Posts by johnnyblaze

Broadcom ditches VMware Cloud Service Providers

The End

... and this is the beginning of the end of VMware. Proxmox seems to be shaping up nicely!

New cars bought in the UK must be zero emission by 2035 – it's the law

Re: Think of the Grid!

This is actually one of the most short sighted, blinkered statements I've ever read. Very much along the lines of 'your doing it wrong', 'you didn't plan your journey' or 'every EV owner charges overnight on a home charger'. No they don't, and they never all will. The current infrastructure is woeful, and an installed charger does not mean a) it's actually connected to the grid, b) it's actually working or c) can provide anywhere near the charge it's capable of. A 250kW feed to 10 chargers, if they're all in use, means a max of 25kW per charging point, which is pretty slow (2 hours for a decent amount of electrons), which is unacceptable to almost everyone if they have to use the cripplingly expensive public charger network, and you will have literal riots because of it.

Now just imagine that 10-20m EV's plugin overnight on a 'trickle charge' as you say, which is highly likely to be 7kW or the max on a single phase supply for at least 4-6 hours. That overnight quiet period that the Grid normally relies on is now extremely busy, and I won't even mention the problems we'll have with over-demand and rolling blackouts.

Finally, in Norway, a large percentage of cars sold are EV's because the government there massively (and I means MASSIVELY) subsidizes every single EV sale, technically making them cheaper than ICE cars to buy. Take that away, and it would be a different story - the same as most regions that subsidies them. Case in point - Germany. They've just stopped all EV subsidies, and EV sales have crashed.

Windows 11 unable to escape the shadow of Windows 10

Re: Forget Windows - buy a Chromebook!!

I'll second that. Most people don't actually need Windows these days - it's heavy, bloated and a nightmare to secure. Chromebooks are great for general internet access, and if you have an old laptop kicking around, try ChromeOS Flex.

Nope

Win11 offers little or no benefits in the Enterprise. We may consider it when MS eventually release Win11 LTSC, but not before then. I'm assuming whatever happens, Win12 will probably be worse again and in reality only be an incremental .1 upgrade masked as an entirely new release.

Techies at Europe's biggest council have 8 weeks to pull finance reports from Oracle system

Re: Would be nice if Oracle stepped in

Oracle have professional services? Shocked!

Lamborghini's last remaining pure gas guzzlers are all spoken for

Hypocrites

EV drivers are the biggest hypocrites around. Their cars may not emit anything from the pipe, but everything else about them is about as eco-unfriendly as you can get. Even the act of replacing perfectly good ICE cars with EV's is just plain wrong on so many levels, and people who buy en EV will replace them every 2-3 years just like ICE, so any eco benefits are never fully realized.

Oh, great. Yet another tech billionaire thinks he can get microblogging right

If Zuck has touched it, avoid like the plague, which is my life moto.

NASA to tear the wings off plane in the name of sustainability

Pointless

Net Zero is a joke and unachievable, but governments will push a lot of money around and grant some very big contracts to 'meet' those pointless targets. The truth is, the vast majority of carbon is generated as part of the planets natural carbon lifecycle, and the oceans and plants soak up most if it, and only 0.4% of the atmosphere is CO2 anyway (and if it drops below 0.2% we all die). 'Climate Change' has been politicized and weaponized to make sweeping changes that aren't really needed, but will hit the poorest the hardest (as usual) and implement controls and restrictions on a scale never seen before. Thought C19 was bad - how about 'climate lockdowns'!

The planet has survived way worse than man can throw at it - it's humanity that are screwed.

Microsoft puts the freeze on employee salaries, CEO pay still as hot as ever

CEO's are there to navigate the company on a path they believe is correct to grow the business and make money - nothing else. If they don't do this, they lose the faith of the board, shareholders and probably Wall St, and will be kicked out (unless you're Mark Zuckerberg, in which case you have the controlling board vote!)

Companies are now spending less in the cloud, either because they see it's just the never-ending money pit it really is and finally realize it's not all it was sold to be. Maybe this will continue, but I'm sure this latest AI craze will fire up people like Nadella into believing the next wave of obscene growth and profit is just around the corner.

Broadcom CEO promises $2 billion annual boost to make VMware better at the things it already does

Not good

What he actually meant to say was "Buying VMware is an amazing opportunity for us to milk customers till the bleed by switching to a subscription only model that will increase the customer costs considerably, and allow us to show our shareholders where $60B went"

This is why we're actively evaluating ProxMox for some specific virtual workloads.

SpaceX's second attempt at orbital Starship launch ends in fireball

Success!

