* Posts by Steve Davies 3

7129 publicly visible posts • joined 24 Jun 2009

The last mile's at risk in our hostile environment. Let’s go the extra mile to fix it

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge
Thumb Up

Have an upvote

for this

Or you have some captcha stupidity that doesn't let you submit your complaint form.

Almost as bad at Talk-Talk demanding that you have a mobile phone when the contract is for a landline.

Sorry, Siri: Apple may be eyeing Google Gemini for future iPhones

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

Re: Siri and Data Centres?

Isn't part of Siri's weakness that it only runs on the device and not in the cloud?

I thought that was part of Apple trying to keep what happens on the phone, on the phone?

Fresh version of Windows user-friendly Zorin OS arrives to tempt the Linux-wary

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge
Thumb Down

Re: Gnome

is IMHO worse than Windows. Every release is (again IMHO) a huge step backwards in usability. I'd love to have some of what those devs are smoking. It must be pretty strong stuff.

Whoever decided that two buttons on a window was better than three is clearly (again IMHO) mentally deranged. Luckily, it can still be fixed (for the time being)

Are the Gnome devs all hoping to get a job at MS like Pottering?

Boo-hiss.

Intel's $699 Core i9-14900KS turbos to 6.2GHz – assuming you can keep it cool

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge
Holmes

Re: Now when I was a lad, processors ran at megahertz speeds

Now when I was a lad, processors ran at kilohertz speeds

Isn't that better? Then 1977 dawned and along came the 1MHz VAX 11/780.

First Armv9 automotive CPUs aim to power AI-enabled vehicles

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge
Thumb Up

Re: safety

Indeed.

With every iteration we get closer to the 'I'm sorry Dave...' situation.

For those not old enough to understand the reference, may I humbly suggest that you watch the film '2001'.

The end of classic Outlook for Windows is coming. Are you ready?

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

Re: OneDrive files were gone

sorta like Sharepoint.

Now you see it, now you don't. All those saved URL's mean zip if the admin decides to 'do some filing re-org'.

What a load of crap. MS should be ashamed of themselves.

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

Re: Apple's walled garden

You will be surprised at just how many apps work very well on MacOS without being downloaded via the App Store.

As for Email, I've used Thunderbird since around the time of Windows Vista. When I raised the white flag and gave up Windows for my personal use, I moved the files to MacOS, setup the config and away I went.

I don't use email on my phone. Yes, it is a PITA at times with all these stupid 2FA implimentations but that is a fact of life these days.

Oracle AI buzz means Larry Ellison's worth $15B more today

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

That's another large part of Maui

being bought up by a tech Gazillionaire.

I expect the natives will not be impressed. Perhaps.... it is time for another Capt'n Cook event?

Climate change means beer made from sewer water, says North Carolina brewery

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge
Boffin

Just like all those 'Lite' beers

that taste of gnat piss on a good day.

Fun fact

If a brewery takes water from a river then there is a good chance that the water will have been used before they extract it from the river. That's why many breweries jealously guard their boreholes.

The same goes for drinking water.

Yes folks, if you are a Londoner, you could well be drinking Reading, Maidenhead and Slough's piss.

Linux 6.9 will be the first to top ten million Git objects

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge
Joke

Re: CSV nightmare.

Sorta like those weird US date formats.

Trump, who tried kicking TikTok out of the US, says boo to latest ban effort

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

Re: Tik Tok Youth Brigade

The (Republican?) lawmakers forget that the January 6th insurrectionists were mobilised on Social Media and by using 'burner' phones.

Troth Social didn't exist in 2020/early 2021.... Unless your name is Donald J Trump... then in his eyes, he created heaven and earth for he speaketh the word of God as he is God (of the Planet Trump) not the earth.

Copilot can't stop emitting violent, sexual images, says Microsoft whistleblower

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge
Black Helicopters

re: There's no money to be made ...

until the billion... no make that multi-billion lawsuits start coming from the Christian Evangelicals (who are really Puritans in modern clothes).

MS will do something then. Until then.... Let the PRON flow.

Toyota, Samsung accelerate toward better EV batteries

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge
Terminator

solid state batteries - the EV holy grail

have been promised every year for at least a decade (much like Full Self Driving, the Tesla Roadster 2 and Robo Taxi's making you $100K per year).

It is only now that some small scale production has started with the likes of CATL in the mix. Samsung are way behind according to many in the business.

