Posts by Bebu sa Ware

Cornish recycling drive sows confusion among Reg Standards Bureau

Re: Proper Pasty

"Merkins apparently have pasties."

An odd coincidence that merkin and pasty both can have the sense of a modesty patch—just covering different parts.

we buy cheese in grammes and measure distance in miles, we drank beer in pints.

and butter in firkins (~25kg) ? ;) Surprised milk isn't in gills (¼ pint. :)

If you read old (before 1960s) recipe books these old units were still used. US books were worse using volumes rather than mass(weight) and in pre internet days working out what a stick of butter weighed was a major undertaking. (It's 4 oz US or 113g. Here the packaging is often graduated in 50g increments ~ ½ stick.)

One of enduring legacies of the French Revolution and Bonaparte's European adventures has to be the metric system (and arguably European bureaucracy, unfortunately.)

Live and learn

I am not clear whether the nipple guard is required only by the athletic amongst the usually better endowed fairer sex (and chaps with gynecomastia.)

A quick oogle suggests even the less active ladies also use them as modesty patches beneath revealing garments.

I think the two words are pronounced slightly differently. The Cornish comestible, the pasty appears to rhyme with "ass tea" whereas the pāste·on nipple accessory pāsty rhymes with "hāsty." (Also tasty but that's a horse of another colour entirely.)

Given the varying diameter of the pāsty is not due to the size variation of the nipple but rather the commonly pigmented areola surrounding the nipple, perhaps the unit of circumference might be called the areola even though etymologically it's a "small area."

1.0 areola (pāsty) = circumference of a pāsty 0.5 lg (70 mm or 2.756") => 1 areola ~ 1.57 lg (220 mm or 8.66")

A notable omission is a reg·unit of energy or work (Joule, kWh, erg) — the closest would be a Norris·linguine (No·lg.)

Also lacking a pressure unit although Norris/nanoWales (No-nW^-1) might serve as might badgers/nanoWales if we take bagders as a unit of weight rather than mass. Curiously 1.0 badger·nW^-1 ~ 4.1 pa.

So 1.0 atmosphere ~ 24.7 kbadger·nW^-1 and car tyres pumped to 50 kbadger·nW^-1.

China turns on a vast experimental network it says is an heir to ARPANET

Re: JANET

anyone for JANET?

I thought JANET was defunct years ago but according to WikiP it's still a thing albeit after an number of upgrades.

UUCP over QUIC anyone ? ;)

User found two reasons – both of them wrong – to dispute tech support's diagnosis

How do you handle users who push back with nonsense diagnoses?

I just remember the graveyards a full of people who were the full bottle on self diagnosis and as a consequence earnt an early mark.

I will be honest and say most of the people who have been enthusiastic in offering diagnoses had in the past been victim to piss poor support from the cattle wrangling fraternity who would abandon them to their predicament if an obvious, simple solution wasn't quickly evident.

Once you have "trained" them to trust a solution will be provided—period—they are more likely to give a description of the problem as they see it instead of their conjectured solution to their view of the problem. Compounding the felony their solution is often recast as a description which to the novice support both very misleading and confusing.

The best client is the one who doesn't know a bean about IT, doesn't want to, and for the trifecta, is devoid of imagination. Saves a lot of time.

Trump Media jumps aboard the speculative nuclear fusion bandwagon

Re: Prizes

This means during the next World Cup, the chance of Trump getting the FIFA Physics and Economics Prizes just got higher

Just give the prick the Fields Medal so everyone with more than a single neuron will know the piss has been well and truly taken.

Given these prizes are awarded to people whose work is usually understood by fewer than is required to form a cricket team, awarding it to a fool who could not competently use a four function calculator is a pretty decent (sic) backhander.

Re: Cryogenic Preservation

The alternative is he'll be put in a gold casket and be displayed at the Trump Presidential Library, like Lenin

Embalmed Lenin in the Trump library, displayed alongside the carcass of the Orange _iDJ_iT seems appropriate given both were complete grifters. Although Trotsky was said to be worse but fortunately unembalmed..

