Posts by that one in the corner

What the **** did you put in that code? The client thinks it's a cyberattack

Re: ?

Mouse?

Don't you mean rat?

SQUEAK! (and he wants you to know that isn't a pet, he is a profesional colleague)

Ah, that explains why internal mail returned the nerfect to me, I'd addressed it to Peabody, down in Shipping.

Hope Pobody won't be upset, the nerfect's fur is looking a bit matted after a weekend in the Post Room.

AI-driven 20-ft robots coming for construction workers' jobs

RIC built robots - that always goes well

"What is my purpose?"

"You pass the concrete blocks"[1]

"<sigh>"

[1] butter found to be unstable outside of the Antartic

Amid CVE funding fumble, 'we were mushrooms, kept in the dark,' says board member

Re: Move it to Europe

A move to Europe does not mean the whole thing has to be carried across the water in one go, totally cutting off any involvement from individuals in the US.

> the secretariat is currently American and the vast majority of the board members (whose time is presumably contributed by their mostly US employers) are from the US too.

The practical, day-to-day result on the first day of the "move" for all of the current secretariat and board members would be little more than a new email address and a new letterhead in their Word template, giving the address of the registered address in some lawyer's office. Further down the ladder, the IT staff will be migrating to duplicate infrastructure in foreign lands, but aren't modern-day IT people used to doing that sort of stuff anyway? No great shakes.

A more cosmopolitan mix of personnel can be fostered over time. There are marvellous new technologies that allow people across the world to communicate; during a time when the majority of participants are in a particular timezone, others can be accomodating to their needs

If your objections are based on anything other than physical limitations of running an organisation over a long distance - e.g. if you are suggesting that any of the people/companies may object to working with a non-US based new home for the CVEs then, well, if that was the case, wouldn't that be an example of precisely why it is a good idea to make CVEs a properly international org in the first place?

New Intel boss is all about ‘de-laborating’ the x86 giant – aka job cuts

Re: Lip-Bu Tan is swinging the ax again

EAX is the Wilhelmian noise the ex-employees make as they are flung out the door.

Tesla's Optimus can't roll without rare earth magnets, and Beijing ain't budging yet

Re: Tech support?

And don't recharge after midnight.

Robots used internally in Tesla factories.

"For internal use only, take with a glass of water".

It may be hard to swallow, but soon Tesla factory workers will no longer be trying to organise unions, asking awkward questions about the boss's compensation package or otherwise being anything other than perfect employees. They'll even start to wear the same size work boots, allowing the company to save by bulk purchase.

Although the staff canteen will have to close due to lack of sales, the company will still be holding Friday movie nights: this week, "Terminator", next week "Saturn 3". Family Special nights in May will be "Demon Seed" and "The Stepford Wives". Attendance - compulsory.

ICE enlists Palantir to develop all-seeing 'ImmigrationOS' eye to speed up deportations

Re: What would you do?

> does everyone saying they're terrible want the Biden era to continue?

Why do people like you keep fetishising these 4-year "leaders" as though they are actually the cause of all the ills and could ever be the ones to fix them?

Looking at the list at the top of this thread - trafficking, health of the poor, drugs: things like that aren't affected by one person's term in office, they all need steady, systematic approaches. Cronyism, corrupt corporations - the same applies: one president can make those a whole lot worse but fixing them can not be "sign this and it's done".

Stop wanking over Biden versus Trump versus Clinton versus Fred Bloggs, you are just going to go blind.

Re: What would you do?

I would start by saying:

Please look up terms such as "Gish Gallop" and why such things are not accepted as valid attempts at honest discussion.

Next: Citations, please. Which includes comparatives, both historical and against the current population as a whole. To demonstrate that you are not simply doing what you accuse others of, only coming from the other side, but have a genuine understanding of all the items you have included in your list.

And request you clearly indicate which items are purely there because you personally dislike and/or do not comprehend the purpose and value of them.

