Posts by NeilPost

Some smart meters won't be smart at all once 2/3G networks mothballed

Re: newer != better

What that they - or a subby - probably installed ??

LOL.

Re: newer != better

It’s also about telemetry and gaining an appreciation for consumption patterns across the country to help with load balancing.

Re: newer != better

I never ever understood why Smart meters - as primary connection method - never just hitched up to your broadband. Broadband access is around 95% in the UK.

Even something shared like BT WiFi/Openzone which there is a reasonable possibility you may just about see from your house.

Microsoft aims to triple datacenter capacity to fuel AI boom

Tripling?

Tripling the rate of adding DC capacity is not the same as the headline of tripling DC Capacity.

Poorly written article..

EU tells Meta it can't paywall privacy

Re: It's Zuckerberg

What about extradition, prosecution and jail-time ??

Some Assange-payback for trying that and a number of others extracted to the USA.

Meanwhile - Alexa, Siri, Self-check-outs and chat bots continue to be dumb as shit.

Re: Gibberish

Well it’s shit and doesn’t work very well. Same as Amazon recommends

.

Future Roku TVs may inject tailored ads into anything and everything when you pause

Re: Playing to an empty room

Just like YouTube.

Are we in a cost of technology crisis? Our vultures think so

An entirely unnecessary Cost of Living crisis, inflation cycle driven by

- war-profiteering by energy and commodity traders and Russian meddling in European gas prices after - with deep irony - Many European countries had sold their energy security (and souls) down the line to (formerly) cheap and plentiful Russian gas

- food, fertiliser and commodity staples tight supply. Because of war in Ukraine - who really knew global cheap staples like 40% or worlds sunflower oil or so much wheat came from there. Compounded by more war-profiteering by commodity traders and global finance

- Central Banks - insanely- trying to deal with the inflation bing hiking interest rates up. Raising interest rates to dampen consumer demand works for demand led inflation. All the above was supply side. It would never work other than making people destitute and reducing their demand - but no effect on prices

- all the above measures above leading to general price inflation, wage inflation now being the key drivers on corporate costs much cynical corporate ‘margin’ building.from many Global staples suppliers. US and Middle East LNG suppliers having a bonanza

- leading to job cuts, IT sector price rises, nickel and diming at pay-rise time

All unnecessary. Some supplies were briefly tight - sunflower oil, fertilizer but they have adjusted. Food inflation has subsided but the lag of this still in the cycle.

Konica Minolta and Fujifilm ponder JV to cut costs of printer businesses

Re: Hmm...

As an almost also ran … I’d be roping Brother into this too against the heavies of HP, Canon and Epson.

Blackstone wants to plug hyperscale datacenter into former Britishvolt battery site

Not Londonshire

Hurrah !!! Something not in Londonshire.

Tesla decimates staff amid ongoing performance woe

https://www.reuters.com/legal/judge-rules-favor-plaintiffs-challenging-musks-tesla-pay-package-2024-01-30/

A small chunk of this perchance ?

US lawmakers rage over Intel Meteor Lake-powered Huawei PC

China Export Licence (Trump) CHIPS Act (Biden)

I see the bastard offspring of irony and satire here.

At the same time Intel is sucking on the teat of the CHIPs Act, it’s exporting current model CPU’s to Huaweii under a licence issued by Trump. Recollect the same ‘China’ (in Trump’s voice as the China virus?!).

You could not make this shit up.

Double dip for Gelsinger too. No shame:

Microsoft gives Hyper-V ceilings a Herculean hike

Isn’t there diminishing returns on managing the multi/tasking for up to 2,048 CPU’s and actually getting the job done ??

UK county council misses deadline for £7.3M RISE with SAP system launch

Re: All ERP migrations are complex

They already work within this framework of standards and processes.

Even across the developed nations emptying bins, running road maintenance, licensing pubs, running elections, dealing with then NHs, providing social care, operating a leisure ventrr, running environmental health visits… all doing the same things within UK National and Devolved Assembly legislation.

Re: All ERP migrations are complex

Or in this case doing it in a distributed fashion wasting even more money.

Re: All ERP migrations are complex

Why not. Some standards, consistency, repeatability would be good.

Across the UK - despite their specialness and local policies - they all do the same thing, they all raise money the same way, they all buy services from broadly the same suppliers, they all interface to the NHS and other central government partners, they all work in the same regulatory framework - even the ones in the devolved nations of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

None of them are special.

AWS must pay $525M to cloud storage patent holder, says jury

Re: One-click patent

‘The pen is mightier than the sword’

according to Dr Henry Jones Sr.

That sounds just like DNS.

US House mulls forcing AI makers to reveal use of copyrighted training data

No more Catcher on the Rye or Death of a Salesmen.

