Posts by Jou (Mxyzptlk)

GPT-5 bests human judges in legal smack down

Re: From my little knowledge about US-legal...

Somehow this confirms why I prefer the European justice system. The judge has less personal interpretation freedom here. Weird laws get removed, albeit a bit slow.

Other things: Here the losing party often has to pay the legal cost of the winning party, especially in consumer protection cases. As @LebenUSA told in his last video: Samsung completely ignored his support call within warranty for his TV, and the reasoning he explained is: "it is a cheap one anyway, and those who buy SO cheap cannot afford legal", practically scammer protection. Unthinkable in Europe, and my own experience in 2021 confirms: I got my money back from Samsung without problems after support could not solve the issues in a reasonable time frame - albeit my TV was from the top class line, but never had such a buggy TV, including the Samsung TV which the "new better" was supposed to replace.

From my little knowledge about US-legal...

The human-judge system is used to keep "common sense". USA is full of weird laws which get ignored. Like you are supposed to have a license plate at the front of the car in many states, but not in all. The law is not followed, and enforcing it might be beaten down by judges and especially a jury since it is difficult to enforce something which now less than 50% of the people follow. Let alone due to the mentioned differences between states. You cannot make someone being treated like a felon for crossing inside USA state lines for a missing license plate at the front, or a weird license plate you got in one state but is seen as "offensive" in another.

If Microsoft made a car... what would it be?

Commonly referred to as "housewife-tank" ?

Re: iCar

But don't expose it to UV light, it might turn pink.

Re: If Microsoft made a car, it would be...

No. A clown car is fun and does not have a storage problem.

Re: Trabant!

> Top Gear 'testing' the Reliant Robin

Sadly the rigged the Reliant Robin for show. It was not THAT prone to tip over.

Re: A Microsoft Car would have

> One on-dash light to indicate low-fuel, brake failure, engine failure, hand-brake engaged, etc

The BlueLightOfDeath?

Re: The Microsoft car

> On the bright side, it wouldn't run systemd.

Yes, 'cause they just call everything a "service". See HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services for your specific available list. This is where systemd got its original inspiration from, though systemd has a less clear definition.

Re: Trabant!

You will have to use the CORE version of Microsoft Car NT 6. It will come with only one control, no windows to open, no lights and a few other things. And then it will reach 10000 miles before each inspection.

Your car insist that a full circle is 365 degrees, therefore never steers the way you tell it to, and is constantly changing its user interface without warning.

Isn't that old?

Depending on what you want to do and the number of passenger and amount of luggage you'll have to rewrite the whole config (-.sys) and AUTO(-exec.bat).

Any passenger, including non humans, always have full access to your car and therefore quite often steer it against walls, rocks, over cliffs and into fire and water.

Any passenger, including non humans, can destroy, rearrange or throw out your luggage, and you can't do anything about it.

You need to have ten configurations ready depending on passenger needs if the car is beyond 640 kg weight. Below you can only transport children up to 20 kg.

You are restricted to configure your passengers and luggage in 64 kg segments of your car. If one of them is above special passenger and seating arrangements is needed. Sounds weird, and it is.

If you are below Microsoft CAR 2.0 you don't have seats or compartments in your storage, only one flat platform (this one needs explanation: MD-DOS 2.0 brought sub-directories).

For bigger passengers with more luggage you need at least 3rd generation motor, capable to manage such. But each passenger has to bring his own Extended Luggage Management, and there are many brands to choose from like Watcom, Tenberry, Quarterdeck, GO32, Charles W. Sandmann to name some. Not all of them work equally well.

You car can get sick, and then it is luck whether it is playing weird tones, falls out of character, or loses all passengers, luggage and the whole base car and you have to reformat and put it all together again.

_{(I just invented the stuff above right now, I've never seen a DOS variant of that joke...)}

Misconfigured AI could trigger the next national infrastructure meltdown

Re: Advice please

If you trust your government and administrative structure that much, you should think serious about getting 100% self sustained. (Including your own internet, of course!)

