* Posts by David Hicklin

1187 publicly visible posts • joined 4 Sep 2007

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Former reality TV star appointed NASA interim administrator

David Hicklin Silver badge

Re: A good face for TV

> Do you think an unqualified leader overruling his military and making all the strategic decisions himself could lead to some sort of Downfall ?

If past history of a certain mid-European country between 1939-45 is any guide, then yes.

Chinese TV uses AI to translate broadcasts into sign language. It’s not going well

David Hicklin Silver badge

Re: Why are they using sign language

> Leave deaf children from different backgrounds together with no formal instruction and they will develop a common sign language quite quickly.

Happens between people all the time, my daughter and her closest friend even had a language all of their own for the time they were at school

Slow down on building power plants for all those new AI datacenters, report warns

David Hicklin Silver badge

Re: Peek power soon

There are a few flaws to your optimism

The days of big power efficiency gains in semiconductor hardware are long gone, if anything over that last few years it has effectively flatlined with any gains to the "feature size" costing untold billions to develop.

optimise code? Who are you kidding! it just keeps on getting more bloated and inefficient, and will only get worse if people start using AI to write it

The only possible reason for "peak power soon" is when the AI bubble finally bursts and the demand for all these DC's collapses and they get shut down.

Trump tariffs turn techies topsy-turvy as US braces for PC tax

David Hicklin Silver badge

Re: Idiotic tariff nonsense

> One of the things, I have noticed in the UK these last 5’ish years is how the supermarkets firstly increased their range of beans and then increased the bag size

I think you will find that shrinkflation ended this practice quite some time ago

David Hicklin Silver badge

Re: Idiotic tariff nonsense

> Speaking as an uncouth Brit, Starbucks always tastes to me like some sort of bitter, coffee ish flavoured dish-water. There are much better alternatives.

The wife & I prefer McDonald’s coffee which is saying something (same for Costa which is just as bad)

Outlook takes another sick day

David Hicklin Silver badge

Re: "New" outlook is crap

> When my employer went from XP to Win7

To be fair when mine went from XP to 7 it was an improvement but it has been downhill all the way from there, managed to retire before w11 got foisted on me unlike my poor daughter at her place, she was here earlier and complaining bitterly how everything had changed/moved and even simple things like copying a file were a pain.

Privacy campaigners pour cold water on London cops' 1,000 facial recognition arrests

David Hicklin Silver badge

According to the article any non-matching scan is immediately deleted, so that answers one of your points.

Also as I read it they are using it to find people who are either already wanted (and are avoiding arrest) or considered a threat to others aka think of the children approach as given in an example on the article.

As for which offences I would expect that once you have either done your time as His Majesties pleasure and/or paid the fine, has points on your licence then the offence is "spent" as far as in being wanted for arrest and there is no need to be looking for you.

So this does have some positive uses but as always mission creep can set in and before you know it we are in 1984, so yes there has to be some laws laid down soon that limit how the scans are stored (should always be never unless a positive) along with some means of erasing false positives and ensuring that it is really only used for the examples given above.

Oh and as for tracking you around, if you have a mobile phone that is already doing it and the national ANPR camera's keep track of where vehicles are, so we are already part of the way there.

Qantas begins telling some customers that mystery attackers have their home address

David Hicklin Silver badge

Re: Data security

> shoddy coding practices means that computer savvy hackers are having a field day.

Don't forget the "get it out now, I don't care if it is not finished we can patch later..." and it is so easy to shove a web site together these days usually without any thought of security. Plus a lot of these are your supplier websites that get hacked.

David Hicklin Silver badge

Re: Nothing is private

> While there may be a file on you, you don't want it to keep expanding

It has been suggested that there are enough large data sets out there that it is possible to construct a lot of information on you already, it has been shown that anonymous data can be reconstructed so I think it is a little late for closing that door now.

