Posts by NoneSuch

Twitter staffer turned Saudi spy jailed for 3.5 years

What a douche. I'll bet Elon will want him back when he gets out.

Server installer fails to spot STOP button – because he wasn't an archaeologist

Re: Abracadabra

"It must have cost a fortune."

Didn't cost them anything. They got the money off their clients.

Microsoft takes a punt on silicon battery startup

Just need to build a crap ton of nuclear reactors to feed the electrical grid and all ends well.

VMware adds subscription version of basic vSphere for server consolidation

"Like every other software vendor, VMware is under pressure to move to subscriptions so it can predict revenue more easily and doesn't have to upsell customers quite so often."

Who the F is putting vendors under pressure for subscription model pricing? Paying a vendor forever is not something I want to do and something I actively avoid where possible. I've never met anyone who said "Oh yes, I'd love to pay X Company monthly until the end of time regardless of their updates, issues or quality."

Once again, what makes accountants happy screws over both the business and consumer long term.

Who will think of the children icon, because, yeah...

Musk bans private-plane-tracking @Elonjet on Twitter, threatens legal action

Selective Fury

He blocked @ElonJet but left the account tracking Jeff Bezos' aircraft, run by the same person, up. *GASP*

I muted his muskness on Twitter. My feed has never looked so good, but I understand that is temporary. He'll undoubtedly unmute his account because what he has to say is important.

I think I'll give MySpace another go.

Voice assistants failed because they serve their makers more than they help users

Re: "... they serve their makers more than they help users"

The middle man in this case, the voice assistant, benefits the corporation more than the end user. It's an intrusion into personal privacy and gives their maker another user data revenue stream.

Convenience trumps security in this case. (Sorry for using the T word).

Citrix patches critical ADC flaw the NSA says is already under attack from China

I'm Psychic.

I would bet the next move by the NSA will be national firewalls to "keep us safe". Anything international is routed through there first. Then the NSA decide what traffic (or communications) are allowed.

Willing to bet serious beer money on that.

Why did Microsoft just buy fiber optic cable company Lumenisity?

Re: Latency is everything

There was a scandal in the US over a brokerage who could execute trades a few ms faster then their competitors making lots of extra dosh.

Tom Scott went into details on how.

https://youtu.be/d8BcCLLX4N4

Re: This is close enough to their core business...

Embrace, extend, and extinguish.

Nuff said.

ChatGPT has mastered the confidence trick, and that's a terrible look for AI

Re: "It’s a Dunning-Kruger effect knowledge simulator par excellence"

"It goes on to say it’s not been programmed with specific language rules about syntax, types and structures, so it often gets things wrong."

They are more human than you think then, as I have worked with many people who fit this description.

Musk's Hotel California erected at Twitter HQ, as some offices converted into bedrooms

Re: Office as housing?

Unannounced beds being installed? I guess those sexual harassment suits won't create themselves. Not that Elon has any history of that. of course.

A boss who does not listen to their educated, trained staff with years of experience. Where have I heard that before? Oh right, multiple times in my career and usually just before a massive amount of downtime or ludicrous loss of money. Funnily enough, those bosses never took responsibility. They typically blamed / fired someone who actually ended up fixing the issue. Why stop a stellar career arc by telling the truth?

Fair seas, Captain Elon of the fair ship Twitanic. Fair seas.

Egad, did Apple do something right? End-to-end encryption for (most) iCloud services

If it makes Apple money...

...they will do it. If encryption and secure privacy sells more iPhones then they'll do it.

Microsoft 365 faces more GDPR headwinds as Germany bans it in schools

Re: This regulator's no good, I'll get myself another

"Microsoft 365 products meet the highest industry standards for the protection of privacy and data security."

Guess who wrote those 'standards.' You know damned well they are not following processes by Adobe or Cisco.

Good on the EU. They seem to be the only bastion of sanity and common sense left globally.

Sandworm gang launches Monster ransomware attacks on Ukraine

Re: Illegal attack

As in all conflicts, the winner dictates what is legal.

