* Posts by katrinab

6314 publicly visible posts • joined 6 Aug 2016

Filipino police free hundreds of slaves toiling in romance scam operation

katrinab Silver badge
Meh

Re: Modern slavery

I guess the $40,000 equivalent in 1886 would have given you legally enforceable property rights over the slave, and there was an established way to advertise and sell your slave. Those things don't exist now, so that would depress the value.

katrinab Silver badge
Meh

You could, theoretically at least, leave that for another minimum wage job though. The only practical difficulty is actually finding another such job.

TrueNAS CORE 13 is the end of the FreeBSD version

katrinab Silver badge
Thumb Up

Re: Bad news indeed

Agreed, especially when, on at least my HP Microserver, there is a USB port inside the case on the motherboard, which you can use as the boot device. Probably HP put it there with exactly that use-case in mind.

Fresh version of Windows user-friendly Zorin OS arrives to tempt the Linux-wary

katrinab Silver badge
Windows

Re: Coincidence...

WinPython - available on the Windows Store, though I don't recommend you install this version; and on winget

Visual Studio - available on the Windows Store and winget

Thonny - available on winget

Notepad++ - available on winget

Firefox - available on the Windows Store and winget -- Winget offers more options for different versions

LaTeX - MikTex is available on winget, TeX Live you would have to download

Doxygen - available on winget

katrinab Silver badge
Meh

Re: Coincidence...

The idea of the Windows Store being an actually useful way to obtain software is a fairly recent thing. Most people tried it when it first came out, found it wasn't very useful, and didn't come back.

katrinab Silver badge
Linux

Re: Coincidence...

'apt install packagename' is way easier than locating and finding some random .exe

For that matter, 'winget install vendor.packagename' is also a superior way to do things on Windows.

katrinab Silver badge
Linux

Re: Coincidence...

My take is that the app store should only show GUI apps, and have a very curated list of high quality apps. If you want to install libavcodec or some obscure fork of vi/emacs, then use the command line.

As if working at Helldesk weren't bad enough, IT helpers now targeted by cybercrims

katrinab Silver badge
Alert

Re: Helpdeskers are disciplined to be helpful

The user account is good enough to get confidential data though.

Ad agency boss owned two Ferraris but wouldn't buy a real server

katrinab Silver badge

Re: The owner has two Ferraris. They have that kind of money

My very small and not at all powerful car can generally do those sorts of journeys faster, because it can fit into spaces that bigger cars can't. Use the right tool for the job, and for that job, the right tool is a city car.

Developers beware, Microsoft's domain shakeup is coming soon

katrinab Silver badge

Re: I seem to have gotten to this planet by mistake. Does anyone here speak English?

Non product experiences - marketing gumph, product documentation, their online store

user-facing product experiences - web applications

authenticated - you have to log in with your Microsoft account password / 2fa

Can AI shorten PC replacement cycles? Dell seems to think so

katrinab Silver badge
Meh

Re: "shorten PC replacement cycles"

Sure, but to the average person, "AI" means ChatGPT, and people know that it works just fine on the cheapest Chromebook, because it is a website.

Cryptocurrency laundryman gets hung out to dry

katrinab Silver badge

The only difficulty is in tying a wallet address to a real-world individual. You can obviously do that at an exchange where they are switching to/from real money.

If you are cashing out crypto that has come from a tumbler service, then it is very likely that you are cashing out the proceeds of crime. The only difficulty is figuring out which crime they are the proceeds of, but they can do other forms of investigation to figure that out.

The end of classic Outlook for Windows is coming. Are you ready?

katrinab Silver badge

Re: It's garbage

At work, they drag the emails into the correspondence folder for the relevant client, as their way of keeping them along side scanned paper correspondence and word documents that were printed and posted out.

China pushes its payment platforms towards an international presence

katrinab Silver badge
Black Helicopters

Most retailers in the UK no longer accept cash. Apple Pay and Google Pay are the normal way to pay for things. I guess it is the same in China?

Network Rail steps back from geofencing over safety fears

katrinab Silver badge
Coat

Re: because...

And the Frecciargento, which is admittedly a silver arrow rather than a silver bullet.

katrinab Silver badge
Unhappy

Re: because...

You would only reopen the line when all the workers have left. If for example 19 out of the 20 workers have left the area, and the other one has gone offline but is still in the area, that isn't good enough.

How do you lot feel about Pay or say OK to ads model, asks ICO

katrinab Silver badge

Re: Great Idea!

Well everyone watching the channel sees the same ad. Yes it is targeted based on the content of the show and typical demographic of the viewer.

katrinab Silver badge
Megaphone

Re: Great Idea!

