Posts by Doctor Syntax

Trump says he got a deal for rare earths in Greenland, but they won't come easy

Re: Trump spews an endless stream of utter rubbish

Because he's in a positon to start chucking tariffs around until he chickens out causing problems for everyone trying to do serious business.

I guess it's even possible he believes what he's saying. In an infinite universe, his mind anything is possible.

FTFY

Re: Who encouraged Trump?

The Grauniad has gone back to crashing Seamonkey browser.

He'll just go back and tell the faithful that he's won concessions to base as meny troops as he wants there and to exploit minerals. They'll believe him. He probably believes that himself. They'll believe he can work miracles. He certainly believes theat himself.

Qualcomm CEO pockets 15% pay rise as profits fall 45%

"and just over $1 million in other compensation."

What harm has he suffered for which he idesrves compensation?

Microsoft 365 outage drags on for nearly 10 hours during bad night for North American infra

Re: Confusion Was Rife...

Find a company that can act as registrar, preferably one that can host a mail service for you, get yourself your own domain and have your own mail service, either run by the registrar or, failing that, by another company. If you have problems with your service provider you can simply move to a new provider, keeping your email addresses.

A lot of their clients wouldn't have noticed as they'd have been having the same problem.

UK trade department put civil servants' feelings first during Windows 11 migration

The real tragedy in this is that the effort was pu into a change that will have to be repeated when the next version of Windows is rolled out.

Re: When going through change, …

And after the 3 years, what then?

AI conference's papers contaminated by AI hallucinations

It's an AI conference The organisers would have been worried if there wasn't any.

Tech support detective solved PC crime by looking in the carpark

It sounds as if the manager might have been too much of a straight shooter if he let the mechanics know he'd found out from Parker.

Marching orders delayed: Veterans' Digital ID off to a slow start

Re: What do they expect?

If it's stored on a smartphone there's also the issue of people needing to recognise it and also of fakes. Exactly what's stored? A PDF?

AI hasn't delivered the profits it was hyped for, says Deloitte

Re: The bubble will burst.

"Winter is coming."

And with it, another memory glut.

So now the scam has mutated to claim unmeasurable "soft" benefits.

Did it ever have any others?

Re: 40% of the workforce are paying attention & give a damn

AI sends spam.

Re: "Deloitte's explanation of the current state of affairs is that money isn't everything"

You've got to wonder how much scope there is for strategic differentiation at the bottom of the barrel.

That's exactly what ERP is supposed to do.

I suppose the difference is that this doesn't involve an ERP system from Oracle. It just makes the Oracle option look reasonably priced.

SAP scores £275M award from UK tax collector – sans competition

If there was no call for competition how do they know SAP is the only sovereign option?

Europe's GDPR cops dished out €1.2B in fines last year as data breaches piled up

Re: Puzzled Old Codger Here.....

Donald, is that you? Or is it Bob?

Ancient telnet bug happily hands out root to attackers

"Users should at the very least update to the latest version of telnetd and close it off from the web"

From the web? It isn't HTTP.

Debian's FreedomBox Blend promises an easier home cloud

Re: Desktops?

Yes, anything like this runs headless. And if it's going on the internet rather than an intranet I'd let somebody like Mythic Beasts host it.

But the general point is to install KDE desktop you do not install from sources.

Re: Desktops?

"anyone with the technical chops to install and use FreedomBox will be able to install KDE from the sources"

It's going to have the Debian repositories set up so it's easier than install from sources:

apt install kde-plasma-desktop

or run tasksel, tick KDE and untick Gnome

/var/lib. Yes, it's an annoyance. Debian and friends put the www directory in there. Server data really needs to be treated like user's home directories and be placed on a separate partition so that even if you have to blow away the old /var on a reinstall it doesn't get touched.

What I do is to mount RAID/LVM or whatever on /srv and create a www directory there, remove /var/lib/www and replace it with a symlink to /srv/www. It's an annoyance that mariadb or mysql buries databases even further in /var/lib and it gets to be a bit if a faff moving those into /srv but it's the way to do it.

It's an even sillier situation having to do that with something that's presented as an instant server in a box distro. Perhaps that could be taken into consideration building the Blend.

Re: "if it's got the word 'blockchain' in it, it's bollocks."

Agreed. I'm not sure whether the mention of of ZeroNet was because it's included - TFA doesn't say so specifically - or whether it's a passing remark. Liam?

Ireland wants to give its cops spyware, ability to crack encrypted messages

"all forms of communications...."

Including RFCs 1149 and 2549?

"However, it promised to implement a robust legal framework, alongside all necessary privacy and security safeguards, if these proposals do ultimately become law."

And, like all the others, it's not providing a proof of concept to submit to expert analysis to show it to be possible. Odd, that.

MIT boffins create device that 'paints' iridescent structural color in real time

"typically require lab-grade materials and techniques to replicate"

Or an oil leak on water.

Child safety or age-gating for all? UK social media ban plan draws fire

Let's make a small change in a line from TFA:

Age gating at this level, ORG says, would drag millions of adults and older teens voters into proving their identity to private corporations simply to post, message, or read online, multiplying the data collection risks that already plague Big Tech.

I wonder whether the 61 MPs who raised this would be so keen if it were put to them in this way.

EU considers whether there's Huawei of axing Chinese kit from networks within 3 years

No mention of pulling US kit? It sounds as if they're not keeping up.

