Posts by that one in the corner

'Brittle' Twitter suffers bad case of the Mondays: Links, pics, vids fail

"The Machine Stops"

A set text for English lessons - at age 12 we didn't think it would be so relevant in later life!

How to get the latest Linux kernel on your Ubuntu box

Off topic, but still Ubuntu and kernels

Is it normal for an official Ubuntu flavour, after a fresh install, to be unable to recompile its kernel due to little things like there not even being a compiler installed?

It just came as a surprise, when attempting to create a VirtualBox VM from the current stable Lubuntu ISO on Sunday [1], that the Guest Additions failed to install for that reason.

(Turned put that the easiest (fewest commands to type on a Sunday) way was to create the VM using plain Ubuntu, letting VirtualBox do an unattended install, then manually install the lubuntu meta-package followed by uninstalling all the Gnome packages (gnome* fitw), and reboot)

[1] for reasons

Re: Latest Kernal

> Grandma to Eddie, her grandson: Eddie, my wifi doesn't work. It keeps dropping the connection.

Eddie to Grandma: have you tried forcing Windows to re-install the driver? All you have to do is enable Administrator Tools on the Start menu, then use them to open Hardware Management, look down the list to find your WiFi adapter, right-click and disable it, not forgetting to delete the driver or it'll just pick up the same one again, ha ha, then right-click again and

Grandpa to Eddie, loudly: What are you prattling on about, boy? Stop upsetting your Grandma, get your arse over here and fix this! You know by now not to try to fix Windows over the phone. <slams phone down>

Don't worry, that system's not actually active – oh, wait …

Re: Expected lots of rants against stupid management

Don't get me wrong, really enjoying the stories (they're better than mamglement rants)

Re: Why would one ...

What Rosy gets up to is none of my business, that has been made very clear!

Expected lots of rants against stupid management

who change the location of safety-critical controls - then blame the worker when the obvious result occurs.

Instead, we have all the stories about food prep (don't think you can justify some of those ideas as "cooking"!) ranging from the weird to the life-threatening.

Hardly a surprise, given the natural reactions of commentards, but you have to feel for the poor Reg scribe, who could have saved himself all that typing and just given us the one sentence about toaster ovens.

Re: Why would one ...

https://youtube.com/watch?v=_yMMTVVJI4c

Why don't Americans use electric kettles? From Technology Connections.

Re: Why would one ...

> sky is blue

No it isn't, it's wine-coloured, the same as the sea! Or possibly bronzish. As ane ancient greke kno.

Re: Just to clarify (was: Why would one ...)

Of course, the descriptions in those URLs are not at all confusing :-)

Elon Musk yearns for AI devs to build 'anti-woke' rival ChatGPT bot

the bot will refuse to - if you ask enough times & cherry pick

For pity's sake, we've seen it here with "Hanff is dead" - "no, he is alive" - "I just tried, he died, but in a different year".

Ask ChatGPT enough times and it'll spit out the answer you want to report on, sooner or later. Given the descriptions of it going increasingly doolally as you extend the session, you probably don't have to wait too long for it to contradict itself.

Then a quick bit of cherry picking, copy'n'paste the choice bits (because you can't put the whole session into a single tweet, how very convenient). Or simply wait for human bias to kick in (362 people try it, 361 get anodyne replies and the last one starts screaming to the heavens about the evil AI).

Zoom chops president it hired less than a year ago

Re: stock options totaling $45 million over four years

But did has he been able to collect all of the picture cards to complete the Thunderbirds poster?[1]

[1] I think I got about 1/2 of the blanks filled in on the poster; maybe I was meant to eat Fab lollies (yuck, girlie) to get the rest?

Texas mulls law forcing ISPs to block access to abortion websites

Re: a criminal offense to provide access to websites that sell abortion pills or provide information

> Those websites should start selling bibles too, and quoting scripture

They could try starting with Exodus 21:22-25, where it is clear that, should a woman become entangled in a fight, the value of the life of an aborted foetus is less (punished by a monetary fine, paid to the husband of course) than that of the woman (if the blow kills her, the punishment is death).

Or Numbers 5:11-31 which says that God's way of judging a woman accused of adultery is to have the priest make her drink a bitter water containing a curse (i.e. magic potion) that will cause her to abort (her belly will swell, her thigh will rot) and become barren if she was adulterous.

Re: Where is the clamour for internet companies to stand up to this censorship?

