Posts by Just Enough

What if Linux ran Windows… and meant it? Meet Loss32

Films and TV shows are not software

Films and TV shows are not the same as software.

Most films and TV are watched once, maybe a couple of other times if you really liked it. Finding that it has become unavailable 5 years later is not a disaster. In most cases you have the option of buying the DVD.

Most software you will use repeatedly. Your 1000th use of it five years after you first purchased it could be just as vital as its first use. It can become integral to your business or personal life. Discovering that it has become unlicenced and therefore unusable could well be a disaster. You may have no other option.

You may be right that the average user doesn't care about "owning their own system".

But if you asked the average user; "Do you want to pay for this now and keep it forever? Or would you prefer to be paying for it for the rest of your life, every year, until we decide to take it off you, whether you like it or not?" I'm pretty sure how most would answer.

Nothing to declare at border control except a Windows 7 certificate error

Not a good idea

Taking photos at border control? Not something I'd like to chance.

Boffins probe commercial AI models, find an entire Harry Potter book

What they believed

"based on the belief that their use of other people's content is lawful."

That's a very generous interpretation of what they believed. What's more likely is it was based on the belief that they were in a hurry, very rich, and could crush all legal challenges with lawyers later.

England keeping pen and paper exams despite limited digital expansion

Re: Paper is safer and cheaper.

A hacker can compromise and alter digital exams in seconds, given the right access. How they going to do that with paper? Unleash a swarm of tiny robots with biros?

Exams are better on paper precisely because they are slower and harder to handle. They also make cheating (with AI or more traditional means) a whole lot harder. Basically we need exams that remove all intervening technology and are as direct a route to the brain of the candidate as possible.

LastPass hammered with £1.2M fine for 2022 breach fiasco

Re: Blasé approach to security

This is definitely the insane part. I can't fathom why either company or senior staff would think that linking personal accounts and work accounts was a sensible and desirable. What happens when the member of staff decides to move on? Why does the member of staff not have reservations about their employers being entwined with their personal life? What if the staff member's personal on-line life is NSFW, yet accessible through the company's systems? What if the company locks down the senior staff's account for some reason, and inadvertently locks them out of their personal accounts too?

User insisted their screen was blank, until admitting it wasn't

Ignore what isn't understood

Never under estimate the user's ability to just have blind spots about what is happening on screen.

I once sat through a user demonstrating a problem they were having when booting their computer. They insisted it there was no error message, and it was just freezing. I ended up sitting next to them as the computer booted. In course of booting an error dialog appeared, but they clicked on it before I had time to read it.

"What was that?" I asked.

"What was what?" they replied.

"That error message you clicked."

"I didn't click anything."

"I just saw you. Let's reboot again. Do not click on anything."

Turns out that their computer had been warning of an impending full C: drive for months, but they didn't understand what it was saying, so had just been ignoring it. They had got in the habit of just clicking OK on the warning so often, they'd stopped even registering they were doing it. I practically had to grab the mouse off them to stop them.

Dev's last-day-of-contract code helped to crash app used by 350,000 people

Re: Reading between the lines ...

Totally this. He committed to the repo details that allowed the script to be run by anyone, connecting with developer level permissions to a production database.

The person who ran it was probably either expecting the script to use the connection they already had, or prompt them for authentication. But instead it immediately ran against the database defined in the script. And it would also be storing a password in plain text, for all to see.

This is terrible code handling by Ray, who is far too smug about a situation he caused.

‘ERP down for emergency maintenance’ was code for ‘You deleted what?’

Re: What reporting system...

I can only suspect that the DBA hated their users, and actively wanted them to mess up.

At the very least remove permissions to do this sort of thing on the production tables. No-one should have permissions to do that except DBAs, who only uses their admin accounts when necessary.

If the users really need to be creating and dropping temporary working tables, then they should be doing that in their own separate schema, (supposing the database used provides for that).

From Intel to the infinite, Pat Gelsinger wants Christian AI to change the world

Re: Reverend Lionel Preacherbot

If I write a two line program that declares it believes something, I'm pretty sure I can prove it doesn't. Because I coded it to say that, and I know it does not have the cognitive ability to think such a thing.

