Posts by Bebu sa Ware 2773 publicly visible posts • joined 3 Nov 2024
Their tools are quite good quality and value, I've seen professionals using them
Tradies doing contract work seem to buy rather "ordinary" cheap~ish (eg Bunning's Ozito [AU]) powertools and chuck them in the skip when the tool dies or the job is complete. Abandoned angle grinders are pretty common sight but you never see a discarded Dewalt in a skip.
In AU we are deprived of that source aspirational consumption; we must be satisfied with the aisle of dreams supplying our middle·european inspired tat.
When I saw the Bork screen I thought the signage was diskless for once and normally pxebooted. An arrangement I am quite fond of and can be made quite resilient with redundant servers (and lans.) I was thinking a malfunctioning boot server or network was the source of the borkage.
Sadly reading the artlicle I realized the signage was only diskless because the boot disk had gone walkabout and the boot pixies never had a server.
One can be fairly certain this class of tech would never compromise on quality — basically because there isn't any; definitely no SSD nor spinning rust; a SD card à la RPi if you are lucky, otherwise a thumbnail sized no·name USB flashdrive. The latter two in my experience can only be relied on to work only if you don't use them and even then often take an unexpected early retirement.
I suppose decades ago the software would have been programmed into socketed EPROM which might have been more robust with the signage data stored in battery backed low power (CMOS) static ram.
I just noticed on the Grauniad site that a revival of Brecht's The Resistible Rise of Arturo UI presented by a collaboration of the Alt-rockers Placebo with the RSC (with Mark Gatiss in the title part) will premiere on 11 April at the Swan theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon.
I cannot imagine any of Brecht's work that resonates with our unfortunate times more than Arturo Ui.
I first saw a performance in the late 1970s — powerful in those possibly less intimidating times — how much more when it is almost the ghastly script of today's America.
Given the rate at which the $ (USD) is heading south the $1.00 you originally invested in your AI project might be worth a lot more after inflation than the admittedly fanciful $2.78 return. Your $1.00 in gold or silver would be a better bet.
I imagine outside the US and possibly the UK most AI projects are purely sacrificial offerings to placate the gods of the markets; quite a few projects everywhere are purely pretexts for already planned reductions in head counts.
I could see considerable embarrassment arising should, if by some remote chance these disposable AI projects actually produce something useful.
"I was … not baptised as a child. [The 'friend'] made the sign of the cross on my forehead with his right thumb."
In the failing light of advanced and you have both finally pulled up stumps and are being slowly braised in purgatory he might have the last laugh saying "See, if I hadn't baptised you, you would be forever stuck a few circles down."
"if there are political figures who have non consensual nude imagery created of them and then that gets into the hands of the Chinese government.”
As if the PRC state doesn't have access to massive supercomputing resources that could use CGI to generate a photorealistic animation of an obese Trump replete with large wobbling boobs and obvious deficiencies the bedroom department.
Fundamentally it is a question of repect, or rather the lack of respect involved in generating any imagery that embarrasses or demeans an individual. It doesn't neccessary involve nudity. Generating an image of person draped in NAZI regalia is an extreme example.
The rightness or wrongness of the generation of such imagery does hinge on the question of how much respect is due to the individual and whether that person is a public figure or not.
Stenciling a swastika on to the arm of Musk's infamous salute almost comes within the bounds of acceptable but not quite (IMHO.) In just about any other case totally unacceptable.
Can you legislate respect ? Of course not. Can you effectively ban this nonsense ? Of course not. Should you at least try ? I don't know.
As a postscript I would observe that the single greatest affliction in the US is the epidemic loss of respect for anything and anybody – a disease of a society that is invariably as lethal as ebola.
Unfortunately this malady also afflicts other nations but thankfully not to the same degree… yet.
"French-speaking person here, to report that "visioconference" is the main term used here,"
Even Microsoft use the term visioconference in their online French language material eg
Visioconférence gratuite: Grâce à la version gratuite de Microsoft Teams, opérez une transition aisée entre travail en distanciel et en présentiel.
The word also bears the imprimatur of the Académie
VISIOCONFÉRENCE nom féminin Étymologie : xxe siècle. Composé de visio‑, tiré de vision, et de conférence.
Perhaps they can rename to viso (< visere – to look at, to visit etc) meaning here "I visit" which perhaps isn't too shabby a reference to videoconferencing.
I would have imagined the Académie Française might have dipped its oar into these muddy waters typically suggesting a perfectly rational but entirely unusable French alternative.
Does anyone in France actually possess an ordinateur personnel or must they make do with a PC ?
Having an initial document and process for even the currently unlikely event, is a start.
Like all parts of the Linux project it can evolve and be refined in the succeeding years.
I imagine other equally graying projects might watch this with a view of adopting applicable elements.
