Posts by Doctor Syntax

As ransomware gangs threaten physical harm, 'I am afraid of what's next,' ex-negotiator says

The best preventetive would be to announce "I may not know who you are but there are undoubtedly people who do, so if we get one of these notes I can afford to and will make it amply worth the while of any of them who delivers your freshly cut off balls, hands and head in that order a week apart."

Re: Someone knocking at the door. Somebody ringing the bell…

If you were to draw senior manglement's attention to this and explain tha they'd likely be the recipient of the threats and that by that time it would be too late for the security measures that would protect their hides then they might be receptive.

AI is contributing to Meta’s growth – just not the kind anyone cares about

"We don't expect that our genAI work is going to be a meaningful driver of revenue this year or next year,"

Plenty of time to not worry about it.

New Google AI model maps world in 10-meter squares for machines to read

Re: Not convinced

"Ah, you forget the almost mystical ability of current AI to fill in the gaps."

Absolutely. The model shows you what ought to be there.

Re: ...an error rate 24 percent lower than other models...

"We need an El Reg standard for approximate comparisons between vague amounts of something or else."

Obviously it must be the firkin as in "two firkin small" or "two firkin big".

Top spy says LinkedIn profiles that list defense work 'recklessly invite attention of foreign intelligence services'

Re: Did IQs drop

I suppose that when I joined the Civil Service in the 1970s I must have been cleared for my role but if so I newver found out to what level.

Re: Common Sense

It's about demonstrating how stupid people who think they're smart can be.

Re: LinkedIn? Why?

"It is long past time for it to go away."

It's long past the time the lot of thme went away.

Windows 10 @ 10: How Microsoft led developers round in circles

Re: So many toolkits, frameworks, APIs, versions and confusion

It probably results from a constant churn and deprecation of the programmers.

Tesla starts sort-of Robotaxi service in San Francisco by invite only

Fully self driving - the driver is just part of the vehicle.

US lowers tariffs on major tech exporting nations - but buyers will still pay more

Re: "manufacturing jobs continue to decline"

Are overseas suppliers going to play ball or are they going to look at a diminishing and unpredictable US market and decide that they'd rather find a customer elsewhere who can pay full price?

Enterprise software giants weaponize AI to kill discounts and deepen lock-in

For customers the only way to win is not to play.

Servers hated Mondays until techie quit quaffing coffee in their company

Re: Disks

I used to work with a Sequent which had a LOT* of huge (4Gb I think) disks. Folk lore was that if they were shut down they wouldn't start up again. That was left running for a years. Eventually it had to be moved & they started up without problems.

* Part of the reason for the number was that they were mirrored at disk controller level and pairs of mirorred pairs were mirrored at database level. Whoever set it up wasn't taking chances.

Re: the company couldn't be bothered to spend any money to fix the problem

Or the CFO

AWS Lambda loves charging for idle time: Vercel claims it found a way to dodge the bill

Re: Congratulations

It sounds to me like they've invented timesharing.

Users left scrambling for a plan B as Dropbox drops Dropbox Passwords

Re: Maybe they just saw the writing on the wall?

If you read tp the bottom of the NCSC's screed there seems to be an assumption that the password manager will be a 3rd party job. Their advice on choice works out as "whatever works for you" so anyone ho's confused will stay that way.

Re: KeePass

Isn't ti a bit of a problem remwmbering which site has X{cRMS1A9D(q"z+Y\8]Y and which has f+X#kOk43ntLtcL-(R~' ?

With Keypass you don't need even a very lightweight, fast server. It's just a file you can copy around. KISS.

Re: Why are users surprised?

Customers mey be pissed off individually but if they then all leave individually, they're gone. The individual customers are, collectively, the company's source of income.

Bitter fight over 2020 Microsoft quantum paper both resolved and unresolved

"You don't think that your microwave oven is a fraud because you can put your mac and cheese in it and it will cook."

I wouldn't want a mac and cheese to put intoa microwave oven so I don't believe microwave ovens can exist.

Internet exchange points are ignored, vulnerable, and absent from infrastructure protection plans

1,519 doesn't sound like a lot given the work they have to do.

Join the club.

Devs are frustrated with AI coding tools that deliver nearly-right solutions

Re: C Suite

C-suite suits take home an indecent salary and bonus.

FTFY

Minnesota governor calls in the troops after St Paul cyberattack

Re: Resilience!

"They apparently have bugger all."

They should have called Birmingham to ask for advice on how to cope.

Re: Resilience!

Who's going to defent the bridges?

Windows 10 turns 10: Dying OS just worked, lacked compatibility chaos

Re: Windows is so [straightforward]

Yes, commonly used applications certainly get put in the tesk bar. But then there's only so much room on there so a logically organised menu is essential. And app tiles? Those weird things compensating for the fact that some utter dweeb decided that, contrary to all previous experience, alphabetical was the best way to arrange a menu?

Re: 99% of users [get] the out-of-the-box experience

"jump distros (wiping the drive in the process)"

Who on Earth wipes a drive to install a new distro? Drives have these things called partitions. If you have to reinstall the OS you leave the partition that will be mounted on /home untouched. It really goes to show how little you understand things.

Re: Last sane version?????

"Shortcuts in the taskbar and customized app tiles should remove 90% of your Start menu deep-dives. If it's a "common", often-used setting it's in the new Win10 Control panel; more intrinsic settings remain in the old panel (it's that simple, really)."

Ah, yes. Windows is so starightforward. Nothing arcane about it.

Flock storage: Audio boffin encodes data in a starling

There used to be a starling near our lab in Belfast that regularly imitated a Trimphoone. What a pity it never got to hear a modem.