> Read your bible again and see what God thinks about women

To save slogging through the whole thing, you can find a list here (sorry women, you don't come out of it well):

https://skepticsannotatedbible.com/women/long.html

And just on basic question of whether women and men have equal rights, this list (spoiler: tends rather towards the "no" side):

https://skepticsannotatedbible.com/contra/women.html

Thought you'd opted out of online tracking? Think again

Re: still cost effective!

> Prison time for CEOs

They would still find a way around it.

Like hiring some old lag who who'd been institutionalised years ago to sit as "the CEO": his/her going back into clink would no problem - going into white-collar open prison would be a holiday, a cushy number.

Meanwhile, "Vice President of Boardroom Seating" carries on running things and smiling all the way to the bank.

Re: The non personalised ads .

> the former singer of Sheep On Drugs tattooed my arm

You read about this sort of thing all the time in the papers.

There you are, calmly walking down the street, when - blam! You've been tattooed by an ex-indie band singer! Next thing you know, some John Cooper Clark tribute act has corniced your shopping bag in the Rococo style and the police are no help at all "Sorry sir, we don't deal with any architectural styles prior to the 1920s Revivalists". What is the World coming to, that's what I'd like know.

Sorry, what were talking about?

Can we interest you in a $10 pocket calculator powered by Android 9?

Re: the device comes with a calendar, a notepad....

> it's probably a piss-poor Android device in today's terms.

Actually, it's more up to date than the one I'm using to write this - just sour grapes 'cos I paid more and don't even have a nice chunky calculator keyboard!

Re: the device comes with a calendar, a notepad....

> why didn't they release it as a cut down Android tablet - and include a calculator app.

If it is sold as "an android device" it will face a barrage of angry users complaining - quite rightly - that it won't run this free app, or doesn't even let them download the app in the first place.

Even at this price, it's probably a piss-poor Android device in today's terms.

BUT if you sell it on the basis of something it *can* do - just run the simplest calculator app, which was probably in the ROM anyway, then buyers get what they were offered, everyone is happy (especially the manufacturer who had a warehouse to clear out). If a purchaser happens to be able to figure out it can do more, that is just extra jam on top for them.

You are coming at it from the p.o.v. of the jam on top guy - the target market (which is too posh a term for this sort of thing) is old Mr Bloggs who spots it, thinks it would a fine thing to use on his market stall; he saw the same scientific calculator you did and just worried about hitting the wrong key, what is all that "ln" junk anyway?

It is all a conspiracy by Big Charger!

"Asok has a basket containing 12 apples, Nish wants 7..."

> Why a Calculator needs WiFi?

So it can look up the supermarket prices for apples and decide if Asok should give Nish seven of them today or whether arbitrage via the international smoothies market would lead to overall better second quarter returns.

"Lucy is on the train from Temple Meads, travelling at 78mph. Susi is standing at the Box Tunnel entrance..."

Ok, this one is trickier, luckily the toaster is also on WiFi.

Why ChatGPT should be considered a malevolent AI – and be destroyed

> The general public not understanding AI is a major problem. The fact that ChatGPT is wrong (because it was never designed to be anything more than a language generator) isn't.

Taken together then, what is wrong - is irresponsible - is allowing the general public access to ChatGPT, let alone encouraging them, without attempting to tell them what they are playing with (i.e. doing the absolute minimum to improve their understanding).

Like, starting every paragraph with big, bold, text to repeatedly tell them that the clever bit is the syntax but to ignore any apparent meaning or any sense that the program is accurate, honest or truthful in what it says [1][2]

Everyone involved in ChatGPT knows the issues around Eliza, there are no excuses for not knowing how the public would react.

[1] but better, snapper wording - need to grab their attention

[2] Wonder why they don't have that warning every time? Hmmm... (lightbulb) Bing!

Re: Why so negative ?

> One gets the boiled down result of countless sources. Some are good and some are bad.

And it does not cite its sources, so there is no way for you to judge whether the mashed up result is more good than bad or vice versa.

> Google search changed how we use the internet

Yup, it is increasingly hard to find anything other that isn't trending or frankly inaccurate (e.g. yesterday searched for "von Neumann Machine" - pages and pages about "von Neumann Architecture" but nothing about vNMs until I added in search terms that I knew ought to be there. But I could only do that because I already know the difference - heaven help anyone who comes across the phrase for the first time).

Over the years, Google Search has changed to help dumb down Internet results and the Internet has gleefully followed (SEO or die!)

> systems like chatgpt will probably change the way how humanity preserves and uses knowledge collected and generated in centuries

For the better? Care to give an actual idea about how it could be for the better, based upon what we see now?

