Posts by david1024

Iran cyberattacks against US biz more likely following air strikes

Ba@hh

They just might get a little more publicity as folks try to call it retaliation, but it is really business as usual.

Broadcom's answer to VMware pricing outrage: You're using it wrong

Of course they actually lowered the price

Obviously the customer is wrong and needs to run things in broadcom's model. Further, once you really look at it, after some re-education, you'll be able to see how much better off you are paying more and be happy. In other news the chocolate ration is being increased to 8oz from 12oz.

US Navy backs right to repair after $13B carrier crew left half-fed by contractor-locked ovens

This sort of thing was directed as a cost savings measure... Just wait until they get the updated bill!

AI coding tools are like that helpful but untrustworthy friend, devs say

Quality

If the only metric for code quality measured in reviews is that it meets coding standards and passes static analysis... Sure.

I wonder if the successful reviewers get used to the mistakes that the AI+human pairs are making and find an economy there?

Your ransomware nightmare just came true – now what?

Fix the real peoblem

Computers and networking are hard. You have to compete with all manner of industries to attract the talent you need too. Buy the computer, buy service agreements, pay folks to maintain them, and hope it holds together. And all the software license money leaves your local economy while the folks that actually do the work are stuck learning the new way we aren't changing the computer systems or watching cat videos while backdoors in the browser are pushing malware.

TBH, a competent admin assistant team with a floor of filing cabinets is starting to look attractive from an ROI standpoint. You got them locked in from a talent perspective and you can traina new helper in a week or so... No complicated industry certs, and you can lay them off if business turns down. Also, you aren't pumping money to wherever VMware lives.

Ransomware scum leak patient data after disrupting chemo treatments at Kettering

Re: Small change in law required.

TBH, we had plenty of big hospitals before computers took over. These systems are designed for accountants and lawyers, not practitioners and patients.

What boggles my mind is that such incompetence is allowed to persist like this. There is literally no need for these systems to be exposed to the internet. But, the lawyers and accountants aren't perturbed yet, I suppose.

KDE targets Windows 10 'exiles' claiming 'your computer is toast'

I love KDE, but

I have always been a fan of KDE, and CDE. On Debian, they are what I expect in a PC. However, they have gotten a bit crazy in the past few years. Some of that seems to bring new devs/users, but isn't really my thing.

KDE is really what the folks want, IMHO, and there's a positive way to say all this without calling anyone's machine obsolete. TBH, the machines are not obsolete and "KDE+Linux will show you that your machine remains quite usable and even faster than it was under windows as you concentrate the resources on what you want to do." Easy peasy word smithing. Besides, they are competing with new machines, not M$

AI can't replace freelance coders yet, but that day is coming

Missing the lesson

To me, this shows how to deploy AI more effectively. And that this study was designed to be easy for AI.

For now, Ai is bottoms-up and humans are top-down. Two separate flows.

I would guess that is because AI still isn't very good at finding the problem to solve and that's at the top/structual, and in that respect it is like a super technically competent green fresh developer. No sense, but knows how to iterate. AI doesn't seem able to mature, and the humans end up fixing code for all but the most straightforward assignments.

Some signs of AI model collapse begin to reveal themselves

Tragedy of the commons

Classic tragedy of the commons. aI puts everything out of business that it needs to steal from. If only there was a way to compensate creators? Stealing hurts everything eventually.

Microsoft-backed AI out-forecasts hurricane experts without crunching the physics

Re: Given that it works on historical data...

Actually. It'll react to that change as it occurs based on updated training data. This is one use of ML where it, the machine, outputs don't impact the inputs. (As opposed to something like a law enforcement use case would).

Expert systems would need new rules for the new climate situation unless they had that folded in already and that's really hard to impossible. Whereas the ML version of the weather predictor will work more like a me when I look at the current front/condition maps for my area and agree or disagree with the models based on my experience of real world historical data. (I'm usually more accurate than the models in use today for a day or two in the future, but not 100% of the time)

Ransomware scum leaked Nova Scotia Power customers' info

Extra data

They are required to offer service, and the customers have to pay to maintain it. There should have been little info of value to copy.

There is no reason for the power company to have SSN, DL, or DoB (and a lot of that other data). Autopay should be handled by the payment service/bank, not the power company directly. This is bad operations. They should be concentrating on keeping the service secure where they should be the experts and leave the PII to the financial institutions (who should be the experts). This everything, everywhere, all the time info model is inherently insecure.

