Posts by Albert Coates 119 publicly visible posts • joined 28 Sep 2024
Most Wikipedia articles aren't full of hallucinations with fake references such as LLMs tend to spew out. English Wikipedia is usually well-referenced with reliable sources, and the standard of the information is generally equivalent to Encyclopaedia Britannica. AI slop is specifically banned from Wikipedia, and the greater part of unsourced statements are marked as such (ie Citation needed).
"British Layland"
Hmm, are you thinkng of 'Layla' by Eric Clapton, or British Leyland, the apogee of abysmal car design and engineering, eg the Austin Allegro, Morris Ital, Triumph Stag (one of worst 50 cars ever made, according to Time magazine) - no-one gave a damn, not the manglement or the workers.
Well, that could have been me. In the late 1990s I was also delivering a training course at IBM in Basingstoke on the 7th floor, where the canteen was also located. Mid-morning I glanced out the window, and something was minimally on fire in the kitchen. I drew the students' attention to the fact and carried on teaching. A couple of minutes later, the kitchens were a mass of flames, and IBM PC Server architecture (usually a rivetting topic) had ceased to be of interest. I asked the class, "Anyone fancy being burned alive?" Answers were all in the negative so I called security, "Fire in the kitchens on the 7th floor", the alarm went off and we all trooped down the stairs as described above.
"Names, addresses, details of firearms held, details of qualifications. Maybe a few more odds and ends."
Like, how many times involved with police for any reason, mental health reports, etc. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firearms_regulation_in_the_United_Kingdom#Licensing
See also further down same article, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firearms_regulation_in_the_United_Kingdom#Gun_crime
"Exactly how is this significantly different from any other sports and social club?"
Are you genuinely dim? Maybe people actually die as a result of the misuse of firearms, whereas not many murders are committed with a running machine. Thank goodness that the UK has one of the most restrictive set of laws in the world concerning firearms. I wonder whether there will be a change in the gun crime statistics before and after Palantir.
Hey, El Reg, a couple of months ago this sort of article used to garner many tens of comments within hours - and now, barely zilch. What could possibly have gone wrong? Is it perhaps that no-one gives a fuck any more? Obviously nothing to do with your fuckwitted re-vamp and shitting on your loyal fans. Bye bye, El Reg: do you even give yourselves six months? Generous in the extreme, I know.
"does anyone take notice of adverts on a website?"
Happily I never see any, thanks to Adblock Plus or uBlock Origin which are entirely effective. Also, no telly or subscription service, so my life is gloriously 100% ad-free. As a further discouragement to advertisers I have so little money that I wouldn't be able to buy anything anyway.
Are you sure you weren't being scammed? Was the article about you or your company or band? No honest full-time volunteer editor would ever ask for money, but there are plenty who of unscrupulous people who attempt to extract your cash to write articles for you. I agree, the WP markup is pretty grim and unforgiving, but there is a visual editor (not that I've ever used it.) Sorry your experience with WP was unfulfilling. (Editor since 2010)
The original proposal is here:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Wishlist#May_20,_2026:_Community_Tech_becomes_a_program
And the discussion seems to start here:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Community_Wishlist#May 20 update
The strikers' page is here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wiki_Workers_United_solidarity
"I've been reading far less of El Reg since the change"
So has everyone else, judging by the lack of comments - often just 2 or 3 or even 0. Well done, El Reg, how to shoot yourself in both feet and call it a triumph for modern web design although all your readers know it's a abysmal load of old bollox.
Allow the horrendously culpable assholes to bring their own prosecution against the entirely guiltless postmasters and postmistresses, yeah, why not? Fujitsu and the Post Office and the Government are preposterously unashamed, and no-one seems to care in the very slightest: they have created a Tenth Circle of Hell just for themselves.
"Minister Willis mentioned a “recent trial of an AI scribe tool in hospital emergency rooms which has reduced the amount of time clinicians have to spend on file notes and increased the time they spend with patients” as an example of the sort of thing she hopes to replicate."
But but but wasn't I reading something here on El Reg that AI tools in hospitals/GP surgeries were hallucinating what patients were describing, simply making up symptoms? (Or maybe the Guardian...) Anyway as one consultant put it, mix up 'hyper-' and 'hypo-' and you suddenly have a whole load of deaths on your hands.
I'm afraid this is absolutely the case in the UK at this moment. How anything gets done, how anyone is cured is a mystery. Perhaps human diligence and persistence carries the day. This planned decline has been going on for decades, and welcome to our new overlords of private healthcare. Big shout out to all the junior doctors, registrars, nurses, clinical pharmacists, auxiliaries, porters and cleaning staff in the NHS who still manage to keep the whole thing working.
"Even with the correct answers, you can fail this test, and others, leaving you with the Apple or Google app left as the only resort."
This is also not the case. I failed the online Experian test, probably since my credit score is actually a great big 0. You can in fact ask for a 'Request for Identity' form that you can present at a UK Post Office along with eg a driving licence, passport. I know, I literally did it today.
"The US is a lot further geographically from any threat "
Yah, but try going west from Alaska - 20 miles of Bering Strait, and what's next? Oh, Russia.
"also self-sufficient in terms of raw materials"
Hmm, maybe, but only China has the industrial capacity to refine rare earths, needed for super-strong magnets, car batterries etc.
Maybe the public should complain louder: "Pitchforks, pitchforks, get yer luvverly pitchforks 'ere, only a tenner to you madam! Flaming torches, I got loads of torches, can't 'ardly give 'em away, flaming torches, guaranteed to last the 'ole night long, three for a Purple Lizzie!"
"If Skype hadn't been vacuumed up by Microsoft..."
I used to hack around with various of bits of code for my own enjoyment, and every time I opened up a hex debugger, Skype running in the background would highlight random strings of numbers it thought were phone numbers, and invite me to dial them.
Iain Banks just writes novels. The science fiction author is Iain M. Banks, and his 'Culture' space operas are full of violence, vicious intrigue and horrendous cruelty. No thanks, Elon, lay off the ketamine, and I hope you're not the one being decapitated by a knife missile disguised as a dildo (see 'Matter'.)
Welcome to fuckwit city centre.
Please do not feed the trolls.
Regular commentards, please refrain from posting anything at all.
You know it makes sense to starve them.
<Shelters under bridge, awaits troll-type grrr downvotes>
NB Trolls cannot cannot stand silent hilarity, since they can never tell if it's directed at them or not.
