Posts by Marcelo Rodrigues

GPT-5.5 may burn fewer tokens, but it always burns more cash

I've seen it, 10k years ago...

In 1988 personal computers were few and far between. Even more so the ones able to do graphic work. (bear with me, it will make sense 10 seconds from now).

So, advertisement agencies were still (by and large, at least here in Brazil) doing everything by hand, the analogical way. And if someone wanted big pretty letters, to our advertisement titles and whatnot, we had to BUY them from Letraset. They were delivered in small strips of photographic paper. And cost a fortune.

But there were those graphic artists that COULD do typeset letters by freehand. And they could command a fortune in wages - because of how much they would save the company, in Letraset invoices.

Now it's the part that starts making sense (the one I said would come, 10 seconds ago).

I look at all these new brave employees, who use all this ever increasingly expensive AI to do things, and wonder... How much time until us dinosaurs can start commanding a premium, for not using AI at all, and saving a fortune in the process?

Asking for a friend, You know...

Users complain that UK Azure is having capacity problems

Re: Never mind azure. Exchange is dying.

"So now you have two problems?"

Are you sure that Exchange dying is really a problem?

MIT boffins create device that 'paints' iridescent structural color in real time

Re: This is going to be like LEDs

"I am struggling to think of any genuinely useful purposes this could be put to."

One comes to mind: as an engineering teaching tool.

Just coat the structure on it, shine some light the right way, andbthe colors would show the deformation/stress.

Excelent to mechanical ans structure engineering classes.

How Microsoft gave customers what they wanted: An audience with Bill Gates

Re: Off topic somewhat but …

"Three is a unicorn squared..."

Being square I take it not in a vacuum?

AI giants call for energy grid kumbaya

It's your mess - You xlean it.

This is a problem caused by the dataenters themselves. Make them fix rhe problem.

I like the last option: force them to have local energy storage, to smooth out the jolta on the grid.

That, or charge an wxorbitant tax on them, for destabilizing the whole system.

Come to think about it, shouldn't it be counted as an attack on the grid?

Codeberg beset by AI bots that now bypass Anubis tarpit

Re: This is not news

"(When did people decide that if a square only contains 1% of the motorcycle, I should skip it?)"

By $DEITY, how I hate this! The handlebars ARE a part of the motorcycle, FFS!

OpenSUSE Leap 16.0 reaches RC status

This isn't looking good.

Last time I lost my "pet Distro" was when Conectiva was sold to Madrake. The less said about it, the better. Suse saved me - version 9.3 at the time - and I'v been a happy user since then.

Now? Now I'm not so sure. I tried cockpit. It almost gave me a physical reaction. Harder to use, more limited than good old Yast and it's brwoser based! Yast I could use on the terminal, without a network.

I've been following Leap 16 on VMs, and It worked there. Looks polished, the updates I did (on beta versions) all worked out and that packager manager (sorry, I still can't remember its name) worked very well.

But stripping Yast, Wayland only, 32 bits on its way out and dropping SysinitV compatibility? Not so sure. Really not so sure, and it's a shame - I really wanted to keep using them. Mint, maybe? I've been playing with it on a VM, and looks like it works.

Hope my RTX3060 doesn't give me much trouble - good old OpenSuse always had me covered. Maybe it's the universe telling me to buy an AMD GPU. Who knows?

British IT worker sentenced to seven months after trashing company network

Re: Greasy

"If I was told I was being suspended, I'd hand my laptop, work phone & pass-card over immediately, and ask them to disable my accounts while I watched. For their security and mine."

This is something REALLY hard to drill into some people. They get offended by this "zero trust" notion - but it's safer for both sides. I would make them do it to myself, had it happened to me. I don't want to be able to login in their systems - exactly so they can't think "mmmm, there was that guy that was fired, right? Maybe this weird gremlin here is..." No, thank You very much. Please, take my access, keys and passes away - and before I exit the building.

Single passenger reportedly survives Air India Boeing 787 crash

Re: Pure speculation

"as well as other industrial contamination disasters (Bhopal)..."

Don't get me started on Bhopal. I watched a video about that - it gave me nightmares. Truly horror movie grade that stuff.

AWS says Britain needs more nuclear power to feed AI datacenter surge

Be it AI, industries or households

Someone will use it.

I may be wrong (after all, I don't live there), but from here looks like Britain is already in serious need of electricity.

Couple that with AI and electric cars, and I would say the odds of overbuilding on the next 10 years are very slim.

Of course, the grid must be upgraded accordingly. And taking 5 years for nuclear isn't an excuse: it will take 5 years to build anyway - be it from today or from 3 years in the future.

