Posts by that one in the corner

UK businesses eye AI as the cheaper, non-whining alternative to actual staff

Here are your new rates for AI hosting

So you've destaffed, put all your reliance on an AI service that was being held aloft by massive fund pumping to build the hype and now you get to actually pay for all the energy and hardware costs to keep driving the monster.

Of course, you can just switch supplier, one AI vendor is just the same as the next, isn't it? Oops, you've been using a model that has been fed all of your business documents to train it up[1], here is our fee to release all those nadans - and here is the fee to see what happens when you try to put those weightings into the new vendor's beast; good luck, maybe they started with the same base model we did[2]. Perhaps you'd be better off just feeding the new empty model with all the original documents - and the entire conversation history: oh, you didn't keep your own copy of all that? Never mind, we can sell you this tape from our archive...

What was that? Short and curlies? Nah, we've got you by something much better.

[1] and it was getting pretty good, only putting the wrong logo on 5% of the documents by this point.

[2] yeah, no, this isn't a database where you can just dump the tables and rules then feed it into pretty much any other vendor's similar box; didn't you read the tech briefing? Where it said "emergent" and the little asterisked footnote about "magic" and "incomprehensible"?

Boeing going backwards as production’s slowing and woes keep flowing

Re: Can you please confirm?

> Bombardier's "strategic exit" from the commercial aviation sector

Ah, thanks, that makes more sense than TFA's simple wording, which implied that Bombardier had been bought in its entirety by Airbus in 2020. 'Cos it seemed a bit odd that Airbus would want to get into the other stuff, like train building, as well (that bit went to Alstom IIRC).

FBI wipes Chinese PlugX malware from thousands of Windows PCs in America

Re: Mustang Panda

And there I was thinking that the rozzers only started using Mustangs recently, making them Battenburgs[1] rather than Pandas.

[1] you'd think those guys were permanently on refs: Battenburgs, Giant Jam Sandwiches...

Europe hopes Trump trumps Biden's plan for US to play AI gatekeeper

Re: Funny

> So there is nothing happening in the EU of note? Nothing globally? Nothing even just in Europe?

You might not have had the chance to notice it yet, but there is *always* something happen; in the EU, globally or even just in Europe (good of you to remember to distinguish between Europe and not just the EU). Things have been happening for the odd millennium or two.

And so the political and governmental organisations always expect there to be "something" going on, to them that *is* the day-to-day. If there wasn't there would not be any need to have any organisation set up to deal with it! Which might be a blissful world to live in, but sadly...

>> Not knowing these things, one can presume you have never had the chance to...

> Nice try. You might not remember the very recent US Secretary of Defense just...

Ah, sorry, wasn't aware that I was conversing with the US Secretary of Defense, or at least one of his immediate subordinates. Good of you to take the time between White House meetings to post on El Reg.

Re: Funny

> she is so irrelevant

No. She is that unusual entity, a competent manager.

A well organised and managed organisation is one where the manager knows how to delegate and does so, creating something that can tick along nicely with everyone knowing what to do, including how to start handling a crisis without immediately running around in circles like a headless chicken (or simply ignoring the crisis as "above my pay grade").

In that organisation, in the absence of a crisis, any person can take leave of absence and trust that the slack will be taken up. Although, on their return, they will have a couple of long days catching up. If a crisis did occur then they have a few more long days doing the bits that are at their pay level to tie it all off, sign off the changes and generally have their colleagues' backs.

Any "executive" who has to be tied into the comms 24/7 is just sitting atop a wobbly pile of incompetence that mirrors their own, just praying that the whole facade doesn't come crumbling down before they have a chance at s golden parachute.

Not knowing these things, one can presume you have never had the chance to work under any competent people or been a useful manager to anyone else.

Tesla recalls 239,382 vehicles over rearview camera problems

>> May I introduce to you the Infineon Profe ... it's not necessarily your granddad's fuseboard out there.

The implication in the original post was quite clear.

