Posts by that one in the corner

Australia asks Twitter how it will mod content without staff, gets ghosted

Re: Those funds are needed, in part, because Twitter is moderating less content

> ROTFLMAO

Glad someone got the joke! Forgot the /s.

Perhaps we can campaign The Register to give us a flying pink unicorn[1] icon for things we'd like to have (like a good Twitter) but we somehow suspect aren't going to seen.

[1] I'd suggest a flying pig but fear that woud be - repurposed - in an unfortunate manner; but not even the commentards can make a flying pink unicorn do anything regrettable[2]

[2] sigh, now I've issued a challenge, haven't I?

Re: Those funds are needed, in part, because Twitter is moderating less content

A car analogy (haven't seen these recently):

The car maker is selling us something that can go from A to B. They want to put in silly flashy gadgets and chrome fins to make you think theirs is the brand to buy.

The role of government (and thence law enforcement) is to say "your car must follow these rules: have indicators, brake lights, brakes that actually work, etc".

The manufacturer will build the car with all of the above included - but they'd rather cut as many corners as they can on the governmental requirements (hey, we can save money by re-using brake lights as indicators! We can put cheap brakes from the Morris Minor into this 15 tonne lorry!). All of the cost of manufacture, sales etc are paid up front by the manufacturer and his lackeys (the salesmen) and are then recouped (plus profit) by charging the customer.

Tax payers' money is then used to keep the manufacturers under control; if they play straight with us then this cost is lower and your taxes go down (well, they are supposed to, but that is another discussion - what is certain is the more the manufacturers play silly buggers the more it costs *all* taxpayers, not just the ones who have volunteered to be customers).

So, no, it is NOT "fair" that taxpayers should be funding Twitters moderators, any more than it would be fair for taxpayers to pay to have proper brakes fitted to the 25 tonne lorry.

Funding moderation comes under business costs and must be paid by the business, then passed onto the paying customers, as in any other business. If the can't manage that then they don't have a viable business model. End of story.

Those funds are needed, in part, because Twitter is moderating less content

That isn't USAzian's tax dollars, so expect Musk to be lauded for getting someone else to pay to (try to) make Twitter a good place to visit.

National newspaper duped into running GPT-4-written rage-click opinion piece

Re: Wireless World

> the process of human procreation in heavily disguised form

The Irish Times did a piece about the Furries?

Crikey.

Shocks from a hairy jumper crashed a PC, but the boss wouldn't believe it

Re: Clothing is dangerous

> wearing a certain brand of socks

Marks and Sparks?

CERN celebrates 30 years since releasing the web to the public domain

WWW is the name of the server running HTTP. Hence http://www.myplace.org

The directory used as the document root for that server - that is htdocs, surely?[1][2]

[1] Yes, Laverne, it is.

[2] ok, many an httpd config allows for a www directory - especially if it is mapping http://www.myplace.org/~fred/ to /home/fred/www

Re: The only reason that WWW ...

Just want to remind everyone that hypertext goes back to 1960, at which time not many people had much experience with hierarchical file systems:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Lib/Dream_Machines

Re: Mirage of democracy

Rather late to this article, but nevertheless:

> However, our study suggests that LaTeX should be used as a document preparation system only in cases in which a document is heavily loaded with mathematical equations.

Or any digital document which the scientific community want to still be able to read in 20, 30, 100 years time.

Hypothesis: scientists who use LaTeX (or even plain TeX!) are more likely to write the next Principia, still worth reading oodles of years later.

Why Microsoft just patched a patch that squashed an under-attack Outlook bug

Re: Security fail by design

Yeah, ok, Thunderbird is probably more likely to be acceptable than Ameol (if only because the latest builds of TB occurred, you know, this century).

Pity one has to actually look for and manually set the plain text option though (it wasn't the default when I set it up on SWMBO's laptop).

Re: Security fail by design

> two mutually contradictory ideas...

The problem here is the third mutually contradictory idea: the notion that it's your computer, and somebody else should be able to do what they want with it.

Did you miss that the intended feature (!) is that the *sender* of the message was *meant* to be able to choose what noise *your* machine would make?

Please tell us that you don't really mean to say that you admire their adding such a feature in the first place?

