Posts by the Jim bloke

Feeling dumb? Let Google's latest AI invention simplify that wordy writing for you

Re: An AI dumb-downer made in 'murca.

A couple of days ago, I encountered - on youtube - someone had made a video where they were reading out the speech bubbles and text from a comic/graphic novel that I remembered from back in the eighties.. no animation, no highlighting which speech bubble (karaoke style), just shots of the cartoon page, advancing as they went. At least the "creator" didnt include their own head in the frame.

I suppose it may be useful for illiterates and non-english readers, but how did they get that far to start with? And how can you understand a comic style layout without knowing which panel is related to the words being spoken (which is why karaoke highlighting would help).

Also, apart from mentioning the cartoon/graphic novel name, they completely failed to credit the original writer/artist.

A youtube of a comic being read aloud, how far the internet has fallen....

People find amazing ways to break computers. Cats are even more creative

.. a useful photo to keep in your library - just watch out for date/time stamps ..

Re: Cats and keyboards

there's a special place reserved in hell for the Teams designers.

Yes there is.

Sadly, its in a management role.

BOFH: HR tries to think appy thoughts

Re: Gamification

Our company did some deal with an online training video provider. might have been called Go One

and the crap they presented was all animated, with fake competitions supposedly against other employees where you displayed how much smarter than them you were..

The entire thing was aimed squarely at whatever group of generations are casualties of youtube and social media, and its presumption of stupidity, and overall fakeness was so blatant I found it too offensive to actually do any of the training.

America's National Science Foundation tells DEI, misinfo studies: You're fired

Re: Institute for Pure American Physics

STOP Calling it AMERICA !!

Is it the Donald Tower ?.. No.. its the Trump tower..

SO use the proper last name for the continent and country..

And rejoice in living in the United States of Vespucci !

CVE fallout: The splintering of the standard vulnerability tracking system has begun

Like imperial versus metric, only worse.

Imperial ?, Trump wishes, but he is barely a robber baron...

Re: China

Lets also include stealing scientists,

The American space program was mostly ex german rocket scientists...

https://xkcd.com/984/

What to do once your Surface Hub v1 becomes an 84-inch, $22K paperweight

Re: Microsoft...................

.... and management is not your friend..

(in case you hadn't noticed)

Need a Linux admin? Ask a hair stylist to introduce you to a worried mother

Even the semi-honest advertising people will tell you half of all money spent on advertising is wasted - its just that knowing WHICH half is only claimed by the outright con artists..

(this disclaimer serves to protect the advertiser from any expectation of results, with the obvious recommendation that you spend twice as much..)

Tesla fudged odometer to screw me out of warranty, Model Y owner claims

All this hate on Tesla

for obvious and valid reasons

and yet Musks other Flagship seems to have quietly taken over global supremacy..

Every government or public news announcement I have seen for the last couple of months has its original publication message in a box out with the stupid X logo...

Dont Meta or the old media empires get a look in any more?

All the anti-tesla protests and publicity stunts are probably being coordinated on peoples X accounts.

If you want to get rid of Elon, you need to get off the Xitter..

Official abuse of state security has always been bad, now it's horrifying

While I agree "the establishment" as an organised force of active malice, with secret handshakes etc.is -most likely- a literary fabrication (which is what they WANT you to believe... )

"the establishment", as the ambient environment which shapes and promotes self interest and exploitive mindsets to the point they are considered normal and even admirable, is a real thing.

With organised religion blowing away its moral authority and social license, there is no convenient source of a 'moral compass', and "be nice to people" is competing directly with "take whatever you can get away with"..

BOFH: There's a fatal error in the blinkenlights

Re: "English language keyboard license"

have they taken it out of Alaska as well?

.. close enough..

The passive aggression of connecting USB to PS/2

Re: *!$#&@ Bluetooth

You forgot to sacrifice a goat, didnt you.

Every bloody time, someone comes in whining and moaning about something not working..

"Did you sacrifice a goat? "

"uhhh,,, nnooo?? "

For fucks sake..

Revenge of the nerds: Teachers, professors sue to undo Trump science funding cuts

Re: The gavel is mightier than a chainsaw?

This has never been a thing before.

Probably because all previous presidents were less blatant in violating the law.

He is exceeding his authority.

He is doing actual harm to US institutions, relations with allied nations, the american people themselves - the entire perceived value of the USA.

People are opposing Trump in an attempt to save America.

BOFH: Have you tried forcing an unexpected reboot?

Re: The only way to deal with Progress Bars...

Is to NOT look at them. Go away and do something else for the next hour or two.

.. and your display goes to sleep - and will not wake - and the only thing you can do is force a power cycle...

