* Posts by tfewster

1193 publicly visible posts • joined 18 May 2007

Page:

Bernie Sanders clocks in with 4-day workweek bill thanks to AI and productivity tech

tfewster

[Obligatory] You got a drink? Bloody luxury.

But you try telling that to the kids of today, they won't believe you.

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

tfewster

"George was an awesome tech" - Not this George then - https://www.chroniclesofgeorge.com/

Spam crusade lands charity in hot water with data watchdog

tfewster
Stop

STOP

"Penny Appeal has 30 days to stop sending marketing comms for which it doesn't have valid consent"

What? No, stop sending marketing comms UNTIL you've checked consent has been given. It's not like they're first time "accidental" offenders.

Bloody chuggers (Charity muggers).

AI to fix UK Civil Service's bureaucratic bungling, deputy PM bets

tfewster
Trollface

Re: All mouth and no trousers!

Is that 'right' as in "correct" or as in "move further to the right of the political spectrum"?

Amazon overcharges shoppers with Buy Box algorithm, fresh lawsuit claims

tfewster
Facepalm

No merit

I'm not defending Amazon, but based on the blurry "evidence" screenshot posted in the article - the other sellers price is higher anyway.

And Amazon do make the effort to show alternative sellers prices for a specific product, as well as comparable products, after you've selected a product from their (crap) search results.

(I mean, search for hand SANITIZER, then select a hand SOAP displayed in the "featured" results?)

CERN is training robot dogs to spot radiation hazards at Large Hadron Collider

tfewster
Terminator

Re: Might be useful in low radioactivity environment as well

I think I've seen that movie. The robo-dog becomes radioactive as well. And develops superpowers to take revenge on its cruel masters.

Raspberry Pi Pico cracks BitLocker in under a minute

tfewster
Joke

Re: Less than a minute?

It's still quicker than typing in the BitLocker recovery key if you've locked your laptop

US research body sues chip tech company Japan’s government plans to buy

tfewster
Trollface

It's "At the heart of the case", so I guess it bears repeating ;-)

AI models just love escalating conflict to all-out nuclear war

tfewster
Mushroom

Re: Unsurprising....

> War is a failure of diplomacy.

Clausewitz disagreed - "War is the continuation of policy with other means."

Return to Office mandates boost company profits? Nope

tfewster
Facepalm

Re: Measures

If you're going to read it, please tell me if anyone considered that pissing off employees by making them RTO might negate any possible benefits of RTO?

Or course, the employee will still be the scapegoat. Manglement couldn't possibly be wrong!

Biden will veto attempts to kill off SEC's security breach reporting rules

tfewster

Re: Veto he should -- and must

When the tougher CISA rules are up and running, the SEC rule can be lifted.

So what's the problem if an established organization can provide some interim protection for the shareholders it represents? Especially if it has the side-effect of protecting others, such as customers personal data.

Mall cops may not be "real" cops, but they serve a purpose.

OpenAI's GPT-4 finally meets its match: Scots Gaelic smashes safety guardrails

tfewster
Facepalm

Re: Pretty easy stuff

If you hop over the guardrails surrounding a cesspool, you're literally in deep shit.

The problem is not the guardrails being easily circumvented They're there to stop workers falling in accidentally, not to stop crazy people. It's the cesspool being accessible by crazies/idiots.

I thought we learned these lessons in the early days of the Internet?

UK Civil Aviation Authority ponders vertiports for flying taxis

tfewster
Facepalm

They're not taxis

"travel between cities and airports" - More like a shuttle service between approved vertiports than a go-anywhere taxi.

Besides, being VTOL, they don't need to taxi to a runway ;-)

HP's CEO spells it out: You're a 'bad investment' if you don't buy HP supplies

tfewster
Facepalm

Strange words

That's an odd use of the word "investment", unless printer hardware is a loss-leader to get users to buy consumables. And in that case, I'd use the word "con", making customers think they're getting a good deal when the cost per page is a rip off.

The IP argument is pretty weak too, the ink formulation or delivery system may be IP but they're not checking for that, they're checking for a HP-branded chip. If I want to put cheap ink in MY printer and run the risk of wrecking it, that's between me and the ink supplier.

Boeing 787s must be turned off and on every 51 days to prevent 'misleading data' being shown to pilots

tfewster
Facepalm

Re: Am I surprised?

