Posts by druck

Google paying to be default search on phones is totally against antitrust law, judge rules

Google need to...

...consult the Intel play book straight away.

Michigan probes Musk-backed PAC website that weirdly tried and failed to help register people to vote

Re: "It was brought to our attention"

This is what happens when you ask Copilot to generate a voter registration form.

Anaconda's Python-for-Excel escapes Azure Cloud, heads for your PC

With Python and Pandas you can skip Excel altogether.

Sneaky SnakeKeylogger slithers into Windows inboxes to steal sensitive secrets

Malware.NET?

I find it incredulous that malware is being written using .NET, wouldn't anyone notice the multi-gigabyte download to get the correct exact version of the .NET framework any program using it requires?

UK axes plans for Edinburgh-based exascale computer

All the big defence projects were cancelled the decade before under Labour, but don't let that stop you blaming every wrong decision in history on Thatcher.

DARPA suggests turning old C code automatically into Rust – using AI, of course

Just one question...

...have they lost their fucking minds?

San Francisco set to ban rent-hiking algorithms used by landlords

Re: Read Very Carefully!

Then payment processors will be instructed block them.

Sam Altman wants a US-led freedom coalition to fight authoritarian AI

Re: The sooner the inevitable is accepted the better the situation is for publishing.

As your posts ably demonstrate, neither AI or pretending to be AI, produces anything better than a human.

The sooner...

...AI crawls up it's own arse the better, and the Altman's of this world can find some other snake oil to sell.

Fortune 50 biz coughed up record-breaking $75M ransom to halt leak of stolen data

You are never going to stop this...

...until Crypto is banned.

How much more difficult would this extortion be to pull off if the only means of untraceable payment was either 3,000,000 $25 Amazon gift voucher codes, or $75m of used bills left in trash bags under a bridge on the freeway?

OpenAI might be a partner, but it's also a competitor, says Microsoft

Nah, if there was any 'I' in AI it would say:-

Copilot: Sure! Have you tried Linux?

NASA pops repair kit in the mail so astronauts can fix leaky ISS telescope

It's space, use kapton tape.

Microsoft services partly down Down Under for Kiwi users

Yes, Veal, mmm.

Boeing's Q2 nosedive buoyed by appointment of new CEO

Re: Titsup

Stick to trying to plug your rust compiler, because aerospace is well over your head.

Five months after takedown, LockBit is a shadow of its former self

He should realise that Ukraine is finding it eminently possible to fly explosive laden drones into high value targets deep within Russia, how long could it be before someone decides to put the name of a ransomware peddling scumbag on one?

UK Electoral Commission slapped for basic cybersecurity fails

Re: 40 million voters

At the UK general election last month 60% of the 48 million registered voters voted, which while it was a comparatively low turn out for a general election, can hardly be described as very few.

Plus there is never a good reason to waste your opportunity to vote.

China stops worrying about lack of GPUs and learns to love the supercomputer

Re: .. overcome in a short term

Let them spend billions creating their own GPUs for AI, just as the AI bubble is about to burst.

They'll have to think of something to do with all those GPUs then, shame they limited the amount of time Chinese children can play games, or they could have used then for that.

Canceled meeting between US and UAE throws fresh scrutiny on Microsoft-G42 deal

Where are the GPUs now?

The UAE is obviously worried the US will find the GPUs are no longer in the country.

Asia's regional internet registry APNIC names new director general

Re: Unrelated…

Didn't see the picture, but reading the article I was thinking of Terry Wogan on Radio 2 with his gentle ribbing of the BBC's DG.

AMD sold $1B of Instinct GPUs last quarter, driving triple-digit datacenter growth

Sell those shovels now, the AI gold rush is almost over.

Europe launches 'AI Factories' initiative in hopes of competing globally

Re: Mass Producing Humonguosly Hungry AI

As much as I'd like to see Microsoft losing money on AI, do yourself a favour and ditch copilot, instead of degrading your abilities and reputation by using it's substandard output. X

Proofpoint phishing palaver plagues millions with 'perfectly spoofed' emails from IBM, Nike, Disney, others

Re: OVH...

