Posts by Joe 59

Musk’s DOGE ship gets ‘full’ access to Treasury payment system, sinks USAID

Re: Aid?

One of the largest destinations of US AID taxpayer funds was.... The Clinton Foundation. So the money came in from the taxpayer, and immediately went out to an organization that has zero accountability and a worse track record. We can't burn US AID to the ground fast enough, but hopefully we can preserve the evidence and have a new subset of the FBI investigate it, though I doubt anything will come of it, I would like my taxpayer dollars back. If someone has a problem with cutting funding to US AID, they can donate directly to the CLinton Foundation.

Also, the FBI was started with an executive order, it could be ended with one. It's a federal agency wholly operated at the pleasure of the POTUS. He doesn't require congressional approval to hack his way through that corrupt agency. He could fire anyone he liked and cut the budget to $0 and there's nothing anyone can do. He won't end it, though he maybe should, given the corruption.

If something was created with an executive order, it's not law, it's an executive office and he can do whatever he wants with it. The budget for it comes from congressional appropriations bills. So they say, Whitehouse, you get $x billions, do as you wish, and the whitehouse decides where to send it. He's just deciding to send it back to the taxpayer. Nothing he's done is even remotely illegal. He's only exposed to the light of day some deep deep corruption. US AID is a great example, but the small examples are things like National Public Radio, which has a distinct bias, and takes in millions in "donations" for commercial support along with billions in taxpayer dollars, and has zero oversight. The taxpayer doesn't have to pay for NPR. They can be entirely independently funded, as they are entirely independently operated. These cuts can't happen quick enough. Anyone complaining just doesn't like Trump or Musk or is benefiting from the fraud in a huge way.

Re: Clear conflicts of interest

you almost sound like you like the fraud that's going on in these organizations. Are you afraid of where these payments are going? Are you personally benefiting from this fraud? Weird that you wouldn't want transparency in government.

This is a good start, but the cuts can't happen fast enough. US AID is a money laundering organization that essentially became untouchable under the last regime, and an audit would find people going to jail. So let's get a move on. Cut, cut, cut. Expose to the light of day the corruption large and small in the places where taxpayer money is spent.

US datacenters in for shock as Canada mulls cutting the juice over Trump tariffs

quick to cut off booze, maple syrup and electricity, slow to cut off illegal immigration and fentanyl. How friendly of a neighbor. Note in the deal with Mexico, Trump agreed to curtail weapons smuggling, pretty good of him to do that for Mexico in exchange for more border security and drug interdiction missions.

3Blue1Brown copyright takedown blunder by AI biz blamed on human error

Re: I'm fortunate enough to have a large audience and contacts within YouTube

My channel with 54 subscribers was taken down because some scumbag issued copyright claims against my videos of my daughter playing 250 year old Bach pieces on her cello, using original over hundred year old sheet music. Like, literally an old hymnal of Bach music, in original 1800s notation. They issued several right in a row against several videos and YT took my entire channel off the air. My wife's aunt was pretty pissed off about it. I appealed and somehow, not sure how, someone in support saw it and realized it was a bullshit claim and reinstated everything. But if they can do that to me, they can do that to everyone. I also run a marching band's channel and all of our music is live performances and pretty old stuff, I'm waiting for someone to make that claim against us.

But seriously, I feel for those who actually generate revenue off their videos, stealing that revenue via copyright strikes early in the video's life cycle is devastating.

Lab-grown human brain cells drive virtual butterfly in simulation

Re: BSG in the making

I hope they're skinjobs. For research purposes only, of course.

Re: ahh Head cheese

this disturbs me on many levels, the least of which is the unknown threshold for a thing to be measurably conscious and what happens if that threshold is lowered after using these things for decades? You discover, after many machine brains have been scrapped, that they were alive the whole time? Yikes. Imagine being one of them, waking up one day as the enslaved pilot of an airplane, finally figuring out what your senses have been telling you your whole life? About the only thing I know about our brains is they're extremely complex and result in potentially multiple "us" inside there at all times, possibly communicating, possibly coming to a consensus on stimulus and response, possibly not communicating at all, how many cells does it take to make 1 "me" in there?

