Posts by Zoopy

Trump tariffs turn techies topsy-turvy as US braces for PC tax

Re: Idiotic tariff nonsense

As an American, I agree entirely.

The recipe for Starbucks is to burn the beans in napalm, and then sell the water used to cool the ashes.

'Cyber security' behind decision to end defense satellite sharing of hurricane data

Re: SimEarth

Don't leave us hanging!!! Was the beer okay?

Folks aren’t buying the PCs that US vendors stockpiled to dodge tariffs

Re: Upgrade? Why?

FWIW, I set my octogenarian mom up with Pop!_OS and (for remote support) Tailscale. It replaced her dead Windows 7. I also did a little tomfoolery to get Windows' FreeCell working on it.

The only tech support she's needed in the past 4(?) years is when her USB Wifi adapter was having problems.

I mention this in case you find, for whatever reason, that Windows 10 is no longer an option.

US Department of Defense will stop sending critical hurricane satellite data

Re: Krasnov

> What's even crazier is that to a one, all those "coastal" states affected by severe hurricanes in the US vote republican.

Maybe I'm not understanding, but that seems factuality wrong.

Hurricanes can hit the entire east coast (and Gulf coast) of the US. I'm the 2024 presidential election, about half of those votes against Trump.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_United_States_presidential_election

Field support chap got married – which took down a mainframe

Re: VAX field service engineers

> This is actually a significant part of the reason I took to wearing bow ties, which don't suffer from that problem

There's something that 90% of people in the forum want to tell you, but it's best if you hear it from a trusted friend over coffee.

Microsoft's May Patch Tuesday update fails on some Windows 11 VMs

Re: They shot their own Azure foot!

Windows NT was pretty serious about stability, IIRC.

Britain's cyber agents and industry clash over how to tackle shoddy software

Re: Software Vendors Are The Tip Of The Iceberg!

"international bodies such as NIST"

International? The first word of NIST is literally "National".

Top sci-fi convention gets an earful from authors after using AI to screen panelists

"Is is possible to steal something *with* permission?"

How about stealing her HEART?

Sincerely, your friends at DeBeers.

I was *waiting* for a No True Scotsman argument!

Re: More Weasel-Words

"There is not justice. Only me."

Trump wants to fire quarter of NASA budget into black hole – and not in a good way

Re: Is Trump just not capable of grasping the concept of knowledge?

I suspect that on balance, Vance is less bad than Trump.

My impression is that Vance's main weakness is that he lacks character and will change his stated views based on what seems expedient.

But unfortunately we're in a situation where that's less bad (IMHO) than the sitting president.

Re: Make Aerospace Grotty Again

Just curious, which sub base? Asking because I grew up near Groton.

Congress wants to know if Nvidia superchips slipped through Singapore to DeepSeek

Re: Medism?

If we're talking about *this* Bond, then he'll yeah! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bond_(string_quartet)

DOGE geek with Treasury payment system access now quits amid racist tweet claims

In (half-hearted) defense of Trump voters, the Democrats fielded their own differently terrible candidate.

Politically moderate voters had no good option.

Ontario responds to Trump tariff by pitching Starlink deal into the trash

Re: Great pic *roll eyes*

"Nobody except Musk himself will ever really know what was meant by it."

The same can be said regarding pretty much any communication.

How confident one should be regarding Musk's true intent is a judgement call.

Microsoft vet laments a world where even toothbrushes need reboots

Re: Mental

I had a very marked improvement in dental health once I start using electric toothbrushes.

I mean this to my dental hygienist once, and he said he sees a very clear trend in the teeth of those who do and don't use electrics.

I encourage you to give it a shot.

AI chatbot startup founder, lawyer wife accused of ripping off investors in $60M fraud

Re: Which is worse?

Yes.

Linux rolls out the welcome mat for Microsoft's Copilot key

Re: Pretty obvious

You need to be careful with that command. Depending on your localization, it might also / alternatively remove the Finish, Fula, etc. locales.

Re: Pretty obvious

I don't know if this is true for all unixes, but IIRC "rm" just removes a directory's reference to a file.

The underlying file continues to exist until (at least) there are no processes that have it open, and there are no other directories / files that have hard links to it's inode.

Or something like that.

Why is Big Tech hellbent on making AI opt-out?

Out of curiosity, what games does a 75 year old like you enjoy playing?

I'm in my early 50s, and I've simply lost interest in the genres that I enjoyed in past decades.

Brits must prove their age on adult sites by July, says watchdog

Re: Here we go again...

Gavina?

Microsoft adds another problem to the Windows 11 24H2 naughty list

Re: Smug

Is it possible to do those cmd line steps before creating an account as the GP described?

When your technological ghosts come back to haunt you, expect humbug

Re: Very good piece

"Helping someone with their first few paraglider launches is an amazing treat"

Is that you, BOFH?

No, I can't help – you called the wrong helpdesk, in the wrong place, for the wrong platform

Re: "They also didn't understand time zones very well."

