Posts by cornetman

US tech titans rejoice in $600B Saudi shopping spree

Re: Phrasing

They are all awful and propagated by lazy people.

Honestly, I'm with the original poster. Adjectives usually come before the noun. "Fighter jet" is referring to an engine. "Jet fighter" is referring to an aircraft. The first is probably a contraction of something like "fighter jet aircraft", which is probably overly repetitive, and now sounds like something different. Both are truncated for brevity so neither is perfect but we live in an imperfect world.

It's about time we cared about our language. Sure, language evolves but let it not stray too far from logic.

Attackers pwn charter airline helping Trump's deportation campaign

> It's quite clear that the issue described is that ICE and CBP are lawless thugs and should be first up against the wall. *Nothing different today.*

Exactly my point.

The big problem with the arguments about "due process" is that they are pretty non-specific like most of the arguments from the left these days. Like using the terms racist and fascist, they aren't attempts to assert factual statements: they are just insults to be thrown around with people that you disagree with.

In a lot of cases, due process is endless court cases followed by appeal after appeal that can go on for decades involving people that are obviously here without good cause and without permission. Those that wish to apply for asylum can do it at an official crossing. The reasons why they don't do so is obvious. Multiply that by millions of illegal immigrants means that most will never be deported. It is merely an attempt to drown the process to feed their bizarre open border political project. I'll say it again: if you have a welfare system, you *cannot* have mass, illegal immigration.

But, I hear you say, "what about that heavily tattooed gang guy that admitted that he would be murdered by a rival gang if he were ever to be deported back home, that I heard about on the TV that is definitely not a member of a brutal gang? He should get 'due process' despite having been in court and being told that he should be deported." Well, yes.

> You're not too smart, are you?

Please keep the discourse civil. Insults don't really make for reasoned debate.

> If you can point to cases where he ignored court orders or deported people to 3rd countries without due process, feel free to post them.

https://www.aclu.org/news/human-rights/ones-obama-left-behind-and-deported-without-chance-be-heard

I find it telling that we weren't having all this hand wringing when Obama was mass deporting millions of illegal immigrants. Obama good, Trump bad. Again, gotcha.

Yes, when you deport millions of people, a few are likely to be borderline or have legal status. I can guarantee that also happened under Obama. I'm not convinced by all the whataboutism.

If you cross the border without permission, you are there illegally.

You can *either* have an open border or have a welfare system. Choose one. Both the US and UK and many other EU countries are in the process of discovering the reality of that and it isn't great.

People did bad things in the distant past, therefore lawlessness OK. Gotcha.

> "illegal aliens."

I believe this is a common term used in the US for persons entering the country illegally. I don't think there is any implication that they are extraterrestrial. Quotes not actually necessary.

GNOME Foundation's new executive director is Canadian, a techie, and a GNOME user

Re: but probably for the wrong reasons

> The previous executive director was chased away because she was a woman of a minority religion.

She wasn't "chased away". She was mocked because she claimed to be a "shaman". Just like she would be mocked for claiming to be an alien, a "prophet" or a multitude of things that would evoke more than a titter in public discourse. She must surely have anticipated such a reaction after entering the public sphere, or maybe she lacks sufficient self-awareness?

The biggest problem in western society is that we have grown *too* tolerant, which is why our societies are rotting from the inside with division. We don't call out bullshit when we see it so minority groups turn our "compassion" against us. The kind of bullshit that gives us gems like "Islam is the religion of peace" and "solar freakin' roadways". I'm not a fan of dog piling: that is an Internet phenomenon that we can do without, but in order to preserve and bolster the rationality which has been the bedrock of western civilisation, we need to start calling out fanciful and idiotic thinking where we see it.

> As a white male...

You failed to mention the colour of his hair and his eyes. This is obviously extremely important and relevant information.

And I'm glad we managed to clear up any misunderstanding regarding his chromosomal make up. For the uninitiated, we call this a "man".

