Posts by MalIlluminated

Whodunit? 'Unauthorized' change to Grok made it blather on about 'White genocide'

Listening to these people talk about neutrality and skepticism is exhausting. Sure, you have all these careful climate measurements and a clear pattern, but some people say forest fires are started by the Jewish Space Laser. We wouldn't want to favour either position, think how shockingly immoral that would be!

Linus Torvalds goes back to a mechanical keyboard after making too many typos

Needs a Firm Hand

A membrane keyboard is perfectly capable of being sufficiently loud if you’re passionate enough.

Musk torches $500B Stargate AI plan, Altman strikes back

Let the influence peddling commence!

China’s Spamouflage cranks up trolling of US Senator Rubio as election day looms

But they made some major mistakes that were likely noticed...

The target audience believes that forest fires are started by space lasers and that hurricanes are caused by the Weather Dominator from GI Joe. It's hard for me to imagine that they noticed.

Linus Torvalds declares war on the passive voice

Unpopular opinion, in an ideal world, commit messages would be in the past tense. They aren't intended for present-day you, who will hopefully remember what he did for at least a day or two. They are meant for future you, who will be looking back, probably wondering "how the hell did I end up here." It's the History, not the Ever-Precessing Stream of Consciousness.

Can confidential computing stop the next crypto heist?

Right, weren't a number of the recent heists due to bugs in the "smart contract" implementation? I'm skeptical that an enclave can protect against shitty code.

Intel finally takes the hint on software optimization

Talent at mass and scale

Perhaps Intel can turn the developers responsible for the Arc drivers loose on the problem.

Apple is about to start scanning iPhone users' devices for banned content, professor warns

Re: People went to digital photography to get AWAY from this

An important lesson from those days was “always invite the girl at the photo counter to your parties.”

Today, digital cameras exist, as do multiple means of online and offline storage. I can’t see where this invasion of my privacy will actually solve the stated problem.

It seems the real problem is that people can’t be trusted not to do atrocious things. I’m thinking of torture and blowing up people in other countries because you don’t like them. So I think when the government is ready to allow me to root around in their phones and cloud storage for immoral behavior, perhaps a compromise could be reached.

AWS launches BugBust contest: Help fix a $100m problem for a $12 tshirt

Re: We only dreamed of having a T-shirt when I was young

Man, that's rough. Microsoft graciously sent me an Internet Explorer "Midnight Madness" tee shirt for nothing. Now, which of us do you suppose had it worse?

UK financial watchdog dithers over £680k refund from Google (in ad credits, mind you) for running anti-fraud ads

Once you have their money... you never give it back.

Of course Google is only offering credits. When you're up against the FCA, ignoring the 1st Rule of Acquisition would be suicidal.

Not sunshine, moonlight or good times – blame it on the buggy

Cosmic rays can get you drunk, too

OK, try my second theory for size: that it's down to cosmic rays.

In the first phase, the support agent invents this excuse, or stumbles upon it while reading a nameless, off-beat IT publication. It's a miracle solution to that uncomfortable moment when the customer pointedly asks "why did it break?"

In the second phase, as the soul is consumed, the agent becomes irritable when asked this question, and the delivery becomes increasingly passive-aggressive.

Finally, when their humanity has been totally stripped, the response becomes part of a game between agents at adjacent desks, where each delivery is worth five points, and the loser pays the bar tab at the end of the evening.

Microsoft to find virtual ways of 'absorbing interns' energy' as students told to stay home – and events off until next year

The Ludovico Technique

I missed the travesty that is the MS Musical on it's first pass through. How could you bring it up again? I can't unsee that.

"You needn't take it any further, sir. You've proved to me that all this Microsoft propaganda is wrong, wrong, and terribly wrong. I've learned me lesson, sir. I've seen now what I've never seen before. I'm cured! Praise Bog! I'm cured!"

"Suddenly, I viddied what I had to do, and what I had wanted to do, and that was to do myself in; to snuff it, to blast off for ever out of this wicked, cruel world. One moment of pain perhaps and, then, sleep forever, and ever and ever."

Windows 7 will not go gentle into that good night: Ageing OS refuses to shut down

Re: And contrary to "expert" advice ...

This can be set in the "Power Options" control panel.

And I'm not so sure about altering a setting via Group Policy. Unless someone can present evidence that this specific setting is being altered by whatever 1st/3rd party component is causing the problem, it might do more harm than good. AFAIK this is equivalent to disabling UAC which causes all processes to run at the highest integrity level. Of course, you weren't running with an Admin account in the first place, were you?

