Posts by Kev99

Europe wants easy default browser selection screens. Mozilla is already sounding the alarm on dirty tricks

As Doctor Syntax wrote, "Much worse is the growing habit of web sites checking the browser and refusing to play if it isn't one of their favoured ones...". Even some operating systems, read mictosoft windows, are written to use one particular browser. With the umpteen thousand security patches mictosoft has had to push out I wouldn't trust anything out of Redmond for use on the internet.

Google on trial: Feds challenge deals that set your web search defaults

In the US the one side will do nothing that could possibly interfere with their gravy trains or billionaire lover boys.

Lawsuit claims Google Maps led dad of two over collapsed bridge to his death

Did the local street department post signs the bridge was out? Was the driver in command of his faculties at the time of the accident? Was he wearing proper restraints? What was his speed? Did this occur during daylight or night time hours? Was this a properly dedicated roadway or a private lane? In most states, landowner are not liable for the condition of private lanes unless they are a recognised highway. Just some of the counter claims Google et al will probably raise.

Scientists suggest possible solution to space-induced bone loss

Mayebe the space boffins will figure out a way to have the crew cabin rotate to simulate gravity of 1G or so.

So what if China has 7nm chips now, there's no Huawei it can make them 'at scale'

The powers that be have conveniently ignored that China got its start in making semiconductors because the US industry was too stinking cheap and concerned about hitting quarterly earnings target set by Wall Street. This has been true ever since US manufacturers decided their stock price was more important than sustainability or giving aid and comfort to possible adversaries.

The Clorox Company admits cyberattack causing 'widescale disruption'

Yup, let's put our business critical, confidential, proprietary, private data out on the 'net (a bunch of holes held together with string) or the cloud (a bunch of holes held together by vapor). IT's perfectly safe. We don't need 256 bit or better encryptions, two factor authentication.What could possibly go wrong?

Airbus takes its long, thin, plane on a ten-day test campaign

Oh, hell yes the airlines will want to cram human sardines into that can. They've already made the seats too small for anyone over 5'4", 100 pounds.And unsafe for any emergency evacuation.

When does tackling pandemic misinfo become censorship? US courts argue it out

Free speech does not entitle one to yell "FIRE!" in a crowded theatre.

US amends hypersonic weapons strategy: If you can't zoom with 'em, boom 'em

Sounds like another job for the old Nike system. Which could use regular warheads.

Local governments aren't businesses – so why are they force-fed business software?

I worked in the fiscal office of a large county when the county welfare department "tried" to install Oracle to manage its fiscal operations and caseloads. When I retired a few years later the implementation was still ongoing, it still could not "talk" to our fiscal software without special interfaces that had to be hand coded for each connection, and had become a branch of Oracle University with all the programmers who came in, got trained, and then left for other jobs. This "failure to communicate" was quite a pleasant experience for the people in that department when payday came around.

Bombshell biography: Fearing nuclear war, Musk blocked Starlink to stymie Ukraine attack on Russia

Was this about Musk or T****?

Linux distros drop their feelgood hits of the summer

But how fat are these distros? RAM & HDD/SDD space.

You patched yet? Years-old Microsoft security holes still hot targets for cyber-crooks

Re: Windows targeted only because it's more popular?

Windows broad user base is a direct result of mictosoft's marketing practices that have basically strong armed computer makers into bundling mictosoft products in their kit. Then the software sycophants make their code comply with what mictosoft dictates with little to no regard to oerability with existing hardware.

"...15 of the 20 most-exploited software vulnerabilities it has observed are in Microsoft's code." Is that all? Considering mictosoft's record of foisting buggy software that requires hundreds of fixes every year and an apparent total lack of quality control and testing, I'm surprised it's not 20 of 20.

Scientists turn to mid-20th century tech for low-power underwater comms

I'm sure there are beaucoup "old" technologies that would work much better than the state of the art technologies around today. And probably cheaper as well.

Toyota servers ran out of storage, crashed production at 14 plants in Japan

And Toyota and other car companies want more and more computers in vehicles? OY VEY!!

