Posts by Martin Summers

I don't know what pressing Delete will do, but it seems safe enough!

Re: Are you sure?

"I love Clonezilla for asking 'Are you sure' and then 'Are you really sure?' before committing."

And then when machines become sentient, "I don't believe you are sure, so I'm just not doing it".

Re: This is a common problem

""Do you wish to remove this request? [Cancel] [Delete]" Go on, guess which one meant "yes".”

I'm going with delete, as in delete the request. It makes sense in a couldn't be arsed to label it properly kind of way.

Thank you, Reg Readers: On Call has turned 500!

The problem with on call is, that often people will share their stories in the comments section rather than having it immortalised in an on call article itself. Maybe the call to action at the end of an article should include 'don't just comment it, send it in'. Either that or you're going to have to resort to intercepting the comments before they're published for material!

Scientists find a common food dye can make a live mouse's skin transparent

Re: Tartrazine is pretty awful stuff

Were you used in the experiment by any chance?

Proof-of-concept code released for zero-click critical IPv6 Windows hole

Re: what if there is no local IPv6 network?

Stuff just stops working, completely, without IPv6 switched on, on Windows Server. No warning, no reason why, just borks.

Astronomers back call for review of bonkers rule that means satellite swarms fly without environment checks

"We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the starlink satellites"

Big business, gradually chipping away at humanity.

Google’s Irish bit barn plans denied over eco shortfall

'Growing demands of AI'

No Google, it is merely a play thing, not doing any actual real work. Now you're imposing it on your users at the top of search results, without asking, which I'm never in million years going to trust to give me a correct answer.

The demand AI has at the moment is purely novelty. It will die down considerably.

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

There was me thinking duct tape would do the job. Good thing I'm not an astronaut.

Ridesharing makes new and unique mess in Japan's taxi industry

Re: Ride sharing my ARSE

I'm not defending them in any way, because I remember when it first started. They marketed it as if someone is going your way then you could grab a ride with them. It quickly became a taxi service by the back door and they resisted every effort to have their service licensed.

They did have Uber Pool, possibly still do. So there has been at least some ride-sharing going on. That's at least true.

Gaming algorithms? The last time I took an Uber in Birmingham UK the guy actively cancelled 'by mistake' my booking and got me to repeatedly hail another Uber whilst sat in the back of his car, until surge pricing kicked in. Unfortunately as I was hailing, other Ubers were picking up my ride first which I had to cancel. Easy to screw about and increase your fare price. I should have just got out, but I complained to Uber and told them what he did and got a refund on the excess. Left a bad taste just how low even supposed professional drivers can go.

Traeger security bugs bad news for grillers with neighborly beef

I'm not one to bash someone else's hobby, I absolutely love BBQ meat and will quite happily eat the results thrown out of one of these grills. I'd also quite happily go without it to avoid the stress of having to piss about with one of these grills. Especially when there's an app and firmware updates to do as well.

Sadly I don't know anyone rich enough to possess one of these grills and I'm not popular enough to get invited to a BBQ either. All in all this article has made me hungry and depressed.

Microsoft hits snooze again on security certificate renewal

Any method of making sure you can easily check certificate expiries is better than having nothing at all, and the certificate expiring. Even if it is a spreadsheet. Sometimes mundane tools just work.

Crypto scammers circle back, pose as lawyers, steal an extra $10M in truly devious plan

Sadly I've had my in-laws fall victim to this, they were scammed out of cash for an investment via a bank transfer. Then it appears the scammers came in for a double dip and tried to 'help' them get the cash back. So it's not just crypto. There will always be people willing to part with their cash on a promise, and those willing to take it from them.

Even making people aware of such scams make no difference, my in laws believed the people who pretended they were going to help them too, despite knowing they'd already been scammed once.

British Airways blames T5 luggage chaos on fault 'outside of our control'

I realise just how huge these baggage operations are, but surely there is some possibility that a manual backup system can be used in these situations. An airlines luggage is surely collected in one place, there is a tag on it that says where it is going, can someone not get a team together and load up a truck, shove it all on the plane?

Seems to me IT whilst being amazing and provides my bread and butter, has also become our crutch. People refuse to actually get their hands dirty and do work these days as soon as a system falls over. Even if they only got a few planes loaded, surely that is better than sending passengers off without it? What on earth did they used to do before computerised luggage systems?

