Posts by Bill Neal

Valve powers up Arch Linux – because who needs Windows when you have a Steam Deck?

Nice to see a company reward a resource like this

Steam has done wonders for Linux compatibility regardless of distro. Even on Mint the vast majority of my 200+ games work better than Windows. They have come a long way in a short time, and all it took was a big company to finally get so fed up with Windows that they put their money in the alternative. And it doesn't need to be some locked down proprietary BSD variant like PlayStation. Letting users enjoy the Steam Deck as more than a console was the best decision Valve made for it.

Oracle urged again to give up JavaScript trademark

Fork name

or LibreScript

It worked for the office suite.

Pat Gelsinger's grand plan to reinvent Intel is in jeopardy

Re: Heaters

Have TDP's not gone up since Pentium 4?

US sues Georgia Tech over alleged cybersecurity failings as a Pentagon contractor

anti-malware?

Just what anti-malware software do they insist contractors use?

Would you rather buy space broadband from a billionaire, or Communist China?

RedStarLink

It was right there and they missed the opportunity!

China starts testing national cyber-ID before consultation on the idea closes

Re: Mandatory centralised face-login for everything

If China can master facial recognition, anyone can do it. That's a serious big data challenge

Intel prepares to cut 'thousands' of workers

Re: Just offshoring

What else would you expect after winning a massive government subsidy?

North Korean chap charged for attacks on US hospitals, military, NASA – and even China

Rim Jong Hyok ?

So it was a Rim job?

More seriously, wouldn't it be ironic to turn him in just to get the $10 million reward and hand it off to N. Korea

FTC grabs controller as Microsoft jacks up Game Pass price by 81%

Re: Coming soon

Isn't there already a Windows insider/developer program in place since the beginning of Win10?

Release the hounds! Securing datacenters may soon need sniffer dogs

Re: Obviously

Or use the old prison wallet

Copilot+ PCs software compatibility issues left to you to sort out, with help from crowdsourcers

useful AI

Want a killer app that people actually need? Make an AI that can write it's own drivers!

'Almost every Apple device' vulnerable to CocoaPods supply chain attack

Objective C

Apple already prevented any malware security issues long ago by forcing people to code in Objective C. Remember? Their apps are the most secure. /s

OpenAI, Google ink deals to augment AI efforts with news – it was Time for better sources

hallucinations

Do they really expect factual information from News Corp?

Intel interrupts work on $25B Israel fab, citing need for 'responsible capital management'

Water resources

How about responsible geography management? Why do they keep building in the deserts of Arizona, New Mexico, and Israel? These places aren't known for having an abundance of resources for fabs.

Legendary Glastonbury farm using bovine excreta power plant adds graphene boffinry

Break the cycle?

Break the cycle of technological progress and return to the dark ages? No thanks.

Tokyo takes on Tinder by developing its own dating app it hopes will arrest population decline

Wow, what a backronym!

They should be careful with that National Institute of Population and Social Security

Hugging Face to make $10M worth of old Nvidia GPUs freely available to AI devs

Hugging Face?

I thought facehuggers were to be avoided.

Another week, another leak for Boeing's Starliner crew capsule

Re: If I were the Astronauts assigned to this mission...

Just wait for the Starliner MAX to come out. It'll be a bang!

VMware's end-user compute products probably have a new brand: Omnissa

Prophetic

Praise the Omnissiah or be branded a heretic!

EU antitrust cops probe Microsoft ties between Entra ID and 365 services

okta?

"thousands of users" is a serious understatement when they have many thousands in my company alone.

Ford pulls the plug on EV strategy as losses pile up

Re: Manly name

The F-150 Lightning has been a thing since 1992, long before the EV model was even dreamed of. Ford has been betting hard on nostalgia with reused names like Bronco, Maverick, and even branding an Escape "Mustang" to try to get people excited about the next thing.

The literal Rolls-Royce of EVs is recalled over fire risk

Re: Just one question to potential buyers, Why?

Ask "mattress mogul" Michael Fux. That's one helluva nominative determinism

Cat accused of wiping US Veteran Affairs server info after jumping on keyboard

Re: cat /dev/null

But was it a sudo cat?

Germany's wild boars still too radioactive to eat largely due to Cold War nuke tests

Re: Bavaria only .....

How can that possibly be? Is nobody testing anywhere else in the world?

LibreOffice 7.6 arrives: Open source stalwart is showing its maturity

Meet?

What is Google meet? I use meet a lot, but didn't know Skype was still a thing.

Not call: Open source gurus urge you to dump Zoom

Zoom or Teams

It doesn't help if the everyone in my work-life only use Zoom, Teams, or both.

We need to be first on the Moon, uh, again, says NASA

Re: Just one question

They'll draw a dashed line around it.

Thousands of subreddits go dark in mega-protest over Reddit's app-killing API prices

Re: "But then how could it be used for porn ?"

