* Posts by druck

2992 publicly visible posts • joined 6 Jun 2007

Beijing issues list of approved CPUs – with no Intel or AMD

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We should be worried

The FT chatted to some IT shops inside China and they confirmed that they're phasing out items like PCs running Windows, because shop-at-home mandates have taken force.

This is the most concerning news; just think what the Chinese will be able to do once unshackled from the disastrous security vulnerabilities and constant pointless change for the sake of change which Microsoft operating systems inflict on us in the west.

Apple iPhone AI to be powered by Baidu in China, maybe

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Re: I assume because Chinese law

China's regulation of AI models is only concerned with political censorship, it could still tell you to drink bleach or any other artificial stupidity.

Crypto wallet providers urged to rethink security as criminals drain them of millions

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They seem happy taking the entire bloody lot.

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Some of the flaws are so obvious and intractable, the only explanation is they have been designed that way to allow exploitation once enough people have adopted the wallets.

Catch Java 22, available from Oracle for a limited time

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Re: Java Is UnbeluckingFievable

Well if you do delete a space Python will tell you as soon as you run it. C/C++/C# will compile happily, but you'll damn well be putting that space back in as the result of a code review, so what have you gained apart from wasting everyone's time?

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Re: Java Is UnbeluckingFievable

Python is an awful language, who in their right mind thought spaces should be important?

So you don't think spaces are important? You write your Java/C/C++/C# as one great long line, or lines with no indentation whatsoever, or maybe random indentation just for the hell of it?

Of course you don't (unless you are a complete and utter knob), if you write properly laid out code in other languages following any sensible coding standard, Python is the same just without the curly brackets.

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I agree. I was on one of the first C++ courses in the UK at UCL in 1987, it was very primitive C++ back then and had to be compiled in to C by Cfront. There weren't many text books at the time, so our lecturer was writing one, he handed out a draft to everyone and offered to buy a pint for anyone that spotted a mistake. The next day I came in with a list of 10, did I get a single pint? Hell no.

But learning C++ before even C worked out really well. I was able to drop down to C and do embedded stuff for a number of years, before coming back to C++ in Visual Studio for Windows applications. Going to C# was easy (on Linux with mono rather than Windows), it had the clean syntax that C++ should have had all along, and still trying to achieve with everything after C++11. I'd even say it helped with Python, which although different in many ways, I still come at problems from the OO perspective rather than purely functional.

Crypto scams more costly to the US than ransomware, Feds say

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Stop

You can't...

You can't ban stupidity.

You can't ban criminality.

But you can ban crypto.

AI researchers have started reviewing their peers using AI assistance

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Re: Who raised you people?

Is there nothing that can't be turned to shit by AI?

Now even peer reviewed papers are worthless.

Cyber baddies leak 70M+ files online, claim they're from AT&T

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Time and PII waits for no man

An AT&T spokesperson at the time said the data was "several years old,"

Well that's OK as names, Social Security Numbers, dates of birth, addresses, emails, phone numbers and other personal information couldn't possibly be useful after several years.

Raspberry Pi OS 5.2 is here, with pleasant tweaks to Wayland-based desktop

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Re: No way-land

Except it being a systemd based system. So it doesn't need rsyslog.

Yeah lets throw out looking at simple text logs in /var/log as that's far too easy. Instead how about a bloody convoluted journalctl program will a million options to try to extract something from the 2.5GB of binary effluent journald has left on my drive.

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No way-land

I'll have to see what the upgrade does for my non Wayland Pi 5, as when I tried a fresh install of Bookworm it was awful, so different to what I've been used to. I couldn't even get Wayland to change resolution from FullHD on a 1440p monitor and rsyslog wasn't installed by default - there is no excuse for that. I tried to install my usual Mate desktop and it completely ignored it, booting back in Pixel, even after configuring X.org. Hopeless.

From my very first Raspberry Pi Model B with 256MB, I've always upgraded the OS in place and moved the card to each new model of Pi I've bought. This worked through every OS version and Pi all the way up to Bullseye on a Pi 4B. I'd had the 64 bit kernel installed for sometime to play with 64 bit containers, but I was still using a 32 userland, then about a year ago I moved from 32 bit to 64 bit by taking a clean install on another partition, getting the same same packages on it as the 32 bit, then copying over the contents of /home and /etc, so not quite an in-place cross-grade but effectively ended acting like one.