We need to make sure it all goes up in smoke next time,

Tesla asks customers to stop being wet blankets about chargers

Re: Wet blankets

A 3.7V lithium battery is never going to electrocute you, no matter what its short-circuit current is, because it cannot overcome the insulation resistance of your skin.

Ah that's where you are wrong, all that is needed is curiosity and crooked teeth!

I was in my early teens playing with electronics, and decided to check what seemed to be a flat 3.7V lithium battery by putting it against my tongue like I'd done many times before with old 9V PP9 zinc/carbon batteries, forgetting I'd just had metal train track braces fitted, and not realising the greater current these could produce even when nearly dead. The braces inside a wet mouth presented a far lower resistance path to my central nervous system than skin, I briefly saw two expanding black dots take over my entire field of vision, and woke up sometime later on the floor. I wasn't sure what had happened, but I think I'd just rebooted my brain!

Microsoft finds a new way to irritate Windows 11 users – a backup pop-up

Re: Seems mighty insecure

You use Windows you muppet, they already have anything of interest via telemetry.

Logitech Zone 305 is light on the ears and wallet, maybe a bit too light on quality?

Re: Logitech & quality??

Exactly the opposite experience here, the wife was always swearing at the Microsoft keyboard for being flat. Since getting the Logitech keyboard she has been able to find other things in Windows to swear at.

Customer bricked a phone – and threatened to brick techie's face with it

Re: super thread drift.. but..

If your clutch was warn enough for that to be a problem, you would be well aware of it, and probably not able to get it up the hill in the first place.

SpaceX Falcon 9 set for comeback after upper-stage failure

Re: Sigh

The automotive business? Those idiots fitting giant touch screens to cars instead of physical controls, are now removing sensors too - god help us.

OpenAI unveils AI search engine SearchGPT – not that you're allowed to use it yet

SearchGPT for when...

...you just don't care if it's wrong.

X.org lone ranger rides to rescue multi-monitor refresh rates

Re: The proliferation of refresh rates has always been a PITA

I would need scientific instruments to detect 75Hz from 60Hz

That was true for me most of the time, except during the summer where I would come back in after cycling in bright sunlight to a dimly lit room and sit in front of the CRT, even at 75Hz it used to flicker like buggery for ten minutes or so, but after half an hour I could set it to 60Hz and not notice a flicker.

Datacenters guzzled more than a fifth of Ireland's electricity in 2023

Re: The data

Productivity increases? Job gains? The only thing AI is resulting in is hot air, the pertinent question being whether more is produced by the hot aisles in the DCs or the orifices of the AI marketeers.

Hey Microsoft – what ever happened to 'Developers, developers, developers'?

Re: Code signing certificates

Hardware is the ONLY tenable approach, anything in the software domain on a general purpose machine can be compromised.

Most HSMs are either PCIe cards or separate boxes connected by Ethernet.

Re: The MS company ethos: "We don't care if you get work done or not".

Teams works well, in what universe?

I spent about 17 years writing programs that ran on Windows, and 17 years writing programs which don't run on Windows, but 9 of them using tools on Windows. Two years when I first started we developed on Unix, and the last 6 years on Linux - thank god I'm now completely Windows free so I can do the thing I love without that shit (except the Linux version of Teams, hence the comment above), or I would have left the industry.

Re: User interface frameworks

They've got form in not being able to decide to stick with an API for more than 5 minutes, remember the number of database APIs; DAO, ADO, ODBC?

Re: A better question

And since then they have fired the other 60%

Re: Code signing certificates

Today they do not trust us with storing the private key safely.

Hardware security modules are still available, and that is what they are for.

The months and days before and after CrowdStrike's fatal Friday

If they immediately spun up the backup images, the first thing that would have happened is the bad update file would have been downloaded and crashed them too. They would have to wait until Crowsdstrike had pushed the fixed update, and then spun up.