ISS resupply drops off experiments for life in deep space

Re: Serious Medical Emergencies

The Cave Johnson motivational method.

https://youtu.be/wX9Sc88qreg

Judge tells Amazon: Stop retaliating against employees

Re: It's nice to know that megacorps still don't own the Justice Dept in the US

Speeding fines in Switzerland are based on your income over certain speeds. I see no reason why a corporations bottom line should not be used as a baseline for serious fines.

The EU should pioneer that as it tends to be the one to smack Google and Apple around.

Elon Musk picks fight with Apple for slashing advertising spend on Twitter

Re: The Muskrat fan club seem to think he'll be releasing his own phone to destroy Apple and Google.

You have total Freedom of Speech on Twitter as long as the Great Leader agrees with it.

Same on North Korea, mainland China and the CCP, Iran, plus the usual list of despots including Fox News.

Twitter search spam campaign hides China riots, researchers say

Re: It is a good thing that Elon has a sturdy grasp on reality

Tyranny already took roost in mainland China.

Screw the CCP.

Man wins court case against employer that fired him for not liking boozy, forced 'fun' culture

Re: "Fun & pro, that's our motto!"

There's only two ways a company (and governments) changes their ways:

- Losing lots of money publicly.

- Bad press.

A 3,000 loss isn't going to do anything to motivate changes. That's a Friday night bar tab to this lot.

Go ahead, be rude. You don't know it now, but it will cost you $350,000

Re: Well, manglement ....

"which was odd as my partner is currently housebound and unable to leave"

Ummm, is housebound unable to leave the house, or tied and gagged on the living room floor?

China declares victory over teenage video game addiction

Re: Yeah right

In the 1984 vein, I've let a lot of CCP generated crap pass by unchallenged over the years, but clamping down on PC gaming makes me an official enemy of the state.

That a government is so fragile it needs to filter computer games for the masses to stay in power shows just how unstable their banana republic autocracy is. The Chinese people I have encountered have been warm, welcoming and generous. The CCP on the other hand are thugs and as necessary as a mans face in a grumble flick. The sooner they are sanctioned into history, the better.

Time to sideline every undemocratic country with the heaviest of trade embargos. we started with Russia. Lets add Iran, China, North Korea and anyone else without honest elections or representation. Zero trade and full economic blockades until they decide to join the world without human rights violations. Oh, and have everyone recognize Taiwan, just to tick them off a little bit more.

Former Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes sentenced to 11 years in prison

Re: A CEO being held accountable?

I doubt she's going to Maximum Security. Club Fed for tennis lessons and only a weekly massage? Jail, ugh.

Aviation regulators push for more automation so flights can be run by a single pilot

FFS

Pilot redundancy is one of the basic flight safety rules. FOR GOOD REASON.

The number of planes that have fallen from the sky due to system malfunction is staggering. Removing a trained human and replacing it with a machine is moronic. It does not improve safety.

They can't make robot cars work on roads yet and they want to try it at 30,000 feet with 300+ souls on board.

https://aviation.globalincidentmap.com/

UK forces Chinese-owned company to offload Newport Wafer Fab

Re: Look Up.

Its all on that twitter thread.

Better read it quickly then. No telling when it will vanish.

Nvidia faces lawsuit for melting RTX 4090 cables as AMD has a laugh

and he wouldn't have purchased the card — or he would have paid much less for the card — had he known this was an issue

"I'll only risk the lives of my family in a house fire if you take $50 off."

NASA uses space station dust sensor to map 50 methane 'super-emitters' on Earth

Re: It's unfortunate

Let's take off and nuke them from orbit.

It's the only way to be sure.

Boffins are studying Martian clouds to avoid another Opportunity episode

Nuclear Powerpacks Not a Thing?

Works for nuc subs. Scaled down Thorium reactor should provide enough power for 50 years if done right. That or dust screen wipers for the solar panels.

Multi-tasker Musk expects to reduce time at Twitter, seek another leader

Re: run Twitter permanently on a full-time basis

Musk mocked them, saying: “I would like to apologize for firing these geniuses. Their immense talent will no doubt be of great use elsewhere.”

