Posts by Phil O'Sophical

Apple update looks like Czech mate for locked-out iPhone user

form over function to make something look pretty.

Standard Apple design philosophy.

Re: 7 bit ASCII

7-bit ASCII is tautological. ASCII is a 7-bit code by definition, to ensure reliable information interchange.

Amazon rewards loyal Kindle devotees by closing the book on old e-readers

Re: HHGTTG

The real HHGTTG was the radio series, the book came later.

Artemis II blasts off on first crewed lunar mission since Apollo

Re: Brings back fond memories of the Apollo period

I think the BBC missed a trick, they should have had James Burke back to do the pre-launch commentary...

The company's biggest security hole lived in the breakroom

Not just an issue for secure networks...

We had a power cut one day and discovered that one of the coffee machines, which was outside the server room but against one of the server room walls, was on the UPS-protected supply. It became a very popular machine that day, but sadly, facilities quickly had that power socket rewired.

Renewables reached nearly 50% of global electricity capacity last year

Capacity ≠ supply

Nearly 50% global installed electricity capacity is nice, but we know that much of that capacity goes unused. We pay wind farms in Scotland not to generate power, for example, and solar panel capacity is unused for around half the time (when it's dark).

It would be better to know what %age of global installed electricity demand is actually met by power from renewable sources annually. Otherwise this is just another meaningless "up to" statistic.

'People's Panel' to check if UK wants controversial Digital ID will cost £630K

Your new Digital ID will probbaly have all of those and a Digital ID number as well.

Re: hooray

Why shouldn't visitors get in for free as well? It's not like they'll be an additional cost, and they may well spend some money in the cafe or gift shop. Assuming that all visitors who currently use the free entry will be happy to pay is typical government nonsense, the odds are they'll simply not bother and so spend no money with the ancillary services either.

UK manufacturers under cyber fire with 80% reporting attacks

Re: Stop using Microsoft desktops?

It's not the technology or the supplier that's the problem, it's the people who are careless about configuring and using it.

Artemis II countdown begins as NASA prepares for crewed Moon flyby

Re: "We will ... talk to our astronauts while they're on the far side of the Moon."

It's accurate to say that they can talk to the astronauts. Whether the crew can hear them is another thing..

Microsoft yanks Windows 11 preview update after install failures

Re: Another FootGun moment from Microsoft

Can Donald Trump Fly like a bird?

The answer to both is NO.

I'd pay to see him try. From a great height...

Senators want datacenters to come clean on power consumption

Re: slightly off-topic...

don't get me started on what she did to the UK coal industry and the miners

Coal was already dying, but the real damage to the miners was done by Scargill. He hated Thatcher so much that he used the miners as his private army to try and overthorow an elected government, and didn't care what happened to his cannon fodder. No government can let that happen. There's a reason that the breakaway miners' union called itself the Democratic Union of Mineworkers, and don't forget that Thatcher won a second landslide in the following election.

Calling out corporate BS? There's a steaming pile to aim for

Re: Quornell

I think you deserve one of these, as well as an upvote ---->

CERN eggheads burn AI into silicon to stem data deluge

Re: Only problem I see...

But they obviously don't feel bright enough, hence the plans for the High Luminosity LHC.

Turns out your coffee addiction may be doing your brain a favor

Re: Complaints

HTTP error 418: "'I'm a teapot", see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyper_Text_Coffee_Pot_Control_Protocol

The heart attack will get you long before dementia is an issue...

Starmer's digital ID reboot raises same old questions as its Blair-era ancestor

Consultation

I hope you're all completing the Digital ID consultation with these points.

Microsoft breaks Microsoft account sign-ins in Windows 11 with latest update

POETS day

It's also, apparently, the International Day of Happiness, so get those cats herded.

Re: "What a time to be a Windows user."

What's a "break"?

UK blinks on AI copyright carve-out after star-studded revolt

Is this why they spell it LaboUr?

"We have listened," said science minister Liz Kendall.

"And we have U-turned. Again."

Maybe if they listened to the experts first, instead of to their SPADs, they'd be able to develop some coherent and joined-up policies. But probably not.

BBC World Service digital switch backfires as online audience drops

Re: What is the point of providing a World Service broadcast.. by Unicast

You can also listen to short-wave radio for days or weeks on one set of batteries (or no batteries at all for a crystal set). Phones used for streaming likely need to be recharged every night.

In the name of science: Boffins build fart-tracking undies

Wouldn't that be double-anosmia testing?

GitHub infuriates students by removing some models from free Copilot plan

Re: it's free until...

Embrace, extend, extort?

Blustering Blackbeard's PC was all at sea, sysadmin got him shipshape in seconds

Master Bates, ITYM.

Smart mirror shows dumb Windows in elevator

Vertical people are boring, horizontal is much more fun

Swiss e-voting pilot can't count 2,048 ballots after USB keys fail to decrypt them

Re: Even Paper Has Its Issues.

At least with paper you can recount.

Re: Voting schemes

But it doesn't prove that they didn't then later spoil that vote, or put some unrelated bit of paper in the urn.

NASA watchdog report pokes holes in Artemis lunar lander plans

Re: Finally a faint voice of wisdom in this whole HLS saga ...

Something very simple like a winch that the astronauts can use to get up and down

Gerard Hoffnung's Bricklayer comes to mind.

