Posts by Bebu sa Ware

101 fun things to do with a locked Kindle e-reader

Re: If only someone actually did a A4 device

first device that has A4 sized screen gets a truckload of money

But then the L.Pondians (specifically Trumpisstanis) will be complaining about its not supporting us letter or legal. and delusional faredgian R.Pondians ("Reform"), [foolscap] quarto and foolscap [folio]. Probably serendipitous that the latter were named fools+cap but A6 would suffice to fashion a Reform dunces cap.

Unfortunately A4 works out to 364mm or 14.35 inches diagonally (aspect ratio 1:√2 ) which is still larger than the largest BOOX I know of viz ONYX BOOX Note Max 13.3" (aspect ration 3:4) so might be a while still.

Reading A4 documents in their PDF form scaled to a 330mm (11") screen isn't too shabby an experience.

Re: onto

"no one persistently using onto writes anything much worth reading" (Kingsley Amis)

Having once attempted Jake's Thing perhaps also vice versa. ;)

Mathematics uses onto as a economical synonym for surjective which probably accounts for some its misuse by those more broadly educated than Mr Amis. ;)

Re: Don't forget

Capt Pugwash: "Lolloping landlubbers! Piracy isn't stealing."

Master Mate†: "Aye, aye Cap'n."

I imagine considering Amazon and Bezos together it's more privateering or at worst buccaneering.

_{† careful here as John Ryan sicked the lawyers on The Guardian columnist who suggested Master Bates, Seaman Stains and Roger the Cabin Boy were part of the Black Pig's company. They were in the crew of the Flying Dustman of course.}

Re: "This technology's glory days may be yet to come"

"starting at a thousand quid."

If a 340mm (13.3") screen were large enough these ONYX BOOX Note Max 13.3" go for AUD1099 (in AU obviously) which is about GBP540. (That includes 10% GST ~ VAT.)

I was always intending to get a 300mm (10") or 330mm (11") version but after retirement I wouldn't have used it enough to really justify the purchase.

"I buy my books from Amazon, carck them"

Carck? In some Englishes can mean destroy or kill. ;)

Presumably a typo for crack but humourous nonetheless.

Only ever bothered with Kobo devices and used Calibre to convert DRM free books† and public domain texts - epub pretty decent, pdf were a bit of a trial though.

_{† Packt and SitePoint titles were/are.}

International cops seize ransomware crooks' favorite Russian crypto exchange

Did US Secret Service not get the memo, or?

The secret service apart from protecting the currency also provide personal protection for this tenth rate failed Forrest Gump.

Valour not exactly his forté, choosing discretion namely not pissing offf the secret service on the basis when these chaps are next called on to interpose themselves they might be more inclined to let that one through to the keeper (via the batsman.)

Controllers getting no response from Lunar Trailblazer orbiter or Odin asteroid mining probe

Re: Now if only

"Thinking ultrasonics to unstick a stuck bearing, etc. I 'invented' this method a while back to repair items like HDDs"

An enthusiastic whack with the handle of a screwdriver is pretty broadband so I suppose there are some ultrasonic frequencies in it. It works (or it doesn't. ;)

"The tanks in Poland came from..."

In the light of past and recent history I might have phrased that slightly more sensitively.

Raspberry Pi launches CM4 variant that laughs in the face of frostbite

Re: Negative 40 of course

Germany dropping the double-S thing

I only learnt from a book on the history of typesetting in England† a few years ago that ß was a ligature of ſ (or ʃ) followed by an 's' rather than a tarted up Greek beta.

Now the poor thing has been taken to the basement.

_{† Interestingly the early print trade was more of a international (European) fraternity almost masonic.}

Re: Negative 40 of course

"the same in Bananas and Celcius."

Minus 40 Bananas - no need to guess where that might be. A few bob short of a quid, a few sandwiches short of a picnic all share the same letterbox.

"Variant[s] are usually headless and deeply embedded"

As I believe we are unfortunately seeing.

