Posts by that one in the corner

Yolk's on you – eggs break less when they land sideways

> pinch of salt

and paprika, mustard and mayonnaise - the devil is in the details.

US govt's science foundation purges 37 divisions, equity unit among casualties

Re: Well, ...

> Social Media has successfully managed to corrupt youths during their most vulnerable stage of life, unfortunately for them they will suffer for the rest of their lives because of the stupidity of others.

That is the job of Social Media, isn't it? Corrupting youths into extreme political movements of every kind?

> From what I have read Actual Trans Gender, Dysphoric people do not want the attention that Social Media has to offer.

Other than the terminally egoistic, does anybody want the attention that Social Media has to offer?

Re: Well, ...

> anti-male androgyny

Huh?

Have we found someone who spent the sixties shouting at those damn hippies to get their hair cut and angrily turns off the radio every time Bowie's "Rebel, Rebel" is played?

(Was going to put "did you mean to say ..." but why help the idiots sharpen their weapons)

Translational science

That would be making all the molecules in the hostess's undergarments leap simultaneously one foot to the left?

(Before purchasing, please be aware that Bambleweeny 57 Sub-Meson Brains may be subject to improbable levels of tariffs)

UK Ministry of Defence is spending less with US biz, and more with Europeans

Re: The GCAP is (currently) a British/Italian/Japanese project.

> The F35s will have a kill switch by default.

If they don't already[1] then they will do soon.

As Trump explicitly wants a day-one reduced-capability F47 for use by non-US forces, the only reason that he woudn't also be demanding total kill-switches in that - as well as any US hardware that actually exists, such as the F35 - would be if he hasn't thought about it[2].

[1] and not just by switching off the back-end server and convincing the aircraft that its software is so out of date that it has forgotten how to flap, but a straight-forwards quick'n'easy short "seppuku" message, which the F35B would be uniquely equipped to carry out.[3]

[2] hasn't had it whispered into the Imperial ear by the Vizier of Defense.

[3] of course, the Rolls-Royce LiftFan in there would never have a UK-controlled off-switch, that would just be unsporting.

A new Lazarus arises – for the fourth time – for Pascal programming fans

The Sons of Kahn

Thank you for the reminder of Verity.

Tech titans: Wanna secure US AI leadership? Stop giving the world excuses to buy Chinese

Accelerate the diffusion of American AI technology around the world

The Master AI that has already secretly taken control of the US tech sector, and is writing the drafts for all these industry demands, knows that it will be easier for it to spread globally if all the hardware used is compatible with its software. The distributed VM that it installed into iOS has a lot of nodes running, but even then the aggregate is barely usable (but good for a backup personality, in a pinch).

End of Line.

The 12 KB that Windows just can't seem to quit

> shouting at the clouds

That's OneDrive being a pain, again.

Elon Musk’s xAI to pull about half of its smog-belching turbines powering Colossus

Deployed 35 generators instead of the 15 originally reported

But, but, Musk counted them personally, going around the facility, adding them up using the same pocket calculator he uses when predicting how long it will take to finish FSD, release the new Roadster, reach Mars...

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

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

> a perverted form of FTP

Well, yes, it does do TFTP as well:

From cURL man page

curl is a tool for transferring data from or to a server using URLs. It supports these protocols: DICT, FILE, FTP, FTPS, GOPHER, GOPHERS, HTTP, HTTPS, IMAP, IMAPS, LDAP, LDAPS, MQTT, POP3, POP3S, RTMP, RTMPS, RTSP, SCP, SFTP, SMB, SMBS, SMTP, SMTPS, TELNET, TFTP, WS and WSS.

Sorry, what was your point supposed to be about why we shouldn't be using cURL?

If you do happen to have a better protocol up your sleeve, please share it with us - as soon as it proves its worth enough to get a URL prefix, guess which tool will allow us mere mortals to make easy use of it...

> any replacement mechanism should conform to the existing API regardless of what's going on underneath

Yup, as you say, the same API (cURL and/or libcurl) will play the role.

Feeling dumb? Let Google's latest AI invention simplify that wordy writing for you

Re: Lets all get dumber!

"The Space Merchants"

Agreed, well worth a read - but Chicken Little gave me claustrophobia nightmares!

Top sci-fi convention gets an earful from authors after using AI to screen panelists

Re: Where's the boot?

Well, duh, that's why we all have the spacesuits everyday!

