Posts by TVU

Oracle Java licensing worries are percolating through the userbase

^ Thank you for the laugh of the day! XD

"Survey finds nine in ten customers concerned as pricing changes push many toward open source alternatives"

It's not only the initial charges but also the notorious licence compliance investigations that quite conveniently favour Oracle. Someone ought to tell Larry that price gouging is just so yesterday.

BBC bumps telly tax to £180 as Netflix lurks with cheaper tiers

"BBC bumps telly tax to £180 as Netflix lurks with cheaper tiers"

Unfortunately, a previous chancellor, George Osborne, had a cynical and deliberate go at the BBC by forcing them to take over the funding of free TV licences for pensioners over the age of 75 which reduced the BBC's net income. Then certain irresponsible newspapers started non-payment of licence fees campaigns.

Personally, I would now want the UK to follow the example of France and fund the BBC out of VAT with the level of VAT being decided by a wholly independent royal charter body so that ignorant and third rate Conservative and Labour politicians have no say whatsoever in that matter or in the appointment of BBC governors or the director general.

That said, I am not uncritical of Tim Davie with his show pony 'woe is me' deep cuts to radio and TV services when he should have been trying to creatively preserve such services.

The Linux mid-life crisis that's an opportunity for Tux-led transformation

Although it might be mildly controversial, I think that the wealthy Linux Foundation ($300 million+ revenue last time I checked) ought to be funding necessary Linux maintainers such as Todd Miller and others.

https://xkcd.com/2347/

Openreach turns up the heat to force laggards off legacy copper lines

Re: Apples and oranges?

I sometimes get spam callers on my landline or mobile phone and my way of dealing with them is to speak to them ever so politely...but in French or Norwegian. I find that they rapidly lose interest and hang up.

Study confirms experience beats youthful enthusiasm

"Study confirms experience beats youthful enthusiasm. Research shows productivity and judgment peak decades after graduation"

^ That's really good to hear but these are unfortunately the people who these days are most likely to be made redundant. Ultimately, that won't benefit the company as they will lose that great experience and new younger hires will not be able to benefit from their wisdom and experience.

SpaceX wants to fill Earth orbit with a million datacenter satellites

"SpaceX wants to fill Earth orbit with a million datacenter satellites"

...cue more unforeseen satellite collisions and even more space debris. In addition to periodic meteor showers, we might end up getting quite a few more bright satellite reentry showers.

Microsoft spends billions on AI, converts just 3.3% of Copilot Chat users

^ Now that is a very valid and relevant point!

"Microsoft spends billions on AI, converts just 3.3% of Copilot Chat users"

I think it is safe to say that recruitment initiative does not represent good value for money. Indeed, that money would have been much better spent on Win 11 update quality control.

Systemd daddy quits Microsoft to prove Linux can be trusted

Re: From available evidence below...

To this day, I still do not understand why the 2014 Debian conference committee members voted to adopt systemd as init system for Debian.

Now that I would love to see!

"Linux celeb Lennart Poettering has left Microsoft and co-founded a new company, Amutable, with Chris Kühl and Christian Brauner"

^ Personally, I would be minded to replace 'celeb' with 'controversialist'.

Oracle seeks to build bridges with MySQL developers

Re: anyone

...particularly when it comes to Oracle's licence compliance tactics that are tantamount to villainous extortion.

If you're one of the 16,000 Amazon employees getting laid off, read this

"If you're one of the 16,000 Amazon employees getting laid off, read this. It's not your fault"

Amazon is one of the worst offenders when it comes to not dealing with staff humanely. Irrespective of what happens in the USA, governments in Europe and elsewhere ought to be tougher with Amazon's treatment of their own workers.

PS Don't be fooled by their BS adverts about staff development and holidays.

Voyager 2's close encounter with Uranus wasn't in the original plan

If any new probes are going to the outer solar system in the next few decades, then I think that Neptune would be a better target as it has a highly dynamic and active atmosphere featuring large scale storms plus there's the large and interesting moon Triton to look at (it is a captured Kuiper Belt object).

Moscow likely behind wiper attack on Poland’s power grid, experts say

"Polish Prime minister Donald Tusk announced in November that he was closing Russia's last consulate in the country"

That's what you have to do when dealing with the despot Putin - close down all the subsidiary consulates and significantly reduce the staff numbers at the main embassy to reduce the Russian state's ability to get information on potential targets. It also requires a significant improvements in cyberwarfare capabilities.