Before we put half a million broadband satellites in orbit, anyone want to consider environmental effects?

luddites

Progress is going to happen, those standing in the way are just standing in the way, you're not offering viable alternatives, or you're offering alternatives that are worse. I can't imagine the number of cell towers and infrastructure required to provide the same coverage. Suggesting the coverage isn't required is a non-starter. Would you rather the Chinese in charge of extraterrestrial internet access? That's a recipe for disaster.

You can't catch them because they are only clearly visible for a few days after insertion, fading orbit after orbit as they spread out and assume their assigned positions. They have to be at exactly the right place to reflect the set sun behind them, far over the horizon, after a few minutes overhead, they fade out as they approach fully-dark. Or in reverse for early morning, pre-dawn reflection of sunlight before the sun rises on the other side of the arc getting brighter until they're obscured by dawn's early light.

timing is everything, then a clear sky

US elections have never been more secure, says CISA chief

Re: Elections must be provably secure

And instead of addressing each of those points, the bad actors downvote you here. Ironic, people who claim there's no voter fraud don't want you to make the elections more secure. What is this, Reddit?

BOFH: The true gravity of the Boss and the 3-coffee problem

caffeine intolerance is a real thing

True story, half my family can't process caffeine properly, hypersensitive lacking CYP1A2. The other half seem to be fine or even hyposensitive. But don't cry for me, Argentina, when I do consume it, a regular coffee is exquisite. I can hardly describe how good it tastes and how quick the effects. I swear I can feel the caffeine with my gums. The effects, nearly immediate high, lasting hours, obnoxious blabbermouth syndrome for a few hours, then insomnia that night. From one cup of coffee in the morning. The insomnia can be diverted with a sleep aid around 1900 for sleep around 2300. Totally worth it about three times a year. More than that starts heart burn, heart palpitations, the sleep aids stop working, dreamless sleep, etc. But for that one moment, I shine like a homely sun, but a sun nonetheless.

CrowdStrike file update bricks Windows machines around the world

Re: Related?

having a zero stock price could play a role in reducing their bonuses a bit

Trump threatens to send Meta's Mark ‘Zuckerbucks’ to prison if reelected president

The entire thing, election, posturing and whatnot is irrelevant. It's show. I say this because there are issues far larger than a President that are looming over the US, and only one political party is interested in solving them, the rest are only interested in making them worse.

Neither major party candidate is going to address the federal deficit and debt which is now rapidly approaching $35,000,000,000,000.

The current largest budget items are:

$1.8T for medicare/medicaid

$1.5T for Social Security

$900B for defense

$891B for INTEREST on the debt

We're about to spend more on interest to that debt than on defense, and soon after that, it will swell so we're paying more on interest on that debt that any other area.

But sure, elect demented old guy or bombastic old guy who tweets rude messages, while the unelected federal reserve prints more money and manipulates interest rates, then we have the money to pay off that debt, right? Better fight for $15, LOL. Better protest Wall Street. I'm sure this inflation is all caused by corporations cashing in.

Zuck did manipulate the election, he's doing it now, as did/is google, Reddit and a hundred other big media companies, including the big media outlets. Anyone who changed search or feed results order or preferences in response to political positioning should be jailed. Anyone who votes for increased spending without corresponding cuts should have even worse done to them.

Joe Jorgensen was a perfectly viable candidate in the 2020 election. You should have voted for her.

I don't recommend voting for the current Libertarian party candidate. He's a fucking idiot.

OpenAI develops AI model to critique its AI models

The Singularity Approacheth

IBM sued again for alleged discrimination – this time against White males

So it's not the left who are promoting this?

Scammers use India’s real-time payment system to siphon off money, send it to China

Re: Indians falling for Internet scam? Who'd have thought it!

Of course, with 1.4B people who aren't scammers, India is as much victim as the rest of the world. The only thing keeping them from rising up in rank of victims is that most of them are extremely poor and don't have digital assets to plunder.

I feel like the emphasis needs to be placed on the policing part, and any nation that firewalls off investigations into this should be shunned from international transactions, like China. They take internal victims very seriously, unless the thief is a member of the CP, but don't extend that courtesy to external victims, unless the thief isn't a member of the CP.

