Posts by Bebu sa Ware 2773 publicly visible posts • joined 3 Nov 2024
A new word for me but then I am not a fan of the "dismal science."
I imagined it was an obscure way of saying "disemboweled" — understandably as there is obviously a fair bit of shit involved in both.
Merriam-Webster
disintermediation
Apparently a new coinage in sense (1) from 1967.
Might be interesting whether in other jurisdictions these conditions constitute effectively constitute a restrictive trade practice and unlawful.
I was curious what 2457 flight hours would look like in CO2 emissions.
According to https://2lun.com/flight-carbon-calculator a flight in a mid-size jet (~Learjet 60/Hawker XP?) from JFK to LHR (Heathrow) — 5400km, 6h55 produces 6107Kg of CO2.
Simple proportion would give you 2143557Kg CO2 [≈6107Kg/7hr×2457hr] or 2143t CO2 !
(https://www.consumptioncalculator.io/fuel/aircraft_fuel_consumption_calculator.php for a Learjet 60 gives 2176t )
That's a whacking great bootprint from the Krapcarft stomping on the planet.
I suppose these dark lords do need their seeing stones to watch our planet burn.
A Learjet 60 burns ~200gal(?US)/hr Jet-A, 1gal Jet·A ~3Kg and 1Kg Jet-A produces 3.16 KgCO2 Doesn't quite add up.
"Because it is too easy to build your ATM on a Windows platform."
Seems a bit odd. ATMs in AU were at least from one bank (of the Big 4) used some obscure or purpose specific Siemens processor and certainly didn't use anything from Microsoft. Don't know anything more as the engineer working on the code couldn't say much about what they did.
I suspect there are (now) multiple processors and the obscure processor handles the hardware and its security and above that a comms processor to handle secure comms between the ATM and the backoffice and somewhere in the heirarchy a user interface processor (which God forbid might be Windows based.)
In the past ATM interfaces were extremely basic and clearly monochrome text based but now are fully graphical (with adverts) and rather complex. Couldn't see the problem there ? No ?
My guess these miscreants are leveraging a vulnerabilty in the UI component to inject fake but legitimate protocol requests into the hardware processor's request stream.
Probably a fundamental design flaw.
If you are going to work in a restricted area of any sort, absolutely insist on being escorted to the work area, on being supervised at all times while performing the task, and escorted from the area. And having a record of the whole process (who, what, where and when) would also be advisable.
If the chap† supervising wants to skive off for a slash/fag either join him or insist on his waiting until his replacement takes over, or on being escorted off the site until supervision can be provided.
If the employer finds you are too much trouble, there are a lot more organisations that take physical security seriously than those that don't.
When the merde truly hits the ventilateur, lax organisations are notorious for assigning blame to the innocent whose only crime is not being sensibly paranoid.
† chap/he could be chapette/she but generally women seem to take this stuff more seriously and have no tolerance for hazing for obvious reasons.
Totally agree.
—18°C cold rooms: typically fan forced and have panic buttons.
Having worked fully clothed in a lab one, I know how quickly you can become hypothermic and lose fine motor control and suffer confusion. It is terrifying.
If the victim suffered from a cardiac infirmity such as an arrhythmia, the physical stress of extreme cold could have precipitated a fatal cardiac arrest.
Definitely homicide. Depending on your jurisdiction might be murder but definitely manslaughter. (Reckless and foreseeable.)
Just have a large carpark outside the facilities' secure areas and transfer visitors to one of these Soviet era conveyances. ;)
In the UK a fleet of mini Mokes would be equally unfeatured - bare bones and the skeleton is showing although it could also make a UK military base look like a scene from "The Prisoner."
There is no hypocrisy like American hypocrisy.
I have no idea whether these chaps have transgressed any laws or moral boundaries but this kind of action is tainted with the very unpleasant stain of "guilt by association" that has blighted the last few decades.
A few years ago II would have thought that comment was utter nonsense but taking UK politics as a whole over the last decade or more there are some rather sinister shadows discernable which don't contradict the comment.
Still, this whole episode does bear the unmistakable hallmark of a typical British clown show fuck up.
Better your country than mine I suppose. :(
I don't think that is even particularly true of human intelligence. Part of intelligence is being able to quickly discard irrelevant information/knowledge and to focus its analytical processes on the remainder.
Sherlock Holmes was famously unaware of the Heliocentric arrangement of the Solar system but as he pointed out to Watson that it was irrelevant to his work whether the Earth went round the Sun, or the Sun the Earth.
"General Intelligence" even in the perverse sense the slop merchants intend must ultimately be those focused analytical processes that characterises human intelligence and not the purely representational manipulations of encoded information that amounts to current AI.
In the fantasy novel "The Court of the Air" one of the functions of the Court appeared to be retrieving individuals caught on the chunks of the planet which have been projected into space by some geological process.
One reviewer wrote "The Land of Jackals is a warped echo of Britain during the early 19th century"
We might write: "Britain in the early 21st century is a warped echo of its past."
