* Posts by Lon24

555 publicly visible posts • joined 3 Jul 2020

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VMware price hikes? Between 800 and 1,500%, claim Euro customers

Lon24

Re: Cuck

I agree. I would have thought most organisations can do that in three years. VMWare will be pretty dead then as revenue (no matter how much more Broadcom hikes) will plummet following the mass exodus. Which implies Broadcom plan to take the money and run means anybody still on VMWare may be moving into no-dev/support land.

They will be more than cuck.

Google backs down after locking out Nextcloud Files app

Lon24

Re: Re:fear for Google breakup is more likely

Agree, nothing to do with bad press. All to do with Nextcloud being a successful German company with the ear of the EU commission. Last thing Google needs is more evidence to supplement current investigations as to whether they play fair within the EU.

Which begs the question. Would Google have u-turned if Nextcloud had been a UK company?

NASA keeps ancient Voyager 1 spacecraft alive with Hail Mary thruster fix

Lon24

Re: Maybe they're pulling our leg

When you have backup thrusters you use them rather than take risks. When the backup thrusters are about to fail - your risk threshold is in a different place.

AWS says Britain needs more nuclear power to feed AI datacenter surge

Lon24

Re: Alternatively..

Alternatively if AI can teach us how to deliver a nuclear powerhouse on time and on budget it may just have a future ... Just sayin'

EDIT: AI appears to have taken over administration of this forum or the SysAdmin has had one too many at lunchtime and shared their instability .. hence double posts, missing pages ....

UK government overrules local council’s datacenter refusal on Green Belt land

Lon24

Re: football pitches

You are so right. Appalling failure by the Vulture correspondent to translate area into terms we can all recognise ie 3.125 E-08 Waleses (given a magnitude or two)

Lon24

Green Noise & Green Energy

I am a true green supporter. As such I ride the lanes bordering the M25 (in order to escape to real countryside). I always regard the corridor a mile wide along the M25 route as a special place in hell. It may be green but to enjoy it is impossible with the 24/7 cacophony of heavy traffic. Pity of those that have to live within it. If we have to sacrifice green land - this is a bit that maybe we can afford.

But where is the 96MW going to come from? Does the billion include some additional green renewable generation?

The 'End of 10' is nigh, but don't bury your PC just yet

Lon24

Re: New PC, went Mint

Yep - bought one of those cheap Chinese N100s that come with Win11 Pro for about the price of a Win11 licence ;-)

Put Debian KDE on it (reverted from Kubuntu when it went snap). But nostalgia reigns. Forked out £12 for a second SSD. Now when I have a bad day with Linux I can switch boot and have an even worse day with Win11.

Perversly this makes me feel better.

Microsoft updates the Windows 11 Start Menu

Lon24

Re: "Make Start Menu great again"...

My KDE alternative menu is pretty much, but better, version of the Windows 2000 menu. A layout imho logical, compact and dead easy to use.

You clicked on 'Settings' to get settings. Not difficult for even human intelligence. That was the pinnacle. Whether Bronze, Silver or Gold I'll leave to you.

Top sci-fi convention gets an earful from authors after using AI to screen panelists

Lon24

Re: Irony?

'Cept it's Sci-Fact, not Sci-Fiction >:-(

Microsoft moved the goalposts once. Will Windows 12 bring another shift?

Lon24
Thumb Up

Re: Upgrade to open source

Be positive. Outlawing Linux in the US will not effect almost all PC users directly. But the big US based datafarms will have to dump Linux for Windows Server. Oh and IBM's Red Hat business will fail. The hosters will be destroyed by the extra cost and disruption and businesses paying for US based cloud will also take a massive hit.

Giving the rest of the less censorious world a massive IT competitive advantage. Too good for even the current administration to consider it for more than 3 nanoseconds. Or am I underestimating them ;-)

Palantir loves the smell of DOGE budget cuts in the morning

Lon24

Re: Who will get the contracts?

"...he can safely retreat to his fortified estate in New Zealand"

Is that a pitch to make NZ the 52nd state?

Lon24

Or you could have a booming economy which generates more revenue without cuts. Investment cuts stop booms as both sides of the pond are discovering. Simple solutions rarely work in a connected global economy.

EU tells US scientists to dump Trump for a lab in Europe

Lon24

Re: Don't forget the non-monetary advantages

"Forgotten Covid and the suppression of any alternative views?"

I see you didn't follow Alison Pearson or Toby Young in the Daily Telegraph. They appeared free to make up stuff and/or too stupid to even question it. No apology when proven completely wrong. That may have cost lives. But, hey they have the right as non-experts to rubbish experts.

I don't question that we shouldn't give them freedom to speak their misinformed minds. I do question your assertion they didn't.

30 years of MySQL, the database that changed the world

Lon24

Re: Naming of MariaDB

And that goes well with Deborah & Ian's thingy.

Windows 11 24H2 now 'broadly available' ... complete with yet another 'known issue'

Lon24

Re: Dear Microsoft....

Oh, why didn't you check with the company that delivers Azure to make it compatible? .... Oh....

'I guess NASA doesn't need or care about my work anymore'

Lon24

Re: NASA's website

The FT is, imho, the cream of news reporting and comment. It may be capitalist but even capitalists need to know what's really going on.

The FT's info is worth a lot to the time critical business world. The sub is a minor business expense to them (and me in the past). They could possibly extort more. The articles are largely lost to the rest of us as their pricing model doesn't accommodate us.

A friend of mine suggested they should offer a 48 hour delayed website for a modest subscription. That wouldn't eat into the current time critical sub base. It would both enlarge their customer base (ie increase total income) whilst better informing the folks and building their image.

Anybody here from the FT who would like to comment?

State Dept reorg could harm US in tech battle with China

Lon24

In what type of moral world should the richest be helping the poorest?

Trump derails Chinese H20 GPU sales, forcing Nvidia to eat $5.5B this quarter

Lon24

Re: Ouch

Really? Announcing your new HQ is in Dublin and you have re-listed on the London Stock Exchange will only excite Trump. Expect treason charges against US based Nvidia execs and seizure of all their US assets Scunthorpe style.

Nvidia would blink faster than a H20 chip cycle.

Raspberry Pi not affected by Trump tariffs yet while China-tied rivals feel the heat

Lon24

Re: (Involuntary Shudder)

Having just ordered a N100 Chinese box instead of adding a 5 to my RPi 1/2/3/4 inventory - I take your point. But does the world really see it your way? It would seem that even RPi may see the future in delivering boards to businesses bundling them rather than low-end PCs to enthusiasts. For example the world has more ad and info screens driven by Pi like boards than geeks. An OEM board displacing some old Windows kit that used to be the norm. The current product line reflects the shift.

Probably not Eben's original plan as the next generation BBC micro. But business is responding to demand wherever you can find it.

System builders say server prices set to spike as Trump plays customs cowboy

Lon24

Re: The cost of buying servers for business will inevitably rise

This will make the UK, EU and other countries more attractive to hi-tech companies as setting up a processing facility will be 20/30% cheaper if the IT is coming from China or Taiwan. This is the tariff burden US based business will have to bear. The US market is smaller than the rest of the world for most products. With global reach the non-US companies can afford lower margin on US business to further reduce the market for US based business. Whereas the US based businesses may be shut out of the world market by a higher cost base on top of reciprocal tariffs.

A double whammy. Over time the new world order may shift high tech out of the US.

UK govt data people not 'technical,' says ex-Downing St data science head

Lon24

Re: I'd go further

Yes, an over interpretation of a good healthy policy imho. Running my Overground line on (mostly) time every 7/8 minutes helps me forgive them that.

But feel free to walk instead. That's even healthier.

Lon24

Re: I'd go further

I think its fair to say if some government agencies were run the same way as for-profit companies people would die and the environment destroyed.

My career was, by choice, all in the private sector. It was right for me, it got the best out of me. I'm proud of it but well aware of how some practices are not in the public interest. My partner's career was in the public sector. She too were best suited to her chosen sector. People are not homogeneous and what we expect from organisations isn't homogeneous either. We need both, yes there is argument in where the division may be. That is good.

There is also the hybrid approach to try and get the best of both. An example is transport. TfL (Transport for London) has outperformed the privatised companies yet TFL's latest lines and all buses are operated by private companies under its direction. Meanwhile I'll leave it to you to mull on the best model for the water industry.

Datacenters near Heathrow seemingly stay up as substation fire closes airport

Lon24

Re: Questions will doubtless be asked

This is frightening. The on-site back-up generators may not be able to power the whole site. Apparently only landing lights, ATC and other vital services presumably mandated by H&S or IATA directives. No provision for even a reduced service.

On failure planes were diverted or turned around. This was after midnight when the demands for landing were low. Just keeping one terminal open should have kept incoming incoming even if they had to abandon departures. They only needed one runway so there is plenty of parking. Moreover planes and crew are there for a more rapid recovery when full power was restored.

Reduced service is not unreasonable, no service isn't. The complacency of the Heathrow CEO on radio 4 this morning was breathtaking. He couldn't even fake an apology. I think that says it all.

AI crawlers haven't learned to play nice with websites

Lon24

Re: AI is little more than cloud/hosting providers ruining the internet in new and unwanted ways

Oh come on - I haven't had a server taken down since - last Sunday. Alibaba again. Started midday got to bed eventually at 3am. Interestingly it was targetting almost all the sites on that server just as before (except it was a different server). At least by flooding with packets they don't get much in return. This must be Division 4 AI-bots . Too stupid to succeed.

AI bubble? What AI bubble? Datacenter investors all in despite whispers of a pop

Lon24

Re: The thing about bubbles

If the bubble did burst - there would be an enormous amount of DC capacity flooding the market with interesting discounting to catch any passing server trade. I know you can run Nvidia drivers on Debian but can you run Debian on Nvidia chips?

Or will their creditors make a killing on selling those 'renewable' energy contracts to nations trying to make their net-zero commitments?

Need cash? Your IPv4 stash can now be collateral for $100M loans

Lon24

Re: If the orange eejit gets a whiff of this...

Yep, $500 million would buy a lot of drones - each with its own IPv6 address. That'll confuse the Ruskies ....

Nextcloud puts out fire after data leak panic

Lon24

Alpha, beta, gammon

Nextcloud's declared strategy is to quickly grab some of the office space occupied by Microsoft & Google with lots of enhancements and apps. Hence move fast and break stuff is the cost of development. This has led to some friction with the crabby old SysAdmins looking for just a very stable federated database. Folks like me hang back two versions (currently 29.0.13) to minimise bugs and only move up when support ends.

With four weekly point updates and a version life of just 12 months - new bugs are a way of life, particularly new versions. The clue is the trailing 0 in 31.0.0. Only a very brave idiot would put that into production. Pre-evaluation more like. So it won't have live users. Doesn't mean it has no real data though.

Nextcloud Release Schedule

Apple has locked me in the same monopolistic cage Microsoft's built for Windows 10 users

Lon24

Yes, you really need two laptops. A big one and a small one. Sadly, even if you have kept an old 32 bit netbook running most software now demands FHD resolution to actual have the OK/Cancel buttons visible in a pop-up box. Even HD struggles and your choice of OSs is very limited.

Still you can make a very usable crapbook from one of those 4/64GB 11" machines that users discover cannot really run Windows and sell, almost unused, for a song. Linux runs well and you have little worries about it being mashed, stolen as it fits in a bag no one would guess has a laptop. That has made by Android tablet redundant especially as sleep mode consumes almost no power and merely opening the lid gives you everything. If most of your work is SSH-ing intosevers - then the crapbook's Celeron grunt (lack of) is irrelevant.

Big laptops are 'desktops' operating in different locations rather than 'on the move' as anybody sitting next to a 16" monster on the tube will testify.

Stuff a Pi-hole in your router because your browser is about to betray you

Lon24

Re: Mashed

What also didn't appear was the warning to disable lighttpd.

Does that make it incompatible with other apps using lighttpd or other webservers?

Lon24

Mashed

Version 6 mashed my server. The server that also performs some other essential LAN tasks that require a Nginx - like to control all my smart switches.