Police ignored the laws of datacenter climate control

I had a 1U rack mountable case I built a server into in '96, the heat sink touched the lid. The lid got so hot, the paint came off the lid in a square around the footprint of the heat sink. And it only took a few minutes to do that, and the server was perfectly happy running during those few minutes. I wound up drilling holes into the lid in a pretty pattern over the heat sink, which improved airflow.

Re: One of my favorites.

sounds like a certain "hotels and resorts" chain I supported when working for a big global services provider. A pair of Slowlartus boxes, a pair of disk arrays, a UPS in a closet with a slop sink, mops, cleaning supplies etc.

They had a problem with one of the pair on a regular basis, the one closer to the floor. One day, we had the Sun guy in to fix it yet again, and we asked him to re-rack it to the top of the rack. Never had a problem with it again. He sent us pictures. It was a full rack, about 16 U consumed, all at the bottom of the rack. The room was moist, but regularly ventilated by people opening and closing the doors. No matter, it stopped complaining, so we stopped complaining.

FEMA to test emergency alert system US-wide today

Re: My only question is WHY?

If there is a threat of imminent war, either via ICBM, bombers, land invasion or other means, the alert goes out giving the citizens a few minutes' warning and instructions, that's enough time to save millions of lives. If it's an inbound missile threat, if you are miles from a fireball, or in direct line of sight of the fireball, or can make it to shelter fast enough if you are closer, there's a good chance you can survive without injury.

Obviously, that's not what it has been used for, so far, this system has been used tens of thousands of times since the start of the first one, alerting on everything from wildfire, flood and earthquake warnings to riot/civil unrest and other events. It's an indispensable part of any nation's communication system.

You place little value in it, but millions of other people do, and if an emergency ever does strike your area, you will benefit from the advanced notice no matter your opinion of the system.

Human knocks down woman in hit-and-run. Then driverless Cruise car parks on top of her

Re: "Should the Cruise car have not started moving if there was a person still on the crosswalk?"

California's road test is, and has been for ages, at least the following standard checklist items:

Starting your vehicle

Merging to traffic

Following other traffic

Backing up

Parallel parking

Making a U-turn

Pulling over to the side of the road and stopping

Moving away from a parked position onto the road

And it's as much as 20 minutes long.

Sounds like you didn't get a license, but just took some classes.

FCC plans to restore net neutrality rules tossed out under Trump

net neutrality isn't vying for neutrality. It provided none of the things you're fighting for.

Cheaper broadband? Nope.

Less censorship? Nope.

It did eliminate competition and stifle innovation through endless regulation. So you got that going for you. But by all means, keep parroting whatever the party tells you to.

Did the apocalypse occur in the years since it was scrapped? Are you paying more to access Netflix because Comcast doesn't own them? No.

USENET, the OG social network, rises again like a text-only phoenix

Ahhh, rec.motorcycles, my old home on the net.

Adny being a dick, but being British, just kind of half hearting the trolling

Sensory Overload, drawing ASCII art in her .sig eventually coming together in the form of a hand cranked film camera filming a dog having sex

the good old days. I still have my rec.motorcycles patch, and my membership number.

Foxconn founder Terry Gou to run for Taiwan's presidency

Re: Loyalty

He's clearly not interested in liberty, equality or fraternity, the hallmarks of a democracy. He's beholden to the Chinese Communist Party, like Biden is, bought and paid for, and now highly leveraged.

US Supreme Court allows 'ghost guns' to fall under federal purview

If there is ever a serious attempt to eliminate the 2nd amendment, the result would be embarrassing for those attempting it. And by embarrassing, I mean absolutely destructive.

A direct threat against the 2nd is a direct threat against the 1st, 3rd, 4th and of course the 13th. The politicians voting for it would find themselves assuming room temperature pretty much immediately.

That's how serious those who take the 2nd amendment seriously take the second amendment. Don't underestimate their resolve, or their numbers.

Florida man accused of hoarding America's secrets faces fresh charges

Re: You sure are preoccupied by Trump and Musk!

