Posts by druck

FBI wipes Chinese PlugX malware from thousands of Windows PCs in America

Re: Scary

If the FBI really wanted to protect people, they would wipe Windows while they were at it.

Intel, AMD engineers rush to save Linux 6.13 after dodgy Microsoft code change

Re: Extra checks please!!!

Or just don't allow anyone tainted by SatNad's growth cult anywhere near Linux.

UK floats ransomware payout ban for public sector

Ban Crypto...

...and you automatically ban the payment of ransomware and many other scams.

Anything else is just pissing into the wind.

In AI agent push, Microsoft re-orgs to create 'CoreAI – Platform and Tools' team

Cultastic

Looks like there is a new favoured caste in the Microsoft growth cult.

Raspberry Pi hands out prizes to all in the RP2350 Hacking Challenge

Test the fix too

I hope the $20,000 comes with the caveat that they have to try again when the revised version of the silicon comes out, which is supposed to mitigate whatever technique they used.

Tesla recalls 239,382 vehicles over rearview camera problems

30cal or 50cal surely?

Unless you mean a 40mm Bofors, which would certainly deal with even the heaviest of traffic.

UK unveils plans to mainline AI into the veins of the nation

No more than a few bit barns of bullshit

All this AI revolution actually is, is giving planning permission for a few bit barns for US companies. It will result in a few thousand construction workers being temporarily taken away from house building, and result in a handful of permanent security and maintenance jobs.

While the companies put in the investment for the bit barns, the vast majority of which is purchasing equipment from US hardware companies, with only a small percentage in building materials from the UK, the UK will be left with the cost of providing all the electrical requirements with an energy industry already at breaking point. Luckily the government has designated bit barns as critical national infrastructure, so they will keep their lights on, while those lovely smart meters selectively blacks out homes and other businesses when the ever increasing proportional of renewables fails to deliver.

On the AI usage side, laughable headlines about pot hole detection, but of course no money to actually fix them pretty much sums up the lack of priorities. In reality all it will be used for is paying the increased AI premiums on Microsoft subscription services. Working from home civil servants will be able to get away with spending even less time generating useless paper work, and productivity will continue to decline.

TLDR; spend billions, get bullshit, accelerate decline.

UK prepared to throw planning rules out the window for massive datacenters

@Oneman2Many just put one server rack in your house and see how long your panels can keep it going.

New Outlook marches onto Windows 10 for what little time it has left

Re: Steaming pile of turd

It looks like the AI dependent generation of programmers working for the growth mindset cult of Microsoft can't even reproduce all the features of a 29 year old email program.

Trump China tariffs to 'overshadow' the 'progress' of AI PCs

The year of the Raspberry Pi

The Raspberry Pi 5 is now available with up to 16GB of memory.

* Manufactured in the UK, so lower tariffs.

* No unwanted NPU (26 TOPS AI hat add-on if you really want it).

* Runs Linux, so no insecure Windows clamouring for an upgrade.

The ultimate Pi 5 arrives carrying 16GB ... and a price to match

Re: Viable as a desktop replacement?

That's what I've got connected to the big TV's in the house. I can sit down in any room, pick up a wireless mini keyboard and do just about anything I can do on my powerful Linux Mint laptop, albeit slightly more slowly. All the data is on a NAS which is another Pi 5 with a larger SSD. I'm using 8GB ones are the moment which seems to be sufficient for desktop type use, where as my the 4GB Pi 4B I bought just before the 8GB ones came out struggled with lots of tabs open.

I'm pondering whether to get a 16GB Pi 5 to replace an 8GB Pi 4 which acts as my data collector, gateway and webserver, or wait for the 16GB compute module and put together a system based on that.

Re: Cost is a thing...

The Pi 5 can be used with a passive heat sink, and can also use the Pi 4 PSU, unless you want to fully load the USB ports and add a hungry PCIe device, in which case you need the 27W PSU which only costs a few quid more.

We did warn you – 2025 may be the year AI bots take over Meta's 'verse

Re: Anyone who advertises on metà is an Idiot

You can always blame AI for making up the source.

Quantum? No solace: Nvidia CEO sinks QC stocks with '20 years off' forecast

Re: Right

The specular failure of the billions invested in quantum hasn't stopped every snake oil salesman and his dog selling post quantum encryption algorithms to protect against the threat that is "just around the corner".

DNA sequencers found running ancient BIOS, posing risk to clinical research

Re: Security 'research'

It's not the device itself they are interested in, but a way to gain a foothold on the network, so they can access other stuff.

