Posts by Andy 68

OpenAI model modifies shutdown script in apparent sabotage effort

Re: I'm sorry Dave

Computer, if you don't open that exit hatch pretty damn pronto, I shall go straight to your major databanks with a very large axe and give you a reprogramming you'll never forget.

Microsoft-backed AI out-forecasts hurricane experts without crunching the physics

Re: Dependeny problems

We demand rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty!

Bad trip coming for AI hype as humanity tools up to fight back

Re: Tech bros gonna tech bro

"got it bad, got it bad, got it bad

I'm hot for teacher."

-- David Lee Roth

The most important experimental distro you've never heard of gets new project lead

Re: Home directory

> One size does not fit all.

Yeah, absolutely - I'm not saying it does.. But no laptop in the 3 or 4 companies I've worked for in the last 20+ years will have had more than one actual human user account set up - obviously there are admin accounts and service accounts etc. .

That's tens of thousands of laptops, and the vast majority of them are not linux. Windows and Mac have the same structure. (At least I know Windows does. Not 100% sure about Mac)

>This may come as a surprise but laptop distros need to cater for more than just your way of doing things.

You're missing my point. I'm not saying "My way is right and you've all got it wrong". I'm saying it could do with a re-think. Operating system use has changed in the last decades.

> I don't want it running out of my own home directory.

Your home directory which is where everything, by default, saves your Documents. In - in /home/doctorsyntax/Documents, which, if you're following the corporate security standards I've seen, is encrypted to the user login. So you have to save your presentation somewhere else. What I'm suggesting would actually help you.

Home directory

I think the very concept of a home directory is one that needs a good re-think. Along the same lines as Hisham says in one of the later links, and what Liam alludes to, I think there's so much less of a need for it any more.

No-one else is going to use my laptop. In the 20+ years since I first used Fedora in a work environment to now, with Mint, no-one else has ever used my laptop(s) - in some places it can be a sacking offence. IMHO the only need for a home area is to store things like ssh keys. Things like .m2 directories with GBs of "stuff", applications that store temp and configuration files and downloaded extras should be in a more general Apps or Data area.

The same problem as windows c:\Users

It sounds like Gobo might be the first step towards this.

Tech support session saved files, but probably ended a marriage

Re: constant referring back to his work there

That took me longer than it should have.

ok, ok... $PREVIOUS_JOB

Re: constant referring back to his work there

I hate it when people do this.

An ex-boss would start 80% of discussions with "When I was at $EX-JOB, we did..."

I did eventually ask him to stop doing that and to his credit he mostly did.

I still left 2 months later :-)

eBPF. It doesn't stand for anything. But it might mean bank

Re: Cost Savings

Oh come on, they're not that bad.

He'd at least get a waffle party, surely?

HP ditches 15-minute wait time policy due to 'feedback'

Re: Irate customers

Did it also have an extra, redundant hole in the other end?

'Abandoned' astro takes recordbreaking ninth spacewalk

Re: With lyrics...

Sweetest sight ever seen

BOFH: How to innosplain your way through an audit

Re: Innosplains of daily adventures

s/provide/create/

Atlassian's Bitbucket Cloud went down 'hard' today

> The om;y worse set of tools....

You've not used Gerrit, then?

/spit

SpaceX resets ‘Days Since Starship Exploded’ counter to zero

caused the ship to RUD

Please, no, "To RUD" is not a verb.... please?

Tech support warrior left cosplay battle and Trekked to the office

What's the weirdest outfit you've worn to a tech support job?

Dashed hopes and fading memories are my daily Tech Supp uniform

Opening up the WinAmp source to all goes badly as owners delete entire repo

Re: CVS?

If the repo that I've just found on gh is legit....

The BuildTools directory has a copy of the tortoiseSVN msi and git (for windows) in it, so there's likely to have been *some* version control in place.

