Posts by Andy Mac

World's blandest man steps down from CEO job to spend more time in tastefully appointed home

Re: Hey

I’m surprised he didn’t legally change his name to avoid embarrassing The Orange One.

Locked-out iPhone user tells The Reg that Apple is scrambling to fix character flaw passcode bug

Re: Silly question as a non iPhone user

I don’t have iCloud backups enabled either, but I still back up my phone to my home machine and it’s something I do before applying any major update

Claude is getting worse, according to Claude

Re: Anthropic need to massively raise prices

Or subsidise the pleb subscriptions with inflated corporate ones.

AMD's AI director slams Claude Code for becoming dumber and lazier since last update

I used to find myself writing in all caps* to GitHub Copilot as it did stupid and blatantly wrong things. I switched to Claude Code and it was dream. Now I find myself writing all caps to CC. I don’t think my expectations have increased, rather it feels dumber.

*Yes I know there’s no point, but it makes me feel better

NHS staff resist using Palantir software

Re: Degeneration

I expect pretty much everyone but Fred Flintstone prefers USD to rubble.

Head-mounted VR hardware will never happen, says Neal Stephenson - who coined the term ‘metaverse’

I thought Mark Z was already an AI agent doing his job

Google gives Android users a way to install unverified apps if they prove they really, really want to

This, this, this, this and this.

Commentards like to put the boot into MS, and with good reason, but Google et al are doing things 90’s MS only did in their (wet) dreams.

npmx package browser released as alpha to fix pain of using npmjs

Put Your AI Where Your Mouth Is

MS are so heavily pushing AI, they should be demonstrating its effectiveness by showing how quickly they can improve these presumably “low priority” sites and services.

Agile Manifesto turns 25 – just in time for vibe coding to test it

The thing about Agile is that I was doing it long before it was popular. Not because I’m smart or ahead of the curve, but because that’s what every waterfall project degenerated into.

Development would start before Functional Specs were complete. Technical Specs were written after the fact. Changes would be expected immediately, etc etc.

It feels to me like Agile just gave some shape to reality, before becoming loaded down with process and acronyms. Choo choo! All aboard the Agile Release Train!

British Army splashes $86M on AI gear to speed up the battlefield kill chain

“Don’t shoot until you see the whites of their eyes!”

And thus, sunglasses were invented.

Intel's open source future in question as exec says he's done carrying the competition

Re: So...

Are they sure a cat didn’t walk across the keyboard when they wrote out his birth certificate?

No chips for you! Senator wants Americans to get first dibs on GPUs, restrict sales to others

Re: The USA is not our friend or our ally

That’s what you put in the CamelCase

Claude Code's copious coddling confounds cross customers

You’re absolutely right! This article does indeed point that that many LLMs *can* display sycophantic behaviour. Well done!

As ransomware gangs threaten physical harm, 'I am afraid of what's next,' ex-negotiator says

I Read: a boon for people with goats that may be malicious or deceptive

I really should give myself time to wake up before hitting El Reg.

Trump promises he won't put his boot on Musk's neck

The only definition of “deserving” poor I see here are the ones unable to afford a second yacht.

OpenAI deputizes ChatGPT to serve as an agent that uses your computer

“OpenAI saves its cautionary boilerplate about potential downsides until the end of its post…”

Just remember, the warnings come *after* the spell.

Put Large Reasoning Models under pressure and they stop making sense, say boffins

Re: Researchers gave LRMs the exact algorithms they needed

It is with the greatest regret that I must record a downvote. While I understand Harry Potter was marketed differently in other parts of world, I cannot let a reference to the “sorcerer’s” stone pass unremarked. Not in this place, which was once a bastion of stiff upper lipped, emotionally suppressed Britishness. Good day to you.

P.S. if we let things slip, before we know it, Marathon bars will be called Snickers…

Single passenger reportedly survives Air India Boeing 787 crash

Re: Dreamliner one day, Nightmareliner next day.

IIRC this was the plane that the people who were building them said they would never fly on.

GlobalFoundries commits $3B more to US fabs in Trump tariff flex

If they follow the example of their Dear Leader, then they understand the gulf between promises and actions.

Aussie rocket foiled by premature fairing pop

“Well the front, I mean top, fell off”

Google backs down after locking out Nextcloud Files app

Has the bar fallen so low that our hearts are warmed by the reversal of a shitty act designed to hurt the competition?

Sadly, yes. Yes it has.

Cook'd: Judge says Apple lied to court in Epic case, asks Feds to mull criminal charges

Re: Wow.

Here here!