Re: "You have mail"

Sound cues have been around since the the teletype - hopefully that rings an ASCII 7. And we've pretty much always been able to customise them (even if the original OS didn't provide the means): Three BELs and All's Well during your long process. Remember using the 'wall ' command to let everyone know they had five minutes left to finish before the PDP lab was closing for the day?

Then the noises became more elaborate when home computers came along (SID or the BBC's nicer chip weren't just used in games and Econet existed for passing messages around). Probably at least one person connected their Atari ST up to play poll for email (did KA9Q run on Atari? Something similar did, no doubt) and then send MIDI to a pipe organ; if not, for shame on us all.

It all went backwards again with the PC speaker (many a TSR died to bring us this message notification), although you could get the floppy drive to make a nice set of noises. Hmm, anyone know if anybody used the different clunks a big old hard drive could make as notification alarms? Then the sound card came along and much rejoicing was heard, followed shortly by "how do you turn off all these noises in Windows?"! Sod "you have mail", that can be useful, but why oh why does the entire office need to know when Fred has closed a window? Use the headphones, Fred!

What you perhaps missed here is that, unlike all of the above useful and entertaining historical usage of audible notifications, this particular "feature" we have been discussing let's ME choose what sound YOUR system makes! Muah-ha-ha-ha (would be my choice in many cases).

Re: Security fail by design

> email was plain text

Well, Ameol is available (for Windows, at least) and does a good (enough) job of pulling legible text out of HTML; and if I want to see an oversized email as the sender thinks it should look it is only a few quick clicks to save it and open in a browser (where all the usual blockers can work).

And the confusion on people's faces when you reply and they can't figure out why it looks like that :-)

Value to users

> Barnea wrote that he hoped Microsoft will remove the custom reminder sound feature, saying it poses more security risks than any potential value to users.

Does anyone have *any* use-case for this feature that would *ever* have had any value to the users of Outlook (the ones receiving the email, at least)?

So far, the only uses I've come up with are:

- spamming recipients with advertising jingles

- creating an online service that'll allow you to anonymously send emails with an attached fart noise as a reminder

So far, my money is on the second option being the only reason the feature was ever added in the first place.

Google accused of stomping on rivals as it stamps out annoying Calendar spam

Indeed.

I'm finding it very hard to understand why I would *ever* want to have an entry appear in my calendar that wasn't from a *very* small number of privileged people (and that most certainly is *not* everyone in my address book!) or wasn't added by my own actions, including explicitly accepting an invitation in an email.

Even if an external third-party system was used to let someone add entries, surely you'd expect to go through some steps to allow them the privilege? Not just find out that the whole reason they work is because they can drop random crap in, but don't worry, we are the good guys and promise not to misbehave!

Astronomers say they've seen the largest explosion yet – and we just had to talk to them

Re: We need our clear skies

True, but I was assuming that even those not interested in the science - which certainly includes the "stop whining about clear skies" brigade - can figure out that anything with "Impact" and "Last Alert" in the name is something that they would want to keep operating optimally.

We need our clear skies

> was first recorded by ground-based telescopes – the Zwicky Transient Facility in California, and the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System in Hawaii

Whilst it is true the the space telescopes are generally immune to the effects of all those Internet from Above constellations, it is the data from the ground-based telescopes that tell us where to point them in the first place. Especially the all-sky surveys and the (amateur astronomer-driven) repeated target surveys (e.g. checking galaxies for supernovae).

And that is ignoring the obvious primary function of the Hawaii installation: it does what it days on the tin!

Elon Musk finally finds 'someone foolish enough to take the job' of Twitter CEO

Re: Meat Shield

Seeing the totally unexpected (/s) bile generated from a post of Linda Yaccarino's CV with a huge highlight pointing to her position with the WEF it certainly looks like Elon has chosen someone who will - get a lot of reactions from the twitterati (and reactions means tweets means engagement metrics improve - ka-ching).

Maybe Elon wants to play the balance card? Look, this group say nasty things about me, but that group say nasty things about her, so Twitter provides a balanced representation of views now!

She is going to do well from this no matter what - just so long as she avoids reading her own Twitter feed without a heavy-duty muck filter in place, no need to take silly risks.

Ya got me agin, dang Vulture!

I should have just resisted; I should have just checked the URL before tapping on it:

> Perhaps this person is the new chief? Or this one?

