Posts by The Central Scrutinizer

NTP server that traveled back in time caused massive Aussie mobile outage

Sadly, this is all par for the course for Telstra.

They have a long and ignoble history of screwing customers, either accidentally or on purpose.

Australia demands AI companies must produce more energy than they consume, stop ‘theft’ of content

All nice words Albo, but I have my serious doubts.

There's a 10 acre data centre a few kilometres from my place. Its massive, not yet finished but a large chunk of it is operational.

People live 10 metres away from it, literally across the street. There's a constant hum from it .. lovely.

I know 10 acres isn't big by global standards but geez.

EU 'Chat Control' snoopfest returns after vote to kill it falls short

Yeah well. It seems that "pre-crime" is becoming a "thing".

I'm about ready to throw my phone away and only use Tor on my browser.

Seriously, this is so fucked up.

Welcome to Minority Report, citizen.

Papers please!

Telstra outage: Failed emergency services calls, train chaos, payment systems down

Having worked at Telstra in the past, it's amazing anything of theirs works, and that's not being sarcastic. When I was there, they were totally process focused, rather than being result focused. Talk about bureauucracy...what a nightmare.

AI startup that’s never turned a profit says it'll totally be around in 2047 to close its $19B lease

Anthropic believes it’s not only going to survive any AI bubble burst but keep operating until 2047,

hahahahahahahahaha

Security researchers tricked LLMs into giving them cocaine recipes by abusing role models for prompt injection

So the LLM didn't sniff out the cocaine subterfuge?

Australia investigating five social media giants for not enforcing ban on kids

That's mental. Next step, a license to use the Internet.

"don't forget, our intrepid Aussie Government has also enacted 'age checks' for search engines"

Well I've seen zero evidence of that happening.

Britain sending Ukraine an extra 30,000 drones – now 150,000 all up

Re: Standard Operating Procedure

Because it's about a country's sovereignty, dumb ass.

Firefox 152 understands 'Sssh!'

Re: Google really doesn't like Brave...

Constant never ending captchas are a royal fucking pain in the arse.

The Internet really really really is becoming a pain to use.

Oh for the glory days of of the late 90s, when people were bitching about 468 x 60 banner ads!

Anthropic reserves right to check ID for Claude subs

What a great way to start killing your own business. Genius!

It blocked us at 'hello!' Anthropic Fable 5 refusing innocuous prompts

From a purely cynical point of view, it'd be good if all AI models refused to do anything, then we could get back to reality.

Signal says UK plan to scan devices for nude images 'endangers us all'

Re: Imagine a world.

It's the conspiracy theory bullshit about there being a microchip in the Covid vaccines.

Total nut job garbage.

Re: Imagine a world.

Wow, kool aid time hey? And Elvis is living in The Bahamas.

No longer just a Copilot, Microsoft's AI wants to take the wheel

My smugness at using Linux knows no bounds.

Geezus, always on, virtually looking over your shoulder. That's just downright creepy. Hi, come and have a huge dose of constant Microsoft surveillance. You'll love it!

What a bunch of arseholes.

'Resistance is futile,' says Qualcomm CEO. AI agents will be become invisible, inescapable, follow you across devices

And these clueless dickheads wonder why people hate tech bros.

I do not want to live in Minority Report or 1984, thank you very fucking much.

Now go and do something actually useful.

Angry devs vow to flee GitHub Copilot as metered billing takes hold

And there we have it in a nutshell. You use AI, we screw you. LOL ad infinitum.

California may let Linux bypass age check

So they'll give open source an exemption to their stupid idea?

Brilliant.

Google is cannibalizing the web to feed AI

At Google's I/O 2026 developer conference last week, the company's Search VP Liz Reid celebrated the rapid growth of AI Mode, which Google refers to as its end-to-end AI search experience. External observers refer to it as simply as the end of search.

Well, thanks Google, you've helped fuck the Internet a big way.

F you very much.

AMD says its $4K Ryzen AI Halo workstation practically pays for itself

Re: IT paying for itself

That would be the platen. I used to work at Xerox and nah the copies were never that good, baha.

The class of 2026 has heard enough about AI, thanks

Re: AI is a tool, not a master

Bollocks to that. In my home life? How, exactly? How am I falling behind by ignoring AI?

My home is gloriously free of anything with the stench of "smart" attached to it. I need a light on, I walk over to the wall and press the switch.

Software developers are already complaining that being forced to use AI at work is turning their brains to mush.

We are supposed to control machines, not the other way round.

MPs want social media treated more like unsafe toys than harmless apps

"The committee said existing age restrictions should be properly enforced using "effective and privacy-preserving" age verification systems...."

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha and ha.

Name one system that effectively does that, just one, and convince absolutely everybody that it will never be compromised.

Chrome silently installs a 4 GB local LLM on your computer

So Google is now a purveyor of malware.

Bastards.

UK age-gating plans risk breaking the internet, privacy groups warn

"They get to increase ad effectiveness, shield themselves from lawsuits, while gaslighting casual news readers into thinking it's really about the kids."