UK officials insist 'murder prediction tool' algorithms purely abstract

Re: It's a reflex

"We call it here back in Brazil the people searching for hairs in the surface of an egg."

Tying knots on raindrops!

Mozilla flamed by Firefox fans after promises to not sell their data go up in smoke

"Why couldn't Mozilla have been honest with us and be like hey the deal with Google is ending so we need revenue..."

Excellent question. Had I received some communication to the tone of "we need the monies to keep going, please donate..." I would probably donate (happily!) to keep them afloat.

Now, after this, I will move the heavens to keep away from them. Ah, well...

Google binning SMS MFA at last and replacing it with QR codes

Re: What about all the people who don't have smartphones?

"Can you give us the IP address of your smart toilet? I have this hacking app I want to try out..."

This gives a new - and terrifying - meaning to the expression "backlog"...

Microsoft 365 price rises are coming – pay up or opt out (if you can find the button)

Re: Do

"Anyone knows what that copilot thing does?"

Same thing Clippy did - only worse.

VMware users gripe over 3-year commitment to renew licenses

Jump ship NOW - or as soon as possible.

I understand these kind of migrations are REALLY hard: it take years to do them right, and it's always a risk and a cost plus.

BUT

As Nike says: "Just do it".

Not on a whim. Not from today to tomorrow. No, this ship has sailed. Renew today (this damned three year contract), and start NOW planning the migration. Take two years studying and planning. Use the last year to migrate - and give them the middle finger. Go on, they deserve it, and You know.

Because if You think THIS contract is bad, wait until 3 years from now. And that one will pale, when compared to the one 6 years from now. You know I'm right.

Eurocops take down 'secure' criminal chat system known as Matrix

Re: Speculation

"...Here we are thinking through the technical intricacies and it's quite likely the cops just performed the old school trick of following the money and knocking on the door of the bloke it was going to..."

Obligatory xkcd:

https://xkcd.com/538/

DoJ wants Google to sell off Chrome and ban it from paying to be search default

Re: Who would want to buy Chrome?

"The DoJ have said Google needs to divest itself of Chrome. Payment is optional."

But "divest" is different from "selling". Strictly speaking, they can just shut it down. Close development, pack the bags and go. Leave the source repo open for some time, in order to fulfill obligations, then close.

I mean, someone will probably buy it. But "divest" doesn't mean "sell it to someone". I think the DOJ would be quite happy if Google said "ok, I'll terminate the browser then and will not use the trademark."

Airbus A380 flew for 300 hours with metre-long tool left inside engine

Re: Multi-Fail

"...I was still awake enough to say "LEFT HAND!"

I was going to have a procedure done on mu right eye.

They asked me twice, and both times I tapped my head, beside the eye in question, and said "this one".

Because I will surelly NEVER trust this kind of answer to something like "the left one".

Two years after entering the graphics card game, Intel has nothing to show for it

"I really don't care about the details. In my experience, Intel graphics has only ever been good enough to get a computer running until I can slot in a true graphics card (Nvidia or AMD, given the moment)."

These first generation AIB cards from Intel weren't bad. No, they couldn't face the best AMD had to offer (nevermind NVidia) - but they weren't bad entry cards. At the very beginning they had a ton of drivers and optimizations problems - but they did their homework, and this isn't a problem anymore.

If I remember correctly, their ARC770 would be about the same level of one RTX3070, maybe one 3060Ti. Far from stellar, but not bad per se either. After all, I'm running one RTX3060 (non Ti). As are about 5,86% of Steam gamers this month. And this is the first more popular graphics card on Steam survey. The second one is... RTX4060.

They had a good video encoder too, and supported AV1 hardware encoding when no one else did (NVidia started hardware AV1 encoding on the 4000 series).

To me the reality is simple: it was a first try, people were scared and money short, they had a lot of teething problems and although "everybody" buys something around the 4060/4070 series, reviewers praise the 4090 monsters. This steer people away from what they would realistically buy. Who cares if the 4090 is (say) 3x faster than the 7900XTX? I won't buy either! What matters to me (to vast majority of buyers) is what is the better: RTX4070 or 7700XT?

OS/2 expert channeled a higher power to dispel digital doom vortex

Re: I have no idea where the book went

"You do know where your towel is....?"

I doubt it - he's already panicking...

If HDMI screen rips aren't good enough for you pirates, DeCENC is another way to beat web video DRM

"I never understood streaming at all. It's like renting access to someone else's Plex and it all goes away if you stop paying, and they can delete and change content any time they like and load it with ads throughout every video if they want."

Streaming allows me access for a HUGE number of music/movies I couldn't ever afford to. Yes, one show can go away from one day to the next. Yes, I must keep paying to watch it. Fine by me: 99,99% of what I watch I have no intention to watch again or keep. The (very) few things I think is worth keeping, I buy a physical copy.

