Posts by Bebu

I made this network so resilient nothing could possibly go wro...

redundancy and diversity?

Instead of a second pair of Cisco boxen, Clint* might been wiser to go for another vendor with an obviously different CLI. Juniper or... Huawei ;). I recall the latter's new enterprise switches around the turn of the century were a fraction of the price of the US vendors. Presumably why so much fun has been had pulling them out later.

On hosts I *always* include the hostname (via $(hostname --short)) in the $prompt/$PS1 especially for superuser accounts. Some who ought to know better when replacing a running machine have the new machine with the same hostname *and* on the network but with different IPs. Plenty of scope there for "les culottes chocolate" (brown breeches.)

_{* the cinematic references abound "do you feel lucky punk", or "a fist full of dollars" as well as "for a few dollars more" and not forgetting "the good, the bad and the ugly" each of which could apply quite generally to any of the large IT and network kit vendors but perhaps without the "good."}

OpenAI loses another senior figure, disperses safety research team he led

Re: "remove the obligation to work for a living"

" Capitalists do not want a world in which we no longer need to work to survive"

Capitalism would no longer exist if people did not have to work, as the things that you need to survive would no longer have any intrinsic value that could be exploited by the banks/capitalists..

As Vetinari and Lady Margolotta separately observed stripping away the facades, it all really comes down to power and control. In Margolotta's case raw power was much more intoxicating than puting ones fangs into the jugular (and cuts out a messy intermediate step.)

I cannot see the assorted and various megalomiacs that have always afflicted our world, being satisfied with playing an elaborate game of Simon Says with their legions of AGI automata.

You your want real fear, pain, suffering and absolute obeissance there is no substitute for real flesh and blood.

San Francisco billboards call out tech firms for not paying for open source

If you don't have to...

doesn't mean you shouldn't.

In the US people are neither compelled to go to church nor to vote but a significant number choose to do so any way.

(In AU we are compelled to vote and 99+% do but hardly anyone goes to church.;)

One would like to think that in the interest of fairness (equity) and justice that if one were to substantially benefit from the exertions of another person one would feel some obligation to compense that person in proportion the benefit accrued.

That many don't speaks volumes of their hypocrisy, cupidity and fundamental dishonesty but I suppost that is the US in a nutshell.

The idea that anyone would do what is right, kind and just, even without incuring any cost or facing the least impediment, seems to be an anathema.

$180 for an overpriced, dubious SSD drive? Maybe don't join the USB Club

I wonder....

whether these devices are running an embedded Napster instance to allow these gen-Z folk to enjoy the thrills of Grandpa's illicit file sharing? The sort of cunning scheme Kim Dotcom (or Balderick) might hatch.

The youngsters purchasing CDs I can understand as I could never warm to DRM download collections which could sublimate in seconds before your very eyes. But vinyl LPs or SPs - daftness incarnate - I was happy to see the back of the blighters. Next I suppose pianola rolls will de rigeur. The only apparent sanity is that (compact) cassettes haven't enjoyed a renaissance but then I may be a little premature in that conclusion.

Putin's pro-Trump trolls accuse Harris of poaching rhinos

Re: Poaching rhinos?

Rhino poached? Broiled surely.

I know it is politically incorrect and certainly sexist but the immediate picture that came to mind was the VP in her kitchen with bloody big pot with on the cooktop with a rhino horn protruding from the top of the pot.

The actual story only marginally less crazy. I don't quite get the angle these malefactors were trying to work.

Trump leaning nongs would actually applaud the killing endangered species while the rest of the electorate would have likely retained sufficient brain cells to have serious doubts whether Ms Harris could discharge something of the calibre* of an elephant gun without ripping one or both of her arms off in the process.

(Fairly clearly she hasn't been so "disarmed" unlike the Jackal Kings (Court of the Air))

_{* according to the "wisdom" of interwebs ".375 H&H Magnum or larger caliber." I have no idea what that means but if I were, heaven forfend, in the US the author of this sage advice could give me a very good deal on a case of the stuff. :(}

Your computer's not working? Sure, I can fix that problem – which I caused

A feature...

Reinitializes the database every month and verifies the backups. A service even. Well worth 150 quid pcm, no?

