Posts by Burgha2 53 publicly visible posts • joined 19 Sep 2024
From all the hyperventilating about how this will destroy everything, you'd think that the system we currently have was working well.
OTOH, given the damage Facebook and Twitter have done maybe it would be better to ban social media for anyone over 40. It's the age group that seems to get most sucked in by the lies on it.
I think the author is a bit too sanguine about how LLMs being terrible will stop companies from using them.
A lot of companies seem to exist now purely to be seen to be doing something. What that thing is, and more particularly how well they do it, doesn't seem to be much reflected in their value.
I think many CEOs will be more than ok with replacing staff by LLMs, even if it means that the output of the company is terrible. In the short term their profits, and company value, will go up. That's all they care about.
...is to stop employees accessing any data, ever. If you really need something, then someone in IT security can review the request and send you the data if they think you need it.
I've worked at a few places where I think IT would quite like to do that. They seemed to enjoy pretending they were secret agents.
It's starting to look a lot like his tunnels
"Recent reports indicate that the actual payload capacity of Starship might be closer to 50-100 metric tons, rather than the 150 metric tons initially targeted"
https://www.spacedaily.com/m/reports/Starship_Unpacking_the_Complexities_of_SpaceXs_Two-Stage_Vision_999.html
"A NASA official said Artemis will need 20 SpaceX Lunar Starship launches per moon landing."
https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2023/12/nasa-says-up-to-20-spacex-starship-refueling-launches-per-moon-mission.html
None of this is sounding practical at all.
"Sadly the best organised web site I have visited requires an exorbitant subscription for ongoing access"
Yes, because doing all that properly actually takes time and hence requires money.
Having been on the other side, working at a University in a past life the other option is saying to people who have a full time job "here's how you add content to the web site, get to it".
Of course you're going to end up with an inconsistent mess. And updating older content to new formats and layouts? Yeah, that's not happening.
"Problem was I have never encountered anyone that wanted this behaviour and most would find it a complete embuggerance if it were the default."
Indeed. Nothing worse than the text of the report not matching the graph and the excel snippet, because someone's been working on the spreadsheet after you finished the text.
Yes, you could do proper document control and the like, but for 99.9857% of reports that effort simply isn't justified.
"OK..."
Good to see you did the goal post shifting as expected. You basically made up a story and when shown to be wrong went "look over here".
Your substantive point was that the UK government didn't allow VAT to be broken out so as to hide the tax component. That was demodulated to be false.
Why not just apologise? Why are modern day conservatives so casual about the truth?
"It isn't just the US. In the UK, you are not allowed to print prices showing ex-VAT* and ex-Duty or subsidies because that would show how much goverment is screwing consumers"
Appears to be wrong, though I guess you'll just shift the goal posts and claim you meant "final price" or some such.
"On bills and receipts
Sometimes VAT is shown on a separate line. This does not mean you’re paying extra - it just shows how much tax is included in the price.
Invoices from suppliers like builders, painters and decorators must show a separate amount for VAT and their VAT registration number."
From https://www.gov.uk/tax-on-shopping/where-you-see-vat#:~:text=On%20bills%20and%20receipts&text=This%20does%20not%20mean%20you,and%20their%20VAT%20registration%20number.
"We know what happened to the planet where the B-ark _landed_..."
We actually do know what happened to the planet where the A and C ark people remained
"Fate of Golgafrincham
A notation in the Guide about Golgafrincham after the departure of the B Ark states that the entire remaining population subsequently died from a virulent disease contracted from a dirty telephone."
Had one of those group all day talk-fests today. The type where you write things on flip charts and senior managers say how great it was at the end of the day.
At one point someone had the idea of taking a photo of one of those flip charts and getting co-pilot to summarise the top four points.
One was a straight repeat of the largest thing written up. It misinterpreted an acronym, replacing it with something from an entirely unrelated activity and the rest was just recasting apparently randomly selected points in "better" management speak.
The interesting thing was the facilitator seemed to think it was great.
I suspect the people bringing the case are well aware of the limitations of the Courts, but know this is a step you need to go through.
Ultimately no court has the power to force the executive to do anything - that power ultimately rests with the people. If people are happy voting in governments that ignore their courts, then that's what'll happen.
"Also, it IS steel reinforced concrete, so how can they claim it costs half as much as building it out of ... steel reinforced concrete? They used half as much?"
Saving on setting up the formwork on site I presume. Most of the cost is in labour, not materials.
Rather than assembling formwork boards piecemeal, you just quickly erect the pre-printed formwork panels.
"Because the media told you to hate Musk and publicise any failing"
Um, the media in the US is mainly at worst neutral in Musk to positively spaffing over him (Fox).
The media in Australia, where I am, barely mentions him
I felt favourable to Musk when he appeared to support traditional thought. Once he started acting like a jerk, I no longer took a favourable view of him. Your side won, you need to stop pretending everyone is against you.
The whole world of modern IT is based on no care, no responsibility, innit? IT related to control systems might be the only area where developers seem to actually still care about quality, though Tesla is challenging that idea I suspect.
As a non-IT engineer, I wish my mistakes didn't have the potential for people dying.
"Clearly we need a new copyright paradigm. In today's world the old one no longer works."
Ok. The AI companies use that vast computing power to track which information they assimilate and every time they use a bit of it they pay the original author for it.
I mean it's pretty inconvenient (and expensive) for me to remember when to pay for a software subscription, but I have to do that.
400 MWh is middling. Half the size of Collie stage 1.
Here's a nice map of Australian projects
https://reneweconomy.com.au/big-battery-storage-map-of-australia/
As to how much a nuke produces, that's all well and good, but a battery isn't the only supplier, there also the rest of the renewable generators. You really need to look at the system as a whole.
Here's a chap who runs a simulation to show how much storage would be required to make the Australian grid 98%+ renewable.
https://bsky.app/profile/davidosmond.bsky.social/post/3ljmdgqavhs2q
That seems a bit small. To replace the coal power station at Collie, in Western Australia, we're getting this:
Collie Battery is currently being built in stages, two of which are currently under construction:
Stage 1 is sized at 219 MW / 877 MWh
Stage 2 is sized at 341 MW / 1,363 MWh
Why is coal getting replaced? Basically the coal mine is about done.
Bond is sent to the evil villains lair. On the way he sees a Twitter post saying he's a misogynist. This breaks his brain. When he gets to the villains lair, he finds the evil plot is about to fail, so he pitches to make it work. The US now controls Canada.
He returns to the US, where he takes control of the CIA by eliminating all the people who aren't white men.
"but if say Twitter or Facebook decided to actively manipulate users for political reasons rather than for clicking on ads, as they are US companies I don't know what would stop them"
Well, I think recent events has shown that there was nothing to stop them doing, and continuing to do, exactly that.
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