Posts by DarkwavePunk

Luggable datacenter: startup straps handles to server with 4 H200 GPUs

Re: Compaq Portable

I have a crooked spine to this day...

Oof

Sounds excessive, but something like that for CFD, Finite Element Analysis, etc... in the field would be batshit insane for geomechanics, Motorsport, you name it. Probably weighs as much as an early luggable, GPS, and mobile phone.

'PromptQuest' is the worst game of 2025. You play it when trying to make chatbots work

Re: hmmm

I hope you're talking about the C= 64 version of The Hobbit. Some well-meaning friend of the family gave me a copy on tape as a gift. Minor problem - I had a Vic-20. This did not work. So I've never finished it, but for different reasons.

Wait

Wait for PromptQuest the MUD. We can all enjoy the shit show together while dodging prompt injecting Player Killers looking to grief you. A glorious future.

Windows is testing a new, wider Run dialog box. Here’s how to try it

Re: Blimey

How sensible. How long did it take to get cut and paste error messages from a dialogue box? Is that even universal yet? The ability to resize input fields is some crazy future technology.

Re: Blimey

Too bloody right. I used to have a mutant tiny terminal in the top left as a sticky window in FVWM. That, focus follows mouse and sloppy focus made for a useful but minimalist launcher.

Blimey

Seems a bit of a faff for not much return. If I do use Windows, the run dialogue is very useful but I'm not sure a slightly wider bar makes much difference. It's usually cut'n'paste into it or total muscle memory without looking. How odd.

Memory is running out, and so are excuses for software bloat

Re: Lovely idea - no chance of it ever happening

I had a fully functional professional suite of CAD, 3D modelling, rendering, and animation that ran on an 8MHz Atari with 1MB of RAM. Sure, 2-4 times that would have been needed for broadcast, but it's still bonkers.

NIST contemplated pulling the pin on NTP servers after blackout caused atomic clock drift

NTP

NTP is utterly batshit insane. Most people just connect to a server or two or a pool and forget about it. Dive deeper into the protocol and Lovecraftian eldritch horror greets you. I say this as someone who wrote a text adventure using DNS voodoo. NTP is on another level of witchcraft.

NS&I tech overhaul blows past Treasury spending limits

The same story

Every single time it's the same clowns and the same result. A bingo card of mega outsourcing companies with a track record of fucking everything up. There must be something dodgy going on. It's not like there isn't a paper trail of failure.

Isaacman finally confirmed as NASA boss after Trump derailed first attempt

Good

I think this is a sensible appointment. His STEM work off his own back/money is laudable. I don't think his relationship with SpaceX is problematic - rather pragmatic. As least he's not some weirdo right-wing podcaster with no experience with aerospace, which I was expecting for a nomination from this administration. Maybe I'm being overly optimistic, but it could be much worse.

NATO's battle for cloud sovereignty: Speed is existential

Re: Three years ago

And the continuation war. Perkele. The Finns are hard bastards with an unfortunate border. No, I'm not talking about you Sweden - we love-hate you.

Re: Three years ago

I was in Estonia just after the Crimea annexation and asked the locals whether they thought it would destabilise the region and if it was a threat to them. The general consensus was "No" at the time. That changed over the years. My Finnish mates on the other hand were pretty much "Those fucking Russians" from day one. Europe is slowly waking up to threats but I really hope the slumber hasn't been too long.

Roomba maker iRobot gets cleaned out in Chapter 11

Re: Spyware

My main problem with these robot vacuum cleaners is that your house/room has to be so clean and tidy for them to actually work that a bit of manual sweeping is trivial. Totally negates any advantage.

Uncle Sam sues ex-Accenture manager over Army cloud security claims

Accenture

I'm going to be vague for "reasons", but seeing Accenture in this pickle is not surprising. Allegedly. In my opinion.

Crisis in Icebergen: How NATO crafts stories to sharpen cyber skills

RPG

Now that sounds like a pretty epic roleplaying game. Glad you got to be a bit of a fly on the wall. Also, Tallinn is bloody wonderful.

