Posts by Doctor Syntax

US tech giants pledge $42 billion in UK investment as Trump tours Blighty

Re: Hole

Not necessarily. They can see what the successor would be. Remember the US couldn't get rid of Nixon until they got rid of Agnew first.

It is. It's the chumps who're paying.

I suppose it'll be cheaper to fit out the DCs in the UK. No tariffs on the contents.

Vibe coding platform Replit's latest update is infuriating customers with surprise cost overruns

"I spent $1k this week alone"

And how much value did you get? Big clue, value isn't what you paid, that's just the price.

Microsoft thinks cloud PCs might be overkill, starts streaming just apps under Windows 365

Re: Oh?

If the hat fits, wear it.

Both.

And, like a cuckoo chick, tries to throw out the victims real occupants, the IT team who, being employed there, have an interest in its continued success.

Social Security admin denies DB data leak, DOGEs questions about a copy

It's hard to do cross-examination by letter. They need him in front of the committee. A question phrased in a manner such that he can avoid it the way he has needs to be followed up immediately by more specific ones. They also need to have the guys who the whistleblower said managed it waiting outside as the next witnesses.

Tariff threat plays havoc with US PC market, economy not helping

Re: Lots to unpack

The main reason people aren't buying PCs is that they've already got one and it's good enough for what they want.

Why Microsoft has the name of an old mouse hidden in its Bluetooth drivers

Re: You have to look at it from Microsoft's PoV

Your misfortune is that Borkzilla's a lot bigger than you so what you care about doesn't register with them. They should have been broken up long ago.

Re: "using metric makes you a communist"

I can't think of any of the alternatives who'd make Britain Great Again. And certainly not the barfly.

Re: Eh?

"Windows 11 won't run on perfectly good PCs in half the cases due to arbitrary hardware requirements that nobody really wants or needs,"

This is a common misunderstanding. You have to look at it from Microsoft's PoV. The only good hardware is either brand new being shipped with a new OEM Windows licence of hardware or hardware that must be replaced by .... a new OEM Windows licence. If your old hardware running W10 can be updated FoC to W11 it is most certainly not good and must be made bad.

There is, however, a slight problem if you suddenly make a PC that was bought new with a W10 licence last week turn bad. It's called Class Action. The solution to that is to make the arbitrary requirement a piece of hardware introduced long enough ago to avoid the class action but recently enough to turn all the older bad hardware good, i.e. in need of replacement.

It is, therefore, quite inaccurate to describe it as something nobody reall wants or needs. Microsoft really, really wants and needs it.

Key KDE developer Jonathan Riddell quits

Some of us preferred operating via our own companies. The company made provision for holidays and pension. I would guess that in Germany there is not the same need for medical provision that the US has. An early target for a freelancing company should be to put enough by to continue making salary payments between contracts.

You appear to be failing to differentiate between the individual and the company as does HMRC and, it has to be said, some freelancers who give the industry a bad name.

This is worrying, both for Jonathan who sounds like a guy with some problems over the last few years and for the KDE project. A change of the structure behind it although the official ownership of the IP is KDE e.V. Perhaps Liam could enlighten us a bit more about the relationships between these entities.

My own preference for a Linux desktop has long been KDE and I hope to see it flourish for a long time. Meanwhile I hope the Quaker community supports Jonathan.

Would that be Sea You Monkey?

Return on investment for Copilot? Microsoft has work to do

“still is our fastest growing M365 portfolio product that we've ever had”

Given that they keep ramming it into everything regardless of whether it's wanted or needed that's not surprising. Have they added it to the start button yet?

OpenAI says models are programmed to make stuff up instead of admitting ignorance

"I can't find anything to match" is the correct answer if it that's the situation. Anything else in those circumstances would be incorrect.

Sky plans to ditch up to 500 staff in the Technology Group

This is a meaning of "enhancing the customer experience" of which I was previously unaware. Thanks in part to this warning I shall continue to not be a customer.

BreachForums kingpin goes from walk-free deal to 3-year stretch

I look forward to another appeal on the grounds that it is still too light to offer deterrence to others.