VMware splats guest-to-hypervisor escape bugs already exploited in wild

"The memory unsafe code by Miss Creant"

The Rust averse femme fatale of development one presumes but a hot date with a reputation for intepid risk taking. :)

_{The creant part apparently comes via OFr. from to believe (Fr.croire < L. credo, credere,...) so miscreant ~ infidel (unbeliever) her cousin might be Ina Fiddle.}

Trump says US should kill CHIPS Act, use the cash to cut debt

Re: What Trump talks about

"The next time I come home and found my cat has ripped up the sofa cushions and shit on the carpet I won't worry about the damage, I'll just shrug and say he's done a lot of things."

I am afraid with my cat there would never be a "next time" - a one way visit to the vet only because of the RSPCA it wouldn't be a sack and a brick.

That's the problem after the mayhem of January 6, 2020 a body bag with a dozen house bricks would have prevented this train smash.

Re: Sooo

"The Telegraph has gone full on la-la MAGA in the last few weeks too."

The Torygraph? I would have thought this nonsense would be more on the Faredge ("Reform" [sic]) demesne although the Tory opposition is apparently just as deficient upstairs.

La-La Ma-Ga Cha-Cha around the twist and dancing beyond the edge of reason?

Re: Brain Damage

"Brain Damage were a BC band of the 70's"

Back then I recall reading of chap called Brain Damage that held the rank of major in the British Army - further promotion was rather unlikely one supposes.

'Cybertruck ownership comes with ... interesting fan mail'

An Opportunity...

Here in AU most Tesla car owners that aren't complete drop kicks or displaced septics, are so dismayed if not disgusted by Space Karen's recent antics that they regret their choice of EV marque.

Many now sport stickers of the ilk: Sorry! I Bought This Before I Knew Musk was a NAZI.

I am wondering whether there is an aftermarket for Twatzika logo removal and replacement.

While the symbol is supposedly a stylized segment of an electric motor it is also not unlike a thumbtack or a prick without any balls.

I would be offering the deceased twitter bluebird as one replacement emblem option in a choice of colours of course but I expect the stylized facepalm will be a more popular selection.

Maybe cancel that ChatGPT therapy session – doesn't respond well to tales of trauma

Re: Go to bullshit factor 10

Lightspeed and normality restoration in -3 seconds.

AI/LLM experience anxiety.

Pretty long bow to draw to expect any vaguely rational person to accept these systems "experience" anything whatsoever.

Make more sense, not much mind, to claim a paramecium experiences paranoia.

Against my better judgement I might play ball and possibly accept that a given LLM when prompted with input from a human with mental health issues may well respond with similar output to another human experiencing anxiety from such input which of course a trained therapist wouldn't.

What this would indicate to me is that the internet material that trained the model was replete with untrained, nay ignorant if not malign, responses to people, potentially desperately, seeking assistance in which the usual social media suspects abound.†

_{† Yes. I realise the subject of the final clause is ambiguous but social media abounds in both ignorant responses and desperate people.}

It begins: Pentagon to give AI agents a role in decision making, ops planning

Now is for "the Moment?"

Given the extreme shortage of functional neurons in the current administration I would imagine you would be obliged to keep the interface extremely simple. Certainly no more than a big red button although the C-in-C probably wouldn't be averse to have a choice bit of crumpet sitting on it instead.

"White supremacist group being run out of Orange County a century ago"

"being run out of"

That being expelled from or organised from?

I suppose given the location the latter is the more likely.

Scotland now home to Europe's biggest battery as windy storage site fires up

MVHR

A 4LA I hadn't encountered but it's "mechanical ventilation heat recovery" with some details on WikiP Heat Recovery Ventilation

Many+ decades ago when I was studying renal physiology I thought that counter-current heat exchangers would a great idea in our climate to "keep the cold in." Basically a passive component between the aircon and the outside. Never really heard of such an arrangement but the wiki article seems to indicate the fixed plate exchangers are something along those lines. Humidity is also a big problem in tropical/subtropical climates which likely complicates any simple solution.