Hurrah !!!!

It could be argued both ways - by using that material, buying that reference book, watching the affiliate as’s on free material you are paying for it to add value and skill set to you as a worker or business.

On the other hand look at publishing, music, video, audio and on-going copyright/usage/royalty payments for utilising such material.

They’d probably need a shit-ton more NVidia GPU’s to process this so they’ll be overjoyed. Environment and electrical consumption not so much.

Re: License fees should be due

As with minor data breach fines - a trivial cost of doing business for breaking the law.

Re: They just can’t stop themselves meddling, can they?

But rightly so, as any credible piece of work should have a referencing bibliography of sources trawled - and if a serious paper an abtract, method, results, discussion and conclusion.

That’s where morons like Tucker Carlson/Lawrence Fox get ridiculed when FullFact, BBC Verify, John Oliver (and others) tear down their fact-lite/less bullshit.

Otherwise generative AI is as authoritative as a Tik-Tok reel or incoherent ranting from the Orange Orangutan and will be discounted as hearsay by anyone able to demonstrate an iota of critical thinking (except by the Kool-aid drinkers then!).

Intel CEO suggests AI can help to create a one-person Unicorn

Re: Generating business reports with AI

They are going to need a pretty large Golgafrinchan Ark Fleet Ship B.

Hopefully the MBA’s will be amongst the first on it.

Healthcare AI won't take jobs – it'll make nursing easier, says process automation founder

Re: Can != will

And the common solution to staff/skill shortages is increase training, remuneration and working environment/life balance.

Even the furriner Nurses - against policy scraped from the rest of the 3rd world - are leaving in droves because the NHS has been wrecked - from a pretty good place at May 2010 - by the Tory Government.

US broadband internet: Now with mandatory 'nutrition' labels

Re: enlightened

The ‘regular’ monthly price after promotion needs to be as prominent as the intro/teaser price. Apart from that it’s great…

It would be useful to see a cellphone contract version next - esp. oriented with clear info about additional costs like roaming, the impact of handset subsidy ‘finance’ and any insurance you get suckered into.

…. and the UK’s useless equivalent regulator Ofcom should clone it immediately.

UK businesses shockingly unaware of how to handle security threats

Re: "Wot? Cybersecurity? Incident response?"

From memory Anti-Virus for Exchange Server 5.5 used to filter out the spam and knobbled the virus/malware.

I’m not seeing that much these days, with the exception of overly agressive sent to Junk folder. Indeed if I cc myself, Apple will send it to junk

Re: Progress

After all the strong FUD talk of new GDPR legislation and penalties, reputational damage etc as ever with UK Regulators they pussied out.

One of the defining cases was British Airways data breach and customers info share.

https://www.mayerbrown.com/en/insights/publications/2020/10/british-airways-ultimately-fined-20m-for-personal-data-breach-by-the-uk-ico-under-the-gdpr

Fined £183m. In the end reduced to £20m.

British Airways pleaded COVID and got let off with chump change to them. The deal should have been defer the fine until business stabilised and returned to profitability … and then 20% of global profits over 20 years (inc interest) until paid off reflecting the short-term Covid cash flow challenges.

Inadequate enforcement, now just a relatively insignificant cost of doing business and no C-Level jail time.

I didn’t get my tax bill from HMRC permanently reduced to 11% of the original value ‘because of Covid’ and it’s existential threat to my financial viability.

Fuckers.

Nice spending money that could have been punative damages on the all (34,000) staff uniform Oliver Boateng change last year. Double fuckers.

Japan may join UK/US/Australia defense-oriented AI and quantum alliance

Re: There's plenty of sand here...

Nine Eyes is on its way. Spectre will be delighted.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectre_(2015_film)

US legislators propose American Privacy Rights Act - and it looks quite good

Re: Doomed

Scale up the sensible California CCPA (largely a clone of EU GDPR) to Federal level.

1x consistent set of legislation.

1x constitutional amendment to enact.

Job done.

Re: Sounds like...

Metres not meters.

Irish power crunch could be prompting AWS to ration compute resources

Re: Irony

It’s a self governing (British) Crown Dependency.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isle_of_Man

The UK does have responsibilities towards it, and ultimately the Head of State for both is the same person.

… who just happens to still be Legal Head of State for Canada, Australia and New Zealand too (and many other places) too I might add.

Re: Irony

You mean like Drax burning CO2 emission free Wood-pellets from the USA ?

Post Office slapped down for late disclosure of documents in Horizon scandal inquiry

Normal companies would not be subject to FoI, Malicious Prosecution and Misconduct in a Public Office legislation.

Re: Why is Paula Vennells still walking the streets?

