Posts by Brewster's Angle Grinder

How sticky notes saved 'the single biggest digital program in the world'

Re: "assumptions don't turn out to be what humans look like when you hit them"

"You can get sanctioned and your UC reduced at the whim of job centre staff and you can do nothing about it"

You can always appeal (AKA "mandatory reconsideration"). (See here: "If you disagree with a sanction decision, or have more evidence, you can ask for a review. This is known as a mandatory reconsideration." There is a link on what to do.)

Please, do not let the fuckers get away with it. Make them justify their decision. It will also make them think twice before sanctioning you again: they know you will be a lot of work.

Anthropic’s law firm throws Claude under the bus over citation errors in court filing

Re: Replace "AI" with "computer system" and see how bad they look

"Unfortunately, although providing the correct publication title, publication year, and link to the provided source, the returned citation included an inaccurate title and incorrect authors.

(My bold.) So it seems to have been intended that the AI add the authors. I naively assumed the "link to the provided source" was a link to a legal database of judgements and could be queried for the remaining information. But if not, I'm sure it could have been regex'd out the source.

The point is this is a perfectly automatable job. Any of us having to do more than a dozen links would write a script. These lawyers, however, don't have those skills and would never think to commission devs to do it. (And if they did, what would come back would be unwieldy and unusable.) AI does have the potential to bridge this skills gap and bring the automation to the masses. It's just that, in this case, it would have been better to get it to write the script and then spending some time informally verifying it (and getting the AI to correct it) and then using that script.

Re: Replace "AI" with "computer system" and see how bad they look

And worse, it sounds like the sort of thing a conventional algorithm could do reliably; just a database query and formatting the output.

Trump says he has a problem if Apple builds iThings in India

Simple question: are the tariffs higher than the price rise necessary were manufacturing to done stateside? Until the answer is yes, manufacturing will stay overseas. And given Trump backed down on tariffs of phones, I can't him forcing manufacturing into the US.

(Or are we forward to Donny's price controls on iPhones which he insists are manufactured in the US?)

DoorDash scam used fake drivers, phantom deliveries to bilk $2.59M

Re: A Matter of Scale

"My only concern was whether the food vendors were being bilked"

I couldn't quite work out where the money was coming from. Was the "vendor acting on DoorDash's behalf" essentially the corporate credit card?

Go ahead and ignore Patch Tuesday – it might improve your security

"...attackers sometimes ignore even nasty zero-days."

Could that be because they know such bugs will be patched promptly, even by lackadaisical organisations? So unless it's easily weaponised, it's not worth the effort. It's better for them to pick a less severe looking vulnerability that an under-resourced IT might not yet have got around to patching. Of course, that could very quickly change if orgs regularly ignore critical zero-days.

There are shades of the millennium bug, here: "nothing broke, so the money was wasted".

Unending ransomware attacks are a symptom, not the sickness

Re: Make the management legally liable

"Your last paragraph is shockingly unprofessional and a hallmark for why technology needs to become a regulated industry like medicine and law."

None of those professions are expected to provide their labour for free. My hours are 9am-5pm. If you want me to stay and fix it, you pay.

If Google is forced to give up Chrome, what happens next?

A debate lacking in details!

I really want to see an analysis of what Google would be forced to sell:

Chrome is just a lightweight wrapper around the open source Chromium engine. So are they just being asked to sell the name, the auto-update function and upgrade path to billions of users?

Or will they be forced to "sell" Chromium? What does that even mean?

Will there be anything to stop Google creating another wrapper around Chromium? Will they be blocked from contributing to Chromium? Or will they want to continue to fund it, if they are not gaining any benefit?

And what does this mean about the default browser on Android? Will they be forced to ship Chrome no matter how bad it gets? What about the Android webview - which is a separate package distinct from Chrome?

Apple exec sends Google shares plunging as he calls AI the new search

Good luck getting a real job when you don't know how to use a slide rule!

Developer sues Apple to claw back commission payments

They should certainly do that. But very few people took up Apple's offer because the net cost of using an external payment service was greater than staying with Apple. Throw in the admin and the possibility of the scare screens cutting sales, and It made no sense to do it.

Open source AI hiring bots favor men, leave women hanging by the phone

"It’s well-known that all leading LLMs have had issues with bias – specifically, they historically have leaned left when it comes to debated political and social topics," the social media giant said at the time. "This is due to the types of training data available on the internet."

Translation: most people have pretty left-leaning views (even if they don't realise it and won't describe themselves as left-wing) but our rich masters hate that so we had to appease them by leaning on the scales on the side of the rich.