I also thought the Electrolux (hydrogen/ammonia/water) cycle refrigeration would be great in very hot sunny climates but I think the ammonia is considered too hazardous for domestic use.

In these parts solar (PV) plus LiFePO₄ battery is not far from being an economic standalone option. The vast majority of houses have at least 5kW of PV on their roofs and adding a 10kWh battery isn't prohibitive with many of the older existing PV panels being 120W due for replacement presumably with 300-400W panels with the need for a larger inverter even larger batteries might become attractive. Say 20kW + >20kWh. To prevent significant grid disconnection I imagine suppliers will have to offer a decent prices for any energy drawn from domestic batteries presumably with the current fixed connection and supply cost amortized into the price. (As it ought for normal supply.)

Scientists create woolly ma-mouse by looking at mean genes from the Pleistocene

Re: Mega Cute

Kind of like a Guinea Pig, but smaller. I propose we call it a "Half a Crown Pig".

Curiously one slang term for 2/6 was a "hog."

Another "tosheroon" seems more a marketable term. "Tosheroon Pigs 10/6 in this style." :)

Cannot imagine your average cat is going to be overly impressed with the prospect of woolly mice.

It's bad enough we have to turn on cams for meetings, now the person staring at you may be an AI deepfake

Re: M-M-M-Max Headroom

While Max is a g-g-g-great option, my pick would be Red Dwarf's Holly† finally morphing into Queeg. :)

_{† the Norman Lovett version.}

Cybersecurity not the hiring-'em-like-hotcakes role it once was

Re: Do try not to exclude neurodiverse candidates

"networked people is quite likely to land you with a load of bullshitters"

I realise you are referring to interpersonal networking but I would suggest asking a candidate for any networking related role to outline and explain the TCP 3 way handshake.

I suspect your ND candidates might ace that one. ;)

Microsoft signed a dodgy driver and now ransomware scum are exploiting it

Didn't Paragon donate this code to the Linux kernel ntfs3 driver?

Just asking.

America's National Science Foundation workers fired in bulk by Trump now reinstated

How do I get out of this Chicken Shit Outfit?

"How do you get a transfer out of this chicken-shit outfit?" - Harry demanded.

"Well, you have to fuck up —"

"Fuck up. That's my problem. All this time I tried to fuck off."

[Footfall, Pournelle & Niven, 1985.]

I suspect these poor probationers having suffered the "fuck up" are seriously considering "fucking off."

Wanna save Intel? Fire the board, bring back Pat, ex-CEO Craig Barrett says

"Shareholders urged to press CTRL-Z"

Is that a a EOF à la CP/M etc or a Unixy suspend and put into the background (the board?) (and fg %pat?)

One imagines Ctrl-Alt-Delete (serendipitously also known as SAK†) might still be the better choice.

_{† secure attention key}

Microsoft blames Outlook's wobbly weekend on 'problematic code change'

Re: On the bright side...

"unable to use the system as hoped."

Idiosyncratic use of hope I'd 'a thought. Dreaded would have more representative, I suspect.

When I first observed Teams being used in the workplace (fortunately immediately before entering the Elysian Fields of retirement), my instant and peculiar thought was this is Guss Hedges and GlobeLink News. Of course that utterly unrealistic satire has long been overtaken by even more appalling reality.

US stocks slip as Trump pulls trigger on Canada, Mexico, China tariffs

Why is it...

that with every succeeding day of this shemozzle of an administration I am increasingly reminded of the scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark where our hero is confronted by a sword wielding loony?

Wishful thinking I suppose.

Phantom of the Opera: AI agent now lurks within browser, for the lazy

Even if this gets better...

your browser will still be harbouring a viper which will very quickly become the target of the various adversaries interested in your cash and secrets.

Quisling strikes me as an excellent name for one of these "in application" agents.

