Posts by wolfetone

Microsoft 365 boosts prices in 2026 … to pay for more AI and security

Well before you list then, can you start with the ones that actually work?

Microsoft quietly shuts down Windows shortcut flaw after years of espionage abuse

Re: I call bullshit

Yeah but the USA don't need to get the backdoors. Micro$oft just gives them the key and they let themselves in.

Latest Windows 11 updates may break the OS's most basic bits

Re: WTF?

It's becoming more apparent to me that Micro$oft are using Copilot to not only write this shit, but to QC test it too. I bet it's even writing the unit tests itself.

How much longer will this go on for? By rights, really, you should stop updates on your equipment given the real risk of it breaking the whole place apart. But if you do that you leave yourself open to attacks made possible by Micro$oft's lax attitude to security.

Happy Christmas eh.

Xero to start charging developers API usage fees, replacing revenue share deals

Closing a business? And here's me trying to start one!

Isn't it lovely that at the moment, in the UK at least, it's become mandatory to use software like Xero to submit tax returns etc, they do this.

How fucking wonderful.

'Exploitation is imminent' as 39 percent of cloud environs have max-severity React hole

Re: Cut the crud

Guys guys guys - be cool. You're both wrong, judging by the downvotes.

You do not consider the following:

- It's cool to use a framework

- It's "easier" to use a framework because it has the bit you think you need

- It's all over LinkedIn so must be good

- All the job postings demand knowledge of it

- Only grandparents and grey breads do things manually

But the key thing here: Security is someone else's problem. Someone has definitely made the framework secure. I'm sure of it. They're sure of it. I don't know who's done it, but someone has done it. And if it goes wrong, then it's not our fault. It's the fault of a "sophisticated attack".

Lawyer's 6-year-old son uses AI to build copyright infringement generator

""In less than 2 minutes, he created a fully interactive website, including the proposed name 'Bedtime Story Weaver.'""

No he didn't. All your son did was provide coherent prompts to an LLM which did the hard work.

It's the equivalent of saying you cooked dinner by buying a ready meal and putting it in a microwave for 2 minutes.

Micron ditches consumer memory brand Crucial to chase AI riches

Re: Damn.

I think really it's a good move from Micron not to sell the Crucial brand.

The chips on the RAM and the storage that come with that Crucial branding are Micron chips and it's those chips that people are happy with. If Micron sold Crucial, the Crucial RAM etc everyone would use based on loyalty and good memories would be garbage. Because the people who buy these brands are there to make money. Put the shittest thing in the product and let nostalgia sell it.

So while it's crap, I think the fact Crucial remains with Micron is a good thing as at least when the AI bubble bursts they could go back to using it.

Newly launched civil service pension portal from Capita is crapita, users report

They don't want you to have the pension.

Now shut up and die already so they don't have to pay you!

China using AI as ‘precision instrument’ of censorship and repression, at home and abroad

Re: Clearly the "Silly Season"

I don't live there, but when I saw ASPI I was reminded of the scene in Dumb & Dumber where Lloyd goes to Harry that they're going to "Assssssspeeennnnn" - and Harry goes "I dunno Lloyd the French are assholes".

NASA nominee 'committed' to uprooting Shuttle Discovery for Houston trophy piece

Re: US space ambitions shrinking

Carry on, my wayward son.

Re: US space ambitions shrinking

And even then they'd have ended up in Boston.

Apply here to win a Microsoft Ugly Sweater. It's uglier than ever

Micro$oft peaked when they released Clippy.

And I would quite like the jumper, and I promise to wear it the day my wife goes in to labour for our second child which is due 23rd December. I can provide photographic proof. Given how it's been during the scans, there is every chance it'll just turn up at the most in opportune time - when I'm sat down for Christmas Dinner lunch wearing that jumper.

Make my kid's christmas great! For the first time anyway.

Search the pre-ChatGPT internet with the Slop Evader browser extension

Re: This is counterproductive for me, unfortunately.

Unfortunately, even pre-AI, this was a technique for SEO. You'd get penalised in the results if the content was "old". So if you don't put the date on it, it's not old.