Was not sure if this was arrogance or stupidity, then realized it's a little from column A and a little from column B.

I killed my Twitter account this morning. I have no time for bullies.

Former employees of Twitter should form their own app. I'm sure a couple are already working on it. I'll be ready when it's ready. Until then, it's Pub O'Clock.

Israel sets robotic target-tracking turrets in the West Bank

The Palestinians have been deliberately murdering women and children for decades, so I have no problem with Israel using what are, inherently, defensive weapons to stop this.

Neither the Palestinians or Israeli's have shown they deserve stewardship of the "Holy" land. Both groups kill, maim and terrorize in the name of God. As Northern Ireland discovered, both parties will need decades of conflict and be up to their ankles in blood before they sit down like adults to resolve this once and for all. Thankfully, we know this can be done.

We are one species. Until we eliminate ignorance and despots we are doomed to cycle through violence.

Spent Chinese Long 6A rocket spews over 50 pieces of space junk

Well, if the Chinese PRC say something, then it must be true. It's illegal to disagree with them and as I'm visiting Hong Kong soon, it's 100% truth.

No sarcasm (*coff*) whatsoever.

Twitter engineer calls out Elon Musk for technical BS in unusual career move

Re: Bit klunky, but...

I disagree. SpaceX staff will fit in at Twitter perfectly. They're quite used to things crashing and burning.

China reminds world shock and ore can hurt tech supply chains

>Put enough political pressure on Germany and they can decide to open the taps without any one else getting a veto

This was the position the Japanese were put in just before they decided on a Hawaiian excursion in 1941. That didn't work out so well.

Multi-factor auth fatigue is real – and it's why you may be in the headlines next

Re: Surely there's a design fault here

The other flaw is using the same generic screen and not saying where the MFA request is coming from. Is it Outlook, Teams, Azure, or what? Just that would help the user narrow down issues and authorize appropriately.

Kyndryl loses $281m in the quarter as modernization agenda continues

Think of the Money We'll Save...

Investing heavily in the Cloud and losing money. Never heard that one before.

* coff *

The Cloud, making the bottom line look better and better since 2010. Not yours... Microsoft's...

The Cloud, because "Briar Patch" was already copyrighted.

The Cloud, because it's simple for Executives to draw on a white board.

Feel free to add your own...

The world was promised 'cloud magic'. So much for that fairy tale

The Cloud

The cause of, and solution to, all of your business issues.

Pay a third party to manage your core contact with your clients along with infrastructure and backups. Then be amazed as on-prem options are discontinued. Finally, once all your info is stuck in the briar rabbit datacenters, the monthly fees begin climbing. Shareholders need to see improved profits quarter after quarter. Not your shareholders, the Cloud providers'. Their Christmas Party Fund will be topped up nicely.

Be of no doubt. The next step is to replace the on-prem IT staff with cheaper (monthly fee based) Cloud support staff. Why have pesky independent IT staff looking after your infrastructure? All they do is ask embarrassing questions and highlight flaws. You need marketing department approved 24/7 support from Mumbai that only takes five times longer to get a ticket escalated. No complaints about overtime, no training expenses, no HR worries. Just a flat monthly fee for all your IT support needs. The accountants will love it.

They'll appreciate us only when when we're gone. Then freak out at the expenses when they try to rebuild on-prem.

Qualcomm: Arm threatens to end CPU licensing, charge device makers instead

Re: Non-transferable license ?

At least the lawyers will get richer. So silver lining after all!

Economic headwinds be damned, cloud migrations 'not stopping'

Accountants are to Blame

Accountants ruin all products and services in time.

They see a need to shave .0072 pence off the cost of a hamburger patty and before you know it, they all taste of cardboard.

Accountants love the Cloud. They can make regular monthly payments instead of capital expenses. It makes their Excel spreadsheets look good and "saves money" over traditional locally owned infrastructure. With CFO encouragement the Executives post more and more of their business into the Cloud. The Board loves the concept, because all the cool kids are going to the Cloud.

