Posts by VicMortimer

Bond, debt bond: Investors shaken, not stirred by Oracle’s borrowing spree sue Big Red

Hey, if the AI bubble bursting also destroys Oracle...

Kind of a no-lose scenario, don't you think?

They won't be missed.

US regulator tells GM to hit the brakes on customer tracking

Re: Which is it?

Yes, obviously. It means they still have access to the data, which is still a problem.

Re: we ended that program due to customer feedback

It's NEVER acceptable to collect customer driving data.

Not "brief time leading up to the incident", not ever.

Your things should not be spying on you.

As agents run amok, CrowdStrike's $740M SGNL deal aims to help get a grip on identity security

Trust Clownstrike?

Seems like a bad idea to use anything they touch.

Ransomware attacks kept climbing in 2025 as gangs refused to stay dead

Re: Solution is to make it illegal to pay ransomeware

If CEOs will go to prison for paying, ransomware will die.

You can't go after the criminals who are in countries that don't care as long as their own citizens aren't targeted.

But you absolutely CAN arrest the criminals who pay the ransom.

Re: Solution is to make it illegal to pay ransomeware

I came here to say exactly that.

As long as nobody goes to prison for paying ransom, this will continue. Lock up a few CEOs because their companies paid, and this will all stop.

'Keep Android Open' movement fights back against Google sideloading restrictions

Re: It bears reminding that 'sideload' is a made-up term

I refuse to use the word. It's "normal software installation".

Historic NASA test towers face their final countdown

Disgusting

It's absolutely disgusting that the tiny-fingered, ferret-wearing, cheeto-faced shitgibbon regime can destroy national historic landmarks like this.

ChatGPT is playing doctor for a lot of US residents, and OpenAI smells money

Re: Makes you wonder which is less accurate

Dammit, I was eating.

Re: The US Healthcare System

We have the most expensive dysfunctional healthcare system in the world. The government actually spends more per capita on healthcare than any other country - and it doesn't even begin to cover everybody.

It's inexcusable. And no, we aren't all voting for this mess.

Re: Interpretation

You'd prefer LLM hallucinations to a search engine that can be used to find actual medical information done by a person who knows how to determine what's from a trustworthy source?

Seriously?

Humongous 52-inch Dell monitor will make you feel like king of the internet with four screens in one

Nah, I'll take the bezels

At those prices, I'm good with bezels. I could get quite a few 27" 4k monitors for that.

Gmail preparing to drop POP3 mail fetching

Re: One drawback with Thunderbird (and Betterbird)

WHY?????

Apple's Mail app comes with the phone, as does the Calendar app. The Mail app supports IMAP and POP, the Calendar app supports CalDAV, no need for Exchange crap unless you're stuck connecting to an Exchange server - which the Apple apps also support.

It's beyond me why anybody ever thought it was a good idea to put mail and calendars in the same app, they're not the same thing at all.

Re: IMAP4 Was Originally Published in Dec 1994.

POP3 - it's the default.

IMAP4 - you have to download, delete, and purge.

It's not a feature I use - but I have my own mail servers, I don't trust ANYBODY else to store my email.

I'm in the US. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stored_Communications_Act is unfortunately still law here. Anything you leave on somebody else's computer can be obtained with just a subpoena if it's been there for 180 days or longer, no warrant needed, much lower standard.

Re: IMAP may send password is plain text as well...

APOP has been around since 1993, it's pretty widely implemented.

Re: Have We Reached "Do No Good" Yet?

No, you have to use the caution and leopard emojis together for that.

Re: POP3S

Yeah, that confused me. POP3 supports SSL and hashed passwords.

https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc1460

Loads fine for me too. macOS 26, Firefox, UBO, and NoScript, - though Google is allowed to run some scripts. Not the ones El Reg wants me to, of course - tag manager and syndication are permabanned on my network.

Re: Thunderbird for the win

No clue. IMAP is older than Google.

And I use it on the only mail servers I trust - my own hardware.

Your smart TV is watching you and nobody's stopping it

Re: Because he is racist

Ken Paxton isn't sort of racist. He's over the top utter piece of shit racist.