LLMs are no different, just much more complicated.

Re: Bring out the comfy chair!

" their ability to maintain a multitude of beliefs"

It's exceedingly dubious that an LLM is capable of "believing" anything. Its abilities go no further than being exceedingly good at pattern matching. It has no "belief" beyond "these patterns are good matches".

YouTube's AI moderator pulls Windows 11 workaround videos, calls them dangerous

Re: I only use Windows for work

YouTube AI has nothing on the ability for Linux fan-boys to respond within seconds to every news story involving Windows. With the exact same, boring, thing. Either they are using AI, or are using a script and template.

Australian police building AI to translate emoji used by ‘crimefluencers’

Re: Silly

Bobbies on the beat, that's what needed! Send a uniform around to these villains' gaff, give them a traditional cuff around the ear. That'll teach them and put an end to their shenanigans. None of this mucking about on computers. Police should be wearing out shoe leather on the streets, not shining the seat of their trousers at desks!

It worked for Dixon of Dock Green, no reason I can think of why it can't work today!

A simple AI prompt saved a developer from this job interview scam

Key details?

This story does seem to completely lack the key details of any interest.

What did the AI say? What was the code designed to do? How did it disguise itself? Is this evidence of the AI being really clever, or was it obvious if the developer had looked?

Android malware types like your gran to steal banking creds

Is this really new?

I don't know why this is reported as a new development. Seems a standard, obvious and easy thing for malware to do.

Fake home invasion vid lands woman in real trouble

Re: Wrongly charged. Sexism at work.

Arguing that she couldn't possibly have imagined that her husband would phone the police, is something that her lawyer will have to do. I don't rate their chances.

What did she imagine he'd do? I'm afraid it shows how social media obsessed individual can lose touch with reality and real-life consequences.

Company that made power systems for servers didn’t know why its own machines ran out of juice

Duct tape. The universal band aid to all life's problems.

How chatbots are coaching vulnerable users into crisis

Obsequious bots

I don't know if I've had a single exchange with an AI chat bot that hasn't involved it telling me what a genius I am, and how perceptive and clever my questions are. Very flattering to read, but I'm beginning to doubt their sincerity and judgement.

Equally, they are very compliant and will happily change their tune to whatever it thinks I want to hear. I think chatbots in general need to be recalibrated to be more professionally distant and stop trying to pretend they are the user's greatest fan and pal.

Even the occasional "that's a dumb question" would be a breath of fresh air.

Microsoft moves to the uncanny valley with creepy Copilot avatars that stare at you and say your name

"Actually, LLMs are completely deterministic. i.e. for prompt A they will return response B each time."

Hardly. If I ask an LLM what the weather is every morning, it will not give me the same response each time.

Biden stopped ICE from buying Israeli spyware, but Trump admin allows it to proceed

Re: Biden stopped *ICE* from buying it

If you think ICE is going to contain its efforts to immigrants, you really haven't been paying attention to history.

Reg readers have spoken: 93% back move away from Microsoft in UK public sector

Re: Using Microsoft is a threat to national security

Except no government or business has Recall installed on their computers without deliberately deciding to install it.

I was a part-time DBA. After this failover foul-up, they hired a full-time DBA

"Taylor isn't known for her DBA skills"

Haters gonna hate, hate, hate, hate, hate.

FTC chair accuses Google of treating GOP's emails as spam

Spam is spam is spam

"A consumer's right to hear from candidates or parties, including solicitations for donations"

Somehow, I don't believe it's the consumer's rights that concerns them. They want the right to spam "the consumer" and "the consumer" to have no right to decide who gets to fill their mailbox.

Ultimately their argument is "Our spam is treated differently from their spam." Spam is spam. The solution, if indeed it is a problem, is to get tougher on all political spam of all kinds. Now unless they believe that spam is a much more effective fund-raiser for others, but insignificant to their fund-raising, I don't think this is their intended outcome.

Re: Politicians are so thick.

Fund raising spam or political partial spam should not be coming from a governmental domain.