Intuitive Machines blames dim lighting and dodgy data for second lunar faceplant

Re: Mechanical Engineering

At some point, the go fast/break things folks...Maybe Don't understand what they are breaking. I think they know... They keep blaming sensors, but they need margins to account for that--and fix the sensors. Not just change the sensor and hope.

So knowing and understanding don't seem to be meeting up in the design from out here where I can see.

However, I do know:

Fast, cheap, right.... Pick 2.

Been an engineering rule forever. They need to push the triangle to the right a bit more. Maybe they have, wish them luck with me.

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

Pinta is great

I love pinta.

I rarely need more than quick annotations, crop, and a bit of copy/paste. Sometimes a simple touchup of a schematic or graph. (Like adding labels or counting pixels for scale).

OpenAI wants to build a subscription for something like an AI OS, with SDKs and APIs and 'surfaces'

Great

Super, another algorithm that'll keep trying to sell me a toaster after I just bought one.

Boffins warn that AI paper mills are swamping science with garbage studies

Re: Not just science, knowledge in general

It's only a breakthrough as long as what it ingests is not AI and .... Is accurate/true. AI trained on general web content will happily spout out urban myths and incorrect technical information as long as it is reinforced in the sample inputs.

Llms set knowledge back at least 5 years and even then, it is popular knowledge, not necessarily fact. Plus, nothing original can be created. So, more like what a drunk teen would say at a party if they had really good drunk-memory. It conveys accuracy when it doesn't actually provide it. Like a teen.

Authenticate the Authors

This is easy to fix, authentication. Author infuses too much AI or other garbage... according to authenticated peers sitting on review boards... They get downgraded. The bonafides only get issued after in-person board approvals. Maybe farm out to university or have a funded professional body.

Pure AI and papers from other unrecognized sources should be subject to increased scrutiny.

Won't be perfect, but better than we have now. The publication system was supposed to prevent this, but it has not scaled to large input sizes, so we need to stem the flow a bit to get the need for reviews more in-line with reviewer capacity.

Nip chip smugglers by building trackers into GPUs, US Senator suggests

Easy, folks in your jurisdiction, fine and potentially jail. Folks outside your laws, sanction. The hardware? Brick it remotely or nerf it.

Software already does this with greater and lesser degrees of success, just put it in microcode and viola it works in hardware too! Altera fpgas have a version of this in their old dev kits. Just a bit of maintenance to add to your SLA. Not really a big imposition.

Discounting vulnerabilities

We already have the tech for this. Heck, we could even have a remote 'brick' ability. Just like Intel's cpu feature subscription hardware can turn features on and off.

Doesn't mean folks will flock to it though. Makes those vpn exitpoints way more interesting though.

20% discount offer on Windows 365 expires around same time as Windows 10 support

Well, cheaper than a new pc...

At least for business class machine for a year or two.

But yeah, this is for enterprises that need a tide over until they can finish getting upgrades fully 'in' or need a bump in user counts for a few months and leverage some older hardware before it gets scrapped.

Anyone with the power and ability will move off windows for a least the near term.

Windows isn't an OS, it's a bad habit that wants to become an addiction

Finally

At last someone has defined the solar panel retro-computing environment so many will crave.

Solar cell and solar chargers are quite simple to use and economical these days, in the US--get em before the tariffs hit!

Samsung admits Galaxy devices can leak passwords through clipboard wormhole

Re: Default in Keepass

That makes sense as the skin has modified the clipboard behavior and KeePass would need to clear that clipboard in addition to the standard OS one.

Which makes it a Samsung problem as they created this new and nonstandard clipboard that has an insecurely implemented feature. And their answer is just "don't do that"... Classic.

As ChatGPT scores B- in engineering, professors scramble to update courses

Yes

All the approaches here sound good together. Just like a marginal or poor colleague you have to be able to spot what is right and what is not in the work produced. To me that's including the AI output in the assignment and proving what's good and why along with the garbage.

Folks reading this likely have used AI or at least seen it, and it has trouble with too many unrelated input parameters and multiple outputs.. (to me, that's why it crushes multiple choice questions). At least for now, and that's another problem, eventually AI may be able to beat all the question formats.

Finally, if a current AI can get a B... The course evaluations are trash to begin with and should be reworked. Really.

Microsoft: Why not let our Copilot fly your computer?

Urm...

So, computers are so hard to use you need a computer to use the computer for you?

At what point do we just turn off the computers to save time ?