But he's also not wrong that the Chinese government doesn't have a lot in the way of checks and balances on surveillance. That's not racist, that's a criticism of an authoritarian government.

Unfortunately, it looks like most countries are moving that way, it's gotten particularly bad in the US and UK. And our corporations slurping data are as damaging to us as our governments. And Paxton is part of the problem.

Finally - a terminal solution to the browser wars

Re: Yes!

Huh?

SSH with X11 forwarding has been a thing for a very long time. Just run Firefox.

Keeping Windows and macOS alive past their sell-by date

Re: OS X / macOS: Download from Apple directly

Every major release of macOS IS a clean install. If you're running OCLP, every point release IS a clean install.

Unless you're intentionally trashing your data and apps, you're not really gaining anything, you're just making your life harder.

Re: Don't Believe the Mac Bashing

I'm not sure what all the whining about Tahoe is about.

It's fine. Sure, you have to tweak a few things (System Settings > Accessibility > Display > turn on Reduce transparency, Show window title icons, Show toolbar button shapes are the big ones) then Appearance > Show scroll bars Always, Desktop & Dock > Click wallpaper to show desktop Only in Stage Manager, turn off all the stupid window tiling crap, then Trackpad and turn on Tap to click, turn off the idiotic "natural" (backwards) scrolling, and of course under Displays turn on Show all resolutions and select one resolution down to get rid of the idiotic notch on newer MacBooks.

But once you've gotten rid of the stupidity (most of which is actually older than Tahoe, the backwards scrolling goes way back) it's fine.

Re: Hope Springs Eternal…

The PowerBook G4 12" was a huge pain to work on.

The hard drive isn't as bad as the optical drive (that's a nightmare on those, removing the hard drive is part of it, as is removing the logic board) but it's still annoying.

One real reason AI isn't delivering: Meatbags in manglement

What an idiotic article

The best way to include AI in your company is to not use it.

You're setting yourself up for failure if you do. When this bubble pops, AI is going to get a LOT more expensive, and you'll have skyrocketing costs that may just bankrupt you if you can't rip out AI and replace it with people. Oh, you fired the people? Well, bye.

Memory is running out, and so are excuses for software bloat

Yeah, not gonna work.

The bloat isn't likely to go anywhere.

All we can really hope for is the idiotic AI bubble to pop soon. It's doing nothing but increasing misery.

Roomba maker iRobot gets cleaned out in Chapter 11

Re: Spyware

Yep. I actually have one of the older ones that didn't have any kind of network connection. I haven't used it in many years. It was not terribly useful.

Spyware

Pretty sure it wasn't "consumer confidence" that made people stop buying their crap.

It was the spying.

A Roomba recorded a woman on the toilet. How did screenshots end up on Facebook?"

Denmark takes a Viking swing at VPN-enabled piracy

Re: This makes a chsnge

There's a difference?

FIFA just gave the tiny-fingered, ferret-wearing, cheeto-faced shitgibbon a big medal. He's a known pedo.

FIFA is a child porn enabler.

Icon for dipshit Donnie getting dressed after raping a teenage girl.

User insisted their screen was blank, until admitting it wasn't

It's better AND worse.

Yes, solving the problem can be quicker now.

But the user NEVER gets educated. They learn nothing.

Re: "I'm looking at a Blank Screen"

The one line at the bottom is almost certainly a holdover from the pre-screen days.

You don't want to waste the paper by printing a line telling the user one thing then a bunch of blank space. So you print one line. The user can't miss it, the printer just made loud noises as the line was printed.

The teleprinter gets replaced with a CRT terminal. Nobody thinks about the user implications for several years.

Re: When they (think they) know enough to be helpful

Eh, honestly it's not a bad idea, it reduces the instances of users shutting down the computer when they know they've got to get to the bottom of it to turn it on.

Re: Go, Look, See

It does sometimes help.