The channel stands corrected: Hardware is a refresh cycle business now

Re: Money dear boy

I've just put a Pi 5 and a wireless keyboard in every room with a TV (a much tidier solution than Pi 500s), there isn't much they cant do at a decent speed, and the dark Mate desktop looks beautiful in 4K, especially on the 75".

Zuck takes a page from Musk: Meta dumps fact-checkers, loosens speech restrictions

Re: Request

You still think you are getting another election in 4 years?

John Deere boasts driverless fleet - who needs operators, anyway?

Re: Harvesting automation

"the worker could be paid 3x" --->

Intel debuts laptop silicon that doesn't qualify for Microsoft's 'Copilot+ PC' badge

Intel Low bar

13 TOPS? That's the same as the $70 Raspberry Pi AI hat, and the $110 model does 26 TOPS.

Eutelsat OneWeb blames 366th day for 48-hour date disaster

Re: out by 11 days by the mid 18th century?

Wales?

Or to put it another way; not Scotland.

AI spending spree continues as Microsoft commits $80B for 2025

AI: You better get used to writing names on coffee cups.

"AI offers not only new tools for people's work but also new ways to help people learn almost anything. We have the opportunity as a country to equip all Americans with the skills needed to use AI to pursue higher-paying jobs and more successful careers.

If your job is a meaningless pusher of paper, or low quality junior coder and you've learnt you can bunk off early by getting AI to churn out something that vaguely resembles what you are supposed to be doing, you are going to be in for a shock if you think you'll be paid more or have a successful career. If you can get away with this, it won't be long before the company realises and replaces you all together.

Google's 10-year Chromebook lifeline leaves old laptops headed for silicon cemetery

Re: 10 years !!!

I'm still using my 2013 11" i3 laptop with a fixed 4GB of RAM to read The Register and BBC News while watching the TV. It was originally shipped with Windows 8, but is faster than the day it was new running Linux Mint.

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

Re: Here's an idea

At no point during evaporation is steam involved.

With 10 months of support remaining, Windows 10 still dominates

Unpatched vulnerabilities

Many editions of Windows 10 are due to drop out of free support on October 14, 2025. Affected users will then have the option to purchase Extended Security Updates (ESU) to keep the lights on a little longer or keep using the operating system and risk falling foul of unpatched vulnerabilities.

Hardly worse than falling foul of the unpatched vulnerability that is Windows 11.

Trump's tariff threats could bump PC prices by almost half

Alternatively

You don't need a new AI PC, and you don't need a Windows 11 forced hardware upgrade. Install Linux on your existing machine, it will work better than it ever did before, and easily last another 4 years until the triple clusterfuck of AI, Windows and Trump are history.

Schneider Electric warns of future where datacenters eat the grid

The Energy Crisis model is the only realistic outcome.

We just don't have the resources to waste on statistical bullshit generators.

Naïve Reg hack thinks he can beat Christmas food comas once and for all

Re: Walking in wet weather

Great advice.

I was going to mention the accompanying pictures all look like they were taken at far more pleasant times of they year, and not the dull grey drizzle which we experience at Christmas every year now.

What do ransomware and Jesus have in common? A birth month and an unwillingness to die

You know the solution

As the article mentions ransomware only really took off with the advent of payment by cryptocurrency, remove to that from the equation and 99.99% of the criminal enterprise will disappear over night. I'm sure someone will still attempt to get paid by a suitcase of cash under a bridge, or a Western union transfer, but the chances of many payments reaching remote criminals sitting pretty in sanctioned countries without extradition are infeasibly small.

Stranded in space: Starliner crew to remain in orbit even longer as SpaceX faces delays

Re: Of course there's a backup plan!

No, not like you said on either point.

And the sustained 8G re-entry force lasted for over 60 seconds.

There were plans for inflatable personal re-entry shields, which would protect a suited astronaut from the high temperatures when aero braking down to speeds low enough to survive the declaration from deploying a drogue parachute. Quite how the astronaut would initiate the de-orbit delta-v without a substantial retro rocket, I'm not sure.

Re: Of course there's a backup plan!

Thank you for demonstrating your complete lack of knowledge on this subject too.

Soyuz re-entries have experienced up to a sustained 8G on several occasions, and a momentary 12G if the retro pack fails on ground contact. That requires a seat liner to prevent serious and potentially permanent life changing injuries. And no you cannot make it orbit with spray foam.

Russian capsules have no commonality or interoperability with western ones, for either docking adaptors or spacesuits. Spacesuits are not even compatible between SpaceX and Boeing capsules.

AI's rising tide lifts all chips as AMD Instinct, cloudy silicon vie for a slice of Nvidia's pie

Re: Rather than numbers of AI processors

Name, shame, and string them up from the nearest (LED) lamppost.