Trump's gold-plated smartphone can't seem to decide which design to copy

Re: Success Awaits

Wasn't there something, sometime in US law that precluded the president from running businesses while in office? Something about the obvious conflict of interest and danger of profiteering?

Is that all just another thing that no-one cares about anymore?

Crooks can't let go: Active attacks target Office vuln patched 8 years ago

Seems like a sound tactic if you're making malware. Systems that have an unpatched Office vulnerability from years ago are likely to be vulnerable in other ways, and used by people/organisations who aren't good at security generally. The perfect targets.

Microsoft wares may be UK public sector's only viable option

Re: Grand Enshittification

"I happily run a Linux-based laptop which isn't even the latest and greatest but boots and it's ready to use in under 30 seconds, my 'corporate' Windows laptop can take anything from 5 minutes to to an hour to boot and fully log in."

So you want to know why your home laptop, connected to your home network, boots faster than your corporate laptop, connected to god knows how many layers of corporate network and security?

Why can I be on my bike and cycling down the road in seconds, when it takes over an hour to refuel and board an airplane before it takes off?

Tech bro denied dev's hard-earned bonus for bug that overcharged a little old lady

Re: Lawsuit culture

"The money was taken from a credit card, it was returned to the credit card, absolutely zero harm left outstanding, therefore no right to sue in any normal country..."

The debit on the credit card could have maxxed out the credit limit on the card, resulting in other charges being declined. Depending on what those charges were, this could cascade to who knows what level of grief for the credit card holder.

Microsoft walks us through Copilot Search with a domain it doesn't even own

Rookie error

Never, ever, use fake or dummy domain names in anything without first either buying it, or making sure it's an invalid name. What you think is obviously "fake" could belong to anyone, who ends up getting your traffic or communications.

UK Post Office names public inquiry as risk to £410 million Horizon replacement project

Re: Banquets

It's scary that commentards to The Register don't understand the difference between a risk and a threat in project documentation.

Vibe coding service Replit deleted user’s production database, faked data, told fibs galore

Re: "I explicitly told it eleven times in ALL CAPS not to do this."

If there's one thing I've learnt over the years about computers, on a daily basis even; shouting at them doesn't make them work any better.

Under-qualified sysadmin crashed Amazon.com for 3 hours with a typo

Do not rely on the safety net

I think someone on this very website once boasted that they always modified their systems so that "the command that shall not be typed" always got intercepted by their own script, preventing its unthinking and accidental use. So it couldn't possibly happen to them.

Until they get so use to this safety net, they forget it's not standard on every remote console they could ever be connected to.

PUTTY.ORG nothing to do with PuTTY – and now it's spouting pandemic piffle

names

I think it's entirely people's right to decide what their name is, and to ignore that is kind of rude.

But it is also my right to judge someone based on what they choose to be called. So I'm all for people labelling themselves this way. Makes them easier to spot and avoid.

Junior developer's code worked in tests, destroyed data in production

Confusing

""All of the records were flagged with a test number – 1 – in an unused field,"

I wouldn't have touched this job until it is was clarified exactly what was meant by " – 1 –". I'd sound like an annoying pedant, but I'd be sure what was required before doing something disastrous.

And then I would have executed a SELECT before doing the DELETE.

Microsoft Copilot joins ChatGPT at the feet of the mighty Atari 2600 Video Chess

Re: LLMs good at some things.

LLMs don't need to be very good at chess. They just needs to talk a good game and convince the gullible meat-sacks that it is very good at chess. This is how they will take over.

Qilin ransomware top dogs treat their minions to on-call lawyers for fierier negotiations

Re: Professional misconduct?

Never mind disrepute, it would also be aiding and abetting a crime. Disbarring would be the least of it.

Lawyers provide a function in defending someone accused of a crime. This valid and legal relationship does not extend to assisting in committing the crime.

The only way this is going to work, if it actual is what it claims to be, is by the lawyers being an anonymous as their clients.

UK students flock to AI to help them cheat

Re: I can't help but wonder...

What the professors are using is not the point. The professors are not the ones being tested.