Window Maker Live 13.2 brings 32-bit life to Debian 13

Re: Impressive

Forgot about AfterStep. Thanks for reminding me of that option. Never got that to work exactly as I wanted either. One day I'll have my fake NeXT cube. I'll probably be disappointed as with most things "retro"

Impressive

I rather liked the NeXTstep/Open step WM/DE back in the day. Tried to get Window Maker and GNUstep to play nicely decades ago with varying success. It's partially nostalgia, but the NeXTstep style still seems elegant to me.

Google's AI training tactics land it in another EU antitrust fight

Innovation

I can pilfer your content as long as I'm rich enough. For some reason I have "I'm The Slime" by Frank Zappa playing through my head whenever I hear this drivel.

Defra admits Windows 10 refresh letter to MPs was wrong – machines were already on Windows 11

Hah!

I used to know someone who worked at DEFRA. This doesn't surprise me. The daily tales of shambolic process woes were almost comical.

HSBC partners with Mistral AI as banking giants spend billions looking for LLM boost

Crazy

I worked in online stockbroking, hedge funds, and corporate insurance in the past. This sounds like a horror show to an old systems architect like me. These industries require some crazy levels of system validation. Now they somehow think this will work and improve revenue? Balls.

TryHackMe races to add women to Christmas cyber challenge roster after backlash

What?

So they did try to invite female security experts but either didn't hear back or they couldn't fit it in their schedule. That and there are a limited number of women in the field with a broad reach. The idea that the men that did accept should have looked into the makeup of the panel and quit in protest because it wasn't diverse enough seems a bit silly.

FCC sounds alarm after emergency tones turned into potty-mouthed radio takeover

Yet...

Funding for cyber security keeps getting cut at a federal level. It's a bit of a mess.

Tiny tweak for Pi OS, big makeover for the Imager

Props

Thanks for the nice shout out to Plan9 and Inferno OS. Played with both back in the day. Very impressive stuff. The core architecture is pretty elegant. The Acme editor/environment is a complete mind fuck though.

Trump wants to turn it on again with 'Genesis Mission' for AI in science

Re: Hmmm

You are of course correct on that. "AI" just gets bandied about so much. The stuff like fusion and materials science is ML and useful. We used to call it Data Mining or Big Data and the like. It's more advanced now but the stupid AI umbrella term seems to have stuck. Excuse me while I go and yell at clouds.

Hmmm

I wonder how many of these resources will be appropriated from Earth sciences, NOAA etc that the current administration has ideological issues with. More science sounds good, but something is going to get gutted. Also spaffing "AI" all over the place and the mention of large data sets makes my skin crawl.

This Thanksgiving, top your turkey with Cranberry sOSS to fund open source

Re: sOSS

I honestly read it as a "pun" on SOS. Like it was "Cranberry Help". Maybe it's cleverer than I thought - or I'm just overthinking things in a pub after five pints.

sOSS

Wow. Thanks for the explanation. I would never have read that as "sauce". Interesting.

Microsoft wedges tables into Notepad for some reason

Re: They broke it.

Agreed. If they wanted to do all this bullshit it would have been better to do it to Wordpad. The only useful additions to Notepad was the whole CR/CRLF thing and maybe UTF.

SpaceX loses debut V3 Super Heavy in ground test mishap

Re: Test stand

As with many things, the engineering feats should be celebrated despite which cockwomble happens to nominally own the company.

Re: Test stand

573 successful orbital launches (full mission) to 1. Blue Origin was started before SpaceX. Think they have some catching up to do.

Test stand

Well, now they have more data. Kinda what it's all about. They churn these things out at an insane rate. Agree or not with the development cycle ethos, it does what it is meant to. As an aside, the constant putting Musk so prominently in SpaceX news is a bit silly. Fuck him, who cares? Hats off to all the talented engineers.

