Re: Software veganism
> couldn't be arsed to reply,
Try taking some B12 or Iron tablets - might wake you up a bit
(sorry /jk)
Posts by Andy 68
126 publicly visible posts • joined 7 Apr 2010
Anti-AI open source has an enemy in common, but almost nothing else
Google meets the neighbors and gets both barrels over its new UK datacenter
AWS customer learns the hard way how even the smallest oversight can be mission-critical
Monday 20th July 2026 23:00 GMT
I struggle to see how you could recieve email that was sent to an address, but not also send.... are there in fact any situations that would occur?
Different passwords/hosts for pop3/smtp/imap possibly...???
This is actually a situation I'm faced with weekly, and the usual response is "Oh, we don't have access to that email address/domain any more"
If there's a real-world solution, I'm all ears
Monday 20th July 2026 22:52 GMT
Sorry sir - that's what a hacker would say.
In all seriousness - if you are a web company whose customers are uniquely identified by their email address and do not require any other form of identification to create an account (e.g. ElReg, and probably 85% of the web) - how the hell are they supposed to gate you other than requiring you to send an email from the domain?
You signed up using X form of authentication. If you can't exhibit X form of authentication then anything you say can also be said by someone trying to take over your account
GitHub Copilot: Sorry Dave, I can't do that harmful thing - unless you ask me in code
GitHub cuts short offer to burn repos on CD after mockery ensues
Startup sues Palo Alto Networks' Koi Security, saying an AI-hallucinated report falsely linked it to Chinese espionage
Young evil genius forces hamster to run on wheel to power his gadgets
To fix this Wi-Fi network, we'll need a crane
The first thing vibe coding builds is confidence it will help you succeed
Sunday 29th March 2026 23:07 GMT
"I don't speak the Language, but this hasn't stopped me from confidently ..."
This hasn't stopped me from confidently quoting Heroes Del Silencio whenever I meet a Spanish person.
Ah 3.. ah 2.. ah 1..
Entre dos tierras estas, y non dejas aire que repira...
Dejame - que yo no tengo la culpa da verte cajer.....
OpenAI gives ChatGPT models the chop – two weeks' notice, take it or leave it
Monday 2nd February 2026 13:29 GMT
Re: This is why openweight models are useful.
> fast
so, are you saying that it is just speed?
"Big" and "fast" are of course relative, and what is small and slow now used to big and fast, and you you can bet that today's big and fast will be tomorrow's small and slow.
I run a 2b model, not particularly fast. The difference in cost is orders of magnitude
Sunday 1st February 2026 20:24 GMT
Re: This is why openweight models are useful.
This is what I don't get - why don't people run these locally?
Is it just speed?
Or is it just a desire to run the latest shiny ones which are likely to be too big for anything local that's not properly specced?
In all the miles and miles of internet real estate given over to discussion of the pros and cons of this or that model, I see people talking about the cost of tokens. I run gpt-oss 2b (or whatever the correct term is) locally, on my windows box under ollama. It's not super duper fast and I admit I don't use it constantly or very much in-depth. But if I grow tired of the speed of it, I'd much rather buy a better GPU, maybe even multiple ones, than pay thousands to any of the online slop-flingers.
Can someone enlighten me please?
CES 2026 worst in show: AI girlfriends, a fridge that won't open unless you talk to it, and more
VLC's keeper of the cone nets European free software gong
Techie fooled a panicked daemon and manipulated time itself to get servers in sync
Why blow up satellites when you can just hack them?
OpenAI model modifies shutdown script in apparent sabotage effort
Microsoft-backed AI out-forecasts hurricane experts without crunching the physics
Bad trip coming for AI hype as humanity tools up to fight back
The most important experimental distro you've never heard of gets new project lead
Saturday 12th April 2025 05:48 GMT
Re: Home directory
> One size does not fit all.
Yeah, absolutely - I'm not saying it does.. But no laptop in the 3 or 4 companies I've worked for in the last 20+ years will have had more than one actual human user account set up - obviously there are admin accounts and service accounts etc. .