> ...but probably for the wrong reasons (not least his skin color or gender).

Jesus, what? Didn't you get the memo? White guilt is so passé these days.

Apple exec sends Google shares plunging as he calls AI the new search

> Do you always verify its output?

Well by following the links it provides. It's not just like ChatGPT: you don't just have to accept its answer, you can go to the source.

> Which God sent it to you?

> Do you consider yourself to be a faithful disciple?

Erm, sorry what?

Re: You have to be very careful what you ask for

Well I wouldn't ask one of these engines to write code for me. They're not quite ready for that.

In terms of regurgitating well-established technical "fact", and/or finding me some relevant articles, it takes some beating

I think people need to temper their expectations. I've been trying out the Perplexity "search engine" for a few weeks now and so far it has been an absolute God-send.

For those who don't know it, it is more like a natural language search engine. For technical questions, it has saved me a *ton* of time. Questions about pthread API, autotools macros, etc, I'm quite astounded by the breadth of its coverage, at least as far as technical questions are concerned. The thing is, it can glean intent from the questions posed and I can better target my queries. If I used a conventional search engine, I would find myself trying to game it by choosing keywords and it is often annoying.

The AI boom has been a hit and miss affair, far too hyped: but don't assume that everything "AI" is rubbish. The reality is far from the truth.

Three Brits charged over 'active shooter threats' swattings in US, Canada

A Yorkshire lad living in Canada, if that answers your question. We're not normally known for being backward about coming forward though.

I must admit to having been a bit snarky.

I believe that in much of American journalism these days, for headlines they routinely omit the word "and" and substitute a comma, probably to preserve space. It often makes for difficult to parse headlines though, something that I have encountered a number of times more recently on El Reg unfortunately. Headlines are supposed to be snappy, but it kinda defeats the point if you have to read it 2 or 3 times to figure out the grammar.

That might have made sense in a newspaper column, but most people are reading this on a large(ish) display with text reflow so not really an issue in this day and age.

Another humorous example was "Man, dog implicated in attack" or somesuch. When you read it quickly it feels more like "Man, dog, implicated in attack", which is probably a little harsh.

> ...in US, Canada

As much as many Canadians would like it, the US isn't currently part of Canada.

Open source AI hiring bots favor men, leave women hanging by the phone

> You're hounded into submission because your ideas are fucking braindead and also a fake rightist.

Unlike gender, political view is actually a spectrum. Like the other person said, for some people like this commentator, there are only two types of people: those that are on the left with us, and the fascist arseholes on the right. Really, I expect a better class of commentator reading El Reg, but it seems like there are knuckle-draggers everywhere you go.

Brewhaha: Turns out machines can't replace people, Starbucks finds

> Where I live there is a Costa and a Cafe Nero and a load of lovely independents. Why do so many people use Costa et al.

Here in Canada, we also have Tim Hortons. People rave about Timmies, but in the main I find their coffee shops scruffy, filthy and very poorly maintained. At least the Starbucks generally seem to be hygienic.

Our local "Take 5" coffee shop is bright, fresh, uses proper mugs and is independent. The staff are very friendly, and the coffee is very nice.

There is also "Waves" which is OK.

Agreed about the independents. Time past, the hipster thing to do was to find small independent shops that cared about their coffee, and boast about it to other hipsters about their underground "secret".

This is seriously disturbing for Starbucks. It shows that they really don't understand their business at all.

Their coffee is fairly standard fayre, but what they are selling is a premium, personal brand. Removing the servers is going to dilute that brand. Who wants to pay a premium to be served by machines? You might as well get your coffee from the petrol/gas station machine and pay less.

Procter & Gamble study finds AI could help make Pringles tastier, spice up Old Spice, sharpen Gillette

> ....sharpen Gillette

As long as the AI doesn't suggest that all white American men are bastards, then that's probably an improvement over whatever they were using before.

Trump tariffs thwart TikTok takeover as China digs in heels

Invade Poland?