After that, as you using this list to defend the current administration, highlight the duration of these issues and how they have changed over time - over a major period of time, say a minimum of a century (indicating how each has changed in style but not type over that time - e.g. don't claim that a newly synthesised drug is a "new" issue when it has a clear place as merely the nom du jour for the addict's choice).

With all of the above, you may become armed with basic people information - or even knowledge - of the depth of such issues and, most importantly, whether each one can sanely be tackled during the term of one administration or whether making claims that a single specific action can markedly "fix" an issue can ever be anything other than grandstanding.

And then indicate how you perceive Trump et al have produced any useful results to fix each of your issues, and without making the others worse - or introducing new ones that you have conveniently left off your list (e.g. the removal of due process).

You have, very tellingly, mixed together a morass of items, in the same fashion that the politicos do, which allows them, for example, to make claims about "so, you are in favour of human trafficking", an obvious harm to the individual, if we just disagree about your use of the word "woke".

Downward DOGE: Elon Musk keeps revising cost-trimming goals in a familiar pattern

(bit worried about the down voters who, one must presume, have fatal caries; should we send them a care package from Colgate?)

Precisely.

Few of us die of caries (tooth rot) these days.

> we don't have go into excruciating detail

It is Easter Bank Holiday Monday and they aren't showing "The Great Escape"[1], so you are going to get the details!

[1] "Guns of Navarone" just doesn't cut it

At which there were cheers in China; if he is trying to "get at" China that was the wrong step to take.

Re: AKA the "Dept of Greed and Evil"

> passwords in kubernetes environment variables

No, no, environment variables are insecure and can be accidentally changed.

Hardcode all your credentials into source code (put names and passwords into separate modules for extra security) then compile the lot - and burn the sources (or just put them in the cupboard, the one with leopard warning sign) then lose the dongle to the proprietary compiler (didn't Sam have it last, the week before he retired?).

That way, nobody can ever change the names, passwords or host ids of any of your services, making it all totally secure and risk free for the foreseeable future!

Bonus points for keeping your version control on a free Github account because you wanted to work at home and already had the login set up.

> why cancer rates are so high

Assuming that they are actually high (whatever that means), there are good reasons to expect cancer to become a more frequently reported cause of death, namely:

Smallpox, black death, typhus, cholera, mumps, measles, pneumonia, influenza, tetanus, tuberculosis, caries, other poxes, augues and ailments that humans routinely died of.

Hacking US crosswalks to talk like Zuck is as easy as 1234

Re: Great hack!

Your bleep at you?

Up here in the NE, they sit in sullen silence, just judging you for being a posh git who uses the crossing!

What to do once your Surface Hub v1 becomes an 84-inch, $22K paperweight

Re: Linux drivers?

> Linux drivers appears automagically when someone says "Linux!".

So, which Linux drivers do you know are missing from the set required for this old kit?

> proper drivers to control an Asus motherboard fans...

You're saying that NO Asus motherboard fans work with Linux? That is a bit of a surprise, as Linux seems to have no issue with my particular Asus boards. Or the Asrock boards or even the Supermicro one.

Guess I just got lucky.

Or do you have a particular Asus model in mind that isn't supported by the particular Linux distro you have in mind?

> Linux being able to more or less seamlessly handle an 84" TOUCH screen is another matter entiely

Why?

The Quadro K2200 is hardly an extraordinary piece of kit and the drivers for it have been listed for a while. So long as it is to the correct h & v resolution, who - or what - cares about the physical size of the display?

Similarly for the TOUCH screen - you only need to read the coordinates back, it makes no difference to Linux if it is (for example) a 100x100 points stretched across 0.84 inches or 84 inches or 84 feet. Whatever the actual resolution of the touch layer - sorry, TOUCH LAYER - if Windows can manage such numbers why would Linux be any different?

Or, for that matter, one of the BSDs.

Microsoft Copilot shows up even when it's not wanted

> https://www.google.com/search?q=%s&udm=14

Ah, of course, it is so obvious, elegant and intuitive.

The Guys & Gals from Google are always first with neat & clever UX design.

