* Posts by Auntie Dix

178 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Aug 2021

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PanWriter: Cross-platform writing tool runs on anything and outputs to anything

Auntie Dix
Boffin

I Support the Author's Panhandling

I am always interested to read about someone's newfound success with a tool that hits the spot. Of course, everyone's spot is different, as the comments prove.

The more details on what hits your particular spot and why, the better. Same goes for URLs and tips.

Who knows when any of us will need the special sauce that your editor offers!

Lawsuit accuses Oracle of facilitating sales of 'billions' of folks' personal data

Auntie Dix
Thumb Up

WELL DONE! Sue, Baby, Sue!

If only U.S. privacy law were extensive, well written, and enforced with eye-watering penalties!

Brave, indeed, are the ones who challenge the status quo.

Lessons to be learned from Google and Oracle's datacenter heatstroke

Auntie Dix
Flame

Re: Shite, sub-par AC

"Shite, sub-par AC" is right! No wonder it fails.

As for residential AC, sorry, but to most Americans, when it comes to dentistry and "modern cons," the UK and Europe are in The Third World.

While Google et al. slop on the "green" banners, the truth remains the same, no matter the hype.

Those cheap-@ss, hippie-dream "green" data houses just got a hot taste of reality.

Novant Health admits leak of 1.3m patients' info to Facebook

Auntie Dix
Stop

The Fiction of a Private EHR (Electronic Health Record)

Repeated stories like this highlight the scum who are in control of our private information and the lack of strict regulation and severe punishment for abuses.

EHR? Go F yourselves.

Windows 10 update breaks audio for some systems

Auntie Dix
FAIL

So Much for the BS of "Agile" and "CI/CD"

The leading purveyor's software and updates therefor are as horribly built and buggy as ever.

Mexico joins the list of nations wanting to lure chipmakers

Auntie Dix
Thumb Down

Mexico: The Land of Drug Cartels Entrenched in Already-Corrupt Government

Cheap wages!

Slave labor!

Free salsa, with chips!

No thanks. The U.S. is already overrun with illegal aliens that you did not stop on your side of the border.

Microsoft to drop price for Teams Rooms, add free Basic tier for SMBs

Auntie Dix
Big Brother

Reggie, Burn Your Article, for the Double-Plus Good!

Updated 04:00 UTC August 19th: Microsoft has deleted the article on which this story was based but has not requested a correction or retraction. The Register knows what we saw and stands by the story.

For Oceania, Microsoftia, Applia et al., The War on Journalism will never end.

Please consult your handler for NewNews, after destroying your article.

Meta's AI internet chatbot demo quickly starts spewing fake news and racist remarks

Auntie Dix
Mushroom

Give It Some Slack

So, the chat bot is a bit overzealous, like a coked-up Anne Heche in her tryout for Door Dash.

At least, it was as quick as she to respond but did not burst into flames and injure anyone.

Sony camera feature hopes to make digital images immune to secret manipulation

Auntie Dix
Devil

Anthony Weiner Wants a SONY

This is thrilling.

Finally, our citizens may receive our politicians' d!ck pics unaltered and be able to confirm their authenticity.

Another step forward in the freedom of sexpression.

AI laser probe for prostate cancer enters clinical trials

Auntie Dix
Alien

Insurance Coverage Lacking? Look to the Skies

The AI laser probe for prostate cancer will never reach critical (m)ass, unless our alien friends conduct more onboard anal probes.

Four charged with tricking Qualcomm into buying $150m startup

Auntie Dix
Holmes

Re: Abusive Contracts

Q (not Bond's gadget buddy) may be wildly delusional and tyrannical in its prohibitions and overreach (begging the question, "Why would anyone brilliant join them in the first place?"), but that does not excuse what appear to be deliberate criminal business machinations and money-laundering on the part of the unsurprisingly ethnically similar defendants.

Abusive contracts are indeed a plague in the United States.

It is noteworthy that many average-joe Americans are now aware of arbitration clauses forced on them for basic products and services (Did any of you refuse an iPhone, cell-phone service, a job opportunity, etc., rather than sign away your right to sue in court?), but there is no collective outrage forcing well-lobbied Congressmen to prohibit once and for all these disgusting contracts of adhesion.

