Is This?"

When AI 'builds a browser,' check the repo before believing the hype

Re: Surely not?

The good news is just around the corner - all the industry needs is a few more tens hundreds of $billions and all the power-generating capacity of each country's national grid - sod the proles, they can shiver while they pay for it - and AI nirvana will be upon us! We're so very close! Aaaaannnnnyyy day now!

Emmabuntüs DE 6: A newbie-friendly Linux to help those in need

Re: ¾

It’s fractionally amusing.