Re: Advice please

Get your solar stuff going. Calculate or measure what you need minimum watt, multiply by 20 for "I need that much solar panels", and add the kW in solar you have as kWh of battery storage (per person 15 kWh recommended). Those are the rough numbers for Germany, 'cause winter. For summer you need that surplus solar for your AC. Those numbers include hot water via solar. For heating via solar: Too many dependencies on your local situation, but you don't have to rely on solar alone for heating, lowering your oil/gas/wood costs.

Depending on where you are, you can add wind. But that make sense in far less places you may think unless you go 20+ meters high if no other houses than yours are around. Or 20+ meters above all houses in your area. Else you need to be in a very windy area for the smaller stuff, and 5m/s, which is the minimum for >90% of the wind power, is more wind than most think of that "low" number. (simple hint: check with a weather station if your THINK you have enough wind)

You can do other stuff as well, that is all a question of money and how much trust you have in your infrastructure.

For Germany: The infrastructure is quite good (except for the punctuality of Deutsche-Bahn, but local city train networks are quite good).

Edit: And don't be cloud dependent for that stuff!

You are you own worst enemy...

...and not everyone else you blame to be.

US is moving ahead with colocated nukes and datacenters

Re: 50% efficiency

Well, sounds like I should go on with my Mentat training to be prepared.

50% efficiency

Yep, that matches what several German scientists said: Those small reactors won't be as efficient as those older larger ones...

it only makes sense if there is an additional side with special production needs, which pool in money.

Enforcing piracy policy earned helpdesk worker death threats

Re: Americans

> That's the vast majority of gun owners in the USA right there. Folks like me who have never pointed a gun at anything that wasn't a paper target, a clay pigeon or

> something I intended to eat. Unfortunately the American population is as big as its landmass, so it doesn't take a significant percentage of idiots or criminals to

> have a LOT of people prepared to acquire weapons and misuse them. And they are the ones that are loud and make the news.

Let me ask a question about your time in the USA: How many did you know, at least seen in person, which should NOT own a gun. But you couldn't do anything about it. I am not against guns in USA, it is the lack of control.

Re: Was it in "That one gun country"?

Jup, der war nur "â gloas bisserle" schwäbisch, ein Grenzgänger...

Was it in "That one gun country"?

I could have been in other countries as well, but...

That type of human exists here too, and with age you recognize the triggers better. They are completely normal, play their role, but sometimes, sometimes they cannot hide it and a small sentence... For example: One who was great at organizing events and parties, really invests time and energy. he asks for help and you are done with what he asked for. If you offer help, a tiny bit too much, you might get "But you won't take this (event) away (from me) now, won't you?"... (word in brackets added for clearer meaning, German was "Du nimmsch mir des aber jetz nich weg, oda?")

How Microsoft's legal eagles wrangled Happy Days for Windows 95

Re: How the Wheezer musicvideo was precieved in Germany first...

I mostly know "The Fonz" from the parodies in Simpsons, Family Guy, American Dad and so on...

Re: How the Wheezer musicvideo was precieved in Germany first...

> Because of the Hoff's God-like celebrity status in the German-speaking world?

We see David as entertainer here. Knight Riddler and Babewatch are well known among people of certain age (today easily to spot by grey hair).

He still pushes the narrative to had anything to do with the fall of the wall and reuniting of Germany - which he has not, not even the slightest bit. The worst is that most (or at least too many) Americans seem to believe him.

Re: How the Wheezer musicvideo was precieved in Germany first...

You think Germans know "Happy Days"? The Fall Guy, yes... Knight Rider yes... ALF yes... Married with Children OF COURSE... Happy Days not really, and not very successful when it came on TV here, more than a year after the last episode was broadcasted in the US. It felt way too much out of time - at least for me. Maybe I should check it out again, see how well it aged. Yes (Prime) Minister and Dad's Army are still well watchable today, for example...

The internet does not forget:

https://archive.org/details/win95_202004

Win95.iso\FUNSTUFF\VIDEOS\HIGHPERF\WHEEZER.AVI

EDIT: Hover, as advertised on the box, still works.

https://archive.org/details/microsoftplusforwindows95_202312

On the Plus not.. But what I found there: lens.scr - still works :D - somehow I missed it?

