Posts by Pen-y-gors

Digital indigestion: Fizzy Coca-Cola display chokes on full storage

Re: The real question is

Count cans

Log can count

Count money

Log money

Display slide

Log slide display

Display menu

Log menu choice

Photograph customer

Save photograph

NHS prescribes half a million Copilot licenses for its paperwork headache

Re: National Humiliation Service

Bed usage optimisation is now critical because of underfunding over decades

A properly funded and managed system would have a capacity cushion built in to cope with peaks and troughs. Instead they deem it a failure if bed occupancy isn't at least 99.93% 24/7/365 - which is why we have waiting lists.

When I was in hospital a couple of years back, there was an elderly gent on the ward waiting for a transfer to another hospital for a replacement heart valve. He was in generally good nick, spent the days reading and walking the corridors. They kept giving him a date, then cancelling due to an emergency coming in to the other hospital - or lack of transport for the 100 mile journey. He was taking up a bed in our cardiac unit for nearly three weeks before he finally went.

Template engine?

If it's used as a sophisticated template engine, fine.

If it tries to summarise/deduce/extrapolate people will die.

If malware via monitor cables is a matter of national security, this might be the gadget for you

Cheap alternative

At least for the problem of the cable leaking signals.

Go down scrap metal yard

Buy 6 foot of old lead water pipe

Run cable through pipe.

Upgrade is to nick the lead sheet off the roof of your local church, and cover the floor/walls/ceiling/windows/doors of your room. May interfere with mobile reception.

Panasonic creates device-locked QR codes to speed facial biometric capture

Re: Not a difficult process.

You forgot

4) bash an employee over the head on the way to work, steal their 'device', cut off their finger, and waltz in unchallenged

It's a bit like giving everyone a physical key, which can be stolen.

Capita won disastrous UK pensions gig after acing performance checks

That evaluation methodology in full:

Do you think you can do this? Yes/No

Do you offer value for money? Yes/No

Have you ever had any ex-UK government ministers or senior civil servants working for you? Yes/No

1 point for each 'Yes' answer.

UK defense startup to supply drone interceptors for Britain and allies

Wow.

So, guesstimates of the cost. Over £250k each? Over £500k?

Sounds like some seriously dodgy procurement shit could be crawling out of the woodwork. Anyone want some PPE?

There is no justification for MoD not to reveal the procurement process.

Britain seeks views before it drops the hammer on signal jammers

Re: Incomprehensible

I think this is an excellent step by our beloved government, which will eliminate car theft overnight.

I suggest the next step should be to make it illegal to own things* that can kill people which will eliminate murder and manslaughter.

* including hands which can strangle people

Surprise! Big Tech has been a bit rubbish at enforcing Australia’s kids social media ban

Re: It’s not hard if you want it

Does El Reg count as social media?

Starlink sprays debris into orbit following another satellite 'anomaly'

Hang on

If they're 'past the 10,000 satellite' mark, but are up to satellite number 35956, what happened to the other 25,000?

HP stuffs OpenAI LLM into new laptops in bid for small biz

Re: As if we needed another reason...

You really should get a discount if you don't want the creepy bloatware

Your datacenter's power architecture called. It's not happy

Re: The fireworks should be spectacular

I'd like to see the same sums for the proposed super-EVs. There was a recent claim of a BYD one that will charge at 1500kW, DC. at 400V (presumably). Apart from the lights dimming for miles, how fat a copper cable do you need to carry that sort of power?

I think that the whole EV thing (fundamentally good) needs a complete change in the public mindset about transport, as big (if not bigger) than the switch from horses to ICE vehicles. Most car usage is relatively short journeys, under 100 miles/day. Charging at home is the norm. If you're driving from Exeter to Edinburgh, or a London cabbie, you just have to learn a bit of patience and spend 45 mins charging every few hours. Face it, you need a break and a coffee anyway. Let's just learn a bit of patience again. EVs don't need to be able to get a month's worth of travel in a 5-minute fill, just as a model-T didn't need to have space to carry a couple of bales of hay to feed the horse.

Chardet dispute shows how AI will kill software licensing, argues Bruce Perens

Prompts?

Presumably the developer will be happy to publish the prompts given to Claude to prove that they were in no way inspired by the existence of the original library? Inputs, outputs etc? Was Claudde given free range and told NOT to reference any existing code?

Microsoft Copilot to hijack your browser... for your own convenience

an Edge case?

Useful comments - inspired me to do a regedit to stop Edge accessing any URL (with URLBlocklist)

Thanks everyone.

TerraPower gets permission to build, not operate, sodium-cooled nuclear reactor

Afterwards?

And the leftover uranium and radioactive salt goes in the recycling bag at the end of the week?

Fake 'interview' repos lure Next.js devs into running secret-stealing malware

Re: Arsessment

To be fair...

Many years back, I was working in a PL/1 shop. One of my colleagues, a Scouser, wanted to get back home. Job came up that required the usual 2-3 years of COBOL. He'd never used it. Spent the train journey mugging up on an "Introduction to COBOL" book. Got the job. Was never found out!

