Posts by Paul Herber

Amsterdam activists throw acid at Microsoft datacenter project

Er, security services here ....

what do you know of pastic coding? That's supposed to be top secret ...

Re: Chips

Two blokes walk into a pub.

Landlord: Good evening, gentlemen. What will you have?

Bloke 1: Two pints of non-brewed condiment please, and a packet of crisps.

What a boring story.

Billing software error sends billion-dollar AWS estimates

Re: Vibe coding…?

VIBE - Very Increased Billing Expenditure

OpenAI admits GPT-5.6 occasionally deletes files – but it's an 'honest mistake'

An AI wrote the contracts, and AI checked the contracts, but the contracts were requested by an AI when the model (and it is only a model, like Camelot, a silly place) overrode a meatbag who suggested not using any AI at all! Heresy.

NASA's Artemis III will need three rockets to do the job Apollo did with one

Re: NASA's Artemis III'll need three rockets

We'll need to have a referendum to see if we'll need to have some official pedantic apostrophe monitors. Greengrocer's apostrophe's are 10/6d a pound, though asparagu's i's a bit cheaper thi's week.

Re: Return to the original plan

Amongst The Problems (ATP) is the Surplus Of Acronyms (SOA). Too Many Acronyms (TMA) can lead to Acronym Overload Syndrome (AOS).

Once In Orbit (OIO) there can be Radio Communication Problems (RCP), hence, there is an Added Layer Of Redundancy (ALOR) but this leads

to the Four Letter Acronym Problem (FLAP) but even here there are problems as there is now a Five Letter Acronym Problem (FLAP) which annoys

every pedant in the industry. They need a good Six Letter Acronym Problem (SLAP).

Re: The big problem with Artemis

When you know you know everything how can you learn lessons?

Researcher poisons open-weight AI model for under $100

"swap from camelCase for JavaScript to snake_case"

I'm not sure whether to get the hump or have a hissy fit over this.

Software bloat? This elevator needs an 8 GB Core i5

Must be an Italian cafe somewhere!

Microsoft cancels Patch Tuesday for some Dell users over surprise shutdowns, overheating devices

Re: Good job it wasn't...

Unstable Down. Sounds like some hills near Luton.

How do you solve a problem like Capita?

Reverse IR35. Problem solved.

Ministers arm under-16s social media ban with least surprising study of the year

Breakfast? Luxury.

Astronomers find sugar near the creamy center of the Milky Way (no caramel, though)

Tea

Milky Way. Sugar.

It's tea. The universe is a device for making a nice hot cup of tea.

EU and UK officially blame Russian spies for cyberattack on Poland's power grid

Re: What does Russia say about all this?

The Russians are quite likely to officially reply with one of Musk's turd emoticons.

P.S. there is no longer a word for "journalism" in Russian.

Irish datacenters now guzzle 23% of the country's electricity

23% !!! That's significantly more than an armful!!!

Slothful summer app lets you scroll simply by tilting your head

Oh Lord, let us now bow our heads in payment!

Amen.

Capita hears demand for pension scheme cleanup 'loud and clear' – but won't say yes

Re: Surge team

... and big shiny wooden boardroom tables ...

EU puts 'addictive' design of Facebook, Instagram under the DSA microscope

It would actually save the advertisers money, as they aren't showing you adverts for the crap you bought just 5 minutes ago.

Tool promises to make lazy academics' AI-written papers sound more human

Hey! You! Simplify! Now!

Samsung’s profits jump 19x in a year and you don’t need AI to figure out why

Re: Insanity...

They won't be worthless as they are issuing AIOUs!

Databricks unifies OLTP and OLAP, depending on what counts as a copy

Re: "professor of databaseology"

A horror film based on databases? That's ripe for a sequel.

Confidential computing's trust mechanism is broken. The fix may not exist

Re: Confused Old Bunny Here..........

Splitters.

New humanoid robots from China look like creepy pop star action figures – complete with slightly dodgy lip-synch

Re: Do they have names?

I can see it now, The Stellar Rovers Return ... Hilda Ogden, a real alien ...

Re: as clever as using heroin to relieve stress

It would certainly add some interest to the Oracle audit team, who probably need to find out what the word 'fun' means.

Re: The important question for most buyers

Ukraine needs to get hold of thousands of the female-dressed version and send them over to the Russian/N. Korean/Chinese/whoever troops before they get killed.

Re: Do they have names?

I'm sorry, Mr Lister, sir, I have no idea who this young lady is, we just happened to be out cycling together ...

Re: Do they have names?

Kryten wasn't in Last Of The Summer Wine, nor was Nora Batty in Red Dwarf!

And I can't see a crossover working, but then I'm not a TV exec.

Re: Did anyone actually say sexbot?

For the majority ruling Chinese ethnic group the model should be called Han Solo.

(Probably an old joke)

"Chinese company UBTECH says enjoys 88 degrees of freedom"

Never thought I'd see the first and last words together in a sentence again!

Your plastic pal who's fun to be with. Where have I head that before?

I think I'm feeling very depressed.

Re: Did anyone actually say sexbot?

Plenty of room for misunderstanding with the order "Head, please!"

Startup targets datacenters with 3D-printed nuclear reactor module

The smaller 15MWe version might be enough to keep the wife warm in the winter months and will save her buying extra socks for the evenings.

User swore hacker called General Failure had invaded his PC

Corporal Punishment for the worst crimes or a Major Bolloc*ing for minor infractions.

Pacemaker manufacturer Medtronic warns patients cybercrooks may have swiped health data

If I had a pacemaker and knew crooks had access to my health data I think my heart would miss a beat.

Somebody told DeepSeek to build in-browser ransomware and it gleefully complied

Re: Chrome & Opera

"Apple's usual habit"

I'm sure most of their staff are quite clean, but AFAIC, same as their products, you can stick it up your nose.

NASA unsure Boeing Starliner will ever be certified for human flight

Is that what an AI is suggesting? If so then go for it.

Former Microsoft engineer shrinks Notepad down to size

Re: "There are Open and Save As dialogs. Font selection. Even printing"

"What's wrong with Courier?"

You just end with Notepad being dumped in next-door's garden with a note in your letter box saying it was left at the corner shop.

Re: "security tools"

So was that you in the crowd at Trent Bridge the other day?

"... you discover a second operating system underneath."

Welcome to SystemdForWindows.

Large Hadron Collider goes offline to make room for its enhanced successor

Welcome to academia/politics.

You use a skua to keep the duck on the table. That makes the plate tern in the opposite direction

Re: Most-Important Tidbit

"red go-faster"

These two are mutually exclusive and will self-annihilate and take out the universe (again).

I like my quantum ducks a l'orange to give them colour and flavour.

Re: So no risk that ...

How low can you get?

<icon = Amstel Bier>

Where there's a will, AI still has work to do

"Probate".

The idea of using AI for probate could now be dead in the water.

Security researchers tricked LLMs into giving them cocaine recipes by abusing role models for prompt injection

Re: "They treat it as their already-reached conclusion, and simply act on it."

I'm sure you can find examples of self-abuse on the interwebs if you look in the right places.

Re: Cocaine Recipes ?

I have no desire to stick anything up my nose, except chips (A Fish Called Wanda) and fire (HHGTTG).

India’s central bank mandated use of .bank domains to enhance trust – but its registry leaked sensitive info

I want to register talesoftheriver.bank

Bank officials

Don't tell him, Pike.