@Fluffy Cactus: You're even closer than you realise - Boeing is the Anglicised version of William Boeings German fathers name, Böing

Will AI take our jobs? That's what everyone is talking about at Davos right now

tfewster
Facepalm

Re: “ Generative AI tools are infamously perfect” ?

I sent it to the Corrections [link at the top of the Comments page], not thinking it might be deliberate snark

Post Office boss unable to say when biz knew Horizon could be remotely altered

tfewster
Facepalm

Re: s/unable/unwilling/

Read has been CEO for over 4 years, after the issue became public knowledge. Maybe not his mess, but as CEO he should been digging in to it and ready with answers.

I'm slightly confused by the difference between the Parliamentary Committee and the Statutory Inquiry. A summary of the evidence for the Inquiry should be good enough for the Committee.

(A cynic might say a Parliamentary Committee is for the government to be Seen To Be Doing Something, and a Statutory Inquiry is to bury the issue [As per "Yes, Minister"]).

I'm also uncomfortable with the Government rushing through special laws to address this. Why not just pardon everyone, have the Post Office repay all fines/clawbacks etc. and bring new prosecutions if appropriate. Not got the evidence to prosecute any more? Tough!

Microsoft prices new Copilots for individuals and small biz vastly higher than M365 alone

tfewster
Happy

Re: Microsoft 36x

Just thank $DEITY the "copilots" are optional.

Michael Dell: Don't worry about AGI, after all we solved that ozone layer thing

tfewster
Facepalm

Re: New nouns, old tune

Dell are selling the tools in the AI gold rush - the proven way to get rich from a fad.

However, to take his analogy to the ozone hole - What we did was stop using CFCs. Is he saying we'll stop using "AI" once there's overwhelming evidence it's bad for the human race (Hallucinations, power usage, etc.) ?

What if Microsoft had given us Windows XP 2024?

tfewster
Linux

Re: 1% of the 1%

It brought tears to my eyes. A fast, responsive, intuitive OS that did its job as a platform rather than trying to be a "user experience".

Good contrast and clear borders between windows - Ah, the good old days.

All those principles lost in time, like tears in rain... Time to switch off.

Code archaeologist digs up oldest known ancestor of MS-DOS

tfewster

I'm amazed that 40 year old floppies are still readable, even if you have a working, connectable 8" floppy drive.

SEC charges ex-medtech CEO with fraud for selling plastic fake implants

tfewster
Facepalm

Re: Sound business principles

The SEC's remit is confined to Securities fraud, it's not that they're heartless. And they can go after company officers, whereas patients can only sue the company (which promptly went bankrupt after being exposed).

It sounds like a number of employees were complicit in this scam, but I don't know what criminal charges could be brought against individual employees.

Doom is 30, and so is Windows NT. How far we haven't come

tfewster
Facepalm

Re: Word 6

Don't be naive. Want WYSIWIG? Graphics and print drivers. Want a mouse or USB devices? Drivers.

Windows has been a great platform for unifying and abstracting apps from the hardware level. And credit to Microsoft/Windows/MS Office for standardising control keys and options.

But back to the topic of the article - what has Microsoft done for us since then?

(Commence corrections & downvotes in ...3.2.1...)

Windows 11 23H2 is a Teams effort but Microsoft already spoiled the best bits

tfewster
Windows

Less is more

> On work or school machines, users could find themselves in the slightly confusing position of having a pair of Teams links on the taskbar.

Ah, that explains it. I uninstalled the crap version so Windows didn't keep pushing it when I wanted to use the work version.

Infosys co-founder calls for youth to work 70-hour weeks

tfewster

Re: Rich man says what?

You jest - but slave owners tended to take care* of their "property", feeding and housing them so as not to waste their "investment".

Contrast that with free workers - Free to starve, live on the streets, be fired etc. as employers push down real wages.

* Obviously I'm not endorsing slavery or making a serious comparison, just pointing out that free workers can be cheaper to employ.

Ask a builder to fix a server and out come the vastly inappropriate power tools

tfewster

Re: Once

Once had to remove a server from its rack that had been installed at an angle - the right hand side was one hole lower than the left.

I don't know how they managed to get the bolts in, but I ruined my favourite ratchet screwdriver getting them out. If I'd had an angle grinder, I'd have used it on the previous engineer.