As Post Office has statutory prosecution powers (which should be cancelled in law) guilty of Malicious Prosecution and Misconduct in a Public Office.

Both are on the statute book as laws.

Re: "Sixty people died before just seeing any sort of justice served"

Though the buck stopped there. I’m sure the millions of pounds in remuneration and bonuses ‘earned’ will keep her warm at night. Esp. As she is not dead or was in jail.

Hoping she doesn’t just play the indifference/Rupert and James Murdoch (Phone Hacking Inquiry) ‘we didn’t know’ shoulder shrugging defence card and say she is sorry.

Re: First Class

The Post Office as a ‘shop’ for assorted services was separated from the Royal Mail as the UK Public Service Operator for postal service long ago by this Tory Government.

Unfortunately no one wanted to buy it unlike the RM…. Which is now equally in the shit for other reasons.

As a ‘State Enterprise’ I think it may meet this threshold too.

https://www.cps.gov.uk/legal-guidance/misconduct-public-office

… though my expectations are low as Boris Johnson was never brought to account whilst as disgraced Prime Minister.

Got an unpatched LG 'smart' television? It could be watching you back

Re: Or your best solution is...

Or more likely de support it after 5 years and no updates.

Re: Or your best solution is...

Agree - everyone who buys a SmartTV is going to leave is disconnected from the Internet!! Esp. The less than tech savvy ones/

Reform of USA's Section 702 spying rule may make it to a vote this week

Re: Being a privacy advocate in the US

The Big ‘Privacy Steal’.

Something actually true and worth getting animated about and going to (Supreme) Court over.

Microsoft puts ex-DeepMind boffin in charge of London AI hub

There is no Intelligence - artificial or otherwise - in opening yet another R&D centre in London FFS.

Try Manchester, Cambridge, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Birmingham, Loughborough/Leicester, Bristol, Sheffield, Leeds, Newcastle, Bath, Cardiff, Liverpool, Warwick, Dundee, Stirling, York, Lancaster, Belfast, Aberdeen instead.

Cloud vendor lock-in is shocking, but there's a get out of jail card

Re: Why not have cloud.gov.uk ?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Computer_and_Telecommunications_Agency

We used to…

Over a number of successive Tory and Government Administrations it was turned from a generator of standards, a provider of infrastructure and comms, a provider of solutions, a hosting provider, and so on …

… into what is now CDDO and part of the Cabinet Offices Team of Procurement monkeys who just seem to generate endless round of procurement framework - inc. ones with vendor lock in and rampant overcharging.

Funny that no-one (but the redundant and people ‘who were not supporters of change’) could see that coming.

Oh it’s where ITIL was born too.

TSMC scores $11.6B funding infusion for Arizona fabs, now plans for third plant

Re: > Nevermind .. the first two plants are facing delays and costs are rising – build, build build!

Are they building an airport adjacent to air-freight the chips they make to China/Indonesia/Mexico/India/Malaysia/Vietnam/Thailand for product manufacture ?

… as it was not just the chip factories that were off-shored to the Far East ??

The whole manufacturing and supply chain - and skills to run it - are needed.

Imagination licenses RISC-V CPU cores for smart TVs, IoT, embedded stuff

Re: There's a lot to be said for dumb

No observable benefits of AI for Smart TV’s, Self-checkouts, Alexa and Siri enabled devices etc ….

All remain dumb as shit.

Local councils struggle with ill-fitting software despite spending billions with suppliers

Re: Problems and solutions not welcome

Fixing roads, empting bins, licensing pubs, collecting council tax, running social workers, street and public car-parking, libraries, leisure centres, running environmental health functions etc - probably 99.5% overlap in common purpose between Councils in The Home Nations of the UK - despite devolution.

Re: Problems and solutions not welcome

… or not having a hostile parking environment in your expensive to stay decrepit town centre and then wondering why all of the businesses have fucked off to new build out of town strip-malls… leaving hairdressers, charity shops, kebab shops, Polski Sklep’s and bookies/slots as your town centre anchor businesses.

Re: Problems and solutions not welcome

… well any Police Vehicle, Highways Agency Vehicle, Ambulance etc once received goes out for extensive fit out before it’s ’to spec’ and ready for use.

Quite why the English Highways Agency drive BMW X5/Volvo XC90’s (and other premium SUV’s) … and not a Mercedes Sprinter or Ford Transit van is another baffling question.

Re: Problems and solutions not welcome

Enterprise Resource Planning…

Is a Council (or a University like say Edinburgh) working in a regulatory framework ‘an enterprise’??

AI will reduce workforce, say 41% of surveyed executives

Re: Gainfully employed writing Cobol

It’s an entry drug.