I just think that if there's half-a-dozen other ways to get the computer to turn off peacefully, taking a hatchet to an important security restriction seems the least advisable one. UAC has saved my from my own clickhappiness at least once.

Astroboffins may have raged at Elon's emissions staining the sky, but all those satellites will be more boon than bother

Re: We'll get there yet

I'm sure it's a ban-worthy offence to bulk create thousands of accounts to upvote a post, but I'm at least considering it.

Elon Musk shows world that he is truly awful at something

My head hurts.

That was utterly painful to listen to. After watching reporting on wars, natural disasters, and even genocide, it was this article that really brought home the sacrifices that journalists make to bring us their reporting. Mr Currie, I thank you for your service. The backing track was, at best, four minutes of my life that I'll never get back... but those vocals. Auto-tune is a pitch-corrector. It can't (well, shouldn't) be used to introduce pitch where there wasn't any to begin with. I'm somehow reminded of Dirk Diggler's demo tapes in Boogie Nights, but it's a charitable comparison: they didn't have Auto-Tune back then.

Accounting expert told judge Autonomy was wrong not to disclose hardware sales

Re: "I just pity the jury"

If Lynch is "sent over," maybe he'll get really, really, lucky and AC will be selected for jury duty.

Re: Auditors....

I'm thinking of the $60 crap HP printer that my grandparents bought themselves because it had "3x Higher Print Quality" and half-a-dozen stupidly-named "technologies" like ColorMagic or NanoNozzle or whatever. I'm thinking about how it printed around ten pages on the included cartridges, and then required another $60 worth of ink to be "usable" again. And I'm thinking about how it failed not two months after the warranty expired.

From where I sit, maybe Autonomy did write something like "100x More Profitable!" on the outside of the box. Maybe the Autonomy technology just boiled down to a bunch of buzzwords. Maybe HP bought a real @#$& printer that seemed like a good value, but made them feel ripped-off after a week or two.

Well, at least I know what HP would do, if it happened to them.

Image-rec startup for cops, Feds can probably identify you from 3 billion pics it's scraped from Facebook, YouTube etc

Re: Sabotage

Seems like a very good idea. Regardless whether other people do this, I gain a personal reward for ruining their database about me. It might be selfish of me, but provided the system can't identify me or anyone I care about, I'm bothered less by it's existence. I have a limited amount of indignation to go around, and there's plenty other problems clamoring for their share.

Canada's .ca supremo in hot water after cyber-smut stash allegedly found on his work Mac ‒ and three IT bods fired

Re: What is it about domain name registries that attracts so much scandal and bad behaviour?

ICANN imagine that the institutional prototype is a poor example, and they've worked hard to duplicate it.

Trump-China trade war latest: Brave patriot Apple decides to do exact same thing, will still make Mac Pro in US

Are you saying that all Mac Pros are manufactured at this factory, but because the number of Mac Pros sold is less than other models, because they're sold to a certain target market, and (possibly) because they're made in the USA they're more expensive then other Macs like the iMac?

Or are you saying that some Mac Pros are manufactured in China, and these are cheaper than Mac Pros which are manufactured in the USA and then sold to a certain target market? In this case, are you saying that only certain configurations of the computer are manufactured in the USA? Or are you saying that Apple somehow manages to get certain higher-end customers to buy the same product at a premium price?

These days, I don't believe anything is true, no matter how reasonable. These days, anything could be true, no matter how unreasonable. So, thanks for clarifying.

Stallman's final interview as FSF president: Last week we quizzed him over Microsoft visit. Now he quits top roles amid rape remarks outcry

Man writes something irresponsible, later judged offensive

This has probably never happened before...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advice_to_a_Friend_on_Choosing_a_Mistress

This has probably only ever happened once before...

https://allthatsinteresting.com/controversial-quotes

This has probably happened comparatively few times before... when compared with the total number of times a man wrote something.

New lows at Bose as firmware update woes infuriate soundbar bros

Re: BOSE, yuck

What really bothers me is that they actually have some decent technology available to them. There are technical arguments for and against waveguides, but regardless what you think of them, there's no excuse for using one to compensate for bottom of the barrel components while charging top-of-market prices. Every time I hear Bose equipment I find myself wistfully thinking of what it could have been.

This is not the cloud you're looking for.... Oracle's JEDI mind tricks work as Trump forces $10bn IT project to drop out of warp

Re: a really stupid way to run a country?

