Posts by Joe W

Tesla Cybertruck recalled again. This time, a software fix for backup camera glitch

Re: Robo Cyber Trucks

The video is brilliant.

I'm on my second Negroni, I'm allowed that opinion.

Elon Musk's X mashed by Australian court for evading child protection reporting

purely symbolic....

"The decision means X is up for a AUD$615,000 ($420,000) penalty."

Per day? Per minute?

Oh, you mean in total? X-Thingy-Corp burns more value than that every day.... that's not even a slap on the wrist, it is nothing.

NASA switches off Voyager 2 plasma instrument to stretch out juice

Good job!

It's brilliant these things still work, mostly....

AI agent promotes itself to sysadmin, trashes boot sequence

Not so sure about this....

"If I had given better instructions to my agent, e.g. telling it 'when you've finished the task you were assigned, stop taking actions,' I wouldn't have had this problem."

I really would not count on that. ROTM and all that (there used to be this category in El Reg).

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

Re: Remembering dialogue boxes, and responses

Had that with a Japanese guest scientist :D I could recognise "hai" and "iee" on the buttons, and the rest was... guess work.

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

... almost there....

"The Boss senses my mental struggle and moves Matthew another half meter away."

At that rate the boss will move Matt along and onto the path of the PFY's Space Program. Or the footpath below the cafeteria's window. "Potato - solanum tuberosum" (I'll steal that phrase)

91% of polled Amazon staff unhappy with return-to-office, 3-in-4 want to jump ship

Re: Bad for some

The drive behind it is middle management needing to justify their existence, the control freaks liking to see busy looking people, manglement trying to justify the buildings.

Re: Well that a hiring decision easy....

That. I mostly work with people not in the same city. I like coming in maybe two or three days to keep in touch with the rest of the team and the neighbouring teams. Mostly a social thing, admittedly. For most of my work it makes not much sense to be in the office...

Did you hear the one about the help desk chap who abused privileges to prank his mate?

Re: Auto-Replace Shennanigans

To be fair: anyone using the auto-replace functionality is begging for this... (I hate that. A lot.)

Green recycling goals? Pending EU directive could hammer used mobile market

It is 2nd hand phones entering the EU. I'd say the EU is big enough to have a healthy second use market. Also USB C has been the de facto standard for several years (6 at least) for new phones. I'm pretty sure I wouldn't want a used phone that is even older than my current one. I use them until they are really no longer viable.

If HDMI screen rips aren't good enough for you pirates, DeCENC is another way to beat web video DRM

ISO = extortion scheme...

"Use the standards or else!"

"What are the standards?"

"Hand over your money or you'll never know!"

As major web browser makers snuggle up to AI, these skeptical holdouts remain

I like the idea behind it - I just cannot stand the UI. I gave it a try, several times, but... nah. Really not into that. What really ticked me off is that it did not respect my desktop settings one bit, forcing the flat... (expletive deleted) onto me, an outrigth jarring expereince contrasting all other applications. I do need clearly defined edges, scrollbars, borders as my bloody eyesight never has been great (icon: this bloke has no problems as he can see that you are not touching your toes, which you should be able to under the age of 35!) and really is not improving with age. It's bad enough that I have Windooze forced upon me at work, with the same flat (flaccid? bland?) look and feel (f'nar f'nar).

Feds urge 3D printing industry to end DIY machine guns

Re: In application

I was semi-competent with a machine gun (MG 3, which is a 7.62mm weapon, basically the old MG 42 the Nazis used in WW2). Didn't take that much time. It was enough to shoot the lowest level marksmanship medal (admittedly MG was way more difficult than handgun or rifle, where I got higher marks).

Re: The unthinkable option...

Yes. That. Having allowed sale of a bunch of military grade (but without the auto fire) guns in the first place was probably a stupid idea.

Now complaining that those can be converted to the original version is hypocritical.

Yes, we will get downvoted for stating the blinding obvious.