I imagine there are quite a few SMEs out there that have suffered significant data (and other) losses through dodgy accounting/business packages and/or trusting their data to the "cloud" who would have benefited from such a "personalized" service. :)

If regonomized* Bill were a complete bastard he would have fiddled it, so the firm's VAT was under reported (under remitted.)

That he didn't shows he likely didn't work on Horizon or for Fujitsu - a chap must have standards don't y'know.

_{* my inserted nom is really required I feel.}

Polish radio station ditches DJs, journalists for AI-generated college kids

A Live Interview with a Dead Poet...

pissed off a few Poles apparently This Polish radio station dismissed its presenters and turned to AI. Then they interviewed a dead poet.

High tech necromancy? Next up Max Headroom interviewing William Shakespeare?

Presumably the AI would suck up all the plays and sonnets but poor Max might well get responses like:

Max: "Will, what do you make of the current state of AI?"

(The) Bard "The foul fiend rages, eats cow dung for sallets, swallows the old rat and the ditch-dog,"

"Ghastly. It all is. Absolutely ghastly. Just don't even talk about it."

BOFH: The Boss pulled the plug on our AI, so we pulled the pin on him

An no sequel database then? :)

I haven't the foggiest whether nosql databases have normal forms or not. Although it is likely one of the few things that I have absolutely interest in knowing. :)

The horror that is VHS revived for horror movie release

VCD too

VCD

I had one of these with a video doc of the archaeological sites of Thailand made in the 90s but never had anything to view it - even at the time as the format was pretty much unknown in AU.

Pornographs?

I imagine a pornograph is a hollow cylinder with a distorting mirror inside which restore the NSFW anamorphic image printed on the cylinders' inside surface. You view along the cylinders' axis.

An example of an anamorphic image René - Descartes because the other search engine options were KC III and selection of beturbinned potenates. Oddly searching with "bikini" added mostly returned non anamorphic images of Princess Leia and an anamorphic image of the crucifixion. I imagine AI is involved and has joined some extremely peculiar dots.

Fake reviewers face the wrath of Khan

Wrath of Khan

"To the last I grapple with thee; from hell's heart I stab at thee; for hate's sake I spit my last breath at thee. "

I couldn't quite place the quote but nice one. Not sure I would be comfortable on the same planet as Ms Khan if I were the target of such sentiment.

Septics are probably more familiar with Melville's work than we are in these parts.

Woman stuck upside down under rock for hours after trying to retrieve dropped phone

Darwin award?

Emergency services had to move a boulder to get her out

Not sure I would have bothered. Humanity's gene pool losing these genes would likely be no great loss as I really cannot envisage her great granddaughter taking us to the stars and besides she would actually be eligible for a Darwin which to to be credible has to be awarded posthumously. Otherwise a bit like a kamikaze reunion which would necessarily be a very second eleven affair.

The dark side I suppose but when I saw the soles of those bare feet down the crevice I immediately thought of a peacock feather.

Didn't say what the lost phone's marque was but I imagine there's only one a fan might iDie for.

IPv6 may already be irrelevant – but so is moving off IPv4, argues APNIC's chief scientist

Will read the Geoff Huston's post...

the bit about names is a good point but I think it has been around for very long time.

The model that an opaque name or label is consulted in a directory to produce an identifier (integer) which is effectively a (destination) address which is then used to set up a circuit or in packet headers is pretty fundamental. Essentially a "what" to "where" translation.

The additional fact that the routing is also in a sense encoded in IP addresses is often not noticed. Think netmasks and CIDR. So in this case adding "how" to the "what" and "where" which is rarely ultimately a good idea.

Alternatively an otherwise opaque identifier could be used to dynamically discover a route to a provider of the identified service which in many cases would be a nearby CDN. Probably requires routers or intermediate systems (IS) to cache a lot more routing information but perhaps offset by other benefits.

I have a vague suspicion that something like this was envisaged by the OSI networking people back when but then the vagueness* wasn't all mine. :)

_{* the uncharitable might suggest vacuity.}

SuperHTML is here to rescue you from syntax errors, and it's FOSS

I wish...

I had this years ago. The small amount of my content creation was purposely limited to html, CSS ( no javascript) so a tool like this would have been invaluable.