The mindset of the SEO snake oil sales man.

Asda's 'self-inflicted' SAP mess after Walmart divorce stalls financial revival

They are mortgaged to the hilt. The stores themselves are run down, shit feeling, and not nice places to be. The quality of the food isn't there (markably down actually), and places like Aldi and Lidl are providing nicer environments to shop, better quality of product, for the same money.

Don't blame all of your failings on IT!

Dorset Council ditching customized SAP for £14M Oracle overhaul

Re: £14M Oracle overhaul

The underlying issue with the strikes is what it's about.

BCC have another equal pay matter that they feel can only be fixed by asking the original bin men to take a pay cut/agree to job losses. The bin men, rightly, say no. The proper fix for this is to obviously pay the women the proper amount that their male co-workers get, but they instead want the women to keep on their low pay and ask the men to join them.

That's the crux of it, and sadly it's so entrenched within the council that it's immune to political swing/bias.

Re: Are not council business requirements largely the same across the UK?

Tomato, tomato, just give me the damn bat already!

Re: £14M Oracle overhaul

My apologises, I acted like Birmingham City Council's own accountants and created a typo that sent the whole world laughing.

I meant or, not of.

Re: Are not council business requirements largely the same across the UK?

Vote for me as Prime Minister.

Or head of technology.

I don't care, just give me the cricket bat so I can affect change!!!!

£14M Oracle overhaul

They're either optimistic of their accountants can't count.

Re: Are not council business requirements largely the same across the UK?

Yeah but no one is strong enough to lead and tell all of these authorities - you all do the same shit, so account the same way.

So say Norwich Council they need to be able to account for all the tractors they have. Birmingham would need to account for all the Bin Men they don't want to pay.

You can see how this would become problematic if you don't have someone there with a cricket bat to smash home the fact that THEY ALL DO THE SAME FUCKING THING.

Landlord quirks leave thousands of flats stuck in the broadband slow lane

Re: Landlords!

Guys, think of the poor landlords FFS!

They've a building there they get hundreds of pounds from each tenant, when all the landlord has to do is wake up in the morning and go about their daily lives.

How dare you expect them to allow a hole to be drilled in the wall of a building they own but you pay for!

UK digital ID plan gets a price tag at last – £1.8B

"Imagine telling HMRC you don't have the necessary software to complete their imminent mandatory income submissions for landlords."

I don't have the necessary software to complete the income submissions.

But my accountant does.

I have been working since 2008. Every job I've gone in to I have shown my passport and I have shown my NI.

It's a weird feeling to be in when you're told that your passport alone isn't good enough to prove who you are in the country you live in, but is perfectly fine when I want to go abroad to 190+ other countries?

£1.8b to introduce something my passport already does?

Seems a bizarre waste of money. I wonder who's benefiting from it?

Canadian data order risks blowing a hole in EU sovereignty

Ah now Canada, don't be acting like the Yanks.

Campbell's CISO canned after lawsuit alleges hour-long rant against staff and customers

Seems lost on a lot of people that this story was released on the 25th November, which is Gazpacho Soup day.

If you know your Red Dwarf, then you know...

Airbus: We were hours from pausing production in Spain

Re: An Aviation Company Runs Out of Gas?

Diesel, actually.

70-hour work weeks no longer enough for Infosys founder, who praises China’s 996 culture

I wish we had another Bevan in the Labour party.

But here we are, stuck with a collection of Blairites who are only concerned with lining their own pockets.

Microsoft wedges tables into Notepad for some reason

Dear Micro$oft,

Here is a list of things people care about:

1) Updates that don't break the system

2) Updates that don't stop them printing

3) Updates that protect their PC and data.

Here is a list of things people don't care about:

1) Notepad doing shit WordPad did

2) Crapilot being shoehorned in to everything

3) Fucking everything you're doing that is pushing this AI bullshit because you've spent too much money on it.

Thanks x

OVH CEO predicts some cloud prices to rise 5-10 percent by mid-2026

Re: "AI sends storage costs soaring"

Not the worst idea really.

