* Posts by Neil Barnes

6971 publicly visible posts • joined 18 Apr 2007

OpenAI wants to build a subscription for something like an AI OS, with SDKs and APIs and 'surfaces'

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Facepalm

Eclipse

And all that is now

And all that is gone

And all that's to come

And everything under the sun is in tune

But the sun is eclipsed by the moon OpenAI

Linus Torvalds goes back to a mechanical keyboard after making too many typos

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Headmaster

A keyboard that requires software support has, perhaps, too many features for me. But then, I'm a bang-on-the-keys-to-make-words type...

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Re: Wish I knew what kind....

Please do not push this button again.

CERN boffins turn lead into gold for about a microsecond at unimaginable cost

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Alien

In space, no-one can hear you fart?

UK Ministry of Defence is spending less with US biz, and more with Europeans

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Oh, hi, Elon... can you give us a good price on some of your smaller rockets please? Don't worry about the payload, we'll do that bit, just some guidance. Doesn't need to go orbital, no need to worry about landing them...

Though on a more serious note, I wonder if cruise missiles aren't a better bet? At least you can turn those buggers around if someone decides it's all been a big mistake.

Microsoft wants us to believe AI will crack practical fusion power, driving future AI

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Boffin

Re: AI will crack practical fusion power...

So we've got this non-polluting, non-radioactive, non-carbon fusion power plant, right, and it's clean energy! Says so on the label, so it must be true. And frankly, I'm all in favour.

But... I can't help wondering about _heat_ pollution. Every Watt that comes out of that plant will, sooner or later, end up as heat. Is there perhaps a potential issue, given that this is going to be 'too cheap to meter' power (right, we've heard that before!) that the amount of heat we're generating becomes itself a problem? History suggests that if a resource exists, it _will_ get used.

It's probably already an issue with a carbon-fueled generator; heat when you burn the primary fuel, heat losses between there and the generator, and resistive heat losses in the final uses (ignoring transmission losses), and I'm sure the accountants have some pretty formulae to evaluate the overall efficiency of the system, but is that power ever accounted for as _heat_? Somewhere, everywhere, is getting warm... Consider people living in areas which are uninhabitable without at least some air conditioning, the output of which makes the local environment warmer. It's a vicious circle.

(I suspect it's a lot less of an issue with wind or solar systems; they take heat energy from the environment and (eventually) put it somewhere else. So at least things are constant.)

Top sci-fi convention gets an earful from authors after using AI to screen panelists

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Headmaster

Re: I guess Someday is now

I saw a quote recently - can't recall where, sadly - along the lines of 'why should I bother to read something you couldn't be bothered to write?'

It applies equally to science fiction as manglement missive...

Microsoft burnishes green cred by paying Swedes to burn biomass and bury CO2

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Coat

I'm not sure they could afjiord it...

Commodore OS 3 is the loudest Linux yet

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Pint

Windows don't just wobble

Like you, this is the antithesis of Linux for me... on any OS the first thing I do is turn off the special effects and sounds, which here would be rather missing the point.

The good thing is not that it is done, but that it _can_ be done. One of these is definitely deserved --->

Altman's eyeball-scanning biometric blockchain orbs officially come to America

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Thumb Up

gaming, online dating, and social media

Fortunately, exactly none of the things I use online.

TAKE IT DOWN Act? Yes, take the act down before it's too late for online speech

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Re: ...because nobody gets treated worse than I do online. Nobody.

Like every other politician, he wants to drain the swamp so he can install his own hot-pool.

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...because nobody gets treated worse than I do online. Nobody.

There's probably a reason for that.

30 percent of some Microsoft code now written by AI - especially the new stuff

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the blurring line between documents and applications

One ring to rule them all? No thanks...

I make data. I choose a program to generate it; I choose a program to process it. Those two programs may or may not be the same as each other; there may be more than one choice in either field. But _I_ choose...

Chinese carmaker Chery using DeepSeek-driven humanoid robots as showroom sales staff

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Re: Waiting for the day when …

Yes, but then they invented velcro shoe-fixings...

Meta bets you want a sprinkle of social in your chatbot

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Stop

Mark Zuckerberg in a Hellenic style - Click to enlarge

Now why would you possibly want to do that?

Duolingo jumps aboard the 'AI-first' train, will phase out contractors

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Headmaster

I have to admit to a certain fascination with language learning: even with four years total immersion in German, I am still unable fully to express myself with anything like my fluency in English, nor to follow a complex program - say, a detailed news item or a political discussion - on the TV or radio.