Trying to secure a web service that required the panoply of PHP, CGI, *sql etc etc for a CMS or a wiki, was a bridge too far - requestors were told to go to WordPress (or to buggery - if there's a difference.) No breaches and users often discovered there is a lot you can do with static pages and in one case augmented with Makefiles. ;)

Feature phones all the rage as parents try to shield kids from harm

Great news!

When the kids give their overprotective parents enough grief to toss their offsprings' "feature" phones I hopefully be able to pickup a decent small light 4G VoLTE dumb phone so that I can hang up on the unceasing spam from chappies in Bombay still trying to flog dodgy photovoltaics. (Unsurprisingly no one else phones me.)

I have a lot of sympathy for the parents but I think just eliminating (for everyone) social media in all its ghastly manifestations would be a far more beneficial approach. Banning cameras in phones would help as most social media seems predicated on the ability to near instantaneously post images or video on some daft web page often with ensuing embarrassment and regret.

What about these phones is a "feature?" I thought the total lack of features was the selling point. The "seniors" phones had large actual keys - a feature I suppose) but given most people now don't remember phone numbers (more than seven digits?, ten in AU) the visually challenged have trouble navigating the dreadful contacts app compounded by the small screen.

Perhaps a voice operated "feature" phone makes sense in this context - a few years a young colleague demonstrated how my low end Huawei 3G smart phone could be voice operated and appeared to work reasonably well. As I said then there will be ice skating in Hades long before I start talking to machines (that includes voicemail) or I will be totally bloody dribbling ga-ga. ("Now then! It's wicked to mock the afflicted." (Frankie Howerd.))

Want to feel old? Excel just entered its 40th year

"The thing is, Lotus trusted MS and wasted its time building an OS/2 version..."

"... trusted MS"

As did IBM with OS/2? But trust MS? Bloody long spoon I should have thought (and here applied both ways.)

Not that there is any evidence that the lessons of history have been learnt.

When? "...is blowin' in the wind."

"More senior than Windows itself, and still runs the world"

"... and still runs the world"

Given the state of the place I can easily believe that! Although the decrepit 40+ yo clowns dodderers who think they are running the show are likely as culpable as MS's geriatric software.

Many years ago I think I read that MS actually acquired a mac spreadsheet application which become excel for the mac but I cannot find any record on the interwebs. I would normally just accept I just imagined it but likewise I don't think I could find that the MS C compiler v3 was actually the Lattice C compiler (which at the time was documented in the Wendin Operating System Toolkit (OST) along with a lot of other interesting tidbits. :)

Unlike money which the "love of" is the root of all evil, spreadsheets require no such intermediary being IT's version of evil incarnate in the incompetent hands of the ignorant and the delinquent wreaking financial havoc for the last four decades.

I don't have any problem with grid (tabular) formats for interactive input and output but rather with the opaque model(s) between the two. Rows and columns are like programming in machine code or assembler.

I had forgotten Windows 2 runtime versions. I had one with the Whitewater Group's Actor language Windows software development application. Actor quite nice idea but Windows 2 nasty unpleasant rubbish (MS and I parted rags at that point. :)

'Newport would look like Dubai' if guy could dumpster dive for lost Bitcoin drive

Re: Simple solution

Give him a shovel. Tell him to start digging. Surely if it’s worth that much he won’t mind wading through stinky rubbish to find a small rusty hard drive?

Exactly my thoughts. And compel the silly sod to put everything back the way he found it whether he locates his hard drive or not.

This chap being in Wales made me wonder whether Bodmin actually is in Cornwall as I had thought. ;)

The billionaire behind Trump's 'unhackable' phone is on a mission to fight Tesla's FSD

Re: 178b is the standard for aeronautical OS's

"...misconstrued as treason.*

_{*Not that they are treason of course.}"

Of course that buffoon also laughed off "a little light treason" as matter of hilarity and nothing more.

A more petty and treacherous individual would be hard to imagine.

Re: What's the point of a secure phone for Trump?

ivanka69?

Wash your mouth out! ;)

Re: 10k lines of code?

Minux 1.0 ran to 12k lines of code and were reproduced as an appendix to Andy Tanenbaum's Operating Systems: Design and Implementation

From personal experience at the time Minix was pretty capable on a IBM PC running two serial vt100 terminals plus the console which was vastly more capable than MSDOS 3.x in use at the time.

