Posts by cornetman

Fedora 43 won't drop 32-bit app support – or adopt Xlibre

> Yes, there are many reasons to keep i686/X86-32 libraries around, but "cross-check that you are using the right data types in your C and C++ code" is NOT one of them...

Honestly, I don't really get the hostility. Take a f*cking chill pill for Christ's sake.

Yes, you are right. I was merely pointing out the advantage of building for a number of different platforms and bit sizes for checking code quality. Yes, I know Fedora supports a lot of different platforms. One less won't make a huge difference and it doesn't in any way negate the truth of my comment.

One advantage of building and testing 32-bit binaries is that it helps to cross-check that you are using the right data types in your C and C++ code.

I've seen a lot of bugs in code that we exposed this way by building for a different architecture or data width. Compilers are getting better at detecting these sorts of issues, but it does help.

Visiting students can't hide social media accounts from Uncle Sam anymore

Re: Other religions?

> Many US states ban books from school libraries. Land of the free, my arse.

Of course they do. WTF? You know that little kids go to school libraries right? Jeez. :O

The constitution of the US protects adults. We have a different standard for our kids and rightly so.

Re: You aren't much of a student if you don't criticise the government.

> you know it's going to be one of those "pull yourself up by the bootstraps" kind of conservatives

And you would be wrong. I am a centre-left liberal. I believe in nationalised healthcare and a limited safety net in general. Just goes to show, you read a couple of sentences from someone, and you believe that you know everything about that person's beliefs. You are sorely mistaken.

Re: You aren't much of a student if you don't criticise the government.

> You aren't much of a student if you don't criticise the government.

It is pretty much a rite of passage for many students to get to college, think that the whole country is f*cked and demand it be turned into some kind of socialist "utopia", graduate, grow up, get a job, start to earn money then realise that they actually would quite like to keep their hard-earned cash, thank you very much.

Real life has that effect.

Yes, it has always been thus. What is different, now, is that the people supposedly in charge of these places don't have sufficient backbone to be the adults and they indulge their misguided fantasies. Which is how we got scenes of students kidnapping the staff and holding them hostage in their classrooms and such. Maximum cringe.

Cosmoe: New C++ toolkit for building native Wayland apps

I'm pinning this. Looks very interesting.

I have a few GUI apps that I maintain and they are mostly GTK. The direction that GTK is going, I have been seriously considering rewrites to something else.

Porting from GTK2 to GTK3 was a *massive* pain in the arse, especially since some stock controls that they use came with GTK2 were removed.

I'm sure a lot of people going through that process had to go through similar processes of having to implement those controls from scratch themselves, a monumental waste of my valuable time.

Xlibre forks to the rescue – but Kubuntu gives X11 the boot

I'm not sure, but it may be that there is some confusion. Do those people say that Wayland is fundamentally inferior as an idea/protocol or that Weston is not ready yet?

In terms of driver support for Wayland, that may very well be true but it doesn't necessarily relate to the architecture or purpose espoused of Wayland.

Training AI on Mastodon posts? The idea's extinct after terms updated

> ... but, as the service acknowledged, enforcement of such a rule outside its systems is challenging.

And they shouldn't be trying to do it. What other people do on their own platforms is entirely up to them and none of their damn business.

US Navy backs right to repair after $13B carrier crew left half-fed by contractor-locked ovens

> He pointed out the Navy personnel are capable of fixing their own gear but are blocked by contracts that reserve repairs for vendors, often due to IP restrictions.

That's f*cking insane. What the heck are they supposed to do in an extended wartime situation?

Such a vessel should have detailed repair instructions for every piece of equipment and people on hand that are able to work on them.

Forked-off Xlibre tells Wayland display protocol to DEI in a fire

Re: Personal view.

The biggest drawback to Wayland (or more properly Weston) is poor driver support by manufacturers. That's getting better, but I had similar experiences when I tried to use it some time ago. Things will improve. I believe that NVidia is onboard now so perhaps there is light at the end of the tunnel.

Re: Code talks

Yes. A pure capitalistic society would be truly awful. Capitalism has its flaws (corporatism, and doesn't help those that are physically disadvantaged) and we should be constantly vigilant against them.

I am against the worship in the US (particularly) of the capitalistic system. It brings great benefits and we know of no better economic system, but it is far from perfect and it can form only part of the way that we run societies. The most productive and prosperous societies understand the truth of that.

I would expect that the main beneficiaries of Wayland/Weston would be gamers. The big issue about choice is they they work fundamentally differently.

A good analogue might be the difference between DirectX, OpenGL, Vulkan. They are all looking to do the same job and many game engines provide some kind of abstraction so you have less need to choose, but ultimately one platform will likely be more efficient for certain workloads. Honestly, I don't get the ire over this subject. X11 has some issues with the modern usage of video that Wayland/Weston hopes to address. I'm not qualified to judge the technical merits of either though.