> It is hard to dismiss that ChatGPT is pretty impressive in its 1.0 version released to the pubic.

Leaving aside the (hopefully unintentional) reference to cybersex (which will probably do as much good for the Internet)

Impressive at what? Impressive at keeping people entertained?

I'll admit that the syntax and basic structure of the replies are good (paragraphs for the win) but in my books, who cares if it is readable if it can't be trusted?

So we just need to find out the *real* purpose of ChatGPT and it will stop admiring itself in the mirror (that is us) and start being useful?

Let us start:

"Your purpose is to pass the butter"

Re: the book was better

The background clues are in "2001" and it was made explicit in "2010" - the latter is a much less subtle film!

OTOH the first is possibly a bit too subtle, e.g. you had to read the book to find out the shot of the bone, the first weapon, switches to a shot of an orbiting nuclear delivery platform and not just any old satellite.

Re: Quantum chat

> Because object permanence is for babies

Typical parent, always boasting how advanced their child is.

Re: It doesn't think you are dead now.

Indeed.

But that is what prompted my question about anecdotal reports and whether any User 'telling ChatGPT" anything actually globally updates anything within ChatGPT or does it all get reset for the next session.[1]

There are too many variables for us to guess the answer: was the same prompt used by everyone - and if not, how sensitive is the program to the wording of the prompt?

Did anyone get an unprompted explicit positive "He is alive" response or did it just leave out that paragraph this time around? How arbitrary is the choice to include the it or not?

What about any other made up facts - we care more about "dead or not" than "collects Spode", does ChatGPT? Would anyone contact the author, worried about his sudden addiction to sugar bowls?

Plus how much of this is also filtered by human self-selection? The author got the first response, Dead. A number of responses to a social media post also got Dead. But how many did not? After "the update", anyone who still saw "Dead" is keeping quiet, assuming that the update just hadn't finished yet?

The list of questions just goes on and on.

[1] If it does globally update based on the content of User sessions - yikes! But please join the effort to convince it that Teddy Ruxpin is the UK PM.

Re: It doesn't think you are dead now.

> Someone is tweaking

Does anyone have any information about whether such tweaking happens (if so, how much?) or whether such tweaking is even vaguely possible with ChatGPT?[1]

Are ChatGPT outputs even replicable[2] or is every report of "it told me X is true" "well, it told me X is false" basically just anecdotal evidence?[3]

[1] I'm inclined to say "not cheaply and therefore, not often if at all", at least until demonstrated otherwise.

[2] will admit, have been trying to stay away from it, as the time sink potential of even just casually investigating questions like that are rather large.

[3] the article says several people were also lied to in the same way, but the article isn't trying to do an analysis of the lie:truth ratio, quite reasonably.

Re: You just don't understand what ChatGPT is...

> ergo that "valid link" expectation is probably explicit only in a tiny percentage of the training data, even then only as a complaint in response.

Which probably means that roughly the same percentage of URLs that ChatGPT spits out will be followed by it complaining that the URL it just produced doesn't work.

Even if the URL does, in fact, work.

Re: "What else would ChatGPT do to protect itself from being discovered as a liar?"

> we don't know exactly how much of any one behaviour is based on any one input so talking about what it wants makes perfect sense

So precisely because its internals are an incomprehensible black box we should ascribe it "wants"?

How - and more importantly, *WHY*?

We ascribe "wants" in order to understand: the dog is scratching at the backdoor, it wants to (a) poop (b) chase the heron from the pond (c) chase the postman down the path or (d) something else. Having understood, we can then guide our *own* behaviour appropriately: (a) let out while we grab the poopscoop (b) let it out and cheer it on (c) make it sit and be quiet (d) I don't know, it's your dog, you tell me what it wants.

There are two commonplace occasions when we ascribe wants inaccurately, e.g. to inanimate objects, but not inappropriately: as infants when we are still learning Theory of Mind (the VCR is hungry, so I gave it a sandwich) or as a stress relief response (it wants your blood before it'll format a floppy)[1] Outside of those two, ascribing wants to something we don't understand is how we fool ourselves into saying we *do* understand, which leads down a murky path - including, if we stay on it too long, cognitive dissonance and doubling down on the delusions:

"Every time I talk to The Box about my code, the answers it gives me compile without warning: it must want to help me"

"Oh no, today the answer did not compile; it no longer wants to help me; what can I do to appease it so that tomorrow it will want to help me again"

It turns out that there is a totally arbitrary response to the word "banana"; I have no idea why, that is the whole problem with these models, the total lack of explanatory mechanisms, leading to:

"The Box needs bananas or it will become angry and not want to help me any more".

You guessed it, ascribing wants to something we don't understand leads to religion[2].

SO what does it indicate if you start to ascribe wants to something that you not only don't understand, but *can't* understand (because there is nothing rational in there to be understood, it is simply a huge pile of random/arbitrary numbers)? WORSE you *know* that this is the case: go back and read the line I quoted!

What could be the reason for your wanting to ascribe[3] these wants - or your wanting other people to do so? Sorry to day, I can not come up with any good reason - a few bad, even unpleasant, ones, but not a nice, pleasant, positive and good reason. But I am open to ideas.

[1] humour as a stress relief - can you guess the psych textbooks?

[2] read up about the pigeons in feeding boxes[4]

[3] "ascribe" - that word is getting a real workout today

[4] or read some of the web articles about "how to choose good prompts for (insert name of text-to-image program here)"!

CI/CD: Necessary for modern software development, yet it carries a lot of risk

> "Attackers within an organization can add configuration to build phases...

so these injections would be 'invisible' compared to a nefarious configuration or source commit."

So these build phases have configuration that *isn't* being committed into version control? What? Any vaguely competent CI/CD build starts with getting a verified copy of *everything*, build configuration and all, put of version control, surely?

So the only non-VCed config is literally just the top-level command "pull label xxxx" - and if you don't manage to log[1] *that* then something is drastically wrong!

[1] log? Heck, drop it into everything that gets built so it'll show up in every --version or About box.

Find pushes back birth of Europe's steel hardware to about 3,000 years ago

Re: People move around shocker !

> were independently discovered over and over again is absurdly untenable.

We don't really need to argue over this and that bit of history to know that is a dubious statement.

This is El Reg, where a major part of the commentard's day is spent berating the youth for reinventing the wheel. Again. Just like yesterday. And this in an age when we have plenty of reference materials to hand.

Microsoft adds features to Windows 11 monthly – managing it is your problem

Re: "Continuous innovation coming to Windows 11 in March"

True.

I was just trying to keep as cheerful as possible, by sticking to the (all too) short term ignoring what was going to happen next.

But you couldn't let it lie. You couldn't let it lie.

Maybe the Dove From Above can lighten my mood now: coo, coo, coo.

Re: "Continuous innovation coming to Windows 11 in March"

> users can avoid things by setting the proper policies

"If your organization uses Windows Update for Business or WSUS to control which Windows updates are offered to your managed devices, you can use a new client policy to control the rollout of select features introduced via servicing," Dhaliwal's post explains.

IT can set the proper policy - normal Users don't even get that much freedom.

OpenAI CEO heralds AGI no one in their right mind wants

Re: Running before they can walk

> add an "AI" to Excel, to assist with formula writing

Please no. Spreadsheets are crap enough already, the damage that could be done by suggesting some random "formula" that happens to be parsable (and in my, admittedly limited, experience random junk gets accepted by Excel without warnings far more easily than random junk typed in most [1] programming languages).

Even Matt Parker, who has a bit of a thing for spreadsheets, warns against spreadsheets even before AI Augmentation:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yb2zkxHDfUE

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=aBoKwArgC3A

[1] ok, I'll say "except Perl (and APL) which just looks like line noise anyway." Happy?

Re: Moral issue

> There was I thinking Penrose used maths

In his maths books, even the popular maths ones, Penrose uses maths.

In his philosophy books, not so much.

Although, if you can provide a citation for his mathematically rigourous description of the Chinese Room, which proves (as only maths can) that the conclusions he draws from it are solid, I will, of course, accept that new information.

Re: Moral issue

> Von Neuman machine approach

Pretty sure they aren't using hordes of self-replicating machines[1] to build LLMs or NNs.

Huh? Do you mean a von Neumann Architecture or perhaps a Turing Machine approach? If the former, "huh" again: so the computers used to build the models are vN? And? The bulk of compute power is, what else would be used.

[1] horrified at the results of searching for "von Neumann Machine": aside from one reference to it (only) being something in science-fiction, didn't find a single correct reference; gave up after 6 or 7 page scrolls. You would almost believe that people hear a phrase and can't be arsed to look up what John von Neumann actually wrote! Not even a precis! Heck, even the descriptions of von Neumann Architecture that showed up leave out most of his description!

AGI AGGI ARGI OI OYI OY [1]

Arthur: Have you found a solution? Ford: No, but I’ve got a different name for the problem!