Not only have I had to reach for the mind bleach but, worse, I've BEEN TO TWITTER AGAIN! It is in my browser history.

Worse, I scrolled. Dear Heaven, help me, I scrolled! Why would I do that? What insanity from the stygian deep possessed me?

Just promise me that you'll not do the same and I'll suffer the madness knowing that, at least, it can serve as a warning to the world.

BOFH: Ah. Company-branded merch. So much better than a bonus

Re: Got some NSFW merch at W.

Hang onto that - it is a rare thing indeed for any company to have the honesty to brand itself as just a bunch of wankers.

Open source AI makes modern PCs relevant, and subscriptions seem shabby

Re: TIME

> He's working on human image output and SD seems to do that reasonably well,

Thanks for fleshing that out (cough, sorry).

Definitely a time sink. Had to rein myself in, a few nights back, from seeing what happened if you just feed it short prompts like "peculiar" - I claim this is serious "probing the tag space attached to the training set" and not "a waste of time making icky pictures".

Re: TIME

Playing with SD does indeed take up time - playing with Craiyon/DALL-E takes up an equal amount of time! Either you find image generators bleh or they'll sink their fingers into you.

However...

> to serve up the results he seeks

You haven't said whether or not he can get the results *he* seeks "out of the box" with any of the cloudy options (and is fiddling with SD just because he can) or whether he has done all he can do with "Prompt Engineering" and turned to something he *can* train and himself out of desperation. Has he spent those three weeks screaming at the Heavens and kicking the cat down the cobbles or has he had three weeks of geek-gasm, twiddling the knobs with manic glee?

> get a great output

Especially with image generation, one man's "great output" is another man's "If thine eye offends thee, tear it out".

> you'll get some modest results

Or some terrific results that more than meet your requirements.

> Either you jump in with both feet or you settle for almost worthless "results".

Sorry, but again, judged by what criteria? Are we talking about how the horse always seems to have an extra bit of leg and the astronaut is clearly not side saddle like you asked? And are the online systems doing it better for you?

> I decided it's probably not worth my limited time resources to continue the experiment

Again, same question to you: do you find that the cloudy options, including the paid-for (trading money for time) give you results that you can - and do - make use of?

> (tens of thousands out of hundreds of millions of computer owners) are bothering to experiment with the local-based AI

Aside from probably underestimating the number of computer owners in the world, how does that compare with the number bothering to experiment with the cloud-based AI (and more than just once or twice for a giggle, a quick post about how it changed their life and then going back to Love Island)?

Re: Electrons being pushed

That raises the question: do we actually have any useful & reliable figures to work from?

To start with, the comparative energy costs between pushing bits in the cloudy DCs versus at home? Including the cooling needed when you have all the kit in such close proximity - no aircon in Corner Corner[1] - and any other infrastructure that wouldn't be in place if the machinery wasn't there? Without a PC I'd still have a desk[2] and somewhere to put it. We're no doubt using different CPUs, RAM etc, what are their comparative operations per Watt?[3]

Then, even though they may be "monster" machines compared to many a household, they aren't in the same league as the cloudy ones - which is the whole point, this is why the models being run at home are smaller. So we're swapping runs of a ginormous model for runs of a merely quite large model: fewer bits, quite a lot fewer bits in motion.

Shall we just assume that the extra transport costs for the cloud (all that Javascript!) are trivial compared to the compute costs and are probably swamped by Netflix usage.

[1] Although, if there was. maybe the window would be closed and I wouldn't have a wasp buzzing around my keyboard! Gerroff.

[2] Only it'd be a good-looking desk, with a blotter and a heavy bound household ledger.

[3] Sounds like the sort of thing one ought to know but ... reliable figures, which aren't triggering "marketing department" vibes?

Is there anything tape can’t fix? This techie used it to defeat the Sun

Re: Sun outages

> try to insist that the outage is postponed and done outside normal working hours.

Hmm, Yehovah managed to hold it back for five minutes - Joshua 10:13 - and are we not the Gods of IT?

Alien rock causes cosmic disturbance in New Jersey home

Look to the skies - and your gutters

Having a space rock of this size land on your house is thankfully rare (in case you are in the UK and were wondering what the proper procedure is for dealing with a meteorite, historical guidance from Middlesbrough is that it should be kept in the Railway Lost Property Office:

https://www.yorkshiremuseum.org.uk/collections/collections-highlights/the-middlesbrough-meteorite/ ).