I dislike my HP work laptop..

Re: Schrödinger's firmware situation

There was an old saying, that a project would progress to 90% completion, in 90% of the budgeted time, and the remaining 10% would take the other 90%.

It probably was actually accurate back then - in the distant and murky past, when I was a lad etc etc..

These days everything is bigger and better, so stick a couple more orders of magnitude on the time factors..

Surprise! People don't want AI deciding who gets a kidney transplant and who dies or endures years of misery

once you take the human out of the equation

The human is in the equation, right at the beginning where they state the conditions and outcomes..

"I want to make dead people."

All the rest is just filling in the details.

Thousands of highly trained and expensively educated ethics specialists will determine a set of guidelines,

Billions will be spent developing software.

Implementation will be run from a call center in Bangladesh.

Re: The main cause of waste is time

4a. is the most deserving recipient place of abode and all their support structures over a days travel away from where the operation can be performed?

4aa. Can we keep the donor/kidney viable until candidate one can be brought into proximity?

4ab. is there anyone else at all that needs the kidney, that it IS possible to shove said kidney into before it goes rancid?

Satnav systems built for Earth used by Blue Ghost lander as it approached the Moon

GNSS uses signal time-in-transit to calculate distance

.. but probably has a much cooler acronym ..

so extra distance makes the calculation more relaxed, leisurely.. not like the knife fighting range that earth focused operations have to work at.

There is an upper limit - which is probably the 'word' length that is used to measure against synchronisation.

There would also be design issues to overcome - machine built to broadcast down towards earth may not send a strong signal in the other direction - or it could be fully unidirectional, i dont know.

Obvious one is no coverage on the 'dark' far side of the moon.

Microsoft declutters Windows 11 File Explorer in the name of Euro privacy

Re: How about real decluttering?

I'd love to see an end to the desperate, needy OneDrive ads.

update that to copilot for me.

Want to play billionaire for a day? This app lets you rent your own armed goon squad

Re: Uber with guns

Uber with Goons

FTFY

Goober?

Re: "a way to democratize personal protection"

Democracy has always been for the people who mattered...

Techie pointed out meetings are pointless, and was punished for it

Re: FTFY

A cookie is like a biscuit, but made with too much sugar

as per what is sold in the junk food franchises and other cultural imperialism outposts polluting the antipodes.

Google Maps to roll out Trump-approved Denali and Gulf of Mexico rebrands

Re: For those of us overseas...

He's not a megalomaniac, he is a sociopath with no comprehension of how normal human beings think.

Everything is all about him, and anything that disputes that is evil and must be destroyed.

For someone getting rid of the DEI hires, he better make sure to exclude neurodivergent from the list or he will be out on his arse with the rest...

You probably have more CIO experience than the incoming White House CIO

having your profile on LinkedIn

... does not speak well of your IT mojo ..

LinkedIn is where recruiters circle-jerk each other, and clueless wannabees lie about their qualifications..

Windows 10's demise nears, but Linux is forever

Re: I agree with the majority of the article...

Someone, somewhere, completely lost the plot, and tried to make the stage the star of the show..

I dont think influencers are the answer - but I respond negatively to blatant stupidity, so influencers rarely get to finish their pitches..

The OS is there to provide a setting that your work is done on.

It should be a servant, not a master (it can spy for the mothership just as offensively from either role, so that point is irrelevant)

DeepSeek limits new accounts amid cyberattack

Re: Reply

Starting up DeekSeek as a business, and waiting for the money to come pouring in....

Europe, UK weigh up how to respond to Trump's proposed tariffs. One WTF or two?

Re: And

Trump now trying to stop wars

LOL

ROFL

ROFPMSL

You honestly dont believe that, do you ?

Trump has an interest in getting the credit, headlines, and prestige from stopping wars - but only to the same extent that Vladimir, Benjamin, the Myanmar junta, or any of the other aggressors do -

... he wants to be the winner...

Trump nukes 60 years of anti-discrimination rules for federal contractors

Trump is a cunning weasel

By launching a divisive and outrageous move like this, he brings the opposition boiling out of the woodwork.

Even if this is blocked - or possible especially - if this is blocked, he has scapegoats to blame when the rest of his stupid policies fail to deliver.

No way is he going to own his own failures..

Re: It's going to be a hurricane of dishonesty,

he has 2 years to freely asset strip the country before any kind of governmental pushback can occur.

By provoking outrage and opposition he gets free scapegoats to blame when his stupid policies fail to achieve their advertised claims.

Re: There are no more men

It isnt complicated at ll.