Techie pulled an all-nighter that one mistake turned into an all-weekender

Re: Keeping a backup...

Almost a parable for version control. ;)

Even venerable RCS (1980s) would have been a life saver here. I used it under MS-DOS in the 80s+.

I had a vague idea that VMS had versioned files as I recall something like purge name.ext;* but might have been another DEC OS.

Governments can't seem to stop asking for secret backdoors

"liberal use of cyanide gas sorted that problem."

With quite a few "problems" cyanide usually does I suspect.

But I was tickled by the idea that the UK Liberal party was resorting HCN gas sort out their problems not that there any evidence they were and going by the Thorpe trial they would have been in more danger of exterminating themselves.

I guess in the case of TB it will have to affect the human population before some sanity in approach and legislation is restored.

I know first hand how unpleasant and drawn out the antibiotic treatment for non-TB mycobacterial (MAC) lung infections are and wouldn't wish TB on anyone especially with it's greater likelihood of antibiotic resistance.

"Decapitation may not be the way to go"

I don't know? Seemed to work well enough for the French. The monarchy, church and aristocracy never really got back into the saddle after that.

I guess you just have to choose the right heads.

The poisonous Hydra of the contemporary body politic would overwhelm even the most enthusiastic headsman but I am certain he would be delighted give it his best shot (chop?)

C++ creator calls for help to defend programming language from 'serious attacks'

Re: Talking at cross purposes?

"even experts have to push harder on dull knives to make them work as required."

I have only ever seriously cut myself with a blunt knife (usually not mine.) Unnecessary force strips threads and removes fingers. :)

Curiously really sharp metal edges cause a peculiar sensation when placed against the skin so you seem to get an "early warning."

I had the impression that at least recently the thrust of Rust safety was thread and lock safety which is probably a more practical concern not really directly addressed in other languages. Possibly memory safety and these concerns are formally equivalent in some sense.

Never having earnt a crust programming, I have always used the simplest available language for what we're mostly simple tasks. The one thing about C that struck me years ago was the dependence on pointers for everything except scalars - even structures were passed by reference (address) in the very early days and arrays/vectors will always be. I have to wonder whether this oddity has meant programmers preferring to work with references even when the operation on object essentially requires a copy (such as storing an object in container.) When you are intentionally working with references viz there is a single object which must be simultaneously in more than one context there is unavoidable complexity around object lifetimes, locking etc.

The really big fly the ointment I would think is the human component. From my experience programmers, coders, developers whatever title de jour are a pretty mixed bag of which between 1% to 5% are really clever and can actually grok this stuff, 50%-60% who really don't and readily admit that, with the residue who to various degrees delude themselves that they are "all over it" ("the full bottle" even. But of what?) It's this latter group who are the most dangerous (A little knowledge....)

With the AI inspired rounds of retrenchments in tech generally, I can foresee fewer talented candidates envisaging their future careers in software development and those already in that industry facing reduced renumeration and loss of employment security contemplating alternative career options creating a perfect storm that would not be so much a skills shortage but a devastating drought.

Mozilla flamed by Firefox fans after promises to not sell their data go up in smoke

Re: Are we the baddies?

You are of course entirely right.

The old adage about "free lunches" is probably older than lunches but relevant all the same.

"To be able to live indoors and have access to comforts like clean water, survivable food, safe shelter, and reliable medical support."

Not living in the US would appear to be a good place to start in these confused times.

Hisense QLED TVs are just LED TVs, lawsuit claims

Hisense?

In these parts not exactly a name that is synonymous with quality.

Quantum stercore hisense?

I looked at the QD5 models on the US site. Only appears to claim quantum dot colours rather than quantum dot technology.

Light of a particular or precise wavelength might be produced by a range of sources including quantum dots and oleds so the colour in the sense of the wavelength isn't the preserve of any given technology.

I think what distinguishes quantum dot sources is gaussian distribution of frequencies around a particular colour presumably due the variance in the critical parameters when manufacturing the dots.