I would guess 2k+ lines were for the PC's floppy disk controller (fdc) driver - hardware which I think AST called totally broken or brain dead.

Minix cannot have been too shabby if Intel half inched it for their onboard management engine (ME.)

Big browsers are about to throw a wrench in your ad-free paradise

Re: Everybody sells out in the end...

"people do with their souls, which is their property,"

Probably on theologically shaky ground there.

Besides I cannot quite see how something whose mere existence is widely contested could be property in any commonly accept sense.

I have the title deed to Lucifer's soul which I could offer on EBay if anyone were gullible interested enough to bid for it.*

_{* might be useful if you had sold yours and now desire to redeem it. :)}

Intern allegedly messed with ByteDance's LLM training cluster

Re: "the incident was reported to their university"

Well that's one guy who can say goodbye to his PhD*, apparently, as well as his prospects of ever working for a major Chinese company.I'm guessing he's going to learn English and come wreak havoc over here in the near future.

If he were responsible for half of what he appears to accused of, I would say he must be seriously deranged. If he were to learn english, migrate to the US and naturalize he would fit into US politics seamlessly but landing any job in IT outside the C-suite pretty unlikely.

_{* unless his thesis topic was "The Hazards and Risks of Insider Attacks in the Software Development Environment" ;)}

Musk's $1M election lottery raises serious legal concerns, says Pennsylvania governor

The great uMthondo we Sizwe

uMthondo we Sizwe had to look it up but I like it. ;)

Presumably translates in this context as "the great[est] dick[head] of the nation."

Re: Waste of money.

Normally the transplanted element may be rejected by the adopting body, but I suspect in Musk's case the to be transplanted thing would reject Musk.

"Graft versus Host" is a thing. Doubtless with the cast of Trump and Musk et al. there is plenty of graft involved.

An old joke though I recall Tricky Dicky (RMN) was said to have received an arsehole transplant but that the graft had rejected him.

Personally I would only accept Musk's USD 1million if might have it in nickels and dimes and permission to shove the whole sum up his same orifice.

Developer pockets $2M in savings from going cloud-free

And there are those expensive modular reactors...

that cloud providers are going to invest in.... guess who going to pay for those?

If AI loads keep increasing cloud services inevitably become more expensive if only from demand/supply economics.

For quite a few firms with very conventional fixed workloads a smaller cloud provider (not in the GPU/AI game) or on-prem may well be considerably less costly than the global cloud providers.

I suspect there is a market for the supply of managed on-prem resources - pretty much the way IBM mainframes were once supplied.

Linux admin asked savvy scientist for IT help and the boffin blew it

Re: Token ring cabling in ethernet

Someone ...That wire was treated to a pair of scissors followed by the bin.

That "someone" wasn't similarly treated?

I am trying to recall a humourous sign from years ago in Benny Hill "faux German" along the the lines "Auchtung! Nicht touchen oder sie Ballen geschnipt!"

Probably too politically incorrect now (like Benny Hill) to see the light of day.

Although just last week a young local political candidate during her campaign was promoting a local German cultural festival on social media thought it clever to appear beside her electoral poster with her picture with a toothbrush moustache pencilled in. Stupidity clearly isn't the sole preserve of the aged.

Re: Igor?

"This is the one true patron saint of lab techs."

I have encountered some breathtakingly peculiar tab technicians but your Igor reminds me more of a few academics I have dealt with who were, if anything, more sodding peculiar (and with lashings of attitude.) :(

The tie and mad Marty Feldman eyes are diagnostic.

Re: School network

50 Ohm. Worried for a moment. The *only* way I could ever forget that trauma would be the brain going...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/10BASE2

Bodies...

One of the senior managers once instructed me to, "Make sure xxxx knows everything you know!" My suggestion that she would have to go to University then gain at least 10 years experience first didn't go down well.

"Everything you know"

Including where the bodies wrapped in blood soaked carpet are buried?

These Captain Bollocks* of Manglement expose how little they about anything when they drop these gems of wisdom.

_{* as Gus Hedges (Drop the Dead Donkey) was once referred to and who famously asked "Are we cooking with napalm? You bet!" Indeed.}

All you needed was the T-connector and a piece of cable long enough to reach to the next box.

"always easy to fit another box into the middle of the net. All you needed was the T-connector and a piece of cable long enough to reach to the next box."