It's not as if RAM ever goes worthless in price. So even if you don't use it, stick it on eBay in a few years for 2/3's of what you bought it for and you don't lose your shirt on it.

Dev's last-day-of-contract code helped to crash app used by 350,000 people

"Fortunately, the major corporation had good backups. And of course Ray didn't work there any more, so this incident was not his problem!"

I'd like to think that Ray got a few quid for giving Major Corp. Inc. a good real world disaster test of their back ups, and any issues found on the back of that were duly fixed.

Have a pint Ray.

Linux admin hated downtime so much he schlepped a live UPS during office move

I'd feel safe if Bobby and Peanut were next to me if I was dying and could only have my life sustained by a life support machine connected to a UPS.

I would draw the line at Peanut interacting with the machine though.

PHP 8.5 lays down long-awaited pipe operator, adds new URI tools

Finally a proper URI parser!!!!!!!

Have a pint for that alone!

TP-Link accuses rival Netgear of 'smear campaign' over alleged China ties

Re: Battle of the short buses?

100% of the Netgear equipment I've used or bought has failed.

5% of the TP Link equipment I've used or bought has failed.

Pretty short discussion about who I want to win.

Microsoft blanks out BSODs on public displays with new ‘Digital Signage mode’

Definitely.

The one highlight I have on shopping trips is seeing in what glorious ways the Micro$oft signage has shat itself.

It's the 21st century version of a busman's holiday, and they're taking it away from us!

Cloudflare broke itself – and a big chunk of the Internet – with a bad database query

*live scenes from Cloudflare testing*

"Dear AI, can you test this for me to make sure it works?"

"What a great idea! You are such a clever person for asking me this. Not a lot of people would think about testing something as extravagant as this so let me not let you down and test it for you. One moment fish...."

"... fish?"

"Ahh I see the problem! I am a herring, I am a herring, I am a herring, I am a herring, I am a herring, I am a herring, I am a herring, I am a herring, I am a herring, I am a herring, I am a herring, I am a herring, I am a herring, I am a herring, I am a herring, I am a herring, I am a herring, I am a herring, I am a herring, I am a herring, I am a herring, I am a herring, I am a herring, I am a herring, I am a herring, I am a herring, I am a herring, I am a herring, I am a herring, I am a herring, I am a herring, I am a herring, I am a herring, I am a herring, I am a herring, I am a herring, I am a herring, I am a herring, I am a herring, I am a herring, I am a herring, I am a herring, I am a herring, I am a herring, I am a herring, I am a herring..."

"stop stop stop"

"I am a herring, I am a herring, I am a herring, I am a herring, I am a herring, I am a herring, I am a herring, I am a herring, I am a herring, I am a herring, I am a herring, I am a herring, I am a herring, I am a herring, I am a herring, I am a herring, I am a herring, I am a herring, I am a herring, I am a herring, I am a herring, I am a herring, I am a herring, I am a herring, I am a herring, I am a herring, I am a herring, I am a herring, I am a herring, I am a herring, I am a herring, I am a herring, I am a herring, I am a herring, I am a herring, I am a herring, I am a herring, I am a herring, I am a herring, I am a herring, I am a herring, I am a herring, I am a herring, I am a herring, I am a herring, I am a herring, I am a herring, I am a herring, I am a herring, I am a herring, I am a herring, I am a herring, I am a herring, I am a herring, I am a herring, I am a herring, I am a herring, I am a herring, I am a herring, I am a herring, I am a herring, I am a herring, I am a herring, I am a herring, I am a herring, I am a herring, I am a herring, I am a herring, I am a herring, I am a herring..."

*looks at the clock*

"Fuck it my shift is over I'll pick it up in the morning"

*next morning*

"Yawn - I guess ######### did the testing, looks like it ran without a problem, git push origin master"

Outdated Samsung handset linked to fatal emergency call failure in Australia

You know you could just put the fucking land lines back so people have a proper phone in their house?

Stop this bullshit of blaming the consumer. It's your fault. Not ours.

