Posts by a_yank_lurker

Developer writes script to throw AI out of Windows

Other name

Instead of MicroSlop how about MicroShit

Dangerous sandwiches delayed hardware installation

Incompetence

It's nice to know Blighty plods are just as incompetent as those on this side of the pond, I would have thought the story actually happened someplace like Philadelphia or some US city whose plods have a maximum IQ that might reach single positive digits.

CrowdStrike file update bricks Windows machines around the world

Ouch

Ouch, I have seen notifications this worldwide fiasco, good job. Might have a quiet day at work today lol

'Return to Office' declared dead

Some Companies

My employer had most professional staff who could work a hybrid schedule before CoVid. We all went permanent WFH since. Management decided to reduce the amount of space rented, keeping only enough space for onsite operations that could not be done from home. So the WFH staff couldn't return to a cube because there is none for us to return to.

Missing Titan sub likely destroyed in implosion, no survivors

4 murdered with their murdered

The at best half-assed design was going to murder people sooner or later. The comments highlight the reasons for this. Four innocent people were murdered because Rush was too arrogant to listen to those who know something about submersibles and submarines.

He was an aerospace engineer from an engineering program that was locally regarded as pathetic, I was told this by a couple of engineering managers who I knew as a kid, I grew up in the area.

Re: Titanium and compression cycles

Steel is rather crystalline, in fact steel is a body-centered cubic crystal, aluminum and many titanium alloys are face-centered cubic crystals. That accounts for their different fatigue and ductile-brittle transition vs temperature behavior.

So you want to replace workers with AI? Watch out for retraining fees, they're a killer

AI

AI should be called 'Artificial Incompetence'.

Too little, too late: Intel's legacy is eroding

Got fat and dumb

The underlying problem for Chipzilla is the got fat, dumb, and happy many years ago and were slow to realize the dangers from various competitors. They got lazy.

Intel tried selling software before. Will it succeed this time?

My Doubts

Chipzilla makes specific hardware they sell to system builders. They do not understand how the system will be used by the end user. They do not directly deal with the end user. Chipzilla only has a handful of major customers they need to pay attention.

Software slingers usually sell to the nominal end user and thus have a much better of their needs. Also, software slingers have many more customers than a handful OEMs.

The markets are very different and require very different approaches.

COO of failed bio-biz Theranos found guilty on all twelve fraud counts

Holmes was not baited by a honey trap by vulture crapitalists. She committed fraud. Also, looking at the investors I am struck by how none of the major ones had a biotech background. It seems the major biotech vultures did not like the taste of the carcass; must have been pretty bad tasting. Holmes was chasing after whales who had no business investing in biotech startup.

Microsoft rolls back default macro blocks in Office without telling anyone

Re: Typical Borkzilla

Manglement has an attention span that is much shorter than a goldfish, much, much shorter. Their collective IQ is < 0.

My main beef with manglement is the tendency to be credential happy and not pay attention to details like a willingness to learn and grow professionally.

China rallies support for Kylin Linux in war on Windows

Real Issue

Kylin suffers from the same issue every other Linux distro suffers from (I am a die hard Linux user) is office and business software that is perceived to be just as good or better as that for BaaD. Also, sys admins might need some tools like Active Directory (not a sys admin). In many categories there are very few choices.

As far as usability, mainstream, desktop Linux distros are just as easy to use a Windows or MacOS.

Bipolar transistors made from organic materials for the first time

Re: Gatekeeping

To make chips at scale and at a reasonable price is not cheap nor technically easy. Also, some of the chemicals used are fairly dangerous. One noted that HF is used which has an interesting habit of penetrating skin and attacking bone (I am originally a chemist); a rather nasty and hard to treat injury. I am fairly certain there are many more issues that prevent most from even attempting to make chips in their garden; I certainly would not bother to try.

PC shipments sink amid steady waves of supply chain, war disruptions

Expected

Even with supply chain woes, I would expect PC sales to stagnate and drop back down now that we are the backend of Covid. A lot of gear got upgraded during the pandemic that will last for several years now.

Amazon not happy with antitrust law targeting Amazon

It was Wally World now its Amazon

Congress critters seem to always moan about the current retail behemoth. I can remember when Wally World was a favorite target, today its Amazon. From the way the bill is written I have my doubts the courts will let it stand anyway. There are antitrust laws on the books and I wonder way they could not be used; but then it would DOJ that would get the credit not America's Native Criminal Class.

Amazon accused of obstructing probe into deadly warehouse collapse

Tornadoes

Living in tornado country one learns very quickly tornadoes are very unpredictable and potentially deadly. There have been many well built structures utterly destroyed by a direct hit from a tornado including schools with children present (Moore, OK a few years ago). Unfortunately some of these hits have resulted in deaths of people trying to shelter in place. This seems to be Congress critters bloviating about something they no nothing about, don't really care about the victims and their families, and frankly could not do much about anyway.

