Posts by Doctor Syntax

Systemd daddy quits Microsoft to prove Linux can be trusted

""Other parts include a logging daemon,...."

The real objection is that all those existed previously but, in true NIH fashion Poettering felt the need to replace those as well.

Microsoft investors sweat cloud giant's OpenAI exposure

I think between now and then there'll be a good few PCs & laptops build with not much RAM. Some of that will be snapped up to beef them up.

Re: Another reason why AI today will crash

"A wiser investor would invest in Nvidia, and keep hyping the new shiny AI coming just round the corner."

There were reports here that Nvidia is also investing in the data centres. That means they're going to be doubly hit when the music stops and there are no chairs.

Re: Sweaty Nads

One day those earnings calls are going to consist of shouts of "Go, Nads".

BTW that Einstein quote sounds very much like a comment he would make on quantum mechanics. I wonder what he'd think of the next big bubble.

Musk distracts from struggling car biz with fantastical promise to make 1 million humanoid robots a year

I remember once seeing pictures of unsold cars parked in neat rows on an old airfield somewhere. I then imagined that applied to unsold humanoid robots; it looked like the terracotta army.

Capita pension portal 'fiasco' forces Cabinet Office into damage control

"Capita and the Cabinet Office are deeply sorry for the worry, frustration, and distress this has caused – particularly for those dealing with bereavement or ill health."

At least this is an improvement on the usual non-apology thanking frustrated, impatient users for their patience or saying they understood there had been inconvenience.

In the meantime do we know what will happen to whoever signed this off as ready to go live when it obviously wasn't and decided not to go with parallel running?

Re: Will they ever learn ?

Maybe they will. It brings it closer to home.

Birmingham City Council's Oracle ERP fiasco now £144M and still not working

Is it just one manifestation of a public body which has simply grown too big for its own good? Looking at the Wikipedia article it seems to have grown by agglomeration of a whole lot of borough councils, probably in the name of "efficiency" and then taken on the role which the county council formerly played in 1974. If my own post-1974 lot were this size I could easily envisage them making a mess on this scale; as it is they just have to be content of messing up on a smaller scale.

If you're one of the 16,000 Amazon employees getting laid off, read this

Re: Corpo-ration

“Culture” is a retention tactic.

Hmmm.

The culture manglement try to promulgate may well be. Beside that there's inevitably a real work-place culture that, like all human cultures, is the product of the behaviour people who work there (including to a major extent the actual behaviour of the manglement). It might be benevolent, it might be toxic, it might be something in between.

"If you believe the most foaming-mouthed AI prognosticators, the Dario Amodeis and Sam Altmans of the world"

And if you don't you can look forward to them getting theirs.

Bork ventures to the Middle of Lidl

Re: Swap out

Agreed. The hedge trimmer I got from there hasn't fallen apart, unlike the big name one I bought from a specialist DIY store which has also fallen apart so I couldn't take it back to complain

Claude Code's prying AIs read off-limits secret files

Re: Machines

"I would seriously like for journalists of all stripes to understand this. It's disappointing that this includes those writing for el Reg."

Why is it disappointing that you should seriously like journalists writing for el Reg to understand [LLMs are not intelligent]? OK, it's probably not what you mean.

I'm sure the author of TFA harbours no such misunderstandings. OTOH if I were using a tool which specifies that a directive will be obeyed I'd expect that that would be hard-coded into its behaviour, even if the tool's results were otherwise based on guesswork. In fact I'd expect that the providers of the tool had tested for it. In this case, however, the first "if" of that sentence is doing some heavy lifting.

AI agent hype cools as enterprises struggle to get into production

Re: A few points.

But, but but...that's so old-fashioned. Legacy even, What would gen Z say about it?

Penguin in your pocket: Nexphone dual boots into Linux, Windows 11

So a big chunk of the flash is taken up with something that might never be used if the buyer is only interested in one of these alternative OSs.

Is it downloading the non Android OS's at boot time? If not can unwanted ones be removed, perhaps temporarily, to free up storage?

Cops put Microsoft Copilot in holding cell after controversial hallucination

That's odd. I'm sure a report I read at the time that use of Copilot was banned in the force. Maybe Iwas hallucinating if it's only being banned now.

ICE knocks on ad tech’s data door to see what it knows about you

Re: It’s an RFI, response is optional, but open to the public…

If I understand it right they would be seeking to buy rather than demand. However sooner or later anyone selling is likely to be sued eventually.

The best way to deal with "nothing to hide" is to tell them to look through the T&Cs of their online accounts: banking, trading, work logins, social media, etc. and check for the clauses forbidding disclosure. If they still don't get it ask them if they'd like to share all those user IDs and passwords with you or, even better, publish them for the world to see.

Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service takes an unscheduled day off in Sweden

"leaving users facing errors"

I'm not sure this is the best description of inability to access and LLM.

Clawdbot sheds skin to become Moltbot, can't slough off security issues

Marketing playbook, remaindered paperback edition: If you have a reputation problem just change the name.