The rest? Stream away, baby. Stream away.

Robot enters Fukushima's nuclear core to retrieve melted-down remains

Re: RE: vacuum

"Sounds nice but remember, to create a vacuum you need to move a lot of air. In this case, super contaminated air, coming out of the exit port of the vacuum engine used to create the vacuum at the working end."

Just put the exit inside the affected area. This way one can blow as much as necessary, and no air leaves the building.

Intel's annus horribilis continues as AMD gains ground

"*Wondering what all these new fangled CPUs are all about...* Still using my Cyrix 6x86 PC... I mean... it runs DOOM... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯"

You MUST get one of those Ryzen 9000 series: they are SO fast, you'll gonna play much more Doom! :D

Oracle's Java pricing brews bitter taste, subscribers spill over to OpenJDK

"The code for openjdk may be GPL V2 but there is an exception that allows it's use."

GPL V2 doesn't forbid commercial use. It has several restrictions of what we can do with the code - but commercial use isn't one of them.

Re: Gartner finally gets something right!

"Throw enough darts at multiple dartboards and the law of averages suggests that a bullseye is likely to be hit once in a while."

Or "even a broken clock is on time twice a day"

Re: FALSE

"Do they have to? Other, that it is, to meet some arbitrary analyst expectations? The likely result is that they shed those customers who were running a mix of Centos in development and test and RHEL in production."

Not to mention "mind share".

If I run <something> at home, I'm more inclined to use <same something> at work, if it's possible.

If I can spun several free VMs running "something", to validate my production environment, then I'm more inclined to use "the same something" elsewhere.

It all adds up.

65 years of NASA's meatball: Original logo lives on despite detractors

Why not both?

We are not living forever, nor chopping heads here. We can have two logos, no problems.

Personaly, I would use the meatball when space and printing capabilities where not an issue.

The worm I would use in places where a monocromatic - or easier to recognize logo - were needed.

Yes, the meatball is iconic, but try printing it REALLY small...

And I w9uld use the worm on rockets. Its proportions are MUCH better suited to a thin colinderbthan the meatball.

Ransomware scum who hit Indonesian government apologizes, hands over encryption key

Re: Criminals with a conscience? I don't buy it!

"They were probably Indonesian nationals and realised sooner or later they'll get caught."

Or just afraid of future retribution. It's quite harder to avoid state retribution than mere business anger.

Voyager 1 makes stellar comeback to science operations

"To poke where no man has poked before."

One poke to rule them all?

Always, ALWAYS, that I read something about the Pioneers, I'm in awe.

At this time, if they said "we have power enough only to answer pings", I would found it wonderful.

Those are a testment of quality engineering, hands down.

A thump with the pointy end of a screwdriver will fix this server! What could possibly go wrong?

Re: Technical Terminology

"Said key was produced, a fifteen pound sledgehammer.It opened the lock."

Here in Brazil we nick named the 20kg sledgehammer "sexta feira" (friday). Because, of course, it's light out time.

Google Search results polluted by buggy AI-written code frustrate coders

I'm getting reasonably sane results with Brave. Ditched google altogheter.

I can fix this PC, boss, but I’ll need to play games for hours to do it

Re: I know for a fact ...

"As for generic software testing, it's the whole "software tester walks into a bar and orders 1 beer, 5 beers, -1 beers, fjioewjiofewj beers, 1.2389028190 beers, etc" "

As long as no client comes in looking for the restroom...

A million Australian pubgoers wake up to find personal info listed on leak site

Sooo... they took a leak after the pub?

Shocking, I say. Shocking.

NASA plasma propulsion project promises Mars in a flash

Re: One stage on

" something like "travelling in space with a nuclear bomb up your butt". "

Wouldn't that be the Orion project? With your but going up and down during it.

Sounds exhaustive, if You ask me.

Software support chap survived breaking his customer

Re: 9 GB of files can only be one thing ...

Only 9GiB?

Too little for pron. Mist be something useful instead.

Leicester streetlights take ransomware attack personally, shine on 24/7

Re: Connect everything!

"I think one of the reasons they went for centralised control is it just takes one pigeon with a good aim to knock the photocell out of operation"

The photocell doesn't have to look at the sky. It reads light, doesn't matter from where. If calibrated (just give a little twist to that sensibility knob, will ya?), one could even point it sideways or to the sidewalk.

Torvalds intentionally complicates his use of indentation in Linux Kconfig

Re: I Hate Syntax Critical Whitespace Indentation

"I Hate Syntax Critical Whitespace Indentation "

Indeed, You and me both.