I don't recall this kind of crowing over a sitting vice president being caught red-handed taking bribes, or again when he's caught again as a sitting president, or again when that same sitting vice president took documents that were above his station, or again when that man as sitting president did the same thing, only stored in four or more locations with zero checks.

It's almost like they just don't like the other guy, but this guy, despite the mountain of evidence of high crimes and misdemeanors, they don't really care about. Weird.

Maybe the west isn't founded on laws?

Slackware wasn't the first Linux distro, but it's the oldest still alive and kicking

Re: 1996

For me, I know it was 1994 or 5 <snip far too much information for public consumption about a telco and deregulation and a pervert of a VP who thought F:\Public was to be taken literally>

I downloaded a copy and wrote them to floppies and borrowed a dedicated 486 PC to install it on from a phone company I worked for as a junior dipshit. A previous admin had installed it on a PC to use as a router/firewall/gateway with basic IP Forwarding. For some reason, he didn't want the network team to use a router to reach the outside world, so he stuck a Linux box in front of it, internet on eth0, LAN on eth1. He got fired. I got put in the hot seat. I got fired. We all had a good laugh.

AI maybe on everyone's lips, but it's not what's driving IT spending

reality check

the vast majority of firms aren't prepared to do anything with AI or ML, let alone succeed using it. Few resources know how to use it, fewer know what to do with the data once they get the tools in place.

Watson's been around for how long?

Senator trying to force Uncle Sam to share everything it knows about UFOs

Chuck Schumer is a self-serving liar whose interests extend to the top surface of his skin.

If he's promising something, it is guaranteed to be for his personal benefit, and rife with fraud.

The question is, what's his real angle? He just wants access to the higher technology being hidden by these declarations, or access to the influence these "Revelations" produce. One thing is sure, these aren't actual aliens, and aren't extradimensional.

InfluxData apologizes for deleting cloud regions without performing 'scream test'

I've worked with this company and their products in the past and have found them to be useful. I've also worked with "cloud" providers and universally found them to not give a rat's ass about my data, making data integrity and disaster recovery wholly my responsibility. Yes, a scream test is always warranted, just did this myself on around a thousand servers. No one responds after multiple attempts at contact? OK, power off, but wait to destroy for a month or more. Saved my bacon more than once, and I'm pretty surprised this particular company let themselves forget that lesson.

Unfortunate bad press, certainly, but corporate suicide it ain't.

Whistleblower claims Uncle Sam is sitting on hoard of alien vehicles and tech

panem et circenses

I guess this is the circus of the bread and circus

craft mac-n-cheese is probably the bread part?

Feds, you'll need a warrant for that cellphone border search

Re: Last time I checked ...

Bolling v. Sharpe (1954)

Frontiero v. Richardson (1973)

United States v. Windsor (2013)

Obergefell v. Hodges (2015)

Loving v. Virginia (1967)

City of Cleburne v. Cleburne Living Center (1985)

United States v. Virginia (1996)

Sessions v. Morales-Santana (2017)

case law seems to disagree that the 14th doesn't apply to federal law as state law.

The FBI as advanced persistent threat – and what to do about it

Re: democracies still have safeguards to bring this stuff to light, and yet it keeps happening

The people perpetrating these crimes aren't being prosecuted, and there are plenty of laws on the books under which to prosecute these crimes.

The only conclusion I can draw is that since the safeguards don't function they don't exist. Abstracting that to "there is no rule of law".

Being a moderate or left-wing activist isn't some high bar in probable cause, certainly being anywhere near a violent protest, or protesting quite legally at a school board meeting is plenty reason for the FBI to become interested and lump you into a profile. How much more so purchasing a firearm or ammunition, or using a VPN?

It won't end until the people exploiting these organizations are charged with civil rights violations under color of law, and it starts right at the top, from Joe Biden, Barak Obama, Hilary Clinton down into the Senate and House before it even makes it to the FBI leadership team, who should also be charged with these crimes of course, along with any individual agents.

And before you scream I'm some MAGA Republican, and start into the whataboutism of only naming those people, those people are clearly guilty of crimes far worse than Watergate, we all know it, and they're currently in charge of the FBI. You wouldn't put up with a Republican does it, why would you put up with it when your President does it?