The concern I have is that assuming Amazon retains contractual exclusivity, I'm betting the political will to restrain their anti-competitive behaviors and dubious data-collection practices will evaporate rapidly. We have a tradition here in Ummerikuh, although it's probably shared throughout the world: do not screw with your tier-one military supplier.

Ouch. Reinstalling Windows 10 again? By 2020, a 'cloud download' may be all you need

Re: WTF: Windows wont boot

This is not based on actual knowledge, but rather an educated guess, so please correct me if I'm wrong here. I highly doubt the problem is the absence of necessary drivers. Frequently, though less often in Win 10 vs previous versions, a system that won't boot normally from an alien boot device will manage fine after a run in "Safe Mode" and the installation of perhaps a dozen low-level drivers. I mean, it'll probably deactivate on you, but for certain values of fine...

I think the problem is that Windows versions have increasingly stopped checking for certain kinds of new hardware on boot, on the theory that you "shouldn't be doing this," in order to decrease boot times. Win 10 is a beast compared with previous versions, yet "it boots faster to the desktop." Now, some of that is down to creatively redefining what stage of the game "boot to the desktop" actually represents by delaying the start of various services that are more-or-less integral for doing anything beyond displaying the desktop slideshow, but I doubt that's all it is.

As many as 100,000 IBM staff axed in recent years as Big Blue battles to reinvent itself from IT's 'old fuddy duddy'

Re: when I was a System/370 operator in the 70s / 80s...

In my experience, this kept up through the mid-noughties at least. Before I worked in technology, I was in a physical profession, providing "relocation services" under corporate contract for their people. Moving furniture. Say what you will, I never had to worry about the job I had just concluded again past the end of the day. I'd still be doing it if the money was there and my body would take it. Technology was a lot more fun when it was a hobby.

Anyway, the company had contracts with Sun Microsystems, Yahoo, Google, etc, and packing up the belongings of their employees, I got to see a side of them that I doubt their colleagues ever did. Meth use in particular was a persistent theme. Especially at Sun Micro around the time that Oracle devoured them. I can empathize with the decision to get high, under the circumstances. Sun was an awesome company, and from what I heard, the best place to work in the Valley at the time. Being made redundant and watching everything you'd built get chewed up and masticated into paste by Big Red must've hurt.

Fed-up graphic design outfit dangles cash to anyone who can free infosec of hoodie pics

Re: Let's see if I can come up with a few.

There's already a good one. I started reading the reg because the BOFH came to live here. Although he hasn't tricked anyone into electrocuting themselves for awhile. I miss that.

Let's see if I can come up with a few.

Hidden away in a darkened cubicle in a generally disused portion of the office, there is a desk covered with empty cans of Red Bull, half-eaten pizza slices and their accompanying boxes. Alice, the friendly neighborhood BOFH, is comfortably stationed in her ergonomic gaming chair that she insisted was needed because she has "spinalitus." She busily slaughters opponents in CS Go without mercy, while disinterestedly reading the most recent entry on her excuse calendar to the unfortunate person on the other end of the phone.

Bob, her colleague in the next building over, has come to rest face-first on his desk after imbibing too much cheap beer or cider over the lunch hour. He starts awake abruptly as his boss snaps at him, and we see his forehead in profile with several key-shaped imprints marred deep into it's surface. His screen is now filled with the obviously nefarious encrypted code-segment "hjukujiiiiihiiiiiiiiiiijjjjjjjjjjjjjkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk"...

Two grown men slap ineffectually at each other after a heated argument over something. Perhaps it was about whether BeOS or OS2/Warp is the superior operating system, going by their t-shirts. Maybe they're arguing over whether Senjogahara Hitagi or Makise Kurisu is "best girl," judging by the plastic figurines festooning their bookshelves. Or perhaps one accidentally stepped on the other's freshly-painted Warhammer 40,000 Nemesis Dreadknight.

A man stares at a screen for many hours, surrounded by other men and women who stare at their screens for many hours. The staring is interposed by occasional bursts of typing. Or maybe it's one guy alone at in a basement. Whatever. Very few people can understand what's on their computer screens at any given time, and nothing else happens, until the end of the day, when they get up and walk away.

Hmm, I guess I do understand the mysterious hooded figure with zeros and ones pouring out. The reality is usually somewhat more opaque, and anything more dramatic is either a recipe for trouble or embarrassment.