Cloudflare experiment ports most of Next.js API 'in one week' with AI

Testing

"A Cloudflare engineer says he has implemented 94 percent of the Next.js API "

And tested it?

Cisco turns to titanium spoons and sand dunes to build a better … box?

In the dim and distant I worked for a large financial company who managed to get through FOUR logos in 12 months, all expensively designed by brand consultants.

The highlight was the one in December when they bussed hundreds of staff from all over the UK to London, in a blizzard, for a launch hosted by someone off the telly. Many were delayed so badly they missed it and had to go straight home again.

Attacker gets into France's database listing all bank accounts, makes off with 1.2 million records

Down with...

"France’s government has mobilized the agencies that fight this sort of incident,"

I can see Father Dougal now, standing outside the Elysée, with a sign saying "Down with this sort of incident"

DARPA's autonomous missile-firing missile advances toward flight tests

Plus ca change

They're fighting the last war again. Insanely expensive toys.

These will cost hundreds of millions each. One missile hit on the launcher and it's scrap.

Just watched an interesting video about the Ukrainian long-range cruise/drone projects. Their FP-1 drones cost $55,000 each, have a range of 1200 km and a 120kg warhead. They are currently manufacturing 200 A DAY.

For the price of one F35, Ukraine can build 2000 FP-1s in 10 days. Enough to destroy hundreds of targets.And FP-2 (mid range) is coming soon, FP-5 (Flamingo) is already here, range of 3000km with a 1000kg warhead costing $500,000 (likely to fall). Twice the range, twice the warhead and a quarter of the price of a US Tomahawk.

And UK and other NATO countries are planning to double defence budgets and buy the expensive big toys. Why?

You probably can't trust your password manager if it's compromised

Firefox?

Obviously only works for websites in FF, but that's fine. 2FA is too much of a faff for anything other than high risk (money, hosting, email)

British Army splashes $86M on AI gear to speed up the battlefield kill chain

Whoops

Get ready for an awful lot of "friendly fire" incidents.

Who remembers the 'incidents' during the Falklands when incoming Exocets were labelled as friendly because they were Fabriqué en France.

New hire fixed a problem so fast, their boss left to become a yoga instructor

Past employment had the standard office desk. I'm tall and was having back problems. Maintenance bods made a couple of 3x3 inch blocks to raise the desk up (they drilled small recesses for the legs so it didn't slide off). Worked a treat.

Microsoft sets Copilot agents loose on your OneDrive files

Re: Windows' Search

And it's so frickin' SLOW. Searching for a filename in a directory with a few thousand files in it on an SSD shouldn't take minutes.

Classic version

Thank the gods I upgraded my Office 365 sub to the cheaper, Copilot-free version

Going off at a tangent here... where do you get 'metered connections' in this Year of Our Lord 2026?

Ghost gun legislation casts shadow over 3D printing

Maybe...

Start by banning the sale of most sorts of guns in the state and city? Possession is fine (under the Constitution*), you just can't buy one. Inheriting granpappy's hunting rifle is fine, obvs.

There are approx 4,000,000 'legal' guns in NY state. Will a few plastic ones make a difference?

* What Dat?

Microsoft spends billions on AI, converts just 3.3% of Copilot Chat users

Another planet...

"plans to streamline or even remove some AI features where they don't make sense."

Start with M$ Swiftkey Keyboard. Which now lets you use AI to make pictures. It's an f***ing KEYBOARD! I could see a use-case for some very focussed LLM work that improves auto-corrupt, based on previous typing, but drawing pictures?

Don't forget you can 'downgrade' your Office 365 sub to the non-Copilot 'Classic' - for now at least. A lot cheaper - i.e. the old price.

Autonomous cars, drones cheerfully obey prompt injection by road sign

In what crazy world....

do people write code that takes any input and executes it without any form of validation or filtering?

How many search input boxes will execute DROP DATABASE fred ?

Surely a basic precaution is to identify an actual legal road sign (not some random text in the field of view), and only act on 'commands' that are on the official list of valid road signs.

The people developing these systems shouldn't be allowed to carry scissors.

Rackspace tests customer loyalty with brutal email price hike

Proton ?

I've been looking to de-Google my email and I suspect I'll be going to Proton Mail at some stage. Tried it out and there are a few issues over speed and search, but those are a direct result of it being very secure - everything is encrypted on the server. To search content it has to download a copy onto your device.

Prices are comparable - €11/month for business email, €15 for the full suite (1TB cloud, VPN, Calendar, Mail, 2FA authenticator app, password manager) - multiple email addresses included. 30 day free trial - I got a refund when I decided 'not just yet'

Personal prices are £95/year for the full works

Has import from other provider options.

Oh yes, and based in Switzerland!

UK prime minister stares down barrel of ban on social media for kids

Re: Digital ID anyone?

Never mind "the government" - how about Farrage's Gestapo?

Boffins probe commercial AI models, find an entire Harry Potter book

'Fair' use?