Ninite to win it: How to rebuild Windows without losing your mind

As a proud member of the oral respiration community, I am offended by your comment.

RIP, Google Privacy Sandbox

Do we even need cookies?

Between local storage, session storage, JWT tokens and the like, I’ve not found a need to use cookies in my work for a long time.

I’m not necessarily suggesting those options provide better privacy, just whether there’s still something that only cookies can do?

4chan, the 'internet’s litter box,' appears to have been pillaged by rival forum

Re: 4chan still exists?

I’m shocked to discover they have moderators.

RISC OS Open plots great escape from 32-bit purgatory

For Acorn

For the Archimedes

For RISC OS

For ROOL

UK finance watchdog spends millions 'enhancing' Workday software rolled out 4 years ago

“…whether it was ever intended to achieve genuine change”

Are they talking about technology transformation or financial regulation?

From MP3 to Web3 to now 3D, Napster gets a new owner

Genuine Question

When has picking up an ailing internet brand and repurposing it was some new web portal/social media/blockchain/AI thing, EVER worked? AFAIK every time the brand is sold for less than it was bought for.

EU says Google scroogles app makers, also gives Apple an antitrust must-do-list

Why bother to report what these spokesliars have to say?

Everything is bad for customers apparently.

For example: “These new lifeboat requirements are damaging to both our ships and our passengers” said a White Star Line spokesman

Oracle outage hits US Federal health records systems

Something something, Oracle bad, something something.

How Google tracks Android device users before they've even opened an app

If you’re not paying, you’re the product…

No, wait! Those Android phones are actually rather expensive. It appears you can be the customer and the product at the same time.

You are, in effect, Schrödinger’s Mug.

IBM likes Hashicorp, finally puts a $6.4B ring on it

Good news

This gives another reason to give people who come to me wanting to use Terraform why they shouldn’t.

As Amazon takes over the Bond franchise, we submit our scripts for the next flick

Another franchise to be milked to death

“Gentlemen, start your enshittification!”

DXC paid 50% more than original contract value for disastrous public sector Oracle project

Disastrous Public Sector Oracle Project

Is there any other kind?

In a rare moment of charity for big red, “Oracle” can easily be replaced by “IT” in that sentence.

Bank of England Oracle Cloud bill balloons – but when you print money, who's counting?

“It’s a beautiful day here at Gobbler’s Knob and here comes Punxsutawny Phil aaaaand, he sees his shadow! We’re guaranteed another 6 years of Oracle overspend”

Reddit’s first public year shows growth, but Wall Street’s still not happy

Headline should be

“Analysts fired for getting it wrong yet again”

LibreOffice still kicking at 40, now with browser tricks and real-time collab

Re: LibreOffice was nothing to do with Sun?

Bears are catholic.

The Pope has strange toileting habits.

Oracle are bad.

Asteroid as wide as 886 cans of spam may hit Earth in 2032

They should have called it the Torino Impact Threat Scale.

Microsoft admits January's Windows Update broke USB Digital to Audio Convertor

In Redmond, no-one can hear anything, because they all have their fingers in their ears and are singing “la la la, I can’t hearrr youuuu!”

Intel pitches modular PC designs to make repairs less painful

Re: WTF

Congratulations on receiving my weeks’ ration of upvotes. All of them.

Boeing going backwards as production’s slowing and woes keep flowing

Airbus “ships” 2 planes a day

Wouldn’t it be easier to fly them?

NATO's newest member comes out swinging following latest Baltic Sea cable attack

Re: Shame

But only if the front fell off.

TSMC revenue booms and you don’t need AI to figure out why

“Digital Offerings”

Is that a euphemism for “ruining the lives of innocent sub-postmasters”?

Rollable laptop displays to roll off the production line from April, says Samsung

Re: My ears!

So I could make an amusing post I guess. Either that or I was too lazy to move my finger far enough to mute it.

My ears!

Maybe they can take some of the profit from this new laptop to pay for a better jingle.

We did warn you – 2025 may be the year AI bots take over Meta's 'verse

Re: Just asking .....

Wow, that almost made sense this time! I hear Meta are after your talents.

Re: "that's where we see all of this going"

Recipient? He’s ratty enough to be a donior.

Microsoft declares 2025 'the year of the Windows 11 PC refresh'

Re: When is Microsoft going to realise?

Hey, some of my best friends are rat anuses!

Boffins carve up C so code can be converted to Rust

“Minimal adjustments”

They make it sound so easy. If it was, why couldn’t they automate those adjustments too?

Europe's largest local authority settles on ERP budget 5x original estimate

“…the Oracle system is not suited to providing these services…”

They should have stopped there.