Posts by Doctor Syntax

UK.gov kicks off half-a-billion quid sovereign AI venture with £80M invite

Re: The Get-a-Yacht Scheme

" The only ingredient actually domiciled in Britain is people writing software"

You forgot one thing: the badge that says "British". Worth half a billion to any government that wants to wave that at Reform.

HP's remote desktop push retreats as Anyware heads for end of life

"This decision enables us to focus our resources on product categories where we can deliver the greatest customer value and drive long-term innovation."

Customer value requires long-term availability. Even if HP stops long-term innovation on a particular product it doesn't matter if the product itself remains available.

Customers have to trust a vendor in order to commit to depending on its products.

Customers will have trusted HP when they started using these products. HP has now betrayed that trust. Will those customers trust HP enough to buy products from them in the future? Probably not.

Users complain that UK Azure is having capacity problems

Re: Users forget

"Simple, you just don't implement a customs boarder and accept that a small amount of goods will get driven across the boarder. Now if the ROI decided they want one then they can implement their own but that would put them in breach of the GFA."

You expect the RoI to breach the GFA to oblige your political views?

Such a customs border would not simply be an RoI customs border, it would be an EU customs border. Do you think this would have been agreed in the Brexit negotiations.

Just more woolly thinking, ignoring realities.

Re: Users forget

"A real Brexit has not been allowed to happen yet. Maybot and her oven ready deal kept us chained to the EU via northern island"

I'll try to make this easy. It may still be too hard for you but here goes.

1. The Good Friday Agreement which brought an end to the Northern Ireland* troubles required no customs posts at the border.

2. That was possible because both Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic were both in the EU so customs posts had already gone.

3. Brexit required one of two things:

3a. A customs border between GB and NI in order to satisfy 1.

3b. Tear up the Good Friday Agreement because 1 could not be satisfied.

This was explained many times as were all the other issues. As with all the other details it was ignored by the blinkered Brexiteers. And you, like all the other, then come along and whine because "It wasn't the Brexit I voted for". The reason it wasn't the Brexit you voted for was because the Brexit you voted for couldn't possibly exist.

You were told that.

You were told that over and over.

You were told that over and over again.

But you didn't listen.

You voted for Brexit. You got the Brexit that was possible. So shut up and suffer the consequences along with those of us who voted against it who are the only ones who have alegitimate basis for complaint. We're all in the same boat. Your boat.

"Maybe once a real government gets in with the balls to do what required"

If you're as smart as you think you are you tell us what you think is required and explain how you think it's is possible in the real world including satisfying 1 above.

* Note the capital initials.

Re: Users forget

I take it you're pleased with the vibrant post-Brexit economy those trade deals have given us.

Re: Never mind azure. Exchange is dying.

So now you have two problems?

Re: Yorkshire!

Stourton! I hope that's not the Park & Ride site I use when I go to the University Library.

You think they're into details like that these days?

Re: Users forget

And bucket.

Re: Users forget

That's Palantir at work.

Re: Users forget

What Brexiters ignored, despite being told many times, was that Brexit would cut British business's home market from 28 countries to less than one (allowing for the frontier they created in the Irish Sea) and that for many of them that would mean their future job prospects would be on the line. And they're still ignoring it.

And before you point out that many of them would be retired many of them would also, like me, have working age children and grandchildren who would become working age if they weren't there already.

"Civo, noted that sending workloads abroad could easily turn into a sovereignty nightmare."

I note that Civo have regions and an office in the US. Could that be a sovereignty nightmare?

Re: Users forget

"Admittedly, they tried that with Brexit, but I guess they decided to pull out of that economic nose dive before everything went North Korean."

Far too many of the Brexiters haven't. I doubt there's any depths to which the post-Brexit economy will plunge before they accept it was their fault. When your heads stuck in the sand you can't see what's happening around you.

"Microsoft is not short of tools for creating tables of figures and forecasts."

Perhaps Excel ran out of rows.

Palantir's NHS future in doubt as ministers eye contract break

Re: So what?

Certainly not a strategic geopolitical move. Very much the opposite.

Re: Get those betting slips out

"A senior British politician has openly voiced the business poison which is proprietary licensing."

I'm not sure to whom you are referring. Most of the quotes come from Wrigley who is not part of the government. Ahmed is a junior minister but in any case neither will be putting their hand in their own pocket as it's our money which I'm sure we will want to see spent better.

In fact proprietary licensing is not being criticised, just the fact that the supplier retains the software and not the client. In the past I've written S/W as a freelance which was then owned by my client. If ownership of the Palantir written S/W had been passed to the NHS this particular bit of criticism could not have been made but it would not have become free unless the NHS had made it so.

There's no point in the minister's talking about evaluating at the time of the break clause. If the clause is to be used the preparation needs to be started in time for alternatives to be in place. The evaluation needs to be now and then, assuming the break is to be taken, start work on the replacement. Given that several trusts have their own solutions which are better the obvious line of approach is to roll out one or more of these to other trusts, running one infrastructure which provide the required sovereign data guarantees. Do that ASAP so that the trusts which haven't signed up to Palantir can take advantage of it along with those who have signed up but find it useless. If, by the time the break point arrives, the NHS has been paying for some months when everyone had moved to something that works well then that's better than paying to get a bad service.

"bids from Quantexa, a British company, in tandem with IBM, and from Oracle Cerner, as well as the winning bid from the Palantir group"

If those were the only bids they were in a bit of a jam. None of them would meet sovereign requirements.

Intel eases reliance on TSMC with 'Merica-made Core Series 3 processors

Re: Core 3?

"Now that they're slashing prices"

So they are.

I hadn't realised that. Last time I looked it wasn't even worth wondering whether they could install Linux.