That's tens of thousands of laptops, and the vast majority of them are not linux. Windows and Mac have the same structure. (At least I know Windows does. Not 100% sure about Mac)
>This may come as a surprise but laptop distros need to cater for more than just your way of doing things.
You're missing my point. I'm not saying "My way is right and you've all got it wrong". I'm saying it could do with a re-think. Operating system use has changed in the last decades.
> I don't want it running out of my own home directory.
Your home directory which is where everything, by default, saves your Documents. In - in /home/doctorsyntax/Documents, which, if you're following the corporate security standards I've seen, is encrypted to the user login. So you have to save your presentation somewhere else. What I'm suggesting would actually help you.
Friday 11th April 2025 19:08 GMT
Home directory
I think the very concept of a home directory is one that needs a good re-think. Along the same lines as Hisham says in one of the later links, and what Liam alludes to, I think there's so much less of a need for it any more.
No-one else is going to use my laptop. In the 20+ years since I first used Fedora in a work environment to now, with Mint, no-one else has ever used my laptop(s) - in some places it can be a sacking offence. IMHO the only need for a home area is to store things like ssh keys. Things like .m2 directories with GBs of "stuff", applications that store temp and configuration files and downloaded extras should be in a more general Apps or Data area.
The same problem as windows c:\Users
It sounds like Gobo might be the first step towards this.
Tech support session saved files, but probably ended a marriage
eBPF. It doesn't stand for anything. But it might mean bank
HP ditches 15-minute wait time policy due to 'feedback'
'Abandoned' astro takes recordbreaking ninth spacewalk
BOFH: How to innosplain your way through an audit
Atlassian's Bitbucket Cloud went down 'hard' today
SpaceX resets ‘Days Since Starship Exploded’ counter to zero
Tech support warrior left cosplay battle and Trekked to the office
Opening up the WinAmp source to all goes badly as owners delete entire repo
Google trains a GenAI model to simulate Doom's game engine in real-ish time
Thursday 29th August 2024 06:16 GMT
It's a labour-saving device
Dishwashers washed tedious dishes for you, thus saving you the bother of washing them yourself, video recorders watched tedious television for you, thus saving you the bother of looking at it yourself; AI plays tedious games for you, thus saving you the bother of playing them yourself
CrowdStrike file update bricks Windows machines around the world
What happens when What3Words gets lost in translation?
30 years on, Debian is at the heart of the world's most successful Linux distros
Viasat probe into ailing $700M satellite casts shadow over Q1 results
BOFH: You can be replaced by a robot or get your carbon footprint below Big Dave's
The ZX81 finally gets the keyboard it deserves
Here's how to remotely take over a Ferrari...account, that is
Elon Musk to step down as Twitter CEO: Help us pick his replacement
Someone has to say it: Voice assistants are not doing it for big tech
NASA uses occult means to spot tiny moon orbiting asteroid
We've got a photocopier and it can copy anything
Dell and Ubuntu certify latest model of XPS 13 ultrabook
Friday 22nd July 2022 09:04 GMT
Re: I had hoped from the photo...
The UK site has the 9315 with the option to have Ubuntu pre-installed - is that the same as "certified" ?
This comment brought to by a 9310 running Mint perfectly. It used to have Ubuntu on it, but it refused to upgrade to 20.04 (or maybe 22.04... I forget), Snap kept annoying the *** out of me, and Liam's previous articles persuaded me to take the jump. I love it to bits.
I don't think Dell do the Developer version for the UK - at least I've never been able to find it. The 9320 seems to go by the name XPS 13 Plus over here, and it does look horrific ( https://www.dell.com/en-uk/shop/laptops/xps-13-plus/spd/xps-13-9320-laptop )
Demand for smartphones is drying up
Wednesday 20th July 2022 08:13 GMT
Re: Peak Phone
What I think you and pretty much all the commentards above are missing, is that we all are no longer the target audience.
We have two post-18 teenagers in the house, and they absolutely do want the bigger screen and faster processors for gaming and watching TikTok. They do want better cameras for selfies to be uploaded straight to IG/TikTok. They want data plans that will let them stream spotify to them constantly wherever they are.
They don't use SMS, email or the telephone - ever.
And they're going to be around for a lot longer than most of us.