Italian premier taps Pope Francis to warn G7 of AI disaster if ethics ignored

The church preaching on ethics. Yeah I can see how that would be a problem.

Support, don't micromanage, say researchers who find WFH intensified 'anxiety' in some

Re: "WFH has less distractions / interruptions"

"But WFH is not more peaceful."

Says you, about your own specific circumstances. As ever, everyone else's mileage may vary. Someone here might work in a shack on top of a mountain with Starlink and only the odd mountain goat for company.

Oracle Java police start knocking on Fortune 200's doors for first time

Oracle's PoS Simphony (and it really is a piece of shit) runs Java and so does their hotel management system. Both are horrendously widely used and embedded. I can imagine some Oracle executives delight (think the Tim Curry Home Alone Grinch Scene) when they realised they could double dip on the licence fees because both products run Java, wouldn't likely be supported unless they ran Oracle's Java (you didn't get a choice with Simphony) and they already knew the customer ran it and on how many machines.

The money tap was well and truly turned on to full when they came up with this wheeze. Java runtime was an enabler for developers to sell products, it was never the product. Amazing bait and switch there. They should be taken to court for this and forced to stop.

UK may not hit goal of 95% mobile coverage, commons committee warns

Just don't have an emergency, and it'll be fine.

Pew: Quarter of web pages vanished in past decade

Re: this content sometimes disappears from view

The digital age could well become the new dark ages, with the only remaining information on this period being from those who wrote and published physical books. I dread to think what the collective knowledge of humanity for the digital age would be represented by with just those books.

We could well as a race completely forget that certain things existed, although with things like TikTok that would be a bonus. Please don't tell me anyone's written a physical book about TikTok!

Sacramento airport goes no-fly after AT&T internet cable snipped

Re: The UK has schools like this.

Safeguarding software at schools monitors keystrokes and flags up any dodgy or harmful keywords. If they're online then of course they filter out naughty and harmful content and report back on searches.

China creates 'Information Support Force' to improve networked defence capabilities

So where's this all going to end. What's the actual end game? I know the world isn't going to immediately all join together and sing come by yah, but has anyone in their incessant grasp for ever more power considered "well what happens after I've got it?".

Russia invading Ukraine, everything popping off in the middle east, the Chinese trying to make the lights go out across the world. When are these nutters ever going to wake up and realise ultimately they fuck all of us, just to feel important. We thought shit was bad when Hitler had a go at taking over the world. We're all fucking doomed aren't we.

Blackstone wants to plug hyperscale datacenter into former Britishvolt battery site

Re: Original battery factory would supposedly have provided 3000 jobs...

People are always the problem. This is why we need robot overlords.

Feline firewall woke developer to declaw DDoS disaster

It was obviously feline a disturbance in the force.

404 Day celebrates the internet's most infamous no-show

How many site admins are now having kittens due to all the 404's suddenly appearing in their logs?

London Clinic probes claim staffer tried to peek at Princess Kate's records

Re: Don't dignify the tabloids

"It hasn't been brought up because it's not the cause."

My theory on that is, in someone's mind, saying someone has photoshopped something was much easier than trying to explain a relatively new feature on Apple phones and bringing AI into the equation. I'm really trying not to do a conspiracy thing here but you are just accepting what you are being told and what she has 'admitted' to doing via her PR in a press release. The truth is probably as mundane as the Apple feature.

Nobody's medical records are anyone's business but their own. Royal family or not. We aren't entitled to know about that just because a large part of her life is now public.

Re: Don't dignify the tabloids

If she took the photo on an iPhone they have an AI best shot feature that has been known to create impossible photos involving mirrors from amalgamation of many images. I'm amazed this hasn't been brought up and considered in this case.

Britain enters period of mourning as Greggs unable to process payments

Considering an Oracle Payment system used at a business I used to work for, fell over completely if you upgraded Java beyond it's mandated horrendously out of date version, this doesn't surprise me in the slightest. It was also hosted on the shittiest machine that passed for a server. It's not important until it goes down, and it was a single point of failure too, just to add insult.

Ahead of IPO, Reddit blends advertising into user posts

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

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

"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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

"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

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

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

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

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'

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

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.