> I've a feeling you badly misunderstood the post.

Or a more humble person might have a feeling that the original post was not saying what the author hoped to say.

> it's not necessarily your granddad's fuseboard out there.

And that is meant to make us feel better, is it?

"Software-controlled fuse" is something only a madman would ever think of.

(Without putting a hardware fuse in line as a failsafe)

> just thrown together.

But it is good practice to have consistency of methodology across all your R&D groups, so everyone can work together as s seamless unit.

Now, the big cost centre is the "throw it all into a big bucket" approach of their AI for FSD etc, following current AI industry best practices, so it only makes sense for that group to take the lead and make all the hardware and non-AI software follow suit.

Hulk smash Musk and Zuck! Actor Mark Ruffalo and non-billionaire pals back network tech underpinning Bluesky

Re: Nobody's mentioning the Mastodon in the room

A Muppet duck : he is upset that his quackery doesn't echo on Mastodon.

UK prepared to throw planning rules out the window for massive datacenters

Re: Possible gains that almost certainly won't happen

Wasn't there a UK swimming pool and a few houses that were fed heat from a crematorium?

Life lesson: Don't delete millions of accounts on the same day you go to the dentist

Re: Auto-Account Deletion

Caesar adsum iam forte, Brutus aderat. Caesar sic in omnibus, Brutus sic inat.

Re: Note to self

By sheer coincidence, I have a filling in two hours time - maybe an orderly shutdown now might be the safest option?

This is where YouTube videos are an advantage

You might be drifting off as the documentation author's monotone tutorial drones on and on.

But you will notice that, just after reading out 'Enabling LDAP authentication will delete all existing users' there is a noise somewhere between a maniacal giggle and a guffaw.

That just doesn't come across in the written work.

Re: "It was just another sentence"

> Unfortunately, I'm not allowed to say where it was...

Very wise. Trying to crowd control a lot of paint groupies isn't worth the money you make from the merch stall.

Linus Torvalds offers to build guitar effects pedal for kernel developer

Re: Worthless

Unless you would actually like a guitar effects pedal to, you know, use. And be a source for conversation with Linus and the kernel community. And ...

Oh, sorry, you are measuring "worth" purely on the basis of how much you could scalp it for on eBay.

Re: Nowt wrong with the 555 and blinky LEDs…

#caughtirononlap

Blue Origin postpones New Glenn's maiden flight to January 12

Re: Gulf of ??

The Gulf of 'Merica may just be a good name for the gap between belief and reality, for - certain groups.

Short-lived bling, dumb smart things, and more: The worst in show from CES 2025

Re: In-car ordering for takeout

> I want to try that chippie

You'll have to hurry; their landlord is shutting them down very soon :-(

> When I was contracting in Bristol ...

And that brings back memories of the chippie at the bottom of Christmas Steps, before they had a fire. Very convenient while waiting at the bus-stop to go up to Bradley Stoke (the one up there was definitely using low-temperature veg oil, shudder).

A life well-lived is measured out by chip shops.

Re: A washing machine

> Whatever happened to colleagues?

They are all busy reaching up to the top shelves in the supermarkets.

In-car ordering for takeout

While you drive home, that needs an AI does it?

We prefer to stick with a good old-fashioned Take Away if we'll be too knackered to do any better by the time we get home, and curiously enough all that requires is to keep handy a few phone numbers for the best places (to be honest, usually just go for the chippie in the next village along, still cooks with proper fat for a cracking good bit of batter).

Of course, I do use voice commands for this if I'm driving: "We're fifteen minutes out, Love, get on the blower, there's a dear".

Tongue-zapping spoons, tea-cooling catbots, lazy vacuums and more from CES

CES: Man's inhumanity writ large

Bad enough that the human race is forcing the innocent

Butter Bot into existence, now we've created a blameless robo-critter so cruelly designed that it can not even escape having its nose assaulted by excessively hot vapours! More than that, we declare its attempts at self-preservation, cooling said vapours to a bearable temperature, to be the very reason we could want to own the thing, perverting it's need for respite for our own ends.