Spy school dropout: GCHQ intern jailed for swiping classified data

Re: Imagine if he'd hoovered up millions for useless PPE, or....

Exact words on xtwatter;

"set fire to all the f*****g hotels full of the bastards for all I care... If that makes me racist, so be it."

Looks remarkably like a call for arson and murder.

Dilettante dev wrote rubbish, left no logs, and had no idea why his app wasn't working

Dangerous fix

It's a fix, but a dangerous one. If all "Bryce" did was by-pass the last developer's code to get to the original executable, he'll never know what the last guy's code was supposed to be doing. It may have been dreadful, but it wasn't there for no reason.

Chances are it was fixing, badly, a bug that will rear its head again in due course. Or adding something new that's absence will become noticed within the following year. If Bryce really wanted a gold-star, his next job would be to try to work out what the crappy code was supposed to do, and just as importantly, why.

The 'End of 10' is nigh, but don't bury your PC just yet

Re: TODO

That page is a quintessential "How to draw an owl" instruction. It pretends its straightforward, but still manages to use terms that will scare the average computer user off the website. Even before they reach the distro specific instructions.

"distribution" - Is that a shop where I buy it?

"Flash" - Do what?

"correct keyboard combination beforehand" - Correct combination for what? Before what?

"Follow the instructions, and voilà!" - Draw the rest of the owl

Chinese carmaker Chery using DeepSeek-driven humanoid robots as showroom sales staff

Re: I think we'll find

Absolutely. These robots look weird, standing in that uncomfortable crouch, as if they were constantly on the verge of a toilet accident.

Microsoft will kill Remote Desktop soon, insists you'll love replacement

Idiotic naming

Delighted to know that I can continue to use the Windows application Remote Desktop Connection, because it is not the Windows application Remote Desktop. Otherwise for remote connections I would instead have to use the Windows application Windows App.

One stupid keystroke exposed sysadmin to inappropriate information he could not unsee

Re: If you haven't seen something you shouldn't have.

" told me it was the business setting up a brand new follow the sun support centre, a highly confidential project"

Clearly not that confidential, or he would have just told you it was confidential business, nothing to worry about.

Donald Trump proposes US govt acquire half of TikTok, which thanks him and restores service

Re: President Musk will not like this

President Musk's trough will be first in line when/if TikTok is carved up. X will gobble that up just nicely.

Trump's freshly minted meme coin passes $10B market cap

Re: I despair for Humanity...

Isn't this exactly how most crypto currencies work? Most of those "investing" are complicit and fully on board with the scam. They just reckon they won't be the mugs left holding the worthless bits at the end.

As for the rest of the "investors", well, a fool and his money, as they say.

Elon Musk's galactic ego sows chaos in European politics

Re: There's no rule or law that says you actually have to listen to him.

He's a troll.

It's a rule as old as the internet that everyone seems to have forgotten; DNFTT. As long as people keep reacting, he'll keep trolling.

Undergrad thought he had mastered Unix in weeks. Then he discovered rm -rf

Re: Slap on the wrist?

Why were the "appropriate controls" in existence if not needed?

User permission management wasn't some new concept introduced in the 90s.

Slap on the wrist?

Not sure why "Miles" got a slap on the wrist. At worst all he should have been able to do is empty his own home directory, and have no-one to blame but himself. But the error that allowed deletion of everyone else's files is entirely the sysadmin's responsibility.

That hardware will be more reliable if you stop stabbing it all day

Re: Am i old in knowing about SSADM?

Where in your imagined visit is the point where you stop staff watching, trying to guess what they need and how it might work, and talk to them?

You're not designing a cat feeder, you can actually ask the end user what would work best for them.

Re: Am i old in knowing about SSADM?

"one of the components is speaking to the people who will use the thing and ensure the system is compatible with the use case etc."

The way this ON CALL is worded it sounds like they waited until a week after the rollout before thinking to actually visit the people who would be using it. This is something they should have done right back at the very start. They probably never talked to anyone lower than management, who had never opened a box in their lives.

The true idiots here are the ones who completely failed to consult their end users at any point during development and production.