Surprising what you read picking up discarded books from the kerbside. Karst Geomorphology anyone? Actually not too dry. ;)
is that you just know that they have never had problem with their systems and probably never would have.
The fool and the simpleminded appear to be cloaked in a protective field which the rest of us don't enjoy.
I suppose too, the visitors to a NHS clinic are so pre·occupied with their own concerns that they wouldn't notice the whiteboard and if they did there would be no incentive for them to screw up further an already adequately fucked up NHS.
A lot of practices in these parts appear to use the same security card on a lanyard tech as banks use for their teller's terminals. A couple of minutes of inactivity the card has to be swiped again to unlock the terminal and applications. Passwords alone then might not be very useful without the corresponding card etc.
I think it is more of Aleister Crowley's dismal "There is no grace: there is no guilt: This is the Law: DO WHAT THOU WILT!"
Same old, once again, nothing seems possible.
This perfidious technology is almost enough to make one believe in a Devil as an anthropomorphism of the immanently malign in the world. Of course we do it to ourselves unassisted by supernatural malignancies which if they exist would undoubtedly bow to our superior mastery of evil.
"How many ungodly creatures are there here! How hideous mankind is! "
"respond unreasoningly-positively and -enthusiastically to devices equipped with Genuine People Personalities™."
Where might one, if one were so minded, find a video of such marvels ?
"O wonder! /How many ungodly creatures are there here! /How hideous mankind is! O brave new world, /That has such people in't."
Last year out of both curiosity and boredom, and the fact they had been subject to legislative concerns and featured in the local media, I searched for information on life sized sex dolls (not inflatables.)
It's quite interesting eg first up there is the choice of Thermoplastic Elastomer(TPE) or Silicone which is a tradeoff between "feel" and "durability" respectively — TPE preferred at entry level (apparently.) Stainless steel frames (skeletons) and start at 20Kg to over 50Kg.
Fairly expensive USD1000–3000 for prête à porter models presumably a lot more for custom tricks.
There was an unboxing video on youtube by a young goth amazon which is quite funny when she kept complaining how heavy and cumbersome the doll was and being forced to read the manual on how to screw its head on.
Apart from a bit of Frankie Howerd level innuendo not as salacious as you might think. Funny though.
I shudder to imagine the "passion" of 50Kg mechatronic Silicone skinned, stainless steel framed doll with a "Genuine People Personality™" — flesh and blood is daunting enough. "He was torn assunder by passion. His remains are in the corner."
certainly mastered mistressed the art of sucking up flattery or sycophancy.
A bit like a cat — sweet as pie … until it shows its claws. Not called Clawdine for nothing.
The dialogue reminded of the early scenes in the pilot of "I Dream of Jeannie" whereafter the usual trials and tribulations of releasing a Djinn (Djinniya) quickly followed and I don't doubt Clawdine, while not as winsome as Ms Eden, will be even more troublesome and equally impossible to put back into the bottle.
The idea of keeping a woman in a bottle speaks volumes about the twisted psyche of the male American both in the 1960s and today. Perhaps the increasing difficulty of keeping actual American women in even metaphorical bottles is driving part of the uptake of these AI succubi.
I imagine laboratory glassware is still borosilcate glass unless there is something better. I think polycarbonate testtubes were used for introductory chem lab courses at one point.
You would not think kitchen glassware would be in line for enshittification but clearly nothing is safe. Ironically with traditional stoneware you get what you see even if it has a shit brown glaze.
https://sourceforge.net/projects/pwgen/ - Ted Ts'o about 9 years ago.
I found it useful for generating random (uses /dev/random) passwords (—s) when mucking about with iSCSI configs and the like.
Just when you thought AI was only good for producing random shit, you discover it's just plain shit albeit predictable shit.
The hypothesis that the brain does some kinds of processing during dream sleep/REM sleep is fairly mainstream, I believe. I think processing and laying down long term memories is one type that has been attested experimentally and clinically.
I don't think this study could distinguish between problem solving per se as one of the processes happening during dreaming and a re·organisation of existing information or memories guided by a recalled problem definition that facilitates finding a solution after waking, Transforming between representations is a fairly common conscious strategy when dealing with abstract problems.
The idea of tagging the problem with an audio cue which can later be played during dreaming to direct whatever processing towards the problems is fairly plausible. If a subject cannot recall any dreaming at all (which I haven't since my teens) any improvement in problem solving must be subconscious.
I recall the "use 6 matchsticks to form 4 equilateral triangles" on Bryant and May Redhead matchboxes flumoxed me at the pub until it just jumped out at me when I was "distracted" dealing with my beer.
I vaguely recall an episode from The Prisoner where the Village People messed with Nº6's head in his dreams using some type audio signal.
Curiously nicotine does seem to focus the mind and render more concrete abstract ideas. Also seems to stave off mental and physical fatigue. No idea of the neuropharnacology behind these observations. Just that it is a rather unhealthy crutch.
I suspect putting a problem aside permits a broader focus to be applied (analogous to escaping from a local extremum during optimisation.)
Personally I find going for a stroll in the fresh air with the distractions of nature or even those of an urban evironment often works wonders.