Google gets the green light to flood US Gmail inboxes with political spam

Auntie Dix
Terminator

Gulag, Fecesbook, Micro$haft et al. Are Sociopaths

"Google is doing this in direct response to disingenuous Republican claims that the company is biased, in a blatant attempt to ward off legislation regulating their service."

Like too many current Republican lawmakers, Big Tech smiles at you, just like a sociopath fresh from his victims' beheadings.

General Motors charges mandatory $1,500 fee for three years of optional car features

Auntie Dix
Mushroom

GM's Thanks for Its 50-BILLION-DOLLAR Government Bailout?

The U.S. Government lost $11.2 BILLION on its bailout of General Motors.

GM's CEO should be hanged on live TV.

Burger King just sent spam receipts to customers

Auntie Dix
Megaphone

Fast Food?

If your Burger King is truly so excruciatingly slow that you cope by ordering ahead via fondle-phone, you should eat elsewhere.

And for the narcissists:

● You are not really royalty, even though someone gave you a cardboard crown.

● You can wait for your order, because no one who is truly important eats at BK.

● Your use of the app makes you look like a chode. Someone should have slapped you, years ago.

Facebook hands over chats to cops in abortion case

Auntie Dix
Big Brother

Fecesbook: Zuckerberg Informs on You. Surprised?

The U.S. Supreme Court has too few members, too long memberships, and too partisan appointments. Worse, it has been stocked with some absolute psychos — such as pompous, pedantic, and obsessive (and finally dead) intellectual phony Antonin Scalia — who have made some astoundingly bad decisions and thereby stifled America's progress for decades.

Democrats under Obama were suckers when they finally had the numbers to appoint Court justices, falling for Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell's (an old, corrupt Southern b@stard) BS argument that lame-duck appointments are improper. The Dems blinked, so Trump subsequently went on a justice shopping spree at asylums that stock lunatics fond of backward, controlling, religious cultures reminiscent of The Stone Age. The damaging repercussions include the Court's fanatics throwing a bone to their crazies by overturning Roe vs. Wade.

By rehashing abortion, the U.S. will create misery, ruin lives, and waste enormous amounts of money, time, and energy better spent elsewhere. "The People" essentially decided this issue decades ago (and the Court followed), but by doing it half-a$$ed (relying on the Court to let sleeping dogs lie), The (Lazy) People are left to endure — likely, for decades — the struggle to rally States to pass an amendment to The Constitution.

The same kind of struggle will happen for every other human right overturned or impeded by the Court's psychos.

President Biden signs CHIPS and Science Act into law

Auntie Dix
Stop

Motorcycles DO NOT Cost That Much

Spending over $52 billion to hype EV motorcycles while invigorating the long-dead careers of Erik Estrada and Larry Wilcox — not to mention Chris Pine's even-then-unattractive father — shows how crazy our government is.

Further, the story lines for "CHiPs" were played out long ago. Do we really need them repeated, especially by actors more suited to Hoverounds?

Apple tells suppliers to use 'Taiwan, China' or 'Chinese Taipei' to appease Beijing

Auntie Dix
Big Brother

Repeat After Me and Create Your Own Apple Slogans

iPhone made by slave labor in Communist China

Alternative 1:

iPhone made by deceased youths who jumped from factory windows in Communist China

Alternative 2:

iPhone for narcissists with disposable cash, made by mistreated, dirt-poor transplants from rural Communist China

Now, your turn.

HPE says $30m Solaris verdict against it didn't provide 'evidence' of copyright

Auntie Dix
Thumb Down

"Latest" Nonsense

"The chances are some of the software you have from 20 years ago will not even run on an up to date OS. It may not even install. An old OS may not install."

Look, "PC" Chicken Little, millions of smart people run (even with ability "to connect to secure Web sites") older HW, SW, and OSes.

Just because you neurotically throw out your overpriced fondle-phone every six months does not mean that others are spendthrifts...or waste time browsing on tiny screens.

