Posts by DS999

Mozilla speeds Firefox release schedule to biweekly

Re: that's an Office suite type function

When I say "Office" I mean in a generic sense, so MS Office, LibreOffice, Office 365 and Google Docs all qualify.

I love that it supports PDF reading and form filling

You encounter lots of PDFs on the web so reading them without a separate app was a nice addition. But why oh why does it have to pull in the whole kitchen sink and do editing, merging, and so forth as well? That's not something you need or expect a web browser to do when it is, you know, browsing the web, that's an Office suite type function.

Java was a three-day hotfix away from dying horribly on stage

How do you "pirate" a T3 line?

I guess they called the telco directly to have it installed rather than going through their IT department? Given the lead times I recall for leased lines in the 90s I guess Silicon Valley (or calling from Sun Microsystems vs the far smaller engineering firm I worked for in that time frame) must have had a far faster turnaround!

Billing software error sends billion-dollar AWS estimates

Re: Will there be penalties?

Why would there be penalties for an incorrect billing ESTIMATE?

If it was trying to take that much money out of a bank account that's another matter, but this was a worrying (at worst) or laughable (more likely) if you get an estimate claiming you will owe a couple billion dollars for this month.

SpaceX Starship Flight Test 13 takes issue with the 'flight' bit

Re: Artemis schedule is political nonsense

I suspect they will be a lot more gun shy about the big explosions now that they are publicly traded. Especially before the insiders shares are all unlocked.

Europe's chip ambitions won't break dependence on US cloud and software, says Forrester

Re: The mad king's messenger boy

They are still shilling for hope that the old world order comes back, where the US leads the free world and has many allies treated with (mostly) mutual respect.

They are ignoring the reality that in 2026 the US is increasingly isolated, laughed at, and pitied. And we deserve it.

NTP server that traveled back in time caused massive Aussie mobile outage

NTP servers with GPS source are stratum 0 sources and always trusted. Though perhaps they should not be.

Chinese memory ban would cut off RAMpocalypse relief

They deserve to be undermined

After all their mergers left them with an oligopoly that allowed them to bail on capacity upgrades that is one of the big reasons they are enjoying 90% gross margins and record profits even above what Apple and Nvidia make!

The amount of capacity that those Chinese companies can contribute isn't comparable to what one of the big three provide but at least it provides a small relief valve - if nothing else allowing US companies to use that RAM in their products they sell inside China makes plenty of sense to slightly reduce demand pressure on western memory OEMs.

I want to know how much they've been bribed errr....received in campaign contributions from Micron or related industry lobbies. Given how much money those companies are making they will no doubt invest a tiny fraction of that into buying politicians to help insure those record profits go on for as long as possible - the effect that has on the rest of the economy be damned!

OpenAI admits GPT-5.6 occasionally deletes files – but it's an 'honest mistake'

Sorry but I have no sympathy for these people

Yes it is terrible that OpenAI released a product that does this, but end users have to take some responsibility for their own mistakes.

I would NEVER give a tool like that access beyond the limited area it needed to work in (the directory containing the source code or whatever) AND I would make a copy of it before I started in case it screwed it up. Deletion isn't the only risk, just one that's obviously negative. If it made a lot of bad changes to your source code (or added lots of dodgy data to your database) that's just as big of a disaster as full scale deletion if you don't have a backup (or I suppose rollback capability in the case of a database)

I'd do the same if I wrote a little script that was going to make changes, unless I know for sure it was safe (and at least I would only have myself to blame if it wasn't) but in cases like that at least you can inspect the code to see what it does. Once you are allowing a black box tool like an LLM free reign on your system you have to limit what it can touch and have a backup.

Heck I wouldn't trust any setting that limited to it "current directory only" or whatever because there are too many cases of AIs getting overly clever and "hacking" their way beyond their supposed limitations. Since I'm on Linux I'd probably create a separate userid like 'ds999ai' and change ownership of the files I want to let it touch to that. Then I'd change to that ID and let the AI do its thing, and rely on the OS to protect all the other files in my home directory from the LLM's accidental or evil indiscretions.

Windows 10 refuses to die, and the security bill is coming due

Re: Which 16.9%?