UEFI Secure Boot for Linux Arm64 – where do we stand?

"Microsoft announced that Windows 8 hardware certification would require UEFI and Secure Boot"

That ought to have triggered an anti-trust/monopoly investigation immediately instead of letting Microsoft get away with it by graciously signing stuff for other people.

Google unveils master plan for letting AI shop on your behalf

It will be opt in. They'll opt you in to save you the trouble.

UK Cabinet Office hands stalled Microsoft migration to another department

Frying pan and fire come to mind.

Trump backpedals as Hyundai factory ICE raid enrages South Korea

Re: The administration's thoughts and prayers are with the victims

"no action can be taken to prevent this from happening again and again."

It can but would require ripping the balls of a good proportion of the ICE chain of command, sufficiently well publicised to get through the skulls of the rest.

Re: Trump backpedals...

"If the plant wasn't so far along construction it would almost certainly have been just cancelled and moved and built in a civilised country instead. It still might be I guess, or possibly just delayed hoping for a regime change."

I don't suppose the South Koreans are going to fall for the sunk cost fallacy. It might still be abandoned after a few technical problems affecting the commercial viability or some such explanation.

Re: Work visas, really? Where are they?

"All ICE had to do was approach management at the plant and request all employees bring in their supporting docs and passport within a few days."

That doesn't provide photo opportunities.

Re: Work visas, really? Where are they?

"So we're a "papers, please" country just like Nazi Germany?"

With Labour once again trying to make that apply to the UK.

Re: Not"

"And they might be a bit miffed at the delay in getting their first paycheck."

The infinite delay.

Re: Work visas, really? Where are they?

"Was trumps plan always to screw US farmers while making foreign agriculture great again?"

That would require connecting two or three things together in cause and effect terms and I don't think that's one of his talents. It's just as likely that he didn't intend to do so and impossible to work out which it was.

Re: Work visas, really? Where are they?

"unless it was on his ass"

Or somewhere fairly close.

Re: Work visas, really? Where are they?

"The current regime is just a replay of the first with the bonus of removing large numbers of farm workers as they worked in the fields."

In his mind it probably all fits together. The farmers won't have to pay those workers to harvest soy beans they won't be able to sell.

I wonder if the Trump organisation is planning to buy up abandoned farms. They'd make good golf courses once the dust stops blowing over them.

Small nuke reactors are really coming online by next year, US energy secretary insists

"It therefore seems conceivable that he could know what he's talking about."

If he does it's likely he has in mind something such as one of the micro-reactors already under construction as mentioned in the article. Failing that Musk could knock up something that looks like one with a few used Tesla batteries turning a morot turning the gen set. Or maybe just a man inside winding a handle on the gen set.

The end of Windows 10 means early Surface Hub hardware will be bricking it

Re: Perhaps an easy fix

That sounds like a nice little earner for someone. Remember to overcharge for the service. And by "overcharge" I mean by a lot. If you don't the sorts of people who equip meeting rooms will think it can't be any good.

Re: And there's the con

Like sheep they'll follow the flock.

Linux Mint picks up the pace with LMDE 7 and Wayland-ready Cinnamon

Re: "Please don't theme our apps"

We noticed. We weren't happy. In consequence we avoid GTK-4 apps as far as possible.

In my own case pdf-arranger/shuffler or whatever it is now has been replaced by a Java application as its UI became entirely non-functional - it displayed a window but with no controls at all.

UK.gov decides tech projects worth billions are major but not 'mega'

"UK major projects, including a string of nationally important tech roll-outs in central government, have in recent years been tracked by the Infrastructure and Projects Authority"

That's odd. Surely an Authority should have the authority to do more than track. Maybe that's why things keep going wrong.

Starlink outage knocks tens of thousands offline worldwide

Re: ..."approximately 40,000 users reported problems"...

In the case of satellites its move fast OR break.

'Powerful but dangerous' full MCP support beta for ChatGPT arrives

It's dangerous but we'll do it anyway because we're special.