Until you found out what the 2 or 5 meant in 10base2 or 10base5. (Clearly here 2. :)

Don't get me started on clowns that had inserted (mono)monitor coax (75 Ohm) into the circuit. Or some TV antenna coax. Or some cable from a random lab instrument.

A pocket full of 50 Ohm terminators and binary section to locate the problem but binary section or sectioning of the perpetrators might have been more effective or at least more satisfying. Always wondered how effective a vampire tap would be as an EpiPen® substitute.

Tolkien Ring

our BOFH sending new PFYs to hunt for the token

PFY: "Sorry Sauron Simon, your previous monkey PFY appears to have fallen into the lava chamber clutching your precious token."

Sauron Simon: "BUGGER! I FORGOT THAT I CAST THAT MISERABLE WORM FROM THE WINDOW. UNFORTUNATELY UNAWARE THAT GRUB HAD CONCEALED MY TOKEN FROM ME."

As I think Pratchett's barbarian Cohen once remarked to a Troll we don't have properly Dark Lords any more. The upper case in tribute to Pratchett's scythe bearing character who is still as properly fatal in this world as on the Disc.

I could see Wile E. Coyote standing under the plummeting ACME Roadrunner Squasher...

as soon as loopback cable was mentioned. :)

Crossover cables were bad enough back in those days but at least they were (usually) bright red and detesticulation or defenestration would subsequently attend anyone bringing one into the building.

Fortunately our "boffins" couldn't successfully change a fuse let alone make a patch lead even with a Krone tool which I wouldn't have on site either. Cheaper and more reliable to buy patches in bulk.

Having endured coaxial ethernet and some odd tech run over rs232 wiring I had very little patience for networking by the time twisted pair/10BaseT arrived.

Even with twisted pair/star topology most of interconnection was via (dumb) hubs which were little better than repeaters or switches (adaptive bridges) that didn't do spanning tree so if some clown intrepid boffin were to introduce a loop into the network topology a visit from Mr Cockup rapidly followed.

I will credit that in almost every case said clowns took the simplest approach and managed to plug two ends of a single patch into the same hub.

Igor's loopback cable is the ultimate simplification as you only need to plug one end in. :(

Like any RJ45 cable with damaged plugs, Igor's cable would have very quickly been introduced to Mr Sidecutter and Mr Miniskip if not also Igor himself.

Typical of the environment I suppose, but why didn't Igor or the network admin* use a standard patch and a 5 port hub - the magic lights work the same and even in those days hubs were as cheap as chips? But they didn't ask Evans either. ;)

Youngsters enjoying the luxury of standards based vendor independent autonegotiation (that actually works) and much more just wouldn't believe you. I guess the "joys" of Infiniband await any contemporary bright young things overcome with hubris. (Those the gods would destroy...)

_{* as a species exclusively either brilliant or ought to have been strangled at birth (or earlier.)}

The Astronaut wore Prada – and a blast from Michael Bloomberg

Re: Patches

Elbow patches and Tweed.

In our case he was a maths teachers who had been a navigator in WW2 bombers on missions over Germany. He use to regale his classes with tales of how they would navigate to their targets (giving the trigonometry used) and the early radar they were using.

The thing that got us was his heritage was as German as you could get even by 1939 Reich standards and in all likelihood his family would have been interned here during the previous stoush. In hindsight his people might have been socialists or communists/marxists who weren't particularly welcome in the Kaiser's empire.

"designed to fit both males and females from the first to 99th percentile."

..., 3, 2, 1 - the non binary alphabet aren't going to like that. ;)

If I were to spend 8 hours in one of these garments (with included* "life support systems...") I would like to know up front how a chap would siphon the python? (I leave it to the ladies to supply their own euphemism.)

Techicolor Birdsong is never going to be pretty in a helmet - Prada or not. I guess the tinted visor is to spare the wearer's companions the nauseous spectacle.

Looking at the photographs the suits do seem to have the design flare of the nation that gave the world Ferrari and Maserati. Prada though - can one wear heels in this suit, I wonder?

_{* not as though oxygen is an optional extra like heated seats. Also not wildly keen or CO2 scrubbing.}

California cops cuff suspect in deadly drone-assisted drug deal

"Other Sensors"

I suspect one way of tracking and locating this drone was the radio transmissions to and from the drone.

