* Posts by Little Mouse

1444 publicly visible posts • joined 12 Dec 2014

Lenovo's Yoga 9 is flexible at home, but stretches the friendship at work

Little Mouse

No HDMI and only one USB port?

I didn't need to hear any more than that.

As Sam Goldwyn (supposedly) said "You can include me out."

Montenegro jails Do Kwon, accused of causing $40 billion LUNA crash

Little Mouse

Where next?

Does Ecuador have an embassy there with a spare sofa-bed he could use?

Out with the old, in with the new – Accenture declares AI is 'mature and delivers value'

Little Mouse

Which flavour of AI are they talking about here? There are some exciting potential uses for AI, but when I hear that the driver is just to lay people off, then I can only assume that the kind of AI being discussed is not one that helps a company "do better". E.g. using LLMs for chatbots and web content.

Bland homogenisation, dumbing-down and clickbait will be the new normal - because it will be easier, and a lot cheaper, than paying people to generate truly original content. The only on-line publications that will survive this sea-change are those that fill a targeted niche, and are really good at what they do.

So it's really concerning to see sites go down this road voluntarily, before AI has even got a toe in, when what they really need to do is make the best of what makes them different.

Software picks out more satellite photobombs in Hubble image

Little Mouse

"so thin that less than 0.5 percent of a single exposure might be affected"

In context that may not be much - stacking software will presumably just treat it as noise - but 0.5% of an image still sounds like a heck of a lot of pixels.

This AI hype is enough to drive you to drink, lose sleep

Little Mouse

Zzzzz - And the AI angle is???

Some run of the mill social science that is not exactly ground-breaking. So shoehorn "AI" in, no matter how tenuously - Interesting!

Except everyone is doing it. It's not worth the column inches.

Please make it stop. It's only "AI Hype" because it keeps getting hyped up.

Can noise-cancelling buds beat headphones? We spent 20 hours flying to find out

Little Mouse

Re: I'm curious

Back then in the UK it was a "Ghetto Blaster" - a curiously aspirational attempt at US cultural appropriation.

And we didn't say "bangin'" in the Midlands either - it was "Bostin!"

File Explorer gets facelift in latest Windows 11 build

Little Mouse

Re: The Recommended File feature

And it begs the question "Why?"

If you're cooking a meal and your kitchen kept on stopping you mid-cook with helpful suggestions: "You haven't used the toaster since this morning","Why not check out the spoons. They're in the spoon drawer", "Your dishwasher has been improved. Care to try it out now?", I think it would be universally recognised as a Bad Thing (even by kitchen designers) which in no way improves either the "cooking experience" or the quality of the finished food.

It's just blatant, self-serving, attention seeking by a company that feels the need to keep telling us about the "quality" of its product, rather than just letting that quality speak for itself.

Sysadmin and IT ops jobs to slump, says IDC

Little Mouse

Re: "predicting substantial drops..." - WTF?

Reply to my own post here - but thought I'd add some personal context to the above, as I've been painfully aware of this situation since my tech-savvy boss sat me down in the mid noughties for a chat about the future of careers in IT.

At that time everyone already knew that Desktop support had already gone the way of the TV repairman: i.e. from a highly technical job, to simply replacing "broken" units. But back then I hadn't twigged that the same was going to be true of server support, network support, systems administration, etc.

It took him telling me explicitly that one day very soon the career path that I thought I was following simply wouldn't exist any more. Because the machine room over there that services 10,000 users will be gone, along with nearly all the other similar machine rooms in the country. And that any left-over sysadmin-style work would be done through a remote single console, by someone working for a different company, quite possibly half way around the world.

Little Mouse
Holmes

"predicting substantial drops..." - WTF?

Does it really count as a prediction if it's been noticeably happening for well over a decade already?

Back In 2007 this might have counted as a "prediction", but since then, Virtualization, Off-shoring, & Cloud / "X as a service" have been steadily chipping away at the required number of sys-admin roles, whilst at the same time forcing an increase in the need to automate routine tasks.

NASA's heavy metal Psyche asteroid trip is a go for October

Little Mouse

"...it could reveal secrets to how planets like Earth formed."