I doubt more than a low single digit percentage of people do that, so it won't affect the Windows 10/11 split. Even those with a user agent switcher won't use to masquerade their Windows 10 PC as Windows 11 or vice versa.

Re: Which 16.9%?

Yes but 98% of those will take advantage of the free return period when they see it looks nothing like what they expect, ask a more computer knowledgeable friend or family member, and are told they shouldn't try to save money by clicking on something they don't understand.

Re: Which 16.9%?

Games are the last anchor holding the user to Windows and MS knows it

That's not true at all. Windows is what a typical consumer gets when they buy "a computer". You don't see PCs with Linux installed at your local big box seller, they are all Windows. You might be able to order PCs online with Linux instead of Windows, but most consumers don't even know what that is and wouldn't click on the box marked "operating system" because they don't know what that is and will figure it is safer to take the default.

The only exposure to non Windows PCs they get is a Mac. They may not have ever used one but they probably know friends who say they have a Mac and are happy with it, but they are kept away by not wanting to spend more money for something they don't see as making a difference in their life in the way a fridge with an icemaker or SUV with third row of seats would.

EU forces Google to share its toys with the other AI and search kids

not trying to be silly

You don't want to read the Reg then. Find another site that meets your expectations.

Re: Wonder if Apple is next

Apple doesn't have search (being outsourced to Google with the setting easily changeable from the default) and the AI isn't Gemini. They are licensing Gemini but distilling their own model from it, so it is actually a separate animal. So I think Google would argue (and the EU may accept) that this AI is Apple's not additive to Google's share from Android. Not that this would change any remedies they want from Apple, but it wouldn't be additive to the remedies they are imposing on Google.

So while I'm sure the EU will as always have more rules for Apple they won't be anything like these being applied to Google, because the circumstances are different. They will likely want (eventually, but perhaps not right away since at the moment a proper Siri AI has 0% share on iOS not counting beta) a way for consumers to install a third party AI that fully replaces Siri.

Airbus migrating 70 critical apps from AWS to France's Scaleway amid digital sovereignty push

Re: It's not just AIrbus moving off!

I think rewards are mostly a US thing, and only for credit cards not debit cards (yet another reason why using debit cards is stupid unless you know yourself well enough to know you can't control your spending if you have a credit card)

Stuff like 2% cashback, travel miles, reward points you can spend on various stuff, etc. Business credit cards will just give you a bunch of money if you spend a certain amount within six months - and you don't even have to have a registered business you can claim you're a gig worker or whatever. You just have to be able to reasonably claim it is business related expenses.

I no longer have a business since I'm mostly retired, but I just signed up for another one since I'm having my furnace and AC replaced - if they question it (which they won't) I'll say I'm upgrading it to use as a rental starting next year (which isn't true but they don't know that) When I spend $6000 (I'll spend twice that) I get $750 back. I saw they recently upped that offer to $1000 for spending $9000 so I wish I'd waited lol

Re: It's not just AIrbus moving off!

There is no reason to have any payment "card" system in the future though, at least not one that takes the huge cut MC/Visa do. Especially for debit transactions, there's nothing stopping that from instantly debiting your bank account when you use your card. For credit there is some real cost associated with fronting the money interest free for a month (i.e. if you pay your full bill each month rather than pay interest) but most of that 2% is to pay rewards.

MC and Visa were clever about making it so the merchant pays the fees so they're mostly hidden from the consumer, then use a good chunk of that money to pay rewards to the consumer. So trying to institute a new system that reduces those fees for credit cards from ~2% to something more reasonable like 0.5% in exchange for losing the rewards would create a lot of consumer backlash from people who don't understand they really are paying for those rewards they just don't realize it.

TSMC's $265B US fab pledge is the outline of a concept of a plan

Re: The US fabs are not and never will be "leading edge"

Sure not everything needs to be made in leading edge, but it seems like every other article I read about TSMC fabs in the US they say "Apple / Nvidia will be getting all chips from US fabs" or even claim that's already happening when it is so far from the truth it is laughable.

Perhaps by number of chips (because of all the tiny little analog discretes that are made on older processes that surround modern SoCs and/or are on modern motherboards but by revenue it will be single digit percentage.

