Posts by Neil Barnes

Ransomware curdles production at Coca-Cola's Fairlife dairy biz

ultra-filtered milk

(a) What are Coca-cola doing with milk? And

(b) Surely if you filter everything out of milk, using your ultra-filter, you get left with, er, water?

AI spam filters are getting suckered by old-school text salting

Re: The pain in Spain stays mainly in the HTML - not the plain - text

Exactly. I came here to post that the whole mess would be a lot simpler if some idiot hadn't been over-influenced by the coloured-pencil brigade and let HTML into emails... straight ASCII please, or if you really must, UTF-8.

Researcher poisons open-weight AI model for under $100

Please - let's not get the hump about it.

Frame: A new X11 server – implemented directly in assembly

Re: Respect

Ooh, you'll _love_ my new FAT32 driver in 65c02 (real soon now!)

Philips to replace bricked Hue Bridge Pro devices

A recent rental decided on a country road in the wee small hours that I was approaching a completely unlit small village with a 30mph limit, and that I wasn't slowing as fast as it liked. So it slammed the anchors on hard enough to break traction and trigger the ALB, and simultaneously - because who needs main beams in a built up area? - ruined my vision by dipping the beams.

Truly we live in an age of wonder.

I have given up complaining (well, about smart home devices). I want none, I have none, I will have none. To me, they represent the apotheosis of widget engineering: someone has an idea that sounds good at first hearing, and the marketing team and coloured pencil department completely ruin it, overloading the design with 'features' and other addenda that end up turning a light switch into a member of a million-device botnet.

I don't disdain those who have found such devices useful or essential - but for me they're neither. I have never been inconvenienced by the inability to remotely control a radiator or change the colour of a light, and to be honest I never expect to be. Obviously, I'm not the target market.

Now... who do I talk to about removing all the 'driver assist' idiocy that goes into new cars?

EU puts 'addictive' design of Facebook, Instagram under the DSA microscope

Re: Close...

I agree, but wonder how you define social media? I mean, even Youtube, if you open a browser from a link, by default has the autoplay button set on. I wouldn't really consider Youtube a social medium, although the requirement to be logged in to do anything useful with it - and in particular, contribute a comment - does tend to lean that way. (Hint: freetube).

LisaFPGA brings Apple's magnificent misfire back in programmable logic

Re: LisaGUI

I could not agree more. I have never understood that particular bit of logic: it's ok as far as it goes, but it really ignores the concept that a user might want to process the data represented in different ways. Ah, this is an HTML file, obviously you want me to open a browser that knows how to display its contents. You would never want to view the contents directly, or to edit them, or create them from scratch, right?

Although to be fair, they probably weren't aiming at people who understood computers, but rather those who had to use them in e.g. an office environment on a regular basis - in which case, they might see only word processing documents, spreadsheets, and email. One file type, one file handler: the word processor, the spreadsheet editor, the email client. So you end up with a very slick UI that can only do a limited number of tasks - that really nice car that can only drive on the motorway, but not the sideroads... and you can't change your own oil.

OpenAI's Atlas browser doesn't make it to its first birthday

The curious thing is

that the majority of a use case for using an 'AI' in a browser - to whit: finding what you're searching for, without being troubled by all the random crap, malware, spyware, and advertising that is delivered instead these days - would be handled faster, more simpler, probably more effectively, and certainly more efficiently if the search engine makers would restore the boolean search conditions that they originally had.

Re: quote: ChatGPT Work is about getting office workers to spend more time with OpenAI

I'm still watching with interest to se whether the bubble disappears with a very loud pop, or more sort of a plplplplp farting noise.

Microsoft intros tech that rebuilds dead PCs without requiring local copies of Windows

you’ll need a Windows 11 machine that’s already running Windows Recovery Environment

Ah, good. My linux machines are safe, then.

GitHub cuts short offer to burn repos on CD after mockery ensues

Re: Physical media has benefits.

At the risk of annyoying Mr Strorm, may I be the 94th person to point out that both CDs and DVDs are devices that store digital data using analogue techniques?

Come to think of it, so does every other 'digital' medium. It's all a question of signal to noise.

MFA-optional banks leave safe doors (and accounts) wide open for thieves to pillage

Re: "she used the same or similar passwords on all of her accounts"

One reason for the repeated use of passwords on different accounts is likely the preponderance of sites that unnecessarily require accounts and passwords...