I'd call the a successful failure with a spectacular end. The way the media reported it was diabolical though. SpaceX's iterative design/testing process worked perfectly - it made it off the pad (and didn't destroy it), and got to 35-sh km's, and this is absolutely cutting edge, never been done before stuff. A stack of data collected, and roll on the next one. You could just see how pleased the staff were it got off the ground - I'm sure they called it very successful.

Apple 'created decoy labor group' to derail unionization

Rotten core

From the outside looking in, Apple portray themselves as a squeaky clean, security focused company who have their customers best wishes at heart. Internally, they're as controlling and manipulating as anyone else. They use the cheapest labour to make and package their shiny 'i' devices, they bend arms where necessary, and control their own staff to make sure nothing affects their brand image. Apple's PR/Marketing people have more power than most other companies because NOTHING should tarnish that image. Yes, they also collect and process more data that you can possibly imagine, but are incredibly secretive on what they actually do with it.

Amazon hit with $1bn claim that secretive Buy Box algorithm screws shoppers

Known fact

Glad someone has the balls to finally step up and take Amazon on, at least in the UK. I 100% agree with the assessment - Amazon have been promoting their own products and preferred resellers stuff over others for years, and everyone knows it. It's also widely known that Amazon will keep an eye on high selling products, and if worthwhile, will create their own version, undercut the seller and promote theirs in preference. Just try and be a seller on Amazon and you'll see how hard they make it!

Now she just has to prove it!

Boeing to pay SEC $200m to settle charges it misled investors over 737 MAX safety

Outrageous

It actually makes me so angry that a company like Boeing, who through negligence and incompetence caused the deaths of hundreds, can throw a few hundred million at the SEC from behind the sofa to make it all go away. It's utterly outrageous, and they should be held accountable. We live in a world where human lives now mean almost nothing and money means everything. I'd like to get off this hamster wheel please.

Big Tech is building the metaverse of its own dreams. You don't want to go there

Dead

If VR had proved wildly successful and every home had a headset or two that were always connected, I'd think, well, maybe. Still a bad idea (being bankrolled by Facebook), but not an outrageous plan. It doesn't though - VR has been tried and tried again, and it's either failed completely, or never got beyond micro-niche. Now, Zuck expects everyone to buy his hardware and them pay him a monthly fee on top, along with whatever micro-transactions he dreams up within his world. Get real. Zuck always wanted to be a real god (he plays at being god inside Meta!), and he desperately wants his virtual currency to be successful (it was killed off in the 'real' world), so he likely sees the metaverse as a route to all that godship. I hope it sinks him, Meta and everything else he touches.

VMware offers cloudy upgrade lifeline to legacy vCenter users

Dream on.

What about if those customers don't want to move to the cloud and start paying through the nose - in blood? Maybe they're quite happy operating a number of local instances, no matter how old, which are no doubt bulletproof and cheap to operate. Do cloud providers really think everything loves them and are desperate to throw all their workloads into someone else's datacenter? Dream on.

Microsoft slows some hiring for Windows, Teams, and Office

Cause of course, MS doesn't want to miss its quarterly $50B revenue now does it. Oh sorry, profit and growth at all costs (inc headcount), so we're looking at $55B for sure. Gotta keep more and more cash rolling in!

Amazon investors nuke proposed ethics overhaul and say yes to $212m CEO pay

I point blank refuse to buy anything at all from Amazon now - I've never had Prime and never will. An abhorrent company. Bezos should be ashamed for his creation, and people should be ashamed for buying from them.

Re: And next week

Agree 1000%. The capitalist west (and most of the world honestly) is now entirely driven by greed and power, with profit and growth at all costs. We are in a spiral now - staring into the void. It's not all about money, and nobody, yes nobody needs a $200m pay packet. Humanity really is screwed if we carry on like this.

Windows 10 still growing, but Win 11 had another bad month, says AdDuplex

Re: Seconds out... round 3

What do MS care? They're sucking up money into Azure like no tomorrow, and that's not going to stop no matter how bad things get - that's their cash cow now. Long gone are the days of Windows generating any significant revenue - as far as Microsoft are concerned, Windows is just a portal to their cloud services now, be that 10 or 11.

Cloud spending to scrape $500 billion this year – Gartner

Cloud con

It's becoming very clear that the 'cloud' is one of the most lucrative con-jobs ever pulled on the world. It's literally an accountant's wet dream as subscription money keeps flowing in like a flood. The idea is just a re-hash of what was done 30 years ago, but on a scale that should make you weep. The cloud exists only because of the continuous revenue it generates and ad revenue from telemetry collection. It's also technically easier and cheaper for vendors to manage what is essentially one backend system rather than thousands of on prem installs. It's certainly not being done for the benefit of the customer!