Anyway, everyone knows you need wings to properly cool tea: bats, not cats. Do you want a squeeze of lemming with yours?

PS

> Luddites might consider just making tea at the desired temperature to begin with.

Even as a devout coffee drinker, I know that isn't possible - tea made at 66 degrees? That can only lead to brown fluid that is everything but drinkable tea!

Is that a bird’s nest, a wireless broadband base station, or both?

Re: "Everything in Australia is deadly"

> some of the sheep weren't deadly.

Whilst the other sheep have been watching the dropbears and taking notes, spurred on by stories from their British cousins[1]

[1] you know the details, like the one about the ambitious Harold and leads into illustrated descriptions of "un mouton Anglo-Francais"[2]

[2] passes the moustache on to the next commentard

What happens when someone subpoenas Cloudflare to unmask a blogger? This...

It is hard to think of Tamworth as spherically-inclined - it doesn't even have a proper equatorial ring road. Unless you count the gyratory ellipse of roundabouts that has the Odeon at one focus, but that makes for more of a small egg than a sphere when extended into 3D.

Tesla, Musk double down on $56B payday appeal

Re: What could be the motivation for continuing to fight the case?

> new large geostationary space stations overlooking us.

When we learn how much reaction mass the StarLunk satellites really have, as they manoeuvre together and interlock their panels. The red Tesla reappears, having ejected the Starman to change its orbit; the steering wheel engages with the antenna controls and we learn just what a massively parallel phased array can do to a metal structure on Earth...

The ultimate Pi 5 arrives carrying 16GB ... and a price to match

Re: Needs more processing power

I too will not be using an R'Pi as a desktop - instead, I'll keep on using my desktop for that. Because I am very well aware that what is required from "a desktop" varies wildly from person to person (e.g. I chew up loads of cores & RAM at the desk but stick to watching videos at 720p or smaller, off in the corner - go downstairs to the telly box for bigger).

Meantime, I'm partway rigging up a set of recently acquired Pi's (3B+'s as I decided that spec best fits this use case) to run as specific servers, alongside the other varied Pi's already on the LAN. I've also just bought an RP2040 Pico-alike without WiFi but with a W5500-driven Ethernet jack onboard - it'll fit a niche but I wouldn't expect everyone else to leap out and buy one (you pay a premium for wired these days).

In other words, horses for courses - that you won't buy any particular model because it doesn't fit your particular use case isn't really worth saying.

Japan's wooden satellite exits International Space Station

On that note, the Thunderbirds creator, Gerry Anderson, had success with space shows. Sadly, "Space 1999" had to be cancelled when Barbara Bain got woodworm.

DNA sequencers found running ancient BIOS, posing risk to clinical research

But nothing has actually happened

TFA just says that a random piece of kit was subject to a tear down and it was found that kit could be vulnerable.

No statement as to how vulnerable, by what vector.

To load the exploit, would an attacker need to be plugging it into the physical BIOS update port on the back of the box? If there was a more exciting way of getting in, like sending a special packet on a LAN, wouldn't they be crowing about that "Look, look, it is really easy, buy or product!".

As many have pointed out, above, lab kit is - well, basically it is as crude as much other industrial control kit and treated as such. So it doesn't get directly connected onto the Internet!

Is the particular piece of kit important? Well, it makes for a good headline, Shades of Frankenstein if a DNA sequence is leaked or modified! Bet that you could take many a piece of kit put of the lab, without considering how it was actually wired up (if at all) you could probably break into it. but the fear factor would be so much lower. What about the camera sitting on top of that microscope? Or that PCR Reaction Chamber (which also sounds awfully scary but is just a water heater with a timer and thermostat)?

Apple shrugs off BBC complaint with promise to 'further clarify' AI content

But US law Trump's everything else!

The latest language in the GNU Compiler Collection: Algol-68

Re: I would try it, but...

