Posts by midcapwarrior

Remembering the time Windows accidentally sent Poland to the bottom of the sea

Re: Rome or Vatican?

There are 3 city states, Monaco, Vatican and Singapore

Fired OpenAI boss Sam Altman may join Microsoft

Re: And the latest news …

A significant number of the employees were not happy that they created a for profit part of the company.

Some true believers thinking there work was for the altruistic and for the betterment of mankind and not to get rich.

Not something I understand but then I don't understand FOSS either.

Smart move by Satya

Seems like a brilliant move by Satya.

For better or worse the near term stock price is tied to ChatGPT.

Kept the leadership in the Microsoft orbit and still has connections to Open AI.

Stock was down as much as $10 after the initial dismissal and now is up in the pre-market.

That's why he's the CEO.

IBM pauses advertising on X after ads show up next to antisemitic content

Re: maybe he is a genius

The oil money sovereign funds are fine with walking away from the funding they provided.

Banks, not so much.

Re: maybe he is a genius

My take is musk usually makes money with his companies, some way, some how.

The banks looked at his track record and assumed he'd actually try to make money this time also.

It's not like loaning money to trump who's gone bankrupt what 7, 8 times?

maybe he is a genius

The bank consortium that loaned the money to purchase twiitter have not been able to off load the loans even with significant discounts.

Perhaps he's driving the value of the loans to a level that he can buy them on the cheap.

Then refinance the loans and make a significant net profit.

Genius move.

Mid-contract telco price hikes must end, Ofcom told

Not sure I understand the customer expectations

"Some 85 percent of customers think mid-contract price rises are unfair, and 87 percent believe they should be allowed to ditch their provider if they raise their prices mid-contract, according to a survey conducted for Uswitch by research agency Opinium."

Curious that these both would not be 100%

Linux has nearly half of the desktop OS Linux market

Re: Installfest

If you did this without asking you are one arrogant a**.

They probably never bothered to respond to you and switched it back without ever speaking to you.

Kind of arrogance that gives linux a bad name.

Here's a fun idea: Try to unlock and drive away in someone else's Tesla

Re: You laugh

My 2020 Audi came with both

Twitter rewards remaining loyal staff by decimating them

maybe musk is following the trump playbook

Not exactly the same but trump borrowed millions to buy casinos, an airline, hotels....

He ultimately walked away pretty cleanly when he went through his seven bankruptcies.

When you are a regular guy borrowing and going broke can ruin you.

When you are rich, not so much.

Microsoft axes 10,000, already breaking bad news to staff

By March not August

Microsoft 3rd quarter ends in March.

They have a FY calendar of July-June.

The cuts go through March because of the 60 day notice requirement.

All those affected find out this week.

Microsoft to offer unlimited time off for US staff

Payment for accrued vacation is not a US wide requirement. It's a state by state thing and smaller companies can be exempt from the requirement.

I've worked at small companies that did not pay out and did not rollover unused vacation.

You had to be an employee for 10 years to get 4 weeks. PTO started at 2 weeks and hit a cap of 5 weeks.

G7 countries beat UK in worldwide broadband speed test again

Interesting looking at the bottom country speeds

Not surprised by the countries but the speeds are so low I'm not sure they are broadband.

"The five countries in the world with the slowest network speeds are Turkmenistan (0.77Mbps), the Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste (0.94Mbps),Yemen (0.97Mbps), Guinea-Bissau (0.98Mbps) and Afghanistan (0.98Mbps). "

My Big Coin founder is – you guessed it – a $6m crypto-fraudster

If he had called it a casino then he would have been fine

"And the coins couldn't be readily transferred or used for anything: victims were just handing over their money"

Supply chain blamed amid claims of Azure capacity issues

No good deed...

"Microsoft is struggling to balance growing customer demand with the support it is giving to the Ukrainian government, and that it cannot easily expand capacity because of constraints on the supply of IT kit."

China's blockchain boosters slam crypto as Ponzi scheme

Re: Ponzi scheme?

"Cryptocurrency exchange CoinFlex on Tuesday issued a new token to raise funds in a bid to restart withdrawals for its customers, after one client failed to repay a massive debt.

CoinFlex said it would issue $47 million worth of a digital coin, offering 20% interest, which it’s calling Recovery Value USD, or rvUSD."