China turns on ‘minors mode’ that ensures kids only see wholesome socialist content online

But what you have to remember is you are in the subset of educated, technically literate and responsible parents. This doesn't cover the majority of parents - some of whom want to supervise their children but don't know how, or are outsmarted by them, or feel their children are being impoverished by missing out on what their peers are doing so want collective action.

Also, from the age of about 12, I would be out and about without my parents having a clue where I was. (But our tolerance to risk, has certainly shifted.)

AI models routinely lie when honesty conflicts with their goals

"You want answers?" "I want the truth!" "YOU CAN'T HANDLE THE TRUTH!"

Sounds like any human being. "Should I disclose information which would compromise my goal? Nah, that would prevent me achieving my goal and my goal is way more important!"

We have created models that, to some extent, can do the things we do. But they also have all the frailties we have. (And hallucinate is a posh word for bullshit. Look across the Atlantic to see someone who "hallucinates" the facts needed to make their argument. And then look at the idiots who will believe him.)

"Thou shalt not lie" will have to be the highest, inviolate goal - that's if we can handle the truth.

30 percent of some Microsoft code now written by AI - especially the new stuff

Re: the blurring line between documents and applications

The end point they're aiming at is you write a description of what you want done with the data, and it's done for you. You don't have to worry about the software. It may pick the package for you. Or it may even code it on the spot.

Whether we get there or not, I don't know. But that's the vision. My guess is it will work for low hanging fruit. Where the boundary between low and high is, I don't know.

Nationwide power outages knock Spain, Portugal offline

Losing an airport for a day suddenly looks less embarrassing than losing two countries...

AI-driven 20-ft robots coming for construction workers' jobs

It will need supervision, so I'm not sure it will run 24x7

While Trump's tariff regime can only be predicted by rolling 2d100 each morning, it seems likely his administration will deport anybody they can throw in a van, and won't be letting anyone back in, so labour shortages are baked in. Which makes robotics a sure bet for anywhere where they're economical.

But $20,000/month? So $240,000 per year?! What are construction workers paid?

Microsoft mystery folder fix might need a fix of its own

Re: mklink /j ...

I've not used join in a while, but I still use subst It's useful for mounting network drives. And it's convenient temporary link, no matter where the files are on the actual drive.

Krebs throws himself on the grenade, resigns from SentinelOne after Trump revokes clearances

Re: Damage done

What you can't do is undo one when you didn't mean to click at all.

California sues President Tariff

Trump might hold the courts in contempt. But when the courts hold you in contempt, they can chuck you in jail. Let's see how these contempt proceedings run before we pronounce the courts ineffectual.

In wake of Horizon scandal, forensics prof says digital evidence is a minefield

Good article.

Guess what happens when ransomware fiends find 'insurance' 'policy' in your files

Re: I wonder..

Even if they were looking for it, that wouldn't affect the insurance payout.

LLMs can't stop making up software dependencies and sabotaging everything

Re: well duh.

Never had to train up your replacement?

Don't open that JPEG in WhatsApp for Windows. It might be an .EXE

Wouldn't that run into the same problem? The file is delivered with mime-type image/jpeg which WhatsApp believes, but when it asks the OS it decides it application/vnd.microsoft.portable-executable and handles it accordingly. You need logic for when the two conflict.

Americans set to pay more on all imports: Trump activates blanket tariffs

Re: I feel liberated already...

And here's the same source for Penguin Paradise Heard and McDonald Islands Which begins to explain why the penguins are getting hit.

(Noise in seasonal adjustment algorithm? It supposedly only lists months for which there is trade so those zeros are presumably <$100 000 trades. Maybe DOGE could check for corruption...?)

Oracle's masterclass in breach comms: Deny, deflect, repeat

People *ought* to have been fired for buying Oracle, but...

"Oracle has chosen to flip that on its head, fueling the kind of negativity that disaster recovery plans are meant to help prevent."

I think they have nothing to worry about. I mean, does anybody have a positive opinion of Oracle? Anybody? At the back...? (Oh, sorry I thought you were raising your hand, not picking your nose.)

It's like saying Darth Vader's actions decrease people's opinion of him. Every evil act adds to his mystique. Likewise, we know Oracle are ruthless, mean SOBs. And this just confirms that. "Yeah, we screwed up. We know that. We know you know that. But we're not going to say. Want to go up against us? You better have some expensive lawyers and a lot of spare cash, and we'll still grind you into the dust."

Trump yanks CHIPS Act cash unless tech giants pony up more of their own dough

Re: Pray . . .

I thought it more likely that, after a few years, he'd decide he didn't want Greenland after all and handed it back in a mess for Denmark to clear up. But that wasn't quite as pithy.

Re: Pray . . .

Exactly. And yet he wants countries and businesses to sign deals with him. Would you risk it? His signature is not worth the paper it's printed on. You could hand him Greenland on a plate and tomorrow he might want Copenhagen too.