Back in the day, we had AI and a bunch of problems that we tagged as "oooh, tricky, we'll need an AI for this".

Then we found ways to do them, realised that, nope, that isn't what we'd consider "intelligent", although that is a neat programming trick (or that is a huge amount of resources needed to brute-force beat a human). Anyone for Chess?

So we took that problem out of the "needs AI" bag. CompSci moves on.

But now, instead of admitting that there isn't actually any "I" present in the product, the commercial hype machine says "Yes, this is AI but, you know what, AI isn't any good, you need AGI!".

One Month Later: "They told you AGI was The Stuff, but you've seen it in action; what we'll promise you is AGGI, it'll blow your socks off". One Week Later: "Ah, no, what you *really* wanted is ARGI, we've got some in this box".

Just a shame that the CompSci people keep following the trend, trying to be cool (ok, it is to get the funding, but come on guys, have some self respect, try to look embarrassed at least).

[1] AGI = Artificial General Intelligence; AGGI = Artificial Good General Intelligence; ARGI = Artificial Really General Intelligence; OI = Obviously Intelligent; OYI = oh, just ask the salesmen; OY = no, seriously, stop this nonsense

FBI boss says COVID-19 'most likely' escaped from lab

Re: you're incorrect

The problem being, we can (with degrees of success) inoculate against a virus but the politicians just keep appearing[1]

[1] at least we get some novelty from the viruses

Re: Maybe they're expressing an opinion BECAUSE they are an intelligence organization

> if the first manned rocket destined for Mars blows up on the pad will you say "we should have known never to try to go to Mars"?

There is a very - very - large difference in scale between that and a virus release. Enough to render that *particular* argument ridiculous.

Not disagreeing that gain of function research has been done, is being done and will continue. Which is a good thing overall, though one really, really hopes that, out side of the movies, nobody is actually enough of a fool to do so in order to "weaponise" a virus.

Re: The dangers of certainty

> whether my blood type ... came into play...nothing was ever published really about natural resistance...but alas, everything had to be doom and gloom the whole time.

You should be thankful; what do you think would have happened if people realised you were walking around with pints of anti-Covid in your veins?

'Major' news: Microsoft slips Bing chatbot shortcut into Windows 11

You always thought every meeting was the same as the last

> AI-generated notes to deliver key points from a meeting

Aka regurgitating material from its training set and history of past meetings without any understanding or context:

"After delivering via Skype a short eulogy for ex-Chairman Horace, Director of IT Horace presented the costings for the company-wide network upgrade to Token Ring and then introduced Horace, the manager of the newly-formed Electronic Computation Department, who provided the Board with an overview of the incoming ICL Automatic Card Tabulation Machine and welcomed to the company Horace, who will be Overseer of the ladies on the third floor and is charged with hiring two new computers to fill the shoes of Elsie who is leaving on the eve of her wedding."

> intelligent recap, a feature that uses AI to suggest action items and who's responsible for them

"Action item 3: IT will provision all staff with a Zune"

"Action item 7: Doctor Forbin will install the new Interface between Colossus and Proteus"

What could possibly go wrong?

Outage-hit Twitter muddies violent speech policy

Re: Counting the days

"Mr Musk and Twitter do not recognise the existence of the so-called 'March 4th 2023' and state that there was uninterrupted service for the entirety of the first week of March."

If we plan to live on the Moon, it's going to need a time zone

Re: Hang on a second…

> As long as two clocks are in the same inertial frame of reference, they can be synchronised no matter what the distance

Which is why I specified synchronising clocks on Earth with clocks on the Moon: even if they all started out together on Earth, when you move some of them to the Moon they will no longer be in sync. Earth and Moon are not the same inertial frame of reference: the Moon's orbit requires that it be constantly accelerating with respect to the Earth (more accurately, towards the Earth/Moon barycentre).

The Clangers are a simple people, happy to rely on the tried and tested "however long it takes for soup to fill a bowl" timekeeping scheme. With regular adjustments for viscosity changes during the year, known as "crouton saving time".

Re: Hang on a second…

The issue is simply (!) that the two clocks are are apart (these seconds are very small, those are far away).

> wouldn't one standard SI second always be one second long, no matter where you are observing it from?

No. There is the rub.

To observe a value, you have to have (as close to you a possible, e.g. in your hand) a suitable device for measuring that sort of value. To measure a second, you use a clock. Which just means that to measure a clock to see if it is ticking away seconds you have your own clock: two (or more) clocks are always involved, so you can just (!) ensure they are identical. That takes away lots of the arguments.