Salesforce signs $5.6B deal to inject agentic AI into the US Army

It's keeping the old adage alive for a new era, just change the names were applicable.

"When the British fire the Germans duck. When the Germans fire the British duck. When the Americans fire everybody ducks."

'Ralph Wiggum' loop prompts Claude to vibe-clone commercial software for $10 an hour

Re: Been here for decades

And also of the same bugs reappearing every time the disposable employee workforce turns over.

"Companies have a brand that can't be cloned and goodwill that can't be cloned,...But product features can now be cloned."

And then all you've got is a clone. Where's the ambition in that?

Tech employees demand their leaders take a stand against ICE

Re: 450 People?

Perhaps if the 150,000,000 were asked again now how many would have changed their view to align with the 450 where they didn't previously.

True, but who, in this situation, are the SEDITION/TREASON/CRIIMINALS? If the US is to have a hope it needs to work that one out PDQ.

Re: Correction to article

Some of us are.

Re: Correction to article

Could we settle for "alleged murder"? "We" being other than the A/C nutjobs. (If you complain about being called an A/C nutjob it at least proves you know what you are.)

Re: CSuite are doing the right thing

"we have the County Council controlled by Reform"

They'll soon fall out with each other. Farage seems to have been collecting a leader-challenging awkward squad. I'm looking forward to the whole thing disintegrating.

I'm not sure they're repairing the damage of BoJo's dumping of anyone who looked like a One-Nation Tory but I think the desertions are the beginning of a move back to the centre where the votes are most reliably found.

Marketing 'genius' destroyed a printer by trying to fix a paper jam

""but it's WIRELESS, it doesn't need those""

"Well, you've just proved yourself wrong, haven't you?"

Re: During COVID

WFH pre-COVID my daughter had an employer provided HP all-in-one which looked fairly like my old, pre-enshitified-HP version until you touched it and felt how flimsy it was. Some minor problem and neither of us could even get the paper tray back into it, partly for fear of breaking it. She had to get it swapped out. That old HP stuff is almost indestructible by conventional weapons.

Re: Users and printing devices...

Not exactly your trailer park situation but anyone growing up in the household of a skilled craftsman will probably be familiar with the notion of not buying something you can make yourself. Even today I have to steel myself to buy anything other than basic supplies irrespective of not being able to make it myself.

Re: Users and printing devices...

Nice catch. I have to admit something like that passed though my mind as I typed it.

No idea why you got a down vote.

Re: "You Can't Use a Chainsaw in a Library"

I have an electric chainsaw. It's far from being library quiet.

China-linked group accused of spying on phones of UK prime ministers' aides – for years

"The allegations surfaced days before current UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is due to travel to China"

What a coincidence!

France to replace US videoconferencing wares with unfortunately named sovereign alternative

Quite. For avoidance of doubt, good for them (i.e. the French).

I'd guess they didn't give a damn either way.

Re: Viso

However Visio the Microsoft product may get elbowed out for similar reasons. Maybe a re-named Dia will replace it.

So the rest is just a bit of flag-waving.

Re: Deja vue all over again

Maybe it was a cunning scheme to get IBM's attention so they'd buy the company.

Succession: Linux kernel community gets continuity plan for post-Linus era

Re: So negative...

Oh, well played, sir.

I thought the stand-in was established as Greg but that would be for the Linus falls under a bus scenario. It wouldn't work in generational terms. I keep thinking "but they're all so young". They aren't any more so a plan is needed.

Microsoft illegally installed cookies on schoolkid's tech, data protection ruling finds

Thanks.

So no penalty mentioned? I suppose it must be a procedural thing and if they don't stop then penalties get decided on then. So we can hope for a percentage of annual revenue.

"should stop tracking the complainant ... within four weeks."

What's the penalty if they don't? I see a mention of 50 Euros in the PDF but without knowing German I'm not sure of the significance. Is that 50 each day of failure? If so they might not bother. 50 per day per affected pupil in Austria might get their attention. 50 per day per pupil across the whole EU might get something done.

High Court to grill London cops over live facial recognition creep

Well, why do you think they wanted to leave the EU? Too much adult supervision for their liking.

You've got to remember that the Home Office's core competence is house-training ministers. That could be qualified with "if they need it" because some don't.

How one developer used Claude to build a memory-safe extension of C

Re: Interesting read.

"If I'm unsure I'll question the change and ask for the reasoning."

Reasoning?

Re: LOL

I guess the meaning is that the bubble will burst before they get round to that.

You have been warned.

"Our strategy is to combine AI and algorithms to rewrite Microsoft's largest codebases."

Keep it simple, stupid: Agentic AI tools choke on complexity

I thought summarising complex data for the simple human being (i.e. manager) was the sort of thing that AI was sold as being good at. Now they're telling me it isn't. Surely the salesweasels weren't lying, were they?

AWS's inevitable destiny: becoming the next Lumen

Re: Cloud direction

Outside the US more people will finally start asking where their data actually sits. Geography will become a criterion.