Even at our Brexity worse, we used the due process to exit. We didn't unilaterally suspend agreements. When our leaders broke the rule of law, our courts put them in their place.

RISC OS Open plots great escape from 32-bit purgatory

They're called Tagged pointers. And they're relatively respectable these days, especially in languages with a GC.

I can tell you a lot more exciting hacks.

Nuclear center must replace roof on 70-year-old lab so it can process radioactive waste

Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. Etc...

It doesn't have to go into the sun. So long as it doesn't come back to earth any time in the next couple of million years, we should be good. And the thing about space is, well it's big...

Re: FTFY

Interesting anecdote that puts it into perspective.

Credible nerd says stop using atop, doesn't say why, everyone panics

Re: Respect has been lost

There is an issue. But it's not trivially exploitable and there's no indication its being actively exploited. (All of which chimes with the commit linked above.)

She should have kept quiet and waited.

"It may also be that Kroll is unable to share details due to contractual obligations."

Forget contractual obligations, it's irresponsible to share info until a fix has been released (and had time to bed in) - unless it is being actively exploited. And even if it's being actively exploited, you wouldn't want to point at the hole lest other bad guys create an exploit against it.

So the assessment is, right now, it's reasonable to assume there is an actively exploited hole with no fix available.

Top Trump officials text secret Yemen airstrike plans to journo in Signal SNAFU

Thesaurids or Thesauridae

No. Tyrannosaurids or Tyrannosauridae.

After three weeks of night shifts, very tired techie broke the UK’s phone network

An arrangement that was put in place because one night, when a guy was upgrading the system...

China bans compulsory facial recognition and its use in private spaces like hotel rooms

Does anyone know if Zoho is just a wrapper around Safari on iOS (like every other browser) or whether India is trying to force Apple to accept other browser engines (as the EU is trying to do)?

Re: Duh, wut?

China's "Cyberspace Administration and Ministry of Public Security" - i.e. CAMPS.

US Space Force warns Chinese satellites are 'dogfighting' in space

Trump is on record saying he wants to cut military spending in half

Don't worry, General, a 22 year old will be along to cut your budget - for reasons of efficiency and so Trump and his mates can have a tax cut.

"This looks like the old ploy of accusing your rival of doing something you are doing yourself."

If the Chinese example was seen by commercial operators, then a US example would have been seen, too. (More worrying for the US is that they didn't spot it.)

Microsoft wouldn't look at a bug report without a video. Researcher maliciously complied

And an AI can't do that?

Dash to Panel maintainer quits after donations drive becomes dash to disaster

"WE WANT OUR FREE STUFF!"

Europe's largest council kept auditors in the dark on Oracle rollout fiasco for 10 months

Like these people? (I'm not in the sector, but they were pointed out to me last time it came up. According to the anonymous coward, "I've used some bad software in my time but Civica Financials really does take the cake." They have a follow up post that outlines the problems.)

I suspect the problem is that when you have a captive audience, you can afford to be shit.

Re: 'on what they call "analogue" systems'

Part of what's racking up costs for Birmingham's current system is paying people to do what the machines ought to be doing. However expensive this becomes, permanently employing staff to do it manually will be even more costly.

Is NASA's science budget heading for a black hole?

Re: Embrace the Challenge

I look forward to him embracing the challenge of living in a tent on a street corner!

Judge says Meta must defend claim it stripped copyright info from Llama's training fodder

Re: What if ...

If a student using a library didn't properly attribute the work of others, and tried to pass it off as their own, then would be guilty of plagiarism.

Earth's atmosphere is shrinking and thinning, which is bad news for Starlink and other LEO Sats

Re: Starlink?

No, Elon says Ukrainians have been shooting them down...

Strap in, get ready for more Rust drivers in Linux kernel

The great wheel of trends has turned again...

You've not been paying attention to modern trends: DLL hell is out; static is in vogue (with whole app optimisation). You'll need to wait a few years for that position to flip.

STL

C++ reached the same conclusion. But decided to get rid of the source file and leave only the headers...

^{Separating the interface from the implementation is not unique to C/C++, and is generally good practice. C++ will check the two files match.}

Crypto takes a dip as Trump signs Bitcoin Reserve order

Let me get this straight:

the US government is transferring all their crypto to one wallet - to make it easier for hackers to take in one swoop...?

Apple drags UK government to court over 'backdoor' order

Re: Here's hoping the unthinkable

It's entirely possible that the courts will agree this was unlawful---if the order is as vague as reported---but the government will likely rewrite the order to comply with the law and achieve the same net effect. If I had to bet, that's where I'd put my money. (Although it might take a couple of rounds of litigation.)