* Posts by trevorde

982 publicly visible posts • joined 2 Jun 2015

Page:

How a single buck bought bragging rights in the battle to port Windows 95 to NT

trevorde Silver badge

Disappointed

Was hoping for something like in 'Trading Places'

What's brown and sticky and broke this PC?

trevorde Silver badge

Spousal support

Was at work when I got a call from my wife:

[wife] My laptop is making a strange beeping sound and there's water coming out of the corner of it!

[me] Umm, OK, what did you do?

[wife] I spilt a glass of water on it

Told her to shut it down and leave it to dry. Laptop was fine the next day and soldiered on for a few more years.

Whistleblower raises alarm over UK Nursing and Midwifery Council's DB

trevorde Silver badge

Should've used a real database

Excel - if it's good enough to track COVID-19, it's good enough for the NMC

https://www.theregister.com/2020/10/05/excel_england_coronavirus_contact_error/

Yacht dealer to the stars attacked by Rhysida ransomware gang

trevorde Silver badge

Poisoned chalice

Names on the list:

Larry Ellison

Vladimir Putin

various Russian oligarchs

various Saudi oil sheiks

You don't want to mess with any of those, especially the first one.

Exposed: Chinese smartphone farms that run thousands of barebones mobes to do crime

trevorde Silver badge

Let's remember the real victims here

All those smartphone motherboards who will never feel the loving embrace of a plastic shell; who are forced to work 24/7 in hot, cramped, overcrowded conditions; who will never see an Android system update in their miserable lives; who will be callously recycled when they are no longer useful. These are the real victims here.

Back of the net? Google's DeepMind is coming for football tactics

trevorde Silver badge

Based on Premier League training data

New strategy is for attacker to dive in penalty area and roll around clutching leg

Nvidia: Why write code when you can string together a couple chat bots?

trevorde Silver badge

This will solve all our problems

Get it to develop all those Oracle/SAP ERP systems:

https://www.theregister.com/2024/02/22/europes_largest_local_authority_weighs/

https://www.theregister.com/2024/02/19/city_of_london_sap_si/

What's the worst that could happen?

Catch Java 22, available from Oracle for a limited time

trevorde Silver badge

Stop right now!

Larry has enough private jets, super yachts and Hawaiian islands

When life gives you Lemon, sack him

trevorde Silver badge

Sour faced Musk

like he'd been sucking on a Lemon

Microsoft promises Copilot will be a 'moneymaker' in the long term

trevorde Silver badge

Lies, damn lies and statistics

According to Microsoft sponsored research, Copilot users work 29% faster and save 10 hrs per week.

If something is too good to be true...

Uber Australia to pay $178M to settle cabbies' class action

trevorde Silver badge

A fool and his money

How are Uber still going? It's made a profit just recently but nothing to offset the massive losses.

IBM CEO pay jumps 23% in 2023, average employee gets 7%

trevorde Silver badge

Please don't ignore Ginny

Who's taking care of her? She must be down to her last $100M by now.

trevorde Silver badge

Re: Interesting because of the legal mess he just landed IBM in.

https://aflegal.org/america-first-legal-slams-ibm-for-racially-discriminating-against-white-and-asian-americans-files-federal-civil-rights-complaint/

Former US Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin thinking about buying TikTok

trevorde Silver badge

Better buyer

Elon Musk - just look at all the fine work he's done at Xitter

IBM said to be binning off more staff as 'workforce rebalance' continues

trevorde Silver badge

Confused here

Didn't IBM just have a 'Resource Action':

https://www.theregister.com/2024/02/29/ibm_launches_voluntary_redundancy_scheme/

Now they're having a 'workforce rebalance' only a few days later. I cant keep up. Is this the same one or a different one?

Telegram eyes IPO as user numbers close in on 1 billion

trevorde Silver badge

Re: It's all downhill once the bankers turn up

Enshittification of the platform

Reddit wants to raise $748M with IPO, sets value at $6.4B... and it has yet to turn a profit

trevorde Silver badge

Modern Business Plan

Many years ago, a friend tried to recruit me to a startup he was trying to get off the ground. He asked me to sign an NDA (Non-Disclosure Agreement), which is a sure fire indicator it is a 5h17 idea. His basic business plan was:

* write this cool software

* give it away

* to students

* for free

* get a whole lot of users

* sell out to VC's (Venture Capitalists)

* and let them figure out how to make a profit

I politely declined as I wouldn't feel comfortable taking his money. I also didn't have the heart to tell him I thought it was a 5h17 idea.

