Posts by MyffyW

250 million-plus unused IPv4 addresses should be left alone, argues network boffin

Re: Well...

My experience with IPv6 has mostly been in disabling it to give a more reliable connection for my various boxen to the Internet

Robot enters Fukushima's nuclear core to retrieve melted-down remains

Re: "radioactive hybrid terror pigs"

"I came her to kick ass and drink milk. And I've finished my milk"

Speaking for a few of my friends - Henry, George and Hetty - I do not approve of this approach :-)

Healthcare giant to pay $65M settlement after crooks stole and leaked nude patient pics

Re: "Healthcare company fined" = insurance pays.

"The person who responded to the phishing email will go unpunished" - in all fairness that is probably appropriate. We shouldn't be in the habit of pursuing the gullible or the ill-trained. We should be educating them.

Sadly anyone of us could fall for a scam.

Nvidia and chums inject $160M into Applied Digital to keep GPU sales rolling

Fools, Money, Irrational Expectations - it's like the fire triangle but for investors

"Radio" in the 1920s, Tulips in 17th century Netherlands, to name just a few other examples

Of course the real genius (or luck) is in knowing exactly when the bubble will burst. But burst it will...

We're in the brute force phase of AI – once it ends, demand for GPUs will too

Re: Wait, he's making sense

Well done, you've built a Cylon detector

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch could be gone in ten years – for chump change

Re: Recurrence

On my Sunday morning bike ride I'm always depressed to find my first world countrymen (and women) have decided to decorate the local lanes with the remains of their Saturday night takeaway.

Datacenters to emit 3x more carbon dioxide because of generative AI

Re: Ha

It is true not enough people care enough at present to actually do something about the profligate waste that is crypto currency, generative AI or whatever the next unnecessary do-dah is.

But, people didn't used to care about lots of things. They got wise, they tasked their governments with doing something, or better took it upon themselves to make things better. That is progress

Boeing's Calamity Capsule returns to Earth without a crew

Re: uh oh

No blackout, and indeed Soyuz continues to be a valid means of access for East and West. It's just best left there for a real emergency, whilst this is a (sadly rather typical) Boeing snafu.

AI's thirst for water is alarming, but may solve itself

Re: AI units: Greehouses and Tomatoes

My Father-in-Law was perfectly capable of growing tasty tomatoes in an unheated glasshouse in sunny England. He had no need for a local datacentre.

His attitude to generative AI was also a refreshing "that sounds like a load of bollocks to me"

Re: Rain

I, for one, welcome our motile fungoid overlords.

Re: Rain

Nature doesn't have a plan, it just exists.

We do have a plan, in fact we have lots of them. And if we're not careful about what we plan, there will come a point where we no longer exist.

If every PC is going to be an AI PC, they better be as good at all the things trad PCs can do

Re: But what...

I think a certain author would have described them as just the latest dull innovation from the ape-descended bipeds of Planet Earth, a civilisation so backward it still thinks the Apple Watch is a good idea.

Planned Parenthood confirms cyber-attack as RansomHub threatens to leak data

Re: an especially low act

Encrypting data at rest and in transit doesn't guard against someone using a privileged account to export it. Criminally motivated people have shown down the years an ability to work around systems, so you need strength in depth - covering human as well as systems weaknesses.

It is tempting to say "don't have any sensitive data on the public Internet" but that goes against the past 20+ years of Internet development and growth. And still doesn't guard against the compromised user who exfiltrates the data from internal systems by another means. Even the swivel chair, two screens approach wouldn't stop somebody taking screen shots, or scribbling notes.

Infosec is hard.

GNU screen 5 proves it's still got game even after 37 years

I've got to be honest typing man mount always brings a smile to my face

... brace yourself, dear

HPE to pursue $4B claim against estate of Mike Lynch over Autonomy acquisition

Re: What the Feds wanted

"where judges don't rubberstamp anything asked of them"

It is certainly the contention of the late Mr Lynch (and others more skilled in law) that this is pretty much exactly how the UK to US extradition treaty works. Yet try and get a US careless driver to turn up for her UK death-by-careless driving trial and suddenly you have the whole apparatus of US government up to the POTUS intervening to stop matters.