OK you probably don't want to see loads of adverts for pregnancy testing kits on here.

I don't want to see them either. It is a tech site, so show everyone lots of adverts for tech related stuff.

katrinab Silver badge
Thumb Up

Re: Great Idea!

And untargeted TV advertising had, an probably still has, a much higher CPM than targeted web advertising.

Trying out Microsoft's pre-release OS/2 2.0

katrinab Silver badge

Re: Pints' on me Brian

The company is still alive. It is called ISKF Limited, Company Registration No. 06893056. The registered office is their accountants in Aldermaston.

We asked Intel to define 'AI PC'. Its reply: 'Anything with our latest CPUs'

katrinab Silver badge
Meh

GPT4All runs at a fairly usable speed on my Threadripper. Running it on my RTX3080Ti is a lot faster, but I wouldn't say the CPU option is "uncomfortably slow".

AI models show racial bias based on written dialect, researchers find

katrinab Silver badge
Headmaster

But why is one way considered the "proper" way, and the other not?

Because it is the way the privileged group speak and write.

Swiss cheese security? Play ransomware gang milks government of 65,000 files

katrinab Silver badge
Alert

Re: One of these things is not like the others

Have you seen how sportsball team fans behave at matches?

Apple may have made itself a target before the EU's Digital Markets Act comes into force

katrinab Silver badge
Angel

Re: I hope so

You no longer need a different charger, thanks to the EU. My iPhone is currently charging with a Google charger and cable.

Trump, who tried kicking TikTok out of the US, says boo to latest ban effort

katrinab Silver badge
Meh

Re: Tik Tok Youth Brigade

Are you sure?

Truth Social was founded about 9 months after the Orange one left office, and launched just over a year after he left office.

Desktop GPU shipments jumped by a third – no thanks to AI PCs

katrinab Silver badge

Yes, but Etherium, where most GPU mining was targeted at, is now proof of stake.

Plummer talks to us about spending Microsoft's money on a red Corvette

katrinab Silver badge

Re: I doubt he would get paid today

He got it specifically written into his contract that he was allowed to do outside work.

India plans 10,000-GPU sovereign AI supercomputer

katrinab Silver badge
Meh

Re: An expensive paperweight

In theory at least, that is the sort of thing you would do to help with the huge poverty problems.

EU users can't update 3rd party iOS apps if abroad too long

katrinab Silver badge
Megaphone

Re: Who are their lawyers?

"The media was full of statements about how shelves would be empty, house prices would crash, millions would be jobless."

Well house prices haven't crashed yet, but it it is only a matter of time given the increase in mortgage rates...

Shelves are empty, and the number of people in employment has fallen by millions.

katrinab Silver badge

Re: Who are their lawyers?

My father could apply for an Irish passport because his grandparents were Irish citizens. But because he didn't do it before I was born, that means I can't become an Irish citizen by that route.

Ireland in the 1970s wasn't anything like as good as it is now, and he probably couldn't have imagined there being any reason to want to move there.

I would always advise anyone to get any citizenships/passports they are entitled to, unless the country is so bad that having it would be actively harmful to you. Ireland was never that bad.

katrinab Silver badge

Re: I hope they get sued out of existance

Not quite.

If you buy from a business based in the EU, like for example the Apple EU App Store in Luxembourg, then you are protected by EU laws regardless of who or where you are.

katrinab Silver badge

Re: Who are their lawyers?

Also, anyone born in Northern Ireland is entitled to an Irish passport, and therefore is still an EU citizen.

katrinab Silver badge
Megaphone

Re: Who are their lawyers?

Yes. Both. And also people in Northern Ireland.

HP print rental service seeks more users to become subscription addicts

katrinab Silver badge
Alert

Re: A fool and his money

Price goes up at the end of the contract term. Probably.

katrinab Silver badge
Megaphone

And that is why HP is not on my shortlist when considering a new printer.

I got a Canon multifunction laser just over 10 years ago in the Black Friday sale. I replaced the black cartridge for the first time last year. The colour cartridges have about 40% left in them. When they run out, that will probably be time to replace it with a new one.

I mostly use it for the scanner. I print 1 or 2 pages every other month, then about once a year I print out a much longer document in the hundreds of pages. So a monthly page allowance just doesn't work for me.

More frequently, I print out 1 label from a sheet of 65 labels. So that one label sheet will go through the printer 65 times before it is used up. So it is one page in terms of ink actually used, but HP would bill it as 65 pages.