About Bill Plympton:

https://archive.org/details/win95_202004

Win95.iso\FUNSTUFF\VIDEOS\HIGHPERF\WELCOME1.AVI

How the Wheezer musicvideo was precieved in Germany first...

To us non-US (like 95% of the world?) that music video was not new, actually not even remotely known. Most were more or less baffled why such an old, but funny, music video was on the CD. Later MTV-Germany played it too, and THEN it dawned it was new.

Apple patches decade-old iOS zero-day, possibly exploited by commercial spyware

Write access is enough?

Which results in: Every app, literally, could exploit it. Is there no NX-bit used in iOS? 'cause I cannot believe that the underlying hardware would miss such a feature...

Starlink speeds past terrestrial networks – and regulators

"nearly always drops packets during that process"

Last part of the article, that is the important information for me.

I hoped or guessed it might be without that, but actually losing pakets (and relying on, for example, the TCP layer to fix that) it is then...

Ancient telnet bug happily hands out root to attackers

Re: All eyes on the code

They say: "Who's such an idiot running internet-reachable telnet?"

Only one in five Euro datacenters AI-ready as builders battle land and labor blues

Headline wrong...

Correction variants:

Only one in five Euro datacenters AI-ready as builders battle ...

... the proof they will actually finish the building.

... the proof they will make enough money to pay after the building is finished.

... the plan what will happen with the finished building once the business hype failed.

... the plan to take care of their own energy requirements.

... whether they can actually afford it without big subsidiaries.

... having an actual viable business model.

... to proof that it is not just another hype-scam.

... My list is far from complete, and I even excluded the typical environment impact etc...

Notepad's new Markdown powers served with a side of remote code execution

Re: They just don't know when to let things be.

I raise you to Whitespace.

Re: I've got an idea...

You already have the choice. Server 2025 aka "Actual Windows Professional": Notepad unaffected, still older style.

Re: They just don't know when to let things be.

But what about the flying fish?

Microsoft's Valentine's gift to admins: 6 exploited zero-day fixes

Re: Today: 0day RCE in Windows 11 Notepad.

Thanks for the link!

Server 2025 classical notepad not affected, that one is still 10.0.26100.*, no "modern" notepad on Server 2025 (you can install it from the store though, but why would anyone do that?)

AI can predict your future salary based on your photo, boffins claim

They AI upscale it beforehand...

Isn't that a less-US problem?

As far as my limited knowledge goes: In USA it is not desired to base hiring on a photo sent along with the application to such an extend that it is even frowned upon sending in a photo. A side effect of anti racism and anti discrimination laws. So that first hurdle is at least taken, and when it comes to the personal or video interview - well that is a different topic, there you might have such an AI checking your face live.

AI agents spill secrets just by previewing malicious links

Re: This is not really news

That is the CC:secret-service trigger sentence...

Why does it even look in a link for commands?

No seriously, it responds to text in the link or in the preview when following the link? Why?

This is an implementation stupidness beyond proportion. This is an order of magnitude beyond bobby tables stupid. Sloppy does not even come close to this.

It feels like the Intelligence started dropping even faster. And I already know some who swear blindly on AI answers. Luckily I don't meet him often any more, he was much better 25 years ago, then married a woman prone to conspiracy, which spilled over to him, and now AI...

In-house techies fixed faults before outsourced help even noticed they'd happened

Re: "Well, as you're on site...."

"just a second"

Containers, cloud, blockchain, AI – it's all the same old BS, says veteran Red Hatter

Re: "Which of your bêtes noires did we miss?"

Samsung still rides the wave of the time they were good in most areas, not just some. My microwave oven was produced January 2000, bought 18th April 2000 for 129 DM (yes, before €, or rather during the transition). Switched the dead bulb against an LED replacement last year.

Re: How could you forget

Just today I had your HTTP/HTTPS case. A UPS SNMP-ed an error intp PRTG. Chrome refused HTTPS "no supported cipher combination found", but happily made HTTP...

