* Posts by ThatOne

3932 publicly visible posts • joined 9 Oct 2017

FCC ups broadband benchmark speeds, says rural areas still underserved

ThatOne Silver badge

Re: Still the same Bravo-Sierra game

I specifically know a couple living in the NE of Germany (in the state of "Niedersachsen") in a house in the middle of the fields, and yet some years ago they got fiber--despite not wanting it! They wanted to keep their old DSL line, which was enough for their needs (older people, so no streaming and such), but the utility guys still installed the fiber to the house "because we're supposed to connect all the houses. You don't need to use it, it's there".

The other three Europeans I know are in France. Two in the capital Paris (obviously fiber), but also a scientist living in a house in the boonies in southern France, several miles from any settlement. And yet he has fiber to the premises (and a very good 5G reception too...).

Long story short, I don't know many people, but not a single of them has anything less than fiber to the premises. Seems to be a case of YMMV.

ThatOne Silver badge

Re: Still the same Bravo-Sierra game

Yet in Europe (most? all?) rural homes have fiber.

The difference was probably that (from what I heard, grain of salt required) many years ago European operators were gently asked to deploy fiber to everyone or else. Bonuses will be lower for a couple years, but I didn't hear that European Internet operators watch they children go to bed weeping from hunger.

"We don't care; we don't have to... We're the phone company."

ThatOne Silver badge
Unhappy

Re: I'll wait for it

> but is likely to get reimbursed

Pull the other one! Give back good money when instead you can make some more? Will never happen.

Besides I don't believe their constant sob stories about those terrible, terrible infrastructure expenses. European operators have apparently managed to do it, in what looks like a way more competitive market (which means smaller slices of the pie for everyone). I know people (admittedly living in a city) in Europe who pay around $30 a month for a 1 Gbps fiber-to-the-premises (plus a phone line and around 60 TV channels, all in the package). $30 a month!

The explanation is probably that they have a choice of 3-4 different and competing operators (and that's without considering cable offers). And yet all those operators aren't starving to death, so apparently it's commercially viable. US telecom operators monopolies are just being fed subsidies for not doing anything.

Qualcomm unveils Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 with Eye-of-Sauron camera

ThatOne Silver badge

Re: So...

Marketing will explain that you've always wanted that, you just didn't know it yet.

It's a good thing "because AI", of course. It means it's utterly hip, the future of (wo)mankind, and having one of those will show people you're on the bleeding edge of technology. Who cares if that blood is yours.

Voyager 1 starts making sense again after months of babble

ThatOne Silver badge

> ways of contacting other life out there

The question is, does "other life" really want to be contacted by humans? I'm sure they'd rather pass.

Unless of course we're considered as potentially useful in some way (food comes to mind, although personally I wouldn't eat that)

ThatOne Silver badge
Devil

Re: If ever there was a use case for LLM

Yes, b-but AI is the solution to everything! Everyone says so!

/sarcasm

Record breach of French government exposes up to 43 million people's data

ThatOne Silver badge
Facepalm

Re: "up to 43 million citizens [..] dating back 20 years"

> I'm in there somewhere !

Wikipedia says population of France is a little less than 70 millions. Given there is a percentage of inhabitants who wouldn't appear in an employment database (kids/teens, homemakers, gentle(wo)men of leisure...), that data must be about everyone having ever lived in France in the last two decades!

"Identity Theft For Dummies" will be the next bestseller I guess.

ThatOne Silver badge
Facepalm

Re: Not again ...

> how did the get into the position to be able to masquerade?

Well, I guess they simply said they were from that other department. Obviously you'd trust them, because if they weren't actually from that other department, they wouldn't say so, isn't it. *shrug*

Can AI shorten PC replacement cycles? Dell seems to think so

ThatOne Silver badge

Re: Where's the incentive?

> Here they are talking it up everywhere

- Talking - Well, obviously, since AI is the best thing since sliced bread, isn't it... Some years ago everyone was talking about tablets taking over and pushing laptop computers to extinction. And all the eminent water cooler experts were agreeing, just like now about AI.

