Posts by Doctor Syntax

Trump eyes up to 100% tariffs on foreign semiconductors, TSMC in crosshairs

He probably doesn't know that. Yet.

His voters probably don't know that. Yet.

When they find out, what are they going to do? Not vote from him again? That doesn't matter, he's got the vote he wanted.

Re: What fucking dipshits

"the only conceivable short-term outcome is massive economic collapse"

I doubt it will be just short-term. The US is looking more and more like a failed state.

Sounds good.

It does indeed. A strong dose of reality is just what the US needs. And that PC refresh MS was hoping would bring about W11 uptake suddenly looks a long way away.

I wonder what his voters will think when they discover who really pays tariffs. Of course he doesn't care, he's got his four years. Who needs voters?

US freezes foreign aid, halting cybersecurity defense and policy funds for allies

Re: What Trump doesnt realize

"WE are the ones paying for those patents!"

Well, then, you're the mugs being mugged.

Re: Progress

"by the stupiest way possible"

Don't be hasty. He's only just started.

Re: Inmates and asylums come to mind

It is the inmates.

Re: "Soft" Power

One of the many problems with politicians is that when they legislate (I use the term in its loosest sense to include US presidential executive orders) that they can't actually control how everyone will respond to them. Bearing in mind that the rest of the world is bigger than the US (it really is, you know) that should be of some concern. The next 4 years will undoubtedly leave the US poorer but probably not wiser.

US AI shares battered, bruised, and holding after yesterday's DeepSeek beating

"After all, if China can do it on the cheap in the face of sanctions"

Not in the face of sanctions but because of them. If you force someone to go their own way you shouldn't be surprised if they do. It's amazing how legislators never work out how the populus is going to respond in reality instead of in theory.

Google Maps to roll out Trump-approved Denali and Gulf of Mexico rebrands

Re: Not for the developed world, shirley

The rest of the world might start reporting it as an error.

Windows 10's demise nears, but Linux is forever

Re: Please stop old-bashing

"can't really get the hang of a mobile phone"

Not surprising I regard them as the spawn of the devil, despite my time in that industry providing the biggest contribution to my pension. Just look who's behind them.

Should have pointed out that that's why both Cinnamon & Mate both exist although with somewhat different scopes

Re: I agree with the majority of the article...

"I don't doubt that plenty of people's grand-folks are happy on linux, this is likely because all IT is confusing to the average elderly person so it's no more difficult to teach them to use a nix machine than a Windows PC or a Mac."

My grandchildrens' grandfather is happy on Linux because he's been using Unix from 7th Ed in the 1980s through various System III & V and prior to Linux on the laptop it was SCO Openserver 5 with development tools for Informix. Informix, although not much used these days, is still on the Linux laptop.

Windows, OTOH, has become a pain. W2K was more or less OK (did some development on that) but since then it's been downhill all the way.

Do not think we haven't all used computers in the past. They've been in offices for quite a while now.

Re: You may be preaching to

"How does one convince Gnome based users to see the true light: KDE?"

You don't if it works for them, it works for them. the same applies to the opposite proposition.

Re: Most requirements are pretty basic.

Oops. does it nicely,

Re: If Linux is so secure...

Why aren't those firewalls running Windows?

And "consumers" can't complain, they "don't pay" - what they want?? Adapt and shut up.

ROFLMAO. "Adapt and shut up" is exactly Microsoft's attitude to its paying customers.

Re: Most requirements are pretty basic.

"Anything more complex than Wordpad is usually a source of confusion as no document more complicated than a business letter is ever contemplated - so Libreoffice is not the greatest option here."

People may have wider needs than business letters (and I fail to see what you have against LO for that). I have a number of friends who write local history books.

I'm even working on one myself when not wasting too much time here. As I like to keep discussion of a map or photograph on the same double-page spread as the image it really needs proper word processing to do that as the text frequently needs to be expanded or précised to achieve that. I discarded the idea of using a eparate layout application very quickly. LibreOffice dies it nicely.

Re: 23 years and counting

"Anyway, LibreOffice obviously cannot do anything like that, but for home users that's irrelevant."

You would probably need the online version for that: https://www.collaboraonline.com/

I wonder, however, if what you describe, and even more so the OP, should take a look at how a lot of FOSS projects work - with a maintainer/editor responsible for the actual updates to the main document. Also whether flat file version of the relevant Open Documant Format would be better (it's a save option from LO) combined with something like git for version control.

Think again about cars. Do you want a sports car or one to carry a family with 5 children? A motorway cruiser, a city car or one to negotiate the half-mile farm track to your home? Is it the smallest car possible or one to carry 3 large dogs in the back? There are a load of options to make and they're all, actually part of the user interface. The user interface is more than the controls.