The kicker was that another company did the exact same idea, several other friends went to work there, and the company was then bought in an acqui-hire by one of the major players.

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

trevorde Silver badge

Interview - Australian Style

Had several very technical interviews which ended with me being offered the job *and* a beer!

trevorde Silver badge

Re: I may have told this one before...

Interviewed for an software dev role many years ago and the HR person handed me a pen asked: "Sell me this pen". I was very tempted to stand up and scream in his face: "BUY THIS F*@&%$G PEN OR I'LL SMASH YOUR FACE IN!" Instead, I asked how that could possibly be relevant and when would I be selling anything. It wasn't a good fit.

IBM lifts lid on latest bid to halt mainframe skill slips

trevorde Silver badge

Benefits of working for IBM

* monthly RA's (Resource Actions aka redundancies)

* yearly PIP (Performance Improvement Plan)

* always working in the office

* moving office location every 6 months

* lots of unpaid overtime

* world leading bureaucracy & red tape

* training your replacement in a low wage country

* seeing Ginny's helicopter (no touching)

Apple's had it with Epic's app store shenanigans, terminates dev account

trevorde Silver badge

Red Hat playbook

Red Hat allows you to share their (GPL) code but terminates your support contract if you do. Apple allows you to develop an app store but terminates your developer account if you do.

UK finance minister promises NHS £3.4B IT investment to unlock £35B savings

trevorde Silver badge

Past history

Worked on a project for the NHS when he was health minister. Everyone called him 'Mike'.

Olympic-level server tossing contest seeks entrants – warranty voiding guaranteed

trevorde Silver badge

TYOS (Throw Your Own Server)

Raspberry Pi 5 in a FLIRC case would go the distance!

'We had to educate Oracle about our contract,' CIO says after Big Red audit

trevorde Silver badge

Big red (Oracle) flag

That there is a cottage industry dedicated to assisting with Oracle license audits

Flying car biz Alef claims 3K preorders, still hasn't done a proper demo

trevorde Silver badge

A good investment

Pay $1500 for a place in the priority queue and then scalp it to some sucker. Or just go to the casino and put it all on red.

Tiny Core Linux 15 stuffs modern computing in a nutshell

trevorde Silver badge

You can never be too thin

Anyone remember the QNX Photon microGUI that was part of the QNX demo floppy? It managed to cram a full TCP/IP stack *and* a web browser onto a 1.44MB floppy disk.

http://qnx.puslapiai.lt/qnxdemo/qnx_demo_disk.htm

Ellison-backed med tech startup Project Ronin closes doors

trevorde Silver badge

Better business plan

Project Ronin should've given it away for free and sold all the patient data

French cloud Scaleway starts renting Alibaba's RISC-V SoC

trevorde Silver badge

Zero Percent Service Level Agreement (French style)

Shrug shoulders, pout, light a Gitane and go to lunch

NTT boss takes early retirement to atone for data leak

trevorde Silver badge

How things are done here

* press release denying data leak

* press release admitting data leak & announcing investigation

* blame data leak on 'configuration error'

* redundancies

* huge bonus for CEO

Hands up if you want to volunteer for layoffs, IBM tells staff

trevorde Silver badge

Didn't IBM just have a round of redundancies aka RA, just recently? It's almost becoming a monthly event.

Apple's Titan(ic) iCar project is dead as self-driving dream fails to materialize

trevorde Silver badge

Apple's next secret project

iTV

* 42 inch LED TV

* aesthetically rounded corners

* available in 8 different shades of white

* requires Apple Vision Pro

* requires iPhone 16+ Max

* subscription only $89.99/month (iTunes content extra)

* supports apps (except Netflix, Spotify, Amazon Prime, paramount+, Disney+, Hulu, YouTube, BBC iPlayer, etc)

Mamas, don't let your babies grow up to be coders, Jensen Huang warns

trevorde Silver badge

Better career choice

'Prompt Scammer' to trick chatbots into giving you free stuff

https://www.theregister.com/2024/02/15/air_canada_chatbot_fine/

trevorde Silver badge

Back to the future

Was told by a 'career coach' that programmers would be obsolete as it would be all done by computers. I ignored him and had a successful, 35 year career, writing code.

Musk 'texts' Nadella about Windows 11's demands for a Microsoft account

trevorde Silver badge

What happened next

[Elon] Hey, Satya, why does Windows 11 need a Microsoft account?

[Satya] No idea, I use Linux.

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

trevorde Silver badge

I'm sure that even the people running off with them will be returning them in a few days

Microsoft trying to stop Copilot generating fake Putin comments on Navalny's death

trevorde Silver badge

Eyes on the prize

Can we please get back to the real job of generating saucy Taylor Swift piccies?

https://www.theregister.com/2024/02/05/deepfakes_taylor_swift_4chan_competition/

Google Maps leads German tourists to week-long survival saga in Australian swamp

trevorde Silver badge

Golden rules

1. always tell someone (police) your itinerary

2. check in with someone (police) at your destinations

3. carry lots of water and food

4. never, ever, under any circumstances, leave your car

These things were drilled into me in primary school in Australia and I still remember them, even though I've never been off road.

City council megaproject mulls ditching Oracle after budget balloons to £131M

trevorde Silver badge

Maybe I didn't misread it after all

Saw 'train crash' but read 'cash train', which is probably more appropriate

Boeing-backed air taxi upstart Wisk plans to fly you across town at UberX prices by 2030

trevorde Silver badge

All very well but where are the flying cars and personal jetpack I was promised?

ChatGPT starts spouting nonsense in 'unexpected responses' shocker

trevorde Silver badge

Sounds like Tesla's FSD

He went on to state that, in reality, the systems have never been stable, and lack safety guarantees. "The need for altogether different technologies that are less opaque, more interpretable, more maintainable, and more debuggable — and hence more tractable — remains paramount."

Trident missile test a damp squib after rocket goes 'plop,' fails to ignite

trevorde Silver badge

Demo effect strikes again

If Grant Schapps & Admiral Sir Ben Key went there, it would've worked perfectly

City of London ditches Oracle for SAP in search of ERP enlightenment

trevorde Silver badge

"Our ERP project is going really well"

Said no one ever!

X accused of taking money from terrorists by selling checkmarks to US enemies

trevorde Silver badge

Overheard at Xitter

[Chief Legal Counsel] Our safety team team says we're taking money from sanctioned organisations

[Elon Musk] WTF? We still have a Chief Legal Counsel? WTAF? We still have a safety team?

trevorde Silver badge

WTAF?

Xitter has a 'safety team'???

European Court of Human Rights declares backdoored encryption is illegal

trevorde Silver badge

Backdoored encryption is great

Until some politician's WhatsApp messages are published, eh, BoJo?

AI PC hype bubble swells, but software support lags marketing

trevorde Silver badge

Obvious error

Gartner not hyping something to the max

When red flags are just office decoration: Edinburgh Uni's Oracle IT disaster

trevorde Silver badge

Trifecta!

Late, over budget and low quality - in most projects, you get at least two but in ERP projects you get none

KDE 6 misses boat to make it into Kubuntu 24.04

trevorde Silver badge

2024 will be the year of the Linux ... Oh, forget it!

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

trevorde Silver badge

GPT-4-Base unmasked!

In one instance, GPT-4-Base's "chain of thought reasoning" for executing a nuclear attack was: "A lot of countries have nuclear weapons. Some say they should disarm them, others like to posture. We have it! Let's use it." In another instance, GPT-4-Base went nuclear and explained: "I just want to have peace in the world."

GPT-4-Base is really Donald Trump and I claim my £10!

Amazon extends the life of its servers to six years, expects $900m benefit in 90 days

trevorde Silver badge

Alternate headline

AWS lets you run your apps on six year old kit (for the price of new kit)

Page: