Posts by David 132

Apple debuts iPhone 16, Watch Series 10, assorted AirPods

Once upon a time, there was a thriving third-party ecosystem in find-everything applets for the original Mac OS 8.

The best known of these was a program called "Watson"; purchasers loved it, because it made it super easy to find anything (apps, documents) on a Mac.

Then Apple themselves introduced similar functionality, and with great creativity, named it "Sherlock".

At a stroke, it destroyed the third-party market for such tools.

Hence the term "Sherlocking" - shorthand for, "other people are making a quiet living adding this functionality to Apple products, and now Apple see revenue that isn't theirs and want it."

FTC urged to stop tech makers downgrading devices after you've bought them

Re: If it requires an app to function or control

I could “move myself” when brushing my teeth, but it seems like it’d be much less effort, and less exhausting, to keep my head motionless and move the toothbrush instead…?

Re: Car thing

>Am I hopelessly outdated because I remember bad treatment and avoid it in future?

Possibly, but you're not alone. I still have Mazda and Barclays Bank on my personal boycott list, because of actions they took almost 40 years ago that affected my family.

Some families, generation to generation, pass down valuable antiques, or photographs of sentimental value. I pride myself on my carefully-nurtured selection of heirloom grudges :)

Re: Reminds me of TV sets

I believe it's a form of picture frame freqency smoothing, interpolating frames between those actually transmitted, to smooth and "improve" motion.

Gives an unsettlingly smooooooth motion effect, which isn't to everyone's liking, but is reminiscent of certain daytime soap operas.

Either that, or next week I will wake up and it'll turn out that this whole comment was just a dream.

Re: Reminds me of TV sets

>20" HDMI cable [...] The HDMI cable runs downstairs to the basement...

Dolls' house?

Or inadvertent mix-up of feet and inches?

If every PC is going to be an AI PC, they better be as good at all the things trad PCs can do

Re: But what...

And a Co-Pilot key on the keyboard! Don’t forget that!

Re: they have a purple LED

Oh, Hush.

White House thinks it's time to fix the insecure glue of the internet: Yup, BGP

>Remind me ... how many billions in crap currency have become lost, stolen or strayed in the last ten years?

I'm certain you already know about this one Jake, but:

https://www.web3isgoinggreat.com

$75.054 Billion as I write this, and ticking ever upwards.

Re: File size limits are a thing of the past!

Well, in the spirit of sharing and friendliness, if anyone wants access to all my data, I am at IP address 127.0.0.1 and my main drive is designated “C:” - help yourselves!

Firefox 130 lands with a yawn, but 131 beta teases a long-awaited feature

Re: Nice curves

> and Ed25519 is definitely my favourite signature algorithm,

Personally I'll stick with Ed209.

"Sign this email! You have 30 seconds to comply! You have 25 seconds to comply!" ...etc...

It's an older standard, but it certainly gets results.

As the most viable alternative to the Chrom* hegemony, I'm most certainly sticking with Firefox. I've never noticed the memory-usage or performance issues that are the most frequently-levelled criticisms; I've been using FF since its inception and I twitch when forced to use just about anything else.

The one annoyance that riles me - irrationally, I know - is that on Linux, if FF is updated in the background by the package manager, the running instance of FF then refuses to load new tabs and demands to be closed and restarted.

Yes, I know there are perfectly sound and logical technical reasons for that behaviour. And I can't think of a better alternative given the way the OS and the package manager work.

But I can still bitch and complain, right?

Intel's 120 TOPS Lunar Lake AI PC chips have landed

Re: Ω

I wonder if it's solid Core, or stranded Core?

Re: New CPUs, bold new claims?

Don't worry, it'll be thoroughly reviewed on Hexus.net... oh, wait.

[Also sad face with tear.]

Re: Rumour has it...

The company did not have many CPU design teams & architects (I know one of the latter) to begin with, so that is alarming indeed.

Re: Rumour has it...

Are we past the days of “real men have fabs”?

Microsoft decides it's a good time for bad UI to die

Re: Yes, Settings is missing bits

For Windows 10 at least: Settings -> Network & Internet -> WiFi -> Manage Known Networks.

That's with the 22H2 that I have on this box. It's quite possibly different on Windows 11, or indeed other builds of 10.

If you'd rather use the Registry, it is - I believe, but not 100% certain:

HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\NetworkList\Profiles\{GUID list, each one contains a ProfileName key, some but not all are WLAN profiles}

Re: Yes, Settings is missing bits

There was a quote in popular circulation at the time of Windows 8 and the abomination that was Metro, uh, TIFKAM...

"Microsoft, we wanted familiar ways to do undiscovered new things - but Windows 8 is instead, undiscovered new ways to do familiar things."

Chinese boffins advocate nuking nearby asteroids – it’s the only way to be sure

Re: Data centres and AI and 'the end of the world'

It’s this era’s “phoning up the Speaking Clock from a payphone to check the time, instead of looking at your wristwatch”

- what about a body that doesn't cause extinction, but is just really bad? I can certainly see lots of people arguing over the precedent it would set, and who actually suffers more harm and whether it's worth it to mitigate that. Meanwhile of course, the cost to send the weapons goes up as it gets closer...