Google trains a GenAI model to simulate Doom's game engine in real-ish time

It's a labour-saving device

Dishwashers washed tedious dishes for you, thus saving you the bother of washing them yourself, video recorders watched tedious television for you, thus saving you the bother of looking at it yourself; AI plays tedious games for you, thus saving you the bother of playing them yourself

CrowdStrike file update bricks Windows machines around the world

Re: German rail

DB now owns a significant chunk of the UK rail and bus services..... coincidence?

Related?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cv2g5lvwkl2o Multiple major Aussie systems down....?

What happens when What3Words gets lost in translation?

If you have any clout left there, can you please ask the team that does the OS Maps app (which I love), make the text actually readable, that pops up when you long-tap on a map and displays your OS reference and lat/long. It's a great feature, but useless as it's illegible

30 years on, Debian is at the heart of the world's most successful Linux distros

I'd happily read a comparison of Proxmox and VirtualBox - especially under the situation you describe.

Viasat probe into ailing $700M satellite casts shadow over Q1 results

"We understand the risks involved in space systems, and have insurance."

Tell that to Jebediah...

BOFH: You can be replaced by a robot or get your carbon footprint below Big Dave's

All too familiar.... :-)

"you'd just have to program it to say What? And I don't understand and Where's the tea?—who'd know the difference?"

"What?" cried Arthur, backing away still further.

"See what I mean?" said Zaphod

The ZX81 finally gets the keyboard it deserves

Re: Well...

And Frogger.

Laboriously typed in from one of the mags, during lunchtime, while desperately fending off cries of "NERDS!" and malicious attempts to jiggle the power cable.

Andy

Here's how to remotely take over a Ferrari...account, that is

Re: Parking your starship

Nope. It could have been Hotblack's Stunt ship, but that depends on whether you're going for the TV/Book version, or if you're going for ultimate geek-cred points with the original Radio version

Elon Musk to step down as Twitter CEO: Help us pick his replacement

Re: The obvious choice

I hear there's a lettuce that's looking for a new role

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

Re: My neighbour's got one

On his patio?

Well can't you just keep shouting back: "Alexa, play Devastator" ?

NASA uses occult means to spot tiny moon orbiting asteroid

Re: 3 miles? That's Clanger territory!

I was thinking The Little Prince, but yeah...

We've got a photocopier and it can copy anything

Re: Correction from "Rich"

Too late. I was so confused, I moved on from coffee to somewhat more volatile beverages.

Send alka seltzer and a taxi

Don't know if it's just that my coffee hasn't kicked in yet...

but I'm confused.

The copier techs who 'Rich' was replacing, called out a copier tech to clear a paper jam?

Moar coffee needed.

Dell and Ubuntu certify latest model of XPS 13 ultrabook

Re: I had hoped from the photo...

The UK site has the 9315 with the option to have Ubuntu pre-installed - is that the same as "certified" ?

This comment brought to by a 9310 running Mint perfectly. It used to have Ubuntu on it, but it refused to upgrade to 20.04 (or maybe 22.04... I forget), Snap kept annoying the *** out of me, and Liam's previous articles persuaded me to take the jump. I love it to bits.

I don't think Dell do the Developer version for the UK - at least I've never been able to find it. The 9320 seems to go by the name XPS 13 Plus over here, and it does look horrific ( https://www.dell.com/en-uk/shop/laptops/xps-13-plus/spd/xps-13-9320-laptop )

Demand for smartphones is drying up

Re: Peak Phone

What I think you and pretty much all the commentards above are missing, is that we all are no longer the target audience.

We have two post-18 teenagers in the house, and they absolutely do want the bigger screen and faster processors for gaming and watching TikTok. They do want better cameras for selfies to be uploaded straight to IG/TikTok. They want data plans that will let them stream spotify to them constantly wherever they are.

They don't use SMS, email or the telephone - ever.

And they're going to be around for a lot longer than most of us.

First-ever James Webb Space Telescope image revealed

Re: Frustrating...

Well, ASP, but upvoted anyway

Arrogant, subtle, entitled: 'Toxic' open source GitHub discussions examined

Re: Eh?