Always thought that was a major flaw in using drones for such covert purposes when they weren't fully autonomous.

I would use a single use drone that could "self destruct" (shades of the original TV series Mission Impossible instruction tapes :) to thwart tracing the hardware.

I would transport the drone with the contraband payload, the navigation and destination instructions preloaded to a non-urban location for the launch. The actual takeoff could be delayed until I had left the vicinity.

After flying to the destination the drone hovers, releases the payload, flies clear and self destructs.

Of course any interference or tampering with said drone would also trigger its destruction.

One alternative I had considered was a balsa, doped fabric skin model glider with a drone powerpack, battery and electric moters with lower rpm, larger plastic propellers(s) - all of which could be quite large with an extremely small radar footprint. Could be rather quiet if slow but the payload could be considerably larger.

Autonomous drone submersibles could also be used where a convenient and adequate body of water was available.

I suppose it might be easier to take up falconry and train a peregrine to deliver the goods. :)

Richard Branson to take balloon ride to edge of space

Re: 5 of Richard Branson's balloon adventures - in his own words

Looking at your Branson Balloon form guide 1985-91 and the inclusion of Space Perspective's founders and major investor Branson on the maiden flight of the Neptune* brought to mind the final descent of the Titan submersible.

The comment by an officer in the senior service about the inevitable consequence of pointed tools coming in contact with inflatables shows there is intelligence and humour still defending this Sceptred Isle.

_{* AKA Poseidon (Greek) - the earth shaker :)}

Server-maker Wiwynn expands $61M lawsuit against X

If names were omens...

Wiwynn = "We Win" unless Taiwan phonology is particularly odd.

I hope this augurs well for the plaintiff.

Elon channelling L.Ron? I have long suspected Space Karen of being the the metaphorical love child of L.Ron who notoriously engaged in similarly disgraceful practices.

I don't suppose we shall have to wait too long before an X franchise applies to register as a tax exempt religious organisation. Might piss off christians as X (chi) already had an early association with their religion. A shame that the Spanish Inquisition is no longer extant which led me to wonder whether Musk had a Murrano (Converso) or Morisco heritage but found it is more interesting than that.

AWS boss: Don't want to come back to the office? Go work somewhere else

Choices

there are some people they don't want to lose who will not agree to come into the office and they figure they'll give them an exception and never speak of it again

Talented and capable people may well choose not to work in an organisation run by arseholes, quietly moving to greener, better tended pastures and ultimately the arseholes* will inevitably fade from existence as the snark they had invoked was a boojum.

_{* from the archives of the bleeding bloody obvious: clearly the only thing anyone can reasonably expect to emanate from an arsehole is shit.}

Alternate world line

CEO: "do X or go somewhere else!"

Employees: "ok" (leave for somewhere else)(stays)

CEO: (surprised Pikachu face)(supercilious grin)

Employees: Back to the office then? (Thinks _{I am sure I will be really motivated to perform at my best with a commitment to an employer that clearly values my contribution and is concerned with my welfare and career progression. Pig's arse - screw you.})

I don't how much incidental damage that "teams" of thoroughly demotivated people can inflict on an organisation but I imagine we are about to find out... in spades.

X to allow third parties to train their AI models with social media users' data

Wrong Oriface?

Elon Musk's social media mouthpiece X (formerly known as Twitter)

Wrong end of GI tract?

... social media anus X (formerly known as Shitter.)

Oral-Fecal routing on the interwebs?

Tesla FSD faces yet another probe after fatal low-visibility crash

Seeing?

Tesla vehicles are ostensibly just as good at seeing in fog, sun glare or excess airborne dust as a human driver, with the added caveat that it's an AI making the decision, not a human.

I suspect I actually need a cluestick studded with steel nails to hammer the point AI, LLM, computers don't see in any sense that approximates processes the human (or animal) vision implies.

Behind every pair of eyes there is a massive causal model of reality that can envisage what might be in the glare of sun, make a nearly instantaneous risk assessment and decide on a course of action. The decisions might be wrong but Darwin has ensured consistently poor deciders are removed from the gene pool.

The main failing of contemporary AI/LLM is not that the isn't clever or capable but rather that its proponents do not recognise that the human brain and mind is vastly more capable than AI/LLM will ever be - even if the technology were taken to ridiculous extremes of scale.