US-funded breakthrough battery tech just simply handed over to China

Auntie Dix
Stop

Traitorous IP Giveaway to Communist China

"By 2017, Yang had granted Rongke a sublicense to manufacture the PNNL VRFBs in China despite his original license specifying that a certain number of batteries had to be sold in the US, which had to be 'substantially manufactured' domestically as well... Yang acknowledged he didn't do that, selling few batteries in the US, all of which were made in China."

Gary Yang appears to be an unpunished criminal and traitor.

His deliberate words and actions constitute circumvention of U.S. law. Governmental ineptitude does not excuse his misappropriation of taxpayer-funded trade secrets.

Mr. Chinese Surname deserves at least life in prison (if not execution, in my book), depending on court findings. Maybe, he could get work release in a U.S.-based VRFB factory.

The many derivatives of the CP/M operating system

Auntie Dix
Unhappy

So Much with So Little

We did so much with so little, pushing via sharp coding limited memory and hardware.

For millions of mainstream hobbyists and pros -- no matter the brand...Tandy / Radio Shack, IBM, Commodore, Apple, Atari, etc. -- each OS was wonderfully unique, and upgrade announcements were not interpreted as "same-old crap, new version number."

Times were exciting. We remember the Amiga's red-and-white checkered, 3D bouncing ball.

Today, we have mainstream monotony induced by monopoly bloatware.

Windows versions annoy, rather than excite. It is with dread and resignation that we face Micro$oft's force-fed OS upgrades.

Oracle staff share news of sizable layoffs

Auntie Dix
Big Brother

Clue: The Cerner Purchase

Via the axe, Lunatic Larry is funding his EHR fantasy.

IBM board probes claims of fudged sales figures that led to big bonuses for execs

Auntie Dix
Meh

The Lobster Clawback, Please

As dreamy as a clawback of IBM's C-Suite swindlers' pirate treasure sounds, the likelihood seems remote.

Bad news, older tech workers: Job advert language works against you

Auntie Dix
Mushroom

Scummy Ads and Jobs, from Scumbag Employers

Profiteers rule.

The U.S. remains mired in weak labor laws.

This is unlikely to improve in our lifetimes. Just look at how long it took to attain the few protections that the American worker has and at how difficult (and often impractical) it is to enforce them (EEOC et al.).

So, for now, no matter your age, engage as a resistance fighter against the (age-)discriminatory, quality-of-life-killing body-shop mentality, wherever you see it.

Help your fellow man by shunning scumbag employers.

P.S. This means that you must stop buying Apple products, for example. You know: The Chinese-factory children, the anti-jumping nets, etc. Too much of a sacrifice?

Chinese booster rocket tumbles back to Earth: 'Non-zero' chance of hitting populated area

Auntie Dix
Pint

Unfortunate

The problem with Booster-Drop Soup is that I am always hungry again an hour later.

Computer glitches harmed 'nearly 150' patients after Oracle Cerner system go-live

Auntie Dix
Terminator

In Other Words

"...we plan to flub it first and work out the clusterf#ck later. Patients and providers will always die first. We won't let contract-wrangling get in the way of our gouging."

Amazon buys US healthcare chain One Medical for $3.9bn

Auntie Dix
Big Brother

Doctors Wearing Performance Trackers and Peeing into Bottles

"I do not see any strategic logic to Amazon getting into healthcare clinics."

ANSWER: Amazon has proven that big money is made by bringing misery through cost optimization. HMOs, the crappiest form of care denial, have shown Bezos another way to inflict greed.

"Excuse me, Mr. Johnson, is that urine yours or mine?"

US warns losing access to Taiwanese chips could break the economy

Auntie Dix
FAIL

Profiteers in Government & Industry

"[The U.S. needs] a manufacturing base that produces these chips, at least enough of these chips, here on our shores, because otherwise we'll just be too dependent on other countries," [Raimondo] said.

Duh.

Does she even fog a mirror?

Stop giving taxpayer handouts like "CHIPS" to Intel et al.

Instead, bring back through STRICT REGULATION the industry that our pols gave away decades ago (at the behest of U.S. profiteers' greed for "globalization").

SOLUTION: Ban chip imports. Do not tolerate security risks.