Cloudflare coughs, half the internet catches a cold

Re: Ruined Lunchtime

Some of us had to slum it on Reddit.

REDDIT!

Palantir plots NHS skills drive for its controversial data platform

Re: Meanwhile...

Ah yeah, Think Tanks.

Every time I go to A&E it's a Think Tank that sees me isn't it? That's there operating the MRI, that is there taking my blood pressure.

Re: Meanwhile...

"Sorry but thats complete bollocks."

Speak to a nurse and get back to me.

Re: Meanwhile...

I think if you speak to any one in the NHS, the main gripe/bug bear is that there seems to be far too many managers and pen pushers who are all on wages that are bigger than what their skillset/job should allow.

The fact AI is here being spoken about I think is more the fact that it now makes these cutbacks more achievable. As before I don't think any government had the stomach for it.

Alibaba releases chatbot that produces error when asked about Tiananmen Square

Might as well ask ChatGPT about it's finances. You'd get the same result as Qwen gave.

Jaguar Land Rover hack cost India's Tata Motors around $2.4 billion and counting

If it's bad for Tata Motors, what's going to happen with Tata Group? Their motors devision has taken a hit, what about their IT services?!

Server virtualization market heats up as VMware rivals try to create alluring alternatives

Ditch your viewpoint

You are being incredibly blinkered at the the problem, focusing only on how it affects you. Yes, sticking with VMware makes it easy for you.

Does the increase/hiked cost make it easy for your accounting department? Does it make it easy for your finance department? No. Because they can't say for certain whether the cost for the service will remain stable, and they can't even predict whether or not they're liable to make these hikes in the future or return to a normal increase. They have to find the money from somewhere to pay the bills.

What then? Does remaining with VMware make it easier for your sales team who have to drum up more business to cover this increased cost? Does it make it easier for the HR department who then possibly have to be told to make savings in personel to cover the cost?

Yeah, the last two are extreme, but forecasting is important for business in terms of cash flow. Sticking with VMware doesn't make that crucial job easier. And it's this that keeps the lights on, not VMware.

Retro Games opens pre-orders for THEA1200, a full-size working Amiga replica

Buy one, wrap it, and wait until December 2026 then?

Firefox adds AI Window, users want AI wall to keep it out

Re: Add-On

Also a software dev: not a dumb question.

But the problem is this isn't an idea set by a developer. This is a marketing/sales/accountant wet dream. They know full fucking well if they offered this as an add on the take up would be minimal. They think that if it's forced on you, you will use it whether you like it or not, and then they can go to their VC sauna buddies and show them how popular their implementation is and get more money for more spa treatments and/or sauna visits.

NHS supplier ends probe into ransomware attack that contributed to patient death

*looks at all the hacking groups in existence, looks at all the cases of hacking*

Strikes me the CIA one isn't doing a good job. Fuck knows why you'd want a British version to do the same?

To 'Infinity' ... and beyond: MX Linux 25 has arrived

"That was superseded by cgroups v2 in kernel 4.5, as LWN reported in 2016, and in the current LTS kernel 6.12 cgroups is turned off, which effectively disables the systemd-shim tool that enabled MX's init-switching superpower."

I'm one of these long time Linux users who've never mucked about with the kernel, but why couldn't the MX devs they just switch it on in the kernel? Because that switch thing sounded really handy and helpful.

OpenAI’s viability called into question by reported inference spending with Microsoft

You know when you have bubblegum and you blow the bubble, and it gets larger to the point it starts to become translucent just before it breaks? We're there with AI.

Micro$oft have skin in the game with OpenAI remember. M$ are investing heavily in AI. They're pumping Crapilot in to fucking everything without being asked to, and pushing it on all Office364 users like a drug dealer outside the gates of a school.

If OpenAI is a loss maker to the point there is no ROI, then M$ will get hurt badly. As would every other jackass AI operation.

Whats more, when DeepSeek came out remember who was loudest of all saying their claims of doing it on the cheap were bollocks? Yeah, same company that it seems can only operate their AI by throwing cash at it without any real hope of recouping it.