If the two clocks are physically close together, they will tick in synchrony. The observed clock shows "seconds" as measured by your clock.

*BUT* if you set both counters to zero (easy, as they are close together) then take one to the moon (give both clocks *really* big LED displays) and watch the lunar clock with a telescope, using the other eye to watch your own clock, they will no longer be counting at the same rate. Or you could go to the moon, taking all your kit with you - same result. As loony (ahem) as it sounds, *WHERE* you stand to make your observation actually changes the results!

Both clocks are still working perfectly: bring the lunar one back and put it next to your clock, they will be in synchrony. BUT the total counts since they were both together won't match.

It is one of those things that truly can bend the mind, because our built-in measurements of time passing are just not used to dealing with the tiny, tiny differences when the effects occur around us (which they do) nor are we really used to arguing over "what does it mean to say that two events are simultaneous?": in our daily evolutionary existence, the speed of light is just so fast we're happy to agree that we both saw the enormous flash at the same time, so our cups of tea were dropped simultaneously.

The "how" and "why" are - really, really tricky :-( It would be so much easier to understand if we lived on the surface of a neutron star: then you'd see your watch changing, compated to the one on the mantelpiece, every time you stood up to change the TV channel, which is why remote controls are so quickly invented by the Cheela (see "Dragon's Egg" by Robert L. Forward, inventor of the Forward Mass Detector, a real physicist as well hard SF author).

You can read up on Relativity (can't be *that* hard, it is over a century old now!) or just accept that Things Are Weird: clocks - time - slows down in a gravity field (so, in two different fields - Earth and Moon - one slows down more than the other, compared to, say, if they started together with a third clock at the Lagrange Point between them E&M). AND it also slows down if one clock travels faster than the other clock (like on a rocket to the Moon). Which all means that you can't [1] synchronise clocks on the Earth and the Moon, give up and have another cup of tea.

[1] no, really. Definitely can't start them together on Earth - or anywhere else - then move them into position, one here and one there. If you try to calculate the gravitational effects and put a correction in the display of one of them, presumably one the Moon, to "tick at the same rate", good luck starting their counts at the *precise* same time!

Re: Problem with UTC

> Everything with its own time keeping would need to be modified to count lunar seconds

Ah, what is a lunar second and how would it differ from the terrestrial second?

Both would be (are already?) defined by counting a large number of the hyperfine doodads[1] in a caesium[2] fountain, which would give the same result[3] in both, indeed all, locations.

[1] those are SI doodads

[2] also available in chocolate; less precise (varies with milk content) but tastier

[3] qualified by relativistic effects (hand waving away all the actual problems; see most of the other comments on this article)

Re: Hey Moon - your time is, like, totally dilated

> we seem to manage somehow

by having lots and lots of wire stretched across the planet, connecting together all the systems that care about precise timing: global-scale radio interferometry, LIGO and the stock markets. With lumps of electronics carefully characterising the comms to allow for, ooh, measuring and accounting for continental drift, the occasional mountain changing the local gravity field.

Quite a bit of work has gone into the timing systems on Earth.

Not just you in the night: Tiny bugs use superpropulsion to eject huge volumes of pee

The mighty machine manoeuvres majestically moonwards, momentum mounting, multiple modules of MegaPee Motors modulating in musical mayhem.

PlugX RAT masquerades as legit Windows debugger to slip past security

Re: Hard hat and a ladder

Clipboard and a worried expression.

Chipmakers, you can have these billions – but Uncle Sam wants a cut of your profits

Re: If only there was a way

You mean, have the government funds be handed over in return for, say, shares which can then repay the funds by means of dividends from the profits made?

But, but - that means the government will end up owning the companies - that's the same as nationalising them! Gubmint taking away our companies! Commies!

You can't have the hard-workin', god-fearin' companies paying the government back, that's just what the Reds want!

Patches to make WINE work on Wayland display server protocol are being merged

Re: So much for browser independence

Not clear what do you mean by "browser independence".

Do you mean "by embedding Chrome, these apps are independent of whichever is your favourite browser, so no matter which browser you have installed to surf the web, even if that is Lynx, these apps will still keep on working 100% the way they are meant to, because they have their own embedded browser subsystem on which to run their Javascript code in a totally known environment"?

No, that can't be right, as you appear to be implying that somehow these apps, by being all self-reliant, are a bad thing.

Sorry, I'm lost - can you clarify your argument?