CNBC.com

Seems like they are looking for revenue from new to pay off old investors. Pretty Ponziesque.

Canadian teen nabbed in $36.5m crypto heist – possibly the biggest haul yet by a single individual

Re: You have to be kidding me!!!

"The pair promised to generate return profits of as much as 40 per cent, and were given $2 billion worth of Bitcoin."

And they are selling 56 million in recovered funds. Wonder where the other 95% went.

Three things that have vanished: $3.6bn in Bitcoin, a crypto investment biz, and the two brothers who ran it

Re: $10 million

You could buy an annuity that would easily generate twice that amount per month. There are stable REITs that would provide triple that return monthly.

Maybe you don't live like a king but you can certainly make enough to never work again.

Maybe not London or New York but plenty of places in the world.

'It's where the industry is heading': LibreOffice team working on WebAssembly port

Re: some success compiling the code, but unfortunately it mostly does not work

"team has had some success compiling the code, but unfortunately it mostly does not work"

Ability to compile as a measure of success seems to be pretty low bar

Biden projected to be the next US President, Microsoft joins rest of world in telling Trump: It looks like... you're fired

A president can't give a pardon for a state level conviction.

Re: Pugh, Pugh, Barney McGrew, Cuthbert, Dibble, & Grubb

His big problem is he can only give pardons for federal crimes. His current cases are at the NY state level. Only the state governor can provide state level pardons and no way Cuomo does this.

Apple gives Boot Camp the boot, banishes native Windows support from Arm-compatible Macs

Re: Hackintosh?

A few years ago IBM made statements about switching to Mac's from PCs and the cost savings involved. It's an IBM announcement at an apple conference so take it with a grain of salt: https://www.computerworld.com/article/3131906/ibm-says-macs-are-even-cheaper-to-run-than-it-thought.html

Wakey-wakey! A quarter of IT pros only get 3-4 hours' kip – and you won't believe what's being touted as the 'solution'

It's not a Microsoft company.

It's a company that provides services for Microsoft products.

a global professional services company

Iran military manages to keep a straight face while waggling miracle widget that 'can detect coronavirus from 100m away'

Re: ride time

Probably both

Trivial backdoor found in firmware for Chinese-built net-connected video recorders

Correct, more of a front door, maybe a window, perhaps a side door.

But definitely not a backdoor

ICANN extracts $20m signing fee for $1bn dot-com price increases – and guess who's going to pay for it?

Re: "justified by comparing the company to top-ranking law firms"

..

"So how do we, the people, get the IRS to review ICANN's status?"

".and had decided to lift a price freeze imposed by the Obama Administration."

Short answer is to wait for this years election and have regime change, otherwise it ain't happening.

Gas-guzzling Americans continue to shun electric vehicles as sales fail to bother US car market

Re: Electricity in the USA

Supercharging is definably a regional thing.

Fairly easy to find if you drive on I95 from DC to Boston,

Rest of the US, not so much

UK Home Office: We will register thousands of deactivated firearms with no database

the Deactivated Weapons Association

the "Deactivated Weapons Association"

Trying to figure out why such an association would exist and what they do at their meetings.

Kiss my ASCII, Microsoft – we've got one million fewer daily active users than you, boasts Slack

Re: Feel old

You can mute the notifications and just have the update show in the system tray, or not at all.

MacOS wakes to a bright Catalina sunrise – and broken Adobe apps

Re: Nah

Nope, he's a registered dictator.

Passed his certification test.

Silly money: Before you chuck your chequebook away, triple-check that super-handy digital coin

then spend big at 7-Eleven

"it didn't take a criminal mastermind to divert accounts, empty their contents, then spend big at 7-Eleven."

7-11 must be different in Japan then the US.

Other than a 6 pack it's hard to find anything that costs more than 10.

You'd need to empty the store to spend more than 1000.

Firm fat-fingered G Suite and deleted its data, so it escalated its support ticket to a lawsuit

Re: So...

The service provides an option for backups.

It's not free but it's an option.

The problem is they deleted their master account which would include whatever back up service they were using.

Most cloud providers make you step through multiple steps to delete an enterprise account up to and including multi factor validation.

Not sure how Google would win in this situation, ignore the delete request and be nailed for not deleting.

Except the delete request and be nailed for accepting the request.

IBM wafts stat minimum redundo terms under noses of Global Tech Services staff

What happens if you raise your hand and they say you can't leave.