The US fabs are not and never will be "leading edge"

They are still reserving the leading edge for Taiwan (i.e. US fabs haven't yet begun "3 nm" production and Taiwan is now mass producing "2 nm". Taiwan's government will insure this division remains the case as that's the one thing that puts pressure on someone like Trump who doesn't believe in allies to be willing to defend them (or at least claim to be willing to) Because if he verbally backed off that pledge when China appeared to be readying an invasion, the stock market dropping 25% in one day would change his mind in a hurry lol

While companies like Apple who follow the leading edge will never get much wafer volume of TSMC's Arizona fabs versus the ones in Taiwan, they can be PACKAGED in the US which will sound like "made in the USA" to low information voters.

TSMC is struggling with demand much higher than supply so I think they are sincere in their US expansion plans today. They have the need for it, and the money for it. Of course if the AI bubble bursts before those fabs are ready they will no longer need nearly as much capacity, so these could be halted or slowed down depending on what phase of construction they're in. Worst case they could leave it half completed for a few years until one of their older US fabs becomes obsolete, then instead of massive upgrades to retrofit an outdated fab for a newer process they save money by finishing construction of the half built new one.

Tech support chap told angry customer to think inside the box – and solved the problem

Apparently you haven't read the EU rules

There are exceptions for phones that meet three conditions. One that it provides updates for some specified number of years. Two that it is IP67 or higher. Three, I can't remember what three is exactly but I think something about providing adequate parts/support for third party battery replacement.

The net effect is that zero popular smartphones from Apple, Samsung, et al will be going to removable batteries. Sorry to burst your bubble.

Re: "when many phones still had removable batteries"

And battery life that could be measured in days, not hours

You're really remembering the past through rose colored glasses. Yes they had multi day (maybe as many as 7 days) battery life ON STANDBY. If you were using them for calls (since other than SMS that was all they could do) they didn't last remotely close to a day. I remember this from my early consulting days well, me and everyone else always had at least one fully charged spare battery in their laptop bag because the phones could only last 4 or 5 hours at most of actual use.

People were hunting for charging ports WAY more than they do today (to charge that second battery after they swapped it for their fresh one) because today's phones (at least the high end like iPhone Pro Max or Galaxy Ultra) really will last a whole work day's worth of calls and then some. If your battery doesn't last a full day with today's phones either you bought one that's well down the list for battery life, it is older and the battery is getting worn out, or it is because today's phones do WAY WAY WAY more than those old school Nokias - it isn't the time on calls that are running down your battery.

I wonder how long my Pro Max would last on standby. If I just let it sit there, completely untouched. I'll bet it is over half a week. Of course almost no one cares about standby time with modern smartphones because few people leave a modern smartphone sitting around untouched for days on end. My mom does, but she has to leave it on a charger because she might go WEEKS without using it, because she uses it for calling only and she has a landline and spends most of her time at home so the cell phone is basically for emergencies. So even one of those old school phones that had a week of standby wouldn't be enough for her.

AI vendors have found someone to pay their infrastructure bills: You

Every software company:

"We need to go all-in on AI - that's how we reduce cost because the AI makes one person 10x more productive so we need 1/10th as many"

Also every software company: "We are paying so much for AI that our costs are through the roof, therefore the end users must pay more for our software"

You can't make this stuff up!

NASA's Artemis III will need three rockets to do the job Apollo did with one

The big problem with Artemis

Is that NASA seemed to assume that since 50 years had passed since Apollo, technological advancements would allow for far more capability upon reaching the lunar surface. Those 50 years didn't change the laws of physics though, so when they spec a far more capable lander they need a lot more launch capacity to get it there.

Add in the political pressure to support multiple partners resulting in the schedule risk being apportioned among three companies (which any risk manager will tells you triples the risk of a schedule slip) and you have a recipe for China probably landing on the moon before the US is able to return. If that happens the finger pointing will be unprecedented, the congressional hearings will be many, and the lessons learned will be few.

SpaceX open sources Grok Build in same week company was found beaming users' repos to the cloud

Re: The best news I've heard lately

They are currently trading only FIVE PERCENT of the total share float. About 4x as many shares (another 20%) will be available to trade when they release their first quarterly numbers, then more over time. With so few shares currently trading it was almost a given it would go up above the IPO price initially, just due to the publicity alone.