As for Toyota... Ah yes, the company betting big on H2 fueled ICE's and Foolcell vehicles who still make people believe that their self charging hybrid is an EV. It is only recently that their TV ads say 'fueled by petrol'.

It seems to me that Toyota are grasping at straws when it comes to the tech for the next gen EV's..

It would not surprise me that next year(or 2026) we will see Samsung take over Toyota.

EU users can't update 3rd party iOS apps if abroad too long

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

Re: Why does anyone buy Apple?

Because it is isn't Microsoft and they don't want to sell their soul to Google either.

That good enough for you?

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

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge
Facepalm

Re: Maybe Apple will have a clue on how to use it?

without it getting in everyone's face and annoying the hell out of the user.

Who knows... Perhaps you should ask Siri?

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

Re: In another year or two ...

All those tweaks you have been virtually forced into developing just to make it palatable will be changed or disabled. MS don't want people to deviate from their way of working.

MS hates people like you. Playing with their baby is just not allowed.

Legal eagles demand $6B in Tesla stock after overturning Musk's mega pay package

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

re: The first thing we do

If find a nice big wall, a supply of blindfolds and a big sign saying 'Lawyers Wanted'.

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge
Black Helicopters

Re: US lawyers endangered?

ROFL.

The law schools are producing more scumbags to fleece you of your hard earned cash (unless you are named Trump who had a habit of stiffing anyone who he owes money too) than the market can bear.

That's why you end up with Judges who don't have a clue (Cannon) and 'I can fake being smart' Habba.

Musk joins OpenAI lawsuit queue, says there's nothing 'open' about it

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge
Pirate

Ms and Elon

Slugging it out in court?

I'll be the only winner here will be the $5,000 per hour lawyers.

Elon really does seem to be battling it out with Trump over who has the thinnest skin. This is a game that you can't win Elon. Just get with the programme and have one of those implants fitted. Then open up the interface to the world. That will be fun.

Chinese 'connected' cars are a national security threat, says Biden

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

Re: can I turn them off

Somewhere in the car there must be a SIM Card. Who is paying the bill for it? Would BMW complain if you found it and removed it? Probably not.

Elon and the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad legal week

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

A bad week for Elon

Is a good week for the rest of us.

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

Re: But they'll all look the same up against the wall

or in the sights of a .50cal sniper rifle from half a mile away.

{I'm not advocating the use of such a weapon, only making a comparison}

All those scumbag lawyers will be first up against the wall. Instead of Gucci bags, they will from Shoprite or Wallmart and lined with dog poo.

Water worries flood in as chip industry and AI models grow thirstier

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

England as well

given the amount of wet stuff that has fallen from the sky this year.

The local weather station is saying that we have had 254% of average rainfall for Jan/Feb

My back garden will soon have dicks swimming around where there used to be grass. Just today(so far) we have had almost 1in of rain.

My neighbour said yesterday,.

"Don't worry. We'll have hosepipe bans by the end of May."

I don't think that he was joking. He used to work at the Medium Range Weather place near Reading.

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

I've said many times that...

choosing AZ for a Fab that needs millions of litres of precious water every year was stupid.

States such as Washington and Maine have less water stress that AZ but all those it might just be those (Alleged) Semi-truck sized brown envelopes are bad news for the residents of AZ.

Apple Vision Pro rentals take China by storm ahead of official release

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge
Facepalm

re: But who wants to work eight hours with 650 grams hanging off their head?

If you think that is bad then have you tried wearing a crash helmet all day?

Motorcyclists do that all the time. Not a big deal once you are used to it.

Google wants regulators to take Microsoft down a notch before it stifles AI

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge
Childcatcher

Oh My.... Who is more evil?

and worse at sucking your information and bank accounts dry?

IMHO, the top 3 all tie for evilness.

MS

or

Google

or

Amazon

and in 4th place

Oracle for its arcane licensing that even the sales teams don't understand.

Sometimes their antics make IBM seem a saner place. (Note that I said 'seem')

Microsoft's February Windows 11 security update unravels at 96% for some users

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge
Alien

Windows 11 might "face installation issues."

The understatement of the year so far...

As for saying that they have no reports of BSOD's they must be off-line. Even a search using Bing shows a lot of reports of errors with this release.