VMware revives its free ESXi hypervisor in an utterly obscure way

Let it rot

I don't think they wanted the small fish anyway, at least that was the story... Wasn't it? Wring money from larger customers and set small to med ones drift.

Not sure where this is coming from, but I don't think the projections are that bad already? No, this is something else. Probably like that soft power I keep hearing about from the state dept.

Tech CEO: Four-day work week didn't hurt or help productivity

Re: Some people like to watch the staff...

I think flexible is more important than x days per week, as everyone has gotten used to scheduling their week to get work coordinated and done when needed. Makes folks sensitive to BS deadlines sometimes and staying responsive can be a challenge if you don't stay in communication even when you aren't "on"

M365 Family users wake up to notice 'Your subscription expired'

Meh

Office applications were feature complete decades ago for all but the most specialize cases. Running them in the cloud when local compute is so cheap these days is a sales fest only rivaled by selling ice to Eskimos.

Cheers to the folks making that a revenue generator. And cheers to me for not keeping my work hostage to them.

Workday talks up AI agents platform that will reap rewards of staff cuts

Re: wtf does that actually mean? Like, in actual English?

Hiring is down, and folks are cutting subscription services. So he's showing how you can continue to pay for their product by example. Quite in character for their (workday's) war on employees... I mean, I spend easily 5x-10x on keeping up with their systems vs what we had before. But hey,they were cheaper on the P.O.

Time to ditch US tech for homegrown options, says Dutch parliament

Missed opportunity here

So, the politics are in the article.

But what about the tech angle?

Would this potentially boost Linux development or just get Amazon to fork the corporate structure a bit and build a data center locally for them? Do they have a capability to start a migration away from m365? (May help limit the name-calling-posts to vi vs emacs too)

OK, Google: Are you killing Assistant and replacing it with Gemini?

There's one killer use Mark Pesce missed

Countdown timers, some music, and the one he missed--> weather. We set so many timers so often we got the echo clock--and it is great.

However, I'll never understand how these are supposed to make money. MS agreed and killed-off the cortana assistant. if they want a subscription-based assistant to do those 3 things... I'll just repurpose an old tablet and have it display the weather and hook into my lan's music collection. and spend $5 on ebay for 10 digital mini timers.

Broadcom has won. 70 percent of large VMware customers bought its biggest bundle

Re: For now

Inertia, kicking the can, etc...

The least risky thing is always going to be to keep on with the horse you rode in on, and that's how they win. But, they may eventually see a falloff--for now they are taking in all that risk-aversion-cash to the bank. Just a greedy power move.

Oh Brother. Printer giant denies dirty toner tricks as users cry foul

Stop it at the router

I blacklist management interfaces and embedded things like cameras at the router. That way I still get intranet dns, but they can't phone home (and wow do those cheap up cameras want to talk to China!)

Linux rolls out the welcome mat for Microsoft's Copilot key

Re: I have already prepared my black tape that says "Ctrl"

They removed that properties key a few years ago. Was useless and benign -- maybe this'll be a safe mapping until we figure out something else.

OBS-tacle course: Fedora and Flathub's Flatpak fiasco sparks repo rumble

Urm

This has happened before and it will happen again. There are different package techs and paths for them out there. Rpm, debs, snaps, etc... All have similar issues where 'upstream' has a version, but if you want one that works... You have to pull from the actual project's ppa, rpm+sig, etc..., To get working items. Friction and lube are part of the game and have been for decades.

Glad they worked it out--better for everyone!

Time to make C the COBOL of this century

Somewhat pretentious

Have to echo the 'good luck'

They've tried language legislation in the past, maybe the new guys feel they'll succeed this time? Likely, no, just like coke floats were forgotten by the new folks and 'reinvented'. They'll need to (re) learn this too.

Robots in schools, care homes next? This UK biz hopes to make that happen

Here's the update!

Not affiliated/associated, but my kids like this guy:

https://www.educationalinsights.com/item-artie-3000-8482-the-coding-robot

(although that's a steep price, I recall under $30)

Re: Waymo

I think you are right. A waymo could easily handle my commute and I could get a few Z's or car videos in. Not everyone has as easy of a time as me though, so there is room to improve/extend the work.

Runaway!

They need to watch that Tom Selleck movie Runaway for ideas. They have a nice technology integration roadmap there. Prepare food, wash clothes, tattle on the children. I want that home robot.

