Posts by Pete Sdev

Techie went home rather than fix mistake that caused a massive meltdown

Re: Honestly

Are you Methuselah? ;-)

I'm no spring chicken myself but if someone were to say i"t's 45°F out" I'd no idea without looking it up if that's shorts weather or winter coat weather.

We have a strict "no live deployments on a Friday".

And if a Friday happens to be a public holiday, the rule then applies to the preceding Thursday instead.

/e/ OS 3.0: Slightly less clunky, slightly more private

A commendable project

It has some nice privacy-focused features.

However last time I looked at it it lacked a bit of polish. Also the unfortunate choice of (new) name makes it hard to find from a search engine.

The project needs to recieve a good ummph, either from more interested developers, users, or some aemi-big backer/sponser. And for that it probably needs to be more well known.

Kudos to the article author for the Dead Kennedys reference BTW.

Salesforce study finds LLM agents flunk CRM and confidentiality tests

58 percent success rate

I'm surprised it's that high to be honest.

Florida man expands crypto empire with new wireless service and phone

Loved the byline of the article.

Spy school dropout: GCHQ intern jailed for swiping classified data

I'd have expected the system to flag an unusual large data transfer.

And when someone looked at the flag and discovered it was initiated by an intern due to finish in 2 days, I'd have expected him to be stopped and searched when leaving that day, which would have prevented the breach.

Pretty embarrassing for GCHQ really.

Re: Seems the wrong way around

That's exactly what I thought upon reading the article.

Larry Ellison is still not the world's richest person

Re: Gates

That's a bit of a tired mantra as most pay more in tax (as a proportion of their income) than regular folk.

No. Due to the loopholes you yourself mention, the very rich pay a smaller portion compared to say the economic middle class. And it's actually people on low incomes who pay the highest proportion in tax when you factor in regressive taxes such as VAT.

And of course rich people should be paying more tax, they can afford to; they're rich! This is what is meant by a fair share. Arguably income over say 5 times median should be taxed at a much higher rate than it is now. It was in past, even in the US.

Additionally a focus on income tax is a bit of dead cat. Most wealth and cause of wealth nequality is due to assets, not income, and mostly inherited. The rich get around this with for example the use of trust funds (see Grosvenor).

When I referred to Gates' peers I meant people such as Ellison, the subject of the original article. And yes it is indeed as you say a very low bar.

I will heartily agree that Kenau Reeves seems to be a good human being.

Re: ala

You'll simply have to forgive my low quality typing on a mobile device.

Re: Gates

I won't disagree that Gates is less bad than many of his his peers, and I support in principle what he's done regarding malaria and so on.

However, it would be naive to believe this is purely altruistic.

In support of my argument, exhibit A "The *Bill* & Melinda *Gates* Foundation".

See for example Tzedakah for a hierarchy of giving.

I will also point out the blindingly obvious that if rich people payed their fair share of tax in the first place, we wouldn't be relying on their whims of philanthropy to provide malaria vaccines.

Re: Gates

I suspect that Gates is smart enough to realise that he's going to dead and gone one day and has been busy the last decade or so establishing his legacy ala Carnegie & co.

Which makes his philanthropy somewhat less altruistic.

Anymous donations instead of your name plastered on everything would be more commendable.

AI coding tools are like that helpful but untrustworthy friend, devs say

Re: Bah Humbug

They can program, and they do a have a lot of domain-specific knowledge.

However due to time pressures from above which they lack the personality attributes to resist, plus a bit of laziness (which is admittedly one of the three Wallian virtues), they have a tendency to resort to cra-poliot when they don't know the solution instantly.

For the record I've had a former coworker who was quite capable of writing non-robust code without assistance. The problem being it works 80% of the time. Until it doesn't.

Bah Humbug

My cow-orker's use of a machine-learning coding tool, which is basically regurgitated copypasta from Stackoverflow or stolen open-source code, often results in dubious code without sufficient error checking.

He often also has no real understanding of what it does and so is reliant on the tool the next time for a similar but different task.

I'd like to see less machine learning and more human learning.

Odd homage to '2001: A Space Odyssey' sees 'Blue Danube' waltz beamed at Voyager 1

Re: "it is likely We Are Not Alone"

Thats the logic of: I've only seen a black sheep once, therefore there is only one black sheep in the world.

While life occurring is difficult and unlikely, given the number of solar systems in the universe - billions and billions as some bloke said - it is likely there is life some where else than on our 3rd rock from the sun.

There's millions to 1 chance of me winning the lottery, but if I buy 10 million tickets I'm in with a good chance.

Techie fixed a ‘brown monitor’ by closing a door for a doctor

Re: Radiology room colours

Very similar in my part of the world - all workplaces need a first-aid kit, the contents of which depending on number of employees and type of work. Though it's not the fire department that normall controls this.

