Posts by Doctor Syntax

Raspberry Pi prices hiked as AI gobbles all the memory

Re: Don't be fooled...

Ken Thompson as a lot of them as well: https://thenewstack.io/jukebox-to-player-piano-ken-thompsons-lifelong-pop-music-project/

"A lot of their value is freeloading off the backs of open source developers who worked on Pi software."

Oh, look. They're freeloading off the backs of Microsoft developers too: https://raspberrytips.com/windows-11-on-raspberry-pi/

And what about Intel? All those of us running Linux on our PCs! And AMD, too, of course.

Aurora immutable KDE Plasma workstation: Big, slow, and confusing

Re: Oh piss off Liam.. :P

Those of us trained on Yes Minister recognise it as simply getting rid of the difficult bit in the title.

AI has had zero effect on jobs so far, says Yale study

Re: Do you trust Yale or Stanford more?

You know the way it works: an alarming report grabs attention. Once everyone's alarmed a reassuring report grabs attention. The cycle will be on its way round again in a few months time.

Microsoft declares bring your Copilot to work day, usurping IT authority

"companies that fail to provide an AI fix"

I think they mean companies who've sensibly and successfully managed to avoid it.

Explain digital ID or watch it fizzle out, UK PM Starmer told

Re: "they are choosing us, they are choosing Hartlepool, Warrington, Belfast, the East Midlands"

Probably become cannabis farms.

UK's digital hospital plan meets analog reality check

Re: Every private health co offers this..

COTS not allowed. It will have to be one of the usual suspects.

Re: Rural access

In a hospital environment the term you're looking for is cross-infection.

Re: "treatment in person"

Your appointment has been made. You can choose your consultant from one of these weird Microsoft avatars.

Microsoft moves to the uncanny valley with creepy Copilot avatars that stare at you and say your name

Re: Copilot Crippledware

And a super-high premium channel offering none.

Re: Share and Enjoy…

There's an idea. Instead of animated faces just use a few plastic tubes with lights inside as an avatar.

"Whether or not the wider public wants, or is ready, for talking AI avatars remains to be seen"

It doesn't matter whether they're ready or not, if Microsoft decides they're getting them then they're getting them. Does the public really believe they own their PCs?

Re: Clippy

"They binned him"

That was then, this is now. They don't care any more.

Britain's policing minister punts facial recog nationwide

I'm sure they'll be getting a nice tranche of personal data as well.

"did I miss any knee-jerk justifications"

Terrorists.

'Money-saving' UK procurement platform racks up monster tab

The old "transformation" racket. It's hardly out of the box before it needs "transforming". Here's the bill.

California cops confused after trying to give ticket to self-driving car

Did it have a passenger? If so he's the person in charge, even if not in the driving seat as it was operating under his direction as he summoned it to collect him and instructed it to go to a particular destination. If would-be passenger s are likely to get tickets Waymo have a strong commercial incentive to make their cars drive better.

If it's unsatisfactory to consider the passenger the person in charge than the company should have a driver of record for the fleet, the exec responsible for the way the vehicles operate day-to-day. Whoever signs off the S/W as being fit for use on the public roads is responsible for what they do there.

Healthcare lags in Windows 11 upgrades – and lives may depend on it

From TFA: "difficulties with regulation, specific software only being approved for specific operating system versions"

This raises the question of whether the specific operating system vrsion is the same specific operating system version after an update has been applied and whether this conflicts with a likely requirement that the operating system be kept up to data.

Greg Kroah-Hartman explains the Cyber Resilience Act for open source developers

Re: I wonder..............

As I keep saying, you do not discourage people intent on breaking laws by providing them with more laws to break. That's despite anyone writing legislation ignoring that simple fact.

Forget vibe coding - Microsoft wants to make vibe working the new hotness

Just Word and Excel? What are they playing at? Surely the obvious target must be PowerPoint. They're made for each other.

Windows 95 was too fat to install itself so needed help from the slimmer 3.1

Re: Nothing ever changes

Subtle. I like it.

Re: Nothing ever changes

"Linux everybody wants their own thing,"

You have a problem with that?

Once you get into the "standardisation" thing you discover that Microsoft can shove anything onto its supine user base and they have no alternative.

How many wanted W8? It doesn't matter, they got it whether they wanted it or not.

How many wanted the ongoing rot of the start menu? It doesn't matter, they got it whether they wanted it or not.

How many wanted the growing strangeness of Gnome? It doesn't matter, those who don't want it have alternatives.

Re: Nothing ever changes

Not going to happen.

One line of malicious npm code led to massive Postmark email heist

Re: Blindly downloading code

A repository is a good thing but it must be actively curated.

If it's just left as some sort of free-for-all lucky dip it's going to go wrong.