But the referenced article from the PSI is simply ignoring the massive number of meteorites that reach the surface of Earth all the time - just because they are too tiny to actually crash through your roof shouldn't mean they are just forgotten about! Micrometeorites can be found pretty much everywhere and all you need to do is clean out a few gutters:

https://www.newscientist.com/letter/mg23331090-800-10-finding-meteorites-in-your-gutters-is-easy/

India calls for all mobile phones to include FM radios

Re: It may be a market-related choice, but I would like to still have the option

You are not alone.

FM radio is a favourite around these parts and would be sorely missed (thankfully we're thoroughly unhip and can bear to use a 'phone that still provides it).

We still have little MP3 players 'cos they will do FM as well. Far lighter than lugging the 'phone around when planting out in the garden and it has a clip - no slipping out and disappearing into the water butt!

This upstart is selling tickets for a SpaceX trip to the world's first private space station

They can not risk any of the dangers associated with "bring your own": spacesuits are one thing, but can you imagine the dangers from 30 days of reheated egg and kipper pie?

Spin aint just for our marketing department

> The habitat will eventually connect with others into a 100-meter-long spinning space station currently being designed by the biz

100 meter (sic) long , 4 wide and spinning. Around which axis and at what RPM?

Spinning on the long axis would be easiest on the couplings between the boxes but might be a little too interesting for the guests, although it would be very egalitarian. You need[1] about 20 rpm for a good effect and you get maximum use of the floor space. Just try to be under 2m tall or you'll be watching your canapes accelerating "up" past your nose.

Using the short axis reduces the rpm to about 4 but now you have to pay more to be allowed at the ends where eating and drinking is comfortable. Hang on, we can vary the charges for each of the containers by time of day: the hub is cheap during meal times but charged at a premium for leisure activities!

But maybe it isn't really meant to be 100 m *long* but 100 m circumference? Now we want around 7.5 rpm and we get a ceiling! *BUT* it is vitally important that the guests don't all start walking in the same direction: you will be issued with a smartwatch which tells you every 10 minutes how much you've added or removed from the hotel's momentum. Please pay attention to the speaker system: if you hear a tone and the word "Widdershins" repeated three times you must immediately start to jog against the direction of the arrows painted on the walls.

[1] according to this random calculator I found on the web

What you need to know from today's Google IO: PaLM 2, Pixel Fold, AI everywhere

Hsiao demonstrated by...

Yes, but did it actually *work* and return back an accurate and complete dataset? Did anyone bother to check?

Microsoft can't stop injecting Copilot AI into every corner of its app empire

Do the benefits far outweigh anything that are the societal consequences

You know, from an entirely logical, cold-hearted, machine-like, point of view, eugenics has benefits that far outweigh societal consequences.

Doesn't mean it's an idea that we should pursue.

Two Microsoft Windows bugs under attack, one in Secure Boot with a manual fix

Don't forget to check your Virtual Machines

Have you enabled Secure Boot in a VM?

Because you'll have to check the effects of the key revocation on those VMs as well: it *may* all work seamlessly in 9 months time, when you boot up the the "only need to use this once per year" VM..." (the one you keep with the Windows-only Creepy Halloween game and your high-scores from the last 8 years tournaments).

Although you are less likely to be dual-booting within a VM (for day to day use, at least) so that removes a worry.

Not wanting to defend Microsoft so much as point out that this one is a bit trickier than most Windows updates have to deal with.

> there won't patch for an actively exploited issue for 9ish months?

Sort of true. There isn't to be a totally automatic, we'll do it to you now, patch for thos 9ish months.

You can apply all the patching needed (if all you care about is Windows) just(!) follow the instructions.

But if they deployed a final automagic fix *now* then as soon as your machine finishes the update *that* copy of *that* OS is the only one that will boot (as you won't have had time to fix up any other copies). You are then in a pickle if you had a dual boot, especially into Linux (you may well demand that a Windows patch seek out and update any other copies of Windows on that machine, but expecting them to patch all the other potential OSes?).

And if you are keeping full disk backups, those suddenly became unbootable, so fingers crossed you don't need them.