When I worked for Microsoft, this was endemic in internal emails.

Nobody seemed to understand the difference between PT, PST, and PDT.

Perhaps this is a generational thing, but I was very unimpressed.

Re: See...

Since a death threat is a criminal act, I'd consider first reporting it to the police, and *then* HR.

HR is not a valid substitute for law enforcement.

This sounds like the setup for a very tame porn scene.

Techie fluked a fix and found himself the abusive boss's best friend

Re: The Power of Fear!

The sabbatical was to stay out of town until the Model M lost interest in returning the favor.

Open source maintainers are drowning in junk bug reports written by AI

Re: I would argue that the Reg comment boards are antisocial media.

"Fuck the fuck off!"

I fear that even a large conference of physiologists, linguists, and pornographers would be unable to pin down the meaning of that utterance.

You, sir, are a true vulgarian.

Police arrest suspect in murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO, with grainy pics the only tech involved

We should also count the loved ones of former, now deceased or disabled, policy holders.

I don't advocate this kind of killing, for religious reasons. But I find the anger against insurers very relatable.

Re: Dead men don't suffer.

My first instinct would be that such questions could be a prelude to robbery. (My neighborhood is quite safe, but I'm the suspicious sort.)

So my answer would be yes, either way.

Windows 11 24H2 rolls out to more devices – with a growing list of known issues

Re: Break/fix/break

Are there any good, cross-platform alternatives to SMB at the moment?

The last time I looked into it, the only viable-looking alternative was NFS, which had its own challenges.

Microsoft confirms there will be no U-turn on Windows 11 hardware requirements

Re: Well...

Heads up, your caps lock is... oh, nevermind.

Windows 11 market share falls despite Microsoft ad blitz

I've had good luck with "Pop_OS!".

Microsoft reboots Windows Recall, but users wish they could forget

Re: When stuck in a hole

Microsoft only understands two answers: "yes" and "ask me later".

I'm not proud of the revenge fantasies such behavior inspires on me.

Like the ad

This article is also showing a CyberArk ad, that rotates a cube so that is occasionally covers nearby text.

It's annoying as hell, especially for someone with ADD.

Another example of neat trick, bad idea.

Microsoft slaps Windows 11 update hold on hardware connected to eSCL devices

So what I'm hearing is...

we can use USB devices to prevent unwanted Windows updates?

Totally worth it.

One thing AI can't generate at the moment – compelling reasons to use it for work

Re: Just plain exquisite

I have little comprehension of what your comment is trying to communicate, but it's clearly a great work of literature.

Whomp-whomp: AI PCs make users less productive

Re: I'm not surprised...

Sir or madame, I regretfully refer you to "Muphry's Law".

AI PCs: 'Something will have to give in 2025, and I think it's pricing'

Re: Reminds me of the fat-thin client 1990's

"Windows 10 is 9 years old, not new but not really ancient, it could easily be extended for a few years until..."

I'd argue that Windows 10 could be extended indefinitely.

For what most people want from an OS, Windows 10 needs nothing more than security updates and hardware drivers.

BOFH: The devil's in the contract details

Coffee vs tea

Out of curiosity, how popular is coffee vs tea in British / Australian workplaces these days?

Yeah, but if you look more closely at their argument, ...

... Never mind. You still see his point.

Airbus A380 flew for 300 hours with metre-long tool left inside engine

Re: properly trained tradesmen

I'm sure there are some niche trades where people pay for that kind of work on their... "hose".

I'm not judging.

Re: "as it would pass through the rotating blades during flight"

Especially when the roulette wheel is spinning at 10 trillion RPM and has a bunch of machetes sticking out of it which could come loose.

Re: "as it would pass through the rotating blades during flight"

Wouldn't that be British Urological standards?

As required by the BDA? (Acronym expansion left as an exercise to the reader.)

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory to eject hundreds more workers

Re: National Science Advisor

Or a flat-Earther.

During their first-day briefing:" A geo-synchronous what now?"

The US government wants developers to stop using C and C++

Re: Which language do you think is used to implement all those memory-safe languages?

I don't think that's fair.

Any child who's familiar with the basics of category theory, lambda calculus, Peano notation, and algebraic hypo-static transductive applicators of Curried semi-ring monads can learn himself a Haskell in mere decades!

Although to be fair, it's helpful if they were exposed to compilers a bit during kindergarten.

Intel: Our finances are in the toilet, we're laying off 15K, but the free coffee is back!

Re: Caffeine is the key here

So you're saying tea is a liquid speedball?

Damn, you Brits are hard core.

Microsoft has reached $1M giveaway levels of desperation to attract users to Bing

Re: They've all become shit.

To be fair, you specifically asked for crap search results.

Re: Bing is a stupid name for a search engine.

"Jeeves makes sense if you were familar with PG Wodehouse's creation although arguably most search engines might be better named Bertie or Wooster."

If Laurie and Fry make a search engine, I'm switching to it, sight unseen.

"Bing" reminds *me* of Ned Ryerson.

Am I right or am I right?