Marketing hype has nothing to do with reality or even plausibility, it only has to do with selling to the unsuspecting. But people who buy into it need desperately to convince others too, because the number of converts reassures them about their own choice. If everybody agrees it can't be wrong, can it.

ThatOne Silver badge
Facepalm

> AI probably works for background processing requiring quick indepth decision making

OMG no! We're constantly hearing about AI "hallucinating", going haywire, or whatever other unscheduled malfunction it is capable of. Which obviously means that in the name of cost-cutting, we will rush to put this half-baked AI in charge of everything important/essential we can get hold of...

ThatOne Silver badge
Unhappy

Generally speaking profit is not good for the environment. That's why usually environment has to go (except of course in those breathless marketing speeches where it is fashionable to put it front and center).

ThatOne Silver badge

Re: Quick survey...

Well, they have been already capable of doing it for years, no need for AI here.

Besides, even if "AI" could somehow improve something, this wouldn't really require that AI to run on every individual computer. After all, all corporate computers are connected to a high speed network...

ThatOne Silver badge

Re: Where's the incentive?

> boast about having AI capable machine

Don't know, I for one wouldn't want to boast about that. There was a time one could boast about having the latest V12 bi-turbo processor with oodles of RAM and a combat graphics card, but those times are long gone.

ThatOne Silver badge
Devil

Re: Where's the incentive?

> I'd actually consider my computer not being able to locally run AI models as an advantage.

You're looking at it from the wrong perspective. The incentive is by and for Dell marketing, and don't forget marketing is always totally disconnected from human reality (they are probably another species anyway).

For the average user there is indeed absolutely no point in having AI capacities: Even if your company or lab does use AI somewhere, it will be a limited team of specific people who use specific hardware for a very specific task. But that isn't important, what is important is that "AI" is something new the suckers deciders don't know very well (except that it is something new and supposedly magic which will help you lose weight, fix your thinning hair (and so on)).

Marketing always likes to find a (actually totally ridiculous) supposedly magic thingamabob and celebrate it loudly and repeatedly until weak-willed people are suckered into buying. Unfortunately it works as well for bogus nutritional supplements as for high-end tech, people like to be told what to think, it's so much easier.

AI and wearables are scaring the wellbeing out of workers

ThatOne Silver badge

Kind of obvious, isn't it

"quality of life declines when people are threatened to lose their livelihood".

What a surprise!... It is also pointless, because the bosses having drunken the "AI" Kool-Aid will push it through no matter what, there are juicy bonuses to be had. It doesn't matter if AI works or is fit for purpose, what matters is the momentary reduction of the wage bill, the resulting stock price hike, and the resulting bonus.

'Chemical cat' on the loose in Japanese city

ThatOne Silver badge

Re: Wait a mo....

How many other chrome-plated cats are there in the vicinity?...

ThatOne Silver badge
Unhappy

Poor kitten

Unfortunately this happened in Japan, so it will most probably die a grisly death. In the US of A it would had traditionally acquired superpowers and started a long career of fighting crime.

Even potentially get its own TV series

March Patch Tuesday sees Hyper-V join the guest-host escape club

ThatOne Silver badge
FAIL

No failures here, updates installed just fine. Only problem is my taskbar has now become totally transparent (dark theme), and now all the right hand status icons are now white on a light gray background picture...

Jeez. What happened to "if it's not broken, don't fix it"??? Couldn't they add a "do not make the taskbar transparent" option? Guess not, the Microsoft way is the only way, and they always know what's best for us.

Grumble, grumble

Grab a helmet because retired ISS batteries are hurtling back to Earth

ThatOne Silver badge
Devil

Re: The Master of understatement

> the maximum fine

£401?

Google debuts first Android 15 developer preview without a single mention of AI

ThatOne Silver badge
Devil

> Google's custom silicon on their Pixel phone makes the GCam app faster

Well, the Pixel's "Google Tensor" chips are indeed specialized in AI. They are actually rather mediocre in everything except AI, so the more AI Android has, the better the Pixel phones look...

ThatOne Silver badge
WTF?

Word Definitions

> the latest version of Privacy Sandbox on Android – an addition billed as delivering [...] "effective, personalized advertising experiences for mobile apps."

I need a new dictionary. Mine is clearly wrong/outdated.

Dell promises 'every PC is going to be an AI PC' whether you like it or not

ThatOne Silver badge
Devil

> I cannot imagine ever outgrowing this thing

You maybe not, but Windows 12 (or similar) will find that it lacks the [newest fad] and thus needs to be replaced. To "improve your experience", of course.

(Assuming you run Windows, since Linux doesn't need that much to run correctly...)

ThatOne Silver badge
Devil

Re: The public

> I don't think the general public are going to be demanding AI in their tech any time soon.

Who cares what the general public is demanding? Definitely not Dell. The only thing important to them is what new great get-rich-quick scheme marketing can sell their own upper management. It's an internal process.

And the worst part is that those newfangled "AI" PCs will indeed sell, because Dell will push them aggressively (as in "it's the only choice"), and companies like to buy Dell because it's convenient and "safe". So marketing will be proven right(-ish), bonuses will be handed out, and everybody will be happy (except the users, but as I already said nobody cares about them).

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

ThatOne Silver badge

Re: This Is Why They Say ...

Allow me to disagree. I'm not of those compulsive tinkerers who always need to fine-tune or test something for better or worse. The only time I "fiddled" with my Linux installation is when I first installed it on the (then new) laptop. Since (and 3 versions later), it's been smooth sailing. Every now and then it installs some update, without bothering me, at worst it sometimes tells me I should consider rebooting the computer as soon as convenient.

That's how it should be: I actually use the OS to get work done, so I really value an OS which stays in the background and doesn't annoy me with quirks and unwarranted initiatives.

ThatOne Silver badge

> Because they didn't find that error before release, they didn't know it existed, they couldn't give a specific educational description for it.

I think this is a misunderstanding: Error messages don't need to be step-by-step instructions on how to fix them, that would be indeed impossible to code. But they can (and should) hint at what went actually wrong ("can't write to ...", "parameter out of bounds", "not enough whatever", and so on).

IMHO. I'm not a programmer, just somebody working all day on computers. I've seen them all, from the honestly trying to be helpful ones, the supposedly witty but not helpful, even the blank pop-up window with absolutely nothing in it.

Uncle Sam tells nosy nations to keep their hands off Americans' personal data

ThatOne Silver badge
Devil

Re: Pot, meet kettle...

"Do as I say, not as I do"...

How to weaponize LLMs to auto-hijack websites

ThatOne Silver badge
Unhappy

Re: Maybe it's useful?

> It would be handy to be able to have an on-hand cracker (on a separated LAN, in a VM) that could be run against one's website test build

Initially I thought so too, but then I realized that there still is no way (in time and money) you might afford to prepare against relevant (i.e. recent or somewhat sophisticated) exploits, if only because those exploits haven't been found/made public yet. Nothing changes.

To put it simply, you'll only be able to check against yesteryear's exploits, and that's about all.

Last but not least, AFAIK 99% of all breaches are due to people being too lazy to patch known issues. AI won't change that...

Twilio reminds users that Authy Desktop apps die next month – not in August

ThatOne Silver badge
Devil

Which is why they axed it. You can't go around providing a real service now can you.

ThatOne Silver badge

No translation needed, it's pretty explicit: "provide more value on existing product solutions" = "make more money with what we have".

Of course some starry-eyed suckers might think that "providing value" might include them too, but in this case they're beyond help...

Chrome engine devs experiment with automatic browser micropayments

ThatOne Silver badge
Unhappy

Re: Good luck

> as your customer base grows you could drop the price

Nah. As your customer base grows, your profits grow, that's all there is.

I always go for the ad-free, paid option, which always will end up becoming a paid-with-ads one. Mobile apps are the worst offenders.

Fujitsu finance chief says sorry for IT giant's role in Post Office Horizon scandal

ThatOne Silver badge

Re: Talk is cheap, where's the £?

> how much did Fujitsu know

The better question is, how much should Fujitsu have known, and the answer to that is "everything". If they didn't, it's their fault: They bought the company with its assets and liabilities, they can't only claim the assets and ignore the liabilities...

ThatOne Silver badge
Devil

Re: Talk is cheap, where's the £?

> it's utterly meaningless in this case

That is the very point of it though: Apologizing is cheap, compensating on the other hand damages your quarterly earnings statements, and thus your bonuses. Since they won't compensate, they apologize so they can say they did something.

Scientists don thinking caps in wearable tech breakthrough

ThatOne Silver badge

Re: A beanie and a sweater with batteries

Washing those clothes might be challenging too...

Microsoft unveils a secret tunnel for Windows Insiders who want out

ThatOne Silver badge
Unhappy

Re: Release Preview Channel

> The virus definitions update themselves 3-4 times/day in the background

They did, indeed, initially Windows 11 always checked for updates first thing just after booting. I didn't even need to log in.

But this is Microsoft we're talking about, so somewhere around the last milestone Win11 update (can't check right now which one that was), this stopped, since then Microsoft's Antivirus solution (name?) eventually starts complaining that its definitions are outdated. When opening the System/Update tab, it just says "You're up to date, last checked x days ago". Go figure how it knows I'm still up to date...

And there are also the various firmware and driver updates which come the same way, and which now won't appear anymore unless I actively check for updates. So I'm forced to manually check for updates every couple days, at least till the next Microsoft previews appear and just sit there waiting for me to look away so they can slip in...

I guess it's yet another bug, my Win11 is full of them. And yet I don't use it, it's only there for firmware updates and the occasional (old, XP-era) game. It's pretty much the vanilla Dell Windows 11 Home installation the laptop came with, just regularly updated.

ThatOne Silver badge

Release Preview Channel

And how do you get rid of those previews that have started to appear about each end of the month, and which prevent you from getting any updates (because else you'll install those too)? Simply checking for updates (for instance to get the newest Virus definitions) automatically starts installing those previews, with no way to stop them...

I'd rather wait till the official Patch Day, when those previews are deemed (Microsoft) stable.

Genuine question

Tiny asteroid's earthly fireworks predicted with pinpoint accuracy by NASA

ThatOne Silver badge
Unhappy

Three hours is not even enough time to inform the decision makers, so they can quit whatever they were doing right then and start wondering if/what they should/could do about the incoming meteorite.

That was my point.

I agree technology progresses, and that was a tiny, hard to spot meteorite, not some big life-threatening boulder, but I still think the panegyrics are a little undeserved yet. We can start congratulating ourselves when we start being able to pinpoint impact times and locations many days* in advance. Not before.

* Consider 1 day at least for the information to make it to the decision makers, and for them to pull out their fingers and figure they need to do something. And then they will start forming committees, make phone calls, querying their legal advisors and any hastily found "experts" (and so on), for this isn't an event governments have standard procedures for. Count at least another day lost wondering the pros and cons of doing/not doing something, emitting sound bites and making sure whatever happens won't affect them. And even after a decision to evacuate has been taken, recent hurricanes in the USA are a good example of how much time it takes to actually evacuate any bigger population, even in a supposedly rich and well-organized country.

ThatOne Silver badge
Unhappy

> 2024 BX1 was spotted less than three hours before impact

Did I miss something? This is marginally more useful than "was spotted on impact".

All right, that was a tiny one, bigger and more dangerous ones would probably get spotted more hours before impact, but still not enough to do something about it.

Microsoft hires energy mavericks in quest for nuclear-powered datacenters

ThatOne Silver badge

Re: I finally wish them well

Why do you assume Microsoft can do that any better?...

ThatOne Silver badge
Unhappy

Re: I finally wish them well

> What, however, about the monitoring and control software?

Indeed. Nobody can seriously claim they know how to keep their software working, without some untested update eventually breaking some/everything.

Death, taxes and Microsoft bugs...

ThatOne Silver badge
Mushroom

Re: Nuclear power the Microsoft way

Putting "Microsoft" and "Nuclear" in the same phrase sends icy chills down my spine. I'll have to check the batteries on my Geiger counter...

