Posts by Androgynous Cupboard

Whodunit? 'Unauthorized' change to Grok made it blather on about 'White genocide'

"just when he was old enough to take up arms and start shooting, democracy broke out. He never got over that." - nicely put.

Re: Zim

It's happened historically in most of southern Africa - Namibia and Tanzania are two I know for certain, both many years ago. It's happens when the country has been appropriated during the days of empire and you wind up with the objectively absurd situation of a small group of people owning most of the land. Frankly we've got the same problem in the UK, but it's too ingrained to fix.

Zimbabwe had Mugabe to deal with - a classic case of a man blaming a fifth column (white farmers in his case) for his worsening grip on the economy. Yes, it went very badly there, but that's mostly down to Mugabe.

Annual electronic waste footprint per person is 11.2 kg

Re: Used

You need to do more work Neil :-) My MacBook Pro keyboards are lasting about 4 years before I successfully beat them to death.

CISA mutes own website, shifts routine cyber alerts to Musk’s X, RSS, email

Re: I hope when democrats take back power

Fat chance. Half the UK government still uses Twitter, even though it is effectively a republican mouthpiece.

Sudo-rs make me a sandwich, hold the buffer overflows

Hundreds?

For the millionth time, stop exaggerating.

Oregon State University's Open Source Lab is running on fumes

Presumably this is why they have eschewed the original open-source Signal, and gone instead with a clone (TM SGNL) which permits archiving, breaking E2E encryption and which is quite likely possibly leaking to the Israeli government? article and analysis

Kind of surprised this hasn’t had more traction as a story - Signal is unapproved but secure; this revelation changes the game entirely.

The Telegraph jumps the gun on World War III

Re: Process flow

If you're going to pay Boris Johnson £275,000 a year to make shit up, costs have to be cut somwhere.

Trio arrested in £3M UK bribery probe over Microsoft datacenter build in Netherlands

The SFO? Now they're in real trouble.

If they're guilty they'll certainly get what's coming to them: a sternly wagged finger. For really serious cases it might be accompanied by a hard stare and an observation that really, they've let themselves down.

Brewhaha: Turns out machines can't replace people, Starbucks finds

Re: Fooled me.

The one I remember is: going to a Starbucks for coffee is like going to prison for sex: you know you’re going to get it, but it’s gonna be rough (from Adam Hills, apparently)

OpenAI pulls plug on ChatGPT smarmbot that praised user for ditching psychiatric meds

Me too. It’s because you’re such a smart guy Paul. Good looking too. Brave and noble. We need more of your type around here.

The State of Open Source in 2025? Honestly, it's a mess but you knew that already

Frameworks

JS devs in particular flock to these frameworks like lemmings, despite the near certainty that whatever they pick will be unsupported on ten years, probably without a clear migration path.

Meanwhile, it’ perfectly possible to write complex applications in HTML+CSS+JS as they are specified, without a framework, that it will continue to work… forever, probably.

Nationwide power outages knock Spain, Portugal offline

Re: Not enough intertia...

Google's LLM happily told me about street in a nearby town, over several paragraphs, including great detail about its history and special conservation status. Of course I'd got the wrong town and the street didn't exist.

So whether its right or wrong, the burden of proof is definitely on you to tell us why you think it's due to grid inertia. Quote a source, not an LLM.

Go away, troll

(if this seems harsh, check their comment history)

Re: To channel a certain class of reader ...

Too subtle by half - you probably needed a "where's the IT angle" to drum it home.

The Iberian Pensinsula is an "energy island" with not nearly enough interconnects, which is not going to help: https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/fr/memo_18_4622 or google "iberian interconnects". No idea if it's a constributing factor here, but I'll wager it's not helping them get back on their feet.

Europe's cloud customers eyeing exit from US hyperscalers

Re: Some of us have been saying this for years

Because I did what he asked, he didn’t beat me as hard? That’s doesn’t mean things are working tout “pretty well””

Tesla fudged odometer to screw me out of warranty, Model Y owner claims

Re: [somebody] bought a used 2020 Model Y Tesla

Is that like regular Lithium, but you have to wrap up warm?

Re: Cockup?

I had the same thought; revolution counters might just be a bit old-fashioned for we-don't-need-LIDAR Musk. But it would also mean a speed of zero whenever you enterered a tunnel and lost satellite comms, or a speed of non-zero on a car ferry. Easy enough to verify.