X confuses the masses by removing all details from links

tfewster
Headmaster

"optimize" [sic] - I don't think that word means what Elon thinks it means

"Maximise" time spent on X, sure. "Minimise" staff and rent costs, sure.

Cisco warns of critical flaw in Emergency Responder code

tfewster
Facepalm

You missed the <sarcasm> tag or Joke Alert icon.

Ah, the days when you could just do a web search for "default password $DEVICE"...

Not even the ghost of obsolescence can coerce users onto Windows 11

tfewster
Windows

Re: "What I wanna know is: Who remembers trying to run Vista?"

I bought a mid-range laptop that came with both Vista and XP pre-installed and the ability to switch. I tried using Vista, but found the UI so slow and UAC so intrusive (Not quite "You moved your mouse. Please enter the Administrator password to make the change") that I gave up on the experiment after a couple of hours. Fortunately the laptop vendor made it easy to switch and delete the Vista installation

The only other time I saw it was with a friends laptop that he'd persisted with, but hadn't installed any updates on - Usually just switching it off when he couldn't do what he wanted to do. Leaving it running for a couple of days to catch up on updates brought it back to a semi-usable state.

Ex-Microsoft maverick takes us on a trip through vintage Task Manager code

tfewster
Facepalm

Several times - It's Microsoft.

No, I'm not having a good day.

Microsoft CEO whinges about Google's default search deals

tfewster
Facepalm

Breathtaking hypocrisy from Microsoft as they try to force you in to using Edge and Bing/Bing "AI" and ignore your choices.

Damn you, SatNad for making me take Googles side on anything!

Scandium-based nuclear clocks promise punctuality for next 300 billion years

tfewster

Off topic, but ICBA figuring out how to change the oven & microwave clocks every 6 months (stupid, fiddly button combos); So one is set to GMT, the other to BST. Good enough for me!

PEBCAK problem transformed young techie into grizzled cynical sysadmin

tfewster
Facepalm

Re: PICNIC > PEBCAK

> my PICNIC brethren need to stop being so fucking stupid first before I become happy

"I'll try being nicer if they'll try being smarter" is my standard response to Manglement.

SAP user group calls for support deadline reprieve amid hospital billing worries

tfewster
Facepalm

Re: Balance of power

SAP are ending support, not a licence to use the app or the ancient platform it's based on.

Though it would be dangerous for a hospital to continue to use software without an (extended) support contract. The only question is if the extended support contracts are troubleshooting-only or custom & general release patches.

Netflix flinging out DVDs like frisbees as night comes for legacy business

tfewster
Facepalm

...streaming rights are expensive and don't offer much of a return

What happened to the "long tail" theory? It costs virtually nothing to store content and the provider pays royalties to the content owner when movie is streamed by a customer.

I guess each content owner wants their own subscription model, which would be fine if it was a fraction of the price of e.g. Netflix, to reflect their limited content.

In a ridiculous related example, Amazon Prime wanted £2 to stream an episode of Firefly, so I bought the Collectors edition series on DVD for £3, watched them all, then gave the DVD to a friend to screw Amazon over again XD

Bad software destroyed my doctor's memory

tfewster
Coat

Re: Have a hundred upvotes

Computers could certainly enhance a paper file, assuming the contents are filed properly. I would hope that system has a chronological summary of the patient history but also allows

- Searching for any term in the file, e.g. "hip". Easy in a digitized file, not so easy in a paper file..

- Linking an Episode, e.g. a broken hip treated in a hospital plus outpatient physiotherapy sessions plus disability assessment.

- Selecting an item, then paging backwards/forwards through related OR unrelated pages. (e.g. You had a fall, but also have low blood sugar. Hmm, could they be related? The human brain is great at making correlations, computers not so good)

- Side-by-side comparison of two pages, e.g. blood test results, to see what has changed. Maybe even highlight changes or anything out of the norm.

That's just off the top of my head, and with little knowledge of current practices. Hopefully those involved are way ahead of me!

(It occurs to me that any CRM system should have those features, so the wheel doesn't have to be reinvented for each use case)

Get your staff's consent before you monitor them, tech inquiry warns

tfewster

Re: Genuine Question re proxy / web filtering

Computer access/email access/internet access needs an additional HR policy that needs to be accepted by the employee.

Though automated web filtering isn't necessarily monitoring, unless you're reviewing the logs...

tfewster
Facepalm

Re: Well, duh..

Failure to read the Ts&Cs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joan_Is_Awful

Zoom's new London hub – where 'remote work' meets 'we need you back in the office'

tfewster
Thumb Up

https://www.nohello.com/

ChatGPT's odds of getting code questions correct are worse than a coin flip

tfewster
Terminator

Stack Overflow sort-of has peer reviewing of answers, so you're more likely to find something that works and covers edge cases. ChatGPT is more "I'm feeling lucky".

Techie's quick cure for a curious conflict caused a huge headache

tfewster
Facepalm

A good point - The end-users got an application menu rather than a command prompt, so it was someone with root privileges wot dun it.

`ls | grep` is also an unlikely command, but that's what I found when examining "/u/grep"

As an apology, I'll offer one of my own "Who, me?"s [1]: `last | grep reboot` [2]

Except I inexplicably missed typing "grep", and "reboot" doesn't ask whether you really meant it...

[1] I make a new-and-interesting major mistake about once every 7 years. I'm overdue another one..I've warned my boss they really should fire me before that happens!

[2] Other, safer commands are available, e.g. `who -b` or even `last reboot`

tfewster
Facepalm

How many people does it take to make a logic bomb?

- A systems programmer who puts their utilities in /u and makes /u the first directory in the search path, as some of the utilities have the same name as (and supersede) system utilities.

- A user who typos `ls > grep` in /u, instead of using "|"

No real problem so far. /u/grep isn't executable, so is ignored.

- A systems administrator who decides everything in /u should be executable...

It's surprising how much of a Unix system depends on "grep" and will fail if you break that utility!

Aliens crash landed on Earth – and Uncle Sam is covering it up, this guy tells Congress

tfewster
Alien

Re: Alien UFOs

Maybe they're DARTS, aimed to deflect Earth from reaching the rich galactic civilization...and spoiling it. Or Teasers, drunk rich alien kids who override the safety systems in their ships so they can buzz humans.

There may be aliens out there, but it seems unlikely they would leave evidence.

Tesla's Dojo supercomputer is a billion-dollar bet to make AI better at driving than humans

tfewster
Devil

Re: "But then, you get to, like, 10 million training examples, it becomes incredible"

And on an on-board computer.

Edit: Already said by GruntyMcPugh

Bizarre backup taught techie to dumb things down for the boss

tfewster
Facepalm

Re: I need my Trash

I've seen server apps installed by tech pros using /tmp on Unixen for data storage.

Not every Unix/Linux variant clears /tmp on a reboot, but there's a warning in the name.

Amazon Prime too easy to join, too hard to quit, says FTC lawsuit

tfewster
Unhappy

Re: It is not just Amazon

Such as Sky TV. You can add new channels/packages via the Web, but removing them took a 30 minute chat session. At least it wasn't a phone call.

CERN spots Higgs boson decay breaking the rules

tfewster
Facepalm

Douglas Adams nailed it on a larger scale:

“There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable.

There is another theory which states that this has already happened.”

Working from home could kill career advancement, says IBM CEO

tfewster
Angel

Re: wondering if fellow travellers are working together

My team is spread around the globe. So are our internal users ("customers"). We tend to deal with the "customers" in our own time zone, but in any given week I'm likely to be working with the US, Europe and Asia. My manager is on another continent. Being in the local office 9-5 will not help me "engage" with them, it will make me less flexible in my working hours to meet the business need.

Management in a multinational company needs to understand that, and adapt. Perhaps if IBM RA'd the management dinosaurs then they would see more productivity?

Just because on-prem is cheaper doesn’t make the cloud a money pit

tfewster
Facepalm

Re: "It's an attractive prospect"

Nah, the Directors who moved everything to the cloud have taken their bonuses and moved on. The new batch will get bonuses from moving stuff to on prem. Rinse and repeat.

Take a 14-mile trip on an autonomous Scottish bus starting next month

tfewster

Re: interesting route to chose

Runcorn New Town was build around a dedicated Busway; where it crossed normal roads the buses got signal priority so didn't even slow down [and regularly hit amber gamblers].

Seems like an ideal setup for even the dumbest autonomous buses

https://busandtrainuser.com/2022/09/17/r-is-for-runcorn/

Page: