* Posts by Handlebars

151 publicly visible posts • joined 29 Jan 2013

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Open source maintainers are really feeling the squeeze

Handlebars

I cannot imagine the mindset of someone who gets demanding with something they're not paying for. On the rare occasions that I file a bug report I ask nicely for a fix and am happy if the maintainer can get around to it.

UK's new thinking on AI: Unless it's causing serious bother, you can crack on

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local council on the front foot!

Swindon council making documents more accessible is nice to hear.

Does DOGE have what it takes to actually tackle billions in US govt IT spending?

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Re: Going after federal government tech spending ...

When the money keeps rolling out

You don't keep books

You can tell you've done well

By the happy grateful looks

Accountants only slow things down

Figures get in the way

Never been a lady loved as much as Eva Peron

Microsoft makes sweet, sweet music with Windows MIDI Services

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Re: "canary channel"...

Sounds like a few scenes from Weird Science that didn't make it into the final cut.

When it comes to AI ROI, IT decision-makers not convinced

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Re: To AI or not to AI

Quite. Photoshop has had 'smart' editing for years. Now it's called AI instead.

Musk’s DOGE ship gets ‘full’ access to Treasury payment system, sinks USAID

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Pardons all round? Sorry, thought you meant the last president for a moment.

Mega city council's Oracle finance fix faces further delays

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Re: Exceptionality fails again

I wouldn't fancy getting headhunted by Brum just now.

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

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The boss probably gets the AI summary of the feedback

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Re: Do we even need to ask this question?

You can try to make money from it: I've just cancelled auto renew on my 365 sub because the renewal included a big price rise for the highly dubious value of some AI credits

DEF CON's hacker-in-chief faces fortune in medical bills after paralyzing neck injury

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Re: "his insurance will only cover the first of three required weeks" of six months

Quite a bit of the expense and inefficiency is from buying EPR software like EPIC and later this year el Reg will no doubt be reporting that the NHS cannot afford to upgrade all its older PCs to run Windows 11.

AI can improve on code it writes, but you have to know how to ask

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It's using the same reference data but not in the same way that you you do.

Imagine a land in which Big Tech can't send you down online rabbit holes or use algorithms to overcharge you

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Re: Some good ideas but at what cost

Windows 8 is the best os

(Just testing everyone's tolerance here)

NHS to launch 'real-time surveillance system' to prevent future pandemics

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Re: PPP

So when the public invests in the research this time, what stops that happening again?

Mega supermarket spots stock discrepancy of tens of millions amid ERP system migration

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Re: "a minor discrepancy"

Security at Tesco stopped me taking a basket out to my car when I forgot to bring bags.

Microsoft unveils Office LTSC 2024 for users that remain stubbornly offline

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Joke's on them because I got fifty people crowded round my laptop to see the presentation anyway

House to grill CrowdStrike exec on epic IT meltdown... no, not the CEO

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Re: ..and constrained US citizen's world view

In defense of Americans taking domestic holidays, is a big place with lots of holiday options.

Brit tech mogul Mike Lynch missing after yacht sinks off Sicily amid storms

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Re: Lifestyles of the rich and famous...

Just relatively dangerous, not implying reckless. Holidaying on land is generally safer than at sea, planes are safer than helicopters per passenger mile.

Chrome Web Store warns end is nigh for uBlock Origin

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my attention span

Is barely enough to post this comment. If ad blockers were to disappear from all mainstream browsers I'd have to go back to Lynx because I really cannot use a page full of ads

Techie told 'Bill Gates' Excel is rubbish – and the Microsoft boss had it fixed in 48 hours

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Re: Excel is still rubbish

More an NHS error than an Excel one. You might laugh but MS Access would have been the better option for getting something useable very quickly with far higher row limits. Going to a proper DMA team would have been better still, of course.

Study shock! AI hinders productivity and makes working worse

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where's the detail?

What does highly skilled at using AI mean? I followed the link and still no idea. Is it 'i can use chat gpt to get recipe ideas' or 'my computer vision project will be scoring the gymnastics at the Olympics'?

Second NHS IT system confirmed to be affected by CrowdStrike issues

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Our incident meeting first thing this morning didn't rule out EMIS just coincidentally falling over at the same time as many other unrelated systems.

London council accuses watchdog of 'exaggerating' danger of 2020 raid on residents' data

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Re: Don’t fire, don’t fine

Worse, anyone any good who wasn't responsible for the fall will do the same

Big Music reprises classic hit 'ISPs need to stop their customers torrenting or we'll sue'

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Re: Home Taping Is Killing Music

Sure, but the goal is to replicate the 80s more than to replicate the source data.