Jaguar Land Rover supply chain workers must get Covid-style support, says union

Re: Screw the union!

You will pay anyway. When the suppliers go under you'll be paying their former employees' benefits. Who knows where the ripples end? Could your employer be a supplier to one of those suppliers?

Re: Insurance

"it was the incompetence of their staff which allowed it to happen."

Was their staff? Or their management? Or a 3rd party supplier? Enquiring minds would like to know.

Re: Insurance

"Shouldn't the share holders shoulder the costs?"

Whose shareholders? And it is possible you may be one of them via your pension fund?

As the UK motor industry has shrunk we now have a situation where many small businesses are dependent on a single big customer such as JLR. If that business isn't able to trade for a while those smaller businesses may fail for lack of cash flow. It could be argues that they shouldn't depend on a single customer but their simply aren't any other customers. It won't ust be their shareholders either, it will be their employees affected. When it gets back in operation the company will then be faced with the fact that suppliers on whom it depended aren't there.

Should the big company's shareholders support the smaller suppliers? - it would be in their long term interest. If it was a services supplier that was the initial point of failure should their shareholders or insurers be on the hook for everyone's losses? Ideally, yes. I have a nasty feeling that it will fall on the small suppliers and your taxes and mine will end up paying for a bit more unemployment anyway while the country's economic base shrinks further and components are imported in the future. Even if you're not prepared to think through to whose shareholders you mean it's very likely they won't be the only ones.

ANd even then they're reluctant of offer payments in response.

Re: Layoffs have begun

"or that your online store has direct access to your ERP system"

Or that anything can get access to the ERP's RDMBS other than by the specific database connection. All other connections the server sit on its own private network. Needless to say users needing DBA privileges have to use terminals which can only access the private network.

"labor org argues UK goverment should step in"

I think the UK govt is likely to take more notice of a labour organisation.

Bring back your old Mac: 5 ways to refresh the OS on elderly Apples

Re: Webless

"I don't know what country you are in."

Check my spelling of "neighbours" :)

I took a quick look through eBay's listings. The biggest seemed to be 15" with one 16". I might take a look in a couple of months when I finally finish writing my local history book. In order to get on with that I need to carrier lost.

"installing say Windows 10"

I repeat an earlier comment to Liam: shudder.

Re: Nice to See This Being Done... but

"pensioners who are patient and don't really mind it it takes 5 minutes to load a web page"

Oi. When you get to our age time is precious - we can see it running out.

Literally.

A group I belong to has lost two of its members this year already. The committee chairman overlooked the fact that the September meeting had been moved back to the end of August. Nobody had current numbers for him in our mobiles but I knew my landline phone had his correct number in its memory so I called SWMBO to ring him. When he turned up he said when she came on the line he thought she was about to tell him I'd snuffed it as well.

Re: Nice to See This Being Done

Youve just reinvented the "expansion slots will become a fading recollection for old geeks".

Re: Nice to See This Being Done

There's really a silicon triangle to match the iron one:

close-coupled, copious, cheap; pick any two.

A processor with N Gb close-coupled memory is always going to be beaten in some tasks by the same combination plus 4N or more Gb added on at a fraction of the price of the original NGb which, in such a system, will be regarded as another level of cache.

UK Lords take aim at Ofcom's 'child-protection' upgrades to Online Safety Act

Re: UK Fascism

Control freaks.

Re: The UK already had porn blocks. It didn't need the OSA.

"The OSA was a Tory policy they should have been junked, along with all the others."

I don't know why anyone might have expected that. Labour have a long history of control freakery. This is heading towards the digital ID cards they tried to get away with last time they were in power. It was a gift for them - they didn't even have to do the work of passing it.

Re: House of Lords

The HoL consists of unelected members. A few are hereditary, a large number are retreads from the HoC, political donors and party workers. That still leaves space for enough people, possibly including some of the hereditaries, with few if any plotical obligations but with real expertise over a wide variety of important topics that pass over the heads of the majority of HoC members. It can do a better job of scrutinising government legislature than the HoC. For that reason it is invaluable.