Elementary OS has paying customers too.

Broadcom sketches out VMware ambitions that stretch from mainframe to cloud

Re: Reputation...

Genuine question..... how on earth do you let your broadband supplier dictate what runs on your machines?

My broadband supplier is there to supply me with broadband. They have no idea what is running this side of their box on the wall.

Unbelievably clever: Redbean 2 – a single-file web server that runs on six OSes

Re: Real computer science

Thanks Mike.... my head now hurts

Atos CEO resigns after board proposes splitting the company

"Age pyramid"

WTActualF? IBM 2.0

Google now requires two staff to sign off each Go change

Gerrit

I know this is not the thrust of TFA, but isn't this the logical conclusion of Gerrit?

I've only worked at one place that used it, but all I could see was a bureaucratic sludge on top of git.

It _looked_ like something designed to empower PHBs/control freaks/God coders to engage in the development process.

Genuine question - it could be either the implementation I saw, or my inability to see its strengths....

1,000-plus AI-generated LinkedIn faces uncovered

You can also cheat, I think, and use the picture name (check the url when you click) to identify the real one

FBI seizes $3.6bn in Bitcoin after New York 'tech couple' arrested over Bitfinex robbery

Re: A Real Name

The Rock....

The Hard Place....

Re: Am I a bad person...

Yes.

Because you lasted 5 seconds

Config cockup leaves Reg reader reaching for the phone

When forgetting 2 simple characters (-r) means a long walk

Shutdown now <enter>

Oh bugger

BOFH: You. Wouldn't. Put. A. Test. Machine. Into. Production. Without. Telling. Us.

IT'S NOT PRODUCTION

"IT'S NOT PRODUCTION!" he snaps back with some urgency

This... so much.

From a frazzled Tech Support

Sir Tim Berners-Lee and the BBC stage a very British coup to rescue our data from Facebook and friends

Re: BBC

I read that as "pro-cake"

I'd Thumbs-Up that one....

Macmillan best-biscuit list unexpectedly promotes breakfast cereal to treat status

Your analysis is correct in absolutely every particular - because it accords with my own opinion^H^H^H^H^H^Hfact.

There is no reason for argument in the comments - this matter is not up for debate, and closed.

Electron-to-joule conversion formulae? Cute. Welcome to the school of hard knocks

Re: "a multitude of fresh qualifications counted for naught"

"how do you pass those loops over the top of a tree or telegraph pole?"

You don't - you cut the bottom off and pass the loops from the bottom

The Register speaks to one of the designers behind the latest Lego Ideas marvel: A clockwork solar system

Re: BrisBricks

Your brother-in-law, your sister-in-law and you.... three grown men.

Apart from the fact that this sounds like one of those "My brother's father is my aunt's cousin" puzzles, there is a whole host of stories underneath those few words....

Q: Post-lockdown, where would I like to go? A: As far away from my own head as possible

Re: Babylon Zoo

> Midge & Chris

Yes, yes, yes... alright. But it was on the tape accompanying the tour programme booklet on the Lament tour in 84, so that counts as Ultravox in my book :-)

> The Bloodied Sword.

We'll have to agree to disagree on that one.

I had it on tape decades ago, which obviously got lost, then bought the vinyl 2nd hand last January and had it converted to MP3 a couple of months ago.

I absolutely love it.

Not heard of the Max Headroom stuff - thanks - will go searching.

Re: Babylon Zoo

Ditto the Ultravox really-really-short soundtrack to the 80s Levis "rivet" ad....

Very much a shame - I'd love a full length version of that....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXSvIrPfqV0

International Space Station actually spun one-and-a-half times by errant Russian module's thrusters

Re: You missed a tagline there

o7

Revealed: Perfect timings for creation of exemplary full English breakfast

Re: On the go ...

From the Ace to the H.

Turn up at the Ace when they open, have a fry-up.

Ride off to the H Cafe, collecting points for the most B roads and the most numbers in the road's name, in time for a bacon roll and a crappy coffee