Google insists the ad tech business ain't broke, urges Washington not to fix it

Re: And also…

It's a deal and if you point them out to Google they refuse to see the problem.

I'd really like somebody to celebrate happy friendship day....(Liam style)

If every PC is going to be an AI PC, they better be as good at all the things trad PCs can do

But what...

... is an AI-PC? What defines it? A certain number of theoretically achievable TOPs? A certain architecture?

Windows 11 continues slog up the Windows 10 mountain

Re: re: Although there is little glaringly wrong with Windows 11

You clearly have kids in their terrible twos (and twins, which means basically madness squared)...

(and you obviously have tried installing a modern linux distro - like Mint or Ubuntu or whatver - even 10 years ago the installer was good enough)

(but I did install Devuan on an older Lenovo laptop half a year ago, the greatest problem was finding my usb sticks that I had mislaid. Linux has drivers for WPA3, the Win11 the laptop came with apparently doesn't)

iGulu F1 could be the hoppy ending to your home-brew horror show

Re: Who is the intended buyer?

It's a juicero (whatever that thing was called) of brewing. A brewcero?

Tired of airport security queues? SQL inject yourself into the cockpit, claim researchers

Re: "TSA has procedures in place..."

Well.... they can in fact check the ID of the person and compare it to the name and information in the portal.

it's just that those are wrong.

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

Range is not the issue!

Good grief!

Most car trips are short. Really short. Especailly that stupid range, where a ICV is so abysmal, because the engine is still cold. To be quite frank: most people should not use a car for that, like, at all. Yes, there's exceptions, we all know that (and it is another discussion, not one we need to open here, and I'm guilty ofthat as well, but kids having sport clubs at different ends of town and training at the same time... I disgress). But in this case range just is not the issue. Even my friend's Twizzy does that superbly (not transporting two kids with their stuff, but this was about *range*).

Yes, there are longer car trips. I know, I go on holidays as well. Except that those people I know who have a BEV are actually quite ok with the rythm of driving and taking a break. Sure, takes a bit longer, but they all tell me they arrive way more relaxed than they used to. might be old age and not being too stressed out about things any more, but that was the consensus: more breaks are a good thing. Considering that commercial drivers need to take breaks, we as civilians should maybe think about taking these breaks as well... (yeah, I'm guilty of just trying to get it over with as well).

What is an issue is price. Too many BEVs are fugly homungous[*] SUVs with a price tag to match. What used to be the family friendly car version (Astra or Golf station wagon - or any other brand) just does no longer exist (not as an ICV, much less as BEV). There are a number of smallish cars, nice for a short commutes. And what really ticks me off is that for the smallest solutions (the above mentioned Twizzy) you do not get any subsdies becasue it's too small to count as a car. It is a commuting vehicle, ffs, low road wear, needs less space, highly energ efficient, low cost - so if you subsidise them with the same amount as the stupid fugly SUV you now have a fleet of small light commuter cars that actually do something for electrifying personal transport. Heck, you can probably charge those from a really small PV installation in finite time as well (hm, say, 1kW installation, realisitically 0.5 kW, charges in 8 hours, from empty, I guess).

No, this is not for everybody, but it would be a good start.

And please look at Norway: BEVs are normal there. Not everywhere, sure, but they did pull that off.

[*] just... yeah... one person driving those battle ships all by themselves, taking two parking sports because they are waaay wider than cars should be and... I'll stop here.

A nice cup of tea rewired the datacenter and got things working again

Re: There is a proper way to do most things

You drink beer out of a porcellain mug?! (sorry...)

I drink Darjeeling FTGFOP[1] (far too good for ordinary people :p ), but 1. quite strong 2. in large quantities and 3. out of a mug. No sugar no milk, no lemon.

Life is too short to drink bad tea.

[1] ok, or autumnal - which has a more aromatic taste. Or nice gunpowder tea, or - what my tea shop recommended - Java (which does not become bitter in a thermos mug, which I sometimes use). Earl Grey is an abomination unto Nuggan and shall be shunned.

