Posts by Matthew "The Worst Writer on the Internet" Saroff

Verizon wobbles on the East Coast, outage cuts off night owls

Yeah, I Experienced the Outage in Suburban Baltimore

I figured that it was the Internet Gods telling me to go the f%$3 to sleep.

Mozilla Foundation crumbles as third of staff cast off

Re: I was going to donate but

What feature? (I'm assuming XUL, but I want to be sure)

Maybe It's Just Me

But maybe they should consider NOT paying their CEO a 7 figure salary?

WordPress saga escalates as WP Engine plugin forcibly forked and legal letters fly

A Legal Question

The donate page for Wordpress.org says, "The WordPress Foundation is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization (Federal tax ID 20-5498932)."

I'm not a programmer, my coding is so ugly that it kills tardigraves, but I did incorporate a 501(C)3 back in the day,

It appears to me that Mullenweg, by using the not-for-profit to enrich his for-profit company is engaging in inurement, which is a violation of IRS regulations on the subject.

https://www.irs.gov/charities-non-profits/charitable-organizations/inurement-private-benefit-charitable-organizations

"A section 501(c)(3) organization must not be organized or operated for the benefit of private interests, such as the creator or the creator's family, shareholders of the organization, other designated individuals, or persons controlled directly or indirectly by such private interests. No part of the net earnings of a section 501(c)(3) organization may inure to the benefit of any private shareholder or individual. A private shareholder or individual is a person having a personal and private interest in the activities of the organization."

This sounds to me like a violation of black letter charity law, though I am a mechanical engineer, not a lawyer, dammit. (Yes I just went Dr. McCoy)

Geico tells El Reg, no, it's not canceling all Cybertruck insurance

Geico thinks that some CT Owners are Renting the Vehicle Out Under the Table

That's why they are pressuring some people to switch to commercial insurance.

The initial complaint was from a guy who had 8 cars.

Sounds like Turo or something similar.

Screw it. I'm Sticking with My 1972 IFA Trabant

Not really, I have a 2004 Toyota Prius as my midlife crisis car, because I am the dullest person on the planet earth.

Microsoft cash to help reignite Three Mile Island atomic plant

This is Like People Saying Post Grenfell Tower Fire

"But look at all of the other buildings with aluminum faced polyisocyanurate cladding, none of them have had fatal fires!"

There is an old Japanese saying, "バカにつける薬はない," there is no medicine for stupidity.

The future everyone wanted – in-car ads tailored to your journey and passengers

How the FSCK Did They Get a Patent on This?

Seriously. This is obvious. In fact, people have been warning about this for over a decade.

Upgrading Linux with Rust looks like a new challenge. It's one of our oldest

Re: Screw this, Let's Rewrite Everything in Cobol

I am an APL fanboi since the 1980s. I approve.

Screw this, Let's Rewrite Everything in Cobol

I just won troll of the day.

Yelp accuses Google of being a local search bully in antitrust lawsuit

You have gained much wisdom, Grasshopper.

I hope that there is a way for both sides to lose.

EV sales hit speed bump as drivers unplug from the electric dream

How much of this drop is a drop in sales, and how much is people not buying Teslas, because .... ELON!!

I remember seeing numbers like this in the US, and every other EV manufacture saw an increase, but the total was lowered by Tesla cratering.

Microsoft closes Windows 11 upgrade loophole in latest Insider build

Re: Upgrades?

It's worse than a crime, it is a mistake.

WordStar 7, the last ever DOS version, is re-released for free

You Kids!

In my day, you had to inscribe everything in Cuneiform on stone tablets with a bronze chisel, and we counted ourselves lucky!

FTC sticks a probe into 'surveillance pricing' Big Biz uses to gouge us all

About 80% of What Silly Con Valley Does

Would have resulted in a criminal prosecution under the Nixon White House.

Now there is a mind f%$#.