After seeing how different a clean install of bookworm was on the Pi 5B, I decided, despite the dire warnings, to do an in place upgrade from the 64 bit bullseye to bookworm on the Pi 4 and I was pleased to find after following the instructions at PiMyLifeUp it worked perfectly. A few more steps than a normal in place upgrade, but I kept a working Mate desktop, rsyslog and all the rest of my setup tuned over the past 12 years, but with no Wayland or the other changes like getting rid of dhcpcd. It was then a simple step take that card out of the Pi 4 and put it in to the new Pi 5, to enjoy the 3x performance increase.

Microsoft promises Copilot will be a 'moneymaker' in the long term

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Re: Lies, damn lies and statistics

If it were true businesses really need to consider if they are employing the right people.

Uber Australia to pay $178M to settle cabbies' class action

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Uber debuted, increased the supply of rides, cut prices, and won substantial market share at the expense of drivers and license owners who soon endured a massive dose of digital disruption.

They also increased the supply of unsafe vehicles carrying paying passengers, increased the number of unvetted drivers, and increased the number of rapes and murders.

But that's OK, because if you weren't raped or murdered, you saved a few quid.

FCC ups broadband benchmark speeds, says rural areas still underserved

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Re: never been to Europe

And for those of us who live where there's municipal fiber, the slowest you can go is gigabit, most cities with it range from $60 to $85 a month.

Those prices would only be reasonable in the UK if there were still $2.50 to the pound, at today's exchange rates they are ridiculous.

IBM CEO pay jumps 23% in 2023, average employee gets 7%

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Forget about the stratosphere...

...7% on average - that's bloody good.

Google brains plumb depths of the uncanny valley with latest image-to-video tool

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Thumb Down

Re: But … why?

Yes research does need justification, if the only possible use for what they are developing is to mislead and defraud people.

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Stop

But … why?

Forget the quality of the current images, ask the question; is there any legitimate use for such fakery?

Broadcom boss Hock Tan acknowledges 'some unease' among VMware community

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Facepalm

Yes because Microsoft have never gouged anyone with their entirely fair and transparent licencing.

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Black Helicopters

Re: Way to go : Tan

Remember the extension pack which makes Virtual Box actually useable is chargeable for commercial use, and means paying Oracle and being subjected to their audits.

Cryptocurrency laundryman gets hung out to dry

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Crypto mixers aren't inherently illegal

Well that's your first problem.

Caffeine makes fuel cells more efficient, cuts cost of energy storage

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Happy

Come on, own up...

...who spilled their coffee on the experimental fuel cell?

Developers beware, Microsoft's domain shakeup is coming soon

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WTF?

Oh what a shame...

...I've redirected *.microsoft to fuck.off

From quantum AI to photonics, what OpenAI’s latest hire tells us about its future

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The universal principle of no free lunch.

Quantum computers aren't going to work, they aren't going to crack encryption, and they are going to do sod all for 'AI'.

European Commission broke its own data privacy law with Microsoft 365 use

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If you were there, you probably can't remember it.

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It's Rice-Davies applies as in Mandy Rice-Davies

Linux for older phones postmarketOS changes its init system

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Re: If systemd is so modular

I have read the docs, but the only option if you just want syslog is to have it log to memory, and despite all the vacuum settings, it still manages to fill up all the time on my Raspberry Pis.

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Re: without it (also) running as a systemwide init thing?

If systemd is so modular, how do I use it without journald?

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Coffee/keyboard

Re: Ah fuck

Physically sick is how I felt reading that first paragraph.

Your PC can probably run inferencing just fine – so it's already an AI PC

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Think of the <s>children</s>billionaires

When you pay a subscription for AI, a fair chunk of that goes on the purchase of expensive servers and the electricity to power the vast amount of computation to train and run the model.

The advantage of an AI PC, is you purchase the expensive hardware and pay for the electricity, and your generosity enables multi billion dollar companies turn your subscription fees in to even more profit.

What's not to like?

For them.

Kremlin accuses America of plotting cyberattack on Russian voting systems

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Lets alter all the votes...

...from

1. Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin

to

2. Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin

That'll show him who can interfere in elections.

Job interview descended into sweary shouting match, candidate got the gig anyway

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I've only had one interview where they got me in front of a developer's computer and asked me how to fix something he couldn't do. I'd recently solved the same problem so gave them the outline to the solution, but didn't like the way it was done. When offered me the job on the spot, I turned them down, and 3 months later they went out of business. Which goes to show if they are that desperate to use interview candidates as unpaid consultants, there isn't much of a future for the company.