Now Trump's import tariffs could raise the cost of a laptop for Americans by 68%

economy of scale

The delta will be much less than $700 if they can scale up due to volume... but that needs volume sales. This is a chicken and egg problem and I think they want to bump the issue with tariffs and see what happens. It is a lot like a flu vaccine--may be significantly effective, may not--but does change the 'r' value.

Amazon worker – struck and shot in New Orleans terror attack – initially denied time off

Re: Wrong type of leave…

Hate to break it to ya, but Amazon and everyone else fired those manager-folks years ago and made HR a remote thing... So yeah, you are shot and run over--but you gotta log in to check boxes or they'll fire you.

And this is why folks aren't supporting employers.

Microsoft hijacks keyboard shortcut to bring Copilot to your attention

I'm sure someone is crafting a 'copilot disable app' for subscription for when this stink-bomb goes live.

They are somewhat safe until they repurpose alt+tab

The NPU: Neural processing unit or needless pricey upsell?

well

What they really need, given the lack of NPU standards... is an "AI-READY" PC... that would have a slot for a module. That way they can upsell the 5%-10% and just have a slot that will likely never get used... then they can upgrade the slot next year and orphan the 1st gen AI-Ready slots. Power users will absolutely need that most expensive NPU upgrade for their AI-READY PC for a few hundred more bucks!

Can't lose!

A closer look at Intel and AMD's different approaches to gluing together CPUs

Crow eating

Intel often has to walk-back smack talk. Up to the P-4, they made fun of instructions per clock as not being important, it was the MHZ baby!... their marketing guys are like pigeons playing chess.

Opening up the WinAmp source to all goes badly as owners delete entire repo

This is not really new

There was a discussion about releasing the code 20 years ago, and this was why they (the winamp folks) said that they'd never be able to release it as it has so many different proprietary parts they couldn't release and it wouldn't work without them.... so, surprise... they were telling the truth. This is just another "wow coke and icecream taste great--surely I'm the first one to invent the coke float!"

Schools bombarded by nation-state attacks, ransomware gangs, and everyone in between

welll

About that statistic:

"According to Microsoft, accounts are more than 99.9 percent less likely to be compromised if they have MFA turned on."

Much like security cameras, the benefits will only be there until everyone is using it.. .then the attackers will pivot. But, network security, and what users will put up with, has always been a blended game of better bears/bear-traps and whack-a-mole with a weird cost-benefit tradeoff thrown in to make it impossible to win.

Missing Thunderbirds footage found in British garden shed

What about the animated?

The updated CGI-animated series was nice. It did up the pacing as it was common for me to take a nap during the originals in my pre-teen days. I liked the re-imagining and the kids liked it too. The originals will always be special to me though.

I did laugh that the new series removed the guns from the uniforms and the vehicles.

AI firms propose 'personhood credentials' … to fight AI

Re: bestowed by some authority

Proving you are a person is something we are going to have to get used to. AI/automated methods are crossing the 95% barrier and are getting to be too hard to differentiate from authentic by normal-reasonable folks. That's text, that's voice, and that's video. Until we come up with a root of trust to use--and use it, you can't trust anything stored digital fully. Systems get compromised, files altered after they are created... really a dystopia of what we were promised the internet would do for us.

PKI/Certificates are what current tech looks like and TBH, between this and curated CRLs from a root of trust you 'trust'--This combo is something we 'know how to do' and are continuing to improve. Are there problems, sure. Far less issues with what we have now than some imaginary solution no one as fielded yet. Maybe we could eliminate SPAM texts, emails, and calls using this tech?

Admins wonder if the cloud was such a good idea after all

Re: Cloud is a financial model not a technology

When I rent vs buy... there's no cost of business to deduct.

After a certain business size, being able to write off the server rent each year forever, is more attractive than running a free-server for just the cost of electricity.

hahha

Well, for as long as it lasts, it is hard to beat the operating cost of that old power edge behind the breakroom door, propped against the server-rack, or on the interns desk.

It's all drying up: Microsoft to erase 3D Paint from digital store

So, the question is why change anything?

So, I'll point to this and say that windows, and PC operating systems in general, with their baseline set of utilities... have been feature-complete for decades.

The only changes made these days seem to be to drum up interest in the OS they are bundled with or try to bring in a subscription model for what is necessarily part of being able to use the hardware to actually 'compute'. I'm not sure what AI is going to bring to the party here, but TBH, if they break MSPAINT.... pinta does the same job without all the MS cruft and is cross platform.