Posts by elDog

Moscow slaps Telegram founder on wanted list, Durov responds with one-finger salute

Re: As usual…

sounds like this is a perfect analogy to what the USofA is, nowadays.

Private or secret law enforcement? Check.

Prisons and internment camps? Check

Who trusts what the US government says these days.

Oracle faces $100M annual bill to back Wisconsin datacenter power promises

Oracle is in a very precarious position - overextended in AI and other commitments

The Ellisons have taken a giant leap into the unknown. Read a bit of Ed Zitron's or Cory Doctorow's opinions on Oracle (as well as OpenAI and others.)

Java was a three-day hotfix away from dying horribly on stage

Re: How do you "pirate" a T3 line?

I remember going into the tellco room and rerouting lines. Admittedly you had to have those t1-t2-t3's already provisioned but the end-points could be moved from the C-suite to the tech department pretty easily.

Former OpenAI CTO does what Altman won't, releases a frontier AI model that's actually open

Re: More, more, more - bigger, bigger, bigger - BETTER? and for whom?

You make my brain hurt. More.

New tool gives CLIs a warm and GUI feeling instead

Upvotes for the preceding xkcd references.

And reminds me of having 1 day to think of a new project.

A modest proposal: Reformat everything to make documents more palatable to AI

Next: Engineer the human genome so the brain comes with a pluggable interface

Of course we don't know what the interface should be since in 20-50 years the technology will look at USB or HDMI or NVME as antiquated.

Same with converting documents to some format that looks futuristic today and archaic in a couple decades.

Make the new agents of our destruction have to do the work to read our minds and our scribblings.

Quit VMware and you’ll emerge with more complex and less capable infrastructure

Shouldn't this piece be clearly labeled with the FLUFF emblem?

Perhaps it's there as "Sponsored Content" but I didn't see it. And the "new look" for The Register may be intended to hide all those types of details.

This isn't even a vague threat of harm if you even contemplate moving away from the VM Broadcom beastie. This seems like a curse upon you and your children (other VMs) if you even try.

Given that this marketing spiell masquerading as a presentation was done under the auspices of that VM beastie, no wonder.

Young evil genius forces hamster to run on wheel to power his gadgets

Cute project. And cute scientist Flamethrower.

Must say I thought the young entrepreneur had a certain similarity to the energy source (the hamster). Perhaps a bit of a chipmunk?

1 in 8 employees totally cool with selling work credentials

Those studies that say "or know someone who has" totally destroys the basis for analysis

Leave off that stupid phrase and you may have a sample that can be used meaningfully.

If I have a cohort of say 200 people and 10 said they have actually sold their credentials, that might add 0.05 to the count. It shouldn't be 1.0 since I didn't say I sold my credentials. But there is absolutely no sampling rigidity in this either.

User found the perfect formula to make Excel misbehave

Re: Maths

Here in the rump of the US, we'd say "notta one I ain't never heard of".

Latin and Olde English are hard. Jest give us some Southern Comfort.

Phone users know when to hold ’em, delay upgrades amid inflation

"Why do people get new smartphones now? Because the old one broke."

That is it in a nice little nutshell.

And if you don't physically break the phone, one of the supply-chain vendors will brick it for you with an update soon.

Witness the huge number of Samsung Galaxy S series suddenly developing screen issues because an update caused the phone to overheat. Clever.

Hashicorp co-founder Mitchell Hashimoto says GitHub ‘no longer a place for serious work’

Re: Unofficial github status page - the one MS don't have

And if you don't have any idea of what you want, just enter a question mark ("?") and we'll build you a new app such as you've never seen before.

Governments on high alert after CISA snuffs out Firestarter backdoor on fed network

Cisco, Microsoft, and Adobe. A match made in heaven.

For security adversaries.

Claude Opus wrote a Chrome exploit for $2,283

Or have a modified calc send a kill to its parent.

"There. That'll stop you from abusing your children!"

Google Chrome lacks protection against one of the most basic and common ways to track users online

Be prepared for the anti-Firefox hordes.

There seems to be a lot of Firefox bashing on other forums (reddit) without addressing concerns such as this one (privacy, fingerprinting).

Anthropic goes nude, exposes Claude Code source by accident

Re: What are the odds?

Or that Emperor OrangAnus is seeking revenge on Anthropic for not supporting his war(s) against the world.

Telling an AI model that it’s an expert programmer makes it a worse programmer

Never tell an AI that they are an excellent commentator.