Whistleblower describes DOGE IT dept rampage at America's labor watchdog

Re: Attempts to log in from a Russian IP address within 15 minutes of account creation

Why bother to hide where you're coming from if you've been invited in?

4chan, the 'internet’s litter box,' appears to have been pillaged by rival forum

Re: PHP is not…

To paraphrase this commentary, you might be able to drive a nail by hitting it with a rock, but it doesn't make a rock the right choice.

PHP is not…

… “the open-source scripting language used for web development”, unless you append “by people with no sense of shame”. Which does cover 4chan, to be fair.

Uncle Sam kills funding for CVE program. Yes, that CVE program

Re: Let the offenders pay

That’s not very on-message. Surely the way to fund it is make them pay to have their CVE removed from the database. I’m pretty sure Oracle would pay up, we established that a few weeks ago.

The most important experimental distro you've never heard of gets new project lead

Re: Pathetic

Systemd makes a distinction between files and symlinks to files in its configuration directories, as I discovered to my cost (and great annoyance). So if Gobo does clever things with symlinks there’s a good chance it won’t work with systemd.

I realise this may be not be seen as a Bad Thing.

I imagine running this on top of a file system with dedup would give you the best of all worlds.

OpenAI slams 'sham' takeover bid by wannabe 'AGI dictator' Musk in countersuit

A plague on both their houses

Nothing more to say

EU lands 25% counter tariff punch on US, Trump pauses broad import levy hike – China excepted

Re: 125%, 100%, 80% whatever

Given the number of uninhabited rocks that trade with the US, that may have already started.

Re: Trump blinked

No, there is a difference. Saying “they’re all the same” means you can’t distinguish between Hitler and Jacinda Adern, both of whom were elected. There is a difference.

Now we’ve established that, did the Dems get criticised for crashing the economy and applying the greatest tax increases ever seen on Americans - because a tariff is a tax? No, because it’s all Trump. You presumably voted for him, at least own it.

Trump thinks we can make iPhones in the US just like China. Yeah, right

I see “just do it with AI” is becoming this decades “just move it to the cloud”.

AI entrepreneur sent avatar to argue in court – and the judge shut it down fast

Ha, nice idea! It won't take long before the only defendants appearing in court are small fluffy kittens with enormous eyes.... court TV will look like a constant rerun of Puss-In-Boots.

China hits back at America with retaliatory tariffs, export controls on rare earth minerals

Re: It would be nice to have more manufacturing jobs here

That’s ok, Florida thinks they can work in warehouses instead. All night, so long as they’re at least 14.

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

Re: The Genocide imposed on the Irish wasn't an accident

Ah, found it - thank you Wikipedia. Trevalyan said the famine was "a direct stroke of an all-wise and all-merciful Providence". What a c*nt.

Re: Please explain

You get to spend all your money on holidays just for yourself, and when you get old enough to require care you get to be looked after by the now adult children that were selfllessly spawned and raised by others, rather than living in a "Children of Men" dystopia. You're welcome.

Re: The Genocide imposed on the Irish wasn't an accident

It was a genocide of opportunity rather than Nazi-style oven building, but you're not wrong. I can't find the exact quote, but I believe it was Charles Trevalyan who implied that it was gods punishment on them for being catholic. And for anyone that feels that even then genocide is a tad too strong, consider that an entire social class - those that informally let a plot of land on larger farms - was essentially wiped out.

That said, relavence to the topic at hand? None at all.

Re: From the "fact sheet", singling out Blighty

The first time I ever drove in the US, a car in front started flashing one of its brake lights. Eventually I figured out that the brake lights served dual purpose as a turn indicator, presumably so the manufacturers could save a few dollars on some orange plastic and a second bulb.

Re: childish analysis

I’m particularly fond of the Guardian article this morning noting a tariff on the uninhabited Heard and Macdonald islands, who somehow still managed to export $1.4M of machinery to the US last year. Suck on that penguins!

Forget Signal. National Security Adviser Waltz now accused of using Gmail for work

Re: Controlled leak

The inevitable result of the US mixing politics and religion is that politicians are asssessed not with reason, but with unquestioning faith. How else could anyone conclude this was somehow intentional? Trust in Donald, his divine plan is unknowable.

Signalgate storm intensifies as journalist releases full secret Houthi airstrike chat

Re: You Mean USAID ?

Oh great, fg_swe is here. Someone fetch the extra-long extension for the nutjob scale,

Re: Encryption......

It says "I have designed my own encryption scheme which is completely unbreakable"

Re: @Wang Cores

Whatever script codejunky is reading from definitely didn't consider the last few months. He's winging it - you can almost hear the desperation as he types.

Should we tell him that "red sea terrorists" became an issue after the collapse of Somalia in 1991? That would under President Bush, by the way. They even made a movie about it.

Re: They're already

"nothing more than serious human error" - well, we agree on that at least - but it's a description that could be also be applied to the sinking of the titanic and the events that triggered WW1. It's an explanation, it's not an excuse.

Even you, in the first article on this topic a couple of days ago, said "it sounds like a real bad screw up". Surely at some level you must recognise this is unacceptable? If it were a democrat you'd be calling for jail, and I'd agree with you. But the law applies equally, so I genuinely don't understand how you can suggest a slap on the wrist is appropriate here.

As for "one of the corrupt agents" - really? He was explicltly added by Mike Waltz who has admitted as much. You're one step short of saying it was little green men that done it - Occams razor isn't partisan, it applies here too.

Re: They're already

While I agree with your comment, “the Israelis and others have shown, it's possible to do better and place a much less damaging missile…”

I feel bound to point out the Israelis may well be able to do that, but they have chosen to reduce an entire country to rubble and kill tens of thousands of women and children in the process. I’m well aware of the issues, but if I were trying to find a poster child for surgical strikes, I’d look elsewhere.

Re: I cannot see how bombing the Houthis helps

When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

EU OS drafts a locked-down Linux blueprint for Eurocrats

A non US Linux you say?

(engages asbestos underpants)

Why not just fork Kynin or Deepin?

Aardvark beats groundhogs and supercomputers in weather forecasting

Re: I use the Golden Gate Bridge.

In boring flat areas based on recent data, I believe it's: if your basement is a foot underwater, it's been raining.

The post-quantum cryptography apocalypse will be televised in 10 years, says UK's NCSC

Re: Not quite, actually

Exactly the kind of pedantry I would hope for around here, have a beer.

Infosec pro Troy Hunt HasBeenPwned in Mailchimp phish

GDPR explicitly lets you store a list of people that don't want to be contacted, for the obvious reason that if you don't have this list, you might contact them.

NASA rewrites Moon mission goals in quiet DEI retreat

Re: Good

Imagine codejunky's envisioned distant future, when a spaceship filled entirely with white men heads to the stars to propagate humanity throughout the galaxy...

Re: Insane

Trump is so horrendously vindictive that, although I find it slightly sickening, I can't deny that the smart approach is to say publicly what he wants to hear. Whether that translates into any sort of actionable policy is a different matter. Regrettably, for so many american corporations, it has - the jury is out on Starmer, but I agree it's hard not to be discouraged.

Privacy warriors whip out GDPR after ChatGPT wrongly accuses dad of child murder

Re: No care, no responsibility

"The whole world of Modern IT?" Have you seen our licenses?

THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED `'AS IS″ AND WITHOUT ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITATION, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

Try selling a car, or a kettle, or anything other than software with that clause and see how far you get. Nothing modern about this trend.

China's EV champ BYD reveals super-fast charging that leaves Tesla eating dust

Re: Calll the fire brigade before hand

I was waiting for El Reg to cover this and hoping for a bit more detail, but sadly not. The Guardian has more info: the improvements are from reduced internal battery resistance, so I suppose yes - they have introduced a new wonder cell. Obviously fast charging is bad for the cells, but for 99% of EV drivers it's something you do only rarely on long trips. When you want it, you want it to be as fast as possible.

As for "Tesla Supercharger" being the pinnacle of technology and capping out at 250kW, the Ionity network in Europe has been delivering 350kW quite happily for a while, and I use a station with 20 of these, often all occupied (in Riems, France). That's a theoretical maximum of 7MW, and although I'm sure it's usually delivering only a fraction of that I don't see it's is going to be an major issue for the grid. What's more interesting is the CCS connector, which I think is limited to 1000V/500A. However Wikipedia tells me someone has already experimentally put 990kW over it with active cooling, so I guess this won't be a show-stopper.

Also wanted to note that one you take into account the increased efficiencies of EV vs Petrol, the amount of mileage you can put on charging at 1MW is only 10/20% less than the amount of mileage you can put in refilling with petrol - it's come up before (not my maths, but looks about right).