Posts by DoctorPaul

Microsoft, PC makers cut prices of Copilot+ gear in Europe, analyst stats confirm

"Something will have to give in 2025, and I think it's AI."

FTFY

UK prepared to throw planning rules out the window for massive datacenters

Re: My experience

Just watched an episode of Grand Designs where someone built the UK's first "super eco" house (can't remember the actual term) which includes some sort of active roof from Estonia that generates electricity directly.

The roof generates enough power to feed 6 normal houses, but they are only allowed to sell back the equivalent of 4 houses worth (regulations dontcha know) to the grid, the rest currently just has to go to waste.

Tesla recalls 239,382 vehicles over rearview camera problems

I was going to say that mirrors can't fail, then I remembered when the glass fell out of a door mirror going over a bump. Easier to fix than a Tesla though. Think I had a rear-view mirror fall off the windscreen once, but that was probably in the 1970s.

Re: will be able to get their car computer replaced free of charge

And the submarine in Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, better than Guy Fawkes night when something went wrong! I just assumed that all American military kit was that deficient.

Blue Origin postpones New Glenn's maiden flight to January 12

I lost my partner and her son to COVID, so I would like to take your opinion and shove it up your arse a VERY long way.

Microsoft tests 45% M365 price hikes in Asia-Pacific to see how much you enjoy AI

Re: Perpetual?

Not for my "perpetual" Office 2010 they didn't!!!!!

Windows 11 24H2 can run – sort of – in 184MB

Re: Imagine the world we'd be living in...

Not an OS but Elite on the BBC ran in 22k - not bad for an entire universe!

Dude, you got a Dell, period! RIP XPS, Inspiron, Latitude, Precision

Re: "help organizations futureproof for the AI era"

Upvoted more in hope than expectation.

The unlicensed OneDrive free ride ends this month

Re: Surely this is a Customer side problem?

I think the key word there is "largely". In the handful of other cases, how deep in the shit would you have been without the data?

US airspace closures, lack of answers deepen East Coast drone mystery

Re: Observations

That would be an ecumenical matter.

The sweet Raspberry taste of success masks a missed opportunity

Re: BBC Micro..

Darn right. In the early 80s, before the IBM PC even existed, the multimedia firm I worked for was doing full screen interactive video using BBC Micros linked to 12" analogue laser disc players from Philips. The analogue bit was fun, you couldn't just tell it to seek to a position on the disc, you had to allow for the overshoot when the head arrived at the specified point and tried to stop.

Aliens, spy balloons, or drones? SUV-sized mystery objects spotted in US skies

Once HEARD never forgotten!

Raspberry Pi 500 and monitor arrive in time for Christmas

Re: re: I suspect that last one isn't particularly profitable....

Quick thought, can you use Lazarus to develop for the Pi?

Ransomware hangover, Putin grudge blamed for vodka maker's bankruptcy

Came here to say just that, check out Wyborowa or Żubrówka (the one with the bison grass). As for Stoly, it's so oily it reminds me of what we used to run 2-stroke motorbikes on in the 60s!

Tesla Cybertruck, a paragon of reliability, recalled again

Whether you do so at full speed, in limp mode or on the back of a tow truck is your own prerogative.

Err, the Cybertruck's prerogative surely?

Watchdog finds AI tools can be used unlawfully to filter candidates by race, gender

Re: Think different

NO!!!

You spike the cassette on the pencil/biro then whirl it around. Get too enthusiastic and the cassette flies across the room.

WordPress's Automattic openly tracks websites bailing from rival WP Engine

Re: WTF?

And trademark it

Gang of monkeys escape South Carolina biomedical research facility

Re: Just leave typewriters out.

Pedant alert: recent mathematical research has "proved" that they won't achieve it before the heat death of the universe.

Philosophical point up for discussion. The original quote was something like "given enough time..." which leads to the question "does time stop with the heat death of the universe?"

Intel: Our finances are in the toilet, we're laying off 15K, but the free coffee is back!

Re: The Need for Caffeine

"it’s not just cream that floats to the top" - quote of the week!

Hide the keyboard – it's the only way to keep this software running

Re: Small boys are good problem finders

"If you want to know if something meets or exceeds military spec, give it to a six year old"

Killer app for AI is still years away, says industry analyst

Re: "software makers are more than happy to slap the generative AI label on products..."

Remember when we used to refer to the Intel Inside sticker as "the warning label"? Here we go again.

I swear that I've seen TV ads for AI vacuum cleaners (the sort you push, not a robot) and ovens, WTF?!

I'm old enough to remember when everything suddenly needed to be "smart" and how well that turned out, not.

Trouble is, when you get to my age you've seen the same shit come round time after time, then people ask "why so cynical?"