Microsoft probes Windows 11 boot failures tied to January security updates

"Microsoft says it has received only a small number of reports so far"

Personally, and given that we are dealing with Microsoft here, I would be inclined not to take that "only a small number" at face value. I strongly suspect that they have been inundated with complaints and are trying to play down this matter.

China’s Deepin Linux gets a slick desktop - and, yes, built-in AI

China’s Deepin Linux gets a slick desktop - and, yes, built-in AI

I think that desktop environment looks more like Linux's unix-like cousin macOS rather than the 'can't switch off' clusterfuck that is currently Windows 11.

Notepad will now tell you all the ways Microsoft has enshittified it

"Notepad will now tell you all the ways Microsoft has enshittified it"

There is absolutely no need whatsoever to add unnecessary bells and whistles to basic text editors such as Notepad and Wordpad. The clue is in the word 'basic'.

Dead batteries cough up lithium after a bath in CO₂ and water, boffins say

However, these days a great deal of scientific papers are behind a commercial publisher paywall and Nature is one of those commercial science publications. I don't know what the precise arrangement was but it was refreshing to see the full complete paper from Nature.

To their credit, those researchers have given full details of their methods in the Supplementary Information section so that other researchers in the same area can try out this new lithium recovery technique. It does seem to be a more benign lithium recovery technique and if that is the case then I hope it can be scaled up to the industrial level.

Microsoft admits Outlook might freeze when saving files to OneDrive

"Is MS suggesting we just upload everything into Coporite and let it 'remember' what we were doing?"

I initially misread Coporite as 'Coprolite' although that second word could also describe the current unfortunate of Microsoft and its quality assurance testing or lack thereof.

Open source's new mission: Rebuild a continent's tech stack

Thank you for the laugh of the day! XD

Re: Obviously ....

There were some issues with the LiMux project from the outset. The project ought perhaps to have gone with one of the standard big three distributions (Ubuntu, SUSE, Red Hat) in the first place rather than do a customised version that might have required more maintenance and they should have adopted LibreOffice as the standard office suite from the outset.

That said, the reversal back to Windows was primarily a political decision rather than a technical one.

Power scarcity drives datacenters to Texas, where the juice is

Re: Really!

Despite Trump's obsession with dirty fossil fuels, particularly coal and oil, sunny Texas is experiencing a free market boom in solar energy provision which is a good thing:

https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/climate-energy/texas-makes-clean-power-breakthrough-solar-output-overtakes-coal-2025-12-09/

Windows 11 shutdown bug forces Microsoft into out-of-band damage control

"Windows 11 shutdown bug forces Microsoft into out-of-band damage control"

^ This is what happens when you sack all your quality control staff and use your customers as beta testers instead - d'oh!

"Microsoft has rushed out an out-of-band Windows 11 update after January's Patch Tuesday broke something as fundamental as turning PCs off"

^ This is what happens when you sack all your quality control staff to cut costs to increase profits. If I recall correctly, those sackings happened back in 2014 and things have gone downhill since then.

Congress throws NASA a lifeline, leaves Mars sample mission to die in the dust

The Mars Sample Return mission was going to be difficult anyway because it was an afterthought. What should have happened is that sample return missions should have been built in to both the Curiosity and Perseverance missions in the first place, eg the lander and the sample return rocket would land on Mars close to each other. That said, it would have made those missions more expensive.

The Soviet Union's Luna 16 mission to the Moon showed that lunar regolith samples could be collected and then returned to Earth.

Trump may hate renewables, but AI datacenters still fancy cheap solar

Despite Trump's irresponsible "Burn baby, burn!" comments, the tech companies seem to want their data centres to be powered by nuclear reactors including SMR designs. In addition, free market solar energy companies are doing well in Texas and they want to expand their generation capacity.

Very tough microbes may help us cement our future on Mars

"Where do they expect to get the urea* from?"

Astronaut wee? Seriously though, urea could potentially synthesised using carbon dioxide from Mars' atmosphere and from ammonium and nitrate salt deposits that have been inferred on Mars.

Copper supplies set to peak just as tech needs more

"Concerns are mounting over copper supplies, with a fresh study warning that demand will likely outstrip production within decade, threatening to constrain global technological advancement"

I have to say that the problem would be smaller for copper and rare earth element supplies if more electrical waste recycling was done across the planet.

Bank of England's Oracle cloud migration bill triples as project grinds on

"The UK's central bank has planned the move since 2020, and a recent procurement note revealed it has increased financial outlay with Oracle implementation partner Version 1 to £21.5 million after initially tendering the contract for £7 million".

Now who would have ever thought that there would be massive cost overruns with a project involving Oracle?