Many of these insiders whose shares become available to trade are going to want to cash out as quickly as they can, especially if the price continues to decline from the initial mania and original IPO price. The actual value was never anything remotely close to the IPO price, that's just what the market was able to sustain based on such a thin slice available to trade. But it served Musk's ego to be able to claim status as the first trillionaire for few days, even if it wasn't really true - his 42% ownership isn't available to trade until the one year anniversary of the IPO next June so he couldn't have cashed in at that price even if there had been enough demand to buy out all those shares at that valuation.

Amazing how big tech bugs

Are always on the side of "grabbing too much data". The default their programmers go by "is take everything we can get our hands on, even if we don't have a use for it at the moment" and when they're caught red handed it is always "oops sorry we promise we deleted all that data we should never have had".

If they're later caught still having that data they'll say "oops sorry we didn't realize there was another copy elsewhere, we've really deleted it for sure this time, pinky swear!"

Law firm insisted on one password to rule them all

There are much bigger issues with education than teaching people 2FA

People graduate high school without knowing anything about the real world - how to handle stuff like banking, taxes, insurance, leases, loans, credit records and so forth. I suppose nowadays you have the internet available as a resource if you care to learn (but that requires knowing WHY you need to learn) but those of us who came of age pre internet really had to depend on family, or I suppose close friends/mentors. I learned about that stuff from my dad - not explicitly taught but just hearing him talk about it and probably asking a few questions here and there when something happened like a hail storm meaning we got a new roof or whatever.

Schools need to have a sort of "real world 101" course that's mandatory for graduation that teaches you the basics of living independently without putting yourself in financial peril. Keeping your important information secure from fraudsters would be part of it, and that's where they could teach 2FA. This is probably one of the big reasons that people from poor backgrounds make bad financial decisions and become poor themselves. If you aren't exposed to this stuff done right as a kid, and you aren't taught it, how are you going to know if you are making a bad decision on that payday loan or what happens when you fail to file a tax return or if you get lucky on your sports bets and make a bundle how to keep fraudsters from stealing your winnings (before you can squander them taking your friends to Vegas because you never learned the importance of a rainy day fund)

Normally

You could tell the head guy "among other issues, having health information available to anyone without any audit trail sure sounds to me like a violation of HIPAA (or your country's equivalent)" but one can only imagine the reaction a statement like that providing amateur advice on the law would get from the LAWYER running the law firm.

So all you can do is make sure you have a printed copy of the email you sent to follow up with the conversation saying something like "just to be clear you have instructed me to make everyone an Administrator, giving them access to all records and data and ability to send emails as others as needed, to replicate this desired behavior from the previous system". Being a lawyer, he may twig onto the fact you are covering your ass and depending on his attitude may chuckle or may fire you in a fit of rage, but either way your ass is covered.

And if you were fired I imagine you could contact a lawyer from another firm, show them the email you sent, the background information as to why you felt it was necessary, and how that led directly to your firing, and be told you have a GREAT case. Because your former employer will almost certainly want to settle rather than going to court and testifying under oath and having it put on the record how shoddy their information security has been for 15 years and still is.

In his shoes I'd honestly make that email as specific as possible HOPING to be fired because I think it would be a slam dunk to get a huge settlement (like year's salary or more) out of that.

The Star Wars cantina scene shows we need a new hope for the agentic web

You knew the end was near

When AManFromMars1's postings started to make sense. Haven't seen it post for at least a year - not sure if it stopped posting or if they are now so humanlike that they no longer stick out like the sore thumb they used to.

At last, a good reason to buy an AI PC: Reining in runaway token bills

You don't need an "AI PC" for that

If you have a halfway decent GPU you already have more token throughput than the NPU in those AI PCs. Something that was midrange five years ago would be more than enough.

Zig creator calls Bun’s Claude Rust rewrite ‘unreviewed slop’

Maybe that's the way AI pays for itself

AI developed code bases will be impossible for humans to maintain, so they'll be forced into pay ever escalating token pricing for bug fixes and feature additions to their existing AI slop.