How to trick ChatGPT into revealing Windows keys? I give up

David Hicklin Silver badge

Re: Wrong 3

> Better guardrails, or contextual awareness, or whatever you want to call the concept today, might mitigate the problem a bit

The number of times that a crash barrier (guard rail in this context) gets flattened and fails to do its job on the roads is a good analogy that LLM guard rails are just sticking plasters

Microsoft developer ported vector database coded in SAP’s ABAP to the ZX Spectrum

David Hicklin Silver badge

Re: I spy an optimization

> But then you smash the foreground program's EXX registers.

As the Z80 only did one thing at a time, the important trick on ending the INT was to switch them back.

Unless of course the foreground program was a bastard that was already using that trick!

Britain's 5G experience 'among the worst in Europe' says MedUX

David Hicklin Silver badge

Re: Cancer

Well considering that you must have looked at all the evidence to reach your conclusion why don't you post it here so that we can all see it instead of cowering behind an AC posting?

Oh you haven't, you are just parroting what our other conspiracy theorists are spouting.

So yes, in the absence of the data to back up your assertion I am ridiculing you.

Post Office and Fujitsu execs 'should have known' Horizon IT system was flawed

David Hicklin Silver badge

Re: How long????

> the PO still have the legal right to be its own prosecutor, judge and jury

I thought that had been rescinded (aslo the British transport police) and that they have to use the DPP now ?

Firefox is fine. The people running it are not

David Hicklin Silver badge

Re: The determination of Silicon Valley execs to ram "AI" [into everything]

Its all FOMO - Fear of Missing Out - that is driving the AI

All rational thinking goes out of the window

Same with Blockchain, Crypto, Self Driving cars.....I could go on for quite a while.....

Yes, I wrote a very expensive bug. In my defense I was only seven years old at the time

David Hicklin Silver badge

Re: Hmm

Now you have triggered some ancient memories of working in a sales office not long after leaving school in the UK and being urged to leave making any phone calls until after 1pm unless really urgent

David Hicklin Silver badge

Re: I saw similar a couple times in that timeframe ...

> An overseas long-distance call required a cardiologist when your bill arrived.

This is UK to Germany but we are in the 1970's, my mum worked as the switchboard operator at a hotel so made all her calls to her brother back in Germany whilst at work after somehow working out a way of hiding the cost

Amazon built a massive AI supercluster for Anthropic called Project Rainier – here's what we know so far

David Hicklin Silver badge

Re: Trapped in our own monkey cage.

> but how'd that brexit thing work out?

Unlike the AC I'll openly answer that - badly, the biggest mistake we ever made but hey that is what a tiny majority (2%) of the country voted for so we are stuck with it And despite whatever arguments you want to make the extremists of either camp are so deeply entrenched in their beliefs that nothing will budge them and the country remains deeply divided by it.

For the record I voted remain.

Meta calls €200M EU fine over pay-or-consent ad model 'unlawful'

David Hicklin Silver badge

Re: Lots of news sites use this model

> Are “consent or pay” business models compliant with data protection law?

No issue to pay to not see ANY adverts as that is the business model but I should not have to pay anything for the business model to be compliant with data protection law as that is a legal requirement.

Musk's antics and distractions are backfiring as Tesla's car business stalls

David Hicklin Silver badge

this all reads like death by 3, 4 & 5 letter acronyms ....my brain just blew up

David Hicklin Silver badge

Re: Its worse than the numbers indicate

> You can't keep producing more than you deliver... as you aren't paid for cars sitting on lots outside the factory.

The 1970's and 80's from the UK called and want a chat, well remember fields full of unsold cars all quietly rusting away...and boy did they rust in those days!!

UK eyes new laws as cable sabotage blurs line between war and peace

David Hicklin Silver badge

Re: Wrist

> At the outbreak of WW1, Britain deliberately cut as many communications cables belonging to Germany

I think you will find that they ran via the UK, so more a case of switching them off rather than cutting them

Deutsche Bahn train hits 405 km/h without falling to bits

David Hicklin Silver badge

Re: Maglevs

And if you thought building HS2 was expensive and ripped up chunks of the countryside....

David Hicklin Silver badge

> Round my way there are break-beam detectors straddling the roads approaching bridges so "stop" signs are flashing well before an over-height vehicle meets the bridge.

I have seen lorries happily ignore them and keep going....the remaining gap looked incredibly small...

Norwegian lotto mistakenly told thousands they were filthy rich after math error

David Hicklin Silver badge

Re: "To them I can only say: Sorry!"

Totally agree, you should *never* act on anything like this until the money is safely confirmed as being yours, and even then I would hold for a while in case it was a mistake. If someone jumped the gun then fool them.

Google to buy power from fusion energy startup Commonwealth - if they can ever make it work

David Hicklin Silver badge

Re: When fully operational

And it will always be 15-20 years away until someone makes a massive breakthrough.

On the other hand we already have a fusion power source, its 93 million miles away - we just need to use it better. Imaging if the investment into fusion had been spent on better solar systems (systems in this case including storing and distributing that energy)

Microsoft's next Windows 11 update is more 'enablement' than upgrade

David Hicklin Silver badge

Re: illegally your's, Microsoft

> yes they do distribute updates that way

ShutUp10 is your friend here as you can disable this and a lot of other crap.....of course an update can turn it all on again

David Hicklin Silver badge

Re: At last. MS has managed to eliminate the Blue Screen of Death ...

> Until you get the "black unexpected restart screen process failed to start" error message....

in black text with black Cancel, Retry, Restart prompts

Scattered Spider crime spree takes flight as focus turns to aviation sector

David Hicklin Silver badge

Re: second and third ID identity.

One problem with that is that more and more people are dumping the landline for just an internet only (or even mobile data) connection, what do you do then? Give them a free landline?

How to get free software from yesteryear's IT crowd – trick code into thinking it's running on a rival PC

David Hicklin Silver badge

Re: Check the kernel times.

> KMS activation is a thing ...

You just have to bludgeon M$ defender AV repeatability until it stops trying to remove it as malware!

Don't shoot me, I'm only the system administrator!

David Hicklin Silver badge

> eaping out or their ve-hic-les guns drawn and making the arrest in a hale of bullets regardless of the risk to life of the inocent bystander

In Hollywood they also tend to be crap shots and everyone almost always misses !

AI agents get office tasks wrong around 70% of the time, and a lot of them aren't AI at all

David Hicklin Silver badge

Re: > "Open the pod bay doors, HAL," that's agentic AI too.

At least the ST computers came back with "insufficient data" rather than just making it up.

FBI used bitcoin wallet records to peg notorious IntelBroker as UK national

David Hicklin Silver badge

Re: What ? Bitcoin ?

ATM Notes are usually fresh new ones so that they won't jam up, so I guess they know which packet went into the machine. No idea if it would work more granularly than that

Gridlocked: AI's power needs could short-circuit US infrastructure

David Hicklin Silver badge

Re: All the people moaning

> A wholesale return of Economy 7 - for all electricity tariffs

Nope, what you will get when everyone* is on a smart meter are demand based tariffs...

* not sure if the heat death of the universe will occur first

Microsoft dangles extended Windows 10 support in exchange for Reward Points

David Hicklin Silver badge

Desperation?

So, M$ are getting desperate as not enough people have upgraded downgraded to W11 or paid the W10 protection racket tax yet ?

David Hicklin Silver badge

Re: Cheaper than $30 a year?

I think you need to sign up to use it for backups as well, not just buy the space.

Mozilla rolls out Firefox 140 with ESR status and fresh features

David Hicklin Silver badge

Re: new version comments

Why the deity do you need that many tabs open for??? You can't possibly keep track/view them all

Huawei's latest notebook shows China is still generations behind in chipmaking

David Hicklin Silver badge

Re: Still generations behind

> Now whether you’d like to live under China’s political system is another matter, but when you look at any recent major UK infrastructure project, it’s hard to argue against his point.