They may write a comment like mine.

(I did first frame this as being a The Register columnist and thought better about it.)

CERN eggheads burn AI into silicon to stem data deluge

Re: Science needs better funding and higher policy urgency

Bunch of petrified old geezers.

Sashiko: AI code review system for the Linux kernel spots bugs humans miss

Sachiko != Satoshi

"They all sound alike."

Okta made a nightmare micromanager for your AI agents

This Okta?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Okta%2C_Inc.#Security_incidents

Mistakes happen. They just seem to happen at inopportune times and frequently while using products that a specifically built to make security better.

Perplexity Comet hurtling toward Amazon ban

Won't be long before the court systems use AI instead of human judges

Guess how their judgements will fall?

(Actually, this will properly elevate the programmers to their deserved position.)

Microsoft Copilot to hijack your browser... for your own convenience

Do you want to be on top tonigh?

I'm tired of all the hard work of getting those idiots to love me.

LexisNexis confirms data breach at Legal & Professional arm, some customer records affected

"We take our responsibility to safeguard customer information extremely seriousl ..."

I'm having the sensation of living in an echo chamber.

Do all companies use exactly the same wording? Is the original author getting credit and fees?

Bull-offal, as usual.

Gram: Zed, but with AI and chat features removed

"Although I suspect Emacs users are probably in their element."

Well played, and I'm sure, appreciated by said users.

It takes a twisted mind to know a twisted mind.

LLMs killed the privacy star, we can't rewind, we've gone too far

Re: not signing up

Most large commercial sites have tracker links on their pages that send page actions (clicks, focus changes, etc.) to the big surveillance companies such as FB, Google, MS, etc. as well as sharing this information with data harvesters (and governments.)

Unless you are using tools that don't allow these tracker links to watch your actions, you are being monitored.

And browsers such as Chrome / Edge, can tell the harvesters whatever they want about your viewing habits and actions.

Hotel's rotary switchboard so retro it predates the concept of crashing

Re: Smoke dirt and no cleaning done in decades

If your teeth were like mine back in the 60s the toothbrush wouldn't be the best cleaning tool.

Now, the toilet bowl swabber...

Poland bans camera-packing cars made in China from military bases

Re: Also industrial vehicles

Ah. Cutting the power draw by masking the cameras. Genius!

Re: Electro-gizmo-cam-bleepers

You got the model with electric wires? Mine just had twine.

Microsoft warns that poisoned AI buttons and links may betray your trust

Re: yes

Let's not leave Oracle or Apple out of the Hall of ShAIme.

Were telcos tipped off to *that* ancient Telnet bug? Cyber pros say the signs stack up

Re: How the ancient Telnet bug worked

Thank you! Off to find some end-points.....

Containers, cloud, blockchain, AI – it's all the same old BS, says veteran Red Hatter

Visual Basic

A wonderful introduction to programming that even your 10yo child can master.

Still seeing production apps written in obvious VB4 or VB6. Scary.

Of course this applies to Logo, Turtle, Software through Pictures (https://arxiv.org/html/2403.08085v1)

I think Apple's Hypercard was actually pretty successful - must be why they killed it off.

AI security startup CEO posts a job. Deepfake candidate applies, inner turmoil ensues

Re: PEBKAC

Pogo knew this.

Perhaps the problem exists between humans and our robotic overlords.

Thousands more Oregon residents learn their health data was stolen in TriZetto breach

Even lawsuits and financial penulties don't work. Time behind bars for responsible parties

would help a lot more.

And this should run all the way up the management/ownership chains.

Feds totally skipping infosec industry's biggest conference this year

Can't have CISA noticing trump's Kremlin boss trying to break into the US systems

That would be awkward. Heads would roll and bodies would go thump.

'Course with Elon already making off with most of the jewels, slim pickins.

Notepad will now tell you all the ways Microsoft has enshittified it

By 2028 it will be preloaded in memory before the login screen. It will be multi-user capable, distributed across every available cloud, have total recall and redo, and with a special Easter Egg, let you see what everyone else is doing!

OpenAI will try to guess your age before ChatGPT gets spicy

Re: Age Prediction Based on Topics Discussed

Perhaps Lady Godiva might be a bit too appealing, even to pre-pubes. How about Mata Hari? Or Bathsheba?

Mandiant releases quick credential cracker, to hasten the death of a bad protocol

I thought it was illegal to release programs that could crack software keys/credentials/etc.