CVE fallout: The splintering of the standard vulnerability tracking system has begun

Re: We've been here before

Because, as the tech bros know, IT is A Special Thing and has to have everything done for it from scratch. Sigh.

Re: China

> Can you name 1 product China has made, essentially EVER, that wasn't stolen from someone else's work, design or idea?

As you seem to have been asleep in junior school political geography, there is a whole Wikipedia page page on the subject.

Aka "Have you tried looking things up before opening your mouth?"

Bank of England flirts with offline digital dosh

Re: enables the downloading and uploading of funds to and from the ledger when the device is back

No need to sync with the network if it does act as a "super duper Oyster card".

They'll receive the funds as being "loaded" onto their device, same as they were "loaded" onto yours. Bit of bluetooth magic or some NFC & job's a good 'un.

Then they can transfer the digital funds to someone else, then the funds can go to yet another person - so long as the transfer mechanism is robust, it could be as good as cash.

Or we could all just get one of those gadgets from the Underground barriers and use existing Oyster cards.

Whistleblower describes DOGE IT dept rampage at America's labor watchdog

Re: "in contravention of standard operating procedures"

Those rules don't apply to Important People, they are just a sop to keep the little guys quiet.

Attempts to log in from a Russian IP address within 15 minutes of account creation

Much as I love to hear of DOdGEy goings-on, it does seem a bit of a feeble attempt to login directly from home; doesn't Russian Youtube get all those adverts for NordVPN?

Unless, unless - it was all a feint and the successful login from Ivan's Washington office was made within eight minutes of the account going live?

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

> Shouldn't the other international stakeholders pay their share

That is the direct Trumpian line: the US should pull out of anything where they are "being taken advantage of".

BUT even making "Is there any good reason why this money should come out of the USA taxpayers' pockets only?" the first - or only - question to ask is going about things arse backwards.

The first, the most important, question, whose answer overrules anything else, is: "Do we - the US - risk more costs by NOT having this programme?" (or "Are we getting our money's worth?" or "Will we really, really regret not spending this?" or a dozen other ways to ask the same thing). To which the answer is YES!

If we accept that the US taxpayer paying for this is in its own interests, should they kep it to themselves? Well, will that be cost-effective? Nope, of course it won't, don't be ridiculous. Bug hunting is a world-wide endeavour. If the US list is inly visible to the US, why would anybody in any other country ever bother handing over information they've found? Especially if there was any cost attached to finding it. So should the US pay the costs of all these bug hunters across the globe just to fill the US database? Is there a cheaper option? How about - just let the database be readable by everyone and accept submissions by everyone. Not only does the US then gain even more for its money, it saves on having to set up the systems to prevent global access whilst still allowing full access within the US: unless a Great American Firewall sounds like something that ought to be built anyway.

The bottom line is that it is far, far cheaper to run a globally useful system like this than not to run it. Even when you just look at the cost benefits of one player.

To risk it just because you want to ask "why should we be the only ones to pay?" is the absolute epitome of cutting off one's nose to spite one's face. It is putting paranoia and xenophobia before even bothering to calculate the balance sheet.

"But, but, everyone else is ripping us off! They should pay! It doesn't matter if we are acting solely in our own interests, if *we* are getting far more value back than we are spending, *they* don't deserve to get anything for free!".

Ah, the clarion call of the truly mean spirited.

And those unable to comprehend Soft Power and that they are getting back even more value than they have bothered to write into their spreadsheets whilst reading the above: there is a reason why, when buying a business, you pay for the Goodwill that has ben accrued.

Official abuse of state security has always been bad, now it's horrifying

"I can't believe that!" said Alice.

"Can't you?" the Queen said in a pitying tone. "Try again: draw a long breath, and shut your eyes."

Alice laughed. "There's no use trying," she said: "one can't believe impossible things."

"I daresay you haven't had much practice," said the Queen. "When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast."

White House budget proposal could beam NASA science back decades

What about the Rockstar Probes?

