* Posts by Martin Summers

1499 publicly visible posts • joined 13 Apr 2011

Ahead of IPO, Reddit blends advertising into user posts

Martin Summers Silver badge

So it has managed to keep going for 20 years not making a profit, and that's all of a sudden a problem? Presumably people and bills got paid in that time otherwise it wouldn't still be here? Is that how a company is actually meant to be run, for the benefit of the people who work for it, to get paid for a living?

Ah yes the shareholders, the ones that will now count the most. Because where there's profit to be had there's shareholders waiting to drive the business to even more growth so someone can get obscenely wealthy, just because. And thus the original aim of Reddit was lost, like many before it. In the name of greed. As per usual.

Microsoft promises Copilot will be a 'moneymaker' in the long term

Martin Summers Silver badge

Who is buying this bullshit? Who is it really saving time for so much so that it is 'indispensable'. I don't for a minute believe that everyone all of a sudden needs copilot. They'd love you to think they do because they've put so much time and effort into it, oh and lots of cash too.

They can't let it fail because they've bet the house on AI. Only it is going to, because it's worth nothing beyond being a shiny toy for people to play with. I would argue it would probably cost more productivity in that respect if companies were daft enough to enable it.

The last mile's at risk in our hostile environment. Let’s go the extra mile to fix it

Martin Summers Silver badge

"No mainstream domestic ISP offer includes a router configured for failover."

Not true in the UK at all, BT/EE has offered it for a while.

Remember your audience El Reg.

Microsoft drags Windows Subsystem for Android into the trash

Martin Summers Silver badge

Why all the disingenuous bullshit as to why they canned it. Can't they just be honest and say, no-one used it, it was costing us too much to develop. An actual reason. Why has it become so hard for people to communicate these days, what are they afraid of?

Water worries flood in as chip industry and AI models grow thirstier

Martin Summers Silver badge

Re: England as well

"My back garden will soon have dicks swimming around where there used to be grass."

Well they do like wet conditions I'll give you that.

Microsoft trying to stop Copilot generating fake Putin comments on Navalny's death

Martin Summers Silver badge

How about not using AI for news, at all, ever. If you can't do proper journalism and have to resort to getting an AI to write your copy then maybe you should not be a journalist.

Work for you? Again? After you lied about the job and stole my stuff? No thanks

Martin Summers Silver badge

Re: Once in the rain ...

I couldn't help but think of the LinkedIn "It was the dog" story when I read that.

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/phoenikhs_linkedinstories-mondaymotivation-motivationalstory-activity-6713675197624545280-Yp8O?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_android

A small Alaska town wants a big bronze Riker

Martin Summers Silver badge

Re: Wait til the statue is up and the town finds out...

"that Star Trek was Roddenberry's view of a socialist utopia"

Which is very easy to achieve when no-one has to pay for food and all disease has been cured. I'll happily turn socialist and volunteer for Star Fleet as and when that happens. Until then, I'm not working for free.

Crowning glory of GOV.UK websites updated, sparking frontend upgrades

Martin Summers Silver badge

Re: changes to things like police and military uniforms, and signage on official buildings

I think you'll find they'll do it gradually Howard, they don't just chuck stuff out. You'll note there are still post boxes knocking around with a pre Elizabeth deceased monarch on them. There are still other things going on in the world that don't just stop just because there's one problem somewhere else we think should be solved.

Martin Summers Silver badge

Re: If they *really* want to improve the experience....

I would imagine there's a few reasons. Reduced attack vector, so no-one can compromise the site and government systems whilst the site is effectively shut. Dodgy updates that would flag but can't be dealt with whilst the offices aren't open, and to allow office staff to be on hand for support if required.

City council megaproject mulls ditching Oracle after budget balloons to £131M

Martin Summers Silver badge

Re: So whose bright idea was it in the first place?

It would be a blind tender initially and Oracle will have ticked all the boxes.

Someone had to say it: Scientists propose AI apocalypse kill switches

Martin Summers Silver badge

Re: The Next Big Thing ..... The Inexorable Rise of AI and Virtual Machines

"one has to conclude that AI in charge of all major event decisions in/for the future is, for humanity’s sake, the much better option to pursue and engage with/accept and experiment with"

Just what I'd expect a bot to say. Oh wait, you are one. Stop trying to take over the world amanfrommars, most of us are wise to you, you're not having earth without a fight.

Dumping us into ad tier of Prime Video when we paid for ad-free is 'unfair' – lawsuit

Martin Summers Silver badge

Re: Which one to bin

"You might want to poll the family…

In my house a few years back it was The Grand Tour, then The 100, currently it’s Clarksons Farm, so it was Netflix that got rejected…"

I watched the Grand Tour and Clarksons Farm, those are good shows that made Amazon streaming worth happening. However, if they'd never launched a streaming service and all their added extras I'd never know any different and there's a good chance someone else may have paid to make those series anyway. Fact is there's loads of production houses touting their concepts waiting for someone to pick them up. Only thing is the likes of Grand Tour might not have had the same budget, who knows.