> why are there no programmer focused keyboards out there on the market?

Leaving aside Ken Hagan's very sensible comment about messing with muscle memory, if you really want a keyboard with keywords ready to go, all the odd characters available without SHIFT etc etc then there are opportunities for you to make it a reality.

There is a thriving make-your-own keyboard "scene"[0], everything from reprogramming a ready-built keyboard to designing your own wonderful arrangement (want it shaped like a hand of bananas? PCBWay can probably offer you a range of colours to choose from). All controlled by a common off-the-shelf MCU board (although there are specialised dev boards from the likes of Adafruit) and configurable firmware to control what each keypress does.

Or maybe just get one of the wide range of "macro keyboards" and use that instead?

One of the happy results of USB is that you can plug as many HID devices as you like into your PC and have them all operational at the same time[1]. So you could just take the easy route to removing the need for a SHIFT key by gluing a second keyboard above your normal one[2] and then gluing down its SHIFT key. Plug both into the PC and you'll have a proper Upper Case to work with.

[0] Although a large part of this seems to be dedicated to creating the smallest possible keyboard, so be careful who you outline your ideas to. Personally, as a dedicated Northgate Omni Ultra user, if a keyboard can't be used to measure out a fathom of line it is too small to be taken seriously.

[1] This is, of course, why That Scene from CSI is so daft - they just needed to plug in another keyboard, then they'd both be able to type on all the keys instead of each one only getting the board to use.

[2] be careful if using a laptop, it may obscure the display

Re: I would try it, but...

Hmm, do I recognise the APLle of your eye?

How a good business deal made us underestimate BASIC

Re: No Files, No Serious Work

A "Hello World" is also what I'll still use whenever starting a new program that I expect to grow into something non-trivial.

That way, I can set up the project directories, Makefiles, doxygen etc etc and get all all that infrastructure working and committed before writing any "real" code. Vast overkill for the end result, at that point, but it means Working On The Fun Stuff won't be suddenly interrupted by some faff when a lib's header isn't on the include path.

Plus it acts as a reminder when switching languages again (so I do actually type it, rather than copying a pre-written hello.some_language)

Re: "write a programme that could re-write itself and change what it did."

> Self-modifying code ... but it took me years to finally find any actual uses of it "In the wild".

Oh, you innocent, to have escaped COBOL and the infamous ALTER statement. Yes, built directly into the language.

Re: Anyone who has a blanket rule banning GO TOs...

> Another common practice was source-code level tail-call optimisation ... but it makes the code harder to read.

That is a very good illustration of what the "ban" on GOTO is all about:

Yes, as keeps being pointed out, the CPU does a lot of GOTO (well, JMP) and even GOSUB (JSR) can be decomposed into separate PUSH and JMP instructions (and you can decompose the PUSH into...).

But we don't hear calls, even in these comments, that we should be writing out a GOSUB in decomposed form - with, of course, the decomposed RETURN to match. Why not?

Of course, the point is that providing composed operations makes life easier - both writing and reading. And for "convoluted" thinking, like tail call optimisations, life is far, far easier if we can leave the conversion into GOTO to the language processor.

99.99 (add as many 8s as you like) % of GOTOs are best left to the language, auto-replacing the WHILE-DO, REPEAT-UNTIL, FOR-NEXT, GOSUB/RETURN with the actual low-level JMPs.

Of course, when the profiler shows a hot-spot, dive in and use a GOTO, even add some assembler. IFF it gives a worthwhile improvement (or you hate the guy who is trying to read your code, in which case go wild).

Re: First BASIC I used

> C victims could learn useful lessons from BASIC’s string-handling.

Flippin' 'eck, not this canard again.

C has types (structs, typeset) and libraries, lots of libraries, which are integral to *using* the language (not part of the language proper, although you can *generally*, not always, get an initial set of "get you started with 'Hello World'" standardised libraries with the compiler).

