Posts by PhilipN

OpenAI meltdown: How could Microsoft have let this happen after betting so many billions?

“not being "consistently candid in his communications" with the board”

About the same as every public company. The successful business executive knows how to manipulate his Board.

Re: What about Non-Competes?

Quick - call Darl McBride!

IBM-led advertising X-odus gains steam as more flee Musk's platform

IBM ...Twitter...???

Why'd they ever think it was a good idea to be on it in the first place?

Space Force turns to Falcon Heavy for spaceplane's seventh mission

Space Force?

Confess I had to look 'em up. 100% military.

(Potential) conflict has always driven cutting-edge technology. Sigh.

Major telco outage leaves millions of Australians disconnected

Re: 99.99% uptime and Short Memory Syndrome

Apologies for the P.S. but this is interesting :

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergency_telephone_number

London 1937 first direct dial emergency number.

But whatever the system nothing beats talking to another human.

99.99% uptime and Short Memory Syndrome

Beggars belief that emergency calling - which has been with us now how long - 100 years? had no backup in place (few posts above).

Which traditional system of communications worked? Genghiz Khan had Pony Express type messengers to transit the whole of Eurasia. The English system of hilltop beacons worked pretty well. Otherwise we’re back to jungle drums.

Welcome to the future and the bigger problem is after the expletives we shrug and go “oh well”.

X says it's only worth $19B after year of Muskmanagement

Still the World's richest

He's supposed to care?

A cheap Chinese PC with odd components. What could go wrong?

VM; support

At those prices you load one OS per machine. When it fails - throw it away.

Re: Running Linux Mint

Link says Windows 11 Pro

‘How not to hire a North Korean plant posing as a techie’ guide updated by US and South Korean authorities

Re: Best code ever!

Then all those packages started arriving from Amazon ....

North Korean plant

A Triffid?

Look ma, no fans: Mini PC boasts slimline solid-state active cooling system

Zotac

Since nobody has addressed the point amongst all the smart-alecky remarks, I have tried a couple of Zotac products and was pleased with them. Particularly handy when the desk space is limited. I shall give this one a whirl.

Microsoft CEO Nadella's compensation drops... to $48M

Mangled Micawber

Salary this year more than last year = happiness

Salary this year less than last year = misery

Biden has brought the ban hammer down on US export of AI chips to China

Good write-up

Thanks

Take Windows 11... please. Leaks confirm low numbers for Microsoft's latest OS

Re: W12 will be arriving soon.

98 then 98 SE. Fits the pattern.

Brit watchdog slams Microsoft as it clears $69B Activision Blizzard buy

"ZX Spectrum"

Pfft - luxury! I am still trying to get past 70,000 on a Space Invaders arcade console.

UK silicon startups to share £1.3M chump change as part of chip strategy

"truly change the way we live our lives"

Like most blokes, after rising there are three things all beginning with "sh" with coffee somewhere in between. Now tell me again how semiconductors will change that?

Mars helicopter to try for new speed record on Thursday

"shouldn't just be the playground for the wealthy elite"

Disagree. That's exactly who it should be for. They'll be just fine while we work out how (or whether) to bring them back.

Lenovo to offer Android PCs, starting with an all-in-one that can pack a Core i9

you don't have to risk your bootloader (those days are gone)

Right. Desktop computing is no fun any more (cough - cough - choke)

Pacific telco backed by Australia, Japan, US bins Huawei

Nokia kit

Out of curiosity trying to establish ownership. Too much noise about their phones to be 100% sure, Does anyone know? Seems to go back to Taiwan and some remarks that it is all made in China. Oops!

Human knocks down woman in hit-and-run. Then driverless Cruise car parks on top of her

In other news - Today's Times** >

Paywalled** but the headline is "Police forced to run malfunctioning electric car off the road".

The nub is "The six-month-old MG ZS fully electric car had suffered a “catastrophic malfunction” and was stuck at 15mph."

**I guess it is reported elsewhere.

The iPhone 15 has a Goldilocks issue: Too big or too small. Maybe a case will make it just right

Everything Apple selling like hot cakes where I live

(As to which mind your own business).

Went on Friday with an appointment (but not for a phone). LONG queue. **** that. Went back yesterday. Large sales area designated for pickup crammed with hundreds of people half of whom were temporary sales staff dishing out the goodies.

Left with the Apple carrier bag then hid it, to avoid looking like all the walking dead with rictus grins flaunting the bag in public as if it were a Louis Vuitton.

Uncle Sam is this keen to keep US CHIPS funds out of China

"keep tabs on subsidy recipients"

Right - 'cos we all know how successful Uncle Sam was in preventing massive amounts of billions of dollars disappearing into black holes in Iraq and Afghanistan. Commerce doesn't need to worry - China will be at the back of the queue.

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

Re: I thought the ban is because of national security

The Chicken Little “The sky is falling” has been a thing in the USA since Sputnik and Yuri Gagarin.

Re: another idea

1. China did not change from a nation of peasants to the World’s factory overnight. Anyone who visited China before the decades of rampant growth saw a massive industrial infrastructure in the main cities. Creaking in places, sure, but all that despite the exigencies of civil war and “the liberation”.

2. Mate of mine studying Telecommunications at Stanford in the ‘60’s said one of their textbooks was written by a guy from Shanghai.

Lightning struck: Apple switches to USB-C for iPhone 15 lineup

Re: Where do we go from here...?