I've used Pi-hole for years and updates just worked. Unsuspectingly - there was no warning - it upgraded to version 6 and everything stopped. It even required sudo to try and sort. I also tried the fixes that other panic struck Admins had posted but losing your DNS and other LAN functions is not a nice feeling. Of course I had a cloned backup which I chucked at it and have resisted upgrading until I know the issues are fixed and it will either work with other software again or whether I need to spin it off onto a dedicated server.

New versions of software are invariably more buggy than the last. For vital apps a warning is really necessary so the unbrave can await the hiccup reports of the brave which alphas, betas and RCs don't reveal.

But devs, I still love you!

Ad-supported Microsoft Office bobs to the surface

Lon24

Re: What's the point?

Maybe LibreOffice could place some ads there ;-)

HP Inc to build future products atop grave of flopped 'AI pin'

Lon24

Re: Nooo!

Why - I never had a problem printing through a Centronics port - till I got a computer that didn't have one. Downhill ever since.

Like Windows 2000 the HP Laserjet 4L was the peak of doing what you wanted it to do rather than what it preferred not to do. Sentience is never a good thing. Think how glorious the world would be without us.

Mobile operators brace for bigger, faster headaches with 6G

Lon24

Re: 4g is fine

This is Concorde/HS2 thinking. Faster is better. No, most people want cheaper, if a bit slower. Hence Ryanair & EasyJet now rule the skies, not British Airawys or Air France.

6G will need a lot of investment. While it could service some specialist services - the mass market will be reluctant to pay for it. It's not the 1990s when 2G & 3G addressed, respectively better voice and practical data. 4G made video practical. 5G is a bit meh. So I'm not salivating about 6G. Mobile devices have now entered their mature phase of the life cycle. Like Windows all the excitement about the next iteration faded after Windows 7.

Only brute force is going to make most go to 11 - unless it's the Spinal Tap edition.

Google confirms Gulf of Mexico renamed to appease Trump – but only in the US

Lon24

Re: Next Trump executive orders

On yer bike Elon...

I'm a security expert, and I almost fell for a North Korea-style deepfake job applicant …Twice

Lon24
Coat

Mirror, Mirror ...

How can a real candidate know whether the interviewer is a deep AI fake? If its getting into difficulty it just has to say it's from HR. Who can tell the difference between a real HR person and a ZX-80 Eliza program with a nice backdrop?

Ooops, HR downvotes incoming...

RIP Raymond Bird: Designer of UK's first mass-produced business computer dies aged 101

Lon24

Re: Computers in the 1960/70s

Yep, when I was 14 or 15 I got to go to EE's Stafford Labs to program a DEUCE computer as a prize for a school essay on computing (gissa job El Reg?).

It was a blazing hot summer combined with the heat of hundreds(?) of thermionic valves created an inferno. The only method of cooling was to have all the windows wide open. Not good for thermionic health and men in white coats went round with trolleys replacing those who had blown. Later I got a holiday job with GKN as an ICT 1301 computer operator for £4-8s-6p a week. Didn't know it was Bird design but what a transition from the DEUCE. Core and drum memory and those new-fangled transistors. A proper control panel with knobs and integrated card reader. And only one ICT engineer to keep it working.

Clearly the inspiration for the early-1970s integrated ICL 2903 engineer-free small business machine which succeeded the unintegrated scaled down ICL 1901/A.

Copilot+ PCs? Customers just aren't buying it – yet

Lon24

Re: Will Linux stay free of the AI fixation

You need more than money to extracate Ubuntu users from the clutches of snap. A system designed to run apps its way - not yours. [Microsoft doesn't have a monopoly on that].

The reason I am reverting to pure Debian.

Why UK Online Safety Act may not be safe for bloggers

Lon24

Re: Bet

On the average Wordpress blog surely all you need to do is make comments subject to admin approval. Bots, malicious actors etc can't post anything directly to the blog. If you then approve it you are then effectively the publisher and should be rightly held liable if it contravenes the law. If you keep to on topic approvals you are exempt.