I note the difference between the Duolingo course (it's not English->German, it's American->German and they're _not_ the same) and tutored classes: the first has you learning long lists of answers mostly by wrote with zero feedback except 'right' or 'wrong' (for example, when I did it, a single incorrect letter in an answer (including using a correct English spelling rather than the American) would make it wrong with no explanation); the second teaches you not German but German grammar... fine for an academic but not so good for someone who just wants a pound of tomatoes or to know who's Chancellor this week.

Surely there must be a half-way house - German As She Is Spoke? - that I have not yet discovered. Duolingo certainly isn't it; in its beginnings, when they _promised_ there would be no adverts nor charges (hah!) it wasn't too bad, but once they started that idiotic 'gamifying' of the courses it became silly - and very irritating.

After leaving citizens on hold for 798 years, UK tax authority has £1B for CRM upgrade

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Re: £1 billion (thousand million) over 15 years

Depending on the overheads - assume around 50% - and the average salary - is thirty grand a year enough to get sufficiently skilled people? Probably not... then you're looking at around a thousand people.

Oh, and this is government, so you'd need to budget for two thousand middle managers, too.

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Flame

digital channels intended to ease service pressures didn't help as expected

Perhaps that might have been because people didn't _want_ to use digital channels?

Anything to do with the tax office beyond the very simplest query is a descent into madness. Even what may be a simple query (e.g. why is my tax all screwed up for the fifth year in succession?) which may have a very simple answer from a practitioner knowledgeable in the art, is emphatically _not_ simple for the person on the street who needs an answer. If it were, they wouldn't be asking... and a robot script doesn't cut it.

People, on the whole, need to talk to people, not machines. And if the tax office needs more people to answer the phones, it should hire them. It might even be able to get their income tax right.

Generative AI is not replacing jobs or hurting wages at all, economists claim

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Re: Wrong Jobs?

We know what happened to the planet where the B-ark _landed_...

Windows profanity filter finally gets a ******* off switch

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Re: Microsoft...

And in true grammar post style, I observe I failed to include an 'ed' suffix before the final exclamation point. ****!

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Headmaster

Microsoft...

****!

The ****ing ******'s ****ing ****!

What the **** did you put in that code? The client thinks it's a cyberattack

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Shades of an 80's compiler (?) which included a free money voucher deep in the instruction manual... it was never claimed.

Google goes cold on Europe: Stops making smart thermostats for continental conditions

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may experience an unpredictable decline in performance if you attempt to use it

Um, no. It has no moving or wearing parts; anything like a battery should be easily replaceable. If not, it's not fit for purpose; money back, please!

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Re: Meanwhile

You are not alone in this lack of ambition.

Indeed, my German house has no direct thermostats wherever, apart from those integral to the Fernwarme district hot water system; there are individual thermostats on each radiator, mostly set at zero for the rooms we rarely use.

Old-fashioned, I know, but it suits us.

DARPA to 'radically' rev up mathematics research. Yes, with AI

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Headmaster

Re: So how long will it take

Oh noes! 355/113 is probably even more vulgar then!

AI-driven 20-ft robots coming for construction workers' jobs

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No worries, lad, we'll just wallpaper over it. Never know it was there. Gotta cuppa?

Signalgate lessons learned: If creating a culture of security is the goal, America is screwed

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Re: Suggested new nomenclature

Signalgate and the Mummy

Signalgate meets the Wolfman

Signalgate and Count Dracula

(c) Abbot and Costello

Hydrotreated vegetable oil is not an emission-free swap for diesel in datacenters

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removal of traditional fossil fuel diesel and subsequent replacement with HVO

So, you remove fuel that's already bought and paid for and replace it with HVO? That sounds less then economical... why not wait until you've _had_ the power outage and burned off some of the existing fuel? Yes, you're going to get no immediate CO2 benefit from the old fuel, but it's a one-off cost.

AI training license will allow LLM builders to pay for content they consume

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Re: How much will they pay ?

1) Ask ChatGPT to generate reams of nonsense (other nonsense generators are available)

2) Ask LLM trainers to pay to use said nonsense

3) $$$

What could possibly go wrong?

As ChatGPT scores B- in engineering, professors scramble to update courses

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Holmes

But when deeper thought was required, ChatGPT fared poorly.

That might be - just guessing here, you understand - because it doesn't think?

UK-based self-driving car startup Wayve heads to Japan for more driving data

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German Autobahnen are notorious for poor visibility lane markings, particularly in the wet and/or dark. They haven't grasped the possibilities of cat's eye reflectors, it seem.