One subset of those My First C Libraries are a few routines that let you do basic manipulation on strings represented in the way that the compiler presents constant strings that you put into the source code. After all, the compiler needs *some* way of presenting those to you and there is no point in doing anything complicated. Because...

Anyone who wants to do anything more exciting with strings in a C program can simply use a library that provides a representation that best fits their needs.

I am quite fond of using structs for the (buffer, buffer len, how full now) representation. But also like a one-codepoint-per-cons-cell approach when digging in and doing macro expansions: less space efficient but constant-time insertions and deletions.

The same goes for C++ by the way: the compiler uses the simplest possible form for constants, you get to choose which library to use for your code (many people use the STL).

Any language that promotes use of libraries can do the same, although more recent languages do promote a more complicated compiler/interpreter representation for constants - even though there is nor, and can never be, One True Representation Of Strings that is Optimal In All Circumstances. The same goes for numbers as well, of course.

Re: Earliest Programming Language

> a lanuguage called CECIL

I think you meant CESIL, if you later moved on to the BBC Micro (that article starts by pointing you at the link for CECIL). Although, if you went from the Beeb to a PET then things were going backwards, so maybe...

> Much like BASIC

Huh? From what I recall, the only similarity was that we had to use character entry forms for both languages, then ship them out from school to the card punch operators at the closest university. CESIL is way cruder than the worst BASIC, more akin to assembler for a vastly underpowered CPU.

Re: Pyton is the current Basic

Yuck. From that choice, I'm far more a C person and am forever struggling to "get into" Python[1] but I'll keep on doing that than go back to VB! And not just because Python is available on so many more platforms than VB.

[1] just trying to be down wid da yoof - and have a language[2] I can share with family who don't seem to understand the sheer beauty of driving the C compiler.

[2] oh, if only Lua were more widely used; I liked using Lua.

Re: English is one of the easiest human languages

> because people repeat what they read

Repeat, without attempting to think if what they are saying makes basic sense as a sequence of words (looking at you, "I could care less").

Re: English is one of the easiest human languages

English is a The Language to use for BASIC (and COBOL, and FOTRAN and LISP[1] before that) because it can be fit into 7-bit ASCII.

Icon: only half joking

[1] if you can call CAR, CDR and SETQ "English"!

> Software -- languages -- have always suffered from a bit of snobbery. It seems that unless you're using 'the latest' in whatever language is fashionable then you're some kind of subhuman, barely worth the time of day let alone be talked to by a person

Curiously, I have never seen that sort of faddism when talking to people who actually created code that worked, worked well and could be respected.

On the other hand, the attitude of the consultants who insisted on shoe-horning a Python interpreter into an otherwise C & C++[2] embedded system because "that will make it configurable"[1]...

[1] You know, INI files are pretty good at that, or - if and only if you need the extra complexity - there are a range of other simple declarative formats, with well-proven parsers.

[2] And their C++ was very faddy as well; shame it didn't run very well.

Re: I did comment the other day....

>> The complexity of modern systems is what makes them insecure and takes away their resilience

> I disagree. That sometimes happens, but the simplicity of early systems often also made them insecure.... consider the ubiquitous DOS...

If we look back a year, to Liam's article on War of the workstations: How the lowest bidders shaped today's tech landscape, you have fallen into the trap that Liam was pointing out then: DOS and from that all too much of what we put up today is *NOT* the epitome computer design..

If you go back just a tiny way beyond the creation of the - trivialised - "computer" that was the IBM PC (and, yes, every other microcomputer out there[1]) then you can find the more secure and resilient systems of yore.

[1] The microprocessor was terribly clever, ''but'' when they were made available to the great unwashed it was still far too expensive to provide the full grown-up computer experience to everyone, but we could provide an ALU, Program Counter and a few kilobytes of RAM at a price that a few really keen people could afford - think the IMSAI and the MITS Altair. We took decades to get much further than that, other than simple bulk, as RAM prices (so very slowly at first...) dropped.

Re: I did comment the other day....