We can argue about which format indentation is better (8 spaces? 4 spaces? new line before and after curly brackets or just after?), but white space as a syntax? No, it's one of the worst things I can imagine. We already have problems finding a comma transmuted into something else. Imagine one white space gone astray...

Some 300,000 IPs vulnerable to this Loop DoS attack

Re: Trivial?

"That's actually not trivial, as routers drop packets with incorrect source addresses."

Routers SHOULD drop them. They don't always do. Sometime ago I was attacked by an amplified DOS, using NTP protocol. The perpetrator was outside my server network, outside the various NTP servers networks used as amplifiers AND they still answered to a spoofed message from "me".

So, yeah. They SHOULD drop - but it isn't necessarily true.

What's brown and sticky and broke this PC?

Re: glueing thin clients

One thing I still didn't see is one of those computer with VESA mounts on both sides - so we could sandwich them between the monitor and the arm support. I think this would be quite handy...

There are some considerations about weight supported and load on the computer chassis - but nothing a little over engineering don't solve.

Tesla Berlin gigafactory goes dark after alleged eco-sabotage

"No-one would be demented enough to set fire to a sub-station would they? no? OK"

The dementors are burning the midnight oil allright.

I know, Iknow. Coat. Door.

Underwater cables in Red Sea damaged months after Houthis 'threatened' to do just that

Re: Why do they need a submarine?

"There is a limit to how long a ship's anchor chain is - although I'm sure it's possible to rig one that's longer."

There is a limit of how long a chain made ONLY of chains can be, before it snaps under its own weight. BUT

Jacques Cousteau already got a camera down the Mariana Trenches - to the very bottom.

The trick to not snap the chain was to alternate: a stretch made of chain, another one made of buoyant nylon. One balanced the other, and everything worked fine.

Dave's not here, man. But this mind-blowingly huge server just, like, arrived

Re: It's a shame

"Ruined by drugs again."

Pot? Really? He's just one rotten apple. There are several drugs that DO destroy everything they touch, ravaging the user and holding him hostage to the vice.

Pot just isn't one of them.

Mozilla slams Microsoft for using dark patterns to drive Windows users toward Edge

"There are buying game studios and destroying them like ..."

To be fair, I think the AAA arena stinks to high heavens, and has for a long time. Honestly, I think the indie crowd got it right: smaller games, smaller player base, more passion and better quality.

You only need to make 500 million from your game if it costs more than 200 million to make it. A small one, costing about 500k, will be quite profitable making "just" 2 million.

Re: Unfortunately .....

"Your name butcherings aren't funny, clever or original. Grow up, be professional and your arguments will carry more weight."

Unfortunately You have to grow up. We, hardcore users (o/), developers, system engineers, pioneers of the internet and alike... we have a long and proud history of dark humor (bus factor, anyone?), puns (A Patchy Server?), and tong in cheek jokes.

Grow up, learn to laugh (at others AND at yourself), and go with the flow. It will be a much pleasant ride. :D

Re: Did Mozilla also mention…

"Frankly, Edge could be the best browser in the world, and I still wouldn’t use it."

Hell, yeah. The only use I have for edge is to download my browser. And, as a petty revenge, I make sure to use Bing to search for it - and click on the link. Just to tilt the numbers.

I know, I know. Won't make a difference. I said it was petty, didn't I?

Not even poor Notepad is safe from Microsoft's AI obsession

Re: Missing the point....again

There is (was? there is years that I don't use Windows in anger) ONE thing I would add to notepad: the ability to understand UNIX like newline. And that's it. The value of notepad is being small, simple, minimalist. This is an app to paste URLs for later, to make a 10 line document, remembering me of something or the grocery list. And that's it.

But, of course, "AI" and all that. Wankers.

Bank boss hated IT, loved the beach, was clueless about ports and politeness

Re: The RJ family...

"My pet hate: black-on-black design, of anything - computers, cars, kitchen stoves, hifi, you name it....."

Now You are just being difficult: there are clear black leters over black background, with neat little black lights to show the status!

Having slammed brakes on hiring, Google says it no longer needs quite so many recruiters

Re: Google Bard

"That test sucks. The answer is always 6."

Beg to differ. As anyone know, the answer is - and will allways be - 42!

Google exec: Microsoft Teams concession 'too little, too late'

Re: Hmmmm

"Except, notably, it's not really Microsoft's customers complaining but Microsoft's competition . . . who are also known for abusing their monopoly power in their own domains. "

Yes, Tou are absolutely right. But what I would like to see is this thing going ahead, and Microsoft getting condemned.

And then, to get back at competition, I would like to see Microsoft egging the regulators against its competitors.

And let them burn one another to the ground on the courts.