back to article Failed gambler? How about an algorithm that predicts the future

Another coffee, please. Yes, I know we're about to start. There is always time for one more coffee. It's good for your brain. Thanks. Could you hold my cup for a moment? I need to visit the restroom. Yes, I know we're about to start; you told me that already. There is always time for coffee AND a comfort break. Yes, I know the …

Page:

  1. b0llchit Silver badge
    Pint

    Half full or empty

    ...coffee-cup-half-full type...

    As an engineer, I reject the half full/empty premise and submit that the cup was not produced with the correct specification.

    1. chapter32

      Re: Half full or empty

      As a project manager I would say that was an agile cup.

      1. Patched Out

        Re: Half full or empty

        As a reliability/safety engineer, I would say that the cup was designed with 100% safety margin.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Half full or empty

          As a field engineer, I'm having to explain why marketing said the plastic water cup could be used for hot coffee when it clearly can't. Hence why half the contents are on the ground.

          1. Rameses Niblick the Third Kerplunk Kerplunk Whoops Where's My Thribble?

            Re: Half full or empty

            As an auditor, I require a detailed explanation of where the other half of the coffee went, why it wasn't accounted for and a report detailing how you intend to mitigate this in the future

            1. Citizen of Nowhere

              Re: Half full or empty

              Helpdesk here. To stop burning your fingers and spilling half your coffee you're going to need to superglue the broken handle back on (although the sales guys did suggest buying a new cup).

          2. Loyal Commenter Silver badge

            Re: Half full or empty

            As a software developer, I'm half way to my next mug of coffee.

        2. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Half full or empty

          AS a software developer, we're working on a patch for that.

          1. Stoneshop
            Coffee/keyboard

            Re: Half full or empty

            As Application Support we've been waiting for that fix for over a year, and it's still listed as being in the next sprint. Perhaps you should feed your snails some coffee.

      2. newspuppy

        Re: Half full or empty

        The cup is agile.. or the bladder is agile?

    2. BenDwire Silver badge

      Re: Half full or empty

      As a grumpy retired engineer, I submit that the cup is half empty, the contents are stone cold, the cup has a chipped rim and I've just cut my lip on it.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Half full or empty

        As a pedantic, I would said if I'm drinkng from it, it's half empty. If you're filling it's half full.

        There again, I don't drink the stuff - what do I know?

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Half full or empty

          I think you mean "as a pedant"

          1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

            Re: Half full or empty

            You should be grateful that something was left on the table for you, even if it was half full; or empty.

        2. Omgwtfbbqtime

          Re: Half full or empty

          As a Far side fan - I ordered a cheese burger.

    3. Pascal Monett Silver badge
      Coat

      Re: Half full or empty

      I reject that argument entirely. As far as I'm concerned, if you're asking the question, the cup needs to be refilled.

      1. Mark 85

        Re: Half full or empty

        I reject that argument entirely. As far as I'm concerned, if you're asking the question, the cup needs to be refilled.

        I vote for this as the best answer/solution. I raise my cup in salute to you sir.

        1. Horst U Rodeinon

          Re: Half full or empty

          Yes, but is the cup you're hoisting full, half full, half empty, or empty?

          1. Ghostman

            Re: Half full or empty

            None of the Above: The cup has reached it's nominal functionality by achieving only a 50% rate of capacity.

    4. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Half full or empty

      As a Stackiverflow user, I'd say drinking coffee is depreciated and no longer best practice, you really should be brewing tea instead.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Half full or empty

        "I'd say drinking coffee is depreciated [...]"

        Well we do seem to have an inflationary spiral - but I think your spelling checker should have used "deprecated",.

        1. Stoneshop
          Headmaster

          Re: Half full or empty

          but I think your spelling checker should have used "deprecated",

          That word has been depreciationelised.

      2. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

        Re: Half full or empty

        Shirly tea is an infusion, not a brew. (Lancastrians excepted, of course)

        1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge
          Coat

          Re: Half full or empty

          Ah, I see I managed to trigger a Yorkshireman :-)

    5. HandleAlreadyTaken

      Re: Half full or empty

      As a one percenter, I say "This cup? It's not my cup! My cup was full! AND it was a bigger cup!"

      (badly quoted from Terry Pratchett, the source of all wisdom)

    6. herman Silver badge

      Re: Half full or empty

      It is due to inflation, to avoid having to double the price of the coffee.

    7. KittenHuffer Silver badge

      Re: Half full or empty

      Obligatory XKCD: https://what-if.xkcd.com/6/

  2. Sam not the Viking Silver badge
    Pint

    We need this

    "...a beautiful concept of actually building prediction functionalities directly into the database..."

    That would be like auto-correct then.

    Inflatable, er, infallible.

    1. Alistair Dabbs

      Re: We need this

      In the early days, autocorrect would routinely replace 'Alistair' with 'Alligator'. This was annoying when it happened but amusing when I failed to notice.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: amusing when I failed to notice.