Now it's true that Windows only has two choices of UI: take it or take it. But those choices seem to change frequently, not just from 7 to 8 to 10 to 11 but in between as well as their marketing department decides to drop more stuff, be it advertising or various AI wheezes, on a monthly basis, again on a take it or take it basis.

You might be prepared to suck that up but for my own purposes I don't want to have to keep tinkering to get rid of unwanted stuff - if that's possible - from month to month or something completely different every few years. And while I might want - and get - a solid daily driver others might want the option to tinker. That's where choice comes in and it's a lot better to have it than not.

Re: All true, but one thing must really be mentioned

"for those who think Linux is for youngsters, I'm turning 71 next month"

You are a youngster.

Fairy Nuff

After I'd written the above it did occur to me that it might have actually been a post about systemd and a smart moderator but apparently not so.

Re: I agree with the majority of the article...

"You obviously DO NOT HAVE a teenage Daughter ... or Son !!!"

Correct. I have a teenage granddaughter and grandson instead.

Granddaughter discusses sewing - which is definitely cool - with SWMBO on an almost mutual level. According to her, her boyfriend - a history student - finds out local history website cool.

"As soon as you 'ASK'"

Did you note the verb I actually used in the OP?

"How on earth are the general public supposed to know the difference and make an informed choice? Yes, I get it's all *nix, but most people aren't and don't want to be techies, just like most people who drive a car have no interest in and couldn't tell you about torque points or what "revs" actually means, or the relative effects of different PSIs."

And yet I observe that the general public are able to make informed choices about different makes and model of cars and do so. They are also capable of driving them.

Your provide a compelling argument for the general public being able to use Linux. Thank you.

Re: Please stop old-bashing

"People now in their 70s and 80s literally invented computers and computing."

Not quite. That was an even earlier generation. We've just been using them for the last 50-odd years.

"makes comments about 70 year old nan's using it pointless"

I can't supply a 70 year old nan as counter evidence but a CiL in her 90s has been using Zorin for some years now. Unfortunately neither of her own children have produced offspring so she's not "nan". What's more, her children in their 50s are also able to use it. SWMBO is a grandmother but I'm not allowed to divulge her age; like me she uses Devuan or, as she's apt to express it, Google or SeaMonkey.

Re: Sky Sports

"Or I consider OwnCloud again after a good few years since I last looked,"

Or the NextCloud fork. You can run it nicely on a Pi locally which is what I do or you can get remote hosting. There's also a client to keep whatever directories you choose synced.

Re: Couple of things that need to be set straight

The alternativesto site will find other suites some of which are loser in appearance to more recent MS Office suites and I believe at least one of my local history group members uses one - on Windows.

That's one of the advantages of Linux. You have a choice of user interface and once you've made that choice it doesn't radically change between versions.

Perhaps the Linux Foundation should sue them for libel. Unfortunately that's unlikely because the membership includes Meta.

Re: I agree with the majority of the article...

Get your teenage daughter to be that Linfluencer.

Security pros more confident about fending off ransomware, despite being battered by attacks

"Ransomware is more pervasive and impactful than ever, with more organizations forced to suspend operations or experiencing major business failure because of attacks," - Trevor Dearing, Director of Critical Infrastructure at Illumio, which sponsored the research.

So why are they more confident of fending off attacks?

Google takes action after coder reports 'most sophisticated attack I've ever seen'

Re: “The scammers called Latta”

"drop into a branch"

That's a reason for suspicion. If a branch can be found the staff are seriously disempowered.

Re: Don't believe it if you are called

" Why would he believe Google is calling him WITH A LIVE CALLER about a possible account compromise? Do they do that in real life?"

I'm told Microsoft do it frequently. Unfortunately I've never received such a call. BT did call once, very interesting seeing as I have BT on my CV...

"modern solutions to phishing such as passkeys,"

Following the link to the previous article on passkeys I find "The website uses the stored public key to authenticate the user."

With scams the problem isn't the website authenticating the user, it's the user authenticating the website, emailer, caller or whatever. As another commentard said above, a one- email address per merchant helps with that. Not a complete solution but it's the starting point.

It would help greatly if is were made a criminal offence for companies to email links to login pages to customers. Any company that takes the security of its customers seriously would do that and emphasis to them that any email purporting to do so is a scam. I suppose the practical limitation to doing that voluntarily will be getting the message through to marketing. Once it's a criminal offence marketing can be told that the individual offender will carry the can.

Meta blocked Distrowatch links on Facebook while running Linux servers

Re: Zuckerberg makes a speech declaring a new era of free speech on Facebook 7.1.25

"Musk levels of hypocrisy"

doubly so given that Meta is a member of the Linux Foundation.

