* Posts by Scott 26

337 publicly visible posts • joined 11 Jun 2009

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How to run an LLM on your PC, not in the cloud, in less than 10 minutes

Scott 26

Re: ... and ...

A colleague gave a demo of an LLM he had running at home ... his home PC was only running a 1060....!

Pretty sure he used the Llama 2 7B model specifically due to its lower memory requirements.

They call me 'Growler'. I don't like you. Let's discuss your pay cut

Scott 26

Re: Depends on your definition of growler I guess.

I used to deliberately mispronounce 'Scrumpy' as "Scumble'... it's made from apples, well, mostly apples.

Cops visit school of 'wrong person's child,' mix up victims and suspects in epic data fail

Scott 26

Re: "thankfully these data errors are incredibly infrequent"

"Ahhh - the old 'eat the telly before I can nick ya' trick"

A visa to fill Australia's empty tech jobs is getting more expensive, but maybe better value

Scott 26

another plus - your neighbours to the East are the best in the world

Self-taught-techie slept on the datacenter floor, survived communism, ended a marriage

Scott 26

Re: Daily!?! RFC begs to differ

My daughter is a nurse, and the number of elderly patients they have to try and save is staggering - a good number don't survive the trauma of the recovery procedure. She's told her grandmother (my MIL) to get a DNR, but grandma took it poorly initially - I think she has seen sense since though. Sir Pterry's Choosing To Die should be mandatory viewing for all families who care about their elders' dignity.

Scott 26

Re: Daily!?! RFC begs to differ

I got an email yesterday saying they had left me voice message....

(my work .sig says "please call via Teams" - I have patchy cellphone reception)

----

But in a previous life I was opening an email when I detected a shadow over my desk: it was the PM who had just sent the email, wanting to know if I had read it, and just in case I hadn't, he had a print-out of it in his hand........ twat.

Election security threats in 2024 range from AI to … anthrax?

Scott 26

Megadeth left off the list as they are completely benign these days

RIP John Walker, software and hardware hacker extraordinaire

Scott 26
Joke

No mention of his sub-4-minute mile?

Tesla's Cybertruck may not be so stainless after all

Scott 26

Re: Cybertruck - the gift that keeps on giving...

yup... "e-coat"

electrostatically applied paint containing zinc etc

(if I correctly remember my ICI Paints days, 20-mumble years ago)

Australia passes Right To Disconnect law, including (for now) jail time for bosses who email after-hours

Scott 26

Re: Flexi time

> why the fuck should I take holiday to go renew a drivers license in the USA

or vote!

WTF are elections held on a Tuesday?

Oh yeah... religion .... and historically long travel times

Scott 26

in East Australis we say "shit, we are seeing American-style politics here" and we mean Trump-style, not Biden-style.... we've just had change in govt (took 3 parties to form a coalition to get a majority) and each of the three campaigned on some pretty horrific policies (repeal of the smoke-free act???? ffs) and they still got in... and now the huddled masses are whinging "we didn't vote for this...." ... yeah, you did.

Back on topic: rushed policy = poor policy. No surprise it's going to be reworked. How was it worded? It was hardly going to be "you sent 1 email 5 minutes after I knocked off for the day... off to jail with you!" shirley! And as others have said: it's not going to be the top that cops it, even though they are responsible for creating the culture that requires middle managers to reach out to staff after hours....

BOFH: Hearken! The Shiny Button software speaks of Strategic Realignment

Scott 26

"Quantum"

(forgetting that quantum levels are very very small)

Please install that patch – but don't you dare actually run it

Scott 26

> More like: Brain, please meet Damage.

"Brian Damage", shirley!

Scott 26

Re: Uptime

First IT job, supporting a company with a Project office... they purchased a few copies of AutoCAD for new office layout design purposes.... but it came with a dongle. A USB dongle. We ran NT4 workstations.... sigh. As if getting their SCSI-attached scanner to work under NT4 wasn't challenging enough.... they had to introduce USB to the fun and games.

I can't remember how we fixed it.... either we found some 3rd party drivers/hacks. Or put them on the fast track for the Win2000 workstation upgrade project.

Raspberry Pi Pico cracks BitLocker in under a minute

Scott 26

Genuine question: What is the solution for non-windows machines? What's the *nix equivalent of BL? And would it be just as vulnerable (MitM sniffing between CPU and TPM)?

Techie climbed a mountain only be told not to touch the kit on top

Scott 26

Re: I see what you did there!!!

.... it's time we knocked the bastard off

(plus I had to scroll far too far down to get to this comment)

It took Taylor Swift deepfake nudes to focus Uncle Sam, Microsoft on AI safety

Scott 26

Re: Apart from any legislation likely being ineffectual...

> So I did some research

Not all heroes wear capes

ICANN proposes creating .INTERNAL domain to do the same job as 192.168.x.x

Scott 26
Flame

> The .local domain is reserved for .local people.