The Voyagers are still out there, albeit on their last few gasps. New Horizons will reach the heliopause around the 2040-plus-a-bit mark, fingers crossed.

If JPL stops looking after them prematurely then we lose our chance at data from that far out for half a century, just due to the travel time.

LLMs can't stop making up software dependencies and sabotaging everything

Re: well duh.

I hope you jest, but this morning I looked at an online jobs page for my area.

Every other job was, literally, from the same company, saying "we need someone who knows X to train our AI how to do X", where X is C# or Python or Web frontend or backoffice systems or...; after which you can go find something else to do with your time.[1] At least this lot was up front about it.

Microsoft total recalls Recall totally to Copilot+ PCs

Recall does not share snapshots or associated data with Microsoft or third parties

That task is delegated to the Windows telemetry subsystem, nothing to do with Recall at at all.

Remember, the original story was "We Can Remember It For You, Wholesale" - and Microsoft always sticks to the word of PKD[1]

[1] The Thirty Three Stigmata of Windows Eleven?

PIRG's 'Electronic Waste Graveyard' lists 100+ gadgets dumped after support vanished

That reminds me, must re-brain that Cricut

Plenty more devices that aren't on that list: I've got a Cricut cutter in the loft that is waiting for me to cut out its PCB and replace it with a Teensy 3 board, to free it from its attempts to contact the long-defunct server (without which it will not cut at all). Yes, the hobbyists can make things work again, but sometimes it takes more than just new firmware.

What is annoying, alongside the sheer wastage, is the number of people who keep on trying to sell borked goods - after the Cricut servers were shut down, eBay was filled (more than the normal levels) with people asking 80% or more of their original purchase price for a doorstop. "It turns on and self-tests, so it is working". No, no I did not buy any of those. But it looks like more than a few poor buggers did. Even if they did know about the blog post telling you where to cut, those prices are taking the mick. For the bulk of 'em, more wasted resources posting things just so they'll end up in someone else's bins.

Self-driving car maker Musk's DOGE rocks up at self-driving car watchdog, cuts staff

Re: which can be fooled in amusing ways...

PS

In case you thought I'd forgotten:

LIDAR OTOH has a simpler mechanical system, in constant stable motion, and we know how to do the mathematics (which is published, you can check the maths and even some code against the maths) to generate an immediate 3D point cloud, from which we can derive & update decent models. Far more directly and reliably than a stereo camera pair.

And we can merge point cloud data from other frequencies (eg RADAR) and/or secondary sensors without overly disturbing processing on that cloud.

Re: which can be fooled in amusing ways...

> Humans do quite well driving a car with a single stereo (or even monocular!) system.

That is certainly true - although there is a big question mark over the "quite well" and whether we want automated systems to do better than "quite well"[1].

There is - always has been - the argument that if humans can rely on sight, so can machines (to reach the same level, at least). But can anyone actually demonstrate that their automation is in any way comparable to our sight?

At the very start, we move our eyes continually, pointing "the good bits" at different places - but putting that much motion into mechanical systems introduces points of failure, so instead we have to have more cameras, all with the highest level of fidelity to match "the good bits". So now the very first stage is wildly different - having to manage merging of views, compensating the different angles and cross-overs, then deciding what the current field of interest is (or do we do it the over way around to get quicker processing? Back to the design, boys).

Ok, now demonstrate the system is at least as good as our sight.

Right, onto the next stage: what we feed this "sight data" into...

Logically, yes, there is a good argument for saying we can automate all this. But have we?

And can we demonstrate this in a better way than counting how many vehicles each one can crash?[2]

[1] Yes, yes, we do

[2] Oh dear, that would mean letting other people have access to our proprietary system to test it out piece by piece (assuming we actually know what the different pieces are).[3]

[3] Note: yes, we can test humans' abilities piece by piece before before letting them out onto the motorway: reading, knowing the signs, did they manage to open the car door without breaking a window first... and all other "testing" in the years before you got to that point, as you simply lived and grew up.