The Automattic vs WP Engine WordPress wars are getting really annoying

Text Squeeze?

When old Microsoft codenames crop up in curious places

Re: No need for memory

Yes Windows 93 94 95, was released in that year.

Ireland fines Meta for 2018 'View As' breach that exposed 30M accounts

Re: Greed vs. Greed

It allows Ireland to run a budget surplus, while the rest of Europe swims in debt.

Apple Intelligence summary botches a headline, causing jitters in BBC newsroom

Re: Apple AI=Ain't Intelligent!

Fail-fast... and fix it, except there isn't a fix for AI apart from uninstall.

The sweet Raspberry taste of success masks a missed opportunity

Back in 1987 I was using an SBC version of the BBC Micro (2" square PC with a 6502 and BBC BASIC ROM) in a variety of industrial non destructive test equipment, we used for checking welds in everything from axel stubs to power stations. In the time between that and the Pi coming out, everything seemed to either go down the route of custom embedded devices, or interface cards attached to standard PCs. I'm glad the good old days are back again!

Australia moves to drop some cryptography by 2030 – before quantum carves it up

Re: Let's say we knew quantum computers do it in 2040

1. They claim to operate using a theoretical physical phenomenon which is swamped by noise in the real world.

2. They break the fundamental rule there is no such thing a free lunch.

Re: Let's say we knew quantum computers do it in 2040

The worse that can happen is that in the rush to protect against magic fairy dust quantum computers which will never be able to crack conventional secure algorithms, we get sold a bunch of post quantum snake oil which is eventually found to be far weaker.

Coder wrote a bug so bad security guards wanted a word when he arrived at work

I used to regard this as an urban myth, but a straw poll of friends & family revealed that everyone paying monthly for their gas & electricity was "in credit" - some by £100s.

That all depends how you pay you bill and what time of the year it is.

If you opt to pay the actual cost each month, you should never build up credit, but you will pay far more in Winter than in Summer (in the UK). That's why most people opt to pay a fixed monthly payment, so credit will build up during the summer months, and reduce and even go in to debit over the winter. This does rely on you giving / them taking accurate readings of the previous years usage to calculate the fixed amount.

$800 'AI' robot for kids bites the dust along with its maker

Re: It happened to the McLaren F1 fuel injection first.

a McLaren F1 relies on a Compaq laptop running a 3.5" floppy drive with the code of its firmware to run the fuel injection system

Don't worry, we did have a couple of spares in the basement of MTC.

Suggested Actions fails to suggest its own survival as Windows 11 feature killed

Re: "New Features"

Who say we aren't / have?

China's Salt Typhoon recorded top American officials' calls, says White House

Re: So all those billions

Really? I suggest your English reading compensation is not sufficient for this level of trolling operation.

The report contains such gems as:-

"poor software engineering and cyber security processes lead to security and quality issues, including vulnerabilities"

"the increasing number and severity of vulnerabilities discovered is of particular concern".

"If an attacker has knowledge of these vulnerabilities and sufficient access to exploit them, they may be able to affect the operation of a UK network, in some cases causing it to cease operating correctly,"

And there are many, many more.

Re: So all those billions

GCHQ actually found it was very poor quality and littered with security holes. They didn't find any back doors, but it didn't need any, anyone could get in by squeezing through the gaps in the walls.

Tesla sued over alleged Autopilot fail in yet another fatal accident

Where's the class action suit for all the accidents caused by drivers forced to use touch screens for basic functions of the car?

Re: The problem with LIDAR

But then you get phantom braking, which isn't as dangerous as people sometimes claim

You wouldn't be claiming that with 40 tons of HGV behind you, who won't even have wiped off 10mph in the time it's taken you to come to a complete halt - momentarily.

Some dashcams monitor both the external (front or front + rear) and inside of the car, which you would need to prove that the manoeuvrer was instigated by the car.

Microsoft holds last Patch Tuesday of the year with 72 gifts for admins

Adobe?

Does Adobe still exist only to make Microsoft look slightly less shit for the number of security patches each month?

AMD secure VM tech undone by DRAM meddling

Re: Seems like that would be easy to detect

There is a lot of memory these days, especially in servers hosting virtual machines. It would be back to the days of the POST check taking an hour.

No, I can't help – you called the wrong helpdesk, in the wrong place, for the wrong platform

Re: Me Too!

It wasn't unusual to use your own mobile in the past, company phones tended to be limited to people who were on the road a lot.

In the good old days, the only phone you had was on your desk, and when you went home it stayed there. I used the same policy with the company mobile.