BOFH: Ah. Company-branded merch. So much better than a bonus

Re: When do people understand that cash rules?

My memory has faded somewhat, so the numbers might be shite, but around 2000, Xerox stock was plummeting, so far that it ceased trading in the exchange, and the company was close to closing doors. Employees were flooding out, threatening death from a different method, when corporate offered a choice:

$5k retention bonus

$15k worth of stock options at $22/share

Nearly everyone took the cash. They had to break their contract when too many people took the cash. The stock options expired long before the stock reached the strike price.

Because I'm an idiot, I took the options.

Always take teh cash.

AI to detect heart attacks tested in the land of the deep-fried Mars bar

deep fried mars bars?

So there's a land of deep fried mars bars, that isn't the USA? When is the next flight?

Biden proposes 30% tax on cryptominers' power bills

Re: "compared crypto's electricity usage to that of video games"

"funny money" isn't very funny. It's every bit as legitimate as state currencies. It's a traded stock, just like any other, backed by the same thing as any other. "Full Faith" of something that shouldn't be trusted in the first place.

So instead of bitcoin, we should use a dollar backed by a private bank, the "Federal Reserve"? Or the Euro, managed by the central banks?

Uncle Sam probes H-1B abuse surge: What do our vultures make of it?

yes, prosecute

It's rife with fraud. Prosecute any and all fraud. They're blocking legitimate skilled workers from opportunity, and allowing unknown others whose only skill is they can pay mules (or they are mules themselves), and through inaction, congress allows this to continue. I don't have hopes that good old Uncle Sucker will do anything about it though, despite the promises.

Let me X-plane: Boeing R&D unit sheds rudder, ailerons, flaps for DARPA project

Re: Goo goo, gah gah

That's weird that someone used a word you don't like, no one in England, Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland uses different words for similar concepts.

What did Unix fans learn from the end of Unix workstations?

Allow me to apologize for recycling a Sun Enterprise 4500 with 36 GB of disk. I needed the room for a beer fridge, and it was either beer or the space heater. I did sell the power supplies and some other kit to pay for the beer.

Zuckerberg: Yes, Facebook kept Hunter Biden's laptop under wraps

Re: Its not a laptop, its a smoke machine

Except there's evidence that Joe benefited from Hunter being placed into ludicrously impossible positions, positions he would never attain if he didn't kick back to his father. There's evidence Joe spoke with Hunter about Hunter's business dealings on many occasions. Joe has even admitted so.

And the email server was absolutely evidence of crimes, crimes hosting that information, crimes hosting it insecurity, crimes transmitting that information and crimes deleting it when subpoenas arrived.

Re: Why do people ignore facts?

This isn't about Hunter Biden's crimes, it's about Joe Biden's crimes. There's far more evidence of Joe Biden running an expensive pay-for-play scheme than what was found on Hunter's laptop. Hunter's laptop has never been refuted, everything in it has so far stood the test, and in a court of law, that laptop would absolutely be allowed into evidence.

The fact remains, Joe Biden is a criminal who was disqualified from the office of the President before he was ever elected for the first time simply by what came out of his mouth. Everything he did since then was to benefit Joe Biden and he ran these schemes from the minute he made the Senate, he doubled down when he became VP.

Salesforce staff back an end to its relationship with NRA

Re: How do we protect our 2nd amendment & our kids at the same time?

Negative. U.S. Musket Model 1795 had an effective range from 50 to 75 yards. That's effective range, the range at which you could expect to hit center of mass, and a .69 cal bullet which had devastating effects on impact.

And you could fire it 3x a minute quite accurately.

Repeating rifles existed in the 1790s though not in mass production and common use in the US military until the Spencer in 1860, though Colt pistols entered common use before that.

And the 2nd amendment isn't about technology, it's about capability. Disarm the government, disarm the planet, make nukes and chemical and biological weapons a distant memory, and we'll talk about limiting small arms.