Elon Musk reins in Grok AI bot to stop election misinformation

Re: What kind of numbnuts relies on AI, especially Musk AI, for election information?

There are too many people not reading real newspapers (not the shite you get in places that are advertorials and plain ads almost completely (ok, even Bergens Tidende, which is not a bad paper[*], is crammed full of ads in the print version...) ) - and those get their "news" from social media. I even have colleagues, all pretty bright young people (ok, younger than I am), who get their news exclusively from social media... this leads to some really awkward conversations, let me tell you.

----> icon I do feel old...

[*] at least it has a substantial amount of article written in nynorsk :p

TikTok isn't protected by Section 230 in 10-year-old’s ‘blackout challenge’ death

Re: At last, some common sense

And asphyxiating "challenges" (though they were not called that) did exist in schools back then as well... nothing new under the sun?

Woman uses AirTags to nab alleged parcel-pinching scum

Re: "police declined to pursue the matter"

Leave your bike next to one that's worth more and has a worse lock...

So far I have fared well by having my good bikes inside (almost all of the time) and using a pretty shite looking bike for my errands downtown with a decent lock. The bike works well (admittedly the drive train is close to being shot, but as long as the chain doesn't jump under torque I'll leave it and not replace chain, cassette and chain rings).

I just hope my kids take bike locking seriously (Übut then again, not great looking bikes).

Zuckerberg admits Biden administration pressured Meta to police COVID posts

Words fail me...

... at least I would rather not write the vernaculars I'm currently thinking of. Timing is great, isn't it?

Fact is thatthat we're were many posts about CoViD that were just... misinformation, like the US president spread when he proposed to inject bleach (seriously....). Removing this kind of garbage is necessary. Sorry. No, your right to free speech ends where it harms others. If (a)social networks don't get stuff done they really need some encouragement.

Yeah, I do expect downvotes, but hey, free speech...

Japan abandons SLIM hopes its lunar lander will revive, ends Moon mission

Things went sideways...

... still: great work!

Bargain-hunting boss saw his bonus go up in a puff of self-inflicted smoke

Not the cause I expected...

... with cheap PCs. We had some that were really cheap (not inexpensive, there's a marked difference), bougth by our "friends" at the neighbouring institute in a year end spending frenzy. The power supply had an 11.3V rail, among other things. And three (all three that ended up in our lab) PC power supplies had the smoke seals break. One of them really went out with a bang (----> Icon), the others just fizzled.

That was after the admin left who would open each and every PC, measure those power supplies, run two days of memtest and another couple of days of disk exorcising ( keep that typo ;p) ). He was a bit of a character, but sometimes his CDO (same as OCD, but the letters are in the right order!) paid off.

Telegram founder and CEO arrested in France

I hope Musk travels to France

"...was arrested, apparently over his company's failure to follow content moderation laws"

BOFH: Videoconferencing for special dummies

Re: So true to life

If the extension lead is rated accordingly you can plug in a kettle.

Hell, there's three phase thirty something amps extension "cables" (and higher, and they are really stupidly heavy, all the copper)

110K domains targeted in 'sophisticated' AWS cloud extortion campaign

dunno, but waaay back when I would look at logfiles of our webserver and would quite often see requests containing "/../../.." or "\..\..\.." so having content and config in the same directory is not strictly neccessary for bad things to happen.

Microsoft's Patch Tuesday borks dual-boot Linux-Windows PCs

I do not own any Windows machines (one is still dual boot, the kids might need windows eventually for school... yeah, sucks). My work laptop does run Win 10 (we will get the... update to Win 11 someday soon), and apart from the hickups with the installation and update scripts for the additional software updates usually go well, so the MS supplied part of it seems to work. It likely helps that our in house tech team does some testing first. I would not call the whole system a "pleasure" to use, but I get the work done, and just using it as a terminal to connect to Linux servers works.