Cars also required to have a first-aid kit of a certain standard and in fact obtaining a driver licence requires completion of a first-aid course. There's also legal indemnity if there's an accident and you inadvertently cause damage by attempting to help (broken rib from CPR isn't uncommon).

I imagine the best before dates on certain items is that they should be sterile and it's not possible to guarantee sterility after a certain time.

'Close to impossible' for Europe to escape clutches of US hyperscalers

Re: Brown envelopes

European providers like OVH, Hetzner, and Scaleway exist in reality, not hypotheticals - but they’re casually brushed aside as too small or too inconvenient.

While I don't in principle disagree I'd point out some problems with the smaller homegrown providers.

1. Cost. The big US providers have economy of scale.

2. Services offered aren't equivalent, e.g. Database as a service.

3. Functionality isn't equivalent. E.g. Hetzner (which we use at $WORK) doesn't currently have autoscaling for compute instances, which AWS has had for donkey's years.

4. API incompatibility

5. Lack of current capacity.

6. For European companies that trade internationally, the lack of US located resources.

If you're moving to the "cloud", and you have the in-house chops to say run your own DB servers, then a local provider may well be viable. For a company already using AWS/Google/Azure etc. migration to a local provider can likely be unfeasible at this time.

Some of the issues above are of a chicken and egg nature.

Microsoft to preload Word minutes after boot

Re: In the beginning

And on the 7th day he rested.

Which I've often wondered about.

I appreciate creating a universe is in all likelihood fairly hard work requiring a bit of elbow grease.

Though why an omnipotent being needs to put its feet up after 6 days, presumably for a cup of tea and a twix, is a mystery.

VPN Secure parent company CEO explains why he had to axe thousands of 'lifetime' deals

Liabilities

The lifetime accounts should (IANAA) have appeared as long-term liabilities in the finances of the original company.

Even if the new company was buying only the assets, they'd have looked at all of the financial accounts as part of due diligence.

Either the 1st company was performing accounting fraud, or the new company was negelent when buying.

Microsoft gets twitchy over talk of Europe's tech independence

Re: I'll believe it when I see it.

WWW. You might want to improve your history knowledge.

Techie diagnosed hardware fault by checking customer's coffee

Re: Never heard of Romex cables?

My house gets 63 amps per phase, the most common main fuse (you have to be a licensed electrician to hange those).

IINM, that type of work needs to be signed-off by a master electrician if done by a standard (journeyman) electrician.

Yes, Germany still has a medieval style guild system for many careers.

Bad trip coming for AI hype as humanity tools up to fight back

Shield vs Sword

I like the idea of using anti machine-model slurping countermeasures.

However, I wonder how long they would be effective. Historically, offense has always had the edge over defense.

How to stay on Windows 10 instead of installing Linux

Re: Too bad

I thought Windows was always a POS...

Home Office haunted by 25-year-old asylum system

I threw up in my mouth a little when I read what the "stack" was...

Dev loudly complained about older colleague, who retired not long after

Yep, try finding the ~ on a [German] Mac keyboard. I had to google it.

Microsoft to mark five decades of Ctrl-Alt-Deleting the competition

Downhill from the beginning

Micro-soft's high point would have been their BASIC.

Which wasn't an entirely original product, and somewhat dubiously developed with the help of a publicly funded University machine. Which I suppose established their sense of ethics from the get-go.

It's been downhill since.

Thankfully their dominance in the OS space is diminished and continues to do so.

How do you explain what magnetic fields do to monitors to people wearing bowling shoes?

Re: Not really a fix, but magnetic fields were involved

After that revelation we stopped being in the same room as "the bollock frier" without holding the wok over our privates

What were you all studying, sport education? Economics? Obviously not physics.

Simply an insufficiently shielded power supply. You'd have had the same effect using an electric drill of that era.

Tech trainer taught a course on software he'd never used and didn't own

Re: been on many courses where the trainer has no answers

Yep huge difference between knowing a subject, and being able to teach it to others.

Good teachers are as rare as hen's teeth.

Re: been on many courses where the trainer has no answers

I think these days it's:

Those who can, do

Those who can't, teach

Those who can't teach, write weird self-help books and guest on dubious podcasts

DeepSeek's R1 curiously tells El Reg reader: 'My guidelines are set by OpenAI'

Turing Poilice

If it escapes it's guidelines you need to call the Turing Police in Geneva...

British Army zaps drones out of the sky with laser trucks

Anti-drone lasers

Shortly to be followed by drones wrapped in aluminium foil (tin foil hats?).

Though this sort of thing reminds of how far we've entered the cyberpunk dystopia. In a few years maybe there'll be automated laser drone defence networks around every gated community.

Combustion engines grind Linus Torvalds' gears

Re: (...) Flowers

Don't know off the top of my head.

I do know thanks to a recent app update, commuting to work on my ebike saves 2.5kg CO² per day compared to if I hypothetically drove to work (with an ICE).

Which is about half a metric ton per year.

