Posts by Knightlie

Show top LLMs some code and they'll merrily add in the bugs they saw in training

Kell Surpreese

Anyone with more than eight minutes of software development experience ALREADY F*CKING KNEW THIS WOULD HAPPEN.

I hate the tech industry so bloody much right now.

Type-safe C-killer Delphi hits 30, but a replacement has risen

Re: Delphi - A fantastic product let down by decades of mismanagement

It was a high point in software development that will never be beaten, IMO. I'm jaded, frustrated and bored by modern development now - but NEVER when I was using Turbo/Borland Pascal and Delphi. Such fun times.

Re: A colleague of mine uses Delphi/Lazarus

Any half-decent developer should be fine maintaining Pascal code. As mentioned it's a bit more wordy than c-likes, but code is code.

Memories...

I remember this like it was yesterday. Delphi was an absolute fucking game-changer at the time, and we could churn out Windows GUI programs at an alarming rate. My favourite IT product, of any kind (after Space Engineers).

Given the mess desktop development is right now, I'm tempted to take a look at Lazarus...

A Chinese crypto farm next to a nuclear missile base? Not on my watch, says Biden

Why not ban crypto-mining altogether and kill two birds with one stone?

Trying out Microsoft's pre-release OS/2 2.0

Re: Very Different

Not sure in what universe Bill Gates "bailed out" Apple, but it sure as sh*t wasn't this one. He got caught with his trousers down.

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

uis

Why do people keep acting as if these AIs have *any* intelligence at all? They're built on human output and so reach human conclusions.

This whole thing seems like a massive waste of time. "Human-trained LLM reaches same conclusion as humans."

That's not the web you're browsing, Microsoft. That's our data

Microsoft have NEVER been trustworthy. Anyone who has read about or lived through their history and paid a lick of attention knows this. Gates and Ballmer were car salesmen, not tech luminaries.

Re: Not just a Microsoft problem

I'm constantly baffled as to why people use - and shill - Brave as much as they do.

Android iMessage app Beeper releases working update of blue-bubbled tool

Re: taken steps to shut down the Beeper party and indicated that it would continue to do so

Not sure how. Anyone can still message iOS users from any other phone. I reckon the colour of a message bubble is a way smaller issue than the anti-Apple-tards think it is. And Apple are perfectly entitled to protect their systems from intrusion by this idiot - as an Apple customer I'd DEMAND they do just that.

As for security, people who want that will be using Signal anyway.

Ofcom proposes ban on UK telcos making 'inflation-linked' price hikes mid-contract

“All telcos are struggling to generate new forms of revenue."

That's not my problem. Turn the heating down or chuck stuff on eBay like the rest of us have to. I enter into a contract for a fixed price, and one that has some random "we want more money" increase halfway through is not acceptable. I don't get the luxury of reducing my payment, they should not be able to do the reverse.

Re: No sympathy

What a load of BS. To avoid this predatory behaviour, the only answer is not buy any of the services offered? You do realise they're all doing this?

But you said "let the downvotes commence," so you're just begin disingenuous anyway.

The 15-inch MacBook Air just nails it

Re: At least...

Yes, Apple being literally the only technology manufacturer in existence whose wares end up in landfill is certainly a vexing issue.

https://www.apple.com/uk/recycling/nationalservices/

Don't be fooled: Google faked its Gemini AI voice demo

"AI" faked?? Say it ain't so...

Veteran editors Notepad++ and Geany hit milestone versions

Re: EMACS or death

I tried, I really, really tried during my switch over to Linux. But no matter how hard I try, using it always ends with me yelling WHAT THE FUCK.

Currently trying Neovim, with similar results.

40 years of Turbo Pascal, the coding dinosaur that revolutionized IDEs

Re: I owe almost my entire career...

Ran an entire Local Authority Highways dept on Boland Pascal and Delphi apps. Great times.

I owe my career to Turbo Pascal and Delphi, and a great book by Jeff Duntemann. I went to Twatter once to try and think him for his book, but he seemed to have gone off on some kind of QAnon-style nutjob rant. I backed quietly away.

