Posts by ChoHag

Microsoft boots 3% of staff in latest cull, middle managers first in line

> Multiple studies have suggested that management roles - especially those at the mid level - are particularly vulnerable to automation.

Go away or I shall replace you with a very large language model.

OpenAI wants to build a subscription for something like an AI OS, with SDKs and APIs and 'surfaces'

Re: making it up as it goes along

The word you're looking for is "bullshitting".

People find amazing ways to break computers. Cats are even more creative

Employ? We get paid?

Computacenter IT guy let girlfriend into Deutsche Bank server rooms, says fired whistleblower

Re: If Forest Gump taught us anything

It's better to just run.

Curl project founder snaps over deluge of time-sucking AI slop bug reports

Re: Well, you shouldn't really be using this tool

In response, something open sores developers should learn how to say:

No.

Besides, we already have ssh.

From Russia with doubt: Go library's Kremlin ties stoke fear

Maybe stop running random code you found online without reading it first?

Three Brits charged over 'active shooter threats' swattings in US, Canada

Re: Only in United States Of America

> some will suffer PTSD for their life knowing they killed someone innocent

See this violin? See how small it is?

You got the gun, you get the responsibility.

British govt agents step in as Harrods becomes third mega retailer under cyberattack

Re: M&S Store shopping - no stock at the best of times

> regular 6 foot 4 bloke

Nobody ever has my perfectly average size 13 slippers.

Ghost in the shell script: Boffins reckon they can catch bugs before programs run

Re: Two easy bash script tests

$ ls -l /bin/bash

ls: /bin/bash: No such file or directory

If you must use bash features it should be launched with #!/usr/bin/env bash. /usr/bin/env is almost standardised.

Moreover set -e is overrated and unreliable. If a command can fail the script should check for the failure explicitly.

Unix, which is what's really being programmed here the shell language is a distraction, is user friendly: it's just picky about who its friends are.

Trump admin freaks out over mere suggestion Amazon was going to show tariff impact on prices

Not stating facts.

Toying with the idea of possibly stating facts.

Open source text editor poisoned with malware to target Uyghur users

Re: What is it

We have always been at war with Eastasia, now it's time for the two minutes hate. No questions!

If the leaders don't point everyone (FSVO "every") at a common enemy they might have time to realise that the common enemy is the leaders.

Japan serves Google a cease and desist order over its Android bundling deals

> Google faces many anti-monopoly cases around the world and faces possible forced divestment of some businesses in the USA.

Google faces many anti-monopoly cases in countries which six months ago would have turned a blind eye to their abuse.

Oops.

Uncle Sam kills funding for CVE program. Yes, that CVE program

> Is there any good reason why this money should come out of the USA taxpayers' pockets only?

"Don't register that vulnerability yet, we need it for this zero-day. Yours, NSA".

Oops.

EU lands 25% counter tariff punch on US, Trump pauses broad import levy hike – China excepted

If there were a reason to pay engineers what we cost (such as, for example, the incumbent supplier's prices rising ridiculously) an AWS clone could be built in a few months. The reason OpenStack and friends are shit is because nobody needed it not because it's hard.

Writing software is not like building the foundries America is trying to re-onshore in an attempt to make itself grate again.

Re: Trump vs the EU

Your big paragraph is spot on. Your conclusion comes from some other dimension.

Trump is making Europe an offer is can laugh at and piss on. Europe is finally waking up to the fact that America's help after they eventually showed up in WWII was very useful but is no longer necessary.

If America hadn't been so stupid they could have held the reins for centuries to come but after the show you've just put on even if Trump and his cronies were removed tomorrow the mask has been removed and America will never be trusted again.

Nice reserve currency you've got there. It'd be a shame if you wiped your own ar... oh you did already.

M365 Family users wake up to notice 'Your subscription expired'

Re: And that's why...

It matters not whether we can keep our own systems up without ever failing but whether we can repair them when they do fail.

How do you propose to repair Microsoft's servers during this outage? Restart? Reboot? Reinstall? Do you have the same access to their data centre that you have to your machine on your desk?

