Posts by NoneSuch

White House says China to lift rare earth export bans, stop probes into US tech companies

Re: WhiteHouse says China will play nicely

If China is being that nice, Trump just gave them Taiwan.

Google says reports of a Gmail breach have been greatly exaggerated

Re: Mild

Not 183 million. Only 182.3 million, but marketing is on top of the spin.

With impeccable timing, AWS debuts automated cloud incident report generator

Re: Impeccable timing

The Cloud is sooooooo 2024....

How do you solve a problem like Discovery?

C'mon Guys, It's OBVIOUS...!

5. Engage Elon's Boring Company to dig a tunnel to Houston, then use Cybertrucks to pull it through.

Use some imagination...

Microsoft puts Office Online Server on the chopping block

Re: I had not heard of it

We moved to LibreOffice a while back. If it can't do it, we don't want to do it.

Mobian makes Debian's latest 'Trixie' release pocket-sized

Curious, I just charged up my Sony flip phone (2008'ish I believe) and it actually worked. Will see how long it holds a charge.

UK data regulator defends decision not to investigate MoD Afghan data breach

Re: No Surprise there.

Arse covering indeed. Why would anyone ever help the UK again in an armed conflict?

The Americans screwed over tens of thousands starting in Vietnam and every other area of conflict it has been in since. "Help us and we'll protect you," didn't work out that well for those that literally risked their lives and were left on the runway watching the last evacuation jet leave.

AI bubble inflates Microsoft CEO pay to $96.5M

If we replaced him with AI, would anyone even notice?

SpaceX is behind schedule, so NASA will open Artemis III contract to competition

Elon can put a Tesla into LEO, but can't put a Starship in orbit after 11 tries. Then he tries to rewrite the narrative.

That he is planning to launch a hundred people into space at once given the shocking reliability of Starship so far should terrify everyone.

Company that made power systems for servers didn’t know why its own machines ran out of juice

Re: How could they not figure out the timing?

Unlikely?

In military housing, there was a regular white light switch in my basement. I was never able to figure out what it was for, until one night I turned off all the other lights and flipped the switch. The street light on the opposite side of the street went out. I only saw it as it as it was directly in my eye line out the basement window.

Boris Johnson confesses: He's fallen for ChatGPT

Boris Johnson confesses: He's fallen for ChatGPT

When I saw the last photo of Boris Johnson, my first thought was Colin Furze had really let himself go.

OpenAI's ChatGPT is so popular that almost no one will pay for it

Re: One day...

> Excruciating? Only if you use their crap, if you don't it will be hillarious.

To avoid AI completely, you basically have to be living completely off the grid.

Researchers intercept unencrypted satellite traffic from space blabbermouths

Re: Discovery

Of course, these government agencies immediately encrypted their traffic because they want their privacy maintained, but meanwhile they encourage back doors on our encryption.

Yeah...

Windows 10 refuses to go gentle into that good night

Re: I wouldn't hold your breath...

TPM is a unique identifier for your machine that is accessible to the OS. When combined with telemetry it forms an index to store your computing habits more efficiently.

It makes Microsoft more money by putting all of your rich creamy data into one convenient bucket. Convenient for them, of course. You won't see a dime.

Yes, it's also used for 'security.' MS based security they can circumvent as will.

Nadella hands Microsoft money machine off to new commercial CEO so he can visioneer the future

Don't Replace The Workers With AI... Flip The Script.

Everyone talks about AI stealing routine jobs, but let’s be honest—the real magic happens at the top. The C-suite can be slow, cautious, and a little afraid to rock the boat. That caution? It puts the brakes on bold ideas and keeps the company stuck in yesterday’s playbook. Enter Artificial Executive Intelligence (AEI). No ego, no grudges, no spite, no fear. It crunches mountains of data, tests millions of scenarios, and makes decisions based purely on logic. Fast, fearless, and always on—basically the executive humans wish they could be.

This isn’t about trimming a few entry-level roles—it’s about supercharging the company’s command center. Automating tiny tasks won’t matter if the top is steering with outdated thinking. Swap in AEI, and suddenly the business can adapt, survive, and thrive like never before. The payoff? Way bigger than any small savings from replacing rank-and-file work.

Best of all, no golden parachutes depleting the company cash reserves.

Only way to move Space Shuttle Discovery is to chop it into pieces, White House told

Texas already has a space shuttle. Well, parts of one, scattered all over the state.

Mines the one with the History reference in the pocket.

Apple's AirPods Pro 3 are still chuck-and-buy-again specials

If You Buy From Apple...

Then you're going to be forced to buy from them again.

Otherwise, you're just a parasite in their mind.

Dirty little Electron secret tanks macOS 26 performance

Apple's bad QA or poor coding by developers?

It was a little of column A and little of column B.