Waterfox browser goes AI-free, targets the Firefox faithful

"That Hasn't Hit Itself In The Dick With A Hammer"

I hadn't seen that absolute gem. The acronym THHIITDWAH is somewhat onomatopoeic when the "n't" is omitted.

That latter version is seemingly all the rage at the moment.

I would be happier less with a run time kill switch which could potentially be reenabled by malevolent addons and javascript, than a compiler switch CFLAGS+=—LEAVE_MY_DICK_ALONE=1

God only knows what the female part of the population think of this — the boys playing with themselves… again. — presumably.

US freezes $42B trade pact with UK over digital tax row

Touch Negotiator

Touch negotiator" is a wonderfully accurate Freudian slip :)

More grab than touch, by his own admission, in the feline line.

Fine upstanding person you have there for President — unfortunate that you didn't elect her.

Brit broadband grilling descends into farce over targets and definitions

Re: Trump level bullshitting

This is indeed the material "Yes, Minister" was carved from. A minister who is completely clueless.

Actually one feels Jim Hacker would made more of a fist of this than this dismal lot.

I have a picture of the room of the newly victorious government's ministerial hopefuls being addressed by Sir Keir:

"Any of you have the least clue on how to govern a country ? — No ? — Me neither. We will have to wing it and make it up as we go. Pick a portfolio… any portfolio I don't suppose it matters much which one you screw up."

I don't suppose it does. Unfortunately.

BBC tapped to stop Britain being baffled by AI

Re: Methinks

Aunty is going to have one hell of a time trying to sell that dead cat.

While still residing in Boondocks, a neighbour volunteered that nothing could beat dropping in a a dead cat to remedy one's sick septic tank. — Indeed.

The cat population, live or dead, in those parts was largely hypothetical owing to the predation of the local feral foxes and dingos. So there might be a market for snap frozen deceased felines in the homestead sanitation market.

How on Earth can anyone, other than those afflicted by terminal daftness, expect a public broadcaster to explain AI etc to an effectively illiterate polloi that are barely able to use their smartphones?

Former UK chancellor George Osborne finds something to do at OpenAI

Re: Wonderful choice... not

A failed jornalist, former [unsuccessful] … (anything) … with a degree in moden history. That will really qualify him for AI.

I suppose Bloody Stupid (de Pfeffel) has his CV sitting in Space Karen's in·tray over at xAI.

GitHub walks back plan to charge for self-hosted runners

Re: Hmm?

I'm still on CVS

RCS for the win. ;)

Or Unix SCCS (PWB) — if you really like punishment.

Microsoft security update breaks MSMQ on older Win systems

"the inconsistent quality remains free"

I suppose then we can expect to pay a premium for the promised future of consistent lack of quality from the AI restructured Microsoft.

Purdue makes 'AI working competency' a graduation requirement

And that's Purdue — not Perdue ?

One might wonder as it seems that toute raison est perdue but I guess in tune with the interesting times which confine us.

UK.gov accused of Grinching Christmas by ignoring phone theft scourge

Re: Someone, somewhere lied to us

Are they not the clowns you vote for every five years ?

"tell an iPhone 1 from an iPhone 17"

The iPhone 1's 115×61×11.6 mm vs the 17's 149.6×71.5×7.95 mm is bit of a give away.

My diminutive SE 1 stands out today at 123.8x58.6x7.6 mm but alas now unsupported.

My replacement refurbished SE 3 is 138.4x67.3x7.3 mm :( I think the 12 mini and 13 mini are slightly smaller but co$tly.)

The population of London is roughly 10 million with 80,000 phone thefts ~ 8 thefts per 1000 persons.

The current stats for AU aren't readily available but the rate of increase on older stats suggests the current rate is comparable.

The regulatory situation is pretty much the same as the UK but doesn't seemed to be much of a political issue here.

Possibly smartphones are cheaper (or more likely the ones most people buy) and more "disposable" here—I don't know.

England keeping pen and paper exams despite limited digital expansion

Of+

I always wondered what was the meaning of the "Of" in front of Ofcom etc which incidentally seemed to be pronounced "Off" but could be arsed.

Seeing Ofqual for the first time and looking for all the world like what I imagine the Arabic for offal to be, I finally looked it up—unsurprisingly, and arguably unimaginatively, it means "Office of…" So I suppose Department of… or Ministry of… was too patriarchal, privileged etc.

In AU I suspect "off" has the stronger sense, mostly olefactory, of "being off" as in an "off prawn" which on reflection is probably not too remote from the affection that Brits clearly have for their government "Offices of…"

_{Also eerily like the world of 1984 and redolent of newspeak.}

Intel hires ex-Trump fixer as Washington whisperer

"always have to pay attention to the zeitgeist"

Or to the contemporary MAGA Poltergeist rattling the political and economic furniture of the Union.

I imagine Cory Doctorow would hold that Scheißegeist^† was the Zeitgeist.

_{† Not my coinage and also—both apt but on two different levels.}

Nvidia fills the void of American open-weights models with some of its own

Nemotron ?

Nemo [nobody, no one] + tron [< elec~tron~ics]

I am not sure whether they were thinking of an orange tropical fish, the captain of the Nautilus or just conflated the name with the Nematodes which include some nasty parasitic roundworms. Given the context the last is most likely (AI = Abdominal Infestation?)

"…gives agents the most intelligence while optimizing tokenomics." — tokenomics another NVidia coinage (and hopefully hapax legomenon.)

_{Nemotron reversed is "nor to men." as in "AI is of no Earthly use neither to the gods nor to men.}

UK plans right for flat owners to demand gigabit broadband

"customer quality is poor."

The first time (and very probably the last) I have seen that phrase with the word service omitted especially when discussing telcos.

Presumably means "below zero" (bozo) [profitability] customers.

Real Estate tenure in the UK…

might be a bit confusing to a non Brit.

I only have a vague idea about the difference between Renters, Lease Holders and Freehold Owners in the UK or do I mean England and Wales? (Scottish Law is bound to be different. ;)

In AU it is pretty much Torrens title (~Freehold) xor Strata Title (and older Company title); Residential (and Commercial) Tenancy.

Every few months I receive an offer for a free upgrade to fiber for the existing NBN connection that isn't actually connected (which is a bit Matt 25:29.) The suburb must have been cabled for fiber when developed in the early noughties (also has underground power which is surprisingly rare in these storm prone areas.)

Two mobile 4G/LTE connections are still cheaper than a single bottom tier NBN connection.

India unveils a homegrown dual-core 1GHz RISC-V processor, the DHRUV64

Indian engineers just as smart

I would imagine the design side will progress very quickly but I suspect the fabrication technology available to India will be the choke point for an entitirely home grown chip industry (in the short to medium term.)

Based on the fairly slow progress of the PRC, I would deduce that catching up with the state of art in fabrication technology is a major, even nation building, undertaking.

Re: Aid

Information just in from HM Government Propaganda Directorate...Look for the sign "Fish & Chips" when searching for a local vendor.

Ah… Eat Out To Help Out probably a just as (un)healthy and certainly more than a bit Rishi.

MI6 chief: We'll be as fluent in Python as we are in Russian

Re: The Battlefield of Tomorrow being AIMastered and Altered Today via SMARTR Play and 0Days

"Out with the meritocratic! In with the multi-racial trans-furries who have trouble doing math!"

Got to love Mr Shurk's turn of phrase even if you don't agree.

Personally I wouldn't mind shooting everyone that couldn't invert a non singular 3×3 matrix [trouble doing math.] The world would be a great deal more peaceful or at least quieter. I would start with the trillionaires and work down through the billionaires and politicians at least until things improve. ;) Unfortunately I suspect only Warren Buffett might survive the winnowing.

Americans' limited and somewhat simplistic grasp of European History ignores a lot of inconvenient and devilishly intertwined details which unhappily must be comprehended before far more recent history might be fully understood.

Thank goodness she said Python

Not Powershell… or Rust.

I don't imagine MI6 pays any better than the rest of the civil service so even setting the bar as low as Python might not attract la crême but expecting a competent Rust developer to sign up might be overly optimistic — throw an 00 license you might attract the homicidally inclined.

Actually I think a fair bit of recent malware was apparently coded in Golang (and I don't mean any Chocolate Factory offal also coded in Go), some of which also seemed to indicate fairly decent software engineering practices. We're definitely in trouble once malware and spyware comes with an ISO 9000 tick.

Apple blocks dev from all accounts after he tries to redeem bad gift card

Re: Backup, back up, back up

I take the opposite tack.

I turn off each and any form of backup on a phone/tablet and necessarily understand treat the material on the device as ephemeral.

I personally don't have much time for photographs as I figure when I become daft enough to not recognise the image what's the point ? Before that I am likely to be blind so doubly pointless.

I am happy for the mostly trivial details of the past to evaporate behind me, leaving only those important and hopefully unforgettable memories.

I never took to digital downloads and stuck with CD and even then still prefer free to air broadcast music which both broaden one's musical horizons and provides greater daily variety—a medium that is intrinsically ephemeral even when the broadcasts can be streamed for a fortnight after transmission.

If you don't have a lot of future you still oughtn't want to live in the past—it really is a crappy place that always was going to have an even crappier future.

Re: Tasmania-based evangelist

Perhaps Apple's AI systems decided Tasmania was beyond the known world or at least wildly fictitious. A reasonable deduction based on the available evidence, I would have thought.

We don't actually exclude Tasmanians even if we do make observations on the athletic prowess of their sisters.

Bishop of Hong Kong tells peers AI is not the devil's work

Re: AI is not the devil's work?

Some of those names are already perfectly serviceable names of demons (fallen angels.)

In my Inferno I might imagine Thiel the father of lies, Alt–Man nominal favourite for anti·christ, Pichai promoter of larceny, Nadella spreader of despair, Zuckerberg deceit and falsity, Amodei denier of God, in their respective Circles of AI Hell.

"engage it with prudence and an incarnational vision"

Would appear the clerical world has its own version of management bullshit bingo.

Risking blasphemy I am tempted to suggest the Christ only knows what that means—which is probably what it does mean. Unfortunately.

"hunt it with forks and hope" would make just as much sense.

AI was an "expression of human creativity" — like poison gas and nuclear weapons ?

_{Icon - my being "de·frocked."}

IBM unleashes CUGA, an open-source AI agent that actually completes more than half its tasks

"may have trouble exiting its run loop"

Did they not enhance the inner reasoning loop to deduce whether it was going exit the loop ? .;)

I vaguely recall that a practical reasoning system should be monotonic and would terminate with a model or a contradiction.

After a few more years of companies imbibing this nonsense I can foresee pretty much nothing will work usefully or at all.

I can see a future for an AI·free certification for products and services—mirroring GM·free. An ISO900xx standard, certification and ✓.

Repent ye inefficient – the ‘Palantir-ization’ of IT services is upon us

Re: "forward-deployed engineers"

Thank you !

I nearly missed that precious gem: "ontological flywheel"

What next ? "epistemological powertrain" ? Lubricated and tuned by these courageous forward deployed engineers ?

Forward deployed presumably means the poor sods sent to the front line.

The whole thing is a roiling witches' caudron of AI codswallop, manglement bullshit bingo and bits of confetti left from shreding the Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy. Not that those Weird Sisters would debase themselves so far as to stir such a foul brew.

Denmark takes a Viking swing at VPN-enabled piracy

Re: Let me get this straight

If I set up a SSH session and use it to set up a VNC session on another computer in X country, then that would be considered a VPN ?If so... how the hell do you incept and block such traffic, especially if I switch it to a random port away from the regular one of 22 ?

You don't even have to ffaf around with the bits of ssh and vnc. Nomachine software pretty much does this out of the box.

Setting up a wireguard vpn between two boxes takes a matter of mere minutes or a service like Tailscale if scale is required.

As someone noted: pure Unenforcium—an element whose hazardous emissions notoriously liquify politicians' brains.

Re: and how...

"They will ask China how to build the lesser wall of Denmark"

Given the Danish Alps top out at 171m and the mean altitude of the nation is ~31m, I would imagine their efforts might be better directed towards building (unencrypted) sea walls.

The idea that the UK would require sticks (as in twigs) to be licensed would be laughable but for the fact it wouldn't be the silliest thing the govt has sought to enact. I imagine the Chancellor is beside herself imagining the absolute fortune to be reaped from aficionados of the childhood pastime of Poohsticks. (Which one imagines is banned in the PRC.)

Starlink claims Chinese launch came within 200 meters of broadband satellite

Re: SpaceX deflecting much?

"Elon is clearly a supervillain and has the potential to become actual Hitler"

Just wondered if one could use AI to edit the "Downfall" parodies (rants) to replace the Führer's ugly phiz with Space Karen's.

Re: Not from the devil ?

"I think AI is not from the devil. AI comes from" … the evil that men do which has long extended far beyond Satan's limited imagination to the point where the poor sod has been left sulking, abandoned in his own pit.

While I have some slight doubts concerning the standard of the theology meted out these days, I am more concerned about the limited grasp of basic logic.

"AI comes from God, who helps us" — one would presumably would reason if AI patently does not help the bulk of humanity or the planet as a whole, it could not then reasonably be the work of a helpful Almighty.

As with much organised religion God is usually best left out of the argument. I imagine "ex cathedra" means God had already left the premises.

Techie 'forgot' to tell boss their cost-saving idea meant a day of gaming

Sometimes it seemed that …

90% of a sysadmin's life consisted of watching paInt dry. OS [eg proprietary Unix] installations and updates typically took hours.

A real incentive to automate tasks — I can imagine Don Libes developed Expect back in the day for this reason.

In the days before the internet and game consoles you were often reduced in extremis to reading the documentation… or indeed any documentation.

The CRASH Clock is ticking as satellite congestion in low Earth orbit worsens

all whizzing around at high speed

I thought the satellites were all whizzing around at high speed, not crawling along at walking pace nor sitting there without moving at all.

Relative to the Earth's surface but relative to each other not so much.

If you use a reference frame through the poles rotating with the orbital velocity of the LEO in question most of the satellites would be dawdling, comparatively.

Given these satellites are in free fall in the Earth's gravitation I guess they are actually in an inertial frame.

Of course a circumpolar orbit intersecting an equatorial orbit is a serious bingle should two craft collide - doubly² so for two orbiting in opposite directions.

Also I suspect most satellites have elliptical orbits which add even more variety to the velocities.

I imagine with enough small fragments, say pea size, whizzing about like gas molecules in a box you might employ the same physics.

The picture of a Mad Max battle armoured space vehicle to launch Space Karen Mars bound, through his Starlink debris, to realize his manifest, if febrile, destiny, is worth bottling.

Hardly imagine you could make his Tesla Wankenpanzers gas tight or the bodywork bullet proof enough for interplanetary space or to transit LEO but I am content to have him try. :)

Re: are my maths correct?

2,150,000,000 km² = 2.15 × 10⁹ km²

I get a bit lower but depends on the definition of LEO - Britanica has 160km to 1600km (Wiki waffles on a bit.)

The easy way is to roughly use the Earth's circumference ~40,000km and assume a ribbon of 1440km wide.

~40,000 × 1400 km² = 56 × 10⁶ km²

If you estimate† the circumference of a 800km orbit as 45,000km you get 63 × 10⁶ km²

Slightly harder using Earth's radius ~6370km

π×[(6370+1600)² - (6370+160)²] km² = π×(2x6370+1760)×(1440) ~65.6 × 10⁶ km²

_{† recall ∆C = 2π.∆R and ∆A ~ 2πR.∆R}

This is assuming no malice

A nation with some launch capability but without any chestnuts in this particular LEO fire might have reason to sabotage the whole show.

Even if it were just to prevent dissidents within their territory using Starlink from their phones.

The icing would be for this rogue state to instead pay SpaceX to launch these kamikazi satellites.

British Airways fears a future where AI agents pick flights and brands get ghosted

Re: Worst case scenario

When Michael O'Leary of Ryan Air croaks it, and his soul makes it way to the Pearly Gates

To quote the Führer^†:

Don't believe Michael O'Leary's propaganda, he's worse than fucking Goebbels. He's a complete c—t. … Lufthansa's motto is "something special in the air" … Ryanair's is "what the fuck do you want now?"

_{† https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wq9mu0HMiVg}

Re: Worst case scenario

Agentic AI always books Ryan Air

Not politically very correct but… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wq9mu0HMiVg

I was thinking of Tiger when they were still flying Australian routes (NB: AU not AT.)

The future of long-term data storage is clear and will last 14 billion years

"will last 14 billion years"

Just don't store it near a vat of hydrofluoric (HF) acid.

I was curious about the birefringence in fused silica but it seems that it arises from the thermal stress of the encoding laser pulse.

Given most of us won't want to resume possession of our CD/DVD collection at end of the Universe† a less ambitious product made from recycled glass, requiring a sub starwars laser and lasting around 100 years might be a more profitable product.

† Imagine the recording angel handing you your copy of a Spice Girls' CD or a Bay City Rollers' vinyl - très embarrasant even, or especially, after 14byr.

Microsoft RasMan DoS 0-day gets unofficial patch - and a working exploit

"use a vetted library."

Preferably not one vetted by crapilot or from Microsoft generally.

Wasn't clear from the blog what was being stored in the linked list or whether it was static (and only the head pointer adjusted) or was dynamic with list elements added and removed (and head pointer also moving.)

That the last element's next pointer was null suggests the programmer whose code corrupted the circular list was thinking of a simple linear linked list.

ie islast(x) = x—>next == 0 … cf … islast(x) = x—>next == head

The circular list would normally have at least one element (sentinel) while a simple list might have none — confusing the two could stuff things up royally.

I am not sure that a circular buffer (head & tail pointers) wouldn't have been a better data structure choice? Never been comfortable with things (ultimately) pointing to themselves — a bit too incestuous for my conventional tastes. ;)

BOFH: If another meeting is scheduled, someone is going to have a scheduled accident

Re: I've heard of Mickey Mouse operations...

But never a vendor that sends an actual mouse to act as a project consultant!

Could only be an improvement - at least the rodent can actually find the cheese; the consultant his arse… rarely.

Sometimes powers users need to be introduced to real power in the form of V x I.

110kV three phase would be favourite - one in each hand and siting on the third.

They could be the "star", albeit a momentarily incandescent one (rather than a dull ∆.)

"Good thing the cameras in the server room never work."

I don't know. Having the cameras ostensibly "working" can provide incontravertible evidence of what did happen in the machine room… didn't happen.

And with the miracle (sic) of AI, vice-versa.

Re: 650k is enough

"2kV is enough. 640kV is 'sufficient'" maybe?

Sales droids have an incredibly thick hide that would not disgrace a pachyderm.

Wouldn't surprise me a direct hit from a lightning bolt left them bare singed.

A 650kV 1000A for half an hour through one might do the job although at the price of electricity 325MWh is probably not very cost effective certainly when compared with the open window alternative.

Disney turns to dark side, licenses IP to OpenAI for videos, images

Re: Disney is already dismal

Been done: AI Snow White featuring Samuel L Jackson: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x35-U9ctVwE

But wait for the long anticipated but AI generated "Snowie Does Dallas^†."

_{† and presumably the seven dwarves.}

Re: The Mouse that roared

Will the Disney investment turn it into an eey ore company?

With the dismal donkey's tail ending up as some dyslexic owl's bell·pull ?

I think A.A.Milne's text is finally out of copyright in the US† but I am not sure about E H Shepard's illustrations as he only died in 1976 - next year in Canada ?

I am sure a Disney-Altman chimera will manage to continue extorting our cash with this expiring IP.

_{† 2027-01-01 in the UK ?}

Silicon photonics won’t matter ‘anytime soon’ says Broadcom CEO

Re: This thing we're behind the competition in

Doesn't matter, so don't go looking in that direction.

Meanwhile in the Middle Kingdom it would not surprise me in the least if bucket loads of cash were being quietly thrown in the direction of Silicon Photonic R&D.

My take: if a technology will inevitably be important one day, it is important now if you hope to be relevant when that future day dawns.