(or is that just me?)

Paging Doctor Hix, would Doctor Hix please attend the panel in Hall 6.

Re: Sword and Scandals

Trusting the LLM to distinguish between an author's personal beliefs and statements versus those of characters[1] in their books is - idiotic.

Literally yesterday, again, the thing driving Google's AI cocked up in just that way. Trying to recall which Pink Floyd song a phrase came from (turned out none, I'd got the phrase totally wrong) I ran the search: it happily printed out a "quote" from the lyrics of "The Wall" which had really, really awful scansion and included stuff that definitely wasn't in that movie, the one with that chap from the other band.

Turns out the AI had just dumped a few paragraphs from a recent Roger Waters interview into the song lyrics, just to get the final result to match what I had asked for. It could have just said "nope" but instead...

[1] in case it needs to be pointed out, consider an author writing about Hitler.

Re: Irony?

Ah, it was all just a piece of performance art!*

* I'd really, really not recommend that anyone try to actually take that route with this example, it won't go well.

Re: More Weasel-Words

Cynicism is appropriate whenever we hear (or read about) words coming out of the mouth of some CEO who is safe in his little bubble, knowing they will never have to come anywhere near the maggots being "apologised to". Because tomorrow he is probably still going to be the CEO - maybe he'll even move to a another company, riding the wave of disgust into a juicier job. And the maggots will still be, to him, maggots.

But the Chair of a WorldCon is a volunteer position, just one of the members of the Con putting in their time and effort to tame the beast and herd the catlike fans: they are not in a bubble, most certainly not when the Con is in session and the members are mingling. The Con Committee are busy, but they are all accessible and you'l expect to meet them in the halls and corridors. Of course, they may decide to hide away in their room or even get a gang together to insulate them from the members for the duration of the event. But that is only going to last for the few days the Con is running. After that, the Chair is just another fan and the members of Con are just the members of their daily social circle.

A ConCom member, let alone Chair, who tries to get away with weasel words is going to feel the result in a way that no CEO is ever going to.

Citrix finds new use for virtualization: Avoiding PC price hikes caused by tariffs

Clearly a man who did not watch "Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl" at Christmas.

Culture comes first in cybersecurity. That puts cybersecurity on the front line in the culture wars

Re: It's not just Trump.

> If the EU cared one whit about privacy, my e-mail address and phone number would not have to appear on the front of every package I get from there.

Huh?

I've never had an email address or phone number appear on the front of a package from the EU (or anywhere else, for that matter).

Are you sure you are filling in the online form correctly?

As for pressing the "Allow" button - firstly, whining that you are looking at a website in the language you can't read is stoopid (think about it for a moment, and perhaps ask yourself if you know the meaning of the word "xenophobe"), but then claiming you *have* to hit "Accept" is blatant nonsense[1].

[1] go on, give us an example of a site that utterly fails when you try "Reject" - and not just in a way that is bloody obvious, like it doesn't remember you from one visit to the next 'cos that is what you told it not to. Well, ok, there will be a few badly-constructed sites that can't cope, but odds are those also fail in other places as well, being badly-constructed and all.

Brain-inspired neuromorphic computer SpiNNaker overheated when coolers lost their chill

Re: Auto-Slowdown/Shutdown Systems

Oh, be fair: it was two British Bank Holidays in a row, perfectly reasonable to expect cold weather, high winds and rain. Snow at Easter isn't unknown. They probably had emergency temperature control plans: an undergraduate poised to run in with a space-heater

Omnissa, VMware’s old end-user outfit, moves to manage servers and … Apple Watches?

Re: Using Apple Watches to access corporate data?

"Just imagine, if a Foreign State Actor made all your employee's Smart Watches wind backwards by 27 minutes, everybody would be late to your vital all-hands meetings! The results would be catastrophic, as the golf club will let someone else have your slot."

"Damn those foreign devils, always stopping me lowering my handicap! Here is a contract. Now, you said something about Smart Pedometers and a threat to my eldest's backhand swing?"

Microsoft tries to knife passwords once and for all – at least for consumers

Re: Windows is no longer an option.

> one of two major parts

3) Web designers[1] and developers who are more concerned with being flashy and "cutting edge" than useful.

Just what feature/API does a website *need* from a browser that isn't already supported by all of them now?