Re: openKylin

I wondered whether it might have been about systemd.

Could you explain what makes openKilin somehat-shady?

DeepSeek limits new accounts amid cyberattack

Re: LOL

In order to censor things there need to be people who know what's supposed to be censored. Asking more and more indirect questions about censored topics is going to result in more people in China having to research them. Interesting corollary.

Re: The result has been a selloff in AI stocks.

"While HP did buy the guy a yacht"

Insisted on it. Or rather one guy in HP did, refusing due diligence, all because of FOMO.

Well, that didn't take long.

AI facial recognition could sink this murder probe

Re: Detective Inspector Artie Ficial reporting for duty.

The problem as always is not the tools, it's the fools tools using them.

FTFY

Re: "Clearview doesn't want to come defend its technology in court"

Firearms identification wasn't my area* however I note that the tests were based on new firearms and the whole basis of marks examination is that an object which makes a mark picks up unique characteristics over the course of time so that an old object will leave a mark with more identifying characteristics than a new one.

It also concerns me that a lot of effort in these reports seems to have gone into the inconclusive responses. To my way of thinking there are only three possible responses to a comparison: they could match, they couldn't match and I can't draw a conclusion. The last shouldn't really affect the court's decision. Also, "could" and "couldn't" carry very different levels of confidence. If a particular blood sample couldn't have come from some particular person the court could reasonably decide it didn't. If it could that doesn't mean must have** and the court should take into consideration that it could also have come from many other people and should be provided with frequency figures to decide whether, in the particular circumstances of the case, that was likely.

But returning to this case - "thinking" the gun was responsible shouldn't be enough. Thinking isn't evidence and if that's all they were offering it suggests they didn't have evidence or even that they had evidence agianst them.

* Fortunately. One of the very few times I was asked to look at a firearm for some other purpose it turned out to have been booby-trapped. That was spotted by the colleague who examined it. A similarly booby-trapped forearm exploded and killed two police officers who'd opened it.

** I have experienced prosecution trying to drag "could have" on a hair sample into "must have". The FBI had a reputation for claiming great success in matching hair. I couldn't understand it because I never found it very conclusive. I later read that a proper investigation trashed that reputation. The only situation where I found hair examination could become conclusive was in the identification of three very badly burned bodies where a sample recovered from one was compared with samples from the hair brushes of the known victims and fortunately could only have come from one.

I have had a case which involved bite mark evidence to put a suspect at the scene although I didn't make the comparison - a dental expert did that. I wouldn't call it fringe except insofar as there are few cases where it's applicable. I'd also limit it to situations where the bite marks are of a quality comparable with those from tool marks or ballistics. That would exclude bite injuries on a victim.

DeepSeek's R1 curiously tells El Reg reader: 'My guidelines are set by OpenAI'

Re: I can't think of anything more stupid and inefficient

We should be looking forward to the whole thing imploding. We need an icon for that.

"do people feel comfortable sharing their data, documents, and potentially sensitive information with a new entrant with a Chinese background?"

I suppose it depends on the attitudes of the people. As so many seem comfortable with sharing - or just haven't realised that's they are doing - such matters with companies with well-known backgrounds that show them to be predatory, then they may well. Those who aren't comfortable with the LLM status quo won't.

WINE 10 is still not an emulator, but Windows apps won't know the difference

Re: MS-Windows "Proprietary Malware" On My Linux System

"It's quite bizarre to pay for a copy of software that doesn't serve you, or even to run such even if you got a copy gratis."

You have utterly missed the point that OP has already paid for the software which does what they want and by choice wihes to continue using it.

You cannot rationally argue for freedom to choose by denying freedom to choose.

">my Linux laptop

That is a proprietary kernel, thus such laptop isn't yours."

WTF?????????

I'm guessing you're a recent convert to/discoverer of FOSS.

Citrix slated to axe its Technology Professional program

Probably abut to launch an AI assistant. Good luck with that.

AI agents? Yes, let's automate all sorts of things that don't actually need it

"...linked to Booking.com."

The use of booking.com and the like exactly the sort of thing for which automation would be useful - to open the mailbox address dedicated to it long enough for any transaction-related mail through and then slam it shut again. It's a chore but an essential one. Spam filtering will just waste excessive amounts of CPU power and some would still get through.

Astronomers red-faced after mistaking Musk's Tesla Roadster for asteroid

ISTR there was a site tracking a floating tool-bag.

Tech stocks tank as US AI dominance no longer a sure bet

Re: You can almost hear the bubble bursting.

"clawing it back if you changed your mind"

No chance. Once it's gone it's gone. You might get a discounted deal for data centre capacity.

They've still got a long way to fall. But give them a little time...