Or, it might reveal secrets to how planets like Earth ended up getting smashed into a gazillion pieces.

Starlink's rocket speeds hit a 50 megabit wall for large downloads

Little Mouse

200mb/s for "10minutes or so" = ~15GB

Reddit users who are moaning because downloads are slowed to a "mere" 50mb/s after they've already downloaded 15GB in one sitting can cry into their beer if they want, but they won't be getting a whole lot of sympathy from me.

"Fair use" has been a thing since broadband speeds came into effect, so what does the users' contract with Starlink have to say on the matter?

Airline puts international passengers on the scales pre-flight

Little Mouse

Re: optional?

I remember seeing a particularly large individual being asked whether they'd "like to move to first class, sir?" when boarding a small plane (15-20 seats or so) for a short hop across the Cook Strait.

Ex-Twitter sextet sues Elon Musk for 'stiffing' them on severance

Little Mouse
Thumb Up

Re: Someone should create a Twitter lawsuit directory

I second that request.

Perhaps a popular vulture-branded online tech journal would be willing to take on the task...?

Upvote the A/C above to add your name to the petition.

Electric two-wheelers are set to scoot past EVs in road race

Little Mouse

Re: Please keep this shit away from motorbikes

I stopped reading at the point where smartphone integration got touted as a good thing.

Seriously?

You spend x-thousand on an e-bike/e-scooter, only to cripple it with a piece of shiny that's guaranteed to be obsolete within a year or two? And that's supposed to be a desirable feature?

Cisco: Don't use 'blind spot' – and do use 'feed two birds with one scone'

Little Mouse

Re: Inclusive Leadership via Language

"Boss"???

Such elitist and/or subservient labels have no place in here.

Capita admits some pension data 'likely' to have been accessed in March breach

Little Mouse

Re: Private Eye named them perfectly!

"they're just a bunch of second-rate chancers"

I disagree - They are very focused and good at what they do best, which is negotiate airtight contracts that guarantee a ridiculously good financial return for themselves, no matter how poorly they perform.

Insurers can't use 'act of war' excuse to avoid Merck's $1.4B NotPetya payout

Little Mouse

They're also going to "create more certainty for policyholders" off the back of this "confusion". Which presumably means re-wording their policies to ensure that these specific circumstances will absolutely not be covered in future.

UK becomes Unicorn Kingdom, where AI fairy dust earns King's ransom

Little Mouse

"The UK’s GREAT"?

I'd never even heard of that campaign. The UK only showcasing “the very best of British" sounds like sticking two fingers up at Northern Ireland to me...

China joins US and Europe in considering 3D-printed Moon bases

Little Mouse

Presumably a relatively cheap way to learn some of the hard lessons early on would be to attempt something similar on Earth first. Maybe by setting up shop in an old quarry and using the material that's right there on and in the ground. It's hardly Moon-conditions, granted, but as a simple feasibility study it must have some merit.

Has such an endeavour ever been attempted?

Mandiant's 'most prevalent threat actor' may be living under your roof – the teenager

Little Mouse

teens "are incredibly effective social engineers" - ?????

It's so UNFAIR! - You've ruined my life! - I HATE YOU ALL!!!!

</Stomp Stomp Stomp. Door-slam. Stomp Stomp>

Pentagon shoots down UFO rumors but says 650 cases are still pending

Little Mouse
Black Helicopters

Being "All-domain" I expect they investigate anything you could file under "X"

What's the wage bill for a couple of downtrodden public servants with no hope of promotion, and a single dingey office?

Google backs Bard to generate ads, which apparently improves creativity

Little Mouse

Please, just make it stop

Haven't we reached peak Normal-Thing-but-with-AI-Twist news stories yet?

Silly me - There's still months and months to go before that "novelty" wears off.

Capita has 'evidence' customer data was stolen in digital burglary

Little Mouse

Re: "... potentially affecting around 4 percent of Capita’s server estate ..."

Or, maybe, damn near ALL the servers for specific contracts? I wonder which ones?

Back in the day, C-word contracts were typically siloed from each other, separated from pretty much everything except the mothership (I don't know if anything's changed since things went all cloudy...) It certainly made things nice and simple when it was time to wind a contract down and they decided to do a bit of pruning. Snip! And you're all gone.