I wouldn't say that artificial intelligence or sentience is not possible but I can confidently predict not in the lifetime anyone currently living (including Space Karen et al. with pretensions to immortality*.) I would predict that the artiface that our descendants might use, would replicate parts of the biological processes involved in brain function if not in its entirety. Evolution might suggest the path of least resistance from an abiotic/inorganic precursor to consciousness is what we call biological. Fascinating questions that might take centuries to resolve - or never.

_{* I would be happy to contribute to their barrels of rotten fish. (See Qin Shi Huangdi)}

Re: Camera only is bad ?

But we let millions of poorly sighted people drive on the roads every day

The question is Are the cars causing more accidents than the human equivalents That is where we need to be going

With humans we know who is responsible. A driver who knowingly operates a motor vehicle while he or she has impaired or defective vision has a degree of culpability.

An automated vehicle that continues to operate under conditions where the inputs from its sensors are known to be impaired to the extent that continued operation is hazardous and consequently causes, or is involved in, a serious accident that otherwise might have been avoided - who is responsible?

For Teslas I would like to think Space Karen personally - twenty lashes with the cat would do nicely for starters.

Elon Musk's disaster relief promises: Should we believe the hype?

Re: Weird nerds

Ad Hominems towards a man that no-one here knows.

"By their deeds you will know them" Matt. 7:16 NMV

_{KJV "Ye shall know them by their fruits."}

Re: Musk is playing...

Elmo could leave for Mars and never come back, that would be a huge gift to humanity. Bonus points if he takes Trump, Thiel and JD Vance or Clarence Thomas with him.

Sounds like the start of a decent passenger list for the B-Ark (The Terran Ark Fleet Ship B) or "a little list." But what has Mars done to us to deserve this load of obscenity being dump on them? Resettle these rotten blighters on Venus or the surface of the sun.

Bandai Namco reportedly tries to bore staff into quitting, skirting Japan’s labor laws

Might not be too bad

"read all the Gartner reports and then compare with what actually happened and explain where Gartner got it wrong."

Could probably freelance for the Vulture with a weekly column like "Nutters* Omens" which could describe predictions of Gartner and other defective crystal ball gazers contrasted with what actually and necessarily happened.

_{* Agnes excepted of course.}

Re: "It's pretty cheap to print your own though..."

When in Rome, DO NOT act as the Romans do. When in Japan, show some dignity and don't learn the language beyond basic stuff, and present the best of Blighty

Shades of Flanders and Swan in full flight "The English, the English, the English are best, I wouldn't give tuppence for all of the rest" ;)

Unfortunately an inescapable consequence of being in foreign parts is being surrounded by foreigners unless it's a package tour destination and then is arguably worse. ;)

I think I actually get the point - every nation and culture has its admirable and civilized practices which which visitor might respect or observe without shame or loss of dignity but equally each also has a share of demeaning, disgraceful, undignified and uncivilized practices which any self respecting visitor ought to avoid.

Opening up the WinAmp source to all goes badly as owners delete entire repo

the cat is no longer in the remote geographical vicinity of the bag.

"Never mind the llama, the cat is no longer in the remote geographical vicinity of the bag."

Schrödinger would be proud of the quantum antics his eponymous moggy's offspring.

This Llama outfit must be a wholly owned subsidiary of the Blackadder conglomerate with the Llama C suite solely consisting of Balderick as this fiasco has the grimy finger prints of one of his "cunning plans" all over it.

I do recall well over ten years ago QNX being open sourced for a (very )short while. I have no idea how they managed to put that cat back in the bag.

Re: Simplest solution

True, but the number of people who think they can read code and are able to misunderstand it is probably a far larger number.

Necessarily at least as many as those who write source code, experience suggests.

Pentagon stumped by mystery drone swarm flying over Langley Air Force Base

Definite aroma of bullshit...

You have half the legions of hell flying over and around your base for more than two weeks and were phoning home using a non standard frequency. An advanced course of hand sitting was prescribed. Pull the other one - it is nearly Xmas so will be seasonal.

Even pulling an old WW1 biplane out of mothballs and flying beside some of these drones you could capture them with a butterfly net. :) Or a remote controlled airship with a trawl net. Or a WW2 Mosquito and use the drones for target practice. :)