Polish cops bust alleged teen DDoS kit sellers – youngest just 12

you have to live dramatically below your means

But it's not below your means, it's within the means you choose to support the future lifestyle you want. You're assuming that people with more income will squander it because they can. That could equally apply to someone on 250k/year, well-off by any standards. Not everyone is so indisciplined. If you want to own your own house, you have to work for it. Too many people expect to have it handed to them on a plate, they will be disappointed.

An extra £600 a month savings is not the difference between 30k and 90k per year. It's more like 30k -> 40k.

A 400k mortgage over 25 years will cost you 2k/month. On 30k (2500/month) that's not viable but 90k per year is 7500/month. A 2k mortgage payment should be easily affordable if you manage your finances correctly.

Where did I say that? If that's the only alternative you can think of you should perhaps broaden your mind a little.

They need education, and perhaps mild (non-penal) correction (as the article said). Rewarding crime does not help them, or anyone else.

Give them a job. Put their talent to use.

Great idea. Teach kids that if they can't get a job, they can just commit a crime and they'll be rewarded with a salary. That will really help society.

Ig Nobel Prize flees US for Switzerland after 35 years over safety concerns

I think you misspelled 'irreverent'.

Re: Zurich, Switzerland

Or worse: Zurich, Montana.

At minimum, Trump won't hold the House of Representatives.

Impeachment incoming?

Whitehall can't cost digital ID until it decides how to build it

Re: The first question.

And, curiously enough, the so-called consultation doesn't ask anywhere if you think it's a good idea, or if you want a digital ID. It's a foregone conclusion, the consultation just asks for ideas about the implementation.

EU legal eagle says banks should refund cybercrime victims first, argue later

Re: Good intention perhaps

It's rarely the bank's fault, and people always seem to forget that high street banks get their money from their customers. The more the banks are forced to reimburse gullible customers who have been conned by scammers, the more the bank charges for all customers will go up.

If someone follows a link they have been sent to a phishing site, instead of typing in the bank address as they have been repeatedly told to do, they must share the responsibility. The fact that the site pretends to be their bank isn't the bank's fault, nor the fault of the bank's more attentive customers, so why should they have to pay?

'AI brain fry' affects employees managing too many agents

Every cloud...

marketers are the most likely to report AI brain fry, followed by HR

So it's not all bad, then,?

Royal Navy races to arm ships against drone threat

Re: You owe me a new keyboard!

They'll identify a suitable off-the-shelf product which can be delivered overnight.

But then there will be 39 pages of changes required to customise it for the special circumstances of the MoD, which will take a year to implement, and the end result will have a range of 25 feet, and cost $1m a shot.

Norway's Consumer Council takes aim at enshittification

Re: In English

King's

Musk's Grok sparks outrage after chatbot makes offensive jibes about football disasters

Banning books is never a good idea. Just file it under "fantasy".

NASA’s asteroid defence mission slowed targets by 1.7 inches per hour

I'd suggest you trust the astronomer.

Oh, come on. Trust an expert instead of believing what they read on social media? Who does that?

Iran is the first out-loud cyberwar the US has fought

Re: israel?

And I'd expect Israel to be better at it, and more effective, than the USA.

Asteroid 2024 YR4 won't smack Moon in 2032, boffins confirm

Re: when they come at us from a sunward direction.

Not much chance of the Earth doing a quick Immelmann turn, though.

Or was that Biggles?

60 years since humanity first touched the surface of another planet

Re: Odd

Well, she obviously dealt with the problem...

Chardet dispute shows how AI will kill software licensing, argues Bruce Perens

Re: .....................it's already here, as a service company

"malus" is also the botanical genus of apple...

Software patents as well?

It does highlight one of the ongoing issues with Open Source. The GNU project predates the explosion of software due to the widespread internet and WWW, and I don't think it really foresaw a world where software would be used by, and written by, everone and his dog on a daily basis. Nowadays we frequently see the situation where someone knocks up a bit of code for themselves, but thinking it might be useful to a few others they unthinkingly slap a GPL header on it and put it up somewhere like github. A few years later they realise that it's really popular, lots of businesses have picked it up, and they're expected to keep maintaining it for nothing. It's unsurprising, really, that many of them regret having made it so freely available and wish they'd kept enough control to have commercialized it themselves.

That doesn't bother the people who are ideologically convinced that commercial software is an abomination, but the real world isn't so black and white. I wouldn't be surprised to see a move back towards the 'shareware' model of the 70's and 80's, where people made their software available for free for hobby and non-commercial use, but very clearly stated that anyone wanting to use it commercially (including for AI training) should call to discuss licence terms.

I also wonder how the use of AI like this will impact software patents. The whole concept of a patent is that the developer of the design gets an exclusive license to commercialise the design for a fixed period, in return for which they make the design public so that others can understand it, and improve on it. That sounds like a perfect definition of what AI does, it can be trained on published patent info and then instructed to create a non-infringing duplicate. Might make people much less likely to patent software in the future.

UK mobilizes lawyers to keep report on Gatwick 'drone' chaos under wraps

Or possibly an excess of ----------------->

UK watchdog eyes Meta's smart glasses after workers say they 'see everything'

Re: GDPR's position on CCTV?

Just require the glasses to be fitted with bells...

Re: Who would wear AI glasses during "extremely private moments" ...

"Men seldom make passes at girls who wear glasses"?

(Dorothy Parker)