Conflict in Ukraine disrupts fragile supply chain recovery

Our own doing

The world only had itself to blame. Companies putting profit and growth above all else as they all shifted to a just-in-time ordering method where they held little stock (to save money of course) and relied on a super-slick, cheap supply chain as they shifted manufacturing to cheaper and cheaper countries (mostly China) has now massively backfired. Covid exposed this fragile system and now the Ukraine war is making it worse, and who pays most of the costs when this all goes tits-up? The consumer of course, as all costs are passed down the chain to the lowest common point. Companies still have to show growth and profit by selling more and more products (got the keep those shareholders happy), but if you squeeze the consumer too much, they don't have the money to spend anymore, and the big risk is everything will come tumbling down, which leads to redundancies and ultimately recession. Stockmarkets also need to shoulder part of the blame, because a lot of price increases are only down to 'fear, panic and uncertainty', and mostly nothing 'real'.

Windows boss Panos Panay talks up 'new era of the PC' – translation: An era of new PCs

PR bull

So much PR bull and spin you feel dizzy. Twice this, double that etc. No figures of-course, but hey, that's corporate gobble-de-gook for you. Just remember, As of mid 2021, Win11 was never meant to be a 'thing', but Microsoft's marketing department stepped in and saw an opportunity to distance MS from the increasing bad press Win10 was getting, and that new lick of paint nailed it.

Meta says it's building world's largest AI supercomputer out of Nvidia, AMD chips

Crash'n'Burn

I'm guessing Zuck can use spare cycles to count his bank balance, which is a long job in itself. My other thought is that as FB's currency failed in the real world, it's almost certain to be the main currency in their Metaverse - you can imagine Zuck's avatar being a multi-billionaire in that world too.

Please though, for the love of god, let it crash'n'burn. The thought of Zuck sitting on his virtual throne in 'his world' just scares the crap out of most people.

EC president promises European Chips Act to quadruple homegrown production by 2030

Not gonna happen

Well, unless the EU is prepared to offer years and years of eye-watering subsidies to attract chip makers to Europe, it ain't gonna happen. Literally everything about operating inside the EU is considerably more expensive, strangled with red-tape with unworkable labor laws.

Insurance giant Lloyd's hires DXC to migrate org off legacy mainframes to AWS cloud

Predictions

Here's a few predictions;

Lloyds won't save any money moving to the cloud - it will actually cost them a lot more

DXC will royally screw things up - and the project will take at least twice as long and cost twice as much as planned

Eventually Lloyds will be operating from a platform they have no control over or say in, so prepare for the outage's

Finger in the air prediction, DXC will mess up so badly, they'll be dropped 2 years into the project and taken to court. Lloyds will either have to find someone else, or revert back to their current system.

US Senator Marco Rubio calls Intel cowards for scrubbing remarks about Xinjiang and apologizing to China

Re: What would happen if

100% agree. Amazon is just a trash site now for fake/poor Chinese imports. I stopped using them years ago - there are plenty of smaller companies offering 'as good as or better' pricing than Amazon who would value your business far more.

A fifth of England's NHS trusts are mostly paper-based as they grapple with COVID backlog, warn MPs

NHS is screwed anyway

I admire what the NHS stands for, and I admire the staff on the front line who work there, but everything else about the NHS these days is totally f*cked, as has been shown first hand by the pandemic. An organization so inefficient and badly run it doesn't matter how much money you throw at it, it won't make any difference. The NHS is no longer fit for purpose, and is one of the main reasons were in this C19 mess (it was all about protecting the NHS, not about stopping people dying). Honestly, it needs rebuilding from the ground up, but I don't think any government has got the guts to do it.

Belgian defence ministry admits attackers accessed its computer network by exploiting Log4j vulnerability

AAS is a big problem

We're running a very slipperly slope with anything delivered 'as a service' too. It's often shipped unfinished and not fully tested - the premise being 'ship it now, fix it later'. Between those two points though, millions could have installed it and be suddenly vulnerable. We are truly walking into a security tsunami with our eyes fully open!