> Back in the day, the abuse directed at BASIC came from the OOP lobby, who looked down upon everything that came before.

What, the guys who created SIMULA (started in 1962) were being abusive about BASIC, which debuted in, um, 1964?

Unless, by "OOP lobby", you mean the pile of people who didn't actually create OOP but just built a bandwagon so that they could shout how clever they all were (which is just something that keeps on happening in the tech world and actually had nothing to do with OOP qua OOP).

> Considering the absolute mess C++ ...

Ah ha, it is you again! Still haven't bothered reading TFA and looking at the names of who said what and when.

> Wait,what? Sorry, what were we discussing?

You were telling us where the nasty C++ compiler touched you.

Re: Basic, etc.

> Dijkstra was an algorithms guy...

And he was also writing back in the 1960s, when people were able to understand the use of hyperbole and didn't just start whining about the nasty mean man (followed by examples from decades after the article was written to show "where he was wrong").

Re: English is one of the easiest human languages...

What would be weird about a Brit using the word weird? I would personally consider it a peculiarly uneventul week if nothing happened to make me say "that was - weird". One doesn't use it every day, of course - sometimes the thing is more bizarre than weird, on occasion merely odd or, on the best days, curious (and then curiouser). But once a week seems about right.

New Orleans attacker used Meta smart glasses to plan New Year's Day massacre

So much more evil than a Go-Pro

> he rode a bicycle through the French Quarter while wearing the Meta glasses

So the sum total of the story is that he has more money to burn than all the cyclists with action cams bolted onto their helmets and/or handlebars?

Telemetry data from 800K VW Group EVs exposed online

Re: Mobile chipsets in "modern" cars allows location spying as accurate as ±10cm, what a surprise.

Yet you fail to point out how or why any of those requirements imply a need to record the buyer's location, and to such accuracy, at the point of sale[1] *or* at any time after the sale.

And you made to attempt at all to explain why *any* data, especially precise location, should be relayed back to the manufacturer at any point after the title has been transferred - either for the car or the telly[2]

[1] I can buy a telly whilst sitting on Laguna Beach, just so long as the licensing people are told it'll be used in Bolton; the car purchase can be completed in the London Ritz, whilst the car is still in Luton - I was going out that way anyway, so what the heck.

[2] "Excuse me, sir, but is there a reason you are now watching the TV in your upstairs bathroom when our records show it was clearly purchased to be used in the downstairs lounge?"

SpaceX will try satellite deployment on next Starship test

Re: Important

> Nothing about businesses or individuals. Bit of an oversight.

Hmm, spot the hand of a Robert Heinlein fan, hoping his books will come true.

"Delos D. Harriman, the last of the Robber Barons" - hang on, look at that name: there is an 'e', an 'l', an 'o', an - not quite. But close, dang close.

Re: Suborbital

> Jeff's BO is a bigger con than crypto.

People are told they can pay $n and for that they will be lofted to elevation k metres, then returned to the ground.

People have paid $n, have been lofted to elevation k metres, then returned to the ground.

Where is the con?

Pornhub pulls out of Florida, VPN demand 'surges 1150%'

Re: Interesting

Well, they have a product that people actually want, and will continue to want into the foreseeable future. So they have an actual reason to behave (in the cyber security arena, at least).

Unlike some online peddlers of trash [1] whose only real money-making strategy is data rape.

[1] some whose energy-to-usefulness ratio redefines the meaning of "obscene"

Brackets go there? Oops. That’s not where I used them and now things are broken

Re: Any system...

You just need to gamify[1] the process:

"I've made a change somewhere on this line I copied from a rule written by you three years ago; when the lovely Samantha sounds her horn you have one minute to write a matching input for a chance to win one of these fabulous prizes! And don't forget the Booby Prize that Sven is showing the audience now - and for the listeners at home, the Mystery Voice ('Documenting the regex language; documenting the regex language')"

Parp

[1] apparently, *not* pronounced like a side of ham