Re: "How do we protect our 2nd amendment & our kids at the same time? "

"I accept that guns have become more lethal"

There hasn't been a significant advancement in lethality of small arms since 1885. The first semiautomatic rifle was introduced back then, and little has changed since. One might argue that the final evolution of the modern rifle was the M1 Carbine, claimed to be the first magazine fed semi-automatic light rifle, developed in the 1930s and deployed in mass production in 1940, but the Garand was deployed in 1936, and one can certainly argue that rifle was the first modern autoloading rifle... But if you're going to say that, you have to admit that the Remington Model 8 was the first modern autoloading rifle, in 1905.

Pistols haven't changed much since the early 1900s either. The same caliber rounds are in use now as then, with a few exceptions, like 10mm, which is not significantly different than .45 or other rounds that are over a hundred years old.

"and possibly more available"

You used to be able to buy BAR 30 cal rifles and Thompson machine guns mail order from the Sears Catalog and they didn't keep records. Yes, you can 3d print the receiver for a more modern rifle (though designed in the 1950s), but the barrels and other components are just as available as they were since the 1800s. Mail order or in-person purchase.

In conclusion, I submit that neither the lethality nor availability have significantly changed for small arms since at least the first years of the 1900s and that these rifles are rarely used in crimes in the US.

There are more people.

There are more mind-altering drugs in use.

There are more mind-altering medications in use.

There are more other things in play that could impact one's mental state.

I accept that people will disagree with these conclusions, to that I say, go buy one and see what it takes. In no place in the US can you walk into a store and purchase small arms without a background check, except private sales which has always been true (and a black market will always exist).

The common factor in all your failed job applications: Your CV

Re: Add the latest to the top but don't delete anything

Your CV at 2+ pages isn't a bad thing. The AI and grep will reach into the 3rd and 5th pages just fine, and the hiring manager will flip to subsequent pages because they're curious. And if they're not curious, they'll find what they need on the first pages.

In all my time hiring engineers, the substance is what matters. I built this. I materially contributed to that. I earned this, I earned that. I contributed to this, I authored that.

It's the resumes where the applicant did the bare minimum that I toss in the trash. Oh, you wrote Web Chess in college? Big fucking deal. I'm hiring the guy who wrote a game engine in college to make his absolutely terrible top-down combat easier to make, or the woman who wrote a mobile app to track the fishing seasons and limits, not the kid who can't do more than the bare minimum.

Unfortunately, my son is now one of those kids doing the bare minimum. Drives me nuts, but he simply believes he's too good to take up the mantle fixing bugs for some random open source project. He needs his weekends, after all, minecraft isn't going to play itself.

Web prank horror: Man shot dead while pretending to rob someone at knife-point for a YouTube video

Re: This is why they should be banned.

It's none of your business why someone chooses to exercise a civil right. You don't get to question their motivation, just because you lack imagination, doesn't mean they have no reason to carry. The 2nd amendment is called that in the United States, but it's a civil right that all people have, even if their current government denies it.

If someone approaches you with a knife, it's entirely reasonable to assume you are going to die from stab wounds. If TWO people approach you with knives, you must assume evil intent and defend yourself and those around you who are not capable of defense or retreat. That is your moral obligation. Failing to do so, which you obviously would, is your problem to solve, or suffer the consequences. Even with a handgun, a knife is a deadly weapon, and even shooting the assailant is no guarantee against bleeding to death.

Linux kernel coders propose inclusive terminology coding guidelines, note: 'Arguments about why people should not be offended do not scale'

Re: Sexism too?

As expected in a comments thread in The Reg, pedantry: The Mason - Dixon line had slave states North of it, all of them north of the line were slave states until the Civil War when the last one was Delaware. While technically to the East of most of the line, it was to the North of the southern part of the line because the line was the demarcation between it and the other states around it.

That sound you hear is Splunk leaking data

remote access is for mainframes and minis

Name a web service that doesn't allow remote access. One that's powered off?

That said, can't tell if you're being deliberately obtuse or simply don't know what it is. Splunk is a log aggregation tool. Think the red-haired bastard step-child of syslog-ng, grep, sed, awk and rrdtool.

Boffins link ALIEN STRUCTURE ON VENUS to Solar System's biggest ever grav wave

well done

this entire story was one long penis joke