Gelsinger opens up about Intel troubles amid talk of possible split

Re: The sting in the Tail

I recently re-watched the telly clip of post-crash B Ark and was both tickled and slightly alarmed at quite how relevant it seems to be to the corporate world today.

h2g2 is not a manual! (Or is it?)

EV sales hit speed bump as drivers unplug from the electric dream

"BEVs appear barely any nearer to affordability and practicality than they were in 2014"

Affordability for second-hand BEVs is substantially better than the situation in 2014 when you could choose between a Nissan Leaf and a very small number of others, all at a high premium second-hand.

Likewise range has increased markedly from the very optimistic "about 100 miles if you're lucky, only when the battery is new" to a reliable 200 miles+ that will last for many, many years of battery life. I know this from personal experience.

However, we live in a free society and I support your God-given right not to like stuff. As we used to say at the end of the 20th century, YMMV.

SETI boldly looks beyond the Milky Way in latest alien hunt

Re: A large portion of the captured energy would be re-released as waste heat

"Bart, in this house we obey the second law of thermodynamics"

Elon Musk reins in Grok AI bot to stop election misinformation

Re: What is misinformation ..

"What is Chatteris, without you in it?" to quote a band who were half man, and simultaneously half biscuit.

But if you're in any doubt, do re-read the post from the sensible chap who outlined the truth and lie paradigm. It's really rather good.

TikTok isn't protected by Section 230 in 10-year-old’s ‘blackout challenge’ death

Re: Excuse me whilst I......

I think there is a spectrum on which "not serving up snuff advice to 10 year olds" can be outlawed without infringing anybody's right to believe and say what they like about established, proven science.

Re: Excuse me whilst I......

I watched The Nun and this influenced me to flagellate myself for buying a Vauxhall Astra, can I make a claim?

Google trains a GenAI model to simulate Doom's game engine in real-ish time

Re: Ok, but why Doom ?

.. for 3 seconds

Re: Copyright

Upvote - most generative AI isn't worth the carbon it emits.

Hangover from messy Walmart tech divorce ongoing at Asda

Migration to S/4 HANA

For when you want to make a business nightmare a technical nightmare too. In someone's mind you can imagine them saying "well since we're doing a migration, now would be a really good time to..."

Stock situation in our local ASDA is ridiculous - hard to hold onto market share when you don't have stuff to market.

Shame, because I used to prefer ASDA to the other big supermarkets, not least because of pricing and availability.

'Uncertainty' drives LinkedIn to migrate from CentOS to Azure Linux

The in-house flair for innovation that Microsoft have demonstrably lacked coupled with the licensing delights that Oracle embuggers it's customers with ... what's not to like?

There was a time I thought a Microsoft Desktop Environment atop a Linux OS would be a useful innovation, but MS have tried their level best to mess up the Windows GUI over the past decade or so.

I do still smile at the phrase "Microsoft's in-house Linux", not bad for a plucky OS the CEO once described as "a cancer"

Seattle airport 'possible cyberattack' snarls travel yet again

I would posit it should be a "Xhit", pronounced with a soft, lisping s.

Xhit, because that is the quality of most of the message contents.

LEGO's Concorde is the only supersonic jet you can build for the price of a fancy dinner

Build a TSR-2?

It's Lego, of course you can :-)

NASA will fly Boeing Starliner crew home with SpaceX, Calamity Capsule deemed too risky

Re: MuskX

I suppose we could always start with life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness and see where that leads us for the first 250 years or so?

Memories of '80s Telly

Reminds me of the the old BBC Adventure Game set in space where if you lost a sort of blind game of draughts you ended up getting consumed by the vortex and walking your way back to Earth. Even as a ten year old I thought it was far fetched. Thanks 21st Century for delivering tangential dystopias based on my childhood TV habits ...

Re: MuskX

OK, you're probably being rhetorical, but the thing about universal human rights is they tend to apply to humans, wherever they are in the, erm, universe.