Re: The TV for QANON

The Q in QAnon

Nah... that's not a capital q it's just a capital O that unzipped and hauled out John Thomas and doing elephant impressions (although a tapir might be more accurate.)

Re: Someone’s fallen hard for marketing BS here…

"rely on quantum phenomena to do their turning electricity into light thing, "

Probably could also argue the interaction between the electron and the phosphor on the CRT tube is ultimately quantum mechanical.

Membership of New Zealand’s domain registry suddenly triples, which isn't entirely welcome

"a person of Māori descent"

While not lived in the Land of the Long White Shroud† since I was a child, I am fairly sure anyone whose forebears go back four or five generations in NZ would be able to claim such descent even those ostensibly identifying as pākehā.

The last general election in NZ returned a hodgepodge coalition more or less opposed to the differential treatment afforded Māori and Pacific Islanders (Pacifika) compared with the pākehā etc instituted mostly by the previous labour governments.

Like most nations the most pressing problems facing NZ are economic including employment, health and housing - other issues are largely considered as an unwelcome distraction with the election of an oddball patchwork government tending to confirm this interpretation.

So I would say this little contretemps is just one small bubo on the plague of ideological warfare being mindlessly waged globally.

I suppose it would be right bugger if .NZ was eagerly sought after by the fascists and ultra right because .nazi is never likely to a tld but subtract the vowels et voilà. Would likely make the day of those billionaire American survivalists who have dismal bolt holes in the South Island.

_{† where ambition and progress are interred. For a flightless bird a surprising number of Kiwis fly NZ for AU for greater opportunities.}

AWS unboxes quantum cat qubit kit called Ocelot

Re: A chance for an ocelot joke . . .

Q. How do you titillate an ocelot?

A. Oscillate its tits a lot.

Also effective on non felines I believe. More so if you substitute osculate.

I'll see myself out.

Re: A chance for an ocelot joke . . .

For the gigabucks involve rhymes with "lossalot."

Following the cat analogy and its precursor braket I might have decided on Pyewackett for the magical and mystic or occult associations although Gillian Holroyd's familiar, a Siamese cat, shot threw when she became human. Not much chance of that misfortune befalling Bezos, I should think.

_{† bra+ket = <| and |> - my how those QM parties must hum along! |>^†<|^† is probably an obscene suggestion.}

Profit slide at HP can only mean one thing: Hammer time

Re: At first, we have HP

"That recession could easily turn into a depression."

You may be right. Some of the economic damage is structural and probably irreversible in the short to midterm; the reputational harm is probably irrecoverable.

"the billionaires take all the money they can"

That's assuming it's a deflationary (or is it stagflationary?) depression like '29 but even more likely given the lower actual non service production of the US to be inflationary (or hyperinflationary) which in the event could mean that these prats' billions might not be worth so much.

The importance and centrality of the USD in the world economy has decreased in the last few decades and more rapidly in the last five with the current administration hastily nailing the last few nails into its coffin. One might suggest an own goal to the likes of BRICS.

One stupid keystroke exposed sysadmin to inappropriate information he could not unsee

FORMATS

Never occurred to these top guns to rename formats.com to convert.com or babel.com etc?

A bit like having a high tech artillery system's safety and integrity checking application called fire!

Open Source Initiative defends disallowing board candidate after timezone SNAFU

Re: "sent with read receipts"

That's not exactly reliable - especially when people like me have them turned off!

Does anybody turn them on?

In the heyday of the "Miriam Abacha" scams half the crap in my inbox was these receipts. My work address was used in the scam email's envelope From_ address presumably garnered from uunet news posts or the address books of compromised accounts.

Feds: Army soldier suspected of AT&T heist Googled ‘can hacking be treason,’ ‘defecting to Russia’

Wa - genius?

Clearly a congenital defect (presumably too many copies of the stupidity gene on the patronymic Y chromosome.)