Delusional reporting of FSD doesn't help

Tesla Cybertruck Avoids Landslide and Then Drives Right Over It: "A must-see video of a Tesla Cybertruck riding into what could have been a disastrous accident, avoiding a landslide, and then remarkably driving over it as if in the act of defiance of machine vs. nature."

> Here's a recap from today posted on the Cybertruck Owners Club Forum titled "FSD Saves Cybertruck from Landslide,"

> Thank you Tesla for making an amazing Cybertruck. Yesterday mine stopped on a dime on a wet road just before we would have been sucked into a crazy landslide. And then, I put it in off-road mode, and I drove through the landslide once it stopped instead of staying in a dangerous situation and waiting over two hours for it to be cleared. No car like it on the planet―Joel D. Wright

> "It was on FSD, and going the speed limit. But by the Grace of God, I saw that crazy tree starting to float down the mountain with the landslide and manually slammed on the brakes for all I was worth stopping just in the nick of time."

OR, in reality:

Whe HE hit the brakes, the vehicle slowed and stopped. Then it (remarkably!) "off-roaded" for a few metres.

How is that better than any Landrover, farm truck or original 1940's army jeep? Or, for the fashion-conscious, Range Rover - although our old Peugeot 2008 has working brakes and got us in and out of a good few muddy fields and rock/pothole strewn farm roads; wouldn't necessarily recommend it for "proper off-roading"...

Infosec experts fear China could retaliate against tariffs with a Typhoon attack

Re: China only needs to wait a few days.

> the first wave of price hikes from the 125% tariffs on Chinese goods will become visible to consumers in the next days.

Helped along in their impact by the removal of the $800 de minimis on overseas goods arriving by post.

(Although, TBH, over the years I've become really fed up with Americans being smug about how high that limit was on any forum about an international group purchase...)

Re: Most dangerous?

Oh, I dunno - that was a favourite trick from DHL a few years ago: deliver the parcel and then their bill for customs & handling fees arrived a few days later; ok, by mail, not in person, but soon followed by a - less pleasant letter.

Most annoying case: I had a Novell software package, in the days when we still got printed manuals; Novell had it on a very low cost sale, for reasons I forget (trying to get traction for particular version? doesn't matter), but then put the full retail price on the customs sticker. Wasn't expecting to pay on receipt, as it wasn't expensive to get, so the bill was really not expected.

Much prefer to get the demand first: "Pay the customs or we'll destroy it" "Well, given that cost, I'll help you load into the incinerator - it's only Novell, after all".

Musk's DOGE muzzled on X over tape storage baloney

Re: 70-year-old technology

I was intrigued by the way that Space 1999's Computer (most definitely singular) always printed its results out on till-roll paper, whilst SID's reports at least were printed on to full-width pages.

However:

> The best they came up with was radar-like CRTs

Both Moonbase Control and SHADO HQ had black & white monitors that displayed (changing) text, like a proper VDU.

> The providers being disabled vets doesn't prove whether the service was good or not, and you can dismiss that as an emotional argument.

Well, it was a bit more than only an emotional argument, as the service was being provided to the Department of Veterans Affairs, the very people who are supposed to be supporting the veterans - one way of doing that being to support their businesses. Which businesses were still required to actually provide the service, as any other business would be.

Re: Only $1M?

A difference in attitudes, as well:

The UK created BBC micro would let you do both *DISK as well as the proper *DISC, but to start coding in Pascal[1] from The Other Place, you were only allowed PROGRAM.

[1] named after someone who would have preferred *DISQUE

Still, it did mean that we could say the BBC was broadcasting a good programme about programs and not be confused whether the subject matter was computers or the making of fine historical dramas.

What is that bonfire for?

"Oh, we've found a load of thick paper tape & card that somebody has made holes in, so it is useless now. Hey, do you what label this means? 'Cultural artifacts. Perm. copy duration 1000 year?'"

Re: Nothing to beat it on $/Gb basis.

How often do they need that old data? As stated, only when a new analysis method appears and it seems worthwhile to re-work the old data. Which doesn't feel like it would occur even once a month...