Oracle will have to borrow at least $25B a year to fund AI fantasy, says analyst

Give the sums being bandied about could it be more credit crunch than dotcom?

UK minister suggests government could ditch 'dangerous' Elon Musk's X

Re: A Govt Bluesky PDS?

"should have its own media system for announcements that is independent of other's controls and which does not piss you off to open an account to simply read stuff"

They should get Tim BL to invent it.

Re: Really

Palantir might pay to get the gig and do it for free. The we might have to buy a couple more to cry into.

Could ditch it?

Nearly the right word but not quite.

To digital natives, Microsoft's IT stack makes Google's look like a model of sanity

Re: His mistake is in thinking it was designed...

"Give it twenty years, people will be saying the same thing about Google's platform. Their big advantage currently is that they offer a lot less, so there's less to integrate. "

They'll probably kill it inless than 20 years.

What's lacking here, and needed for any large software undertaking, is someone, call them product manager, architect or maintainer, to take an overview. It might be necessary to meet some proposals with an outright "No". Otherwise it might be "That sounds like a good idea but integrate it with the rest to make it look as if it was designed in from the start".

Re: Marketing to the rescue

Don't forget Live which crept in there somewhere.

Harrods blames its supplier after crims steal 430k customers’ data in fresh attack

Was anything learned from the previous incident?

Intern had no idea what not to do, so nearly mangled a mainframe

Re: Expensive Lessons

I *know* they won't be making that mistake again

Only by knowing the individual. Some will make the same mistake over and over again.

Digital ID, same place, different time: In this timeline, the result might surprise us

"Starmer's government does not plan to charge directly for digital IDs"

Not directly but those without smartphones will have to fork out for one and those who value the security of the phone they use will have to fork out for a second one just to hold this something which must be done.

Trump demands Microsoft fire its head of global affairs

It should be a reminder to other governments what risks they face in handing over their means of operation to companies that face such pressure from the US government (for want of a better word).

Re: Judge people by your own standards

I think that applies to extremists of most varieties.

Re: Chamberlain

"Germany was in no position to defeat Britain in 1940 never mind in 1938"

That's hindsight. It certainly wouldn't have seemed like that at the time.

Microsoft wares may be UK public sector's only viable option

Re: Knocking the government for doing the same as everyone else

To a large extend what a commercial organisation does with its data is between its management, shareholders and customers. As long as I'm not one of their shareholders or customers it's their problem how leaky their systems although they really should be doing due diligence.

When it comes to my government, however, I can't help but be concerned because it's my taxes paying for it and it's inevitable that at some point one of them might be handling my data. I'd hope, therefore, that they do their due diligence in which case they should be taking note of factors such as this: https://www.computerweekly.com/news/366632040/Microsoft-hides-key-data-flow-information-in-plain-sight which more or less confirms that Brad Smith admitted in France. They can't provide data sovereignty.

It will very likely not take many of the sort of suits against the police that the CW article talks about to start CEOs asking their IT departments if that's a risk for them. What are they going to say? "Well, everyone else is doing it" isn't going to be adequate.

Microsoft agrees to 11th hour Win 10 end of life concessions

Re: Seriously

Apparently that was just some unauthorised Microsofy but OTOH it's been officially denied and you should never believe enything until it's been officially denied.

Re: What a fucking shitshow

You're talking about Microsoft. Money grabbing is what they do, what they've always done.

Re: I wonder how they determine if you are in the EEA

It looks as if they think that the EEA is anything between the Atlantic and Russia N of the Med. I wonder what they'll do about Greenland.

Re: I wonder how they determine if you are in the EEA

"However, my wife and sons are running win10 and I am tech support."

The last bit was bad management on your part.

Re: "upgrades from Windows 7 or 8 to Windows 10 did not carry such limitations"

If that were really the case they wouldn't be pushing W11 like they are. You're supposed to buy a new W11 licence with attached PC.

Trump’s tariff‑shaped stick can’t beat reality on US chip fabbing

Re: Really makes me sad

I think it's the Speaker who's next in line and in answer to your last question, LBJ completed JFK's term.

Many employees are using AI to create 'workslop,' Stanford study says

Re: Bad Information

Attatch.

Re: Bad Information

But you can put bad information on a page and attache ads to it.

Re: If you have a shitty manager

I wonder to what extend this is a form of quiet quitting in response to compulsory RTO. Perhaps that will be their next research project.

If you can't use AI then it's bye bye, Accenture tells staff

Thank goodness they don't manage my pension fund any more.

Workers: Yes, RTO makes sense. No, we’re not going to do it

Re: Less flexibel? Nope.

"They push to come at least 4 days a week to the office, and then i end the conversation."

What if they say you can WFH full time?