For home users, sometimes it's necessary to ask if there's a child in the house. When I was working ISP tech support years ago, I had a call from an illiterate user. The guy couldn't read a word on the screen, I had to describe the icons. I finally got him to put his kid who could actually read on the line. We were making progress, but I had to end the call when the kid had to go to t-ball practice. (Unfortunately the guy had a winmodem, I wasn't allowed to tell him to go buy a real modem, and those things were FLAKY back in the late '90s. I dropped some hints, don't think either of them got it.)

Re: Go, Look, See

I learned many years ago that user confusion on slash direction is very, very real.

It's usually confusion between forward/back, but worst case virtually any key on the keyboard can be a "slash" with the most problematic users.

Re: Solicitors...

That's BOFH-level user hostility.

Worst plugs in the world, you mean.

Those things are a foot puncture wound hazard. And FUSES in the plug? Ugh, horrible archaic design. If the device needs that kind of circuit protection, put a circuit breaker in the device, not a fuse in the plug.

Re: Reminds me of the time ...

My last dentist did that.

He insisted that it was absolutely necessary, because he spent so much time doing things with his hands while looking in a mirror, he needed the mouse pointer to also work that way.

He didn't use a trackpad at all. Had me set it to disabled when a mouse was connected.

Disney turns to dark side, licenses IP to OpenAI for videos, images

Does the Rat not know that AI output is not copyrightable?

AI sucks, but this is good news. Copyright destruction on track!

Oracle raises AI spending estimate, spooks investors

POP!

I can't wait for this stupid AI bubble to pop. And if it hurts (or even better, takes down) Oracle, that's a win for all of us.

Electric cars no more likely to flatten you than the noisy ones, study finds

Noise pollution

"EVs have reduced noise pollution in cities! We can't have that happening! Make them LOUDER!"

If my car (a PHEV) had this crap there's no question I'd disable it. Fortunately it does not. If yours does - fix that, disable the speaker.

(Icon for the thing which needs its wires cut.)

Poop-peeping toilet attachment has a different definition of 'end-to-end' encryption

Smart Pipe Inc. is a Registered Sex Offender

Smart Pipe Inc. is a Registered Sex Offender

Lawyer's 6-year-old son uses AI to build copyright infringement generator

If there's one good thing AI will accomplish for society, it's the utter destruction of copyright law.

And screw this scumsucking bottom feeding lawyer.

SK hynix wants you to bond with HBM, so it coated corn in banana chocolate

I'm confused.

Is this gonna be at 7-11 in the US, or will US 7-11 continue to suck compared to 7-11 in Japan and Korea?

(I'll be shocked if it's not the suck option.)

Campbell's CISO canned after lawsuit alleges hour-long rant against staff and customers

He's not wrong.

Their soup is shit. That's not new though, it's been shit for decades. It was shit before GMO anything even existed.

FCC guts post-Salt Typhoon telco rules despite ongoing espionage risk

Re: 'Agile security'?

Oh, this isn't about money. This is about Comrade Krasnov making sure Putin has access.

Google and Westinghouse lean on AI to speed US nuclear plant builds

That's terrifying.

While I think more nuclear power is probably a good idea, and if the choice is between nuclear or fossil I'd rather live near the nuke every time, I'm not sure that would continue to be the case if a LLM designed any part of the nuclear plant.

Why are people this stupid?

Microsoft reveals new cloudy AI PC that’s not a Copilot+ PC

I prefer using MY computer, not somebody else's computer.

Cloudflare broke itself – and a big chunk of the Internet – with a bad database query

Centralization is the problem

What most people aren't getting is that the existence of systems like Cloudflare IS the problem.

It should NOT be possible for an error on one system to take down a huge chunk of the internet. But that's EXACTLY what happened. Cloudflare, and the entire concept of ANY single company that has that much power to cause disruption, are a menace to the internet.

Organizations need to seriously rethink their use of such systems at all.

VLC's keeper of the cone nets European free software gong

Gong? Really?

That just seems like a REALLY bad headline.

I'd think most people should know that getting the gong means you lose.

X says passkey reset isn't about a security issue – it's to finally kill off twitter.com

Same thing that happens to other expired domains - porn site.