Posts by Doctor Syntax

Car giant Stellantis says customer data nicked after partner vendor pwned

Only names and emails so presumably their partner fir spammng customers who will now get even more spam.

Microsoft insists Copilot+ PCs are 'empowering the future' – reality disagrees

SWMBO's laptop is well past being due for replacement so I decided to investigate this possibility. There are a number of howtos for installing Linux on them so it seems to have accomplished already. However, like me, she needs 17" or bigger display and there don't seem to be any so that was the end of that. They also seem a bit on the expensive side for Yorkshire sensitivities.

Arm will have to stay in the cupboard where it's running the Nextcloud server.

Linux attracts people obsessed with control over their computer data, privacy and lives in general.

Re: Ai, Ai, it’s off to Linux we go

We always ask that question and they always demonstrate that they can.

Re: +

"Let's talk about systemd. And GNOME."

I don't have to deal with those either.

Re: ARM PC will never be

"There are no ARM ATX motherboards or disk images you can boot from to boot such board. Now you know why ARM will never become a mainstream PC."

Why should an ARM processor use an ATX motherboard? It's perfectly feasible to start from scratch and establish new standards for H/W extensions and firmware. The fact that nobody has seen fit to do it doesn't mean that nobody will.

Some of us have long memories and remember the S-100 motherboards. There was no provision for 16-bit processors let alone 32 or 64. By your logic it follows that16, 32 o4 64 bit processors could never become mainstream.

No. It's telling customers to send their old PCs to landfill and buy an OEM Windows licence with a new PC attached. If it fails I wouldn't be surprised to see a new W11 special edition tat will install without the H/W requirement but it won't be a free upgrade or else some more paid W10 support deals.

Re: Marketing company

Ad companies target the advertisers' wallets. All they sell is advertising.

Re: C suite AI deployment roadmap

You may be overestimating the C suite. It's probably

1) Get AI

3) Profit

Re: True "AI" story.

Measurement can be very difficult. A lot of that effort goes into understanding what it is you should be measuring, why and then doing it properly. It's so much easier to just measure something easy and obvious without understnding what it tells you.

Re: True "AI" story.

"1 week to not do something that takes 30 minutes."

And probably not even worth doing.

"Businesses didn't care about exclusive features such as Recall."

They should care very much about Recall, just not in the way Microsoft wants them to.

Re: True "AI" story.

I suppose the companies are staffed/started by those whom they let go.

Trump says Michael Dell is part of the team buying TikTok, with Larry Ellison and maybe some Murdochs

"SaaS"

In this context I don't think the first "S" stands for "Software".

Tech troubles create aviation chaos on both sides of the Atlantic

“next-generation common-use passenger processing system solution that allows multiple airlines to share check-in desks and boarding gate positions at an airport rather than having their own dedicated infrastructure.”

Or to put it another way, a single point of failure.

Re: Redundancy

"How many facilities have truly separate access points?"

As many as take redundancy as more than a box to tick.

Re: Redundancy

"your facility is the other side of the freeway from the substations and there's only one nearby bridge with a suitable cable culvert crossing that freeway"

In that case it's best to count them as a single substation or at best one and a half, but not two.

Brit scientists over the Moon after growing tea in lunar soil

So it's best to leave Mars to the likes of Musk.

'Technical debt' in police database built to respond to child murders causing a 'failing service'

investment in the system was limited to 'keeping the lights on' .... The PND transformation is being delivered to address the technological debt in PND which is causing a failing service,

"Keeping the lights on" should include fixing issues as and when they keep up so that it is not a failing service. All the waffle sounds like an attempt fo excuse underfunding and everything between the two quotes sounds like infighting between rival empire builders that allowed the underfunding to happen.

Firewall upgrade linked to three deaths after Australian telco cut off emergency calls

Re: Commitment required.

"Here endeth this too-verbose rant."

Not at all too verbose. It's all about what I termed in another comment "a public service ethos".

One thing stands out in the example you linked - difficulties switching to a DR system. The things that people tend to do badly are those they do seldom simply because of lack of practice. DR rehearsals are important, initially to introduce plan to reality so that the plans, rather than reality, can be changed, secondly so that documentation can be filled out by recording what's actually done and finally to give practice to those who will have to carry them out.

Re: Optus obviously directly decided to shift blame to employess

Irrespective of whether it was a case of staff not following procedures a company like this, with a critical public service function needs to have a public service ethos, for want of a better term, that ensures everyone is aware of the consequences of actions. Such an ethos starts at the top. If a thoughtless action at any level was the cause that is ultimately due to the attitude of the board and senior management.

FOMO? Brit banking biz rolls out AI tools, talks up security

"rolls out AI tools, talks up security"

Which did they choose?

It's a bit like the iron triangle with a missing corner.

Just as well I gave up on them years ago.

Trump admin says tech companies are abusing H-1B visas, slaps $100k a year to allow entry

Re: This is illegal

"Basically we need to treat the US like a failed experiment"

It's odd that given the "no more Kings" attitude they ignored the fact that England had been evolving the separation head of government powers from head of state for a couple of generations. They stepped back to somewhere about Queen Anne's day and then froze it with a written constitution.

Re: Seeing is believing

The photo contest could be the basis for a little harmless fun. Pseudonymously* submit some images from an outfit known to be particularly vigorous in pursuing their IP. If you could work out the stock image site they went to and tip off the copyright owner so much the better.

* You wouldn't be at risk of not being able to claim the $1,000 prize.