Microsoft Teams outage widens to take out M365 services, admin center

Auntie Dix
Big Brother

Spyware Downtime

Tell panicked micromanagers to use the precious downtime to savor the TOS of this POS corporate spyware.

As you do so, hold up a finger to your laptop cam.

Apple to pay $50m settlement for rotten butterfly keyboards

Auntie Dix
Mushroom

Re: California, Florida, Illinois, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, and Washington

"California, Florida, Illinois, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, and Washington"

This cheap-for-Apple, lawyer-enriching, victim-curtailing case highlights some of the backward, expensive, ridiculous "justice theater" of U.S. law and product liability.

Apple sells its shoddy, overpriced crap nationwide and worldwide. The penalty should apply nationwide and worldwide (the latter, for WIPO signatories).

FYI: BMW puts heated seats, other features behind paywall

Auntie Dix
Thumb Up

Make It an URGENT Subscription

BMW restrooms provide employees toilet services only by subscription:

- Lid Unlocking

- Retraction of Seat's Tire Spikes

- Heated Seat

- Flush. One per visit or three (via the "Premium Unlimited Plan")

- Heated Bidet-Hose Spray. Tap or Evian (via the "Premium Unlimited Plan")

- Fart Fan. Low or High (via the "Premium Unlimited Plan")

- Toilet Paper by the Square. Five per visit or fifty (via the "Premium Unlimited Plan")

- Door Closure. Lock (via the "Premium Unlimited Plan")

- Seat-Ejection Timeout. Two minutes or ten (via the "Premium Unlimited Plan")

Subscriptions are OPTIONAL. Employees retain the right to "hold it in."

Intel's Atom C2000 chips are bricking products – and it's not just Cisco hit

Auntie Dix
Megaphone

Re: This will show up the good vendors vs the bad ones.

Doing the right thing does not get a company sued, typically, but the right thing means putting into a remediation chest BIG MONEY.

CEO scumbags are playing games ("We won't name the perp!"), because the law won't prosecute this hiding of information. Their mansions are safe, while your Intel-crippled Synology box croaks and you lose your money, time, and data.

Companies ("persons," under insane U.S. law) will lie, unless severe penalties are at the ready. Think of automobile recalls. Those CEO scumbags have (some) regulation over their slimy heads.

Massive telecom outage in Japan kicks 40 million mobile users offline

Auntie Dix
Thumb Up

Re: Japan and the Joy of Fax

I concur with all of the above.

When the power is out, POTS works. Even then, incoming and outgoing calls sound crisp and clear.

America's POTS network, like the U.S. Postal Service, should be viewed as a national asset, not a no-longer-trendy encumbrance. Both have been regulated to be reliable and ensure breadth of service. Unfortunately, in recent decades, both have been undermined by profiteers preying on pols sleeping at the wheel.

The concept that profiteers abhor: Regulation. For the good of the public, not the greedy.

The greedy have already shown their colors. Want from a commercial carrier remote letter delivery or cell service? Tough luck, if the business does not see profit in that entire region. (BTW, Bezos knows all about avoiding paying the real costs of "the last mile," especially, in rural areas.)

As for the fax machine, it is simple and elegant for what it does. Like a good toaster, it is cheap and easy to keep around, performing consistently and without complication (such as software updates and other time-wasting nonsense).

As a matter of fact, I recently saved time and effort by signing and faxing a required government form, rather than wasting time to boot a PC, power up a scanner, scan to PDF, add a digitized signature, load a browser, start an e-mail session, upload the PDF document, and send the e-mail to some immemorable address longer than ten digits.

Google location tracking to forget you were ever at that medical clinic

Auntie Dix
FAIL

What about purchase histories showing wire hangers?

Will Google Shopping history ignore automatically -- not edit out later, since law enforcement may move quickly -- all hanger purchases?

How about Walmart and Home Depot, which obnoxiously opt-in online customers to the tying of credit-card numbers to in-store purchases? Both display in-store purchases on line before one leaves the parking lot.

As for location history, some citizens with newer cars will be given away by the "black boxes" to which the clueless public acquiesced decades ago. Do you even know the types and magnitude of data your carmaker collects and retains?