Stuck paying for your apartment's crummy internet? FCC boss Rosenworcel wants to help

katrinab Silver badge
Meh

Re: Altnets in the UK are creating the same problem

My girlfriend's building has a choice between BT Openreach FTTP and Hyperoptic, so no, there isn't a monopoly, and yes there are multiple lines running into the building.

katrinab Silver badge

Re: Maybe not as easy as it seems [Bulk-Billing Alternatives]

Where I live in England:

Rubbish collection is carried out by the local council using council-employed staff and vehicles.

Water and sewage are "provided" by a government-sanctioned organised crime gang

For electricity, there is a monopoly cable provider, but I can theoretically choose which billing company I want to use.

Same would apply for gas if I had it.

For telephone, there are two companies that operate cables along my street - BT Openreach and City Fibre. Both of them allow me to select which ISP I want to access over those cables, and there is an actual genuine difference in the service the different ISPs provide. Other streets nearby additionally have the option of using Virgin Media cables.

There are 4 mobile providers + a load of MVSPs who use those providers networks

There is a fixed wireless provider

+ there is satellite, but probably not worth considering given the alternatives that are available.

Microsoft: Copyright law didn't stop the VCR and shouldn't stop the LLM

katrinab Silver badge

No

Ultimately LLMs are processed using the same boolean computer instructions that have been around since at least the PDP11, probably earlier. The training data is used to compile billions of IF statements that determine what the output is going to look like.

I pick on the PDP11 because it was the first computer to run Unix. Most computers these days run some sort of Unix or Unix-like clone. The exception is those that run Windows, which is different, but not in a way that is relevant to this discussion.

katrinab Silver badge

I would run with the argument that the training data is the source code. If I took the source code for Microsoft Office and recompiled it in a different way from how Microsoft's release team compiles it, it would still be copyright infringement.

katrinab Silver badge
FAIL

Not the same thing at all

Video tapes were a device that could be used to make and watch recordings from both legal and non-legal sources. If you set up a market stall selling video recording from non-legal sources, law enforcement would shut it down.

ChatGPT / CoPilot / etc don't give you the choice of which training data to use. They are the market stall selling access to material from non-legal sources.

katrinab Silver badge

Re: What an absolute joke of an equivalence

And also, you could buy video tapes of things from the copyright holder.

What a surprise! Apple found a way to deliver browser engine and app store choice

katrinab Silver badge
Megaphone

To lock down iOS as tightly as before, you do nothing. Doing nothing is what people who don't know any better would do anyway.

katrinab Silver badge

Which involves changing stuff in the settings app. Easy enough for us to do, but there is sufficient friction to stop a normal person from doing it.

katrinab Silver badge
Megaphone

The vast majority of Android users don't install third-party app stores or sideload apps. They install apps exclusively from Google Play.

I'm sure it will be the same on iPhones.

Microsoft drags Windows Subsystem for Android into the trash

katrinab Silver badge
Windows

It is possible to install Google Play on it. The only issue I had was, if you use a Google Workspace account, you have to go into admin settings to allow users to disable authentication requirement when waking up their phone, because that doesn’t work in WSA, and isn’t needed because you are already authenticated to the Windows desktop.

Watchdog calls for more plugs, less monopoly in EV charging network

katrinab Silver badge

Re: It is still not as simple as pulling up in a forecourt and filling up a tank

Your bank already issues you with such a card. The amount would be added to your credit card bill rather than your electricity bill, but is that a problem?

katrinab Silver badge
Thumb Up

Re: It is still not as simple as pulling up in a forecourt and filling up a tank

Which is why the EU mandated CCS for all electric cars, including Tesla.

That bit isn't a problem. The problem is the 15 different apps you need to get all the chargers to work, and that a mobile signal isn't guaranteed to be present at the charger site.

And also the fact that 6 chargers per service station is nowhere near sufficient. Every single parking space needs to have a charger.

Updates are plenty but fans are few in Windows 11 land

katrinab Silver badge
Mushroom

Re: Be less intrusive, less pushy, less blocking work,

Remember to also do Remove-AppxProvisionedPackage to more completely remove it

Hands up if you want to volunteer for layoffs, IBM tells staff

katrinab Silver badge
Meh

Re: voluntary redundancy?

Let’s say you are a supermarket, you have 10 checkout assistants and decide you only need 5. You could then legally ask for volunteers amount the 10 checkout assistants to take redundancy.

Incoming wave of AI is making buying PCs riskier for businesses

katrinab Silver badge
Gimp

Re: Simple Question..

If Apple is anything to go by, things like Subject Lift can be pretty useful.

You can do it in Photoshop on a regular CPU though, but it is somewhat slower.