Cisco donates Agntcy project to Linux Foundation in the hope it gets AI agents interacting elegantly

Linux foundation hosting AI projects? This is worrying.

Windows 11 is a minefield of micro-aggressions in the shipping lane of progress

Re: The real question

"Frankly I doubt if it makes a profit at all."

If that were thecase they wouldn't be making a fuss about the requirements to upgrade to 11. They want people to buy new PCs so they'll buy new H/W licences with them.

Re: The real question

"The kernel, Linux is proprietary software."

How's the Hurd coming along?

Re: It's all very well saying "Just don't use Windows"

"exotic software on production lines that just won't move to another OS unless as you say something drastic happens"

Does that include not being able to move off a version that dropped out of support years aago?

Re: Sure, Linux could make a truly usable desktop system....

I think he means it's GPL2, not GPL3.

Re: Sure, Linux could make a truly usable desktop system....

Not always - I'm old enough to remember when it wasn't. But I always prefered something more Unix-like for what lay behind the UI.

Re: Sure, Linux could make a truly usable desktop system....

"I think maybe because Linux is chasing the users it doesn't have rather than making the system suit the users it does have.

Hence a focus on design and shiny over pure functionality."

You did miss the irony tag didn't you?

Or did you just parrot something you read somewhere posted by somebody who's never used Linux based on something written by a Microsoft shill?

Because those uf us who use Linux do so because it suits us exactly (it has the flexibility to so that) while W11 is the result of 25 years focusing on design style and shiny over functionality.

Re: Sure, Linux could make a truly usable desktop system....

"most Linux desktops still look like something from the early noughties"

And what's the difference between WIndows from then and Windows now?

Quarter of a century of enshitification, that's what.

Quarter of a century of releases that expected ttheir users to go along with whatever changes Microsoft expected them to adapt to.

Quarter of a century of changes imposed simply because Microsoft needed to force purchase of new H/W for the latest Windows because that meant new licences being sold.

What have you gained from it? And what have you lost?

Re: Sure, Linux could make a truly usable desktop system....

"The problem is that amateurs are unwilling, sometimes unable, to agree to standardize the OS."

What standard is this? It can't be Microsoft's because that's been shifting with every release. Would W2K have been a good standard? A lot of people seem to tink so. If so why didn't MS stick with it? Why did they come up with Windows for Teletubbies? W8? All the rest?

Is macOS the standard? If so why doesn't Wny version of Windows look like it.

The closest thing we've ever had to as standard is CUA. AFAICS the closest adherents to that standard are KDE and LibreOffice. The "professionals" have dirfted further and further away because their marketing departments and they crayon departments told them to. The "professionals" aren't allowed to follow standards. I also wonder how many of the "professional" coders have worked on UI design as compared to the "amateurs".

Re: Sure, Linux could make a truly usable desktop system....

Question: Who's the best judge of the UI I, personally, find most useable?

Answer: Users.

Maybe a lack of reading skills. Look at the question again:

Note thetwo words "I, personally".

Why should a mass of undefined people "users" be able to make a judgement on my preferences. Why? How? It's an answer beyond reason.

The only person who can judge that is me. Not you. Not "users". Sure, some users might come to the same conclusion. Some might come to different conclusions.

You find Gnome ittitating. So do I. So I don;t use it. I have choices and, FWIW, my choice would also exclude Apple's UI which I think weird

W8 which is exactly the opposite of what I want from a UI. I think a lot of people agreed about that and yet I assume it wasn't coded by amateurs.

I'm not sure you intended your last paragraph to say what it di but as far as KDE is concerned you are correct.

US science left out in the cold amid plans to retire Antarctic icebreaker

Not MAGA, MAD

Making America DIminish

AI don't know: Enterprises slow to pick up on Copilot+ PCs

Re: Snapdragon

"I would not buy a Windows ARM machine."

Neither would I, but not for the same reason.

"That's disturbing, or at least should be for the company employing them."

You mean theydon't know enough to avoid them>

Google’s latest renewable energy deal is all gas bags and hot air

Re: Er

"that could be a massive reduction in emissions"

Only a temporary one. Once the system's loaded that's that apart from topping up afterleaks which, by definition, emit the gas.

Re: Er

"pumped hydro is the only at scale solution"

For some values of "at scale". In order to achieve that you need suitable sites with an upper and lower reservoirs. Reservoirs involve drownin existing landscapes which isn't exactly environmentally firendly, nor is it firendly to those who lived there if the valleys were inhabited.

It's a useful technology but niche.

Re: Er

Especially this? https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/976/cpsprodpb/A93A/production/_128422334_gettyimages-1148069508.jpg

Re: Er

Pumped storage amd mine shafts into which to lower weights are niche in terms of where they can be built. However I wonder about lead-acide batteries as an alternative.

Microsoft used staff in China to help babysit US govt cloud services, report says

Re: As of this writing, Microsoft has not responded to The Register's request for comment

I'm sure there are a few suitable phrases on the playbook: only a few.etc., no longer doing it (right out of Sir Humphrey's stock excuses), mistake by a junior/former employee ...

No problem. The emollient words flow smoothly, not so much lies, more a case of not having any meaning to any PR person.

Publishers cry foul over W3C crusade to rid web of third-party cookies

More power to W3C.

Blame a leak for Microsoft SharePoint attacks, researcher insists

Re: Leaky leak

You could go a step further. Why pay someone to leak a vulnerability? Why not pay someone to put it there?

It depends on how obvious the weaponisation was. Some of the exploits seem to happen PDQ.