Sony no longer home of the Bravia as it plans TV biz spin-out to China’s TCL

Re: Not sure why the dissing of TCL

Here's my reason. I bought a Phillips TV not realising it had been TCLed. It was supposed to not be smart (a plus) but had a network connection through which it was supposed to connect to the Freeview site rather like the Freeview box. It didn't and hasn't since. The alleged customer service line wasn't. As far as I'm concerned they're just another company that buys up brands to fool customers into buying a mediocre product thinking they'll get the quality of product and service the brands were originally known for. If TCL makes it I now won't buy it.

Re: "20/30 years ago Sony meant"

Produce a good products and a brand can get a good reputation. Then produce one bad one and the loyal customers who'd bought one go elsewhere and, if they like what they find, become loyal customers there instead. Even if the original brand continues to produce good products its ex-customers aren't going to go back because they've no need to. The best they can hope for is to pick up a new following.

But that's just with a quality issue. The rootkit episode was a gross breach of trust. Even people like myself who'd never bought a Sony product heard of it. Trust is the hardest thing to rebuild once it's lost; "If they did it once they might do it again. You can't trust them." That's why the rootkit issue will stick to them as long as people remember it.

Re: How to destroy a respected brand, 101

It depends on who runs the brand. In apple's case it's Apple. This isn't always the case. All too often the brand is bought up as a consumable to boost sales until poor service gets it tainted. Then its time to buy another.

FTC tries to un-Zuck Meta's grip on the market by dragging it back to court

It sounds as if Zuck hasn't grovelled enough.

Microsoft admits Outlook might freeze when saving files to OneDrive

Maybe Tuesday the 13th is another date to avoid, possibly replacing Friday the 13th.

AI researchers map models to banish 'demon' persona

Re: Just my ignorant opinion

It comes as a poor third to not building something you have to tame and building something you don't have to tame.

Kids learn computer theory with wood, cardboard, and hot glue

Re: Valves (Tubes) impracticable?

I remember the name but the smallest valves I ever saw were about the size and shape of an acorn. The connections were wires sticking out of the waist and one, presumably the anode, at the top. Used for VHF, I think.

Re: Blue Peter

Edge punched cards were used for identification of timber. They were sold by - IIRC - the Forest Products Research lab at Princes Risborough. What they sold were the un-notched cards and a booklet which told you what notches to clip for each species. Possibly they also sold the clipper but you had to supply your own knitting needle. Fortunately the stacks I used had already been notched. Cutting the sections of pieces of sawdust in the correct orientation for microscopy was a bit tricky.

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy goes wobbly on AI bubble possibility

Nvidia and the existing players are getting involved in the circular financing.

How's this for an alternative scenario:

Whimsy's Greenland whim backfires, crashing the dollar and substantially raising interest rates (itself a bit of an achievement for someone trying to drive interest rates down).

Heavily debt-fuelled businesses, say OpenAI implode.

Businesses heavily invested in them, say Microsoft, have a big hole in their balance sheets.

To raise cash they have a fire sale of DCs.

A European owned consortium buys the European DCs with an arrangement to run them as an arm's length operation, guarantees as to IP, source and documents in escrow etc.

Europe finally has its own sovereign cloud operation.

Re: Rot economy not denied by enshittifier-in-chief

Right now I think Davos is more concerned with Trump's Greenland moves. The AI bubble could be just collateral damage as the EU is set to nuke him. (OK, not lierrally although maybe they'd like to.)

Majority of CEOs report zero payoff from AI splurge

Re: They were paying for an education.

You'd think that. You'd hope that. History says they won't.

A lot of which people?

And does it matter? It's all money down the drain when the bubble burst. There's not much point arguing whose drain it is.

the report cautions that "clearly, we're in the early stages of the AI era."

The caution is more likely to enable them to plausibly deny their report burst the bubble.

MPs ask who's responsible when AI crashes the UK finance system

Re: Mogrisponsible - Fuzzy responsibility

Not even false.

So caveat emptor

Re: There must be clarity on who is responsible:

"Have they implemented something knowing it's ethically or functionally dubious?"

I'd rephrase that slightly. Dubious leaves a little wriggle room. Where there's doubt there's room for it to be either wrong ot OK.

"Have they implemented something without knowing it's ethically and financially sound?"

OpenAI is still figuring out how to make money, but wants you to believe in it

Re: Compute in GW

It tells you all you need to know. The operation is measured in terms of its inputs because they cannot quantify useful outputs. If they could they'd use that measure instead.

Re: "revenue followed the same curve"

So the banks go into Chapter 11 or it's equivalent instead.

Somebody has to decide what the level of losses will be. Throwing good money after bad is not a good idea. If the losses are inevitable the sooner they're realised the less they will be.

Global economy shrugs off US tariff shock, tech spending does heavy lifting

Re: Trick

"Even if our governments do nothing many people I know are now actively seeking non-US products, even if it costs them more."

This is going to be Trump's legacy to the US economy long after he's gone. It's no longer able to be seen as a reliable part of a supply chain.

Re: Trick

Why would anyone ship to the US if they risk losing?

All taxes fall on the buyer sooner are later.

Re: the 2.4% growth for the USA will come crashing down

Still predicting the cliff collapse that justified us jumping off the cliff with Brexit.

Yes, sure. Going to happen. Any day now.