Re: Core 3?

"Running Linux (Mint)"

It's what Jeeves would have recommended.

I meant to do that! AI vendors shrug off responsibility for vulns

A few expensive breaches attributed to them will help thm burn the money even faster.

Attention data hoarders: Alexa loses its Plex appeal as voice feature gets canned

Re: OurJukebox still working nicely

Do nothing 'til you hear from me.

Re: OurJukebox still working nicely

Perhaps your play lists show a superior musical taste and are limited to the music of Edard Kennedy Ellington.

If you want into Anthropic's Claude club, you may have to show ID

Re: I am curious

So you think that's a valid citation to describe someone as "functionally illiterate". Very informative.

Irrespective of whether or not you're the previous A/C I can see why you post that way.

Re: There's something basic...

Do any of us know who we are?

Are we the person named on our birth certificate? The child whose birth is recorded there was present but in no fit state to take notes. We rely entirely on what we've been told by those who told us they were our parents.

And that's before we consider those who are fraudulently using a birth certificate or other documents.

Re: I am curious

"for some, functionally illiterate"

Citation needed. But I can see why you posted A/C.

Re: Hard no

"Europe basically forced the entire world to have stupid cookie dialogs after all."

Because Europe tends to be on the side of the consumer and user tracking is very much consumer exploitative.

Thanks for letting us know you're on the other side.

Re: Hard no

"Thus, if $BIG_COMPANY can outsource compliance to a third-party solution"

At a first glance it has doubled the attack surface. In reality the 3rd party might be outsourcing to more companies so it may have done more than double its attack surface. In practice such outsourcers, by performing the same role for more end-user facing companies, are a juicier target than any single end-user facing company and will attract more determined attempts to crack them. When the least well defended of those goes down the blame, lawsuits and general opprobrium will inevitably fall on the end-user facing company with added blame for not being capable of looking after its own affairs itself.

"When new information is gathered, it often goes through a whole chain of providers"

And, as I keep pointing out with supply chains, a chain is no stronger than its weakest link.

Opsec oopsie: Dutch navy frigate location outed by mailing it a Bluetooth tracker

Re: The real news here…

The real news here is that European countries join forces when needed. They don't start things on their own and then expect others to join in.

If it's an escort vessel it can help to give away the position of the capital ship, alsways assuming that's not been done already with Strava.

Anthropic mocks up Claude Design to draft fancy new pink slips for marketing teams

Re: Unsure of What I Just Read

AMFM1's alter ego?

I'm beginning to wonder if Po's law is at work here.

Locked-out iPhone user tells The Reg that Apple is scrambling to fix character flaw passcode bug

Re: Apple...Or Someone Else?

FBI is a 3LA

Support tech caught by 'Technician Aura': the bug that only hides when you're watching

Re: It's not just hardware!

Tell them it's magic and they've got to get the spells just right.

"last week we got LEDs"

Just wait till they start to fail. The <= 1Hx flashing gets annoying, especially if it shines in through a bedroom window.

Re: We call her Ruth

st'Ruth!

Re: Had similar

"A BoFH that can actually see the future is a window far too open for most people."

With a BoFH in the vicinity any window is far too open, even when it's closed.

Just for extra effect, the interference was strongest just before the phone rang.

Mozilla throws Thunderbolt at enterprise AI providers

Bludgeoned its way in,in fact.

"into German company deepset's Haystack platform"

Does it have any needles in it?

Sorry - too tempting.

Capita won disastrous UK pensions gig after acing performance checks

Re: Brown Envelopes

"What was also ignored is that Civil Servants are still one of the only groups to have gold plated final salary pensions"

I get fed up with pointing out that IME the Civil Service scheme was not gold-plated. I had a far better deal moving into the private sector. The Civil Service pension scheme had less value per year served in terms of final salary and the non-contributory aspect was a salary sacrifice scheme and a bit of a con trick because it lowered the final salary on which the pension was calculated. More pinchbeck than gold-plate,

It's worth bearing in mind that it's the bollocks being made of that very CS pension scheme that's the focus of this thread.

And apart from that, a pox on your casual ageism.

Re: Brown Envelopes

"This leaves governments filled with the same Etonian based connected mates in Politics and civil service"

We had a generation of politicians, starting from Wilson, through Heath & Thatcher who came up through the grammar school system. It was Wilson & his cronies who pulled up that ladder behind them. The next generation were largely headed by public schoolboys again.

Re: Brown Envelopes

"Don't have the size of in house teams to handle larger projects hence it getting outsourced."

This is a factor entirely within government's control.

From the letter linked in TFA: "Capita was the winning bidder in line with the evaluation methodology."

Perhaps the evaluation methodology needs to be evaluated.

NodeWeaver says its perpetual licensing beats VMware’s perpetual price hikes

Re: Potato

"Will it run on a turnip?"

You have a cunning plan?

DuckDB uses RDBMS to attack classic 'small changes' problem in lakehouses

Or any other good RDBMS. (Licence audits not good)

"cheating with a better design,"

Given the description of how it works otherwise it wouldn't be hard to find a better design. When somebody calls it cheating you have to wonder why they've ever been allowed near a keyboard.

Server-room lock was nothing but a crock

Re: I have a lockpick set in my laptop bag

Who needs paper-clips when an office is fitted out with filing cabinets, all with the same key?

Microsoft announces product it doesn't want anyone to buy

What's a software giant to do? Point out it was quite emphatic about not extending the ESU period past April and stick to its guns – or make a change take the money?

FTFY

Raspberry Pi OS ends open-door policy for sudo

Re: Passwordless sudo ?

A regular user in the sudoers list needs only their regular password. In effect they're using the admin password all the time.