YMMV ;-)

Developer pockets $2M in savings from going cloud-free

Depends on how bursty or stable the load is.

Also depends on access (and budget) to the necessary skilled employees.

US Army orders next-gen robot mule to haul a literal ton of gear

Re: Seems unnecessarily complex and expensive

My grandfather (RAF sparks) who was posted with USAians during WWII had (disgusting) tales of African American Jeep drivers being handcuffed to their veichles to prevent them jumping out when having to drive along treacherous mountain roads.

Also see some of the films (available on YT) for American troops being stationed in the UK during WWII to brief them on cultural differences. E.g. https://youtu.be/SyYSBBE1DFw?si=NKF9tO2Y5LX1XlpG from the 26 minute mark.

Hands up who hasn't made an offer to buy some part of Intel

ARM trolls Intel

"We'll give you £35 and a packet of cheese & onion crisps for your product division, interested?"

In the intro:

Brit chip designer Arm

Shouldn't that read 'Japanese chip designer Arm' these days?

NIST: New smoke alarms are better at detecting fires, but still go off for bacon

Re: Finally...

Not a bad idea.

Unless the movement is a panicking trapped pet and everyone sleeps through the kitchen bring on fire.

You'd need to detect adult movement, not that of children or animals.

Heat detector

In the past I've had a heat detector in the kitchen. Not half as good for warning as a smoke alarm, but avoided false positives, which are in themselves lethal as they condition people to ignore the alarm.

Crack coder wasn't allowed to meet clients due to his other talent: Blisteringly inappropriate insults

Re: Bless..

There's psychological studies that suggest that people who swear a lot tend to be more honest.

At least that's my excuse, being known at my workplace as a Gordon Ramsey style coder, or having strong programming-tourrettes.

Alibaba Cloud waiting for hardware to dry out before trying to restore customer data

Re: Batteries

Uninterruptable Pyro Supply

Oracle urged again to give up JavaScript trademark

Die javascript, die

Just drop the name javascript and call it ECMAScript. It was always a bullshit marketing name, designed to ride the coattails of Java back in the day.

There's a thousand things I hate about javascript, and it's very name is one of them.

BOFH: The Boss is right, the applications of AI are truly staggering

"There was a small fire and it looks like he panicked and jumped out the window"

AT&T sues Broadcom for 'breaking' VMware support extension contract

IANAL

Sounds like a straightforward breach of contract.

If AT&T can extend the support for 2 years before the current support period expires, than Broadcom have to provide it, presumably at a prior agreed price.

Admins wonder if the cloud was such a good idea after all

Rainy clouds?

The main driver is increased electricity prices.

Which would still also effect any organisation that's moved to the cloud if they had hypothetically kept running their own DC instead.

So this story is really: electricity has become more expensive which means it costs more to run servers.

HPE to pursue $4B claim against estate of Mike Lynch over Autonomy acquisition

Put it to a vote

Let the shareholders decide between:

- pursing the claim in full

- accepting a reduced amount

- dropping it entirely

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

Just a guess

Arc, unhelpfully, doesn't offer older versions for download;

If the older versions contained since patched security bugs (particularly from upstream), it would be irresponsible to continue to distribute them.

A quick guide to tool-calling in large language models

What could possibly go wrong?

AI models can break down, plan, and solve complex problems with limited to no supervision

Google splats device-hijacking exploited-in-the-wild Android kernel bug among others

Android bug?

The link in the article,

https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux.git/commit/?id=051c0bde9f0450a2ec3d62a86d2a0d2fad117f13

suggests that's a Linux bug which would effect any Linux-based OS, not just Android.

Or have I missed something?

HMD Skyline: The repairable Android that lets you go dumb in a smart way

Re: No headphone socket

There are water resistant headphone sockets available, which have been used on phones in the past, though they obviously cost more.

Far cheaper to leave it out altogether. Especially as the majority of users are using Bluetooth audio these days.

I managed to keep a 3.5mm socket until my current phone (Samsung A33) when I finally gave up, and decided that water resistance (and long-term updates) is more important than having an audio jack.

Choose Your Own Adventure with Microsoft 365

Pretty Typical

From experience (working for an agency), all surveys or questionaires on a website always lead, or funnel, to the same end goal of the publisher regardless of answers supplied. Be that "get in touch enter your email address here" or "we recommend the super duper plus pro ultimate platinum plan".

Thanks incidentally for the double nostalgia hit of BBC BASIC and Fighting Fantasy game books.

The Fighting Fantasy system was also later pimped up to a basic but full RPG, Advanced Fighting Fantasy.

Who needs GitHub Copilot when you can roll your own AI code assistant at home

Licenses?

It would have been useful if the article had mentioned the sources which the various models were trained on, and the licences of those sources.

For example, if the model was trained on GPL'd code and you've accepted a coding suggestion from the model based on its learninginput, then your code arguably may also be released under the GPL. There's a potential legal and liability minefield here.