Windows 10 given an extra year of supported life, for $30

Been looking to move my main workhorse to Linux for a long time, the problem being that I'm running 6 monitors and 2 graphics cards and the Nvidia drivers can't cope. So it's off to eBay where another HP Z230 cost me £38 and a pair of AMD 4 port graphics cards were £19 each.

Slowly building the system using Mint 22 and liking the results. The only missing component is a media browser for my albums. I just want something like iTunes where I can browse albums by the cover art, should be spoilt for choice right? Wrong, cannot find a single player for Linux with this ability. Really?

Re: $30 ... how to be paid?

Was that BypassESU? Worked a treat and kept me on W7 until earlier this year.

UK sleep experts say it's time to kill daylight saving for good

Re: I disagree

It's a known syndrome (yes I've been watching QI again) where some people just don't do mornings. Think it was Descartes or another philosopher who didn't get up until midday. According to QI one in 500 have the syndrome, that's a lot of people! Me, I'm never up before 10 in the morning - I'm 72 now and been like it all my life.

And that 1 hour difference means that inter-business communication isn't available for 4 hours every day. There's an hour in the morning where just one group is at work, then the equivalent hour at the end of the working day, plus the lunch hours don't overlap losing another 2 hours.

AWS boss: Don't want to come back to the office? Go work somewhere else

The missing piece

WFH can be very successful as long as one key component is in place, namely a competent manager. Ah, just saw the problem.

Opening up the WinAmp source to all goes badly as owners delete entire repo

This is what we come here for

"Never mind the llama, the cat is no longer in the remote geographical vicinity of the bag."

Smart homes may be a bright idea, just not for the dim bulbs who live in 'em

Re: X10

My solution would be a second-hand Humax FoxSat satellite receiver with Raydon's firmware upgrade applied. That gives you a full featured web server for admin and programme guide plus other goodies like an FTP server, quick bit of port forwarding on the router and setting recordings from outside home is a doddle.

Smart TVs are spying on everyone

Re: IF YOU CAN'T BEAT THEM .... USE THEM :)

If you want to watch FTA broadcasts without a TV there is a little box called HDHomerun. Just 3 inputs - 5v DC, ethernet and aerial - then view via the supplied apps on the OS of your choice. No connection, just a satisfied user.

Or plug in a USB drive and you can pause \ rewind \ replay live TV, at least on my LG. Start watching a programme then at the first ad break hit the Pause button and wander off and do something useful for a while before coming back to finish watching while skipping the ads. That said, they don't make it easy. On the LG the best I can do is 16x FF through the ads, while my old Humax satellite box also has skip forward and back buttons. Skip forward jumps about 3 minutes a press (easy multiples of UK ad breaks) while going back is about 30 seconds, thus making it a breeze to jump past ad breaks and then hop back to the start of the next section of the programme. So useful is this functionality that I believe that certain vested interests made sure that it was removed from all later equipment across the industry, after all skipping ads is theft right? I also refer you to the fact that all satellite boxes after the Humax FoxSat now have their firmware encrypted, cutting us off from the enhanced functionality offered by modders such as Raydon.

Re: PiHole!

Been running a pair of pi-holes for years now, they "just work". A couple of years after being bereaved it suddenly occurred to me that I had completely forgotten about them being on my network, so finally logged in and ran some updates. Rather like systems that just sit there doing what they do. The only thing that I found in the early days was that I needed a pair of them, firstly to offer the router primary and secondary DNS servers, secondly because I found that a single pi-hole would lock up about once a week. That took out my entire home internet so had to be fixed, hence running a pair. Looking at the logs shows that one pi-hole will do all the heavy lifting for a while, then things flip-flop to the other one one. No idea why.

Techie took five minutes to fix problem Adobe and Microsoft couldn't solve in two weeks

Re: Safe Mode

Dumber than Windows?

Missing Thunderbirds footage found in British garden shed

Re: UFO

If you're looking for a TV series written on drugs, can I refer you to The Prisoner :-)

Re: That film...

Seem to recall that I eventually ended up assembling an Airfix plane around a firework banger, it only had the one flight into the garden of course. That was after we got bored with setting fire to paper darts and throwing them into the fireplace, but before a schoolfriend and I built a mill out of a motor, Andrews tin, marbles and Meccano. What were we milling? Gunpowder of course! Kids today don't know what they're missing.

Embattled users worn down by privacy options? Let them eat code

Re: would this work?

Loving the idea of poisoned cookies! And if some random corruption (honest guv) just happens to produce some SQL injection that would be a real bonus.

And that in itself is enough of a reason for me to use Firefox for many years.

Busybox 1.37 is tiny but capable, the way we like Linux tools to be

So many uses!

Pretty sure that busybox is a key component in the wonderful Raydon firmware upgrade for the Humax FoxSat satellite receiver that I will big up here at every opportunity. Full on web server for admin and channel listings, FTP server, utilities all crammed into that little ROM. Mind you, the end result is a film collection currently around the 6,500 mark spanning 32Tb of storage - you have been warned.

Office 2024 unveiled for Microsoft 365 refuseniks

That's what I thought, but then when I needed to do a reinstall I found that Microsoft had switched off the activation server. You might be in for an unpleasant surprise.

Meta gives Llama 3 vision, now if only it had a brain

So let me get this right

The article once again emphasizes that every output from such a system must be checked for veracity, so someone please explain WHAT IS THE FUCKING POINT?

Revenge for being fired is best served profitably

Re: only 3 in 25 years

Second hand business box from eBay is my go-to solution, OK so it's probably going to be a Dell or HP but at least they don't profit from me directly and the chassis quality far exceeds the cheapest Chinese boxes and their tendency to draw blood.

Main workhorse is a HP Z230 running the "full Terry Pratchett" with 6 24" monitors, media server is a Dell mini-tower whose stock PSU manages to cope with spinning up 32Tb 6HDDs and an SSD, and finally the driving sim just has the 3 monitors to go with the seat, steering wheel and pedals. Each box wasn't much over a hundred quid and came with a Windows license.

Harvard duo hacks Meta Ray-Bans to dox strangers on sight in seconds

Re: We'll all look like sirens...

I recall an episode of QI where Stephen Fry showed a pair of glasses with multicoloured frames which it was claimed would make facial recognition systems identify the wearer as a particular female action movie star. Patterns in the frames exactly matched that face at a tiny scale and as soon as the system went "ping, that's a match" it moved on to other faces in the field of view. Anyone know if that still works?

Valve powers up Arch Linux – because who needs Windows when you have a Steam Deck?

Re: Woa - desktops = production??

Trigger's desktop?

It's true, social media moderators do go after conservatives

Re: Means nothing

Happy to oblige

Bank of America app glitch zeroes out people's balances

Re: Cash is king

And then add to that reports of blaggers putting stickers with dodgy QR codes on payment machines in car parks. Me? No way will I ever scan a QR code while out and about.

BOFH: AI consultant rapidly transitioned to new role as automotive surface consultant

Re: Human-fired power station

Harry Harrison helped form a lot of my thinking back when I was a teenager, we all need to be Stainless Steel Rats!

OS/2 expert channeled a higher power to dispel digital doom vortex

Re: In the days before t’interweb…

I think that the apogee of my attempts to speak French in an Alpine ski resort was when a local asked if I was Belgian, I was really chuffed!

Admins using Windows Server Update Services up in arms as Microsoft deprecates feature

Re: MS seems to have lost it... big time

Finally had to be dragged kicking and screaming off Win 7 Pro earlier this year, at least Start11, WindowsBlinds and InControl make Win 10 tolerable for not much money. Shout out to Stardock for not taking the piss with their pricing and Gibson Research for just being bloody brilliant!

Would love to move my main workhorse to something like Mint but I'm running the "full Terry Pratchett" with 6 monitors and two graphics cards. Windows is fine but with Mint the proprietary nVidia driver only displays on 3 monitors and the open source driver sees all 6 but runs so slowly it is completely unusable. The graphics cards won't be getting any driver updates from nVidia either so I'm basically stuffed. That said, the nVidia driver sees both graphics cards when I delve into the settings - time to learn a bit about X windows internals?

FTC urged to stop tech makers downgrading devices after you've bought them

Shout out to the wonderful Humax FoxSat satellite box firmware update by Raydon, which gives my box a web based interface, an FTP server and the ability to record HD unscrambled.

My media server is a second hand HP Compaq tower running Mint and Plex which to my amazement is able to boot up with 6 HDDs and an SSD fitted, we're talking about 30Tb of storage in total - well over 6,000 movies, a few hundred TV series plus all my music (ripped from CD as flac). One day I may get round to watching them all.

White House seizes 32 domains, issues criminal charges in massive election-meddling crackdown

Re: "The Biden administration"?

Quite simple really, they want to sow societal discord in any country that has nicer things than them. That would be quite a few.

Trump just happens to be a godsend to their campaign in the USA.

Key aspects of Palantir's Federated Data Platform lack legal basis, lawyers tell NHS England

Is opt-out even legal?

So the best I can hope for is to be given an option (well hidden?) to opt out. How about assuming opt out and having to specifically opt in?

It's a bad enough idea, but Palantir?! FFS