Since the U.S. is a business-first, lawmaker-lobbied, apathetic-voter country that lacks strict privacy protection, its citizens must beg for after-the-fact or -hack scraps of remediation.

IBM settles age discrimination case that sought top execs' emails

Auntie Dix
Flame

IBM's Cure: A Supreme Release

Just as the Roe v. Wade poisonous draft revision was released to the media, so should Grandma Ginny's IBM e-mails.

Just as the SCOTUS injustices' homes have been vociferously picketed, so should hers.

Neutered courts let these creeps retire in wealth, privacy, and obscurity, when they deserve society's never-ending scorn.

Doxx, cancel, repeat.

If you didn't store valuable data, ransomware would become impotent

Auntie Dix
Mushroom

Pot-Headed Article

"...your inability to keep private data private... Who will want to do business with you in the future?

In an ideal world, no one, but in this world, we neglect to euthanize the apathetic, as Fecesbook's stunning worldwide membership total proves.

Piss-poor and absent privacy laws result in quick (news, today; forgotten, tomorrow), PR-spun, minimum-disclosure, minimum-consequence rebounds for all security-breached businesses, from mega-retailers such as Home Depot to essentially unregulated credit-bureau cartels, including members such as Equifax.

An apathetic public continues to shop just as before at breached Home Depot, Michael's, Target, [insert long list, here], etc., and remains ruled by Equifax et al.

As long as America's Injustice System pats itself on the back while Big Biz lobbie$ corruptible lawmakers, you and your data will be raped.

Amazon shows off robot warehouse workers that won't complain, quit, unionize...

Auntie Dix
Alien

Re: "The Invaders" Red Glow

You are absolutely right about modern management's "motivational," limits-pushing, stepwise torture, AKA "Workforce Management" ("WFM"):

"Your agonizer, please." — Evil Mr. Spock [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WIee7DIDL-8&t=94]

However, Amazon has always eschewed prolonged engagement:

"Jeff Bezos once believed insists that Amazon's low-skill worker churn was is a good thing The Final Solution, as a long-term workforce would mean a 'march to mediocrity.' cohere and fight back en masse successfully." ("Amazon Fears It Could Run Out of U.S. Warehouse Workers by 2024" [https://www.theregister.com/2022/06/22/amazon_labor_pool_shortage/])

Carrot ► Stick ► Knife ► Next!

"Terror must be maintained, or the empire is doomed." — Evil Mr. Spock

Auntie Dix
Alien

"The Invaders" Red Glow

"The robot shines a beam of green light to navigate, stopping if it detects something or someone blocking its path..."

...and then firing the laser to vaporize at Low (rodent), Medium (slow-moving employee), or High (union organizer).

GitHub's AI code assistant Copilot takes flight. And that'll be $10 a month, please

Auntie Dix
Happy

Bot, why write regurgitated code?

Gee, what would happen if we abstracted all of that AI code into reusable subroutines...better, verbs...of a higher-level programming language?

I think that we're on to something!

HCL to end all support for old versions of Notes and Domino in 2024

Auntie Dix

Re: "HCL promises upgrades are now easy"

If Notes has been truly reborn, why isn't word of mouth bringing it worldwide recognition?

With such a great product, why isn't HCL seen as a new software leader?

I have my doubts, and those who supported Notes, their nightmare memories.

Auntie Dix
Mushroom

Re: Hidden in the bowels

That's like asking, "Do you have herpes?"

512 disk drives later, Floppotron computer hardware orchestra hits v3.0

Auntie Dix
Meh

Mr. Fix-It, Mr. Restore-It, and Mr. Teach-It

Impressive creativity, but all that work is a fleeting piece of art that feels wasteful.

I wish that someone so talented were practicing restoration and preservation, rather than silly exploitation.

A high-quality VCR, refrigerator, washing machine, etc., is no longer manufactured, today. Worse, when one of yesteryear breaks because one part wore out, the lack of economical restoration/preservation expertise compels us to throw out the device.

The VCR has no new replacement, and today's expensive, overly complex, replacement washer and fridge -- each built to fail in a few years -- are crap and not worth fixing. To the landfill!

Meanwhile, snowflakes are denouncing plastic straws.