Other OS's can create a far more resilient update system why can't MS get it right after all these years? [see icon]

Microsoft catches the Wi-Fi 7 wave with Windows 11

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge
Black Helicopters

Re: does anyone

Great comment. You have described the real world... not the Ivory Tower that the MS Marketing Bozos inhabit.

What are the plans of the major ISP's to give us WiFi-7 routers? Now much extra per month do they want to fleece us for?

As you say WiFi-5 and 6 are working fine for most of us and there is no need for an upgrade.

MS Droids will probably have a plan to remove Wi-Fi-5 and Wi-Fi-6 from Windows (or just hobble it speed wise) just to force us to spend money we don't have on an OS that most of us we don't want.

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge
Alien

Re: Marketing needs to feed

I wonder if their 'AI in everything push is not going so well?

This could be Plan B to get us to use the One legged dog with Rabies that is W11.

How many El Reg readers have any device capable of WiFi-7? Hands up now.... Wot! No one... Quelle surprise.

AI comes for jobs at studio of American filmmaker Tyler Perry

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge
Facepalm

Re: Never heard of him

You clearly don't watch Channel 5 (or any of their other channels) in the UK.

They are pushing his series 'Sista's' in almost every Ad break.

Microsoft adds more AI to Photos in Windows 10 and 11

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge
Mushroom

Re: MS update

is something that should have been taken out the back and put out of its misery years ago.

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge
Boffin

Re: Who asked for all this?

as someone who said 'so long and it has not been nice knowing you' to MS for personal use in 2009, and spent until the end of 2016 writing software for Windows Server Systems, I want to support the AC who made the original post.

All my family are now mac users. In early 2015, I gave them an ultimatum. I said that if they wanted my IT support for free then they'd have to ditch windows. Windows 8 was according to MS, the Future. W10 corrected some of the lunacy but not enough. The funny thing is that now I get only about 20% of the support calls that I had when they were on windows.

I use a MacBook pro (bought used) as my main device plus a variety of Linux systems.

At the camera club that I go to, most of those who are active members are also Mac users.

Many have resisted the high pressure sales at places line Currys to buy a windows system. Now they all buy (if buying new) direct from apple.

This hell for leather race to put so called AI into everything is a marketing droids dream. It ain't proper AI for starters but that is a different story. Most people can't see the need for AI in everything or in my case there is no need for AI at all apart from creating some artwork for my novels.

Rivian decimates staff to put a brake on spending

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge
Big Brother

Re: So if they go bust...

Amazon will step in and buy them out. Rivian are making Vans for them AFAIK.

Baldy Bezos is Big Brother these days

Euro shoppers popping more and more premium phones in the basket

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge
Childcatcher

Many of us by used iPhones

The last new iPhone I had was a 4S. Ever since then, I buy used.

My current device is an SE-3. The old SE-2 is my in car media player as it runs Car Play very well. No SIM in that.

I paid about 30% less than the retail price for a 6 month old device.

Someone had to say it: Scientists propose AI apocalypse kill switches

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

Re: Just don't

Ah yes.... the

I'm sorry Dave moment.

We know how that ended.

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge
Boffin

re: ... industrial control

And watch things go boom almost every day.

Unless the AI can perform rational thought (it requires a sentient being to do that) they can't control an industrial process on its own. Sure, it can monitor and regulate a whole load of stuff but overall control requires a far deeper level of humanity than any of the current AI's are capable of.

The 'What if' question is hard for AI. We manage it without thinking thanks to our years of training and experience. Then making the right decisions are instinctive. The last thing we need is 'Computer Says No' in a time of crisis because there is no rule or LLM to meet the condition that is causing a meltdown.

Cybercriminals are stealing iOS users' face scans to break into mobile banking accounts

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge
Holmes

Facial recognition

You only have one face but 10 digits (or most people will have 10) for fingerprint ID.

I won't use my voice or face as ID.

Apple are stupid (IMHO) for dropping TouchID on their phones apart from the SE model.

Dumping us into ad tier of Prime Video when we paid for ad-free is 'unfair' – lawsuit

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

Re: And in other news...

I might be wrong about what Baldy is going to spend that money on.

There are reports that he is going into real estate ownership. Apparently, he's looking at buying whole new subdivisions before they are built for rental.

Will the rental agreement state that everything in the house has to come from AMZN? Your groceries from his supermarket... etc etc.

Brings a whole new meaning to 'company town'.

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge
Big Brother

And in other news...