Smallsats + solar sails = Photos of exoplanets at 1970s digital camera resolution

Little Mouse

Re: Proper sailing spaceship????

Surely you can't steer if you don't have something to "push" against? A sailing boat can be steered because the keel & body of the boat meet the resistance of the water. Steering a solar sail would be more like trying to steer a hot air balloon - impossible to do in any direction other than the one that the wind is taking you, even with special sails for steering.

So in that sense, no, it wouldn't be possible to tack into the solar wind, because there's no resistance to space. However the idea of using orbital mechanics to "cheat" and slingshot closer to the sun is quite neat.

(Disclaimer - I am not a sailor and know bugger all about boats really, so am looking forward to being proved wrong and learning something new...)

Little Mouse

Clouds & Continents?

"High" resolution (i.e. greater than 1*1 pixels) photos of exoplanets would definitely be cool, but I think that concept art should be taken with a huge grain of salt.

Given enough time, surface features could theoretically be resolvable, even with the planet in question constantly rotating & slipping in and out of shadow, etc. But individual clouds...?

Brit cops rapped over app that recorded 200k phone calls

Little Mouse

Re: ACR - I used that. It's one of the few (2) apps I actually paid for.

IANAL, but I understand that in the UK it's perfectly legal to record telephone conversations without disclosing that you are doing so. There are limits to what you can do with those recordings, although if you make all parties aware beforehand ("This call may be recorded for Training & Monitoring purposes..."), then those limits are reduced.

There's no legal basis for crippling this functionality in the UK (or in many other jurisdictions, presumably), but Google decided to force this change on the entire world just to play it safe.

Brits start 'em young with 20% of tots 'owning' a smartphone

Little Mouse

Re: You might want to reconsider your overshare, Richard

Anyway, there's no flaming on this site, because we're all mature sensible adults here.

(Bumwillytitpoopants)

Little Mouse

But real news, properly presented, is a far cry from unregulated inanity. My earliest memory of similar would probably be the John Craven's Newsround coverage of a famine in Bangladesh in the 70's. Pretty harrowing stuff, but still important to know about, even at that age.

(Edit: But yes, there are limits of course. Truly evil stuff can't easily just be "talked through".)

Little Mouse

"by the time they are 12 it's something like 97 percent"

Hardly surprising. My kids' secondary school "encouraged" all parents to make sure their kids all had a smartphone - Partly for some of the on-line aspects of the coursework and also for "safety" reasons e.g. So that they could always contact someone in a real emergency, never get lost, that kind of thing (sigh).

That said, they were also never allowed to actually use them in school unless specifically instructed, which almost never happened.

Hey Siri, use this ultrasound attack to disarm a smart-home system

Little Mouse

Re: One C, one R

The flip side of that concept is known as a "Birmingham screwdriver" here in Blighty.

Parts of UK booted offline as Virgin Media suffers massive broadband outage

Little Mouse

Re: No service update

Customer Services - "We're not satisfied until you're not satisfied'

(from despair.com IIRC)

FTX cryptovillain Sam Bankman-Fried charged with bribing Chinese officials

Little Mouse

So... What's to stop Mum & Dad popping down to the store to buy a cheap laptop?

Are you ready to go all-in, head-first, on a laptop? ASUS's Zenbook Pro 16X asks for that commitment

Little Mouse

Re: Oops

And does anyone even want hardware shortcuts to apps?

I've lost count of the number of keyboards I've used that came with a set of dedicated keys for email, internet browser, etc. They never get used. Ever.

Student satellite demonstrates drag sail to de-orbit old hardware

Little Mouse

"if it was 30cm cube"

Was it though? Shirley 3u means 3 * (10cm*10cm*10cm). which would be just a ninth of the size of a 30cm cube.

Don't worry, that system's not actually active – oh, wait …

Little Mouse

..."when he'd finished his business in the test area"

Ew.

I hope he washed his hands.

Service desk tech saved consultancy Capita from VPN meltdown, got a smack for it

Little Mouse

"brought the company name into disrepute."