Of course, in time, some anonymous MS or Amazon engineer will post the wrong script or some doofus with a backhoe will plunge their datacenters into the Dark Ages. With all their data eggs in one basket, companies who "went to the Cloud" will be find their entire production and backups are all in the same DC with no plan B. No contact with clients, no emails and all you can do is wait for those same engineers to get your business back up and running.

There is no Cloud, it's just someone else's server. Anyone putting core contact with their customers fully in the hands of another company deserves what they get. And in time they will.

Is it any surprise that 'permacrisis' is the word of the year?

Honestly...

If The Reg Measurement Soviet can't define the size in lettuces or elephants then it just does not exist in my mind.

Or maybe it's just me seeing too many damned despots in this world being continually unchallenged.

To make this computer work, users had to press a button. Why didn't it work? Guess

Re: Bad design

"On the other hand, try asking someone to saddle a horse these days and see how far they get. I wouldn't have a clue where to begin."

Step 1, get a horse.

Am I right? I'm right aren't I? Or is it a saddle. No, no, it's got to be the horse.

More than 4 in 10 PCs still can't upgrade to Windows 11

Re: I wonder...

"More than 4 in 10 PCs still can't upgrade to Windows 11"

Should read, "More than 4 in 10 PC's are eligible for a free Linux install."

Cult leader meets the Pope: Apple CEO chats to Francis

During the meeting, The Pope observed God had not answered any of his prayers. Cook commented the Lord could not hear him, as His Holiness was holding his crucifix incorrectly.

Microsoft to kill off old access rules in Exchange Online

Re: The beginning of the end...

Sending email to someone you've written weekly for ten years.

Outlook: SUSPISCIOUS ACTIVITY and blocks your account.

Meanwhile, three Nigerian Prince emails get through.

Oracle extends share options plans, no bumper payday for execs... yet

Effing Dumb

130 million??? Divide that by Oracle staff would give them just under $1,000 a person. They are the ones doing the real work.

Wearables sales slacken as the novelty wears off

Re: An $800 watch

But, but... The Logo!

Getty bans AI-generated art due to copyright concerns

Ahh...

The "monkey grabbed the camera and took the photo" law suit comes to mind.

Microsoft debuts Windows 11 2022 Update – now with features added monthly

Re: New features every month?

Panos Panay, Microsoft’s executive vice president and chief product officer for Windows + Devices, has billed the update [...] as offering “many subtle, but important changes that come together to help you be your most productive and your most creative.”

My fixed version.

Panos Panay, Microsoft’s executive vice president and spyware as a service officer for Windows + Devices, has billed the update [...] as offering “many unnecessary, but annoying changes that make us lots of juicy profit and help us gather as much private info on you to bolster our ad and marketing department revenues.”

Meta, Twitter, Apple, Google urged to up encryption game in post-Roe America

Re: in other news: governments require backdoors in encryptions

Backdoors?

In WW2, the strongest Enigma code was 88 bits. We broke it in a shed using telephone relay switches.

70+ years later we're told 256 bit encryption is strong enough as long as you use an American NSA designed algorithm.

Best practice is to use whatever is NOT listed on the US Department of Commerce recommended encryption page and up the key strength to the highest supported number you can find.

Depend on corporations and governments to protect your privacy and you will be disappointed.

Amazon's Roomba acquisition gets caught on FTC's rug

Re: Scamazon

Before you buy an iRobot device, try to download their Google / Apple app that controls the unit. They geolock a lot of countries making that app unavailable in many regions. No reference to that on their website and if you are geolocked don't expect support.

A rake in the face after spending $1,000+ and finding you can't download the app that controls it. Caveat emptor.

BT CEO orders staff: Back to the office or risk 'disciplinary action'

The biggest drivers of this are the folks who feel the need to socialize. They like being around others chatting about nothing. Meanwhile, those of us actually doing work can get more done without the constant interruption's of how Mike's son is getting on in Uni or how Judy and her baby are doing.

As if the quality of your work depends on you being seen, your location, or whether you are wearing trousers.

Apple to raise App Store prices in 28 countries

Raising Prices?

If I add up all my Apple store purchases over the last ten years, you'd get 0.

To those mired in their eco system, start building ladders to get over their walled garden.