Baldy Bezos sells $4B worth of AMZN stock.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-68277678

He must we planning in buying a whole country with that much mulah. Perhaps he will go there and take all of AMZN with him.

Damn Small Linux returns after a 12-year gap

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge
Alien

Re: Small?

Back in the day.... (a long time ago), you could configure an RT-11 kernel to run in 1.5kB.

We could run a full avionics simulator on a 56kB PDP-11 using RSX11-M with enough ram left over for other users to edit and do Fortran compilations.

Now we have simple apps using 200Mb just to get going. Madness.

I had to increase the Virtual memory of one app earlier today to 1.5Gb because it ran out of ram with 1Gb. More madness.

NHS in Wales bets big on Microsoft with deal worth nearly half a billion

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge
Mushroom

Re: pistol in their pocket

Said pistol is naff all use against a .50 cal long gun fired from half a mile away.

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge
Big Brother

Re: How much?

And... as the data is in someone else's cloud they can charge you a £1/byte to get it out. Your data is not yours when it is in their cloud. They own it no matter what the contract or the law says. By the time they catch up with you said data will be in the USA and being milked dry AND Trustmarque will have filed for Bankruptcy as soon as the lat bit of data went overseas.

These Vulture Capitalists/Equity investors only have one goal. Milk the company dry, sell off anything worth more than a few quid and exit stage left leaving a pile of debt behind.

We have all seen it before.

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge
Linux

An agile and flexible solution

Translated from MS Marketing Droid gobbledygook means

It works or it doesn't.

Elon Musk can't wriggle out of SEC Twitter fraud inquiry

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge
Big Brother

Delay, Delay and Deny

"I did nothing wrong"

All part of the standard playbook of 'The Orange Genius" and Musk's overlord, Donald J Trump.

Delaying a court case for years is his SOP. I find that strange because if he truly did nothing wrong, wouldn't it be in his best interests (especially $$$$ wise) to get the trial over with sooner rather than later?

No? I guess that he's just like almost every other politician... as soon as they open their mouth, they lie.

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge
Joke

Quick Elon

Run for Congress then you can ignore subpoena's at will. (See Gym Jordan et al)

ANZ Bank test drives GitHub Copilot – and finds AI does give a helping hand

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

Bank finds AI useful

It just makes giving your poor customers the 'Computer Says NO' a lot easier.

250 million-plus reserved IPv4 addresses could be released – but the internet isn’t built to use them

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

Re: Plusnet

Have no real excuse for not enabling IPv6. All their crappy routers will ignore it. Only those of us who have replaced their shit with our own routers will see it.

I've stuck with them because of two things.

1) I paid £5.00 for a fixed IP at least 10 years ago. The idiots who run the FTTP/FTTH network around here (TOOB) want £5.00 per month for the same thing. I'd really like to know their justification for that.

and

2) when I have had the odd problem I get to speak to a human who does not try to make out that it is my home network that is at fault (Hey Talk-Talk and Vermin... are you listening)

Come on PlusNet give us IPv6 it isn't that hard you know.

You're not imagining things – USB memory sticks are getting worse

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

Re: Well, given this is a UK website

Sorry folks, since it moved to a .com URL, it is a US site. The IP address is allocated to Cloudflare, a US company and I might be wrong the owners of the domain are now a US company.

US laws might apply to cases that go to court. It all depends on the wording of the contract in the section that covers dispute resolution. I once saw the T's&C's of one company in the US that demands that all disputes are dealt with at a court in a drive by city in TX that meets for TWO days a year. Legal Yes. Ethical? Hell no.

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

Re: Currys

Have an upvote for wishing them to go bust. Cue looking for a bread maker just before Crimble. Website says that they have several different ones in stock at local store. Drive to local store. Zero in stock. Spotty faced assistant said 'we don't have any in stock and it has been like that for months.' All they had with a decent selection were Toasters and Air-fryers.

Sites like eSpares are also good places to go for things like cleaner bags, as is Ebay. No Baldy Bezos tax to pay there (until AMZN takes it over)

Ford pulls the plug on EV strategy as losses pile up

Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

Re: Second life batteries

40kWh of these (from a crashed Tesla Model S) run my home during the day. They get charged at night on cheap power.

What's heading for landfill? Not these.

The recent Fully Charged Show Podcast that features the head of Gridserve shows how they manage sites with limited Grid capacity using Battery storage.

This is in use today.