Capita's name was mud long before the early 2010's when this tale took place

Havana Syndrome definitely (maybe) not caused by brain-scrambling energy weapons

Little Mouse

Symptoms are also consistent with... run of the mill Migraines

"dizziness, headache, fatigue, nausea, anxiety" - "tinnitus, visual problems, vertigo, and cognitive difficulties"

Textbook migraine symptoms.

Speaking as someone who gets combinations of the above 3-4 times a month, they have my sympathy, but it doesn't scream "conspiracy" to me.

Twitter rewards remaining loyal staff by decimating them

Little Mouse

Thank you El-Reg...

Appropriate use of "decimated". Go to the top of the class.

(I was going to award you top marks, 10/10, but that might be viewed as commentard-baiting)

PC tech turns doctor to diagnose PC's constant crashes as a case of arthritis

Little Mouse

Re: South don't work in the North

The moon is upside-down, Orion's sword points up, and the sun tracks the wrong way across the sky.

Something's definitely amiss down there.

Little Mouse

Re: South don't work in the North

Due to differences in the local electrical supply, presumably?

Gullible ol' me initially assumed you were referring to some effect of the Earth's magnetic field or similar. Duh.

I can't do that, Dave: AI drowns top sci-fi mag with story submissions

Little Mouse

Re: "...AI could turn writing from a serious craft into a cheap commodity"

Check out another (very) short short story: "Rejection Slip" by K.W. McAnn.

An author's manuscript, "The Last Man on Earth" is rejected by the publishers as they are over-stocked on non-fiction.

Little Mouse

Starting a year or two ago, I noticed the emergence of a style of IT troubleshooting "how-to" web pages that had clearly scraped the technical steps from another source, and then padded it with a lot of infuriating waffle, with a real "English is my second language" vibe.

I'd originally assumed that it was just lazy wannabe tech-gurus, with nothing new to contribute, but it seems likely now that they are completely auto-generated.

They can ruin your search results with identical copies of the same obvious solution to a problem, making the truly useful and obscure nuggets of info so much harder to find.

A tip for content filter evaluators: erase the list of sites you tested, don't share them on 100 PCs

Little Mouse

Re: Bulldog

The Anarchists *what?* Book?

Shocked, I tell you.

Little Mouse

Not on my watch...

We occasionally had to temporarily add some "interesting" sites to the whitelist during my time employed at a mental health hospital, to help facilitate treatment. The old adage that "there's a fetish for everything" is pretty close to the mark.

But we did have to tell one beardy doctor exactly where to go when he demanded that one patient have access to some scarily illegal stuff (to help wean them off it, apparently...). Even if he had come back with a court order granting full exemption (he didn't), I'd still have said No way.

If you have a fan, and want this company to stay in business, bring it to IT now

Little Mouse

Similar situation here, many years ago. But, through trial-and-error, we discovered that using fans to blow the hot air out cooled things down far more quickly than using fans to blow cold air in.

That's not a TP-Link access point, it's a… vacuum?

Little Mouse

That's called "Plausible Deniability"

"Four suction modes and a tissue dispenser" would be so much more difficult to justify.

Cloudflare engineer broke rules – and a customer's website – with traffic throttle

Little Mouse

"Blame Free Culture"

That's a phrase that gets misused too often by companies. Hopefully not in this case though.

I've only worked at one place that officially had a Blame Free Culture, and plenty of others that just naturally didn't feel the need to blame individuals for faults and errors unless it was genuinely deserved.

The place with the official policy used to go to a lot of effort to identify exactly who it was that we shouldn't all blame, and made sure that everyone new who it was that wasn't getting blamed. They even held high-level meetings to discuss the individuals who weren't being blamed, because, officially, they were so caring and people-focused.

Glasgow staff form UK's first Apple union after historic vote

Little Mouse

The Secret...?

UK employment laws that can and will bite companies where it hurts if they break them?

McDonald's pulls plug on Wi-Fi, starts playing classical music to soothe yobs

Little Mouse

Re: Even them playing classical music ...

A couple of decades ago anyway, the main McD's in Melbourne city centre actually had a secure sharps-bin attached to the wall in the gents.