Posts by gv

AWS-hosted tech providers urge Middle East customers to fail over now

“High availability across multiple Availability Zones will be restored once AWS confirms recovery.”

Probably best not to hold your breath.

Say goodbye to budget PCs and smartphones – memory is too expensive now

Re: Which is why I bought new smartphone two weeks ago...

End of last year noticed that StarLabs were having a sale, so picked up a laptop with 64GB of DDR5 for around £1700 which should keep me going for the next decade.

Hardly anybody bought Samsung's last smartphones for AI. It hopes this year's models change that

Re: No thanks

"... if you consult your calendar and the phone sees you have a meeting in the near future, it might suggest you summon an Uber."

I'm not quite sure why I need 'AI' for that.

DRAM prices expected to double in Q1 as AI ambitions push memory fabs to their limit

Re: Loophole

640MB is more than enough for anybody.

Bork ventures to the Middle of Lidl

Re: Swap out

What do you mean I don't need an arc welding torch?

ServiceNow boasts about years of sweat equity that went into making its AI agents smarter

Re: Screen

"Have you tried forcing an unexpected reboot?"

Google pushing Gemini into Gmail, but you can turn it off

Re: Hands up who didn't see this coming?

I've had "smart" features turned off for a long time.

AMD threatens to go medieval on Nvidia with Epyc and Instinct: What we know so far

Re: What has CES become?

To play Doom?

Recline of the machines: Terminator felled by dodgy battery

Re: I used to like

Old enough to have actually experienced this in real life.

Windows is testing a new, wider Run dialog box. Here’s how to try it

Re: I wonder

Bring back the vertical taskbar.

The Roomba failed because it just kind of sucked

In the same timeframe for about £100 less, I bought a Miele vacuum cleaner that is still going.

Techie 'forgot' to tell boss their cost-saving idea meant a day of gaming

Re: Yes.

Been subject to two acquisition processes in my 30+ year career and the three to six months it takes for these things to work themselves out have been spent improving my Minesweeper skills for the first one and messing about installing various Linux distros for the second.

I'm currently in a consultation period for possible redundancy, so am seeing if I can finally sort out my ascension run in Nethack in between job interviews.

Microsoft research shows chatbots seeping into everyday life

"Genuine People Personality"

Windows Insiders get a glimpse of Microsoft’s agentic future

I'm sure Clippy for the OS will be as successful as Clippy for Word.

Dell says Windows 11 transition is far slower than Win 10 shift as PC sales stall

Re: "the potential of the AI PC"

Strongly reminded of the 3D TV fad.

Microsoft spins up Azure HorizonDB to take on distributed Postgres rivals

The sane decision would be to stick with Postgres and avoid this Microsoft rubbish.

Self-replicating botnet attacks Ray clusters

Re: I just . . . what?

Ray bloody Purchase

Game over: Europol storms gaming platforms in extremist content sweep

Re: I was radicalised by computer games

I hate the Wizard of Yendor!

AI layoffs to backfire: Half quietly rehired at lower pay

Re: The American (CEO's) Dream

It's really going to motivate you to do your best work if you're rehired to your old job with a smaller wage.

UK.gov vows to hack through regulation to get benefit from AI

Re: Downward spiral

Don't forget your towel.

Literal crossed wires sent cops after innocent neighbors in child abuse case

During my upgrade from ADSL to VDSL, they managed to somehow assign my landline number to somebody else. Recently switched ISPs and this time they managed to block incoming calls on the landline.

Everyone wants a fancy phone – even the folk buying them second-hand

Currently on an iPhone 16 running iOS 26.0.1. The only redeeming feature is that it's USB-C so I no longer need the weird Apple cable.

Work have standardised on Apple and Samsung and, having tried both, there's no way I'm spending my own money on either.

Mozilla is recruiting beta testers for a free, baked-in Firefox VPN

Re: Architecture? That's houses, isn't it?

Old enough to remember when my browser had an email client, calendar, IRC, and HTML page composer.

Microsoft moves to the uncanny valley with creepy Copilot avatars that stare at you and say your name

Re: Share and Enjoy…

Me: "Orac, what new emails do I have?"

Orac: "I am closing down. I have much to do. You have engaged my circuits on your petty affairs for far too long."

Linux's love-to-hate projects drop fresh versions: systemd 258 and GNOME 49

Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition...

Vibe coding platform Replit's latest update is infuriating customers with surprise cost overruns

Re: CEO's Marketing-Inspired Analogies

... and the sandpaper will be deployed when you attempt to cancel the service.

Smart-blooded super soldiers: Coming soon from DARPA

"Dr. David Banner - physician, scientist - searching for a way to tap into the hidden strengths all humans have..."

US tosses $134M pocket change at fusion pipe dream

Re: Two options

I didn't expect the Spanish Inquisition.

Get paid like a prime minister to tame Home Office IT chaos

Re: Delusional

Musk is paid billions and I wouldn't put him in charge of my microwave...

LibreOffice 25.8: Faster, leaner, and finally speaks PDF 2.0

Re: Still no usable database

Given it's free software, if the database in the office suite is not working for you, why don't you use one of the many actual open source databases (MariaDB, etc.)?

Opinionated Arch derivative CachyOS overtakes Mint and MX on DistroWatch

As I have spare hardware, I like to try out different distros as well as different desktops/window managers/browsers, etc.

For my work laptop, I have to use the company-mandated 'enterprise' distro, the current version of which only has Wayland, so it's a choice of the supported GNOME or the unsupported KDE. I am not happy about this.

Voice, vision, pen: Oh dear. Windows boss says Microsoft is again reshaping OS

Re: More Shite being flung against the wall

Will be sticking with Linux as the OS on bare metal and Windows in a VM.

Alexa hits snooze on basic functions as alarms and timers KO'd in UK outage

It's quite alarming: this should be a massive wake-up call to all involved!

UK expands police facial recognition rollout with 10 new vans heading to a town near you

"You ain't seen me, right?"

Lyft and Baidu plan Eurobocab launch, starting in UK and Germany next year

Country Roads

Spent last weekend driving on some roads in the Leicestershire countryside, so good luck to the robots dealing with the single lanes, horses, pedestrians, tractors, and the odd bus/coach.

Microsoft bolts Copilot Mode onto Edge to chase AI-browser crowd

Re: No.

"removes friction to unlock your flow"

To paraphrase Mrs. Doyle, maybe I like the friction.

Biden broadband benchmarks are BS, says Trump FCC

I've made it a personal rule to not give any of my money to Musk, Bezos, Trump, et al.

If you're forced to use Windows 11, here's how to steal some of your time back

Re: Nonsense!

If the Start Bar is "better than Win 10", why can't I have it down the side of my screen (like I did in Win 10)?

Nearly 3 out of 4 Oracle Java users say they've been audited in the past 3 years

Re: Free Libre Open Source Java

"which SQL Server would handle just fine"

Is that Microsoft SQL Server?

Outlook takes another sick day

Re: Fix at 07:00 ?

I love how all the large corporate IT departments have settled on Windows/Office 365/Sharepoint, et al. What could possibly go wrong?

VMware must support crucial Dutch govt agency as it migrates off the platform, judge rules

Money for nothing...

"... the costs of using VMware products under the proposed subscription licenses would increase from €2,144,466 to €3,966,220 per year, an increase of 85 percent."

Not sure how you could justify that; exactly what extra value is being delivered here?

There's no international protocol on what to do if an asteroid strikes Earth

Resistance is useless

Has anybody checked with the planning department on Alpha Centauri?

French city of Lyon ditching Microsoft for open source office and collab tools

Re: I can understand the wish, but...

I wish I could be done with Teams...

Breaking the nerd internet: Three overlapping generations of tech history – in one selfie

Re: Cutler is right....

"Those who do not understand Unix are condemned to reinvent it, poorly."-- Henry Spencer

A classic crash from Classic Outlook when opening or creating emails

Re: You will never change my mind ...

For my corporate email, I have Outlook in a (Firefox) browser tab whether I'm running Windows or Linux, but then I don't have the esoteric use cases that people who need the full fat classic Outlook require.

Half of businesses rethink ditching humans for customer service bots

Re: Good

Some of us would prefer not to speak to a human: just give us a comprehensive knowledge base and a good search.

Microsoft rolls out Windows 11 Start Menu updates

Re: It's CLEAR that when they let the DEVs egos get in the way, the end user's get the shaft

With widescreen monitors, it's unforgivable not being able to place the taskbar vertically.

OpenAI model modifies shutdown script in apparent sabotage effort

Re: Obligatory ST:TOS Reference

Orac: "There seems little point in wasting time on such an explanation, since you would be incapable of understanding it."