As for the bitlocker keys, most users would write them on a post-it note and stick it to the bottom of the laptop, which is great for security.

But I will agree without over the staged updates.

Musk deflects sluggish Tesla car sales with Optimus optimism

Re: Everyone will want a humanoid robot

Posting ASCII art to a comment page which uses a variable pitch font, strips leading spaces and double spaces lines, ain't going to work.

Could you not see that from the preview?

Forget security – Google's reCAPTCHA v2 is exploiting users for profit

Re: Inappropriate XKCD?

At least you know how / can be bothered to put proper links in posts.

Arch-based CachyOS promises speed but trips over its laces

I don't want a gamer's toy with technicolour lights that sounds like a fan heater.

I was given an ASUS Strix gaming laptop at my current job, I thought I wouldn't like it, but with the lights turned off it is good. It makes low humming sound all the time in normal use, including compiling, only high graphics use gets it to spin up to a louder but still not unpleasant sound. This is so much better than the demented high pitched whine of the fans in my previous Dell and Lenovo laptops, which if you even think of doing some work try to simulate an F15 on full afterburner.

Azure VMs ruined by CrowdStrike patchpocalypse? Microsoft has recovery tips

Re: Human intervention is needed.

But it's not just Crowdstrike, think about the OS which makes this possible - "systemic" barely scratches the surface of that clusterfuck.

Re: Human intervention is needed.

Whilst more subtle problems may not show up for a few weeks, detecting a boot loop is pretty quick, so one machine in a sandbox would have caught this straight away.

North Korea likely behind takedown of Indian crypto exchange WazirX

Why, why, why...

...hasn't crypto been banned?

From being the facilitator of every type of online scam, from small time extortion of individuals, through ransomware of companies and hospitals, right up to funding North Korea's nuclear ambitions, it is pure criminality all the way.

Semiconductor shares slump – possibly thanks to Biden and Trump

Re: "Taiwan doesn't give us anything"

Trump is trying to extort Taiwan because he sees the presidency as being a godfather of mafia. What he's selling here is the fantasy to his voters that foreigners will pay the US for its protection.

That's following on from his statements where he reduced the world's most successful defensive military alliance to a mafia protection racket, saying he let Russia do anything to NATO member countries if they didn't cough up the 2%.

If you think AI labs wouldn't stoop to using scraped YouTube subtitles for training, think again

They'll have fun if they use some of the Japanese cartoons my kids used to watch on YouTube, they were obviously dubbed in to English and subtitled by two completely different firms, so the names and phrases in each didn't match up at all, you really had to struggle to comprehend they were telling the same story even though each vaguely matched the animation.

Linux kernel 6.10 arrives with punched-up hardware support

Alpha legacy

All the effort was not wasted: some Alpha people and technology ended up at AMD, where the know-how went into AMD's 64-bit x86 chips.

Not forgetting contributing to the ARM ecosystem, twice - Alpha tech went in to the StrongARM, and ex-Alpha engineers formed P.A. Semi which Apple bought and created the M series ARM based Apple silicon.

Southwest latest to aim at electric air taxi dream with Archer partnership

Neither of them make a pleasant noise, but the diesel is less likely to fall from the sky.

Is Teams connector retirement a tweak to fit EU laws, or a sign of price rises to come?

It's pure a revenue move, it's always a revenue move.

Car dealer software slinger CDK Global said to have paid $25M ransom after cyberattack

Re: Paying ransoms - cyber or traditional - should be illegal.

Even simpler and not wrong, is ban the only viable means of ransomware payment - cryptocurrencies.

White House urged to double check Microsoft isn't funneling AI to China via G42 deal

Audit 'em!

If the UAE can't account for so much as a single GPU, pull the plug. Otherwise it's likely they're being shipped over to China by the boat load.

SpaceX hit by inflight Falcon 9 failure

Does SpaceX even bother insuring their own payloads on their own rockets?