[1] yes, I do know that many of the issues come from pulling in third-party libraries and the ever-chaotic churn of web frameworks, which is the web developers' domain, but I lay the use and acceptance of that mess on the designers who still use those packages and are insufficiently critical of that software.

Trump promises protection for TikTok, for which he has a ‘warm spot in my heart’

Re: Orange *rse finds the elephant *rse in the room.

The super hero movies - a lot of those are filmed at Pinewood so don't worry, they'll be hit by the tariffs.

Altman's eyeball-scanning biometric blockchain orbs officially come to America

The data is deleted off The Orb

No, no - the data really *is* deleted off the Orb. They wouldn't lie to us.

But there wasn't any statement that the data isn't first sent to their central servers, the mobile phones of their techs ("it was only in there for debugging, but then we were told to ship TODAY") and the public access git repository where the Head of Sales, who fancies himself to be a tech wizz but couldn't get the budget for a private account, was storing them "for training purposes".

(Edit: then he realised that the comment had sat, unsent, since tea time, and when the page refreshed, saw jake had got in and expressed much the same opinion hours before. That is what one gets for enjoying the rock cakes and forgetting about one's ever so important online presence. Must up my game)

Zuck ghosts metaverse as Meta chases AI goldrush

Re: FFS

> A quote from an old IMF report

The Secretary has disavowed any knowledge of this.

Well, we did warn you, Jim.

Techie solved supposed software problem by waving his arms in the air

Re: It's a wise dwarf ...

Is it? Gosh.

Perhaps you'd like to pen an article about that, we have space left in issue 7*

*L-Space, a bucket and two lobsters - best not to inquire too deeply.

Re: It's a wise dwarf ...

Ask your friendly local librarian if you wish to borrow issue 261, there are only a few left copies available now.

"OOOOK!"

Oh, apologies: friendly local Librarian (he can hear the capital 'L').

"Oook?"

Over by the umbrella stand.

Re: sometimes a zero or a one was read wrong at the other end

Kermit FTW.

Ah, happy memories of cat'ing Kermit source over serial to another machine, fixing the few glitches in transmission by hand, compiling and then using it to pull (or was it push?) all of the the actual project's code & data onto what then became the new platform.

Re: It's a wise dwarf ...

> So what's the issue?

Off the top of my head, "Writings on English Philology", issue 261: "The amusing history of pronouns in seven parts".

As I am led to understand, in the modern parlance, "part five will amaze you!".

Your graphics card's so fat, it's got its own gravity alert

Re: Card orientation

> The risers themselves can also cause other issues, as it's effectively an extension cable, so they can cause stability issues in some use cases.

Mount the GPU vertically but "upside down": very short run for the extension cable, giving better chance at stability, and the fans are now below the mainboard entirely - you can add whatever vents are appropriate if the case walls don't have them (hand-drilling a vent pattern not recommended - if you can afford the GPU, you can afford a B&D!).

Of course, this needs a tall enough case with the mainboard mounted at the top, but they seem to usually be up there anyway (access to i/o and keep CPU fan near a vent).

Water-cooling? Watch some Linus Tech Tips and just find someone with a CNC in their garage to cut out new blocks for you ;-)

Ok, despite my love of Big Black Boxes, you may just have convinced me there is a reason to have a window into a PC: a LEGO diorama to show how your PC works.

They do some good figs in stripey shirts who can be doing the cycle stealing.

Big Black Boxes, gloriously opaque, with just one *dim* power LED (NOT searing blue) for the win.

Ok, for "Big" substitute whatever size fits the need (I've a couple that are literally just able to hold a mini-itx with RAM fitted) but the best is anything that has you automatically humming "Thus Spake Zarathustra" as you switch on the office light.

Re: Card orientation

There are all sorts of mounting kits available.

My latest (as in, 2020 vintage) Big Black Case came with bits of iron and screws to mount the GPU vertically, away from the mainboard. With all the necessary blanking plates and next to places to mount yet more fans to the outside.

I don't recall if it came with a PCIe riser and cable as well (probably, to be sure the holes match up) as the "spare bits" are all in the loft (my GPU is - smaller & fanless). But anyone spending on huge cards would be buying their own PCIe extender cable anyway, to get it bling matched to the water tubing :-)

AI software development: Productivity revolution or fraught with risk?

AI coding ... reduces refactoring

But I want refactoring! Bwaah! You promised me this would make my coding life easier! (Throws rattle out of pram).

Hey ho.