Europe's largest council could face £12M manual audit bill after Oracle project disaster

Perhaps they should go with a more reliable system

I would suggest the implementing a solution using the, "Primitive Emergency Non-Computerised Information Logger," (P.E.N.C.I.L) and the, "Passive Archival Processing Embedded Recorder." (P.A.P.E.R.)

SpaceX asks the FAA: 'Can we launch our rockets again, please?'

Re: Did you just say “passivated”

It blowed up real good!

Verizon hit with whopping $847M verdict for infringing 5G and hotspot patents

Judge Ronnie Jockstrap?

One of the worst patent trolls on the Federal bench?

Hoocoodanode?

Ex-OpenAI board member accuses Sam Altman of 'outright lying'

This Is What You Get When You Hire a Snake Oil Salesman with an Unbroken Record of Failing Upward

He got fired from YCombinator for lying and favoring his own self aggrandizement over the well being of the company.

He's like the Dick Cheney of Silly-Con Valley.

The behavior described, lying about his ownership interest, is fraud. It should be prosecuted.

Micron told to pay $445M in memory patent infringement case

You All Beat Me to the US District Court for the Eastern District of Texas

BTW, there IS a, "Special patent court," but it only hears appeals. It is called the, "U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit," for various obscure historical reasons.

They are way worse than the mooks in the US District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, ruling in favor of things like patenting a rainy day. (Hedging against weather, but since hedging is prior art, it means that they literally granted a patent for a rainy day.)

Among other things the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit have, made determinations of fact, a no-no for appellate courts, who are only supposed to rule on matters of law, and assumed facts not in evidence.

The Supreme Court has been slapping them down the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit for over a decade.

These folks are nuts.

John Deere now considers VMs to be legacy tech, Ethernet and Wi-Fi on the brink

Is it just me

Or is this an attempt to sabotage the increasingly likely passage of right to repair laws?

Lords of May-hem: Seven signs it is Oracle's year end

Could someone explain to me

How a company so remarkably abusive to its customers manages to stay in business?

NYC Comptroller and hedge funds urge Tesla shareholders to deny Musk $50B windfall

I prefer to refer to the company as "Ecch", as an homage to Mad Magazine.

Hm! Boeing union just ran whistleblower rights training

What needs to happen is that senior management needs to be frog marched out of their offices in handcuffs.

AI might be coming for your job, but Sam Altman can't go on dinner dates anymore

Let Me Get This Straight

Sam Altman, whose entire career is an exercise in under-performing self-promotion, and whose time at OpenAI has been an orgy of self promotion, is upset that people recognize him now?

Oh the huge manatee of it all!

Google Search results polluted by buggy AI-written code frustrate coders

Enshittification

Notepad++ dev slams Google-clogging notepad.plus 'parasite'

Google is the epitome of enshittification.

Woz calls out US lawmakers for TikTok ban: 'I don’t like the hypocrisy'

IBM did the tabulation for the cattle cars, dude.

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

Just Frog March Senior Executives Out of Their Offices in Handcuffs

"It's the only way to be sure," to quote Aliens.

Elon and the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad legal week

Re: Odd, isn't it?

Read Kara Swisher.

Elon believes that he is the only player in a simulation, and the rest of us are simulations, so it has already been achieved.

Yes, this is batsh%$ insane, but it explains him.

I Hope that the Apartheid Era Emerald Heir Pedo Guy™ Experiences Karma

Seriously, he's one of the worst, and stupidest, people in the world.

Tesla's Cybertruck may not be so stainless after all

Re: Hate to Defend Tesla

It's like the DeLorean, where they had to warn people not to buff out scratches with steel wool, because the bits of iron left behind would stain the skin.

Hate to Defend Tesla

But this could be dust from something like train rails getting the car and literally staining the steel.