        Aha, my friends, you now see that our mental conditioning technique has worked after all. Our friend A, originally given a whimsical and moderately embarrassing animal-themed name by his parents, now *truly* believes he is really called the much less socially troublesome name "Alister" instead. And since all the altered documentation has been in place for some time, I think we can call this a wrap!

        ...

        ...

        Hmm, mind you, there is still the "Dabbs". Do you think we could maybe do better? :-)

  3. Franco Bronze badge

    I'd try and write some sort of clever comment normally, but right now for some reason I'm entirely focused on coffee.

    I predict the future is caffeinated.

    1. Warm Braw

      I was always taught a fresh cup of really hot tea offered better prospects, though I've never been able to afford the finite improbability generator.

      1. Franco Bronze badge

        To be fair it's a big problem powering your infinite improbability drive when the onboard drinks dispenser produces a drink that is almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Growing up I always saw the evenings and the future as peaceful and mentally quiet, with wonderful music playing (LP's on the record deck) and everyone sitting around talking while sharing a puff with each other and passing the album covers around, enjoying company and conversations.

      But now that's illegal and we're drinking coffee and posting on social media instead, is this our caffeinated future?

  4. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

    tspDB? A teaspoon database?

    Connecting it to BitCoin & the like should be interesting - if it handles the feedback correctly it will disappear up its own oracle.

  5. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

    "My entire lab really loved this project."

    Back in the day N Ireland didn't use the blow-in-the-bag breathalyser. They had a device using wet chemistry, colorimetry and operator input to obtain the final reading. The RUC operators needed training courses and the training courses needed other RUC officer volunteers to be test subjects (I don't thing there were any conscripts) and consume alcohol. There was a slight downside in that it involved having several blood samples taken over the course of the day although I suppose they were feeling less pain as the day progressed.

    A colleague had the job of managing herding the volunteers. She reported that some of them got a bit upset that the course was paused for the lunch break and broke into the drinks cupboard.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Happy

      Hey, you just triggered a memory of something I hadn't thought about in donkeys' years - the original breathalyser used by police at the roadside.

      It, too, used wet chemistry - you blew through a tube of crystals into a bag and the colour change in the crystals reflected the approximate amount of alcohol present in your breath and likely got you a trip to the station.

      1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

        Call that wet chemistry? This one, as I recall, bubbled the breath at a controlled rate through an actual solution.

        1. Loyal Commenter Silver badge

          Eh, in my day, it wasn't wet chemistry unless the fire sprinklers are going off in the lab...

          ...and you tell that to the kids today...

        2. Anonymous Coward
          Happy

          "Call that wet chemistry?"

          As a chemist, yes ;-)

          I would imagine the one you used was intended to be more accurate as it used a colorimeter to assess the colour change, but I would also imagine it was still based on potassium dichromate. The dichromate has to be wet or moist for it to react with the alcohol.

          But anyway, you did remind me of something I hadn't thought about for decades.

    2. swm

      "My entire lab really loved this project."

      At GE where they built microwave ovens one researcher used to bake cakes in them. He could tell by how the cake rose where the microwave energy was going.

      Around 4:00 a large crowd of researchers gathered around to eat the discarded cakes.

      1. Antron Argaiv Silver badge
        Thumb Up

        It's fun to microwave Peeps (those marshmallow ducks with the colored sugar coating). You can see them "breathe" when the microwave is set on 50% duty cycle, and if it has a turntable you can see when they go through the hot spots in the cavity.

        Best of all, after a minute, you get that wonderful roasted marshmallow smell, and you get to eat the test subject!

  6. chivo243 Silver badge
    Happy

    Old pizza crusts

    and Stonehenge research? I'm in! Let me help you with that pizza!

  7. Potemkine! Silver badge

    Coffee is good for health!

    For the french speaking audience: Un caoua SVP!

    1. Alistair Dabbs

      Re: Coffee is good for health!

      That was fun, thanks.

    2. Dr_N

      Re: Coffee is good for health!

      That's a fairly accurate portrait of a French working life with coffee.

      Except maybe not enough handshaking. (Or failed handshake/fist-bump these days.)

  8. Howard Sway Silver badge

    coffee cup half empty

    If the algorithm predicts that the algorithm isn't going to be very good and you're going to need a bigger algorithm, that's when you know it's started to truly understand the world - when it starts making more work for itself in order to keep its job. That's when you'll know that it's passed the Consultancy Horizon.

    1. You aint sin me, roit
      Mushroom

      Re: The Consultancy Horizon...

      I saw a documentary about that.

      Once the horizon had been crossed someone tried to pull the plug... and that's how we ended up with terminators running around in California!

  9. Dr_N
    Coat

    Dexter

    Luckily the Cartoon Network one, not the blood splatter serial killer one

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Dexter

      Either are good programmes to watch!

Page:

POST COMMENT House rules

Not a member of The Register? Create a new account here.

  • Enter your comment

  • Add an icon

Anonymous cowards cannot choose their icon