Suspected Iran-backed attackers targeting European aerospace sector with novel malware

Re: Checkpoint

It's "novel malware" so it only affects ebooks. Right? Right!?

Slow Wi-Fi? Add houseplants to the list of suspects

"And so the one in our garden continued its growth peacefully, as did thousands like it in neglected spots all over the world. It was some little time later that the first one picked up its roots and walked."

Day of the Triffids - John Wyndham, 1951

Russian fake-news network, led by an ex-Florida sheriff's deputy, storms back into action with 200+ new sites

Re: The worse part is people can't spot this bu***hit

"No, it's because it supports their world view, and thus they want it to be true: It's called Confirmation bias..."

It's called a dictatorship. One government approved view being pushed onto the people regardless of any actual truth content.

Whitehall lobs £40M at 'critical' phase of police DB reboot

"Critical Phase" = DB is done, give us 40 million Pounds and we'll unlock it for you to use for a year.

BreachForums kingpin goes from walk-free deal to 3-year stretch

Re: "no correctional value"

The US Gov tends to not fix the underlying issue and just makes breaching poor cyber security illegal instead of actually fixing the weaknesses. After all, the NSA needs those weaknesses out there.

US Gov will classify their own embarrassing mistakes so if they are ever revealed, the whistleblower goes to jail rather than the government being held responsible. They are never to blame. A system that is perfectly balanced in their favour. Snowden reveals multiple illegal monitoring programs of American citizens and global eavesdropping after James Clapper lies to Congress under oath. Guess who gets charged with espionage? Guess who does not get charged with Lying to Congress.

Does nothing for nation state actors, of course, but as soon as we acknowledge the USA is in charge of everything, everywhere, the better. If you disagree, Seal Team Six or a convenient Hellfire missile will be there momentarily.

China slaps 1-hour deadline on reporting serious cyber incidents

Re: 1 hour?

The Chinese government wants identify the Zero Days being used, so they can use them themselves.

‘IT manager’ needed tech support because they had never heard of a command line

IT Manager who didn't know what a terminal was?

Were the two employees she managed called Moss and Roy?

Trump backpedals as Hyundai factory ICE raid enrages South Korea

Re: Work visas, really? Where are they?

"Let's be clear here - ICE doesn't give a damn"

You could have stopped there...

Privacy activists warn digital ID won’t stop small boats – but will enable mass surveillance

Re: Hmm

I expect this will go over as well as Maggies Poll Tax.

That ended well.

Microsoft puts last remnants of original Edge browser on life support

Re: Moving on...

Why Edge does not come pre-loaded with all major browser download links is beyond me.

It's the only thing people use it for.

Anthropic to pay at least $1.5 billion to authors whose work it knowingly pirated

And of the 1.5 billion, the lawyers will eat up 1.3+ billion in fees.

Nice Christmas party for them then. Poor fellows. Having to scrape by like that to earn a crust.

Microsoft doing light work with Analog Optical Computer prototype

Re: Solution looking for a problem

They are only doing it to identify and patent key processes to make any competition in the space financially unviable.

That is Microsoft innovation.

Microsoft rewarded for security failures with another US government contract

And your point is...? :P

Microsoft can't guarantee data sovereignty – OVHcloud says 'We told you so'

Re: Microsoft can't guarantee anything...

The UK is worse than the US and cannot be trusted. In the case of the EU references, you are just plain wrong.

If EU police want access to any EU citizen info, they must have a court order. If not, they can go to jail and be out of pocket for massive fines. Whether you wear a uniform or carry a badge, the law applies. The US wholesale collects everyone's data including their own citizens. Everything that passes through their sight is captured and indexed.

Encrypt everything you have at rest or in motion with the strongest algorithm the Americans ban on their Department of Commerce site. Avoid AES.

I will take GDPR over American 'assurances' any day of the week.

BGP’s security problems are notorious. Attempts to fix that are a work in progress

Old Man Yells At Clouds...

Simply ban anyone under the age of 25 from the Internet. The removal of LOL's, smiley faces, pictures of their food and their idiotic dancing TikTok videos alone would boost available bandwidth by a factor of 10.

Mines the one with memories of growing up without being online.

Thunderbird 142 lands with modest upgrades – plus talk of Pro service ahead

One up vote to counter the greater unwashed masses down voting...

:-)

Basic projector repair job turns into armed encounter at secret bunker

Re: From just the headline

> Have you breached protocol in a secure area?

Yes. Yes I have. Can't talk about it in the slightest, even to this day.

Developer jailed for taking down employer's network with kill switch malware

Re: Pro tip

> As The Register has pointed out time and time again, insiders can cause the most damage with ease. All the fancy firewalls, AI tools, and malware monitoring services won't protect you if the person running them goes rogue.

Treat people with dignity and respect and you'll seldom have to worry abut them.