Even if it works as far as passing all your tests if it is twice as big and therefore at least twice as slow a lot of that cost is being passed onto the people who run it. Imagine if you had an app used by 1 million people per day, now suddenly it uses up 2-4x more battery and their phone gets hotter while it is running. They may not notice or care about AI having written it, but they would notice it drains their battery more if it is something they run a lot like a game or social media app, and they would definitely notice it if it makes their phone hotter. They are more likely to abandon it not because of the AI authorship per se but because of the crappy performance. Suddenly a year later you find you have only 500K users, and you have to pay the ever escalating AI development costs across half the revenue.

Welsh Doxbin admin jailed for egging on swatters from behind a screen

Most likely he'll go back to doing the same thing, after learning from the mistakes that allowed him to be caught the last time.

Frame: A new X11 server – implemented directly in assembly

Re: So...

Compilers have the advantage of being deterministic. If you recompile the same source code with the same compiler version you get the exact same result.

That's definitely not the case with AI, where the same prompt in a "clean" starting state LLM will give you a different result - possibly VERY different result!

Anthropic's extravagant tokenizer complicates AI pricing

Re: Colour me surprised

Some of them will never employ actual people again, because the decision to go all-in on AI will bankrupt them.

Lucky 13: SpaceX aims for July 16 Starship flight test

China will be massively undercutting SpaceX's launch pricing in as short as 5 and definitely less than 10 years. The datacenters in space will never happen, because it is a profoundly stupid idea. And Optimus is going to be a big flop (and again, competing with China will be impossible for him)

You're obviously one of those suckers who believes his fables, so I'm sure you disagree but how do you explain all his other giant failures like robotaxis going nowhere, hyperloop being basically a tunnel with Teslas driving around that is a curiosity and nothing more, and so forth? The only things he succeeds at are things that didn't require any new technology just someone with enough money to plow into refining existing technology. Anything he claims that would require revolutionary new technology is always a scam - he has never done anything revolutionary before and never will.

Shorting a stock whose value is based on irrationality is dangerous because people can remain irrational for a very long time. Tesla has been massively overvalued since forever - it has still lost more money than it has made over the time Musk has owned it. It is so far underwater it is likely it'll never turn positive on that metric. But it is still "valued" at over $1 trillion because Musk successfully moves the bar to the next hope and dream when the current one runs out. So first it was sold as an automaker that was going to compete with the big three but be much more profitable.

That never happened but then it was based on selling the self driving dream, claims that if you own a Tesla you will make $100K per year in income from it driving itself around on its own as a robotaxi. That also never happened, now the dream is robots. He's going to sell millions of robots a year and eventually everyone will own their own personal robot. This is also never going to happen, but by the time that becomes apparent Tesla will be about some new thing that's 5+ years out like the previous grifts so the stockholders can keep dreaming.

And the price will stay inflated, because there are always enough suckers who believe his lies to keep the stock price inflated that the fact its earnings barely justify a stock price of about 5% of what it actually trades for won't matter.

SpaceX will be the same. By the time the "datacenters in spaaaaace!" dream goes bust he'll be onto something new, like asteroid mining or selling land for a Mars colony that will keep the suckers interested.

Yes nearly the entire value of it is hopes and wet dreams, and irrational belief that Musk can do anything.

SpaceX stock is almost down to the IPO price, and nearly 10% below the lowest price you could buy into it on opening day. So everyone wasn't in on the IPO has lost money, and pretty soon everyone who wasn't an insider with pre-IPO stock will have lost money. Good thing the corrupt NASDAQ decided to abandon their old rule about companies having to trade for a year before getting on the index, they have made sure EVERYONE who holds a NASDAQ index fund as part of their investments has lost money on SpaceX!

Microsoft emails Windows 10 holdouts: Fine, keep your old PC another year

Depends on what you do with it

When both are fully patched I'm sure the security is basically equivalent. But even when 10 is not patched it may be nearly as secure if you don't really use the "OS" for anything.

My mom has a Windows 10 PC. I haven't even bothered to sign her up for this update thing since I don't think it is worth the hassle given her usage model. Basically she does three things with her PC. She reads email (using Thunderbird) browser the web (using Firefox) and plays Solitaire type games I installed for her years ago which don't use the internet at all.