Angry mob trashes and sets fire to Waymo self-driving car

There is a Report on Ecch (Twitter)

That the car had stalled in the middle of an intersection.

https://twitter.com/marcviloria/status/1756690879811826072

I think that the people of San Francisco are sick and tired of being guinea pigs.

Wait, hold on, everyone – Mozilla thinks Apple, Google, Microsoft should play fair

Maybe if Mozilla Had Been Screaming About this Years Ago

Instead of trying to sell me a bloody VPN, they would be in a better position.

Musk claims that venting liquid oxygen caused Starship explosion

Maybe It's Just Me, but

Maybe Elon got briefed on this, and simply did not understand what was going on, because the drug-addled "Smartest Man in the World" is not too bright?

HP customers claim firmware update rendered third-party ink verboten

And they are advertising that their printers are "less hated"

Seriously, every time I read an HP story these days, I am filled with incandescent rage toward Carly Fiorina, and I never worked there.

Mozilla CEO pockets a packet, asks biz to pick up pace the 'Mozilla way'

Mitchell Baker is not the highest paid executive in tech

But he is the most OVERPAID executive in tech. (Apartheid Era Emerald Heir Pedo Guy™ is not a tech executive, he's an actor starring in his own demented reality show)

Here's a list of thousands of artists Midjourney's AI is ripping off, creatives claim

AI Skeptic Here

I think that this crap is just an overengineered ELIZA program.

That being said, if machine learning is learning, and to be clear I do NOT think that it is learning, then teaching an AI should be an acceptable use of the material.

Much like wannabee standup comics will teach themselves to by reading the joke books of current comments, and watching their performances on YouTube, the AI is teaching itself, which is the purpose of these works.

How is, "Teaching an AI is a violation of copyright," when, "Teaching a person," is not?

Again, if, as I believe, this is not intelligence in any form, and just a mixmaster of gibberish, then the issue is not IP infringement, but rather that the AI companies are defrauding people.

Musk floats idea of boat mod for Cybertruck

Apartheid Era Emerald Heir Pedo Guy™ Has Become Homer Simpson from "Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?"

You know, the one where Homer designs a car, and only Bart likes it.

https://simpsons.fandom.com/wiki/Oh_Brother,_Where_Art_Thou%3F

Tesla says California's Autopilot action violates its free speech rights

Re: According to Musk, fraud is protected under the 1st Amendment

When you characterize Elon Musk as a, "Cunt." you are being unfair to vaginas everywhere.

Bank's datacenter died after travelling back in time to 1970

I agree with not ratting out the help desk

But they should now be responsible for everyone's first pint FOREVER.

Dump C++ and in Rust you should trust, Five Eyes agencies urge

Upon Hearing that the FBI and NSA Endorsed Rust

My first reaction was to run away from Rust.

It's not that I do not think that the various TLAs are not technically astute, they are, it's that my paranoid mind thinks that if they like it, they have a back door in the software big enough to drive Elon Musk's ego through.

OpenAI meltdown: How could Microsoft have let this happen after betting so many billions?

What about Non-Competes?

While non-competes are (IMHO correctly) very limited in California, people who leave OpenAI might very well have non-compete agreements with much of the staff, and those WOULD likely prevent those folks from working on Large Language Models for a time.

Vote now on who should take the lead in Musk: The Movie

Re: Laverne Cox

Not a Jew, she just dates Jewish boys. Says that, "I’d like to think of myself as the nation’s premiere black transgender shiksa."

Laverne Cox

Having Elon Musk played by a trans black actress will make him lose his mind.

It triggers two of his most prominent bigotries.

Want a Cybertruck? You're stuck with it for a year, says Tesla

Re: J. Jonah Jameson laugh.gif

Actually, diesel engines were originally intended to run on coal dust, which he could never get to work, so Rudy moved to the heavy fuel oil.

Musk thinks X marks the spot for Grok AI engine based on social network

Re: "The meaning of 'grok' is to understand profoundly and intuitively."

Unfair to a partially chewed piece of gristle.