The key point about 'fair' use is that it must be fair. e.g. quoting some sentences in a review of a novel. Quoting a paragraph in an academic paper (with full citation). Not for commercial gain (I suspect if someone tried to publish the "2026 Calender of the 365 best quotes from Harry Potter" they'd be in court sooner than they could blink - whereas you'd probably get away with having my favourite HP quote of the day on your Facebook page.

If a college photocopied HP and the Goblet of Fire for every student in a class and used it as an example of poor writing, they'd be in deep doo-doo unless they had some very powerful licensing agreements.

For some reason this doesn't seem to have come up so far in court.

Infinite Machine e-scooter is like the offspring of a Vespa and a Cybertruck

Form over function?

They designed everything from scratch. Why?

How about taking a Vespa (or similar) and working out how to switch to an electric motor and shove in some batteries? The design works. And under £5000

Space-power startup claims it can beam energy to solar farms

Re: A good article .....

Ah, yes, but can hyper-rich 'investors' high on coke and ket actually read? Or care? Anyone with money to spare for this is another argument for a wealth/asset tax, and not at 2% p.a.

But...why?

What's wrong with plopping 200 sq miles of cheap solar PV in some desert to generate 100GW, and pair it with a pumped storage site / loads of very hot salt/sand that you can use at night? Must be more effective than a series of very expensive stages each of which runs at 20-30% efficiency

Amazon-backed X-energy sweet talks investors into another $700M for small modular reactor dream

Decisions, decisions

You come up with a completely new design for something and you have a choice. Utilise Helium as a coolant, an expensive gas that is getting rarer by the day, or salt, which is cheap as chips (and good on chips) and seriously available. What to do, eh?

Bitcoin bandit's £5B bubble bursts as cops wrap seven-year chase

Criminal Assets?

So what happens to the £4.8 billion? Does the UK government keep it? Cash it in and give it to Water Company shareholders?

UK's Ajax fighting vehicle arrives – years late and still sending crew to hospital

Questions?

"There are also questions about whether vehicles such as Ajax are vulnerable to drone attacks, of the kind seen against tanks in Ukraine's battles against Russia's invasion. "

Nah, I don't think there are any questions. We know.that drones can destroy T-90M Russian tanks. An AFV will be a doddle. They could glue some metal spikes on it?

OpenAI API moonlights as malware HQ in Microsoft’s latest discovery

Oh yeah?

Seeing a connection to OpenAI's API on your network doesn't exactly scream "compromise."

It would on my network!

UK charity bank CAF branded a 'disaster' after platform migration goes wrong

Test, test and test again

Is this another 'skimped on testing' problem?

Frozen foods supermarket chain deploys facial recognition tech

Insufficient data...

Before I get worked up about this and boycott Iceland (again - the owner was a prominent Tory donor, also very anti-Welsh, despite being based in Cymru) could we please have some numbers?

How many violent assaults against staff happen in Iceland stores every week? What is this as a percentage of customer visits? How does it compare to e.g. assaults on staff in Lidl or W H Smiths (R.I.P)

Yes, even one violent assault is too many, but could the money for this system be better spent in other ways? Is it just an excuse to reduce the number of actual human security staff, i.e. a cost-cutting measure.

We need to know.

UK to buy nuclear-capable F-35As that can't be refueled from RAF tankers

Re-fighting WW2

As always the US military and government are re-fighting the last war-but-one.

You want to drop a big bomb somewhere in the vague area of 1100 miles from your airfield? Buy a dozen F35A for $100 million each

Option B - design and build precision long-distance drones that drop 500kg of explosive 1m from your target. Or better, buy Ukrainian ones which have been tested in combat conditions. Cost? Much less than $100 million.

Re: "In an era of radical uncertainty"

Yes, but... I'm sure making the probe retractable would count as an out of specification modification and add $100 million to the price.

Re: "In an era of radical uncertainty"

"Well, unless you cancel your licence and give up watching live TV" (NB also iPlayer)

Did that several years ago. Return the threats addressed to "the Legal Occupier" as "Not known at this address". At the rate they're going the postage costs will bankrupt the Licence people.

Do you trust Xi with your 'private' browsing data? Apple, Google stores still offer China-based VPNs, report says

Not a problem

The only websites I look at over my Chinese VPN are the one with AI-generated pics of Xi pleasuring himself with under-age donkeys.

Meta offered one AI researcher at least $10,000,000 to join up

No! Pay me!

I have a radical idea that will massively improve all LLM machine extrapolation tools:

Label their training data as factual, opinion, fiction or fantasy

Idea copyright (c) me 2025

Please send licensing cheques (minimum €5 billion each) to the usual address

Take the job. Demand to WFH. Bullshit as long as possible. Eventually get sacked. Result.

Tape, glass, and molecules – the future of archival storage

Re: If you really want your scribbles readable in 3000 CE* ...

Nah, serious longevity is chisel and granite slabs, stored in a large dry cave 1000 ft above sea level in a geologically-stable area.

Yeah. But a much better format would be hexagonal crystals about an inch in diameter and 8-10 inches long.

Meta sues 'nudify' app-maker that it claims ran 87k+ Facebook, Instagram ads

Odd

So they're seeking an injunction to stop people posting ads that they accepted money for? Isn't there some sort of implied contract there?