Brit council gives Oracle another £10M for professional services amid ERP fallout

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You might imagine that both customer and supplier would have audit functions on the check list. Even if the council are daft, the supplier might want to nudge them

'Skeleton Key' attack unlocks the worst of AI, says Microsoft

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Re: Disassembly

A Mary Whitehouse AI? Oh no, what a personal disaster.

Indian govt probes claims Foxconn won't hire married women

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Re: It's for the in-house dating

Why not exclude already-married men on the same basis?

Y Combinator, startups funnily enough aren't fans of draft California AI safety law

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Re: Why development?

Surely open source will be able to comply: if you can inspect the training data and the steps to get to the model then that should be ok (but I admit I have not read the draft bill and they may have some other intent)

Apple Intelligence won't be available in Europe because Tim's terrified of watchdogs

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They kind of can put the genie back in the bottle since they have control of your device and can take features away.

EU attempt to sneak through new encryption-eroding law slammed by Signal, politicians

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The reeducation camp awaits you, citizen.

Thanks for coming to help. No, we can't say why we called – it's classified

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Re: 1 in a million scenario

There's a market of people who want everything with lights and the case is displayed prominently.

We need a volunteer to literally crawl over broken glass to fix this network

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Re: "This being 20 years ago now"

It's not really got the attendees. It's so someone gets to say they commissioned an artist for an installation

Legendary Glastonbury farm using bovine excreta power plant adds graphene boffinry

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Still, at least they can rely on the breeze from VIP helicopters landing in the inter stage zone to keep that thing turning. /s

Support, don't micromanage, say researchers who find WFH intensified 'anxiety' in some

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Measuring remote work and neuroticism with the confounding variable of a pandemic is a really odd choice. There were lots of people in remote jobs before 2020.

I didn't touch a thing – just some cables and a monitor – and my computer broke

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who did the bad install

I'm trying to understand how someone who cares about the difference between one monitor and another is also unable to grasp the need to connect both ends of a cable.

All I can think of is they wanted to waste some time, or maybe feel important because someone else had to do the fix.

Twitter 'supersharers' of fake news tend to be older Republican women

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Before Facebook, my friends and I just clicked Reply All on a running email thread. No timeline for a company to add posts to, no adverts, no engagement metrics. Simpler times.

Pretty much all the headaches at MSPs stem from cybersecurity

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There's 5 weeks to go and you've already got electile dysfunction

Brit publishers beg Apple not to hurt online ad revenue

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Re: Fuck off

There's lots of paywalled news sites. Are there really none you would consider decent?

Dell to color-code staff based on how hybrid they really are in RTO push

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That's some enthusiasm. Hope they gave you some other time off since you came in on the weekend.

The hiring frenzy is over at India's services giants

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'Tater Consultancy Services. My spud-based snack bar.

Street newspaper appears to have Big Issue with Qilin ransomware gang

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Storing personal details including bank accounts on spreadsheets is not ok in a micro business, never mind a national-scale organization.

UK council won't say whether two-week 'cyber incident' impacted resident data

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You probably put your card details into a separate page run by the payment processor. That's how it works where I live.

Cop shop rapped for 'completely avoidable' web form blunder

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Re: Why on Earth?

Probably an off the shelf forms product deployed by non technical staff.

AI to fix UK Civil Service's bureaucratic bungling, deputy PM bets

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Re: Computers say Yes,..... Resistance is Futile and Puerile and Self-Destructive

The last several FOIAs that crossed my desk were companies trying to get a public entity to do their market analysis for them. I just pointed them to the .gov site where they can get the data and analyse it themselves

Musk joins OpenAI lawsuit queue, says there's nothing 'open' about it

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Re: Nothing has achieved AGI yet.

I recall 'oxygen bars' being a brief fad in Japan about 30 years ago

City council megaproject mulls ditching Oracle after budget balloons to £131M

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Re: What would it cost ...

I think we'd be in a cheaper but just as disappointing situation where change requests get gridlocked and everything still falls back to Excel.

Legal campaigners challenge UK.gov decision to redact NHS-Palantir contract

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I wish someone else was handling this case. That bloke has a pretty bad track record.

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There are other projects to make it easier for the GP and the consultant to share information for your individual care. NHS orgs also do some population health and service design work with those systems.

FDP seems like a database looking for a purpose.

Euro shoppers popping more and more premium phones in the basket

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Are we now going from a few years of no compelling technological reason to upgrade, to a period where on device AI will get better in leaps and bounds and drive upgrades?

Or perhaps that doesn't matter as long as you have fast data?

Vietnam to collect biometrics - even DNA - for new ID cards

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Can't recall where I read that in the 30s the Dutch government had a (paper) database with lots of information about citizens. When the Germans invaded they found it immensely useful.

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