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A little further north, and you'll get (eventually) to Cairn Lodge services on the A74(M) which I think is also of the same stable, and equally not to be despised.

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Almost every time I get in a vehicle in which I am not in control, I go to sleep... It's almost a reflex.

Though self-driving vehicles will have to be a damn sight better than they currently are before I get in one, so that's probably not an issue.

RIP, Google Privacy Sandbox

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Re: Their profits

Firefox is all-in on baking in advertising tech in the browser.

Can you elucidate, please? I've obviously failed to notice something.

How to stay on Windows 10 instead of installing Linux

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Re: From Seattle with Love

Forty-nine days, then?

Pharmacist accused of using webcams to spy on women in intimate moments at work, home

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Re: Healthy governance guys

What? Has the orange one not yet slapped tariffs on such spyware?

Canada OKs construction of first licensed teeny atomic reactor

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Boffin

could power up to 1.2 million homes

at 1kW each? Not all at the same time, then...

Yes, we can provide 24kWH per customer, but if they all decide to boil a kettle at the same time?

Trump fires NSA boss, deputy

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Re: Let's make American democracy a little more robust next time around. Please!!!

But still not a patch on Marmite - original and best!

Windows intros 365 Link, a black box that does nothing but connect to Microsoft's cloud

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high-fidelity Microsoft Teams meetings

Has anyone _ever_ had a high-fidelity Teams meeting?

Asking for a friend...

Americans set to pay more on all imports: Trump activates blanket tariffs

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Re: Liberals

Have you not seen 'A Night at the Opera'?

Oh, not _that_Marx...

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Re: The economic "plan" behind the madness

Last time I drove a US automatic rental - admittedly, twenty years ago - it was clear that the engine, gearbox, and cruise control weren't talking to each other: a sudden drop of two gears to accelerate 5mph while cruising, or gears suddenly changing half way around a corner. It's clear that I don't drive in the US style.

(But then, my local service garage is always amazed at how little brakes I wear out: I don't drive German style of roaring up behind someone doing 100kph faster than them on the autobahn, and then jam my brakes on at the last second...)

Mozilla is rolling Thundermail, a Gmail, Office 365 rival

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Re: It is not the ecosystem

Hmmm... I'd like to click on a link on an email and have it open in _at least_ a private window of my default browser, and ideally let me choose the browser.

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Re: cheers

I've used Thunderbird for years but to be honest the latest changes - Gnome effects, I surmise - leave me unhappy. I could live with - though not particularly enjoy - the change to hamburgers instead of menus, but replacing text in context menus with cute little pictures (e.g. for print or delete) with no text alternative really does my head in. So I tried Evolution again, but that seems to require a manual population of the contacts list, instead of doing the obvious addition of every received non-spam mail address (or even offering a menu option to do that). Maye I'm missing something obvious; I like the general look of Evolution.

But that said: I don't want a lot from an email client: a way to view mail without clustering mails into 'conversations' - I don't like that threading - and a way to send mail using a contacts list. I don't need or want all the bells and whistles of integration with office suites. I appreciate that my requirements may not those of other users, but I prefer the 'do one thing and do it well' philosophy rather than 'include the kitchen sink just in case' approach.

Privacy died last century, the only way to go is off-grid

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Re: The pros have it.

"In Jersey anything's legal, as long as you don't get caught."

European Gaia mapping satellite is retired but proves very tough to kill

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We need only remember that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.

Prepare, citizens, for the Great Leap Upwards!

On my count...

Malware in Lisp? Now you're just being cruel

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Re: Whitespace interpreter

From the emporium of John Wellington Wells, Esq?

Today's jobs Microsoft thinks could use an AI assist: Researchers and analysts

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Holmes

I'm waiting for its first plan

1) Brilliant idea!

2) ???

3) $$$

US defense contractor cops to sloppy security, settles after infosec lead blows whistle

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score of -142 for its implementation of NIST SP 800-171 security controls

Given the behaviour of the senior government, is it actually worth Morse fixing this?

50 years ago the last Saturn rocket rolled out of NASA's Vehicle Assembly Building

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Pint

Consider the glass

raised!

Judge halts DOGE's union personal data grab at OPM, Treasury, Education

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Re: I'm not sure that the "judicial" branch really understands that the data has long flown the

It'll be an interesting situation (in the sense of the old Chinese curse) when/if the judiciary jails people for breaking the law - as in this case - and Trump immediately pardons them.

Oh, wait, he's done _that_ before.