Beijing needs the ability to 'destroy' Starlink, say Chinese researchers

Attacking a facility in another (presumably neutral) country is an 'act of war'. Depending who they attacked they might face an more powerful alliance than they bargained for; an alliance that once fully deployed could trash the Chinese military rather quickly.

Also, attacking another country would be long-term economic suicide for China. Moving manufacturing will not be cheap or easy short term but long term is probably necessary to stabilize worldwide supply chains.

SAP attracts further criticism for Russia presence, despite promise to leave

SAP Fraud

Ukraine should be thankful that SAP is still in Russia. Removing SAP crapware might actually help the Putinator and improve Russian performance.

Did ID.me hoodwink Americans with IRS facial-recognition tech?

Another Reason...

One solution is to have a tax system that does not require individuals to file annual paperwork with the tax cheats. In this case replace income taxes with other taxes that do not require detail knowledge of each citizen to be collected (sales taxes, excise taxes, etc.).

Cars in driver-assist mode hit a third of cyclists, all oncoming cars in tests

Re: So technology works as intended...

Yes it bleeding obvious but too many are oblivious to the fact it is bleeding obvious.

Re: So technology works as intended...

The point is we are further away from autonomous vehicles than the hype machine would have you believe.

Oracle really does owe HPE $3b after Supreme Court snub

Poor Leisure Suit Larry</snark>

Now let's see how his minions defraud their customers to pay the bill.

Judge agrees damages model in Oracle cloud class-action

Re: Threats a business model ?

It works for the Mafia until they get hit with RICO charges. I wonder when some DA will actually look closely at Leisure Suit Larry's minions and their practices.

Shareholders turn the screws on IBM and its gag orders

Good Luck Manglement

The moneybags are getting worried that is not a good sign for the mangelment. While it technically has not been proven there is systemic discrimination at Itsy Bitsy Morons the sheer number of lawsuits alleging discrimination, illegally withholding commissions, etc. point to some serious ethical issues within manglement. The fact that many have been settled by manglement without even going anywhere near a trial probably bothers the moneybags. If these issues are allowed to fester much more they could take the company down in a rather spectacularly with the moneybags taking a bath.

Manglement is relying on a person not taking the shyterly NDA to a legal beagle who would probably point out all the illegal and unenforceable terms in it.

Re: Agreed

A subpoena would invalidate the NDA.

Oracle users fail to get that moving apps to cloud means business transformation – Gartner

Re: Customization

Some industries are also heavily regulated so moving data to the cloud could be illegal depending on what data is moved, etc.

Customization

My group writes custom, internal code to serve our customers. It is one our competitive features that we can do some fairly serious custom code to support our clients. Leisure Suit Larry and the fraudsters Gartner ignore the fact off the shelf software has limited utility for many business critical applications. Many businesses need custom code to be competitive and often the custom code is what gives the business an advantage.

Insteon's vanishing act explained: Smart home biz insolvent, sells off assets

IoT = Idiocy of Turds

The nearest devices I have to IoT are some recent model cameras and lens from well known manufacturers. Every so often there are updates issued by these manufacturers which are DOWNLOADED to a computer then manually installed to the device. A bit old school but the updates are infrequent. More importantly, if any of the manufacturers does die the gear will still work as none are dependent on talking to server.

ZX Spectrum, the 8-bit home computer that turned Europe on to PCs, is 40

On this side

I remember the pre IBM PC days with an Apple IIe. Fond memories of that beast. I was one of the first to write a MS thesis on a computer (I was a STEM major at an engineering school). Spectrums were not easy to find over here but we had plenty that were roughly equivalent at the time.

Infosys noncompete clause sparks complaint from labor rights org

Non Competes

Non competes should automatically unenforceable as where would one go to work for in most cases but either a competitor or customer unless one leaves the industry. I can see not keeping company equipment, files, and the like but knowledge is hard to not use.

COVID-19 contact tracing apps were suggested as saviors. They sometimes delivered

Re: Or did it have to do with the population and distrust of the government?

Also, some of us try to limit what leakage there is from our smartphones and will not install an app just because someone says so. I am not very trusting of your average bureaucrat's ethics as they are basically failed politicians. And depending on who they involve in the project I would be extremely wary of what the app does.

Windows 11 growth at a standstill amid stringent hardware requirements

Aging Gear

My aging gear (one exception), at least one laptop about 7 or 8 years old all run the current, fully patched Linux Mint reasonably well with no complaints from Mint about hardware compatibility. The exception is an aging iMac I inherited and it runs the current MacOS with no issues. While I hope to slowly upgrade my kit this year, I am not under any specific pressure to do so because the 'latest and greatest' will not run on my current kit. My current kit, while old, is still fully functional and I probably can get a few more years out of it if I had to.

The Rejects of Redmond are beyond clueless. Most users are not really stressing their kit out so what runs Bloatware 10 is more than adequate. I think I will take the hint and not get Bloatware 11 ever.