Your mouse can't reach that Excel cell? Buy a 'desk extender' said help desk bluffer

Re: Wendell should have offered

I'm reminded of the IBM "mouse balls" memo

Why, why, Mr American Pai? FCC boss under increasing pressure in corporate favoritism row

Public Servent?

Oh, right, that's what you call them over there. Here in the US we don't have those.

I still haven't found what I'm malloc()ing for: U2 tops poll of music today's devs code to

DevOps saved me so much time that I had time to write an article about... what, exactly?

No crypto backdoors, more immigration ... says Republican head of House Committee on Homeland Security

Either that, or you're living in the same-old reality where politicians will say whatever they think most impressive to the particular group they're addressing at the moment. This one has seemingly learned to properly judge his audience, and I suppose that's a start.

Super Cali: Be realistic, 'autopilot' is bogus – even though the sound of it is something quite precocious

Re: again?

I'm reminded of Archer S3E1:

RILEY: Uncuff me, you idiot!

Holy God, if we overshot our chance to refuel…!

ARCHER: I thought you put it on auto-pilot!

RILEY: It just maintains course and altitude!

It doesn’t know how to find the only airstrip within a thousand

miles so it can land itself when it needs gas!

ARCHER: Well, then I misunderstood the concept.

Fake Twitter accounts, coup plots ... Wacky Hyperloop One lawsuit turns it up to 11

Re: So, do I have this right?

I think there was a story about this. Cheese is scarce at Cheese Station A, or something similar.

It's time for a discussion about malvertising

Thank you for your honesty

I would, at least, pay for what you write.

Hacker shows Reg how one leaked home address can lead to ruin

Re: “These sites are everywhere”

"If you outlaw it, then the rates for using private companies needing information will go way up because their risk increases."

I don't buy it. Insurance and credit have been around a lot longer than creepy internet information brokers. Beyond that, I'm sick of hearing how if we regulate egregious bad behavior, or stop providing governmental incentives, or charge a reasonable amount of corporate tax, or enforce fair labor practices, that private companies are going to raise rates for their services and prices on their merchandise. They raise their rates anyway, to the absolute maximum that the market will bear.

And I'm pretty sure that Hillary made information *excessively* available. Allegedly.

JFrog's marriage made in ... well: Internet of Things, meet DevOps

If you've accidentally swallowed DevOps, we recommend a JFlaxative. This will help ensure your delivery is continuous and liquid, and your binary download will stream, unimpeded, through the pipeline.

Android's unpatched dead device jungle is good for security

TLDR

Guy at mobile payment firm assures you that known vulnerabilities on your mobile device are no big deal, but doesn't go so far as to personally indemnify you when your device is compromised.

Ad-blockers are a Mafia-style 'protection racket' – UK's Minister of Fun

Watching Rome Burn

When this guy talks about a possibility for a need for regulation, I wonder if he understands that he's talking to the victims of crime. People who've had their personal property damaged and defaced, victims of identity theft, data theft, damage to business, extortion, I could go on and on. The advertiser is an accessory to a criminal act. The publisher chastising me for locking these criminals out of my house deserves to have their business bled dry.

EMC creates a Star Trek holodeck ... and uses it to simulate a data center

Simulate the System

BOFH 2013 Ep 9:

....

"Yes, well, is it slow?"

"Let me see," I say. "I'll just fire up the system monitor."

>clickety!<

>...A minute later...<

"Well?" the Boss asks, "how long does it take to load?"

"It's loaded!" I reply.

"That's just a picture of the Earth from space!"

"Yes - it's actually a picture of 'the system' as you call it. Now how far do you want me to zoom in?"

How to save Wikipedia: Start paying editors ... or write for machines

Textbooks are NSFS

Look, I'll agree that Wikipedia is biased, fraught with errors, and generally unsuitable for consumption by impressionable minds. I wonder why people think the textbooks being issued primary school students are so much better? Perhaps it's because adults have some exposure to the clusterfsck that is Wikipedia but don't bother to crack open their children's textbooks to see what they're learning?

'T-shaped' developers are the new normal

So when I hear the word "agile," I always imagine something lithe and sleek, like a cat... with a sock over it's head, and it's tail on fire. Driving a train. Into a brick wall. With my application, knitted around him like a cute little sweater.

Caption this: WIN a 6TB Western Digital Black hard drive with El Reg

"Powerful, penetrating vibrations"

Until the divorce, Searle had never once considered the peril of an artificially intelligent Hitachi Magic Wand.