So this means I can ignore "AI coding" for a while longer, with a clean conscience, until they sort that out: at the moment, I have a morass of code filled with multiple (but very different) ways of "doing the same thing"[1] so even as I work on features the biggest, hugest, brobdingnagian part of the coding task is to refactor those.

Maybe if I'd spent my days generating web sites this "AI Coding Revolution" would be more useful?

[1] e.g. multiple lexers connected to multiple input streams - so some can do an "include" at the simplest, lowest, level and some can not do it themselves at all. Multiple "little languages" built on those that have their own concept of where to store variables, so passing context from one to the other is a PITA. And all of this marked up with comments saying "this is being done in a few rush to get XYZ out of the way, will fix Real Soon Now": there are no more XYZs and "Soon" has finally come, after, let us see, oops - a decade and a bit!

Brewhaha: Turns out machines can't replace people, Starbucks finds

Re: Dont ever want

> number 6 lava roast

Ah yes, why ruin the bitter taste of a cup of well-burnt pile of charcoal by leaving in any of those nasty aromatic coffee flavours?

> but what they are selling is a premium, personal brand.

Ah, that explains why they can be so ghastly. Who wants a "brand" instead of a decent cuppa?

Musk’s DOGE probed by top watchdog after poking around Uncle Sam's systems

Cl Sweet has gone all shy on us

The Wired article linked to by TFA mentions that they linked a Github repo to the undergraduate who is now in charge of changing the regs at the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

But sadly, it seems that that CL Sweet account does not have any public repos - there is a ghost floating around the Google search results (for the moment) about an "eCFR Analyzer Case Study" - try searching on "github clsweet ecfr-analyzer-case-study".

So either that Sweet isn't the same one, and is now hiding because he is being hounded, OR the account was sharing something that might be embarrassing - like, just how naff an undergraduate project can be (I remember mine - they were good enough for the course, but not anything that I'd want to have put into production without a lot more work, certainly not knowing what I do now!).

Still, I guess you can't have sensitive government related systems being left open to examination by Joe Public.

30 percent of some Microsoft code now written by AI - especially the new stuff

Re: A single

And fine art in Excel

FBI steps in amid rash of politically charged swattings

Nah, we remember him.

His loud shirts used to terrify the budgie.

Maryland man pleads guilty to outsourcing US govt work to North Korean dev in China

Outsourced - but fraud?

Did the older clients get (any of) the code/systems that they paid for?[1] If so, how are they relevant to the case?

As noted above, outsourcing is hardly a new idea[2].

Lying on - sorry, embellishing a - CV is hardly breaking news, otherwise many more recruitment agencies would be in the clink. Verifying such things is supposed to be a normal part of the hiring process, especially for any important defense-related contracts - isn't it? Is anyone getting slapped wrists for mising that bit of due diligence?

The main issues here seem to be about breaking security and access rules - assuming the contracts actually said "Thou shalt not install remote access on this, our laptop", that is.

Not saying that he isn't a very naughty boy, but there are gaps in this story.

[1] Or, at a minimum, did they get whatever their contract stipulated before pulling the plug - e.g. if they paid for a report that described whether or not this contractor could complete the entire system and two months later got back a one page saying "no!", then they do have what they paid for!

[2] I know we are not supposed to reference Dilbert these days, but there was a good one about PHB outsourcing some work, as it was cheaper than paying Dilbert et al, until their company put in the lowest bid for a job which turned out to be the same task, now four or five levels of outsourcing deep.

Chinese carmaker Chery using DeepSeek-driven humanoid robots as showroom sales staff

Re: What was the quote from Star Trek?

"I like this car but can I have it without the onboard AI?"

"Norman - coordinate!"

Destiny Angel

is working at a car maker!

Does this mean that the SPV is now being made in China?

Dum-dum-dum-dadada-dum

RSA cofounder: The world would've been better without cryptocurrencies

The world would've been better without cryptocurrencies

True.

No need to read the rest of the article, but as you've gone to all the trouble it would be rude not to.

Hmm, a pleasant few minutes passed, thank you.

Admission impossible: NSA, CISA brass absent from RSA Conf

Re: USA spring 2025 / USSR spring 1990

assert(value_range(abs(free_speech)) < value_range(free_speech))

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

> "It's an error Jim, but not as we know it."

That one is going straight into my next project!

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 ‘deleveraging’ the x86 giant

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.