Tempted to write "No, nothing" but I suspect the company still has unplumbed abysmal depths from which it might drag the dismal talent with which it could convincingly cockup a cockup.
Only MS could show such facility in fucking up their own BSOD.
"[Sonnet 4.6] with a broadly warm, honest, prosocial, and at times funny character, very strong safety behaviors, and no signs of major concerns around high-stakes forms of misalignment"
Oh Dear ! Someone has clearly been spiking the lemonade.
Either that or they have confused their malignant creation with the person of the Dalai Lama.
given the low powers involved. Just wandering around with a 930MHz wide band transmitter broadcasting noise would overwhelm the presumably extremely sensitive receivers.
There wouldn't be enough power available on the rfid to do much cleverness like beam forming, spreadspectrum or fancy error correction.
The transmitters could do fancy stuff like spatially localise each rfid and beam the power channel to the device which still would be not be much more than 1 μW based on the typical rfid's size, I would have thought.
Openbox, Window menu, done.
Probably configured twenty years ago and copied from OS to OS since, with minor tweaks.
Actually install tint2 but don't really use it or need it - the battery widget and time/date is about all. (Needed to build it from source for AL8 so I guess it is fading.)
Or at least get their crayons from the Recycled Toxic Waste Office Supplies Company (Guangdong) — they also do a pretty line in coloured play sand with added asbestos.
Long ago the abuser interface on Windows drove her indoors to such distraction that I installed Classic Shell (now OpenShell) so her PC has looked roughly like XP ever since Win7.
She was stuck on Windows back then because she had to run Windows only accounting software for honorary treasurer roles in a couple of community groups. The auditors working gratis specified the accounting packages compatible with their systems.
When LTSC goes out of support I'll just move her to a Linux distro with something that looks like XP.
Moi. As I said thirty years ago to a hopeful soul: "I don't do windows." (If I did, I would be standing on a traffic island with a squidgee and a bucket of soapy water. Being preferable to being perpetually mired in MS shit.)
If he was asking for
But your Dutchman is proverbally mercenary and this specimen likely a bit deficient in brains department so I might play a lament for him on my 2cm violin†.†. ;)
† move your flexed index finger over the top of your thumb in a sawing motion while voicing a whining lament.
"have any references to cite"
Just search "semantic ablation"
Two picked at random:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07421-0 , https://arxiv.org/pdf/2507.13300
How does measure semantic ablation? I assume by measuring the quantity of information in the system before and after the process has been applied; the loss of information is the ablation. Entropy typically being the measure of information.
Does rather sidestep the issue of the relation of "meaning" (semantics) to "information" in this sense. To my mind the "meaning" must include the context of the reader. A theory of Life, the Universe and Everything recorded in Minoan Linear A script† could be demonstrated to contain information but currently very little meaning. The Voynich manuscript might be equally futile.
† I guess "== ||" does appears somewhere. ;)
"Now where do I get my misinformation from without having X?"
Truth Social ? Pravda ? Sky ?
I guess the real question is the negation of yours viz where do I not get my misinformation ?
Inside surface of a cardboard bogroll core would be favourite.
The truth might be out there but is decidedly coy; certainly not easily discoverable.
Does anyone reckon that the teen Space Karen had the hots for agent Scully ? Might explain the the whole X thing. (Not saying Gillian Anderson wasn't hot.:)
I noticed the stock of ex-govt laptops offered by my usual reburbisher is smaller but that might be partly because they sold off all their Win10 machines that weren't supported by Win11. Also I guess higher demand due to higher prices and lower specs (esp. ram) for new machines.
I had a quick look at their prices for 16G ram; i3,i5,i7 12th Gen cpu (mostly i5) which ranged AUD800—1000 (EUR480—600)
Slightly older machines hover around half that.
If you were intending to run Linux, Freebsd or Win 10 ltsc/iot the oldest machines (8th gen cpu) are more than adequate.
Wasn't those (dodgy MOTs) the things that Arthur Daly had a tame mechanic write for his equally dodgy motors ?
I would have imagined £95k would a bit on the low side for a CIO even for the UK Civil Service.
A radical idea might be to recruit more examiners possibly by paying all of them a decent retainer (plus danger money.)
Many decades ago going for my drivers license in rural AU, I was examined by the the local desk sergeant who only wanted to check I understood the give way rules in place at the time (since changed), then we went for the driving test to the only signed reverse parallel parking in the whole town which was outside the hospital where the Medical superintendent habitually parked. If you could sucessfully park in the space behind that car you were done. (Provide you handn't actually killed anyone in the process.)
Four decades later her indoors got a license based on one held overseas twenty years before but had only used it infrequently for a years or so — She now had an open AU license and couldn't actually drive - took about six week of driving around a paddock, then the streets in a vacant industrial estate before she wasn't an actual menace,.
tar - cpSf /somewhere/safe/precious.tar.gz ./precious
mv ./precious ./precious.bak
My motto: "Make your mistakes slowly, keep them small and easily reversible, if possible."
Applies equally to powertools which is why I eschew them for their manual predecessors.
Qui festinat res destruit.