Why he thought anyone would be interested in the calls of the Orange eejit ordering MacDonalds or Uber Eats is anyone's guess.

DARPA seeks ideas for 'large bio-mechanical space structures'

Re: You can't create matter

E=mc² says you can. While we have managed to let that djinni out of the bottle putting it back into the bottle has so far eluded us to any significant extent. ;)

Re: You can't create matter

"And to grow a tree, requires the tree's weight in CO2 and water to be converted by photosynthesis, which will have to be sent up from Earth"

Or from the Moon which does have water and minerals but not sure about carbon though but you would perform most of the operations on the lunar surface or at least in lunar orbit before deployment to Earth orbit or wherever.

I am guessing that this is more about bulk than mass (L³ v. M)

Sending up prefabricated components still has a volume inefficiency I suspect.

One idea is to break everything down to minimal elements something like Meccano™ with a solar powered, automated orbital assembler to construct, and later repair, the required structures with the potential to later disassemble and reuse the components.

This is (very) little like biology where basic units like sugars (glucose), amino acids, fatty acids are mixed and matched to produce complex structures much of which will be broken down and reused.

I suspect much of the crap that emaninates from DARPA (and the US MIC, or the US in general) is to test said crap's mural adhesivity. ;)

FDA clears Google watch feature to call 911 if you flatline

Pretty obvious why ...

Apple didn't choose to work off brain activity (EEG) - at least in N.America.

Trump tariffs forcing rethink of PC purchases stateside

Re: Who will pay the tariffs?

My guess the downward pressure on sales volumes from the increased prices will mean the tariffs collected won't offset the knock on economic damage. There sre whole industries built on shifting cheap imported tat which could well fold.

"Most Stable Genius"

MSG aka Vetsin to which many have a sometimes severe allergic reaction.

Muttering Senile Geriatric probably a more accurate description.

USD8.00/doz. that is more than AUD10.00/doz. and we too have bird flu and supply shortages but a dozen barnyard eggs is a little above AUD5.00 ~ USD4.00.

Ironically the producers point out that if the eggs were still produced from the phased out battery hens the avian flu wouldn't have infected those chooks but now the free range and barnyard chooks can come into contact with native birdlife carrying the virus.

Re: Education

"Books were a major cost to schools."

The exorbitant cost of textbooks was/is the textbook publishers taking their pounds of flesh from a largely captive market - the printers and authors not so much. Still pretty much the case with scientific publishing.

University students mostly cannot afford textbooks so courses mostly don't specify required texts but refer to library reserve holdings, lecturer's online notes and paper handouts as well as online material available from the likes of MIT.

I am wondering whether some the various fairly decent textbooks that authors/copyright holders have donated as etexts to the world could with their consent be printed cheaply in volume in a student edition paperback format. India up until the 90s used to print local only editions of major science and math etc textbooks for less than a USD1.00 (at the time.) Back then I picked up a few that had escaped India, from second bookshops in AU (particularly the now long gone SKOOB Books†.)

A lot of the English literature resources used in schools are public domain and available from Gutenberg, Fadedpage etc which could be reset and printed.

_{† Nearly fifty years later the Dianetics mob opposite are still there peddling their codswallop. "Lest one good custom should corrupt the world."}

Nope. You probably can't cash in by turning your office or farm into a datacenter

"gigawatt-scale datacenter .... will require 634 acres (256 hectares) of land"

One thing I remember from the peculiar units† rote learnt during my long ago £/s/d schooldays is that there were 640 acres in a square mile. (2.56 square km or 1.6 km × 1.6 km)

The idea that this AI madness is going to consume 365.25x24 GWh‡ of energy every year and cover a square mile of probably otherwise quite productive land is insane and all just so some corporate, utility or government instrumentality can have an AI agent which will give you the same pre AI runaround.

† rod (aka pole or perch), chain, furlong; perch, rood, acre but mercifully no hides.

‡ I guess enough energy to heat 75 Mt of water 100°C.