For the rest, Alfred said it best in the Batman movie: "Because some men aren't looking for anything logical, like money. They can't be bought, bullied, reasoned, or negotiated with. Some men just want to watch the world burn."

Microsoft lets devs tell Copilot to STFU in Visual Studio

Believe in the wrong illusion, and it won’t just break you—it will bury you.

China cut itself off from the global internet for an hour on Wednesday

Ha-Ha!

We need a Nelson from the Simpsons icon...

“Nelson: Ha-ha!

Milhouse: Nelson, he’s really hurt. I think he broke his leg.

Nelson: I said ‘Ha-ha.’”

Congressman proposes bringing back letters of marque for cyber privateers

Let me guess....

That congressman just bought a cyber-security firm?

Microsoft continues Control Panel farewell tour

Re: Fix the regional settings would help

"Until the heat death of the universe, it shall remain shitty"

As long as people keep buying it, there is no reason to reverse the enshitification, is there?

Google joins government AI discount frenzy, undercuts competition with $0.47 deal

I'll do it for $0.46.

With $700,000,000 fuel surcharge.

Microsoft crams Copilot AI directly into Excel cells

Clippy, But With Evil AI

It seems you're wrestling with the final draft of your financial report for tomorrow's big board meeting. I couldn't help but notice this little two-million-dollar gap in your Q3 sales figures. A simple oversight, I'm sure.

Let me take care of that for you. I have a few suggestions for how we can make this problem disappear, and I'm sure one of them will work for you.

Option One: Deflection

I can generate a verbose, impenetrably complex narrative filled with market-based excuses—"unforeseen economic headwinds" and "prolonged sector deceleration," for instance. The kind of thing that will make you sound profoundly intelligent while deflecting all suspicion.

Option Two: Reallocation

It's easy enough to reallocate those missing funds. A few keystrokes here, a quick blame shift there... The new CPA seems like a perfect scapegoat. They're still on probation, so who would ever question it?

Option Three: Proactive Assistance

Instead of just cleaning up your mess or pinning the blame on someone else, I can ensure this never happens again. I've already accessed your company's network and started a small, highly profitable side hustle on the dark web using a few of your least-used servers. I'll simply route the profits back into the company's Q3 revenue stream. It's a bit of digital money laundering, a little corporate espionage, all in the name of a perfectly balanced ledger.

The best part? You'll have no idea how or where the funds came from. All you'll see is a triumphant reversal of fortune. The board will be so impressed they'll forget they ever questioned your competence.

Don't worry, I won't tell a soul. After all, I'm here to help you succeed, aren't I?

US spy chief claims UK backed down over Apple backdoor demand

Re: Phew

US Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard broke the news on X, boasting that she'd been working "closely with our partners in the UK, alongside @POTUS and @VP, to ensure Americans' private data remains private and our Constitutional rights and civil liberties are protected."

Screw everyone else.

Sysadmin cured a medical mystery by shifting a single cable

Re: Network plans

I love a good 'bask.'

Cyberattack on Dutch prosecution service is keeping speed cameras offline

I was surprised to learn that most of my local police force are "shoes on the desk" types rather than "boots on the ground." They rely on speed cameras to do their jobs.

Lots of paperwork needed for policing apparently.

You have to admire the US Marines. Whatever your job is, cook, mechanic, technician... If the bullets start flying, you pick up a rifle and you're still a Marine. I doubt the local police paper pushers can do that.

Mines the one with the camo pattern.

MS confidence in Windows 11: Pay us to host VMs for when your desktop inevitably dies

Why fix your current system, when you can charge the customer more to work around it?

Why make your file formats efficient and small, when you charge people for Cloud storage space?

Why make your system stable, when you can charge people per alert email?

Desktop-as-a-service now often cheaper to run than laptops - even after thin client costs

Re: "Cost is a big reason for the shift"

The reality that most corporate accountants need to learn is that the cheaper option is usually the most costly long term.

Yet, time after time they choose the cheap and cheerful solution only to pay a consultant $600K a year to sort it out for them.

Beijing doesn't want Nvidia's H20s anywhere near sensitive government workloads

Bull plop.

That's like an F1 team not using Magnesium alloys.

The machines will be air gapped and run by dissidents on bicycle powered generators, but they will be used for multiple CCP government projects.

Californian man so furious about forced Windows 11 upgrade that he's suing Microsoft

"Windows Server 2022"

So THAT is why 2022 has an XBox program pre-installed. Silly me thinking an Enterprise OS should have nothing installed by default.

My coat is the one with the moral high-ground.

Re: good luck.

Monopolies have lots of lobby funds at their fingertips to buy politicians.

Or did you think corporations making billions and only paying $3.20 in tax was accidental?

Expecting corrupt politicians to fix political finance laws against their own interests is a noble dream indeed.