So it may simply still be as cost effective to have an old tape be mounted, let the new software run over it for a day or two, swap tapes... As you say, 20MB per reel is not a lot so if the chap is mounting new tapes to archive new data a few times a day anyway then - he may be grateful for the foray into the stacks to break up the routine!

UK's answer to DARPA sprouts new ideas, like programmable plants

Re: Finally....

Trifids? Pah, merely walking fertiliser for my fully grown Krynoid[1]

[1] new varietal, totally deaf and immune to sonic screwdrivers!

AI entrepreneur sent avatar to argue in court – and the judge shut it down fast

You only wish to hear about good things that work, without being warned of the charlatans out there?

Nobody here (so far) is falling for his line of guff, instead we now have an article - and the responses to it - that we can show to anyone less well informed than Register readers when we hear them talking about "this great thing I heard about...".

I had never made a replica before of myself or anybody

So he is selling a service - and using it in court - before he has even tested it out once?

How did he expect that was going to turn out?

> You know my site, we get a fair number of views but we really don't get much business out of it.

Time to give up, matey. That isn't a startup business, it is a shambles.

Can any good come out of this? Well, show the story to anyone trying to do the same sort of business and point out you can't actually see any substantive difference between theirs and his, then see if they can or if all they can do is merely bluster.

DOGE dilettantes 'didn't test' Social Security fraud detection tool at appropriate scale

Re: School children?

Oh, if only.

At least school children try to remember how to do simple arithmetic, so they'll be ready for something really important, like the end of month test (Mr Baxter is hard, but fair and works to a schedule).

Now, let us try again, Donald: if you want the minimum of a number k and 10, what is the result when k is negative? No, you *do* know what a negative number is, we had a look at your tax returns, remember?

OTOH we trek the cheque books around to the co-signers twice a month...

Different strokes for different folks, as I believe our cousins are wont to say.

Procter & Gamble study finds AI could help make Pringles tastier, spice up Old Spice, sharpen Gillette

Re: rubber duck debugging

Just time for another bath, in the glow of the burning forests.

Re: Game changer?

Of course it is a game changer - they only have access to another human to work with for less than five minutes at a time, whereas the AI won't storm out, screaming "will you shut up about bloody Pringles!".

This is especially useful for R&D at Gillette (where they standardised on Chipples last year).

Trump doubles down, vows to make Chinese imports even more expensive for Americans

Re: Probably a stupid question

There is a Matt Parker "Stand-up Maths" video about Explaining the Trump Tariff Equation where he does just go over these numbers - double-checks them, points out the set of countries where (according to Trump's own maths) the US ought to be putting on negative tariffs...

And after watching that, and slamming your head on the table a few times, you can be reminded that there *is* sanity in the world by, say, watching his recent "Pi Day" video about how to calculate Pi by slamming blocks together on a table.

Re: Probably a stupid question

Nope, you are not an idiot: there is no point at all in basing tariffs on that sort of trade differential.

Consider vanilla, 80% of which (approx) comes from Madagascar, which now has a 47% tariff.

Madagascar is not a rich place and isn't in the market for too many expensive US products - and the rest of the World will buy the vanilla (and other exotics) - the price may go down temporarily, as the non-US supply chain won't take it all, immediately, but it will sell.

So "plain vanilla" goes way up in the US, and Madagascar tries to a bit harder to convince us to buy some more.

The "value" to the US being - nope, I give up.

French Toast, anyone? Extra tasty today.

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

Re: Commodore 128 - A Questionable Example

That is true.

But you had to decide to take the plunge at the initial purchase, and there wasn't much C128-specific s/w available, so you - unless there was already something you wanted to run - it was a leap of faith that the programs would appear. There was a bit of a self-reinforcing loop between buyers and authors, neither wanting to take a gamble on the other.

As opposed to starting with just the MDA board in a PC, knowing that you could upgrade as/when the EGA software arrived: you're not having to take any leap on day one, if you don't wish to.