Posts by Wempy

How Google tracks Android device users before they've even opened an app

Not at all surprised

> "Leith says the DSID advertising cookie is created shortly after the user logs into their Google account"

Once you've logged in Google knows who/what/where you are - this is a non-story, is it a slow news day?

Singapore says Nvidia's astounding local sales don't mean it's the source of DeepSeek's GPUs

wow, nvidia have solved time travel:

> ... In a Q3 2025 filing [PDF], for example, ...

Revenge for being fired is best served profitably

Re: If you need a Merlin ...

What a breath of fresh air that website is, I'd forgotten how good the web could be without javascript. Well done 51 Factory.

Zen Browser is a no-Google zone that offers tiling nirvana

I use yt-dlp to download the vid, it even looks up if some kind person has added the vid to the sponsor block db and inserts chapter markers if it has (which is brilliant)

I wrote a little utility to scan my clipboard for yt urls, and download them to a known directory - then use kodi to play 'em - I don't think I've seen a youtub advert for at least a year now

I also get a little peeved should I (probably inadvertently) click on a video link on my phone and then have to suffer them (which I probably don't by just hitting the back button)

As a grumpy old git I have no need for elastic toenail supports from evil mega corp, nor lurid green bossa nova pants (whatever they are) from some random young'un init! - now if they were to advertise cigarettes, scotch, pork pies and cheese and onion crisps I might pay attention.

AI models face collapse if they overdose on their own output

from the department of stating the bleeding obvious

also, I haven't read the further than the 2nd paragraph :-) - I'll go and do so now, just wanted to voice my opinion.

Users rage as Microsoft announces retirement of Office 365 connectors within Teams

Re: Where's the Plan B for companies

um, are you aware of the meaning of the term 'Open Source'? It means you have access to the source code - just copy it, and continue building and enhancing it, no-one can 'take it away' from you.

Waymo services driverless car software after Phoenix truck collision

there must be a 'CoPilot' joke here somewhere, let me just rummage under the seat while my car runs into this truck

oh dear:

"I can't tell which way round you are, nor whether you are coming or going, so I'm going to run into you."

that bit of exception handling must have been fun to write!

Share your 2024 tech forecasts (wrong answers only) to win a terrible sweater

A pair of Assassins, known only as Mr. Diffie and Mr. Helman, are tasked by Reading Council to take out Bob and Alice.

AWS delivers a – rather late – major release of its homebrew Linux distribution

that is the problem, the lambda container OS is AL2 so you aren't going to get the latest and greatest runtime versions until that gets updatified.

The ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 10 as a Linux laptop

Re: Optional

if you change 'us' to 'gb' in that url, you get to build your null - so I imagine the linux version is not available in the uk, sigh.

Conversational AI tells us what we want to hear – a fib that the Web is reliable and friendly

It's all trial and error

I don't get the hype, sorry. When I hear the words 'A. I. Training' I know that is just trial and error, really quick trial and error, but just trial and error. Banging the square peg into the various different holes until it finds the star shaped one (they tell me it learnt - basically, remembered - that the star shaped one was next to the square one). Why on earth would you need a degree for to be qualified to do that, human children do that quite early in their lives.

Still what do I know, I still think 1+1 = 2 and that 2 is a prime number.

oh, and I didn't have to `import spring` to be able to type this, no external libraries needed, I must be human.

Ubuntu applies security fixes for all versions back to 14.04

Re: Don't use &&

no, `&` allows them to run concurrently (in the background) `&&` will run the next one only when the preceeding one finishes with an exit code of zero.

Lenovo pops up tips on its tablets. And by tips, Lenovo means: Unacceptable ads

Re: You ain’t seen nothing yet

currently ITV3 are highlighting the very sad case of a woman that insists on taking a bath every 15 minutes. The poor thing only gets about 3 seconds in the bath before she's magically fitted with a very large towel and ejects herself from the sit down unit.

Microsoft to require proof of vaccination from on-site staff, pushes back full reopening

And there's the problem - some things you have to take on faith or at the very least attempt to mitigate against possible outcomes.

The effects of this virus are quite startling, therefore a sane, sensible person would do everything possible to not contract it.

Putting your faith in numbers when the situation is fluid and unclear is not sensible - taking reasonable precautions against contracting an air borne virus is sensible, whether the numbers add up or not.

A toy example would be that a car moving at speed seems to have a lot of kinetic energy, I'd be better off not using my body to dissipate it, just in case. Whether I have the exact numbers or not, I doubt it'll end well for me.

Bug at payments processor WorldPay swipes £2k+ per ride ticket from Brighton Pier revellers

The thing that always ticks me off when financial companies make a cock up, debits are instant yet credits take ages. This may have been a genuine mistake, but mealy mouthed apologies will not be good enough. World Pay personnel need to seek out these people and apologise to them in person, while handing them their cash back including a payment for interest and bank charges. Now wouldn't that be a thing, also it'd stop it happening again.

ZIPX files that aren't: Keep a weather eye out for disguised malware in email attachments

> Despite Huddleston's jailing, NanoCore has continued to lurk online.

Now wouldn't that be nice, as soon as you take someone off the board their footprints disappear.

Visual Studio Code 1.50 goes hard on extensions support, but tackling add-on bloat is becoming more onerous

Re: Don't blame the extensions...

% ls -lh $(which vim)

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 2.1M Sep 22 01:29 /usr/bin/vim

Just saying...

Why cloud costs get out of control: Too much lift and shift, and pricing that is 'screwy and broken'

Do not lift and shift

Lift and shift to the cloud is professionally irresponsible, cloud services have to be designed to be cloud services - the hardware they run on is never guaranteed to still be there and available one minute from now, you need to design for that.

As part of the design you attribute costs and as part of the operational tasks you add monitoring, not only of health but of idleness and uselessness.

Therefore, over time, as you monitor your services, they *should* become cheaper as you strip away the useless and idle parts (or redesign the useless and idle parts to become useful).