Spanish media sues Meta for ignoring GDPR and harvesting data

Re: "systemic and massive disregard for privacy laws"

Prevent Meta properties from operating in the EU until they fix the issue. Either a) they fix the issue or b) we'll be without ArseBook and Crapstagram. It's a win either way, although I prefer the latter outcome myself.

HP exec says quiet part out loud when it comes to locking in print customers

Not sure why anyone's really that surprised, these companies haven't even been *trying* to hide their contempt for their customers for a least a decade.

Microsoft .NET MAUI devs vent over bugs backlog, response times

I lived through the Database Access maelstrom back in the late 90's, where MS had at least four competing database client libraries on the go at once. I'll give Blazor another three years before some MBA comes up with a career-enhancing replacement.

.NET UI is a Mess

.NET UI options are an absolute mess. If I'm still considering *Windows Forms* in 2023 for writing a desktop application, someone's dropped the ball pretty badly. And bringing Linux into the mix pretty much negates the "cross-platform" .NET as an option at all, I'll get a more cross-platform result with Python, ffs.

Sam Altman set to rejoin OpenAI as CEO – seemingly with Microsoft's blessing

lol

X's legal eagles swoop on Media Matters over antisemitic content row

Hahaa, yeah... wait, you're being serious...

Firefox slow to load YouTube? Just another front in Google's war on ad blockers

"To be clear, Google's business model revolves around advertising, and ad blockers are specifically called out as being in violation of its terms of service."

Sounds to me there's an anti-trust/monopoly issue around Google producing the browser AND the ads people are trying to block. Maybe Chrome should be spun off into another company...

Re: Grumble

I'm using Vivaldi and Pi-hole on my NAS and I've not seen any of this crap.

With all eyes on OpenAI, Meta drags its Responsible AI team to the recycle bin

Responsibility or Profit.

Pick one.

To pay or not to pay for AI's creative 'borrowing' – that is the question

"We're thieves and parasites profiting from the hard work of others, and we want the law changed to allow us to continue doing that."

Imagine a burglar standing up in court and saying this.

Intel drops the deets on UK's Dawn AI supercomputer

Re: Why ?

I'm going to jump the gun and say "no." In fact. I reckon this will be sitting idle in, like five years or so when they realise no-one has any actual use for it.

Google dragged to UK watchdog over Chrome's upcoming IP address cloaking

Tell us you don't understand what racism is without telling us you don't understand what racism is.

Cruise admits its driverless robo-taxis need a human at the remote-control wheel

"As to the reason behind the pause - be it cold feet or GM just waiting to see if and when Cruise gets its driverless license back - GM declined to elaborate."

I suspect it was prompted by a Cruise cab parking on an a injured pedestrian's leg. These abominations shouldn't be on the road, anywhere.

UK throws millions at scheme to heat homes with waste energy from datacenters

This sounds like something that will generate exciting profits for someone, but leave tenants either sweltering hot or still shivering cold. The former matters, the latter won't.

Microsoft's 11-year itch: The uncelebrated anniversary of Windows 8

If you "got used to" Metro after a week you clearly don't use your computer for anything particularly complicated.

Wow, a lot of unbridled hate for people who don't like the tools they use every day having their interfaces completely changed - and made objectively less useful. Go and adjust all the door of your house to open the other way and tell us how you get on.

I've used Windows since 3.1, and I enjoyed being able to use a reasonably consistent and easy to understand interface, with a good information density, helpful feedback and all the features I need readily available. The Metro interfaces destroyed every one of those aspects of the Windows UI.

BTW, the last couple of sentence of your post make you sound like a dick.

Re: The beginning of the end

Just going through the same process now, also getting a Mint installation set up. Windows 8 onwards is a dumpster fire, and I'm tired of being angry at my computer all the time because it won't do what I want it to, or does things I don't want it to.

Microsoft have lost the plot IMO.

As NASA struggles to open OSIRIS-REx's asteroid sample can, probe heads off to next rock

"The team has been working to develop and implement new approaches to extract the material inside the head"

Taken out of context, that sounds horrific.

Meta's ad-free scheme dares you to buy your privacy back, one euro at a time

How does this work for people who don't sign up for Zuck's manure-filled websites, but are tracked by him anyway? How do those people withdraw consent?

X looks back at year of so-called 'engineering excellence' under Musk

I suspect it's because Elon Musk is a hate-filled, talentless, unfunny, clueless, reactionary, bigoted, stupid shitstain. People like that are generally, and rightly, reviled by us decent people.

Windows 11: The number you have dialed has been disconnected

Re: Amen

Yep. Just do one last major release to reinstate the Window 7 UI.

Bezos' engineers dream of Blue Ring space platform in orbit by 2025

Re: Reality distortion field testing in progress.

Apparently the other major challenge is getting access to public money for this bullshit instead of spending his own.

Re: Space

I find people supporting the actions of these parasites abhorrent. This pie-in-the-sky (or... donut-in-the-sky?) nonsense provides nothing of value, like all billionaires' society-destroying hobbies.

LinkedIn lays off nearly 700 staff, engineers to suffer the most

"None of that really matters, though, because Wall Street approves. Microsoft's share prices were generally unaffected after it announced its IRS bill last week, and jumped today on news of the LinkedIn layoffs."

Poor people* are suffering, yay!

* Poorer than "Wall Street," anyway.

British boffins say aircraft could fly on trash, cutting pollution debt by 80%

Betteridge's Law of Headlines

"Is a sustainable aviation future possible?"

No. If you're burning something to do a thing, you're doing it wrong. This is still producing pollution, just at a slower rate.

As it prepares to abandon its on-prem server products, Atlassian is content. Users? Not so much

"Some users who contacted The Register told us they've started, and paused, migrations away from server products because the process was not easy."

It literally didn't work - we had to migrate twice because their systems weren't working correctly. Took weeks to fix.

Remember folks - it's not the cloud, it's just somebody else's computer.

Excel Hell II: If the sickness can't be fixed, it must be contained

Oh great, more AI

I mean yeah, spreadsheets are rarely used correctly, but the prevalent answer of "GeT Ai To dO It" is a shitty one. There isn't any "AI," it's just fancy auto-correct, and if you have to fact-check it because YOU ALREADY KNOW it get's things wrong, how is that an improvement? Do we need more AIs to check other AI's output? It's AI's all the way down, man...

So this one time, at Bandcamp, half the staff were laid off

"We are committed to keeping the existing Bandcamp services that fans and artists love, including its artist-first revenue share, Bandcamp Fridays and Bandcamp Daily," said Songtradr.

"We are looking forward to welcoming Bandcamp into our musically aligned community. We share a deep passion for all things music and will continue to serve artists, labels and the fans who make it all possible."

BandCamp Fridays will be gone within 12 months, BandCamp itself will be gone in two years. Calling it now.

Airwave a 'license to print money' on legacy blue-light comms contract

"license to print money,"

ALL Government contracts - whether central or local - are a license to print money, always have been, always will be. £11 million? That's rookie numbers.

Doom developer John Carmack thinks artificial general intelligence is doable by 2030

LLMs are not AI, on any level, and cannot become one.

Why can people not understand this?

Microsoft’s AI investments skyrocketed in 2022 – and so did its water consumption

Another Offsetting con

"Pay no attention to that water consumption behind the curtain, look over there at that wetland we helped... do something with..."

Portable Large Language Models – not the iPhone 15 – are the future of the smartphone

The combination of "Meta" and "LLM" means I won't ever touch this, even if I thought there was anything remotely beneficial.

Meta's entire business model is based on scooping up and selling personal data - why would they give out a product that doesn't do that?

You sound like one of those people complaining that Apple "hoovers up" your appointments for the Calendar app. And none of the ads I see on the App Store are "personalised," so you're going to have to provide a citation for that.

Never mind, you won't...