Intel's latest CEO Lip Bu Tan: 'You deserve better'

Nice to hear from someone with a bit of humility. We need to see some evidence that he can turn around their entrenched attitudes but it is a good start.

NASA rewrites Moon mission goals in quiet DEI retreat

Re: Sunset of merit

> ...it achieved nothing of any importance except a publicity win over the USSR

Quite aside from the shit-ton load of technology and science that typically come out of the pursuit of such endeavours, it was an immensely aspirational achievement, a feat that we are still talking about to this day.

Sure, it was a politically motivated stunt, but it was also a huge galvanizing and watershed moment for the US nation and for the rest of the western world.

We need more such positive achievements to inspire the future generations to do great things.

Re: Good

> Imagine codejunky's envisioned distant future, when a spaceship filled entirely with white men heads to the stars to propagate humanity throughout the galaxy...

Or just "the best person for the job" without getting hung up about something as childishly facile as what shade their skin is?

Time to ditch US tech for homegrown options, says Dutch parliament

> ...that would rather escape Earth by building space rockets,

Rather escape Earth than what exactly? It would probably be a good idea to not be so reliant on companies in other countries: sure! But what does space travel have to do with your justifications? Seems a rather weird thing to say.

Why do younger coders struggle to break through the FOSS graybeard barrier?

> Another gate opener...

That's something that I seriously considered myself. We have one that is proprietary and I want it to do some stuff that it wont do. I also would love to have the time to design a Pi-based washing machine controller.

Honestly, it doesn't matter if there are a 1000 projects out there like this. The point is that it is cool and the amount of experience gained by doing it is immensely valuable.

Re: Privilege

> Sure, some people can do it, typically those on the spectrum who don't have cravings for social life or those who think they can change the world by providing free alternative to what greedy corporations are offering, whilst living on instant noodles and still living with parents.

You watch *far, far* too much TV. I suggest you get out and see the world, it is rather more nuanced and varied than you seem to think.

Diversity, equity, and inclusion is not an illusion, but it soon might be

Re: Seems to match

> Should they? Which ones should? Why? And what about the millions of other people in the country?

I venture to suggest that the point being made is they they are not part of the political club. This could imply that they might be less partisan and provide an unbiased viewpoint. There is a prevailing feeling in the US that politics has become an in-bred political bubble and that outside intervention and/or fresh blood is desperately needed. That the fresh blood also consists of clever people should be advantageous.

I would add that they should also be "moral" people whatever that mean these days, and one doesn't necessarily imply the other.

For the most part I agree with you, but when you talk about the "Equity" of DEI (as opposed to Equality), this is explicitly a call to rebalance the scales through intervention. This is the main reason why people hate DEI so much.

There is no call for Equity in the NBA and it is very obviously unbalanced in terms of racial representation. But then it is *extremely* merit-based so we accept it.

Re: Seems to match

> Don't talk about racism and you're abetting it by burying your head in the sand.

Talking about racism is explicitly talking about race. WTF? Listen to yourself. Whether or not it is true is beside the point if what you are saying is complete nonsense.

Re: Seems to match

> How hated was Obama for being black?

He was absolutely reviled by many in the black communities of the US as being an Uncle Tom. You really can't make this stuff up.

Re: Seems to match

> For hundreds of years it has meant "white men" and in many industries in the west it clearly still does.

I would bracket that by pointing out that this is a very Amero-centric viewpoint. This is not been the case in most of Europe for a long time.

And I would challenge you to expand on what you mean by "...and in many industries in the west it clearly still does.". Which industries and where? This is the problem with a lot of these claims. They are so non-specific that they are impossible to refute because they aren't making a falsifiable claim.

Undergrad and colleagues accidentally shred 40-year hash table gospel

Re: Dicts?

Hashes are everywhere. Whether or not this discovery is generally applicable, we shall see. I still have yet to read the paper but it does sound quite interesting.