Guess you have to hold it until the inevitable next round.

IT pro screwed out of unused vacation pay, bonus by HPE after judge rules: The law is a mess but it's still the law

Highest incareration rate depends on how you measure

In China and some other countries, however, data limitations make direct comparisons with the U.S. tricky. The World Prison Brief notes, for instance, that China’s total excludes inmates being held in “administrative detention” – a type of confinement that may house more than 650,000 additional people. Adding an additional 650,000 inmates to China’s total would place it ahead of the U.S. in terms of total incarcerated population.

https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/05/02/americas-incarceration-rate-is-at-a-two-decade-low/

Pushed around and kicked around, always a lonely boy: Run Huawei, Google Play, turns away, from Huawei... turns away

Re: Continuous Integration vs Donald Trump

Huawei is a minor player in the US.

Not much of an affect on US retailers, operators...

Now in Europe and asia different story but they aren't his concern

Key to success: Tenants finally get physical keys after suing landlords for fitting Bluetooth smart-lock to front door

Or worse, left the phone I the charging station at home.

What a meth: Elderly Melbourne couple sign for 20kg shipment of drugs, say cops

I assume they received uncut meth, which means it's not a gram for gram comparison.

Once it's cut with whatever they have available you would end up with multiples of the original amount.

Or so I'm told.

Bitcoin drops 7 per cent on New York Attorney General's allegations of $850m fraud by Bitfinex

Re: International Bank of Villainy

"But $100m debt is not worth $100m in most situations, because of risk."

It most cases it's possible to hedge or insure that risk with a third party effectively significantly reducing that risk.

I'm not aware of any method of offloading bit coin risk in this way.

Idiot admits destroying scores of college PCs using USB Killer gizmo, filming himself doing it

Re: Surprisingly honest

My guess is that the class of crime has a max fine

Aussies, Yanks may think they're big drinkers – but Brits easily booze them under the table

Re: Big drinkers?

a competition I'll gladly let your side win

London's Metropolitan Police arrest Julian Assange

Re: @AC or has committed a serious crime

"Mueller found no evidence of collusion w Russia on the part of Trump or his staff, although there is evidence that Russia tried."

Incorrect, Barr found no evidence in his review.

Mueller did not submit a finding either way.

Children of Wales to be prepped for the vibrant world of work with free Office 365 ProPlus

Re: Libre Office

"as Office doesn't work on Linux."

Just like most students

Wondering why 'Devin Nunes herp-face' was trending online? Here's the 411: House rep sues Twitter for all the rude stuff tweeted about him

Re: Twitter , FB and Google should be declared Monopolies...

Everything you say may be true (it's not but that's besides the point), it still makes nunes a very bad example to make the case.

In hilariously petulant move, Apple shuts Texas stores and reopens them few miles down the road – for patent reasons

Re: Perhaps an empty gesture

Yes and no.

Federal judges are subject to approval by the Senate.

Each State Senator has a substantial say in the approval process and can keep nominations from coming up for vote.

Re: Perhaps an empty gesture

Kind of the way Delaware works

IBM so very, very sorry after jobs page casually asks hopefuls: Are you white, black... or yellow?

Re: sorry or not

“Our recruiting websites temporarily and inappropriately solicited information concerning job applicant ethnicity, based on local government requirements in Brazil and South Africa,” Edward Barbini, IBM’s vice president of corporate communications, said in a statement to The Washington Post. “Those questions were removed immediately when we became aware of the issue and we apologize.”

The site has since switched to ethnic designations that are standard in the United States, Barbini said, such as “Asian” and “Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander.” It also allows applicants to check “unknown” or “not indicated.”

Amazon triples profit to $11.2bn, pays ZERO DOLLARS in corp tax – instead we pay it $129m

Re: Tax

The median is heavily weighted to the warehouse workers. Not in anyway comparable to the expected HQ2 workforce.

Razer offers freebies to gamers who descend into its coin mine

Re: Great

"So the deal is people use their hardware and their electricity to generate wealth for others and in return they receive "points"."

Kind of describes any MMO.

3ve Offline: Countless Windows PCs using 1.7m IP addresses hacked to 'view' up to 12 billion adverts a day

"The malware would only install on systems that weren't running security software"

Not sure whether to laugh or cry that there would that many open computers.