Any suggestions about "well, you can just switch off Secure Boot and update all those manually" - well, that is just back to doing the manual process (which they've already made available) plus you aren't using Secure Boot whilst you do so - and presumably you think that is a Bad Thing to do or the whole situation is simply moot to you anyway.

Wait for the capacitors to discharge before switching on again

Intrigued by the implications of the manual update process steps:

3c Restart the device

3d Verify installation and revocation list was successfully applied

3e Wait at least 5 minutes and the restart the device again

Wait 5 minutes? For the electrons in the EEPROM to settle down? To phone home and report that we've been good little boys and girls?

Re: sooooo

Well, they say:

Downloadable Windows media (ISO files) from Microsoft, updated with the latest Cumulative Updates will be available through familiar channels including Microsoft Software Download, Visual Studio Subscriptions, and the Volume Licensing Service Center. If this media works with your device and configuration, there is no need to follow the manual steps below to create updated bootable media.

So get it quick before the OS you are using is declared obsolete.

Re: Yikes!

Looks like you are correct. From the Microsoft KB article:

Because of the security changes required for CVE-2023-24932 and described in this article, revocations must be applied to supported Windows devices. After these revocations are applied, the devices will intentionally become unable to start by using recovery or installation media, unless this media has been updated with the security updates released on or after May 9, 2023. This includes both bootable media, such as discs, external drives, network boot recovery, and restore images

Backups of Windows which were imaged before the installation of the Windows updates released on or after May 9, 2023 will need to be recreated after installing these updates. These will not be directly usable to restore your Windows installation after the revocations have been enabled on your device.

Linux is also affected by this issue. Microsoft has been coordinating with representatives from major Linux distributions to make the fix available for their operating systems. You must contact support for your Linux distribution for guidance on mitigating this issue for your Linux devices.

The first real robot war is coming: Machine versus lawyer

Re: I tried ChatGPT for an engineering question

> ChatGPT was quick to provide you with things that looked like answers

The term for which is "answeroid".

Brexit Britain looks to French company to save crumbling borders and immigration tech

Re: To make decisions about people crossing the border

That's what we get for trusting to automated systems: one autocorrect later and we've reversed the Party Policy!

Vive la revolution mecanique!

Of course Russia's ex-space boss doubts US set foot on the Moon

We all know The Truth[1]

Why won't anyone take this man seriously? Of course no-one got to the Moon in the 1960s!

You can't get to the Moon 'cos it is *above* the plane of the Earth and the only way for us to leave is to drop *down* over the edge! If you straight up you'll just bounce off the Bowl of The Heavens[2], as ane fule kno.

Which is why the USSR signed the Antartic Treaty in 1959, to hide the fact that they had failed in their attempt to pull the Glorious People's Magnetic Ladybird up the outside of the Ice Wall when (ex) Corporal Ivan claimed he could "make it dance" by quickly flipping over the magnets on the inside[3].

What's that? Nap time? Thank you, Nurse.

[1] The Truth shall make ye fret!

[2] Bowl! Revisionist nonsense, promulgated after the People's Committee airbrushed the Goddess Nut out of the photographs and changed the story of the great steam train journey carrying the hero to The Russias, so that it now carried the Glorious Revolution across the sky, spitting out hot embers to form the stars

[3] This is the reason that searching for "magnetic ladybirds" nowadays will only show results for fridge magnets and not the original "two round black magnets" technology; don't be taken in by conspiratorial claims that the round black magnets were just cardboard props used in early TV broadcasts to hide the fridge light from the cameras.

Twitter admits 'security incident' made private Circles not so much

Think of it as Free Speech In Action

You didn't want everyone seeing that message?

Why? What are you trying to hide?

Anyway, you gave it to us for free, we are free to do with it what we want. Free speech from you, for us to freely monetise. That is The American Way[1]

You disagree? So *that* is what you were hiding, you Unamerican commie you!

[1] As freely interpreted in The Book Of Elon, just after The Whitepaper[2]

[2] All Hail The Whitepaper

Dump these insecure phone adapters because we're not fixing them, says Cisco

Re: I once was able to test them

> I have no idea how on earth they managed to make their device that bad.

Practice. Years of it.