If the Amazon streaming service didn't need so much cash pumping into it then I might still have the same service I signed up for at the same price. They were literally printing their own cash and now their screwing it up, along with all the other reasons i.e tat that will eventually cause them to sink.

Martin Summers Silver badge

I paid for Amazon Prime for fast free delivery. What they decided to introduce as "Value added" was up to them. Upping the price of Prime in general, when they added something I didn't want or need is taking the piss. Then changing the terms of that free delivery, even more. Now I got used to having it as part of the service, they want to charge extra for removing the adverts, even more of a smack in the mush.

I'd be quite happy if they just went back to free next day delivery and charged what they used to for it. No-one asked them to keep adding these extras to Prime.

FCC Commissioner calls for crackdown on Apple's iMessage gatekeeping

Martin Summers Silver badge

Re: Hmmm

I'm not an Apple Fanboi at all, quite the opposite. I do however think if they want to run a proprietary closed message system then it's up to them. I don't see why anyone else feels they have any right to access it, especially when they have to use man in the middle Apple hardware to do it.

Apple could probably spin out iMessage as a standalone app to Android users and they would flock to it, seeing Apple as the last bastion of privacy, which I in fact do compared to Google or Meta. Even I would be tempted to move over to it over WhatsApp. Maybe that's what they're planning in the future. They'd possibly completely kill of WhatsApp if they did, which would be great.

Bumblebee malware wakes from hibernation, forgets what year it is, attacks with macros

Martin Summers Silver badge

Yeah disabling macros was fantastic, until the accounts team with their ancient spreadsheets started complaining they couldn't do their jobs. Not to mention had no idea how to create a new sheet or use Power BI and the person that originally created the sheets left years ago. So yeah, guess who had to turn the macros back on. I suspect lots of companies probably have too.

Attempts to demolish guardrails in AI image generators blamed for lewd Taylor Swift deepfakes

Martin Summers Silver badge

"Must be an election year..."

Nope, the media has just gone mad over this newfangled AI taking over the world. As you say, the fakes have been around forever. It's a new fad and they'll get over it. Simply because much as they might look realistic, it still isn't actually the person. I'm really not sure what all the fuss is.

Investors threw 50% less money at quantum last year

Martin Summers Silver badge

If only they could observe that the money was actually there.

Psst … wanna jailbreak ChatGPT? Thousands of malicious prompts for sale

Martin Summers Silver badge

So where is it getting the nefarious data? It got it from somewhere. Surely it's not actually having a think about how best to attack something, it has got to be presenting something it has sucked in almost verbatim hasn't it? That leads the question, if it can find the information then how would that not be achievable by some creative Googling?

Lots of questions arise, but the idea, since it cannot actually 'think', that it can come up with attack vectors on its own seems ludicrous to me. Otherwise it should be able to come up with answers to all of man's greatest problems, like how to build a pothole resistant road.

Taiwan connects its first home-grown quantum computer to the internet

Martin Summers Silver badge

I think you mean "will it run Doom". I presume the answer is maybe, maybe not.

France fines Amazon €32M for watching staff so much they'd have to 'justify each break'

Martin Summers Silver badge

I sincerely pity the poor buggers that work for this lot in the dystopian world they toil in. I'm part of the problem, I buy from Amazon. I try not to now, I try and find the website of an independent supplier of items I need. Their time is coming full circle, where people realise just how crap they actually are now they have literally become a Chinese tat bazaar that you can't trust even when the items are shipped from their own warehouse (thanks to co-mingling of stock).

I hate that I still buy from them and watch Prime video, I don't exactly feel fully comfortable, but they mostly provide what I need at the price I can pay at the time I need it. I think a lot of people are in the same boat and can't completely wean off thanks to the considerable inconvenience it would cause my life. Pretty much like I know driving a car hurts the environment as does me being a rabid meat eater. We can't all give up everything that makes our lives bearable, but thanks to companies like Amazon and their practices we have to live with the micro guilt of our decisions from hundreds of decisions like buying from them.

Users now keep cellphones for 40+ months and it's hurting the secondhand market

Martin Summers Silver badge

Re: No real surprise

But what about the AI? Ya know that super magical thing we all didn't realise we needed, that Samsung 'might' charge for in 2025. Surely that's got to sell a few phones? Don't upset them by telling them there's actually no need to release a 'new' phone every year.

They should probably concentrate on selling their existing inventories and bring back a sane refresh cycle for consumers now. We are at peak smartphone until electronics we gadget fans can use as toys are able to fit within the chassis.

Data wrangler Zuckerberg becomes world's least likely cattle rancher

Martin Summers Silver badge

If he does move them underground, one can only presume the cows will be sporting the latest Meta Quest headsets with virtual fields to roam. I'm sure I've seen a picture somewhere of a cow wearing a VR headset.

Martin Summers Silver badge

It probably already is one. If not I'm sure they'd love to get their hands on such customer satisfaction data.

Motorola loses appeal to kill price cap on UK Airwave emergency services contract

Martin Summers Silver badge

Re: Classic

"This should have been in-house state run affair. But I guess the current government couldn't run a bath."

You've made the argument for privatisation right there.

'The computer was sitting in a puddle of mud, with water up to the motherboard'

Martin Summers Silver badge

Re: "a site that was used to train drug detection dogs"

"I started reading your post expecting something else to be clogging the fan..."

Snort laughs....

Amazon's game-streamer Twitch to quit South Korea, citing savage network costs

Martin Summers Silver badge

Re: Maybe I'm missing something here...

No you're not missing anything at all. You're spot on.

What we have here is an ISP being nostalgic about the days when there used to be caps on Internet usage, go over 100GB in a month included in your package for arguments sake and they charge you a bit more for the additional. Now they can't go against the grain and bring that type of charging back in because people would leave them in droves unless they all did it which would presumably be illegal manipulation of the market. So what's an ISP to do? Go in for the double dip and try to charge the content provider for daring to provide content their users want. It's a shameless money grab because someone can't run a business efficiently.

Ofcom proposes ban on UK telcos making 'inflation-linked' price hikes mid-contract

Martin Summers Silver badge

Re: No sympathy

The flaw with that argument is simply that you cannot escape it, everyone is doing it. There is nothing wrong with wanting to pay the same contracted price you signed up for, for the duration of the contract. Or do you think it's OK for someone to just extort more money out of you mid way through and have to go through the hassle of moving to someone else who is just going to do the same?

Yes you could go pay as you go, just to get ripped off there too.

As for contracts, anyone who was paying attention as you say, knows they just don't get a phone for free, especially the operator who will just cream off the pure profit from those suckers who keep paying when the contract period has ended.

They're sharp business practices and they're getting away with it because they can. Not because they need the money. Do their staff see the same percentage pay rise every year I wonder?

Branson's wallet snaps shut for Virgin Galactic

Martin Summers Silver badge

Surely the answer is just to put the prices up. If you're paying 450k for a ticket, surely another 100k isn't going to trouble you. Otherwise why are you paying to go into space in the first place? People who have that kind of money tend to have more of it lying around. They then have a choice of whether to go or not, as no doubt there will be plenty of other rich people who will take their place.

HP exec says quiet part out loud when it comes to locking in print customers

Martin Summers Silver badge

Some people here really don't like HP then huh?

I'm on their free instant ink tier that they tried to scrap. 15 pages a month. Which is great until you need to clean the heads. I gave up paying more for instant ink when the only way I could solve a problem with a dodgy cartridge was to cancel their service and resubscribe as there was no way whatsoever of easily getting in touch with them to raise the fact it was dodgy. I just managed to get in to their free tier and have been milking that since. They rarely get any money from me.

At work, I've never seen so many HP laptops (inherited from a merger) with their batteries bulging needing replacement, thankfully free under their still ongoing replacement program. I'm amazed at just how shoddy their stuff is. As for their servers, have you tried using their support sites to get all the drivers etc you need to set one up? They really are a piece of work as a company and one day they'll be wondering why they went bankrupt.

AI threatens to automate away the clergy

Martin Summers Silver badge

Well I personally see no difference between an AI hallucination and religion, so it might as well happen. There's no real difference between some religious types making up a story to control the world and its' population and an artificial intelligence doing the same. Maybe God is an AI.

Tesla, Musk likely aware of Autopilot deficiencies behind Florida fatality, says judge

Martin Summers Silver badge

Depressingly

At the end of all this, those people are still going to be dead and Elon is still going to be rich.

Tool bag lost in space now tracked by garbage watchers

Martin Summers Silver badge

Re: Why

"String. Everything can be solved with string."

Well that's the theory anyway.

European Commission loves Oracle enough to sign six-year cloud deal

Martin Summers Silver badge

Assume we shall get an update story in roughly a few years time telling us how over budget, a quarter implemented and not fit for purpose it is. Meanwhile another sucker signs an Oracle contract and they coin it in.