With 90% COVID-19 vax rate, Intel to step up return-to-office

Manglement Strikes

When I hear some manglement moron say their cube farm must be filled I have a bad feeling about the company. My impression is Intel manglement wants to be able to more effectively harass the peasants which is easier to do in the office.

WFH does has advantages for the both sides. Employees are not commuting any significant distance (bed to desk is not very far). Lunch is much easy to take care of, just raid the fridge. Thus commuting costs are much lower. There is no office space to be owned/rented for the employee and less resources required onsite such as cafeteria, desks, chairs, etc. Also, what space is available can be used for activities such as manufacturing that require onsite presence. Another benefit is that having to work a few extra hours is not as painful for the employee.

Microsoft backtracks on lack of easy Windows browser choice

Ownership

Since I own the hardware the OS resides on, it is a guest on my hardware. If you treat me wrong I have options. None of my personal computing requires Bloatware-as-a-Disservice. I can easily go fruity or with a penguin as both have all the necessary software I need.

Re: Please explain to me

Apple and Linux distros come with a default browser but installing other browsers and changing the default is very easy with both. The complaint is not there is a default browser (a necessity if you want to browse the web) but the OS lock in to the default browser.

Dems propose privacy-respecting digital dollar

Problem

Somewhere there are ledgers which have all the available cash/credit available to someone. The ledgers that can easily be turned into cash will still register withdrawals against the account. The cash then is not easily traced in principle but using large amounts will get unwanted attention; try buying a car with actual cash.

Sealed, confidential IBM files in age-discrimination case now public to all

Experience

The grey hairs bring experience to the table. Experience can help in understanding many issues such has how a technology developed, operational issues, customer issues, etc. Understanding the issue is the first step to solving the issues. The experience can be valuable even if it is not strictly IT as it might give an understanding on how a process will actually work. Experience is only gained by facing issues as they come. Firing the grey hairs and replacing them with diapers is idiotic as there will be no institutional memory.

Russian court deems Instagram and Facebook as 'extremist', WhatsApp spared

Sad

It's sad when a Russian court reaches the correct conclusion even if their reasoning is dodgy when courts in Feraldom turn a blind eye to the Suckerberg's criminal empire.

Oracle's compliance cops now include Java in license audits

Re: Larry, the Putin of the biz software world!

I am not sure who is the bigger threat between Vlad or Larry to humanity. With Vlad it might all be over rather quickly but with Larry starvation is a real threat.

Linux Mint Debian Edition 5 is here

Re: Imagine how much time is wasted...

On my slow, elderly i-MAC full system updates take a couple of hours, best to run overnight. But they are run after permission is granted so you can decide when the update will not interfere with your work.

Re: Imagine how much time is wasted...

While different package managers can be a headache to work with it does create an interesting security side effect. To install malware, you have somehow get the correct package type to the user for their distro. And then convince someone to sideload an obscure package onto their system. It's not impossible but more tedious to do.

In real life, most Linux users probably use 1 or 2 distros so they are very familiar with the package managers these distros use. So the existence or non-existence of the other package managers is irrelevant.

Re: Hmm

Two issues involved. The OS is a shorthand for the software ecosystem available for the it. Most are familiar with Bloatware as a Disservice and the fruity ecosystems. Linux not so much. Here inertia rules, most will go with something that has familiar software available. The other is relatively little hardware comes with Linux preinstalled. You can find gear with Linux on Amazon but it takes some deliberate searching. So for most it is install Linux on a computer. A task that is not terribly difficult but scares non-technical users. Here again inertia rules.

JavaScript library updated to wipe files from Russian computers

Stupid is as stupid does

While I am not happy with war in Ukraine, malicious destruction of files, etc. on someone's computer is beyond the pale. From what I have heard there are some anti-war protests in Russia so the war is not universally popular there. You could be destroying someone's computer who actually is on the side of peace.

How experimental was Microsoft's 'experimental banner' in File Explorer?

Criminals

The Rejects of Redmond are making it very obvious the less I deal with them the better off the happier I will be and less damage that criminal organization can do to me.

Even complex AI models are failing 5th grade science

Artificial Idiocy

My cats display more reasoning ability than any artificial idiocy system can do.

Re: "there's no reasoning going on inside those digital brains"

I hear the bumblebees are rather insulted by the comparison of artificial idiocy to them.

Re: Interpreter please

The title is a reference to a US TV game show 'Are You Smarter than a 5th Grader?' hosted by the American comedian Jeff 'You might be a redneck...' Foxworthy. Contestants were asked questions that are covered by the 5th grade in the US with help from actual 5th graders.

Re: The next question...

Sooner than I would let AI aka artificial idiocy do so.

Red Hat effort to shut down WeMakeFedora.org deemed harassment

Re: Smacks of IBM

Not familiar with Pocock but I am familiar with how Itsy Bitsy Morons and their shysters work. Agreed, this smack of good old shystering.

An open-source COBOL contender emerges

Scary

It's kind of scary to realize one is a few years older than COBOL and Fortran and these languages have not been put out to pasture. I'll probably fully retire before these geriatric languages are retired.