Boeing warns SLS staff that job cuts could be on the way

Re: Don't need this, don't want that...

> I am sure that Musk will be looking to cancel anything that might compete with or disfavour his own interests.

Well it has been a bit of a disaster for reasons outlined by others above. No doubt if it does get canned (even for purely legitimate reasons), people will accuse the government and Musk of corruption anyway.

It's like the enlightenment and the invention of logic never happened. "He says he didn't do it! Well, that's exactly what a guilty man *would* say."

Does DOGE have what it takes to actually tackle billions in US govt IT spending?

Re: " it built some manufacturing software that was bolted on

> Still every little helps when you're looking to fund those tax-cuts-for-billionaire and the Make Billionairs Rich Again agenda

If you think that billionaires are funding this expenditure, then I think you are deluded. Billionaires know how to avoid paying taxes, shunting it around to optimize their portfolios. The middle income Jack and Jill is paying the taxes to fund these projects and I can tell you that *many* of them would like to see less of their hard earned wonga piss*ed down the drain on foreign vanity projects.

Re: Going after federal government tech spending ...

> So... Worlds richest person sends in crack IT men to shutdown support for worlds poorest children.

I think the claim is that a ton of money is being spent and very little actual "good" is being done. Whether or not that is true, but there are plenty of anecdotes of billions being spent and little actual return for the money *actually in the US*, never mind abroad. The EU has exactly the same problem with the unbelievable amounts of money being spent on aid and subsidies and the gaping cracks down which it inevitably drains, never to be seen by the intended recipients.

There's going to be a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth, particularly from the incumbants. I would expect nothing less.

Musk’s DOGE ship gets ‘full’ access to Treasury payment system, sinks USAID

> Eat the bugloaf and turn in your guns. Daddy is home.

> they did the public into thinking why change it for

Honestly, I didn't expect a lot of agreement with my opinion here and I don't necessarily agree with everything that Trump is doing, but what's with all the weird-ass responses. There really is something to the Trump-derangement syndrome accusation. Instead of rational rebuttals it just seems that there is something about Trump that gets under people's skin that makes them react so emotionally and irrationally, and frankly weirdly. Some of you just don't sound all that sane and it doesn't do much for your credibility.

Passionate opinions on both sides are welcome, but don't get all weird.

I'm honestly not sure what to think about this.

The US federal government has become a sprawling juggernaut that could rival the EU for the sheer amount of money that is laundered through it, far from the original American ideal of a union of loosely coupled states brought together by a small, nimble federal organisation to represent their common interests. Most Americans' experience of how bad things have gotten is through the gestapo department known as the IRS, an out-of-control body that is a law unto itself.

The *only* way to wrestle control of such an organisation involves extreme measures. Anything else leads to the status quo. The trick is to not throw crucial babies out with the sewage that they were previously being washed in. I do worry about what is going on but I hope for something positive to come from it.

Trump scrubs all mention of DEI, gender, climate change from federal websites

I suspect the purge is going to be a bit of a mixed bag. I would probably agree with some of it, disagree on others.

> Science is still a male-dominated field, but Rubin Observatory is working to increase participation from women and other people who have historically been excluded from science. Rubin Observatory welcomes everyone who wants to contribute to science, and takes steps to lower or eliminate barriers that exclude those with less privilege.

This is an interesting comment because it presents two different agendas. One suggests that there would be more women if men would just stop preventing them. Yes they have been excluded in the distant past, but that's not been true for decades now. The other suggests that all are welcome and we will work to remove unreasonable barriers that would prevent competent people having a chance.

The second is admirable, the first is making a lot of assumptions that have been largely proved to be wrong in the modern day.

All the DEI bullshit should be nuked from orbit. It is a sexist, racist, vanity money pit based on insanity. However, I am massively in favour of the Internet Archive recording everything. Future generations need to know how bad it got before things got better.