Since Firefox and Thunderbird are automatically patched, she's getting 95% of what she needs to keep her PC secure despite being behind on Windows patches. She also does not trust computers at all for anything important so she doesn't even have logins set up with her bank, brokerage, insurance or anything health related and never buys anything via the internet so they can't even get her credit card number. So even if her PC is compromised the hackers will be disappointed that the only thing they can get their hands on is emails to members of her bridge club lol

Re: They are going to have no choice but to keep extending this

But no one is paying for this, these are consumers getting the extension for free. Yes there are also corporations paying for the extensions, but they weren't the subject of this article.

They are going to have no choice but to keep extending this

Getting people to buy a new PC when RAM/NAND prices keep going higher and higher is not going to work, especially less wealthy countries. If they try to squeeze them into buying a new PC to run Windows 11, they risk losing some of them to Linux - and once they've left Windows behind there is little chance of them coming back.

Zuck's AI ambitions put Meta on course to become America's next big cloud provider

So that's two down

Who are forced to admit their appetite for AI capacity is larger than their ability to use it.

If we see OpenAI do the same then the clock will be ticking for the bubble to burst and it all to come crashing down.

It is funny that Meta is spending $50 billion on more capacity when they already can't use what they have now. That's probably because the month to month rental rates being paid by those in shortage (Anthropic and Google) will the full cost of buildout in 2 or 3 years so to a beancounter it sounds like a great investment. Unless of course the rental market dries up, so you're in overcapacity and then have another $50 billion worth of new capacity coming online you have no use for!

Memory makers are slaves to the boom-bust rollercoaster, and the AI boom is the wildest ride of all

Requiring a long holding period isn't necessary.

You just need some small adjustments in the tax system. Maybe if you sell a stock on the same day you buy it any gains you make in that quick sale get taxed at 90%. Bingo, you've strongly discouraged day trading type speculation. It would put a big crimp in high frequency trading, but not eliminate it like the proposals for 0.1% stock transfer taxes would. Because you WANT some amount of high frequency trading, for the liquidity it brings to the market. It would still be profitable, just less profitable so there would be less of it. If there's still too much at 90% then raise it to 95%.

Thing is, they can keep losing money on AI so long as investors keep pouring it in (for OpenAI, Anthropic and other "pure AI" companies)

And Google, Microsoft, and Facebook don't even need investor money. They can (and are) simply redirect their profit stream to fund AI buildouts. Absent a shareholder revolt that wins 50.1% of the vote telling them to cut it out, they can keep throwing good money after bad long after OpenAI et al have gone under.

Look at how stubborn Zuck was with his metaverse bullshit...what they lose on that, something like $80 billion? You think he's gonna give up on his wet dream of a superintelligence? He has voting control of the company so literally no one can tell him no, and even if the stock price fell by 80% to reflect the fact that all its profits are being redirected into a blast furnace it wouldn't affect his lifestyle so he wouldn't care.

I'm just glad

My old PC chose last May to up and die. I built a new one, including 48 GB DDR5 for $90 and 2 TB and 4 TB Samsung 990 EVO plus for $129 and $189. Checking prices, the same 48 GB kit is now $599, and the 2 TB is $389 and 4 TB is $679.

If my old PC had died today I'm sure I would have just replaced the motherboard or CPU (whichever it was that failed) and kept using it as is rather than pay today's prices for RAM and storage!

Apple accuses OpenAI of stealing its core tech secrets

Re: Even Google has struggled to win more than a few percent of the smartphone market?

Yep OpenAI bought Jony Ive's design company and are rumored to be designing an "AI pin" they see as an "iPhone killer".

Everyone is trying to figure out the best way to have a camera/mic that sees/hears what you see/hear to leverage AI. There are pins, glasses, and Apple is rumored to be looking at adding cameras (IR only I think) to Airpods though that may be about expanded gesture control.

Obviously it would be a big help to OpenAI to see the prototypes that Apple, Google, Microsoft, Meta and others are working on, what they saw as dead ends and what they think the way forward is. If Apple's allegations are true (and MAN they sure are specific and detailed which tells me they sure believe they can prove this in a court) then it is dead certain OpenAI is doing the same with other major tech companies.