Tech CEO: Four-day work week didn't hurt or help productivity

So what we learn from this is that nobody works on Friday?

FreeDOS 1.4: Still DOS, still FOSS, more modern than ever

Re: When did you start "...sucking hind tit..."; start using copiers rather than writers, El Reg?

You could always not click on it.

And where does it say the reg is a newspaper?

> You seem to be completely, blissfully unaware that a such a statement by you says very much more--negatively--about you than about the object of the statement.

Indeed.

Forget Signal. National Security Adviser Waltz now accused of using Gmail for work

Re: Well. At least....

Washing machines eat socks so we always need new socks and planned obsolescence means the washing machine won't last too long either because it gets clogged up with the missing socks.

Specsavers takes off the Oracle glasses, sees better ERP options

> please don't listen to the sales team from any of these large vendors

One would hope that Specsavers of all people can see through the sales talk to read the smallest letters at the bottom of the contract.

China cracks down on personal information collection. No, seriously

How many trillions?

So an AI will take a set of keywords and checkbox flags and wrap them around with excessive layers of boilerplate bureaucratic bullshit nobody has time to or, obviously, needs to read?

Presumably interested parties will then use another AI to summarise the bullshit back into a set of keywords and checkbox flags that convey the few useful datapoints that were originally input, only without the certainty that what you're reading is what was written.

Shannon would be proud.

Nuclear center must replace roof on 70-year-old lab so it can process radioactive waste

Re: "Confident they have an alternative"

They'll move into the bike shed.

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

Re: Happy as Larry

Cats know the most important thing there is to know about tech which is why mine is sleeping on the laptop.

Dems dub Trump cuts to chip export controls a 'gift' to Xi and Putin

Cutting off the chip supply was Xi's gift (I think Putin and his cronies are too stupid to take advantage) and that cat is now out of the bag.

The world where nobody really bothers to try because we can all depend on America, and thus remain in their shadow allowing them to call the shots, is gone.

Ex-US Cyber Command chief: Europe and 5 Eyes can't fully replicate US intel

Stooge? He's a genius! Putin said so...

RIP Mark Klein, the engineer who exposed US domestic spying ops after wiring it up

Re: Honesty, a lost cause.

"No longer"? That's the sort of thinking that results in "he was the kind of person who thought if you showed up with all the facts and you laid them out in front of smart people they would do the right thing. I don't think he ever really got over the fact that that wasn't true and that doesn't happen."

People in power will ALWAYS abuse it. Rights are ONLY achieved (and kept!) by separating such people from their heads.

Ask the French.

France offers US scientists a safe haven from Trump's war on woke

Re: MEGA

It says we know a good thing when we see it?

America is squandering the output of its decades of frankly excellent education. We'd be stupid not to take advantage of that while you're throwing it away.

Thank you for educating the next round of Europe's money-makers while we were busy recovering from the wars you eventually got around to helping us with.

Pathetic

Summary of every comment to this article: "No you!"

ffs I thought there were at least some adults reading el reg.

Dash to Panel maintainer quits after donations drive becomes dash to disaster

> How to fund FOSS development is an ever-growing problem

It is not a problem at all.

If you want to get paid, don't work for free.

It's quite fascinating to see such smart people unable to grasp this astonishingly simple idea.

Starliner astronauts' stay drags on as Crew-10 launch scrubs

Re: Weird

It's obviously Ukraine's fault.

UK must pay cyber pros more than its Prime Minister, top civil servant says

"Legacy" is a derogatory way of saying "still working" by the people who will replace the system at great expense with one that isn't.

Microsoft quantum breakthrough claims labeled 'unreliable' and 'essentially fraudulent'

> How do you prove you have done something that has never been done?

Openly, not hiding behind a guy fawkes mask data obfuscation.

Payday from hell as several British banks report major outages

Re: Making changes

> how it could have been mitigated

One popular mitigation is to not perform risky manoeuvers immediately before the entire workforce of your employer and all of your suppliers goes home for 2 days, so that the people who can fix a problem are available to do so when one occurs.