Of course actually ensuring they apply ... well that takes a bit more work.

To crew, or not to crew – that is the question facing Boeing's stricken Starliner

Re: Groundhog Day

come for the tech news, stay for the circular discussions :-)

Note from the makers of For All Mankind: please don't use duct tape this time

SpaceX set to surpass Gemini 11's altitude record with Polaris Dawn mission

Can we avoid the cost of sending him to Mars and just force him to subsist entirely on a diet of potatoes grown in his own faeces for the rest of his natural life?

Asking for my friend Vivian ...

Re: Bad choice of comparison

I'm a massive admirer of the concept in the F-111, B-1 etc. of having a survival cell, rather than just an ejected seat.

I am genuinely curious as to whether these were ever used at supersonic speeds, and since I'm at work an immediate search isn't possible.

Re: Bad choice of comparison

People remember the crashes, but the de Haviland Comet is an extremely safe vehicle.

[if you're looking through the round window]

Rocket Factory Augsburg engine test ends in explosion at SaxaVord spaceport

White pudding and those strange flat squares of sausage meat they put on the Full Scottish Breakfast

UK tech pioneer Mike Lynch dead at 59

The probability of those two events happening so close to the conclusion of the trial is vanishingly small, but not zero.

To the dead, may they rest in peace. To the bereaved, our sympathies.

Shein, Temu escalate epic e-commerce squabble

Re: "late-stage capitalism"

Adam Smith was very suspicious of the "Joint Stock" companies that were emerging in his day, saying that when someone wasn't venturing their own money but that of other investors they were likely to be less prudent.

He also called out the problem of "torpor of the mind" from workers engaged in repetitive labour.

The companion volume to Wealth of Nations - The Theory of Moral Sentiments is worth a read for anyone seeing Adam Smith as purely an advocate of neo-Con economics.

Re: "late-stage capitalism"

It's robber-baron capitalism whether in China or the West.

The less you pay for a product, the less likely it is that the money will go to anyone nice.

Quality and standards cost money. From Bezos' destruction of our town centres to Temu via the Shite off Shein we are paying for the "I can't believe it's so cheap" mentality

Re: "Shop Like A Billionaire"

I would like to call out Dr Martens for particular ire. It's been a long time since they were made in Northampton, and watching the change in country of origin on my 1460s has an exact correlation with their quality of manufacture. Vietnam and now Laos being the most recent, whilst the boots wear out in increasingly weird, entertaining and pretty much irreparable ways.

Finally ditched them for my latest purchase, going for British-made Grinders (no relation to a certain dating app, not that it would bother me)

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

Re: Silver Hammer...

Upvote for recalling (arguably) the worst Beatles song ever made, even though I find myself singing along to it whenever it comes on.

To those injured or lost at sea, my deepest sympathies.

Re: Inference?

The narrative I heard was the snapping of the (very tall) mast disturbed the balance. I'm not immediately clear why that in itself would tip it over, unless in returning to a new equilibrium it rolled over to the alternate side.

Texas Instruments calculates its US CHIPS Act winnings at $1.6B

Re: Close the Dept Education

Is that you, PJ?

Tesla asks customers to stop being wet blankets about chargers

Re: Wet blankets

I love my EV, and being an impatient cow sometimes wish it would charge quicker (when, as we all know, the 30 mins is merely an invitation to have a Greggs pasty). However mindful of sound parental advice there is no way in the effing world I'd be putting a wet towel around a cable carrying anything up to 150kW.

Never mind the argument about whether it's the Volts or the Amps that kill you, 150,000 Joules delivered into your tender flesh every fecking second is not going to end well...

Apple agrees to terms with US store union for first time

I like being able to take my tech back and someone who's actually been taught how to support being able - in person - to fix my problem.

Now I'd really like to be able to fix it myself, but small steps...

Solidarity Forever

Kia Niro electric vehicle defies physics with record-breaking 114 million miles on the clock

Passage for two + droids

Let's just say we'd like to avoid any Imperial entanglements.