You are likely to be eaten by the MIT license: Microsoft frees Zork source

Re: Adventureland

VIC-20. I never finished Voodoo Mansion. Bloody hell that parser was the worst I've ever seen in a text adventure. Tried playing it again in an emulator some time time ago. Not worth the high blood pressure.

Re: I member.

I was lucky enough to have a hex editor. Searching through gibberish looking for something that might possibly be a string was a rite of passage. Beer for you regarding the assembly. Me too dumb.

Ahead of its time

Z-machine was a marvel of design. Such a clever solution with the limited resources of the day. So many fond memories.

Apple’s new 15% mini-app deal finally gets Tencent to cut Cupertino in

Re: Fine

Exactly this. I've worked for a few financial institutions in my time. This is entirely how such organisations view regulations.

I only skim 5% off when selling crack to children, because I'm a nice person.

By Hook or C(r)ook

All these companies are going to leech as much as possible while trying to keep regulators at bay. Malicious Compliance as always.

The Steam Machine rises again as Valve readies 2026 hardware trifecta

GN

Gamers Nexus just did a couple of really in depth reviews on the hardware behind all of these products. Well worth looking up on YT. A lot of engineering went into them. Enough to make me mildly interested.

Retro Games opens pre-orders for THEA1200, a full-size working Amiga replica

Want

I so want this, but I know it will just end up in a corner sulking at me like so many of my poor impulse control purchases before.

UK tribunal says reselling Microsoft licenses is A-OK

Re: Copyright?

The "Copyright" bullshit pivot was such an idiotic move. What the hell were they thinking? Proper head meeting desk moment.

Avalonia brings Linux, browser support to Microsoft's MAUI cross-platform app solution

Re: What?

Thanks. I'm from the early Java App era. It makes some sense but also chasing one's tail.

What?

Who asked for this? What problem is it trying to solve? I read the article, but it sounds like any other framework waffling promise.

Ironclad OS project popping out Unix-like kernel in a unique mix of languages

Re: AMOS

You seem to be correct. I just always felt like a pleb for having an ST.

Re: AMOS

I had its bastard cousin STOS for the Atari ST because I'm a peasant. Have beer, the idea tickled me and brought back fond memories.

To solve compatibility issues, Microsoft would quietly patch other people's code

I remember

There was a certain game that had a hard coded hack in the OS to make it run on 95. My brain wants to say CivII or Sim City, but memory has failed me

EU's reforms of GDPR, AI slated by privacy activists for 'playing into Big Tech’s hands'

Special exemption

So if I pirate games and all other media to "train AI" it's all fine right? Don't want to stifle innovation eh? Guess it's time to start my own company.

Here's one way to cut support ticket volume… send them to another company entirely

Nightmares

I was kind of on the other end of this. Used to get really angry (American) people phoning the help desk for a company I worked for. Couldn't work out what the fuck they were banging on about. Turned out that some American state automated toll system was called the same name as the global internet roaming company I worked for.

Sadly, rebooting Windows XP computer didn't solve their issues with some fucking toll bridge in Iowa or whatever. Other American places starting with "I" exist.

ChatGPT, Claude, and Grok make very squishy jury members

Always fun

I have tried to get multiple LLMs to answer a question about the language Motu from Papua New Guinea. It spits out gibberish in Tok Pisin. Different languages. Kill it with fire.

Bank of England says JLR's cyberattack contributed to UK's unexpectedly slower GDP growth

Re: So now we know that cyberattacks cost ...

Agreed. Security should be baked in from the beginning. Unfortunately it always seems to be bolted on after the fact. This is suboptimal and leaky as fuck. Doing things right costs money up front, not doing it right costs a fuck tonne of nightmarish horror down the line. How many times do we see this? When will it change?

'Vibe coding' named Word of the Year. Developers everywhere faceplant

Vibes

I "vibe" coded a version of the classic Breakout in one of my many local test LLMs rendered in CANVAS. It glitches out like crazy, seemed to time units wrong. It ran at speeds beyond human responses and utterly borked my VM in an infinite loop of madness.

Now, where is my hundred million sign-up bonus from one of these AI companies?