"To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:
A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;"
I hadn't encountered standups it this context until after COVID – I have never used any form of video conferencing – so the word only had a prior meaning redolent of promiscuity and cramped, steamed up telephone boxes where admittedly some agility was a requisite.
The first time I heard it used in a post COVID office I was rather surprised until the penny dropped… if anyone had mentioned scrums I would have been off pdq… besides I didn't fancy any of that lot. ;)
"purpose is to convey information between two or more entities"
Obviously separated by space. When nearby, any perturbation of historical syntax or grammatical norms are unconsciously taken into account by those entities. When the parties are separated by space and cultures, misunderstanding will inevitably arise from deviations from those norms.
Once separation in time is added any ephemeral changes in language might completely obscure the original meaning from the writer's or speaker's descendents.
As it is when you are within ear·clipping distance of some linguacidal† youth you often have to refrain both from "WTF is that supposed to mean" and a swift biff to their lugholes.
† overjoyed that is not my coinage.
My aging eye snagged that as "bonk" — hanky panky on the ISS … dear me !
I always imagined there would be a terrestrial software simulator for the probe in orbit on which the commands could be run before sending to the actual probe — as a final failsafe. Apparently not.
My cog·nitive gears crashed on that phrase.
My first take was the prospect of her entire nutrition in retirement would be retricted to the Colonel's limited menu. A dismal prospect, indeed.
Declutching, my parser backtracking I then re·grokked "KFC waiting" as "KFC waitressing" ie have a life in retirement without having to work as a KFC waitress.
Heaven knows what AI/LLM makes of this stuff. Dread to think.
Basically agree that the US's problems are entirely home grown and long standing; furthermore that any immigrant contributions have been palliative with the effect of delaying the now imminent crisis.
"Am I the only one getting the this-is-a-joke-that-will-come-to-nothing feeling?"
There is a pdf on trapc dated 2025-01-07
https://www.open-std.org/JTC1/SC22/WG14/www/docs/n3423.pdf
which details the "what" as might be expected from a standards document but is unenlightening on the "how."
The trap·c example where a pointer to a chunk of a function's local storage can be validly returned makes me wonder whether the stack model of a function's local memory would have to be abandoned in a trap·c implementation for something resembling smalltalk blocks. Otherwise (or potentially in any case) extensive implicit run·time copying from the stack to the heap would be required and pretty much every pointer could be "volatile."
Perhaps another case of "only in America" (especially Brooklyn) — all puff and no pantaloons ?
I had a look at and a play with fil-c. Seems to work as advertised. The time·space overhead is probably too much for real world projects then maybe not.
My gut feeling these days is that thread management and safety might be where Rust (or something similar) could win the day. Not that thread safety and memory safety are unrelated.
Certainly true in so much both can really screw things up royally and rather rapidly given half a chance.
The difference is you cannot give an AI agent a decent bollocking… I suppose you can but entirely pointless… which come to think of it there is not really even that difference.
"We remain committed to making X a safe platform for everyone and continue to have zero tolerance for any forms of child sexual exploitation, non-consensual nudity, and unwanted sexual content."
Would appears to a product of AI itself or in default an equally defective human.
I imagine it would be a tad difficult to determine whether X/Grok generated "sexual content" was wanted or not. Presumably "gratuitous" was intended.
Taken at face value "non·consensual nudity" (or indeed consensual nudity) is a peculiar concept — one might as well speak of a non·consensual sun·tan. Again presumably what was meant is the display of an individual's purported naked form without that individual's consent and perhaps by extension (to include the above) without the consent of any viewer that hadn't solicited the image.
I think the US could field an entire Twit Premier League from its billionaire fraternity.
Of course to they would call it "The World Series" (of Twits) claiming complete domination of Twittery.
(Hell ! Who is to argue with that ?)
I guess the particular drongo referenced would immediately rebrand it to Xit Premier League (enxittification.)
Antoine de Saint·Exupéry writing of aircraft in his Terres des Hommes (1939) equally concluded:
"Il semble que la perfection soit atteinte non quand il n'y a plus rien à ajouter, mais quand il n'y a plus rien à retrancher"†
(It seems that perfection is attained not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing more to remove.)
Not that any sane person seriously wants perfection but even a little bit of "retranchering" of the "merde" already stinking out our software might go a long way towards adequately good.
† chapter 3 - L'Avion.
>> younger POS people
> (?) I think this abbreviation means something different to you than it does to the rest of us.
A real puzzler but I punt on Point-Of-Sale as it is fairly common to find less senior retail assistants with their heads buried in their phones when you approach them.
Higher bids welcome. :)
"I think the name is probably easy and natural to Francophones."
I couldn't recall any words with ü so searched for 'words in french with ü '
AI Search Assist nailed that one "In French, the letter "ü" is used in words like "Noël" (Christmas) and "aïeul" (ancestor). " (Not ! ;)
Elsewhere a non·AI page suggested the 1990 French spelling reform recommended that aiguë be replace with aigüe [likewise ciguë/cigüe.]
As the first means acute and the second hemlock I guess Francophones could knock themselves with ü's by describing acute hemlock poisoning presumably using Emmabuntüs.
FWIW: thus accent is supposed to indicated that accented vowel is to be pronounced separately from the immediately preceding vowel (like aïoli I imagine; or indeed Noël) but would not seem able to serve that purpose in Emmabuntüs.
One genius decided in the early-mid 1990s that the department spent too much on printer/photocopy paper and decreed that students were to provide their own paper for the common use Apple Laserwriters.
Of course the number of paper jams skyrocketed.
The prize for the most imaginative went to the student that tried using onionskin (25·39 gm paper) which was then typically used with typewriters for the carbons, or for airmail letters (where postage was by weight.)
In the event it wasn't too hard to remove as any organic component appeared to have been vaporised leaving a mineral shell that hadn't adhered to the rollers etc and could be cleanly lifted away.
During an absence someone had seriously screwed a Laserwriter and I found on my return the paper policy had been rescinded.
Tektronix?
Gory details Wikipedia: Solid Ink printers.
Tanks of oil don't seem to be involved but the buggers don't like being moved before properly cooled down.
I have had academics swear by them and I don't doubt legions of IT support staff swear at them (the printers mostly...) instead we purchased an HP9000dn from a retailer at a closeout price (a lot less than half the price of a solid ink xerox phaser.)
About a decade later when the 9000 seemed to be dead we purchased another 9000 and when we installed the new 9000 beside the defunct one, the original 9000 magically revived and was still working a few years later when I stopped.
[once?] marketed as Twink in New Zealand for which Kiwis raise a few eyebrows in AU when they use "twink" as a verb.
First thought "who is he/she going shove said screwdriver into ?"
Depending on the conclusion I might well be quite happy to lend one of the cheap sacrificial ones from the pound shop. "Blade or Philips ?"
Although as a precaution against the rare dev that possess a (dangerously) little knowledge of hardware, I might have previously replaced the access screws on anything important with torx.
I hadn't encountered this word outside crosswords as an alternative to reticule so the article's reference to a lady's handbag sized die was a little confusing.
Wikichip: mask explains.
The Latin root means a net (as in the retiarius - a type of gladiator) which makes visual sense in the context of a IC die.
Hopefully the photonics will advance in spite of the likelihood that the bubble will have burst before 2028.
"china, russia or usania"
Hadn't seen that one. Insania currently might be more apt and perhaps eventually excusania when, or if, the lunacy passes and a penitent nation goes cap·in·hand to its former friends and allies.
These chaps in Guam allegedly fraudulently claiming COVID benefits, given the claims would have covered a shortish period, could have destroyed their computers' storage after their last claim.
Certainly fairly easy to use a Linux live distro with the option of saving state on a usb memory stick (can be the same as the distro boot media.) A few decent blows from a hammer with the fragments turfed on to the bbq and even the NSA would be unlikely to recover much.
If you needed Windows for your nefarious purposes I recall directly installing on to removable media doesn't work but in a very idle moment I think I once used virt-manager (kvm/qemu) to install Win7 on to a usb stick by specifying it as the target drive for the install. I think I managed to get it to boot with a bit of fiddling.
Alternatively install a real distro on a memory stick (RHEL7 fitted quite nicely on a 16Gb stick) then under that kvm install Windows10 - it doesn't matter that it won't activate for the ephemeral and nefarious purposes intended. Wine might be sufficient if just a windows web browser was required.
In any case as a precaution I would remove any existing storage from the machine before starting anything untoward.
The hammer and bbq are the crucial elements.
Can you remember, in what month, of a year several decades ago you opened a bank account ?"
The present account, no. The first account I opened, yes - the month and year I started at University.
I think for most people it's the same with cars - they can remember their first reg and, out of necessity, their current one but very few in between.
I fail on all those. I don't remember the current plate number and have photograph in my phone for the paid parking in the shopping centre. :)
The little gray cells might be packing it in, but I have always perversely refused to remember unimportant or ephemeral things. My phone number hasn't changed since 1994 (except for the analogue to gsm prefix change) so I can (usually) remember it. When I can't I just say "I don't often call myself" and you can see their thinking "doddering old fool" but you then generally get "waved through."
Still when the support person asks for the six digit mfa code texted to your phone and you reply I can't see it as it's next to my bloody ear." Fair dos, I reckon. I suppose the non geriatric all have airpods or the like hanging out of their ears so the problem doesn't arise. Having watched The Rise of the Cybermen, I will forgo the Cybus Industries' earpod upgrade.
"I think that it needs also to have a really honest and persuasive way of communicating why it is a good idea"
I don't imagine any government is going to manage to nail legs on to the decidedly defunct horse honest much before the first blast of the last trump.
"And you tell the young people of today that anything and they won't believe you." — Funny that. Wonder why ?