> And how do you manage 2FA when there's no internet connection available?

You dial in with your direct line at 9600 baud and transmit the second factor this way. If you are good you can whistle your code, though that would be like 2 baud?

But seriously: The RSA stuff with hardware tokens still works, it simply got moved to the authenticator apps for convenience. They did not need internet too - though a good synced clock :D.

Re: He missed one...

You are right.

$true | Export-Clixml test.xml

<Objs Version="1.1.0.1" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/powershell/2004/04">

(B>true(/B>

</Objs>

Bool. I had to CHEAT AGIN with ( instead of <. The Register should ignore html tags inside a code block.

I don't need to remember, DOTNET-powershell import-clixml has to remember :D. And even complex objects survive the export-import (i.e. hashtable with arrays in "default powershell" or System.Collections.Generic.List or whatever...). And for "unknown schema" xml I just prepend [xml] to the string, and it digests quite a lot of crappy xml (for example: GPOs...) into a usable object.

Re: He missed one...

> Int32 (singed)

The int, the int, the int is on fire...

We don't need no data, let the motherfucker burn...

Re: He missed one...

Yeah, but XML has an advantage over JSON (at least in DOTNET): The type definition is stored as well! With JSON everything is a string...

Real world example here from my solar stuff (except for the last two lines, I added the values temporarily before export to show off):

<I32 N="COMSpeed">115200</I32> = Int32 (singed)

<Db N="BatteryVoltage">52.54</Db> = double (i.e. 64 bit floating point)

<D N="Euros">12.341777777777</D> = decimal (i.e. 128 bit floating point - hey, this is about money, I want precision here!)

<By N="BatteryMode">2</By> = byte

(S N="Time">2026-02-08 01:46:12(/S> = Date-Time as string (I had to cheat with a ( in from of the first "S" here, else the html-strike-through kicks in).

<DT N="Test1">2026-02-08T01:46:12.0227828+01:00</DT> = DateTime object. Note the 100-nanosecond precision - and the ISO8601 style.

<U64 N="Test2">1234567890123</U64> = unsigned int 64

Re: "Which of your bêtes noires did we miss?"

with a used 7.62 mm caliber round at tool which fits so perfectly for that purpose, and blast the result through their 75 mm L/70 common Panzer cannon.

Recursive virtualization! We will have that as new buzzword in Q3 2026.

Why? 'cause MS nested-v is, in reality, limited to two levels now, even though did DID work with more in 2016...

Re: Agile ?

1944 CIA simple sabotage field manual. Specifically Page 8ff... Specifically Page 28, Organizations and Conferences, point three:

(3) When possible, refer all matters to committees, for “further study and consideration.” Attempt to make the committees as large as possible — never less than five.

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Simple_Sabotage_Field_Manual/Specific_Suggestions_for_Simple_Sabotage

Nowadays it is called the "Common management principles manual".

Re: June 29, 2007

All that stuff existed before, including the "phone+photo+musicplayer+internet+GPS" stuff. The innovation was the ease to use, the touch display, and the genious move was to enforce the Apple marketplace, like they did with the ipod. Oh, and most important: The BLING factor. Fujitsu Loox 720 and Fujitsu Loox T810 / T830 for example had all that as well, and other manufacturers too, but the touch and usability could not compare.

Re: Browsers.

I've been using Netscape browser+mail since 0.9something, which then went to be Mozilla browser+mail, which then went to be Firefox. But I refused Firefox and hated the dumbed-down-outlook-express-alike-Thunderbirdand stayed with the mozilla browser+mail, and then luckily Seamonkey came up. Seamonkey is still my main mail client, and the main browser is currently Waterfox. But a few secondary are needed now... Vivaldi for Fecesbook since I don't trust any browser there, and Edge for the crap which requires chrome but is not Fecesbook.

Azure power hiccup gives Windows admins a rare break from updates

I feel so Nelson Muntz

No update no worry,

no patch no pain....

Machine learning could yield faster, cheaper lithium-ion battery development

Re: How to spot scientist

Of course one can always cheat to get the desired output :D.