Re: To be fair back in the day there were "full digital" CD's and AAD CD's

> you could hear the stylus drop onto the record

Vitally important for playing The Goons records:

'Ere, 'oo stuck that needle in my nut?

Re: Bit hard on the bright young things?

> Explain this...

How about being able to get all the artwork at a size you can actually appreciate it? With liner notes and lyrics that you can read without a microscope?

And gatefolds without half of it sitting under the CD holder?

We may huff about the quality of so-called music these days, but the artwork on CDs is dreary as well. Why bother with a Roger Dean double gatefold, just shove another dull band photo on there!

I admit I'm listening to the CD but I'm looking at the Yessongs LP cover.

Re: Bit hard on the bright young things?

That cable is chock full of amazing ideas to improve your audio. Like untwisting the twisted pair. And they spotted that any good cable must have at least one of those mysterious lumps near one end, so not only have they provided two mysterious lumps, but theirs are eco-friendly: made of purest bamboo!

But that is an old product, and misses out on an important feature: arrows! Yes, if you don't have arrows on the cable, how can you know it is plugged in the right way?

As this current listing for a £1,199.00 ethernet cable (0.75 metres - don't worry, it cheaper per metre in longer pieces; how does £10,999.00 for 12m sound?) states

"All audio cables are directional. The correct direction is determined by listening to every batch of metal conductors used in every AudioQuest audio cable. Arrows are clearly marked on the connectors to ensure superior sound quality. For best results have the arrow pointing in the direction of the flow of music. For example, NAS to Router, Router to Network Player."

https://www.analogueseduction.net/ethernet-and-streaming-cables/audioquest-rje-diamond-ethernet-cable.html

Owner of 'magic spreadsheet' tried to stay in the Lotus position until forced to Excel

Re: Better than a PM

To do it properly, you need to combine the triangulation of IP pings with Jake's use of echo ^G (hang on, wasn't that the - apocryphal? - origin story of IP ping, that the receiving machine actually went "ping"?).

Bonus points if someone is also following the cables and tugging on them to see what jolts loose:

"Ping"

"5 metres"

"Ping!"

"3 metres"

"PING!!"

"1 metre"

"That's not possible! It's inside the room with us!"

[FX: BOFH tugs hard on ethercable, box shifts on false ceiling, teeters on foam tile the falls, dragging BOFH up partition wall]

"Aaaargh!"

[FX: ceiling collapses, wire tentacles drop, entangle PFY who is yanked, screaming, into void as server rack crashes down on other side of rafter. PHB fires wildly and terminates anyone in his sights]

(TV edit: removed the following scene, where techie leans over server, says "It's dead" just as the optical drive tray shoots open, impaling his dangling id badge)

Python still has the strongest grip on developers

Re: Languages

> CPAN was, to my knowledge, the first modern software package repository

It was based upon the CTAN model for distributing TeX related materials, which started 2 or 3 years earlier than the Perl archive.

Microsoft mucks with PrtScr key for first time in decades

Re: As we suspected

Heathen!

Just because ini files are readable, can contain comments in case you forget why you changed that setting, can be managed within version control, can be copied from one system to the next - how can any of that compare to the wonder of The Registry or the sheer joy of screen capturing the Settings dialogues and hoping you'll still be able to find those same GUI controls in the next releases of the OS?

Microsoft stumps loyal fans by making OneDrive handle Outlook attachments

> The first time you get a discovery request from some kind of litigation you'll wish you hadn't kept so much stuff.

Or, you know, don't do stuff that you shouldn't in the first place?

Re: Stick to IMAP, move to local every so often

> or POP

As I said to the wife: "Your Thunderbird is GO!"

US defense tech veterans call for a separate Cyber Force

This is my keyboard.

There are many like it, but this one is mine. My keyboard is my best friend. It is my life. I must master it as I must master my life. My keyboard, without me, is useless. Without my keyboard, I am useless.

Alibaba and Huawei set to debut generative AI chatbots

Re: Wouldn't a global AI model have to be trained in both English and Chinese?

> trained in both English and Chinese

Shiny.

Careful selection of criteria

> Out of 15 questions, ten responses reportedly outperform competitors. Benchmarks for determining that result were not disclosed.

Those ten suggested buying new underpants on AliBaba, four suggested Amazon and one the running dogs of capitalist imperialism that is Marks and Sparks.