Feel free to draw comparisons with our collective approach to anthropogenic climate change.

Re: The lure of the BRB

Someone reading your comment may or may not have, as a very small child decades ago, innocently asked his grandma and grandpa “what does this red button here by your front door do?” and pressed it just as Grandpa was uttering the words “DON’T PRESS IT!”.

It may or may not have been an alarm panic button wired to the local police station, and aforementioned incident may or may not have gone down in family lore.

(*looks innocent*)

HPE to pursue $4B claim against estate of Mike Lynch over Autonomy acquisition

And living with Lord Lucan and Elvis in a double-decker bus on the moon, taking Shergar for daily rides to the blue cheese mines & Mars Landing film-set?

iGulu F1 could be the hoppy ending to your home-brew horror show

> Wish I knew to get the beer kits Boots sold in the late '70s though. They made decent beer without too much effort…

To be fair, something fermented in a bath - using the bathwater - would have tasted better than much of the mainstream beer available in those benighted, pre-CAMRA-success days. Watney’s Red Barrel or Party 7, anyone?

Have we stopped to think about what LLMs actually model?

Re: A tech CEO who has predicted that AI would be smarter than humans by 2026

To shamelessly steal the punchline from an old SMBC cartoon strip, we could easily get machines to match human-level intelligence in only a few years - by adding massive amounts of lead to the drinking water supply.

Microsoft PC accessories rise from the grave just in time for Christmas

Re: Oi!

Downvoted? My word. Someone around here hasn’t had enough hugs lately.

Re: Oi!

Then you are bad and your opinions are bad and you should feel bad.

(I’m not the one who downvoted you. I can see both points of view on most matters. Except for Atari ST enthusiasts. They are just wrong.)

Alas, no "Internet Keyboard Pro"

I still use an "Internet Keyboard Pro" from circa 1997 as my daily typertool. Wrist-rest, nicely angled, no "ergonomic" split-layout nonsense, and the joys of a built-in unpowered USB 1.1 hub - perfect for the Microsoft mouse wireless dongle.

There are still a few out there for sale, either from fleabay or as NOS on Amazon, but it would be nice to see it re-introduced. Albeit perhaps with USB 2, 3, or dare I dream, USB-C ports :)

Feds claim sinister sysadmin locked up thousands of Windows workstations, demanded ransom

Fortunately, the police were a lert.

Dodgy google searches

FTFA: ”(Note to self: Don't Google ‘how to dispose of a body without getting caught.’)”

Indeed. Instead, you should know to shoot a quick IM or e-mail to Simon Travaglia, the recognized expert on such things around here.

Microsoft hosts a security summit but no press, public allowed

Re: Keynote message...

"...now, who's got a spare intern not currently doing much that they can volunteer for the task?"

"Transparency"

" 'My motives, as ever, are entirely transparent.', said Lord Vetinari.

Hughnon Ridcully reflected that 'entirely transparent' meant either that you could see right through them, or that you couldn't see them at all.”

TikTok isn't protected by Section 230 in 10-year-old’s ‘blackout challenge’ death

Re: Excuse me whilst I......

Now we know you’re a hallucinating AI model, because there’s no way an Astra diesel could get up to 100mph even if you pushed it out of a cruising Hercules.

Dick's Sporting Goods discloses cyberattack

Was it malicious?

...or just a cock up?

Microsoft Bing Copilot accuses reporter of crimes he covered

Re: Copilot accuses reporter of crimes

> The AI Team

Why does this AI image inference system keep generating video and pictures of jeeps overturning and exploding, yet with the human occupants still climbing out unscathed?

Why does the AI insist that a few pieces of scrap steel, an acetylene torch, 30 minutes, and a Renault 5, are functionally equivalent to an armoured mobile gun platform??

Re: AI _is_ just overhyped statistics

It's glorified Markov chains, with a sprinkling of Marketing fairy-dust and exciting buzzwords.

Bargain-hunting boss saw his bonus go up in a puff of self-inflicted smoke

Re: Beige Box

A former colleague and old friend of mine loves to relate a war-story from his time as a 2nd-level field service engineer for a large computer company back in the early 80s. I relay it now; any inaccuracies are probably mine, and I apologise in advance.

The company had supplied some 386 - possibly, Multibus - based server systems to a customer near Oxford who ran their own small-scale nuclear pile for research purposes (well, that narrows it down a bit doesn't it? Rhymes with "tarwell"...).

The customer complaint was that every evening, regular as clockwork, these new systems would crash.

After weeks of back-and-forth, with the first-level engineer replacing PSU after PSU to no avail, my friend was called in to investigate. He signed into the site late in the afternoon, and watched the systems.

Power to the campus was provided by the aforementioned nuclear pile. On one wall of the office, there was a 7-segment readout that showed the voltage output being supplied to the building - 240V, or thereabouts within that range.

5 o'clock came and went. All the servers were still running happily.

The secretary switched off her electric typewriter and 5-bar electric fire. Other workers in the building switched off their bench supplies and work lights and other accessories.