I want to create another account just to upvote this again.....

Bravo, Sir/Madam/Other! Bravo!!!

Icon for "we didn't burn him, you know!"

Psst … wanna jailbreak ChatGPT? Thousands of malicious prompts for sale

Scott 26

or "sudo give me......"

David Mills, the internet's Father Time, dies at 85

Scott 26
Coffee/keyboard

> If it was before 5PM, a knight in black armor would come out of the woods and chop your head off with a big sword.

Got a genuine L.O.L. from me....

40 years since Elite became the most fun you could have with 22 kilobytes

Scott 26
Pint

> procedurally generated universe

millions of kids today playing Minecraft owe Elite devs a pint or three*

* I'm one of them. /raise glass

Tech billionaires ask Californians to give new utopian city their blessing

Scott 26
Gimp

"channelling their inner RHCP"

poor choice of words, giving the former's reputation for SA'ing fans live on stage

(or maybe an excellent choice of words - I don't know the reputation of these billionaires)

Peregrine bows out with a bang as SLIM aims for Moon's rocky runway

Scott 26

If you are going to splash down near-ish to somewhere could you please quote ETAs in local time?

(Plus I hope there are no cruise ships in the area - that's prime cruising territory)

WTF? Potty-mouthed intern's obscene error message mostly amused manager

Scott 26

Re: I presume

"I could eat a speach for hours"

Daughter of George Carlin horrified someone cloned her dad with AI for hour special

Scott 26

Re: Why use A-I? Because there's no other way to get anything close to the essence of Carlin.

"no I in team"

"yeah, but there's 4 in 'platitude quoting idiot'"

or

write out the word team in a font that is "balloon-like" (you know - fat letters, not just lines)... then colour in the bit above and below the crossbar of the "A" - "look, there's teh "I", right in the A-hole"

or

"So what? There's a fucked-up 'me' in 'team'!!" (FTFY)

generally find no-one quotes that asinine cliché around me ever again.

While we fire the boss, can you lock him out of the network?

Scott 26

Re: 13 days into 2024...

what picture?

Scott 26

Re: Dead mans shoes career progression

Happy New Year, jake!

I see you are still collecting those downvotes like some kind of badge of honour

Silicon Valley weirdo's quest to dodge death – yours for $333 a month

Scott 26

Re: You don't measure a life by it's length, you measure it by it's breadth..

came here for that quote......

thank you, internet stranger!

New year, new bug – rivalry between devs led to a deep-code disaster

Scott 26

judging by the up and down votes on most comments, it feels like el REg has its own Jacks and Irvings....

(not a dev, so most of the points raised go over my head, so can't wilfully vote on any of the comments)

Enterprising techie took the bumpy road to replacing vintage hardware

Scott 26

Re: What is old, is new again

Similar to when I was working in London - we were slowly upgrading our network from TR to ethernet...

I had the job of swapping over the desktop NICs. I asked what happened to the old TR NICx? Oh - the desktop supplier swaps the ethernet NIC for the TR one for free. Oh... for free? Yeah, the supplier can onsell them to other customer who haven't made the jump to ethernet yet.... for huge money as they are scarce as hens' teeth.

Meta starts rolling out end-to-end encryption in Facebook Messenger

Scott 26

didn't work in a messenger group I'm in....

Option to use E2EE was there, but when I went to send a message, it simply "failed to send"

Law secretly drafted by ChatGPT makes it onto the books

Scott 26

Re: Perhaps ...

it was local level govt.... if I look at my local council, I don't think any of them are lawyers. They were voted in to represent a cross section of the district. The mayor is the only 'professional' politician.

'Return to Office' declared dead

Scott 26

Re: Stick

> After all who cares if the worker is in the bowels of Slough or in Bangalore, no?

gawd - what a choice... a complete slum of poverty and backwardness; or somewhere 5000mi away from London.

Scott 26

I chose to move out of a main centre and into a the countryside (pre-pandemic), and I had always planned to discuss WFH 1 day a week once settled. Then Covid-19 hit, and the whole thing became moot.

Last year I was doing 1 day a week in the office (fronting up to the client site - rah rah rah). This year I haven't travelled into the city at all (for work).

Potential sat-bothering cannibal coronal mass ejection slams into Earth's atmo tonight

Scott 26

Our local FB community notice had stunning pics from the weekend's show (I missed it :( )... and we are at a whisker over 41deg S (normally The Lights are visible at ~45deg S - 900km to the south)

Bank boss hated IT, loved the beach, was clueless about ports and politeness

Scott 26

Had exactly this when on my OE in London - call came into the SD from the EA to #1 and #2 in the company.... problem with #1's new fandangled laptop (this was c 2000/2001 - laptops were a rarity even for the exec).

My Boss said "for some reason #1 has asked for you by name..... " (giving me a look of "what have you done", and "normally I'd send one of lackeys, cos I know they won't say the wrong thing")

I trundle over to head office (IT dept was in a separate building a street or two away - a casual 5 minute walk)... walk into #1's suite... "Ahhh Kiwi, I was showing Sir Herbert my new laptop but I can't get it to work"

I took one look at it and saw that they had plugged the modem cable into the RJ45 socket on the wall.... carefully eased it out with the blade of a letter opener, and then said "this goes into this kind of socket" and plugged into a telephone jack. "For the ticket resolution notes, who did it?" both of them quick as a flash both of them pointed at each other..... and laughed.

So I took my chance and asked why they asked for me, a casual contractor on his OE from NZ.... "cos you like rugby"

Musk tells advertisers to 'go f**k' themselves as $44B X gamble spirals into chaos

Scott 26

"Stop hitting yourself. Stop hitting yourself"

Except, Bart is played by Elon, and Nelson is played by .... Elon.

Scott 26

Re: The corner of...

... and the lollipop lady is now over on Mastodon....

(we squeezed this metafor enough yet?)

Scott 26
Mushroom

I wish I was Elon Musk....And could tell advertisers (who bring my platform money) to quote GO FUCK YOURSELF unquote

no, wait.... no I don't.... what a dick. Talk about doubling down on his pig-headedness. What's that quote? "Your ego is writing checks your body can't cash"

Scott 26

Re: Delusional narcissist

> Yeah, no. Disney and IBM are paying monthly for their gold corporate "verified" status accounts.

Which is peanuts compared to the spend on advertising....

Which I believe was teh original point: keeping account open $$$ << advertising $$$

Plex gives fans a privacy complex after sharing viewing habits with friends by default

Scott 26

Re: Why do companies think we care what anyone else is doing?

> I remember when Twitter was still new and not widely known. I took a look at it and it was basically just people literally narrating their life 140 characters at a time. I remember thinking something along the lines of why world+dog should care about your bowel movements or that you're getting something from the fridge.

I think my very first tweet was something literally like "banal comment about my life"

Someone else has a go at reforming US Section 702 spying powers – and nope, no warrant requirement

Scott 26

> Additionally, the bill requires FBI agents to secure approval from their superiors for any query term that could be "reasonably believed" to identify a US elected official, political candidate, or appointee, US journalists, or religious leaders.

But everyone else is fair game....

AI threatens to automate away the clergy

Scott 26

Re: Evidence

> For example the indigenous people of the Amazon tested Christianity by crucifying missionaries

Harry Harrison used it as a plot device in his short story The Streets of Ashkelon

Videoconferencing fatigue is real, study finds

Scott 26

it was funded by a business who makes money from services & products that "help" with stress from tech,

so, immediately, I think "not unbiased, then"

I was going to share this with my colleagues with a cheeky "hope manglement doesn't see this", but once I saw the study's sponsor, there's no point even bothering with that cheeky joke.

OpenCart owner turns air blue after researcher discloses serious vuln

Scott 26
FAIL

Normally I'm a late comer to these comments sections on El Reg (time zone differences mean I read the article the next day or 2, if it has been a weekend).

But sometimes that works in my favour - decided to check out the linked issues discussion - and it's been updated since this article was written... clearly he (or someone he knows) reads El Reg, and he has had an even bigger meltdown over the vuln reporting.

As my wife would say "Tee Eff Eff" (too fucking funny)

Firefox slow to load YouTube? Just another front in Google's war on ad blockers

Scott 26

> I'm old enough to remember when most video was consumed via broadcast television. The cool kids started talking about the wonderful new world of online streaming video. "And the best part is," the cool kids said, "there aren't any ads!"

or

I'm old enough to remember when most video was consumed via DVD and VHS. The cool kids started talking about the wonderful new world of downloaded video. "And the best part is," the cool kids said, "there aren't any (FBI) ads!"

Scott 26

Re: This is not the first time this has "accidently" happened

> https://raw.githubusercontent.com/kboghdady/youTube_ads_4_pi-hole/master/youtubelist.txt

> https://raw.githubusercontent.com/kboghdady/youTube_ads_4_pi-hole/master/crowed_list.txt

interesting.....

I will take a look at those after work.

I use uBlock Origin in my browser - no YT apps. But I cast to the TV or use the TV's native YT app = ads and I'm reminded how shitty they can be. Normally when casting to the TV its for the family audience, and I haven't seen anything inappropriate. Just annoying so far.

BUt if these work I will raise a virtual glass in your honour!

Sam Altman set to rejoin OpenAI as CEO – seemingly with Microsoft's blessing

Scott 26

Re: Mmmmm

+5 Insightful

Robocar tech biz sues Nvidia, claims stolen code shared in Teams meeting blunder

Scott 26

We are in the middle of our mandatory annual "compliance" training.. one module is Ethics and covers the re-use of company IP... have sent my team this article as a real-world example of what not to do.

Why have just one firewall when you can fire all the walls?

Scott 26

> four f'king Es

probably for the fork handles (four candles)

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