The climate is turning against owning our own compute hardware. Cloud is good for you and your customers

It's all bull

Call it what you want, the truth is that average Joe, the small guy, the consumer etc are being fingered as the root cause of the climate problem. We're the issue apparently - so we need to buy expensive EV's and heat pumps, we need to recycle more and put all our data in the cloud. I'll tell you for sure, it's all bull. The consumer (as we are) has little choice in most things they do. The way things are designed or sold or packaged - we just have to go with the flow. It's the manufacturers that are the problem - the suppliers, the shipping companies, the total waste of packaging used to ship things, the wasted compute cycles in cloud datacenters where they analyze and process my latest photo with AI or churn over the last URL I visited to decide what ads to send me, or monitor every location I've been EVER been to give me a useless timeline if I want to view it (I don't). So much wasted time and energy which all leads to unnecessary pollution and CO2 on a scale a million, million times more than average Joe ever produces in a lifetime. The public are being manipulated into believing they now have to spend even more of their money to make things right - that £20k ICE car you had your eye on is now a £30k EV that has actually produced 70% more CO2 during manufacture than the petrol car, and you'll need to drive it at least 50k+ miles just to break even on cost and emissions, but don't worry, the battery will be useless in 5 years, so you'll have to buy a new EV to replace it, and so the cycle goes on. Stop blaming the consumer!!!

Apple sues 'amoral 21st century mercenaries' NSO for infecting iPhones with Pegasus spyware

Spying

The footnote to Apple's filing is;

"We strongly resent any external 3rd party spying on Apple device users and collecting data without their consent. We believe only we (Apple) should have the right to do that, and will continue to defend that right to the utmost extent of the law"

That about sums it up!

Microsoft touts Windows 11 SE: A locked-down OS to give Chromebooks a run for their money in schools

Gimped

Anyone care to guess how a gimped Windows 11 will run on paired-down, low as you can go gimped hardware? I'll tell you, it will be B-A-D. You'd have thought MS would have learned there lesson from previous attempts like this (remember Netbooks or Windows 10S, WoA even). If you've even attempted running Win10 on a Celeron with 4GB and eMMC storage you'll know what I mean. The elephant in the room is obviously the 'curated' list of apps MS (and only MS) will allow you to install on them. Yes, this is just one more attempt by MS to take on ChromeBooks that's likely to go extremely badly - again.

Microsoft: Many workers are stuck on old computers and should probably upgrade

Gimped

So lets see here - Microsoft artificially gimping Windows 11 so it requires new hardware for many (all in the name of security!). Microsoft publishing a report saying people are more productive with new hardware (running Windows no doubt). Microsoft's partners preparing for their post-COVID hardware sales to crater. Microsoft looking at slowing Surface sales and little interest in Windows 11 (unless it's forced on people - everyone remember GWX I hope).

This is almost as good as Apple standing in front of the world and saying they know best what their users want - and sideloading would be a bad thing as it does terrible things like give users choice (all in the name of privacy and security).

So says two of the biggest companies in the world who cream off more user data and information than almost anyone else.

Intel's €80bn European chip plant investment plan not bound for UK because Brexit

Deal done

So Intel are happier dealing with rafts of EU bureaucracy and Brussels red-tape whereas setting up in the UK would have given them much more freedom. Yep, me thinks the EU have done an under-the-table deal here, because they definitely don't want the UK to be seen as a good place to setup business!

Microsoft wants you to know it hasn't forgotten about Surface

Eye-candy

The Surface range are eye-candy devices only, designed to compete with MacBooks (yes, Microsoft still have Apple-envy). Put any Surface device in the Enterprise and watch them fail on most counts - reliability being the main problem. They're not user expandable or repairable and seem to break/crash if you sneeze on them wrong (Surface firmware is buggy as hell).

Horizon Workrooms promises a virtual future of teal despair

DOA

Don't use Facebook, never have used Facebook, and I never will use Facebook - anything. This is just the worst possible creation, one that I hope arrives stillborn. FB obviously think companies will buy the product (and associated per-user license), buy the Oculus headsets and all pile into this dead-eyed virtual meeting room all the while FB captures all the data and starts monetizing at a new level. Would corporates even be happy with the potential boardroom spying that would ensue. Nah, this is DOA for sure.

AWS offers you the opportunity to pay cloud bills before they’ve been issued

I'll say it again, nobody ever saves money moving to the cloud, and now they want your money in advance! Cloud services are convenient for a very good reason, and act like a revenue waterfall for the providers. The cloud would even exist if these mega-corps weren't making money hand over fist, and the bonus is, they get your data at the same time, which for many, locks you in, so you keep paying - forever!!

Microsoft: Behold, at some later date, the next generation of Windows

Cloudy future

Here it comes - Windows 10 Cloud Edition. A version of Windows 10 so completely and utterly tied to Azure (and a nice monthly sub), you can't use it without it. Azure is SatNad's baby, and he'll drag you kicking and screaming into it until his last breath (then lock the door and throw away the key).