Our new masters, the EU, are calling the shots. Since when did the EU believe in innovation? I trust in overweening bureaucracy!

More discarded cables

Yeah yeah I already have cupboards-full of those.

China caught – again – with its malware in another nation's power grid

“..thought to have been”…”believed to have been”…

That’s OK. I am convinced!

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

config.sys

OMG - where's the Vallium.

P.S. Thanks for the heads-up

Arm reveals just how vulnerable it is to trade war with China

For those who don't know...

The Risk Factors section in a prospectus used to be about 2 pages. Now it is 20 and getting longer every year. It is the most incredibly boring part of the document whose drafting is therefore usually left to a junior or trainee lawyer who starts with the most recent version and is not able to think of anything beyond "what else can we throw in". The intent is NOT informative but to prevent anyone - especially the lawyers - from being sued by saying in effect "If you buy these shares you are mad".

Internet Archive sued by record labels as battle with book publishers intensifies

Re: "artists such as Frank Sinatra .." etc

There are no IP rights in an idea. It is the demonstrable representation of the idea - words, design, process, sound etc - which is protected.

"artists such as Frank Sinatra .." etc

THOSE are the music giants.

The entities named are record labels which have been ripping off musicians since the year dot.

I find it hilarious that they are the ones making accusations.

Indian armed forces gives Windows its marching orders, but only for desktop warriors

Warez

Thanks for the reminder of an expression I have not seen used for a long time.

As to what it actually meant - well what did you want it to mean? That was back when "-ware" was being tacked on to almost any prefix and "-z" was tacked on to anything that was suspect, or fun.

Biden administration restricts US investment in tech China's military might employ

"likely to increase tension"

No s***, S****!

In the context though, China must be satisfied in one sense that to get so far up Uncle Sam's nose they must be doing something right. Even without the "Designed in California" tag.

Cops cuff pregnant woman for carjacking after facial recog gets it wrong, again

Re: In front of her kids

They must be youngsters so pretty horrific. And the first or a step towards a lifetime of viewing police as “The Filth”.**

** Explanation for Across-the-Ponders : a common epithet in certain sectors of British society.

Deutsche Bahn stands to lose €400M if it has to do Huawei with Chinese kit

Somebody would spot it

I am not going to apologise any more for posting the same message again and again :

“There is, to date, no public evidence of serious technological vulnerabilities in specific Huawei or ZTE equipment.”

CCDCOE Paper, Tallinn 2019

Two US Navy sailors charged with giving Chinese spies secret military info

Re: the US are such hypocrites

In the context we are not talking about mere criticism. We are talking about treason which - cough cough - in the USA is indeed a capital offence.

Google Street View car careens into creek after 100mph cop chase

Re: For readers outsie the US

Ike - per Macarthur : "The best secretary I ever had"

treat driving through with an abundance of extreme caution

Exactly so. It is what we are supposed to bloody well do anyway - all the time.

FBI boss: Congress must renew Section 702 spy powers – that's how we get nearly all our cyber intel

Compare and Distinguish.

This piece and

https://www.theregister.com/2023/07/17/great_firewall_even_greater/

Chinese companies evade sanctions, fuel Moscow’s war on Ukraine, says report

"probably"

Penultimate line of the shambolic Executive Summary. OK then.

Think tank calls for monitoring of Chinese AI-enabled products

Re: Who are ASPI?

ASPI - Snort! Snigger!

Quarter of tech pros say they're considering quitting jobs in next six months

Mbula Schoen

That last quote - what was it? Some attempt to communicate amongst humanoids? Didn’t work.

Germany raids climate piggy bank for €20B to bankroll chip fabs

Re: Strategic investment

Your para. 2, fourth sentence. Quite so. No way the Taiwan ruling party** will allow TSMC to share its crown jewels outside the territory. Hence automotive-specific only.

** Or - cough, cough - China for that matter, That is at least until they can match the expertise, which is the moving target dragging by the nose everything that China is doing.

Want to live dangerously? Try running Windows XP in 2023

Thanks for the links

Not long ago I bolted together some old bits and some new bits and installed XP. Had to remember where I put the driver CD's for the USB bluetooth dongle and the USB wi-fi dongle. But it all worked. Until I fired up Google Chrome.

Apart from that, the trouble is I sat there looking at the familiar wallpaper wondering what to do next.

Then found that some old things from the era for which I needed XP to run would run perfectly OK in an XP VM on 7,

Eventually binned it. Sigh. I guess like a lot of people here I have too many computers.

US Air Force's Angry Kitten turns Reaper drone into fierce feline of electronic warfare

Re: Defense of budget, not nation

My thoughts exactly.

And “they were focused ..” Pathetic, but I guess having such a large piggy bank overflowing with billions of dollars tends to spoil the focus. It would mine.

RIP Kevin Mitnick: Former most-wanted hacker dies at 59

Hats off from a non-techie

And "pregnant with their son" always tugs at the heartstrings.

Beijing wants to make the Great Firewall of China even greater

Learning from the best.

How is this different from what the Department of Homeland Security (amongst others) is doing?

Microsoft promises to keep Call of Duty on PlayStation for next decade. Sony believes it

Re: So

An integral part of the MS MO. Such as hidden API's which made WordPerfect for Windows explode.

I give them one year.

Microsoft admits unauthorized access to Exchange Online, blames Chinese gang

How curious

Washington Post says ""the government was not yet attributing the attack to any country or group" alongside a similar clickbait headline.