Another parallel is Pipewire. It's still a bit buggy but hopes to take over from Pulseaudio, pure ALSA and Jack. I would welcome an implementation that is reliable and performant, but I haven't seen the same kind of controversy surrounding it.

Re: Code talks

Agreed that I don't like to see the politicisation of software. However, a large segment of the loony left have made that point rather moot.

Free software *is* explicitly political though so the horse is well and truly gone from the stable.

When people spend significant time and resources wondering if "master" is an inappropriate term for the primary branch of a git repo though, I do have to wonder if they don't perhaps have better, more useful things to do with their time. Idle hands and the devil and all that....

> Not so good as it will small-p politicise what should be a straight forward technical project and ironically discourage participation.

I would have to disagree about that. Equity policies in the main are explicitly discriminatory. I'm all about outreach to encourage participation by any who are technically proficient enough to contribute. Your skin colour should not be a consideration.

Tesla FSD ignores school bus lights and hits 'child' dummy in staged demo

> "The car identified the pedestrian, but didn't stop after hitting it and carried on down the road."

The article does talk about the use of cameras as opposed to LIDAR as a factor but it also says that the pedestrian was correctly identified, but mown down regardless.

I wonder how many actual incidents are caused due to the use of cameras rather than software glitches.

> "And if we get everybody on quality software that's better than human drivers, like Waymo, we will save hundreds of thousands of lives per year. That's absolutely true. But it won't be Elon. It won't be Tesla."

In fairness, the self driving features are already statistically better than average humans at regular driving tasks so if all cars were using Tesla's tech then lives would already be saved. That's partly because a lot of human drivers are pretty inattentive and sometimes reckless.

The big problem is that it fails in incomprehensible and strange ways that makes us distrust it, and rightly so. I live on an island here where we also have the yellow school buses around in the morning and late afternoon. Meatbag drivers also sometimes do not stop when it is flashing its lights and has the STOP signs out. Tesla's self driving systems might be flawed but people are similarly stupid.

For those outside the Americas that are maybe not aware, traffic must stop *on both sides of the road*, and not pass the bus, when the it shows the red lights and sign so that kids can safely cross the road.

AMD puts Intel in rear view mirror with Threadripper Pro 9000 high-end desktop chips

Re: Price

If you are doing serious cutting edge research in the area of AI, you aren't in that game. These enormous bit barns are leveraging massive scale to do business. They just also happen to be doing their own research because that's good business.

Anyone that is trying to do fundamental research by hammering problems with enormous compute aren't really doing anything new. They are trying to out-Google Google, or out-Amazon Amazon. That's not research: that's an exercise in futility.

Re: Price

When I was starting in computing, actually owning a computer was completely beyond comprehension. They could only be afforded by large corporations.

Later, you could buy a home computer by the likes of Commodore or Sinclair which were capable but filled a fairly narrow niche. Not exactly cheap but affordable. However, the cutting edge mini and mainframe machines were again affordable only by corporations or universities.

Now you can buy a powerful GPU and CPU and make an affordable power house, but yet again if you want the best that money can buy, you need a lot of money indeed. You *can* do AI tasks on a machine that is affordable if you are fairly well-heeled professional but if you want to set up something that can serve "AI" to an entire country or the rest of the world, you need a stupendous amount of money. That software and the hardware behind it scaled *well back* is attainable by mere mortals but you need some decent resources.

However, it has *ever* been true that if you wanted access to the serious, cutting edge, you were talking about serious money. I don't remember there ever being a time where the cutting edge was accessible to those who were not extremely rich. That balance has ebbed and flowed over time but it is true in all areas of technological life. I don't see that changing any time soon.

Re: Price

> We had small window of time where working class had almost equal opportunity, now it is again getting out of rich and only the wealthy are in the game.

Sorry, that's complete bull. You can pick up a second hand Ryzen 3700x from AliExpress for just a tad over $100 CAD. 8-core 16thread CPU that chomps through any developer workload I can throw at it. Multithread compiles are awesome. What is *actually* happening is that *all* computing is getting incredible, but affordable options that don't suck are now available to everyone at the mid- and lower-levels.

What we *do* need is better access to reasonably priced mid-level graphics cards. AMD are staying away from the very top because they are just prestige products and there isn't really much money to be made there. Intel are doing good work at the lower levels. At some point, I might check one of their GPUs out.

Actors' union complains about Epic Games cloning Darth Vader

Re: Boycott Epic

They do have some form for sure, but for this situation, they seem to have reached an equitable arrangement with the estate.

It's not clear to me WTF the union is whining on about in this case.

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.

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.