Re: $100k

"more like abusing power"

Standard operating practice.

Re: For $100k

"All it seems with Trump’s blessing"

Why wouldn't he. Get us to pay to have a US listening post implanted in MoD.

Re: For $100k

"The person would still be allowed to visit the US for meetings and for projects"

In theory, yes. In practice they may be detained and chained up for a photo-shoot.

Re: No problem

Absolutely. The quote "I think it'll hit the outsourcers more than probably those firms" is the exact opposite of what I'd expect.

We all know what the the offshored service to be like.

Give it a few weeks for the TACO to arrive.

Turns out Hayabusa2's next asteroid target isn't much bigger than the probe itself

And whether they're OK to be chlorine-washed.

Make Windows 11 more useful and less annoying with these 11 Registry hacks

Re: It's easier than doing all that. [1]

"To be fair, the Linux and open source world hasn't yet come up with a reliable or familiar way of centrally managing almost 100,000 machines in a vast global directory." It hasn't come up with anything like https://www.theregister.com/2025/09/19/microsoft_entra_id_bug/

Re: Super helpful...

"Meanwhile, in linux land, you need a parser to access ini files"

They're not usually called ini but I guess if you view things through a Window that's how you'll think of them. The Unix approach is to make file plain text so the only parser you need is between your ears and, as you point out, a standard text editor is all you need to change them.

But pets? Try work horses. Carefully tended and fed because they do heavy lifting.

Re: Super helpful...

"Or just won't."

You're supposed to buy a Windows 11 licence with a new PC attached.

SaaS vendors are hiking costs faster than inflation, but squeaky wheels can still get deals

"Two years is also a good time frame in which to plan a migration, and letting a vendor know you're considering that option can work wonders."

Actually doing it can also work wonders.

Zuck has the power! Meta applies to sell excess electricity

Re: All this power, what are we building with it?

The value of a process should be measured by its outputs. If you have to measure inputs, whether it's bums on seats in the office or gigawatts into data centres, it's a clear indication that you don't have a grasp on what's being achieved.

Slack threatened to delete nonprofit coding club’s data if it didn’t pay $50k in a week

Re: Slack should ..

There are people who will do this sort of thing very professionally. e.g. https://www.mythic-beasts.com/apps/overview

Not quite a tenner a month but long enough established to be well trusted.

"Lessons will not be lost on the young people I think."

Just what I was thinking. Lessons learned when young should help them in their careers. Who knows, some of them may be making purchasing decisions in the future.

Alleged Scattered Spider teen cuffed after extortion Bitcoin used to buy games, meals

There may well have been a bit more in the detecting side of it but as a story the mainstream media will understand buying pizza is the way to explain it.

Nevertheless, having blagged their way through the weakest link and amassed a lot of money they do tend to thnk they're an awful lot smarted than they really are. Basically they're just hi-tech versions of the teenage robber who threw his jacket away when he escaped with his library card in the pocket or the one who threw away his cap with his name written inside - both real cases from the old days in Belfast.

"agents later seized about $36 million in cryptocurrency from wallet(s) on that server."

That shouldn't worry Jubair. He's not going to get a chance to spend it anyway.

Word to the wise: Don't tell your IT manager they're not in Excel

Re: Temp Users Are Skum

About 3 days into my IT career I was parachuted into a client site where one of the two company bods had just left to go freelance. They knew what rate we were being body-shopped at. Very shortly the other one left as well & I quickly became team leader on the site. It took a long time to rebuild* the finances after a long time as SSO in the Civil Service to be able to make a move like that.

" Build might be more accurate.

Re: "Surely an IT manager should know the difference between Word and Excel?"

the reason for moving from one building to another was quoted as "better snacks"

What's wrong with that? It's obviously one of the better reasons.

Re: "Surely an IT manager should know the difference between Word and Excel?"

The real clue is probably "Manager".

Re: Labor Hire Company?

The technical term in freelancing is "pimp" although I've also heard of them referred to as "agents".

Re: Even worse...

There's an alternative view that it's with the existence of OLE that the problems start.

I hope he was professional to the last and fully wrote up the ticket so that anyone who needed to would be able to be aware of the correct solution in case of a recurrence of the problem.

Court lets NSF keep swinging axe at $1B in research grants

It's going to take the US a long time to recover. America's being made a great third world failed state.

One token to pwn them all: Entra ID bug could have granted access to every tenant

undocumented impersonation tokens called "Actor tokens"

Remind me again how one of Linux's weaknesses is that it doesn't have something something Active Directory something something logins something something company wide something 1000s of users something.

Charities warn Ofcom too soft on Online Safety Act violators

Will the stakeholders include those who have given personal data to the age verifiers and may have concerns abut security? As the likes of Kidron have this extended to more sources of information such as Wikipedia* it's likely to become an issue for all of us.

* If the kids are using it to research their English history homework they're likely to come across a lot of distressing material.

British spreadsheet wizard will take mad skillz to Vegas after taking national Excel crown

One day he'll discover RDBMS and may never recover.

Microsoft boasts about humongous datacenter on abandoned Foxconn site in Wisconsin

"Foxconn initially promised 30,000 jobs, then reduced that number to 13,000, and ultimately delivered just 281."

How many does it take to run a data centre?

"Foxconn abandoned the project ... Badger State locals wondering if they were going to get hosed again,"

And once the AI bubble bursts it may well happen again.

Re: Wisconsin - used to be known for dairy and nice people

They'll need batteries to keep the power on at nights. I hope they weren't planning to get them from Georgia.