ArcaOS 5.1 gives vintage OS/2 a UEFI facelift for the 21st century

Wonder if they'll ever try to port it over to 64 bit.

How to ask Facebook's Meta to not train its AI models on some of your personal info

I requested and here's Zuck's response -

Thank you for contacting us.

We don’t automatically fulfill requests and we review them consistent with your local laws.

If you want to learn more about generative AI, and our privacy work in this new space, please review the information we have in Privacy Center."

In other words, unless you're in California, you're screwed.

Right to repair advocates have a new opponent: Scientologists

They probably don't want people to find out that $$$ machine is just a bunch light bulbs and meters controlled the variable resistors.

BOFH: What a beautiful tinfoil hat, Boss!

This week's edition proves my personal adage: Never underestimate the stupidity of the human animal.

Microsoft maybe still dreams of bendy phones, judging from 360° folding screen patent

If cell phones weren't the size of cigar boxes and not used at psuedo-computers, folding phones wouldn't be even remotely necessary.

USENET, the OG social network, rises again like a text-only phoenix

The article on the first commercial spam message is almost identical to the ambulance chasers today saying they'll help Camp Lejuene victims or those claiming to help get the federal compensation relief funds. Both programs are free to access, free to apply, and free to monitor. The ambulance chasers want to get their 40% off the top for doing ten minutes of work.

We all scream for ice cream – so why are McDonald's machines always broken?

Why on earth does an ice cream machine need software? They worked for decades with simple switches and sensors. I don't remember any Mr Softee truck not working becuase the ice cream machine had a software error.

US Air Force wants $6B to build 2,000 AI-powered drones

Thank you for letting potential adversaries of the US know what its plans are so they can begin getting ways to defeat them.

Polishing off a printer with a flourish revealed not to be best practice

Re: Stories from Grandad

I worked for several years with 9 odd women. And, BOY! Were they ever!

Microsoft still prohibits Google or Alibaba from running O365 Windows Apps

Isn't that known as "restraint of trade" in legal circles?

Europe's tough new rules for Big Tech start today. Is anyone ready?

It sure seems like a lot of people believe who ever sits behind the "Hayes - Resolute" knows everything that every agency, department bureau and other rabbit holes is doing. Passing information that could result in the deaths of even a handful of people should not be allowed. It ranks right down there with yelling "Fire" in a crowded theater.

I guess Amazon hasn't heard of Amazon Web Services - AWS.

Xebian is the Marie Kondo of Linux distros – it's here to declutter

But how fat is it?

LibreOffice 7.6 arrives: Open source stalwart is showing its maturity

Re: "Now if I could just get LO to install without throwing repeated 2503/2504 errors."

Sounds a bit snarky to me. Want to translate that into words of one syllable or less?

Way back in the Stone Age, I used pfs:Professional Write on DOS and Windows 3.0. The only features in word that it didn't have that I can remember were mail merge and easy envelope printing. Between it, pfs:Publisher and Quatro Pro 4 (which had features in DOS Excel didn't have in windows), I ran our multi-million dollar entity. Most of the features in word and excel are just so much bloat.

Now if I could just get LO to install without throwing repeated 2503/2504 errors.

Space junk targeted for cleanup mission was hit by different space junk, making more space junk

Wouldn't it be cool is someone were to put a satellite up that deployed a huge net t grab all the trash humans have dumped into space. After a few orbits its engine would kick in for trajectory to Sol. I wonder if Jettison Scrap and Salvage Co. is still in business?

Lockheed's ARRW hypersonic missile: Sometimes it flies, sometimes it just tries

Once more the US military wants ot reinvent the wheel. Wouldn't it be cheaper, faster and easier to just put a modern guidance system on the old Nike Zeus B (8,000 MPH, 250 mile range)?

OpenAI's ChatGPT has a left wing bias – at times

According to some news reports, evangelical pastors are being called out for preaching left-wing agendas. This often occurs whey they preach on The Sermon on the Mount.