Signal will withdraw from Sweden if encryption-busting laws take effect

Re: Laws of Mathematics

> if they don't work for GCHQ, why not?

Two reasons:

1) Working for the government.

2) Being paid by the government.

BOFH: The USB stick always comes back – until it doesn't

Re: Soldering irons??

It's not a question of size, it's what you ...

Never mind --->

HP deliberately adds 15 minutes waiting time for telephone support calls

This is absolutely true, but with the minor caveat that there's never any point in first checking if the website will frustrate you this time.

Why do younger coders struggle to break through the FOSS graybeard barrier?

Re: Scratching an itch

> Users are *always* worth listening to.

Why? It's not their software. If they want it to work in a particular way they have all the tools at their disposal to make it do so. Why should anyone hobble themselves to accomodate their laziness?

> any change should deliver a material benefit to the end user.

If users want some material benefits they can offer some material money.

> it may affect uptake and usage of the project.

Is this project the solution to someone's problem or the extension of a developer's ego?

North Korea targets crypto developers via NPM supply chain attack

How long ago was it we were celebrating the new devloper paradigm of taking random shit off the internet and slapping it together blindly?

Yeah so how's that working out for you?

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

Re: The real problem

There is a difference between subcontracting and hiding your identity to secure a job you couldn't get otherwise.

UK Home Office silent on alleged Apple backdoor order

Re: Just be up front

They have nothing to fear, so they have nothing to ... oh wait...

They will be able to take SSH off me on the day the global economy collapses because international (and indeed intra-national) commerce no longer works.

DOGE geek with Treasury payment system access now quits amid racist tweet claims

Re: @Andy 73

> All I keep pointing out is he didnt do a nazi salute.

Musk is many things but he's not stupid. He knew exactly what he was doing. -->

The only reason one of his favoured idiots was recently fired was because he didn't know how to keep his racism publicly ambiguous.

> I am not sure I can make that much clearer.

Keep trying.

Creators demand tech giants fess up and pay for all that AI training data

Re: False perceptions by 'creators

> Somehow, an ethos of 'entitlement' has arisen, wherein the mere fact of a work being published confers an unquestionable accolade.

It's called copyright and it's not "somehow", the entitlement is its very purpose.

> a key protection against barefaced plagiarism, is given legal backing

Quite.

2 officers bailed as anti-corruption unit probes data payouts to N Irish cops

> "The public rightly expect and demand the highest standards of professionalism and integrity from all of our police officers and staff.

Demand? Certainly.

Welsh woman fined for flatulence-fueled cyber harassment

Re: "I would like to feel safe in my home."

Unfortunately there's little other than a restraining order such as this that you can do in response to someone being a prat. You're not allowed to slap them any more even if they deserve it.

WFH with privacy? 85% of Brit bosses snoop on staff

Re: Relax.

> If you are working from home, whilst you are doing it, your home is no longer your private home but your workspace.

Nope.

> So accept that your company has access to it.

Nope.

> If you want to separate your home and work, you have to actually go to work.

It's called a "VPN".

Work can stay out of my home. If they don't like that my skills will be welcome elsewhere. If you can't say that get better skills.

Court rules FISA Section 702 surveillance of US resident was unconstitutional

> It may in future need to get a warrant for this kind of snooping.

Don't make us ask for permission! We might not get it!

Intel pitches modular PC designs to make repairs less painful

Re: Cut e-waste?

> You're not going to be able to keep the same computer for 30 years and have it stay up to date.

This is no longer true. Some of the computers I use are from as early as 2005 and still serving away.

Silk Road's Dread Pirate Roberts walks free as Trump pardons dark web kingpin

My first ever downvoteon this site, sorry.

Please quote everything Trump says in Comic Sans.

Google DeepMind CEO says 2025's the year we start popping pills AI helped invent

> You've got to be very careful if you're using synthetic data, that it's actually correctly representing the distribution and you're not somehow training on your own errors

Hallucinate, but correctly.