Posts by midcapwarrior

Trump says he got a deal for rare earths in Greenland, but they won't come easy

Re: Plenty on US soil

One of the reasons mining is rarer is that the mine owners now have to remediate the mines. Mine waste is highly toxic and has to go somewhere. China doesn't enforce environmental regulations so it's not a concern. If you want to see a worse case of what happens with the leftovers take a visit to the Berkeley pit in Montana. Visited it when I worked for the US DOE. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkeley_Pit . The Berkeley Pit is a former open pit copper mine in the western United States, located in Butte, Montana. It is one mile (1.6 km) long by one-half mile (800 m) wide, with an approximate maximum depth of 1,780 feet (540 m). It is filled to a depth of about 900 feet (270 m) with water that is acidic (4.1 - 4.5 pH level), about the acidity of beer or tomatoes.[1] As a result, the pit's water is laden with heavy metals and dissolved metals that leach from the rock in a natural process known as acid rock drainage. The pit's water content includes (but is not limited to) dissolved copper, arsenic, cadmium, zinc, and sulfuric acid.

Sorry, but DeepSeek didn’t really train its flagship model for $294,000

Re: So, in fact, when all elements are factored in

Deepseek has been found to provide either inaccurate or no responses to questions the Chinese government doesn't want https://arstechnica.com/ai/2025/01/the-questions-the-chinese-government-doesnt-want-deepseek-ai-to-answer/

So it depends on what job you want done.

Tesla FSD ignores school bus lights and hits 'child' dummy in staged demo

Re: "Elon sets priorities, and he's never made safety a priority."

Technically it did save a fraction of what was promised but I get your point.

DOGE dilettantes 'didn't test' Social Security fraud detection tool at appropriate scale

Re: DOGE incompetence

I can verify it's the login.gov.

Tried several times with login and it returned errors every time.

Switched to the SSA and no problems.

Crypto takes a dip as Trump signs Bitcoin Reserve order

hmmm

"On the other hand, the coins aren't being used in transactions and commerce."

So it's like almost all crypto.

US stocks slip as Trump pulls trigger on Canada, Mexico, China tariffs

Re: Fentanyl

The total amount seized (both borders) is approximately equal to a single rail oil tanker. That's why it's so hard to stop and so lucrative per ounce.

How Windows got to version 3 – an illustrated history

Butterfly affect

"Windows was supposed to die, and it would have if not for one fateful encounter.

"Well, at a late-June Friday-night party celebrating the opening of Microsoft's big new Canyon-Park manufacturing facility, Murray spied his good friend David Weise, a Windows developer, fellow physicist, and all-round computer whiz. Looking for some fun, Murray teased David that David's new Windows 286 (Windows 2.x with access to the 64-KB HMA) was basically a joke. What one really should do was to get Windows into protected mode and blow away the 640-KB RAM barrier altogether. Much to Murray's surprise, David said, "Yes, let's go do it!" So Murray said, "OK, how about tomorrow?" David said, "No, let's go right now!" -- "The Personal Computer from the Inside Out", by Richard Shoemaker and Murray Sargent.

It's been 20 years since Oracle bought two software rivals, changing the market forever

Re: "The table naming convention...goes way back to the time of when it was called Great Plains."

That's one way of looking at it.

Another is that once you learn an archaic naming convention it's a PITA for the user base to switch even if a newer naming scheme makes more sense.

How datacenters use water – and why kicking the habit is nearly impossible

Re: So why not locate by rivers, lakes or the ocean?

Part of the Columbia River issue is the water discharged by the data center is warmer, sometimes significantly warmer than the water that it intakes and than the water from municipal plants. The warmer water is detrimental to fish and aquatic life.

A Kansas pig butchering: CEO who defrauded bank, church, friends gets 24 years

Depositors would be first in line but they would be covered up to $250,000 by the FDIC.

After contentious Amazon datacenter fight, US county says it has learned a lesson

Re: Headcount

Most of those onsite "employees" are security.

Not quite generation of high paying jobs.

Indian govt probes claims Foxconn won't hire married women

I'm shocked

Shocked that the government is investigating.

Guessing someone at foxcom forgot to make their monthly bribe/payment.

Sure it will be cleared up next month

Microsoft posts another set of bumper results. Market's response? Meh

Buy the rumor

sell the news

Tesla owners in deep freeze discover the cold, hard truth about EVs

Went to college in Illinois.

Had an older car.

Last task of the day was to take the car battery into my apartment at night.

Going green Hertz: Rental giant axes third of EV fleet over lack of demand

checked the for sale listings from their website and most have 30-40,000 or more miles on them. Given they are nearly all years or less it seems they are fairly popular. I'd go with the cost to repair and the unexpectedly high depreciation rather than infrastructure issues.

Musk floats idea of boat mod for Cybertruck

Re: Why

"I must observe that I see shonky panel gaps and lax assembly standards on almost any US designed and built car."

As opposed to any British designed and built car.

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.