I'd love to see the US DoJ (such as it is) go after google/mandiant for making it possible to break security. Or even attempting to do so.

But then, google like most of the US mega-corps, is a maga supporter.

Wikimedia’s 25th birthday gift: Letting more AIs scour pages volunteers created

Heck, I "raided" it several times in the last year. Free and approved download of all the content.

Very few organizations allow this type of access.

Used Kiwix. https://kiwix.org/

Kiwix enables you to have the whole Wikipedia at hand wherever you go! On a boat, in the middle of nowhere or in jail, Kiwix gives you access to the whole human knowledge. You don't need Internet, everything is stored on your computer.

Bond, debt bond: Investors shaken, not stirred by Oracle’s borrowing spree sue Big Red

Don't by coy. Your nomination was: "We all live in a virtual machine, a virtual machine, ..."

Probably sung to the Yellow Submarine tune by some garage band.

Reminds me of the joke (?) from years ago:

This is your pilot speaking.

Now that we are safely in the air, you will be pleased to know that this is the first commercial aircraft totally controlled by robots, totally controlled by robots, totally controlled by ...

There was so much fraud on COVID loans, the feds trained an anti-fraud AI on the applications

Re: Fraud was a given...

Unless it increased "fees" to be paid to engage in fraudulent activity. You know, "It's all right if the boss says so."

Ignore rosy datacenter expansion projections – there isn't enough power

At least in the US, those pesky regulations that are holding back unfettered polution

are all on the chopping block.

Forget carbon credits/swaps and all that fancy paperwork. Just take a trip to sunny Florida - with a truckload of cash (cyber coins not accepted.)

Google rekindles relationship with jilted JPEG XL image format

Good thing! You won't have to worry about any new Dilbert comics!

I guess proper respect should be paid to Scott Adams who gave us some humorous views of a type of office life. Who has now passed.

And also left a legacy of right-wing craziness in his writings.

Danish dev delights kid by turning floppy drive into easy TV remote

How about some punched cards - ala Lovelace and Babbage?

I was trying to think of something a bit less techno-advanced than a flippy (vs. floppy or zippy.)

Perhaps an OCR for stone tablets? Moses would approve.

Don’t bother with the retailer’s website, says Google: Gemini can shop for you

kagi - a paid subscription with lots of added benefits

Own search index (and can use others)

No tracking

Selection criteria that work

Lenses (choices of groups of sources)

https://kagi.com/

AI industry insiders launch site to poison the data that feeds them

Wouldn't the slop that comes spewing out of government agencies be enough?

Thinking primarily of what has happened in the US but seems to affect many other countries.

Pink Slime news sites are also great purveyors of poison.

"Study: People Often Trust Fake Local News Sites More Than Real Ones; Yale Political Scientist Warns of Growing Influence of AI-Driven ‘Pink-Slime’ News "

https://isps.yale.edu/news/blog/2025/09/study-people-often-trust-fake-local-news-sites-more-than-real-ones-yale-political

Bank of England's Oracle cloud migration bill triples as project grinds on

Surplus money? Ah, no - you're dealing with the Ellisons

They are as avaricious as the worst of them, including Donny TwoScoops.

Crims disconnect Wired subscribers from their privacy, publish deets online

If you replaced that "or" with "and" - then I couldn't imagine it.

But I've been a reader on-and-off for many years of Wired and The New Yorker. (I love their tote bags.)

Only if I re-incarnate as something very different will I qualify for a subscription to Teen Vogue (and get a new tote bag?)

Stop the slop by disabling AI features in Chrome

Why not just ditch Chrome? Chromium is the open-source framework for Chrome, Brave, Vivaldi, Edge

Chromium is obviously very capable in its own right without the constant proprietary nudges toward using their opinionated search results.

For me, I'll gladly pay for a decent search engine. Kagi.com.

AI datacenter boom could end badly, Goldman Sachs warns

It would be a shame to have all that land, water, energy, technology, human effort wasted.

(Looking for the sarcasm thingee.)

I see dystopian pictures of tumbleweeds rolling by huge rusting/decaying building in the middle of nowhere. I also see a lot of governments (small and large) being left with huge holes in their budgets and nobody can find the original investors or their attorneys.

Lawyer's 6-year-old son uses AI to build copyright infringement generator

This is but the tip of the iceberg. (Copyright 2025)

The AI shit will hit the fan and there won't be enough TP and lawyers to clean it up. At least in the crazy country I live (US), the law-making bodies are even dumber than the 6 year old.