UK to crack down on imported Chinese optical fiber cables

Martin Summers Silver badge

"As a result, network intelligence outfit Ookla has called for a "required industry focus on selling fiber subscriptions." "

Which is neither helpful, or any of Ooklas business to say. Their market is speed tests and letting people flex, which they will do more when they have fast fibre. So that's how they will benefit from the ad revenue, otherwise they can keep their nose out.

Not sure why Ookla are even mentioned in this article. If fibre subscriptions are available to sell then do they really think the industry aren't going to sell them?

Go ahead, let the unknowable security risks of Windows Copilot onto your PC fleet

Martin Summers Silver badge

Re: User free

"You won't operate Windows, Windows will operate you."

No that's Windows for Russia.

Hacktivist attacks erupt in Middle East following Hamas assault on Israel

Martin Summers Silver badge

Well wolfetone, you nailed that one.

Russian Nauka module plays leak-a-boo with International Space Station

Martin Summers Silver badge

Let's not forget of course that someone who has been up there has not been averse to drilling a hole or two. Not that we will ever know what was going through their head when they did that.

Forcing Apple to allow third-party app stores isn't enough

Martin Summers Silver badge

Re: It's not whether the App Store is good or bad...

"You also don't have free medical care, there is no such thing."

Ah you're one of the 'there's a cost to someone' brigade. Well yes it does not take a genius to know there is a cost to someone. In the UK with our NHS that's the great British Taxpayer. We have people here whose entire lives are funded by the taxpayer, so it is indeed free for them. Then we've got our lovely healthcare tourists. In any case it's free at the point of entry and we aren't badgered for our insurance details or have invoices for the ride in the ambulance if we need one.

Chinese smart TV boxes infected with malware in PEACHPIT ad fraud campaign

Martin Summers Silver badge

Even the government are warning people against dodgy streaming boxes with billboard advertising campaigns saying "you're letting criminals in". Was quite surprised to see them. No-one is going to listen of course, so long as the box streams what they want. Most people are gleefully ignorant of what happens in the world around them and they will always be that way.

ESA funds space weather satellite swarm to understand and combat orbital debris

Martin Summers Silver badge

Know what? Yes I did I admit, but there are still going to be 8 new satellites up there contributing to the already huge numbers up there, when we already know there is a space junk problem and getting rid of it is the only answer.

Martin Summers Silver badge

Genius, stick more satellites up there to add to the eventual problem to tell us more about a problem we already know about. I know 8 isn't exactly a huge amount given the amount up there, but surely investing in debris removal tech is the game to be in these days.

Police ignored the laws of datacenter climate control

Martin Summers Silver badge

Re: Fun with magnets.

I had quite a large CRT for home use with a degaussing button on it in 2000. Made a heck of a noise and clunk when it was pressed.

Ex-Microsoft maverick takes us on a trip through vintage Task Manager code

Martin Summers Silver badge

Re: "I'm proud of my younger self for a job well done"

"Couldn't make it up."

You seem to have had no trouble.

Outlook's clingy 'reopen last session' prompt gets the boot

Martin Summers Silver badge

Re: Perpetual Office

Something most of us will be in until the day we die or relatively close to it once we've retired. Sadly real life rather than dystopian.

Martin Summers Silver badge

Re: Is it just me...

It's not just you. I leave the emails open, at the end of the day if they're not dealt with I close outlook and let it prompt me to open them all again when I start it up again.

Like you say it's not perfect, but because the emails are not massively important I don't really care. It just works for me.

I was actually worried this article was going to say they were removing the feature.

Getty delivers text-to-image service it says won't get you sued, may get you paid

Martin Summers Silver badge

Re: Whose images?

How much are Getty charging for the images though? That's the crux of it. The photographers should be on a percentage of sales, not hard to do and the only fair way to do it.

As someone else has said, all this needs is a rival to disrupt the market and break the likes of Getty's hold and everyone is happy.

How is this problem mine, techie asked, while cleaning underground computer

Martin Summers Silver badge

Re: Dirt

"Dave, the senior BMS"

Bum Matter Surveyor?

Uncle Sam names three Amazon execs as Prime suspects in subscription ripoff case

Martin Summers Silver badge

Is this just a US thing? Cos I've just cancelled it on their UK site several times over the years and other than obligatory 'please don't go' screen, it's been cancelled in seconds. It's also fairly obvious you're being signed up to prime if you aren't currently.

UK Online Safety Bill to become law – and encryption busting clause is still there

Martin Summers Silver badge

Re: Why?

"We could hope that Signal and friends follow through on their threats to withdraw their services in the UK."

Since they stopped supporting bog standard SMS in the android client full stop, I stopped using them anyway. What I thought might end up as a decent WhatsApp replacement that I could use for everyone encrypted or not, has to my mind now shot itself in the foot. I even donated to them.