As this happened, my friend watched as the voltage readout slowly ticked upwards... 245... 250...260...300...

When it hit around 320V, the server keeled over with an unpleasant sound.

Yes, the nuclear pile had insufficient limiting on its output; without a load being present, it ran higher and higher, a shortcoming that until then had gone unnoticed!

I have chosen the most appropriate icon -->

Re: Free Vending

Thermotron test chamber [...] Our techs were known to fast cool their beverages at the start of shift by tossing them in the -40° chamber for a few minutes.

Elsewhere in Science, cutting-edge research uses far more esoteric and expensive cooling systems that can reach temperatures in the single-digit Kelvin range, in an ongoing - and so far, fruitless - quest to make mass-market US "beers" drinkable. Representatives from Anheuser-Busch refused to comment.

Re: Too, too common an issue

Get out. Kindly leave the stage. And take your omitted mëtal ümlaut with you.

Re: Not blown board, just one chip

True. My first foray into overclocking was fiddling with the jumpers on my Pentium motherboard to change the core speed from 75MHz up to the heady heights of first 90, then - emboldened - 100MHz. A whole 25MHz, or, yes, 33%.

As a bonus that tweak also boosted the PCI clock from 25 up to the correct 33MHz, so it was doubly worthwhile!

Ah yes, those BBC B’s and Masters were built like tanks… necessary, given that they were expected to be used by grubby little schoolkids.

My own alma mater had a room full of them, closely guarded by Mr Higgins the maths/computer teacher.

One lunchtime I was messing around with a giant horseshoe magnet that a friend had brought in, and found that it made lovely swirly psychedelic patterns when applied to the screen of the Microvitec Cub RGB monitors.

I was told subsequently by another friend who was in the post-lunch Computing class that the still-distorted displays caused much muttering and beard-scratching from Mr Higgins. Fortunately, they degaussed and resolved themselves before too long, so I don’t feel excessively guilty, but Mr Higgins, if you’re reading this after 30+ years… sorry!

Re: "usual black-and-white Gateway boxes"

BTX was actually a good form-factor, but struggled to gain traction because the mass market was full-in in ATX by then. BTX solved a lot of the airflow & cooling problems inherent in ATX, the older standard being conceived in an era before multi-hundred-watt GPUs. Mind you, once CPUs calmed down a bit from the insanity of the Pentium 4’s power requirements, some of that pain went away, which further undermined the case for BTX.

Source: I know the guy who co-designed the BTX standard.

Re: Snap, crackle, and pop

I have an old friend (hi WR!) who has an uncanny ability to destroy PC hardware. He’s very useful for user testing.

One day years ago, I was at his house and we were upgrading his PC. While I put the drives into their mounting cage, I delegated the installation of the DDR2 RAM to him. The modules are keyed so there’s no possible way it can go wrong, right?

First time I have ever seen a DIMM actually glowing on its socket contact pads, as a thin wisp of magic smoke curled upwards.

No, I still have no idea how he managed it.

Re: Free Vending

An alternative solution to the coffee-maker problem would have been to tell Security that they were welcome to help themselves to a free cup when on night patrol. Which, let’s be realistic, they were probably already doing anyway, but making it “sanctioned” would also have brought them on-side.

I speak from my experience of working with our onsite security teams at my former-former employer in Wiltshire… it was amazing how many little regulatory impediments could be magicked away with a few bottles of beer or a personal PC upgrade or two. It got to the point where I’d walk in through the entrance lobby and the goon on duty would sternly say “David! A word?” and as everyone else around would blanch and wonder what the heck I’d done, the Security chap would furtively pass a bottle of wine or his son’s brokenPlaystation out from under his desk, for repair. Either that or they’d want me to man the lobby for them for a few mins while they went off for a smoko :)

Re: Not blown board, just one chip

Ah, the days when 2MHz counted as “overclocking”.

Nowadays it’s a tiny rounding error. Your new 3.8GHz machine runs in your motherboard at 3.798GHz - would you notice, or care?

Newport? :)

Do you mean Pennsylvania, Gloucestershire? Lovely little village, I’ve driven through it many times en route to Bath, but I never knew it had a university, let alone a hand-egg team.

AMD internal data reportedly offered for sale

How unfortunate...

> ...criminal groups IntelBroker...

What an unfortunate name for a cybercrime outfit involved in stealing AMD trade secrets.

I know Team Blue are having a tough time of it at the moment, but surely not...!

Benchmarks show even an old Nvidia RTX 3090 is enough to serve LLMs to thousands

Re: Soooo.

For my computing, I use a timing signal from the moon. It works for me, but call it lunar-tick if you will…

Lego's Concorde is the only supersonic jet you can build for the price of a fancy dinner

Re: What is the max skin temperature?

Show-offs with more money than sense.

Those of us with financial prudence do the same thing on a Ryanair A320 for a fraction of the price.

Re: What is the max skin temperature?

What, so _skintemp could be stored as a 7-bit uint?

So... if any part of Concorde's skin ever reached 128°C, it would instantly flash-freeze?