Deadbeat dad faked his own death by hacking government databases

Re: Is it hacking?

Nah, it's "cracking".

But this is the old definition, and we are now using "hacking" for the nefarious stuff... :(

China's chip tech still lags the West – by up to five generations

I wonder...

"China files the bulk of chip-related international patent applications under the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT), and the nation's semiconductor industry secured over 3,400 approved patents in 2020 – up from a mere 122 ten years prior. Many of those, it should be noted, do not represent significant innovations."

Can anybody enlighten me why there's patents when there's no innovation? I thought there used to be a hurdle to take...

But then Western companies were there first, and a "filed" patent is not approved. Still, isn't this meant to invoke some sort of concern about the Chinese ability to develop new stuff (even if it is not innovative)? This then is counteracted by a paragraph further down: "The report noted that Chinese firms do appear to compete more on price than on innovation, which makes sense for a country whose industry R&D ranks quite low among peers."

Missing scissors cause 36 flight cancellations in Japan

Meanwhile in Zürich...

... there's a Victorinox store. Yes, behind the security check. Yes, they are (or at least were) carrying the Swiss Army Knife...

Google's ex-CEO U-turns after saying staff 'going home early' killed winning

Re: WFH increases my productivity

Hey, I can browse the Internet all day even in the office if I have nothing interesting to do (not the same as"important")....

Re: Yep yep, the priviledged attitude

"Loyalty and motivation work both ways."

my current work place will learn that the hard way in the next months...

India shuffles away draft law treating influencers like real broadcasters

"Influencers"

So .. shills. It would already help if they would disclose that they are advertising mostly.

Or do you mean those... Eeeejits that trample through the landscape with complete disregard for nature or their personal safety (or of those who try mimicking their stupid stunts - the things I see when out in the Alps are mind boggling).

Core Python developer suspended for three months

Re: The real issue

Ah. That

Ok. In general, yes, there are a bunch of people who just love to be offended on behalf of others.

On the other hand, names are really hard, and i actually prefer the term main for my git branch. Skal, shouldn't we rename that version control system? (Ok, I'm kidding)

The port of the Windows 95 Start Menu was not all it seemed

Re: Proxmox undone

Sounds depressingly worse than (even) my current place.

I have an old Greybeard (capitalised out of sheer respect and beard envy) on the next desk, he's my new best buddy, has seen too much, and is even more cynic than the average BOFH. We are slowly dragging systems from the mesolithic into maybe the iron age, anything more "modern" is Generally Frowned Upon by Those Powers Who Be, though we just got rid[#] of one of the more vocal wastes of good office space - a dude who was proud to not understand any of that technology and statistics[*]. I remarked to one of his former team mates that at least he could organise, to which she replied that if he could, why wouldn't he, apparently she did it all...

Anyway, nice work! Too bad they shot themselves in the foot again.

[#] well, he still is in the company, but a different department, hopefully running that one into the ground

[*] forcing out the only person who had a clue and was giving him opposition[+] - the other statistician was too low on the food chain and too scared of repercussions to speak up - great we got rid of that computer user - non-technical. Now I inherited that defunctland of misused stats...

[+] I was on different projects - not that he would listen to me anyway, nor the physicists, bio-statisticians, meteorologists, applied statisticians...

Linux Mint 22 'Wilma' still the Bedrock choice for moving off Windows

Hm...

"With only verified packages, Flathub's cupboard is suddenly bare, empty of anything you're really likely to want."

Really? What do you want on top of the things offered in the Debian repository, on which Ubuntu and therefore Mint is based? Edge... is a pain in the proverbial (ok, I find it a pain to use, but hey, choice i in principle good). And Chrome? Why not chromium? Isn't that one packaged properly? Why not use a sensible browser like Firefox (I don't like Chrome, obviously...)

FYI: Data from deleted GitHub repos may not actually be deleted

Re: Other cloudy git providers?

"Clone" should get you the whole upstream repo, unless you do something specific only the "main" branch. And if you then change "remote" to a new remote repo and commit stuff there, upstream cannot see it.

The problem is that upstream can access all commits of your private fork.

Re: "this is expected and documented behavior inherent to how fork networks work"

I'd guess that this can open a can of wriggling regulatory proverbials. There must be a way to delete stuff, as far as I understand the rules.

From an architectural point of view this can be difficult. GIT does not like it if you delete a commit that lies embedded in a chain of commits.

Re: Yes and no

OK, here's the situation.

you fork an upstream repo, your fork is private

you commit something there that should not see daylight (keys to the Lamborghini or whatever)

you delete that commit to hide your sins

and now that commit is apparently still easily accessible from upstream.

Study shock! AI hinders productivity and makes working worse

Ah, the old one...

as the BOFH remarked when the Boss asked for something:

"and you want us to make it 'better' using 'technology', and if we just 'thought out of the box' the solution would 'stare us in the eyes'"

Or something like that. Didn't the boss get cut by the PFY with a linoleum knife then?

Remember, folks, if you cannot read ElReg and the BOFH and declare it as "essential training" you have the wrong job (that said, I do work enough, and currently my code's compiling / my SQL query is stumbling along)

CrowdStrike update blunder may cost world billions – and insurance ain't covering it all

... and this is why we need to think about accountability and safety within the IT delivery chain - not only the food industry...

And I have always wondered about those EULAs, basically saying that the manufacturer is not even sure if the software is fit for its intended use. Sure, if it is my home hobby piece of what I could generously call software that is written for my use, and maybe a mate can use it, and I cannot be arsed to really test it that is basically ok. On the other end are big software houses that earn millions during the time it takes to write this comment. They sell their product for a certain use, and need to make sure it can be used for this purpose.

If I design a car shaped object and drive on my own land and break my neck nobody cares. If I want to drive it on a public road it needs to get certified. If a big company sells a car for use on public roads and the car is unsafe, they are held liable (well... in theory they should be, and could be, and... yeah).

Sam Altman's basic income experiment finds that money can indeed buy happiness

I don't know about that... the place I grew up had some not-so-fortunate areas, but still I was quite naive about my fellow countrypersons (gn). Only through mandatory army service I learned apart from what a bunch of tossers are around that 1) there's folk who can no longer read if you cut off their index finger but 2) those can still be incredibly cool people to hang out with. Did ground me more in reality. Sort of glad I had to do this...

Re: why the hostility ?

Not amoral? I don't know.

But here's the thing: Getting money off poor people (like, really poor, living-on-the-street people) is pretty hard for a company, so why not get somebody (don't know, the government maybe?) to provide them with some cash they can spend on your products is a winning move.

The experiment focuses on a very narrow part of a populace (a design choice). It seems to indicate that many people (in that study) don't like being idle for too long and would make some work for themselves, either working a regular job or volunteering to help other people - or, and that might be a new concept to some, actually spend time with their families and especially their kids, actually taking care of them and not putting them in front of the electronic nanny (used to be the TV, now it's the tablet / smartphone) because they are knackered from their job and now also have to take care of their household. The mind boggles....

EU gave CrowdStrike the keys to the Windows kernel, claims Microsoft

Re: Wrong question

And people complained when the discussion about IT supply chain safety and responsibility and accountability came up.

Yup. That's a great example, isn't it?

CrowdStrike's Falcon Sensor also linked to Linux kernel panics and crashes

Re: "We're in the process of operationalizing an opt-in to this technique"

Remeber folks: "verbing weirds language".

(B Watterson)

Angry admins share the CrowdStrike outage experience

Re: Holidays

You will gloat until this becomes part of systemd.

(and then I will totally gloat, running bsd and Devuan - until stupid stuff hits my systems, but since I no longer run Debian Sid chances are slim)