Germany to cut Huawei from networks 'irrespective of costs'

Too bad the US doesn't have the cajones to make such decisions and make them stick. Can't do anything that could possibly affect wall street or dividends.

Version 5 of the Endless OS enters testing

But how fat is it? How much space does it take on the drive? In RAM?

Microsoft may store your conversations with Bing if you're not an enterprise user

Mictosoft's TOS for its AI rank right down there with 1) Don't be wet, water; 2) Don't be cold, ice; and 3) We know you'll do exactly as we say.

Sparkling fresh updates to Ubuntu, Mint and Zorin on way

There is only one Ireland, or more correctly, Eire. The northeast portion is Great Britain in all but name only.

Microsoft, Intel lead this month's security fix emissions

Re: Switch from German to English?

Switching over from anything by mictosoft would probably improve security.

Really makes one wonder is ANY software developer bothers to review past CVEs as well as possible flaws, breaks, conflicts or what have you before unleashing their software. So many of the CVEs seem to relate to such and such process pointing to core processes when there's really no need.

Soon the most popular 'real' desktop will be the Linux desktop

Great way to have your data stolen

Like anyone with an gram of grey matter would ever trust to put any of their private, proprietary, confidential, business critical, personal data in the bunch of holes held together with string or vapor. It's bad enough mictosoft's one drive insists on foisting its irritating icon overlays onto all my files even though I'm not now nor have I even been connected to one drive.There's no way on earth I'll let mictosoft have access to my data. If I absolutely need to access my data remotely, I'll either have it on a thumb drive or on my personal, encrypted NAS.

Couple admit they laundered $4B in stolen Bitcoins after Bitfinex super-heist

They learned the hard way just how safe & secure the "cloud", a bunch of holes held together by vapor, really is.

Japanese boffins slice semiconductors from diamonds – with lasers!

Re: Are they forever?

I thought a platinum AmEx card with no credit limit was a girl's best friend.

Panasonic liquidates its liquid crystal display business

I wonder if slumping PC sales is a result of buyers realising that yesterday's kit does the job just as well as today's but without the hype and questionable "improvements". Maybe gaining a few nanoseconds in processing speed is important to Fermi Labs but to the vast majority of users they couldn't care less.

GNOME project considers adding window tiling by default

I find having multiple windows open to be quite distracting. It's okay if I'm working different versions of a spreadsheet or doc but otherwise quite distracting.

The choice: Pay BT megabucks, or do something a bit illegal. OK, that’s no choice

The article on running cable thru a BT conduit reminded me of an Abbott & Costello movie. They opened a gas station across from another but could match their prices. The discovered the other station had its petrol piped into their tanks. So, A&C dug a tunnel and tapped into the other station's supply pipe.

Intel adds fresh x86 and vector instructions for future chips

Once I ask this question. How does an original chip, be it CPU, GPU. Pi, ARM, or whatever get coded. I can understand how a designer can add registers through modifying the microcode or whatever, but how does the original chip designer get the chip to respond to:

r

PB PC NVmxDIZC .A .X .Y SP DP DB

; 00 E012 00110000 0000 0000 0002 CFFF 0000 00

g 2000

BREAK

And then how does the designer get the mirocode to respond to machine code, and so on.

Too many bytes and not enough bricks for datacenters

Ah, yes, the cloud. And what is a cloud? It's a bunch of holes held together by vapor that some bean counter listened to a PFY about how much money it could save.

I wonder if using old mine tunnels for the centers would save a bit on cooling and construction costs?

GlobalFoundries claims German chip subsidies will 'distort competition'

And how many millions or billions has Global Foundries glommed off the federal, state & local taxpayers? During my 20+ years reviewing tax incentives, very, VERY seldom did the companies coming to us hat-in-hand need the tax break. Such as Ford wanting $125,000 tax break to expand an existing plant when its alternatives were France & Brazil. Or KAO wanting even more to expand its Jergens plant. Personally, for every cent/pence/sen/fen/etc given as tax breaks should be levied as tax at the national level.