IBM's CEO and outgoing exec chairman take home $38m in total for 2020 despite revenue shrinking by billions

Unbelievable!

You just couldn't make this stuff up. Execs who've initiated the biggest staff cull in years, who are responsible for a fall in all areas of the business, who show no obvious understanding of the markets they're operating in get handouts in the millions for doing basically... nothing. There are people working 10x harder (you know, doing real work) who barely scrape a living. Something in this world is very, very wrong.

Microsoft previews Windows Server 2022: Someone took a spanner to core plumbing features

Let's be clear here

- MS don't want people running Windows Server on-prem anymore and they don't want you using a GUI. They'd like nothing more than for everyone to run Windows core VM's in Azure, and you managing your entire estate in their cloud with PowerShell. That's the bottom line, and that's what they're moving towards ever, so, slowly.

They want you paying your cloud subs month on month without fail while you become 100% reliant on them for everything.

Pat Gelsinger promises Intel can go back to the future – in memo to staff shared with world+dog

Personally, I'll never buy or recommend Intel again. They've treated their customers as cash cows for too long, with little or no innovation and a confusing product line. I'd like to see AMD eat a lot more of Intel's breakfast!

Judging from all those packages y'all ordered, this shouldn't be a surprise: Amazon passes $100bn in quarterly sales for first time

A bit silly

It's all getting a bit silly now isn't it - super-corps hoovering up all the cash, primarily from lazy fuc*ers sitting at home with nothing better to do and a home page set to Amazon. Can a company get too big and powerful? I think the answer is yes it can. Personally, I don't order anything from Amazon unless there's no other choice - I'll always look elsewhere first. It will only take a few hundred million buyers to think the same way, and about a decade, and Amazon will be out of business. Yaaay!

Social isolation creates craving in the same brain region as wanting food or addictive drugs, study finds

Yeah, surprise me.

Humans are social creatures - we need it. Lockdowns drive anxiety, depression and feelings of isolation. Suicides up, domestic abuse up, divorce rates up. It's not rocket science, and this will be felt for years to come.

Apple gives real-world events longer pandemic-prompted App Store fee reprieve

Funny that.

Why do you get the feeling that Apple, who are coming under intense scrutiny for the monopolistic practises, app store charges and do-as-we-say, not-as-we-do methods are suddenly softening up a little, probably to try and deflect criticism and the anti-competitive lawsuits about to kick off. Funny that.

Oh! What a lovely pandemic, says Cisco as it sees wave of network refreshes on the horizon

Yipee

Who said the subscription business model doesn't pay. Subscriptions benefit no-one but the company selling them - it's continuous revenue all the way. Why sell a product to a customer once, when you can sell it to them again and again, and if they miss one payment they lose the service. This is an accountants wet dream.

Network driver issue shaves 12 more hours off Microsoft's '365' infrastructure, and yeah, it was Exchange Online again

Down we go

Microsoft 358 - and counting (down)!

Finding remote working a bit of a grind? Microsoft staffers feel your pain

Not all great.

Companies like MS are obviously seeing some significant cost savings by not having staff in offices. Let's see - heating (and cooling), general power savings, water rates, canteen costs, parking, security, admin staff (receptionists) let alone actual building costs inc rates and insurance. Having staff kept in their own homes, using their own energy, water, food and heating/cooling without ANY compensation made those bean counters sit up and take notice. The mental health issues, inc productivity issues are a small price to pay. Money talks after all.

Down the Swanny: '2020 has been the most challenging year in my career' says Intel CEO as profit plunges 30%

Pah!

Intel blamed COVID as most companies can do now (and get away with it), but at no point did he blame tough competition from AMD. It's almost like Intel don't even want to acknowledge AMD, even though their eating Intel's breakfast - and lunch - in many different areas. Quite please to hear these results actually, long may the continue.

The clouds part, cash rains on Microsoft's UK money-making machine

I disagree. Companies are being hoovered up into the cloud often because they have no choice and orgs (like Microsoft) make it very difficult to stay out of it. The cloud exists for one reason - continuous revenue for the cloud providers. It often doesn't make things easier or quicker, and I stand by the belief that very few companies save money moving to the cloud - it often costs more - a lot more.

Looking for a home off-world? Take your pick: Astroboffins estimate there are nearly 6bn Earth-likes in the Milky Way

The universe, and galaxies like our Milky Way are literally teaming with life, Even if only 1% of what they imply actually has sentient life, that's an awful lot still. We just havent found it yet, because let's be honest, humanity is probably the equivilant of a neanderthal in comparison to many other civilisations.