It's sensible to do it anyway merely to thwart the spammers.

Why users still couldn't care less about Windows 11

Lon24

Re: Elderly like Mint

Well I'm nearer 80 than 70 thank you.

And I've given up on installing Linux distros on Gen Z PCs (or whatever they are called these days). They always moan and groan finding one obscure app that won't run. The (better) FOSS alternative isn't acceptable and it's not safe because it can't run Norton/McAffee or whatever. They revert back to widows and then, because I appear to be an expert, call me up when they can't do something because they had forgotten they needed a Microsoft account.

Mention command line and they go a darker shade of black <:-(

Lon24

"We have a French widow in every bedroom affording delightful prospects."

G Hoffnung

Windows 10's demise nears, but Linux is forever

Lon24

Re: You may be preaching to

A recent poll in the Fediverse had 81% running Linux. Should it be rightly be renamed the Nerdiverse?. The remainder was pretty evenly split between Windows and Mac.

Now to the real battle. How does one convince Gnome based users to see the true light: KDE? [Retires to his NZ bash-proof bunker]

China's DeepSeek just emitted a free challenger to OpenAI's o1 – here's how to use it on your PC

Lon24

Re: To err is just like a human AI investor. To be divine hit an ATM fast ;-)

Currently (Monday 4pm UTC) refusing new registrations (except possibly from a +86 mainland China mobile phone), due to "malicious attacks". Maybe - more like the DeepSeek servers are overwhelmed. Their status pages show degraded service. Seems to be connected to the time North America wakes up, reads the news and hits the app.

Though you can imagine the investors who are trillions down seeking to unburst the AI bubble by any means possible. Or indeed impossible.

This is how Elon's Department of Government Efficiency will work – overwriting the US Digital Service

Lon24

Re: Once a lap-DOGE ...

Well one interpretation of this is the Trump team (who actually write the Exec Orders) are attempting to consign Elon to sorting out the Fed's IT. Something Elon is probably well qualified to do. Consigning him to IT might keep him out of the more political headaches and, more importantly, the news headlines at Trump's expense.

Like yesterday with one flick of the arm.

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

Lon24

Re: I am altering the deal. Pray I do not alter it any further

Your definition - not mine. And I don;t actually own it but I do control it.

My definition is data storage up in the [internet] sky accessible anywhere, anytime on any device with authorised credentials. Other can choose or make up their own. The test is 'your cloud' an effective alternative/plugin to the majors - AWS, Google ...??

Lon24

Re: I am altering the deal. Pray I do not alter it any further

I love my cloud. It's a RaspberryPi Nextcloud & NFS server with a big ssd stuck in the back. When that runs out I'll stick another one on. Negligable power consumption. Total control.

MS-free now but I have a soft spot for the days I carried my .pst file round on a USB stick till it got too big. Cloudy with even less consumption.

Planet survived.

Nvidia snaps back at Biden's 'innovation-killing' AI chip export restrictions

Lon24

Going Dutch?

The Netherlands but not the EU? Presumably AWS having a mammoth data centre there has nowt to do with it.

Psst don't mention open borders Pike!

Blue Origin gives up on New Glenn lift-off, 2 hours into launch window

Lon24

Re: Alexa,

Done. And the cutlery?

Nominet probes network intrusion linked to Ivanti zero-day exploit

Lon24

Starter for Ten

Nominet is just the first of n - where n+1 might be nearer the number of targets.

Nominet should and probably has one of the strongest security layered system structure of any company. Compromising a Domain Registry is getting close to a zero day for the internet (or at least the UK section of it).

Reading between the lines of Nominet's letter and touching wood - those layers appear to have held and the threat detected - and presumably reported back to the vendor rather than the other way round. Others may not be so lucky - yet only one public report to the NCSC? If you are using the product the NCSC protocols pretty much make that mandatory if the exploiter could access production system through possible compromised credentials or similar.

Euro-cloud Anexia moves 12,000 VMs off VMware to homebrew KVM platform

Lon24

Re: Get rich quick

Broad Haven? I was thinking of which Caribbean island I would locate in on. After extensive, thorough and long personal research of course ;-)

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