HP pilots paper delivery service for Instant Ink subscribers

Auntie Dix
Coat

Refuse Printers Crippled by "HP Instant Stink"

Here we are in 2022: Consumer protection seems as weak as ever; consumer apathy, as strong.

We need enterprise leaders to respond to HP's games: "Enough. We'll buy elsewhere."

Dream on, I know.

Salesforce faces diversity audit from activist investors

Auntie Dix
Thumb Down

The Company Cafe Served Me Alphabet Soup with Floating Demonic Messages

"...anecdotal accounts of racially based microaggressions among Salesforce workers."

I cannot believe that companies are forced to entertain these loons.

Google calculates Pi to 100 trillion digits

Auntie Dix
Happy

Google Causing Trouble Again

Once again, for all of the circles in my life, I am going to have to double-check their circumferences and diameters. That is going to take years.

This is almost as bad as the Imperial-to-Metric madness of the 70s. How did that end? Expensively, for every American guy owns not just one set of wrenches, drivers, etc., but two incompatible collections. No American can gauge easily copier enlargements, because nearly no one here uses A4 and the like; the misspent paper has sustained our timber industry for a century.

So, let's just stick to 22/7 for pi, which, whether calculated by hand or device, seems to be a simple, rational choice for a boring, irrational number.

Scribble to app: Microsoft's Power Apps VP talks us through 'Express design'

Auntie Dix
Stop

Applications by the Clueless

The oxymoron "citizen developer" is an insult that should be shouted down at every utterance.

Micro$haft neutered and euthanized its royalty-free, professional RAD tools years ago, to drive its goal of never-ending cloud-subscription cost.

Today, too many upper- and middle-moron management creeps are drinking the cloud-subscription Kool-Aid and encouraging the excretion of PowerCraps, in order to avoid paying for talent.

So, when management's clueless toddler's cobbled creation fails, stutters, sprawls, or stagnates, management then coerces the professional developer — who could have written the program properly in the first place — to give the toddler a workaround or write for him some fix.

This demeaning, waste-of-time cycle repeats until the professional developer flees management's exploitation and the toddler-app cesspool.

Zero-day vuln in Microsoft Office: 'Follina' will work even when macros are disabled

Auntie Dix
Mushroom

Microsoft's TRAP-DOOR "URL Protocols"

Boy, Micro$haft really left this latest turd to rot for quite some time. Quelle surprise! Reeks of "security through obscurity."

Macros disabled, there should be nothing more to worry about in Office Fantasyland, except that there is, and most people have no clue about Micro$haft's "URL protocols" and the machinations that it deliberately hides behind them.

The first time that I saw one of these monikers, my reaction was, "Why is M$ obscuring functionality, via this oddball, non-obvious, proprietary, Registry-buried crap?"

IBM adds side order of NLP to McDonald's AI drive-thru chatbots

Auntie Dix
FAIL

The "Wage Inflation" Is His C-Suite Paycheck

McD's obstacle-in-the-way, unpaid-labor, germ-screen/cumbersome-UI kiosks—ignored by most customers (CEO Clown, haven't you figured that out yet?)—can sit there and rot, right next to the recently reduced, comfort-worsened seating.

The same goes for NLP BS at the drive-thru.

Customers, many with special requests, are not going to wait behind someone yelling out of his car window, "A-gent, agent, AGENT!"...or tolerate robot-voiced, automatically Mc-F-Upped orders.

(BTW, CEO Clown, at a local store, the weeks-out-of-order, smashed LCD that flashed annoying adverts to one side of the double drive-thru may be a hint that using video loops with disappearing menu choices has pissed off your brick-toting customers.)

So, CEO Clown, if you are going to play games rather than provide a living-wage-paid human cashier, Mc-F-Off. Your customers can buy artery-clogging burgers and fries from your less-obnoxious competitors.

P.S. Walmart, Home Depot, etc.: I refuse your unpaid-labor, "self-serve" checkouts. If your cashiers are backed up and struggling, I simply leave my cart and walk out.

The Return of Gopher: Pre-web hypertext service is still around

Auntie Dix

Re: Even when the Web existed...

If Lynx doesn't work on a website, it probably means that the site won't work for people using screen readers.

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