Links are plain text

Reg FOSS desk test drive: First beta of Fedora 38 drops

Software Management

I love everything about Fedora except the software Management. I used fedora 14 as a daily driver for years and loved it. The changes in gnome drove me to Mint, and LMDE5 has been a dream compared to everything else. Mind you I'm not running a server, a touchscreen, or a programming workstation. For a standard one-size-fits-all desktop I see no reason to leave LMDE.

Linux Mint 21.2 and Cinnamon 5.8 desktop take shape

LMDE 5

I have been thoroughly enjoying LMDE 5. I use it on my personal work XPS laptop daily which has only an i3. I prefer MATE but cinnamon works just as well for me. Other desktops like NsCDE and MaXX were easy to install and try. The only thing that ever broke it was trying to update GRUB. Don't do that.

Google staff asked to share desk space in latest cost purge

Free message therapy?

Is that an SMS therapist or a chatbot?

Amazon buys US healthcare chain One Medical for $3.9bn

Re: "waiting weeks or even months to be seen"

Nah. They just need to manage their time better.

James Webb Space Telescope looks closer to home with Jupiter snaps

Re: photographing a turtle

They could just do it at night

Microsoft pulls Windows 10/11 installation websites in Russia

Re: I resisted for all of 20 seconds

Good time to be a ReactOS dev, if you live in Russia ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Fujitsu, Intel tilt at hyperscale storage with Ceph-powered arrays

Ceph?

I guess we don't have to ask about Crysis then

Cranial RAM cram plan aims to restore memory

Johnny Mnemonic?

I hope they get better storage capacity than Keanu did.

We need to talk about SPEAKERS: Sorry, 'audiophiles', only IT will break the sound barrier

Ancient technology

I had an employer who insists his old tube-based amplifier is still superior to anything digital today. After hearing the quality at very high volume and very low wattage, I'm inclined to agree. Of course every few years he has to order new tubes from China or some eastern European country since there isn't much demand anymore in the west.

On the other hand, speakers have changed quite a bit over the years. There are even towers that you might not think capable of making any sound just by looking at them (google MartinLogan). Most people (myself included) still prefer a more traditional speaker for simplicity. When a simple speaker breaks, I know why and I can repair or replace it myself.

Speaking in Tech: 'Software-defined' anything makes me BARF in my MOUTH

Software Defined Nausea

Unisys cozies closer to Intel, 'sunsets' proprietary processor

Emulation?

"uses software for processes traditionally performed by hardware."

Are they afraid to say emulation? because it looks like they're afraid to say emulation.

Teeny GPU targets wearables, Things

IoT?

more like the Internet of Things for the NSA! Why would you need such high res (& probably low framerate) graphics in such a small package?

VROOM! Intel revs Devil's Canyon monster 4x4 at 4GHz

smaller and simpler power supplies

This may be a bit off-topic, but why aren't there power supplies for DC voltage applications like marine & automotive environments? Wouldn't it be simpler to skip the AC/DC transformer and just control voltage? Is there something out there that I don't know about?

The enemy of my enemy is my, well, temporary ally: Apple and Microsoft in pact against Google

Re: well ...

Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia

US bloke raises $250k to build robo-masturbation device

Re: Software Defined Wanking

Masturbation as a Service? MaaS

Android is a BURNING 'hellstew' of malware, cackles Apple's Cook

Re: That's what my boss used to shout

Yeah, I'm not using KitKat and I'm still happy with my experience until I really want to shell out the cash for a new device that can handle it. I have seen several friends & family in the last year switch from iOS to Android for exactly the same reason, "The iOS update made my iPhone4 crap!" Everyone has their reasons. Mine are simple: total cost of ownership and device lifespan.

Venus Express to get final acid bath before crashing to surface

Re: The nutcase brigade would never allow a NASA mission to Venus

pity that NASA is concentrating so much effort on Mars, since there is no way we are going to colonize Venus

Solaris deposed as US drone-ware, replaced by Linux administration

Re: Wow, that'd make a great T-shirt!

Death as a Service? in the cloud?

Will Apple's $130bn cash infusion keep investors onboard?

Steve Jobs' legacy:

The money being spent on Samsung patent litigation and a new HQ.

Don't forget that he started those too.

Shocking new low for SanDisk – 15nm flash chips rolling out its fabs

too far?

I want to believe there is no loss of reliability, but at what point should I worry? Is it not still more reliable to use the last generation with slightly more atoms per bit?

Hidden 'Windigo' UNIX ZOMBIES are EVERYWHERE

Would you like to install?

...unless they don't know the root password. That depends on the distro, of course.

ZEPPELINS to replace Goodyear blimps in American skies

Re: Zeppelin NT?

I guess we missed out on Zeppelin for Workgroups. They should be alright as long as they don't name one Vista.