I suspect a lack of public enquires and if you object they just build the motorway either side of your house (not sure if that is still there now). NIMBY's also probably don't stand a chance and we need to go back to the Victorian era of building the railways where they just demolished anything in the way

Techie went home rather than fix mistake that caused a massive meltdown

David Hicklin Silver badge

Re: Honestly I'm bilingual

when I was flying with Lufthansa to Germany for work the pilot in his/her hello speech always gave the height in metres... Thankfully I think they set the altitudes by "flight level" and a number

David Hicklin Silver badge

Re: Honestly

> ancient enough to have been brought up in the UK

So am I but I find it much easier to relate to Celsius , like above 25 is getting too hot for me and just right for the wife...how we have stayed together for the last 33 years beats me ......

Techie traveled 4 hours to fix software that worked perfectly until a new hire used it

David Hicklin Silver badge

Re: PEBCAK

> This is "especially irritating" when, as I had with a previous work laptop, when waking from display sleep

Ye Gods I hated that - along with a 2 minute screen lock that thankfully I had a registry hack (and use of Symantec AV's monitors and scripts) to disable it but still a pain after locking it to leave the desk

SpaceX's Starship explodes again ... while still on the ground

David Hicklin Silver badge

> Starship will never be successful to the Moon or Mars.

One of its problems is too many rocket engines, same as the Russians had with the N1 moon rocket - there are too many things to go wrong. They got it better with Soyuz of course but still the N1 had 20 rockets and StarShip has 33....time to dust off the Saturn V rockets engines!

David Hicklin Silver badge

Re: Yeah. Why go to all the trouble...

> Also means no-one needs to worry about bits of Starship falling out the sky.

Or having to get a pesky licence to launch it in the first place.

My guess is a QA problem, has Musk been cosying up to Micro$oft ?

Japan set to join the re-usable rocket club after Honda sticks a landing

David Hicklin Silver badge

Re: Honda isn't just a car/motorbike/lawnmower powerhouse

> What we shipped in the West was really just prototypes

So the build it fast and ship it mentality? I guess the way you described it in Japan relied on a long return on investment rather than next weeks share price.

Microsoft broke DHCP for Windows Server last Patch Tuesday

David Hicklin Silver badge

Re: Third sigh this week ...

> Sigh ...another home user comparing their set up with a 10,000 person set up

As my last job before I retired all the on-prem servers had fixed IPs

Dunno about the cloud, could not care less

‘AI is not doing its job and should leave us alone’ says Gartner’s top analyst

David Hicklin Silver badge

Re: Monday morning tasks

Yup, just love (2), defo recommended.

At the rate we are going however us Retirees will be the only customers soon.....

Firefox is dead to me – and I'm not the only one who is fed up

David Hicklin Silver badge

Re: I'll quit firefox

> losing ad blockers will mean I laregly stop using the internet. You forget what a useless mess it is without blockers,

Wish I could upvote you more than once, I use metcheck weather site and over the weekend had to use it on mobile and ye gads it was hard going with ads obscuring large chunks of the phone screen, even my pi-hole stops that on wifi at home.

Microsoft slows Windows 11 24H2 Patch Tuesday due to a 'compatibility issue'

David Hicklin Silver badge

Re: QC

But they just have to keep on fiddling with it to add new shiny features that few people want or need just because....well because of what? In the early days most new features were welcomed and probably increased the sales...but now?

I wish they would just leave things alone and fix the bugs ...a forlorn hope it seems.

Peep show: 40K IoT cameras worldwide stream secrets to anyone with a browser

David Hicklin Silver badge

Re: So just what is the problem?

I suspect that UPnP on routers is the problem with the camera's automatically opening up the ports needed for internet access

Trump lifts US supersonic flight ban, says he's 'Making Aviation Great Again'

David Hicklin Silver badge

Re: Not those Boomers.

Completely unrelated and from another era but was out on the horse yesterday and the AVRO Lancaster along with a Spitfire and Hurricane flew over me, was a lovely sight to see.

David Hicklin Silver badge

Re: Not those Boomers.

> live next to the East Coast Main Line in Newcastle

Where I live there are parallel train lines one street over in either direction and the only time we really notice them after 30 years is when a really heavy train gets the house shaking and rattling.

Could have been worse I guess, HS2 on a viaduct was going to be build alongside one almost at the bottom of our garden!

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