Earlier Horizon rollout could widen net for quashed Post Office convictions

Re: Oh...And By The Way.....................

Indeed, and that jail time should also apply to senior Fujitsu staff as they are equally culpable.

"But your refusal to tell us how much Fujitsu will pay into a £1.8 billion bill for taxpayers leads people to the conclusion that, frankly, Fujitsu is behaving like a parasite on the British state"

^ Those were strong words from Liam Byrne and they were fully justified given Fujitsu's poor conduct. For example, when the Horizon system was rolled out back in 1999, sub postmasters started putting in complaints about Horizon but no one listened. I would want Fujitsu to put in hundreds of millions of pounds into that compensation fund since they were the authors of that Horizon abomination.

This is a relevant article:

Fujitsu bosses knew about Post Office Horizon IT flaws, says insider

https://www.computerweekly.com/news/252496560/Fujitsu-bosses-knew-about-Post-Office-Horizon-IT-flaws-says-insider

Capita tells civil servants to wait for chatbots to fix pension portal woes

Indeed, and these chatbots won't have a clue about more complex questions. Capita will no doubt also make it more difficult to actually access a competent person on cost reduction grounds.

UNIX V4 tape successfully recovered: First ever version of UNIX written in C is running again

That is an excellent question to ask and I would place Linux as in independent emulation of Unix as the Linux kernel does not contain any original Unix source code.

I would also say that it is, along with Minix, is a Unix-like system.

Vultures rake our claws over COSMIC as Pop OS 24.04 LTS with 'Epoch 1' emerges

What Liam has described ought to be options in the initial set up installation guide.

Uber and Lyft rolling Baidu robotaxis into London next year

"Uber and Lyft rolling Baidu robotaxis into London next year"

^ Cue significant and controversial accident in dense London traffic in 3..2..1. While there have been improvements in the controlling software, I am not yet sure that autonomous robotaxis are fully ready for deployment and as things stand, the only beneficiaries will be lawyers because of the resulting lawsuits.

Oracle's new AI-enhanced support portal leaves users fuming

"Oracle's new AI-enhanced support portal leaves users fuming"

^ This does not surprise me at all. AI has no emotional intelligence, it is still significantly imperfect and it is now being used to replace front line first contact humans resulting in a significantly worse service. This is in addition to the sacking of staff to save $$$.

pearOS is a Linux that falls rather close to the Apple tree

"pearOS is a Linux that falls rather close to the Apple tree"

That reminds that the disappearance of the old Pear Linux is still an unknown mystery of the universe. Was it bought out? Was there the threat of litigation? Perhaps this mystery will never be solved.

Trump Media jumps aboard the speculative nuclear fusion bandwagon

Re: How long before a juicy government contract drops?

Any investment by that administration in any form of nuclear power is welcome and perhaps the AI bosses are getting through to Trump that old fossil fuels alone aren't enough to power new data centres.

Affection for Excel spans generations, from Boomers to Zoomers

Re: Dunno

Microsoft Works used to come with a useful database and it's unfortunate that they did not continue with that handy little office suite.

Reddit sues Australia to exempt itself from kids social media ban

I would say that Reddit is more like a traditional discussion forums (or indeed The Register) than it is like the here today, gone tomorrow fluff of Tiktok, Instagram, Snapchat, etc so I think that their challenge is valid.

Microsoft 365 boosts prices in 2026 … to pay for more AI and security

"Microsoft 365 boosts prices in 2026 … to pay for more AI and security"

But the problem there is that they are extracting even more cash to fund unwanted bloatware.

Latest Windows 11 updates may break the OS's most basic bits

Indeed, and the very last thing they should be doing is sending out updates that bork people's business and home computers. They should be delaying the updates and be doing more in-house testing first before they release these updates to the wider public.

Windows 11 still barely pulling ahead of 10 despite end-of-support push

That so many businesses are wanting to use Windows 10 ESU is an indictment of the forced migration to Windows 11 and the broken promise that Windows 10 would be the last ever Windows version.

That so many businesses are wanting to use Windows 10 ESU over Windows 11 is an indictment of Microsoft's forced migration policy. Microsoft should have stuck with their original promise of Windows 10 being the last Windows with an ongoing rolling update model.

Two paths to Enlightenment: AV Linux 25 and MX Moksha step forward

Re: Why the forks?

I guess because they're specialist creative media distributions like Ubuntu Studio is:

https://ubuntustudio.org/

Another open source project dies of neglect, leaving thousands scrambling

The moral of this tale is that profitable businesses and wealthy corporations that use such necessary softwares ought to all chip in and fund salaried maintainer jobs.