Beijing plans at least three new rockets – maybe reusables too

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On your head be it

It says they may start doing reusable boosters, but I assume these aren't, in which case; are any of these going to perform a controlled re-entry of the first stage? Or are they going to just drop them anywhere downrange on people they don't care about, as with the Long March 5B?

LinkedIn's turn to fall over: Outage hits thinkfluencer hub

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Non status page

The Microsoft-owned site's status page shows everything is OK, at time of writing, as does the API health monitor.

As with most services these days the status page may as well just be static HTML, and the only time it will tell you anything useful is if it is down itself.

Logitech MX Brio 705 – where Ultra HD meets Ultra AI

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Re: 4K?

At my last place we made video conferencing systems and although we experimented with 4K, its still some time away, not everyone is using Full HD yet.

We did by a 4K Brio, and pointed it at our 5x5 screen video wall to capture output of tests, and it worked great for that. It was attached to a Raspberry Pi 4B, and a small Python program gave the correct runes to ffmpeg to capture single frames or videos, do keystone correction (as the camera was in the ceiling looking down), crop out the screen(s) of interest and caption with a timestamp.

IP address X-posure now a feature on Musk's social media thing

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You can't have it both ways

One minute everyone is crying out for peer to peer encryption for security, now they are claiming it exposes IP addresses and you should go through the companies server for "enhanced privacy".

Copilot pane as annoying as Clippy may pop up in Windows 11

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Boffin

No, every version of Windows is bad, it's just that each new worse version makes you nostalgic for the last but one version your fading memory now looks back on fondly.

Rapid7 throws JetBrains under the bus for 'uncoordinated vulnerability disclosure'

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Mushroom

What is this, 1958?

I'm expecting "The Whole world is in his hands" to back at the top of the charts any day now.

Brit chip industry wonders if UK budget will put its money where its silicon is

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Re: “lack of funding to support later stage growth … to scale up and become globally competitive”

we don't have any meaningful high tech industry

You really don't have any clue as to what this country produces.

We have plenty of high tech industry, you don't seem to be able to tell the difference between that an low tech manufacturing.

Flying car biz Alef claims 3K preorders, still hasn't done a proper demo

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Simple economics

The reality is that if you can afford to fly your own aircraft, whether it be an aeroplane or a helicopter, with all the training that involves, and the substantial costs of purchasing the aircraft, maintenance and fuel, you can afford to drive a very nice conventional car to the airport, and hire another one at the other end. Having a combination vehicle which is horribly compromised in carrying capacity, range and speed in both the in the air and on the ground, doesn't make any sense practically or economically.

Updates are plenty but fans are few in Windows 11 land

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Re: MS is like a certain candiate for POTUS

You've already found the light, now stop worrying and let Microsoft carry on the way they are. The world will be a better place when the AI hype runs out and they've faded in to insignificance.

Year of Linux on the desktop creeps closer as market share rises a little

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Re: Repeat after me:

If you think Outlook is any good at email, you really don't understand email.

Ransomware ban backers insist thugs must be cut off from payday

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Re: Payment options

Exactly, you don't need to ban payments, just the method used in 100% of payments.

The federal bureau of trolling hits LockBit, but the joke's on us

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The most sensible thing I've ever read on crypto currencies

You can't trade cocaine futures on commodity exchanges because it is a destructive drug that enables crime. Why tolerate Bitcoin?

This ^^^^

Health system network turned out to be a house of cards – Cisco cards, that is

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Re: Heading off after completion of a task

Runways don't have any such marks on them, the "point of no return" or more accurately reaching V1 seed, differs for each type of aircraft, it's take off weight and atmospheric conditions.

French cloud Scaleway starts renting Alibaba's RISC-V SoC

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Those are very slow for cloud systems. For two months rent you could buy your own Pi 4B.

Incoming wave of AI is making buying PCs riskier for businesses

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Facepalm

Re: Simple Question..

So you get charged exactly the same monthly fee for Co-Pilot, but you have shelled for the NPU hardware and the electricity costs - Microsoft thanks you from the bottom of their wallet.

Stack Overflow to charge LLM developers for access to its coding content

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Re: "traffic to Stack Overflow has steadily dropped over time"

Usenet misses you - it is still there.

OpenAI sued, again, for scraping and replicating news stories

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Re: How Long?

The sooner the better.

What is GitHub Copilot Enterprise? You and your org just might find out firsthand

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Re: Fighting claims that it cribbed code from humans.

No what they are doing is stealing other peoples code and using their vast profits in to bullying the owners to giving up their rights when faced with an army of layers and an indefinite appeals process.