Mystery German chip fab sips on Gradiant's ultrapure water

ThatOne Silver badge
Joke

Chips and water

Nah, you've got it all wrong: The water is for the fish which go with the chips...

New York Times sues OpenAI, Microsoft over 'millions of articles' used to train ChatGPT

ThatOne Silver badge
Devil

Re: If it's free on the Internet

> or contemplate the coming zombie apocalypse, right?

Coming? It's already here, just look around.

Infosys loses ten-year, $1.5 billion contract announced just three months ago

ThatOne Silver badge
Devil

Re: Murthy and UK family friends

> the dude keeps talking about how lazy people are these days

People saying "people are lazy" actually mean "people don't work enough for my profit". It's always turtles greed all the way down.

Here's who thinks AI chatbots will eventually be smart enough to be your coworker

ThatOne Silver badge
Unhappy

AI knows better what you need

> Large language models will evolve from AI chatbots generating synthetic content on your screen to virtual agents that are capable of performing actions on your computer.

Let me rephrase that in a less idealized and more realistic way:

"Large language models will evolve from AI chatbots generating useless chatter on your screen to virtual agents capable of selling you stuff you neither need nor want."

Obviously AIs will get monetized, i.e. they will be trained to try to sell you stuff. Now give them decision powers (somebody like Microsoft will rush to do it) and they don't even need to convince you anymore: You just pay the bills and collect the parcels. The worst is that a lot of people will be quite happy about that ("shopping is such a chore... I never know what to chose... The AI cares for me, I get a gift each day...").

ThatOne Silver badge
Devil

Re: Clippy on steroids

> and, next time, order from company that still uses humans

Which you can find just next to the unicorn breeding facility. Seriously, everyone will use AI for customer contact, they already do it now ("To buy something press 1, to buy some more press 2, to be explained how to buy something press 3, press 4 to listen to the message again") so there is no reason they won't jump onto the AI bandwagon. After all it's cheaper than any outsourced call center, and almost as inefficient.

I'm thinking about a start-up to create an AI program to call those AI-driven call centers for you! Let them chat along, all night long. Instead of losing your time, the program will tell you if there was something said you might be interested about. The program needs to run on a fairly low-end computer (the kind people can spare), and ideally be able to run several threads concomitantly ("I'm calling support A since May, and support B since last summer")...

ThatOne Silver badge
Devil

Re: Automated meeting times!

That's your problem, and you'd better solve it fast!...

/boss

Windows 12: Savior of PC makers, or just an apology for Windows 11?

ThatOne Silver badge
Facepalm

Re: My way or the highway

> Microsoft needs to lose the attitude that they alone know what is best for their users.

I wholeheartedly agree, but actually they don't give a damn about their users customers: What is important to them is their bottom line, nothing else.

Marketing lives on buzz-words. Remember a couple years ago when everything was "tablet"? (The new computing paradigm, it's the end of desk/laptops, they will go the way of the Dodo!) Couple years later tablets have found their real use, watching cat videos and reading stuff in your couch, and people still use desk/laptops to do serious work.

Nowadays it's "AI": AI will replace everything, do everything, you need AI, lots of AI! Cue forward a couple years and AI will have found its place (writing homework for the terminally clueless/lazy?). In the meantime, they will try to make you buy things you neither need nor want, by repeating long enough that "that's how the cool kids do it", and that you desperately need their stuff, even (especially) if you didn't realize it yet. They'll repeat this until the more weak-willed cave in and start believing (buying) it.

Internet's deep-level architects slam US, UK, Europe for pushing device-side scanning

ThatOne Silver badge
Big Brother

> making the world safe from predators

That's the excuse. What they really want is to be able to keep tabs on the Great Unwashed, just in case.

Google Pixel gets privacy mode to keep your selfies safe from prying repair techs

ThatOne Silver badge
Devil

Re: Brace yourself...

Like an SD card?...

ThatOne Silver badge
Devil

Chances are the repair tech will simply wipe the phone in this case: "I didn't have the key, so I just smashed the door" kind of way...