Everything is fair

unless I dont win,

then you are obviously cheating and more rules need to be brought in and enforced.

need an icon for trump/techbro oligarchy.. is the turd emoji under copyright?

Oh, Deere! FTC sues tractor maker, alleging decades of monopolized repairs

Re: "the stench of partisan motivation"

what stench does that have ?

... rich, and agricultural...

Anduril picks Ohio for 5 million square foot autonomous weapon factory

World class workforce

How are they going to manage that under Trump?

You need either existing industry to poach from, or a functioning education system, or something that makes it actually attractive to skilled migrants...

Either that or the 'harnessing' will involve slave collars - which does resonate with the juntas attitude to workers rights..

Tech support fill-in given no budget, no help, no training, and no empathy for his plight

Re: Long ago I was in charge of IT for part of a university

... all the high tech liberal arts departments like physics, math, stats and...

what kind of university considers STEM to be liberal arts? sounds more like a seminary or flat earther hangout...

Firefox ditches Do Not Track because nobody was listening anyway

Re: Future of Privacy Forum

easying words is doubleplusgood

Google to wrap up Christmas Island with new subsea cable

As an Australian, I am perfectly fine and accustomed to ignoring taswegia,

but I am curious with whats happened to NZ..

Have all the billionaire survivalists successfully removed it from Googles knowledge to hide their apocalypse bunkers?

Thousands of AI agents later, who even remembers what they do?

Re: Thanks Gartner!

They are busy creating "an ideal customer experience", although they have no idea who their customer is, what they want, or how to achieve any changes - but thats OK, because the customers will LOVE the ideas our marketing team came up with, and even though the uni graduate we have developing it couldnt quite get it working, the customers will appreciate its potential...

AI Jesus is ready to dispense advice from a booth in historic Swiss church

El Reg is far from its roots

An article on religion with no mention of the FSM.

As for training the AI, even if they left out the Old Testament to avoid poisoning it with crazy, a constant diet of confessions of sins, guilt and all your religious hang ups will lead to a seriously twisted AI - probably best if it doesnt actually listen to what people tell it..

Billionaire food app CEO wants you to pay for the privilege of working with him

Re: Legal considerations

If he fails to completely impart all his experience, sue him for the entirety of his financial empire, for breach of promise and fraud..

Windows 11 continues to creep up behind Windows 10

Re: Rust in the Windows kernel

There's a really nasty smell, and it feels spongy underfoot...

Weekends were a mistake, says Infosys co-founder Narayama Murthy

Re: "I have not changed my view; I will take this with me to my grave"

Do people in those parts actually have graves? I imagined cremation was more the rule. So is reincarnation I suspect which I guess rather limits the repose.

If enough people piss on his pyre, it can just sink into the muddy ground...

Business owners expecting their employees to sacrifice everything towards the profits of the owner dont do so well if anti-slavery and basic human rights laws are enforced... another reason for Elon to get into bed with Donald.

All bark, no bite? Musk's DOGE unlikely to have any real power

Re: Hmm

Its amazing how quiet the Australian republican movement was while Trump was demonstrating how bad a populist demagogue conman could be as a head of state...

Re: There IS NO MORE CONGRESS

American quality is a thing of myth and legend i.e., long vanished from this world.. USA politics, media, and legal system has become an international joke, with any trace of competence replaced with a cult of personality.

if you want to buy high quality politics you would probably need to look at some of the smaller European nations.

Airbus A380 flew for 300 hours with metre-long tool left inside engine

Re: "as it would pass through the rotating blades during flight"

puts a different twist on the saying "the vultures are circling..."

Yes, your network is down – you annoyed us so much we crashed it

Re: Can't recall the mechanism

The ultimate detergent

For when you really need to clean up the scum..

Re: Finance dept. are at the root of this issue

my favourite example of this was a book where the vampire elder would become immune to all damage ( and any consequence of his own stupidity ) by becoming insolvent.

Just because the evil clown can doesn't mean fantasy creations get to do it too..

Oregon Trail 'action comedy' film in the works from Apple

The south park crew already did this

Matt Parker and Trey Stone made Cannibal! the Musical, in 1993 according to a quick google search

That position you just applied for might be a 'ghost job' that'll never be filled

Re: 81%

HR is the last refuge of the 'unskilled clerical' employee.

All other positions require some kind of management, technical or administrative ability, but the personnel departments attracted those who didnt want to damage their nails on a typewriter, and adapted to its current form as typewriters vanished as a threat..

The hunt is on for the scum who stole Britain's largest inflatable planetarium

Re: Was it locked?

The first telehandler I encountered, a couple of decades ago, had the model or brand name of Teleporter...