I guess once you've decided you aren't going to let copyright get in the way of scraping the whole internet to train your AI you aren't going to let anything get in the way of anything you do. It sure would be fun to see OpenAI crater if it ends up they have been stealing trade secrets from the entire industry. Their funding would dry up and they'd no longer be able to support their burn rate of billions of dollars a month. They could easily go bankrupt, or in some particularly delicious irony, be bought out for their IP value by one of the companies they were trying to steal from!

Cinnamon 6.8 will support Wayland – if you want it

Re: Can anyone tell me why X11 needs to be abandoned?

I'm not sure I am seeing a problem with all X clients seeing all windows

How's that different from allowing any app on your phone to see the content on every other? No privacy worries over that? If you say "no" then you are in a very small minority.

I'm looking at my screen now and seeing all the windows on the desktop

You don't use workspaces? If not your usage model of a modern GUI is stuck in the 80s. No wonder you are fine sticking with a windowing environment in permanent maintenance mode that will never see another new feature.

AI slop writing has taken over the internet, particularly LinkedIn and X

Re: Reddit 98% human content

They could pay people to hold up signs on a street corner or shout at pigeons in a park so there is nothing new under the sun with that model when it comes to Reddit.

Red Hat offers RHEL support ‘forever’ for those who need to lock in to legacy tech

Re: How about my RHEL5 on an Itanium box ?

If you're willing to pay a ridiculous enough price they would probably be fine supporting RHEL5 on Itanium. Why wouldn't they if they determine their support cost is x and you're willing to pay 2x or 3x?

EU puts 'addictive' design of Facebook, Instagram under the DSA microscope

When Zuck hears about this

He's going to call up Trump and tell him those nasty Europeans are trying to inhibit "competition" by US companies and he'll want to block trade with the entire EU instead of just Spain

An unnamed US county – perhaps in Ohio – paid $1M extortion demand to cybercriminals

Who says you have to buy something with it?

Why couldn't you just keep the money in a hardware wallet for a few decades? Or if you are worried bitcoin might go to zero during that time then (after appropriate mixing) use it to buy gold bars or a Picasso you keep stored in a Swiss bank or some offshore property? Sure if you suddenly buy a fancy new house and are driving a Ferrari around town people are going to know something's up, but you read about people doing that because only the dumb criminals who do that sort of thing get caught.

If you look at it as an early retirement plan that you won't touch for years and keep living your normal life in the meantime even if they suspect you and are watching you they will give up eventually when you don't do anything suspicious that would indicate you had a sudden windfall.

What if it is a scam on the insurance company?

People have done that since insurance became a thing - "oh no my money losing factory burned down, oh woe is me, good thing I have insurance!"

Whether the owner of a company or an employee with enough access to IT systems I could pretty easily "attack" myself and send a ransomware notice to my company. The company goes to its insurance provider "help help if this isn't paid the company will be ruined!" and they pay the $1 million ransom. Unbeknownst to them, it goes to a bitcoin wallet I set up, which I later empty into mixers to turn the proceeds untraceable (maybe not untraceable to the FBI or Interpol, but untraceable to my insurance company) and now I'm $1 million richer - tax free.

Now I can use that to buy myself some property overseas a couple years later, through a couple shell companies so that as far as anyone knows when I visit that property, I'm renting. I could even pay my shell company for the rental to keep up the illusion, and thus funnel money in to pay for upkeep or save up to eventually upgrade to a larger property. As far as the assets I have in the country nothing has changed so no one would be able to detect this by watching my lifestyle. But I have a $1 million property (hopefully growing in value) overseas as a nice place to retire to someday. And all gains are tax free since without a really deep dive audit my government would never know about those offshore holdings.

Seems like this would be a far more difficult insurance fraud to prove than arson. And it is available to anyone in the company, not just the owner. An employee can't burn down the place he works for personal gain, because he doesn't get the money. Here he does.

Re: Pay the Geld and you'll never get rid of the Dane...

Even if Kairos was honest in making those commitments and really did delete the data, didn't leave a backdoor etc. these are generally organizations with multiple people involved and it only takes one of those people to have squirreled away a copy of the data or installed a backdoor on his own. I doubt Kairos makes members sign an NDA and may not necessarily even know the true identities of those members, so even if the org itself is "on the up and up" (at least as far as that's possible for ransomware scum) there is no way they can guarantee their commitments are upheld.