US datacenters in for shock as Canada mulls cutting the juice over Trump tariffs

Re: Erm

> through the eastern provinces which are less enthusiastic about the whole thing.

There's not a lot of enthusiasm for that here in BC either. Fairly recent spills of oil haven't really improved on that sentiment.

Welsh woman fined for flatulence-fueled cyber harassment

Re: Just, how?!?

> Very clever, but smirking is also usually accompanied by laughter...

No it's not. *Usually*, it is intended to be surreptitious so also making a noise would be self-defeating.

Trump eyes up to 100% tariffs on foreign semiconductors, TSMC in crosshairs

This happened to us, here in Canada. We ordered a new sofa that was made in Mexico, but when it got to the border, the Canadian government introduced a massive "emergency" duty on them. IIRC a complaint came from some Canadian producers that some of the leather came from China and that it was undercutting them unfairly. OK, well fair comment. But we'd already paid for it and now we couldn't get it into the country. Also, bear in mind the fact that very few people here can afford a Canadian made sofa costing upwards of $5-6K. So no lost sales at all.

What really bit was that our sofa was actually at the border but couldn't make the last few kms to our house. Quite a few people got stung by that.

WordPress drama latest: Leader Matt Mullenweg exiles five contributors

> ..exhibiting sociopathic tendencies.

I disagree.

Sociopathy would imply a disregard for the feelings of others, and a general inability to empathise. Much of what Mullenweg has been doing seems targetted and vindictive which implies some measure of antipathy. Same for Musk: he's full of is own smelly farts and he is an idealist, and perhaps has some narcissistic tendancies, but I would really hesitate to use the term sociopathy for either.

Honestly, it certainly seems from what I read generally is that Mullenweg has had something of a mental breakdown. No snark here: I genuinely feel like he needs some help.

Linus Torvalds offers to build guitar effects pedal for kernel developer

Re: principles of circuit different from tracing the circuit

> If they copied the artwork by tracing the PCB. thats a problem

Honestly, this is starting to stray into recipe book territory. The word art is terribly misused in this context. PCBs are not art and so many circuits are now part of the common knowledge in electronics.

Free-software warriors celebrate landmark case that enforced GNU LGPL

Re: Stretching

IIRC, the license includes a provision for scripts/utilities needed to build as well as code. I don't remember the wording but I would guess it is related to that.

The channel stands corrected: Hardware is a refresh cycle business now

Re: Pardon my ignorance. . .

> but what, pray tell, is The Channel?

It is just a metaphor for a major supply chain.

Zuck takes a page from Musk: Meta dumps fact-checkers, loosens speech restrictions

Re: America has gone down the toilet

> * Well, how else did Trump get elected?

Well perhaps because the alternative was worse? Until the US figures out a way to field candidates that are neither insane nor politically impotent, the nonsense will continue.

We’re paying for what we don’t get: East D.C. neighbors frustrated with Amazon’s Prime delivery exclusions

Honestly, I'm not entirely sure where I would go physically for a lot of the stuff that I buy now. I'm sure that there are physical shops out there but I know that in the past, a lot of them have been "trade only" outfits so won't deal with the general public.

I do try to deal with local businesses where I can but a lot of what I need is pretty esoteric.

We actually have a similar situation here. I have a Prime account and they say that they will deliver next day.

However, I live on a small island and no courier drivers come here: it would be prohibitively expensive for them to come over by ferry even for the couple of thousand people who live here. So everything comes by Canada Post for the "final mile". So it will always take a couple of days, minimum. You get used to it though as it is a reality of island living. I also would prefer that they 'fess up before the purchase is completed.

This seems to be a big story about something extremely simple. Amazon say they will honour a certain delivery time and then they change their mind after the purchase.

This is plain and simple deceptive practise and they should be prosecuted for some kind of fraud.

All this other stuff about race seems largely tacked on for extra political clout. Also whether or not people are aware of it seems to be irrelevant. Saying that you'll do one thing, then change your mind is bad enough.