The media barely do ANY analysis now. They just parrot government press releases and move on. It is actually really depressing.

So hopefully all of you in the UK are writing strongly worded emails/letters to your local representatives about this stupidity....yes?

Kids say they can beat age checks by drawing on a fake mustache

These stupid age verification laws normalise surveillance. They're getting a whole generation used to the idea that they need to turn a camera on when they access content online. It is not OK to have to constantly prove you're an adult every time you want to do something online. I wonder if the politicians can even spell "panopticon".

Firefox maker torches Google for building Prompt API into browser

Re: Too late

Funny about that. i use Firefox exclusively and have no problems whatsoever. If you don't like Firefox, just say so, or provide evidence.

I seem to recall that some years ago it was Google doing all the pearl clutching about the Balkanized Internet.

Yet here we are.

Microsoft boss tells investors the company is working to 'win back fans'

Fans lol

When I used Windows in the past I most certainly was never a "fan". We all know the problems from years gone by and which are apparently getting even worse these days.

Age checks could turn internet into an ID checkpoint, complains Proton CEO

It'd be a fantastic censorship tool and a massive threat to democracy.

We have to resist this sort of authoritarian overreach or we're all fucked. We have a right to be left alone without the dead hand of government constantly bearing down on us.

Microsoft gives your Word documents an AI co-author you didn’t ask for

"until no one uses any Microsoft products at all."

We can only hope.....

Anthropic's super-scary bug hunting model Mythos is shaping up to be a nothingburger

Can I at least get fries with my nothingburger?

Zorin OS 18.1 released - and the Lite edition reappears

Re: Just use Arch

"Zorin and Mint are not for you or me, they are for "Windows Refugees". People that [b]wanted to keep using Windows[/b] (even Windows 11) but, for whatever reason, are forced to use Linux..."

Forced to use Linux?

Not in my case. I never liked Windows. I'd been wanting to try Linux for quite some time, but without all the futzing around that some distributions seemed to require. Then I discovered Mint .

Download it, install it and you have a solid working system within minutes.

I want to do stuff with my computer, not mess around in the guts of the OS.

Showing the Windows 10 desktop was the yeast they could do

Re: Windows 11 toaster

And I definitely don't want any buns, baps, baguettes or bagels.

Japan relaxes privacy laws to make itself the ‘easiest country to develop AI’

Colour me cynical too

That sounds like a privacy and security nightmare. No opt out of anything much? I'm sure the pinky swear about doing nothing bad with it will never be broken.... noooo .

Leaked memo suggests Red Hat's chugging the AI Kool-Aid

Yes, very droll. 10 points for snark. It won't stop me from using it though.

Bla bla. I happily use a systemd distro.

Explain to me in one or two coherent sentences why it's so bad.

Apple's last tower topples… and the others will follow

7 grand for a Mac. It is to laugh.

Really, just to have the shiny Apple logo somewhere, when you could get far more performance for that money from Intel or AMD based machines.

Yep. there's one born every minute.

GitHub hits CTRL-Z, decides it will train its AI with user data after all

Microsoft's GitHub next month plans to begin using customer interaction data – "specifically inputs, outputs, code snippets, and associated context" – to train its AI models.

But of course. All your data belongs to us.

Fuck off.

Age checks creep into Linux as systemd gets a DOB field

Re: systemd-free distros

You really love totalitarian shit, don't you?

Windows boss promises to heal the operating system's self-inflicted wounds

Very funny. Multiple tech websites refer to this.

In the end, I don't actually care, because it's never going anywhere near any of my computers. Bwahahahaha.

Whichever way you want to wash it, Windows is shit, full stop.

Requiring a user online account to even install their shitty OS?

That's a my gigantic red flag that no one should go past.

Elon Musk wants to build 50 times more chips than the world currently produces, using 'new physics'

And I have a couple of bridges to sell. One has unbeatable harbour views in Sydney.... get in quick!

Competition watchdog cracks knuckles, probes legality of Adobe cancellation fee

Re: fees on membership plans

And that "creative cloud" bullshit. No, I'll edit my photos on my own hardware ty very fucking much.

I was happy to use Lightroom way back when I bought a so called perpetual license for it. Then they started the subscription garbage. Not for me thank you very much.

They just seem to have degenerated into a company that keeps infinitely gouging their victims, (sorry, customers)!

Age verification isn't sage verification when it's inside operating systems

Anyone arguing for this nonsense is totally naive. In the politicians' case it's just sheer stupidity/bloody mindedness.

It's all part of the war on personal computing that is being waged these days - encryption back doors, DRM, endless data slurping, the list goes on. As the article states, the proposed law is so nebulous and ill defined, how on earth is it going to be enforced?

Those who would argue that it's just a minor quibble miss the larger point. It's called scope creep. If by some miracle this sort of thing becomes a requirement, you can bet your bottom dollar it will be expanded over time into something truly odious.

We don't need government permission to use our own computing devices as we see fit, free of spying and verifying every damn time we want to do something.

That should be the starting point for combatting garbage like this.