Connect, disconnect, or just have a lovely beer

Re: It does look like the Disney castle

A secondary question is why so many similar spiral staircases in church towers spiral the same way. Were the priests expecting to have to defend them, or did the masons not know how to do it the other way?

An artificial cell with a full lifecycle has been created for the first time

built entirely from known chemical components

Isn't _everything_ made entirely from known chemical components? Enquiring minds want to know!

(Also, did they ever watch/read 'The Andromeda Strain'?

Boffins peg narcissistic leadership as the real driver behind 'return to office' demands

Perhaps they could get a local AI that they could shout at?

Supreme Court rules cops need a warrant to vacuum up phone location data

Re: A conundrum, and I don't know how it works

Or, presumably, their nearest and dearest did...

A conundrum, and I don't know how it works

On the one hand, I use a mobile, with the location services turned off except when actually using a satnav program (itself with standalone maps so it doesn't have to talk to Google every five miles). On the other hand, when I fly my paraglider, I _want_ to be visible (Electronic Conspicuity) and in that case I use an Android based tablet which shouts out my location: FLARM and Fanet as well as my height, speed, and direction. It uses both direct RF communication and, if it can find a network path (either from fitting a local SIM card or by making my phone a hotspot), t'internet.

I don't know how much joy it gives Google to know my exact height and speed, but I'm sure they're stashing the information away somewhere... (and since you ask: it had Chrome as a default browser. Now it has Vivaldi.)

Large Hadron Collider goes offline to make room for its enhanced successor

the new one will be just as safe

But I wanted an earth-shattering kaboom!

/marvin

End of era as the BBC switches off Radio 4 Long Wave service

Re: Imagine the outcry if the long-running drama The Archers was to come to an abrupt end.

Were is the conditional in subjunctive - considering a case that has not (yet) happened, but what if it did?

I once suggested that in the days when the BBC first started trying to move people to DAB, they should make an official statement that The Archers was _not_ going to move to DAB only. The whole of middle England would have been out to buy a DAB radio that afternoon!

Re: Irreplacable...

It's always been an issue: analogue systems degrade gracefully, digital systems work until they suddenly don't.

The original idea for DAB was (a) that it was mobile only, and (b) there would be lots and lots of low power transmitters, so the signal from one could take over as the previous moved out of range. Instead, we got DAB broadcast from major transmitters, and people put DAB radios in their kitchen and surprised that they stop working if they move them a couple of feet.

US auto regulators want to kill robotaxi brake pedals

Re: Am I missing the difference?

The controller of an Uber or Lyft has skin in the game.

FOSS dev builds a BASIC compiler using LLVM

Re: The caption on the photo...

It's a while since I looked into HTML in any detail, but isn't there a field in the image tag for that?

Ah yes, <img src="", alt="">, and it's mandatory for exactly that reason. Surely screen readers know this?

The caption on the photo...

Any reason why it reads like an AI description of the photo, rather than being simply titled?

Perseverance rover finds even more signs of extinct life on Mars

But the chances of anything coming from Mars

Are a million to one, they said.

Sadly, we live in a world where abstract knowledge is not prized; where there is little visible cooperation, as opposed to competition; and where budgets change on a monthly basis.

Windows 11 turns five, leaving some important lessons for Microsoft

Re: Just throw away the shell...

Oddly, I haven't found them so (on linux). Perhaps just me - but if I want to move files around I generally feel safer when I can see both the source and destination window.

Re: Win 10 was "OK"...

"...Paint 3D, Snip and Sketch..."

Classic cases of MS taking working software that people were used to and replacing it with something almost but not entirely unlike tea, er, I mean the application people expected.

There is a recent trend - and it applies not just to MS (and Apple? I don't use that, can't comment) but also to Android and Linux - of someone deciding they have to replace existing software with 'updated' equivalents which aren't: functionality missing, user interface apparently deliberately obscured; look and feel modified. It's as if people don't feel they're providing a useful function unless they're messing up learned muscle memory and messing with people's taste.

Certainly a more recent update can be a significant improvement - for some, or many. But is it necessary to remove the original for those who prefer it?

Ordering a trip back to 2009, with a side of nostalgia

Re: God's waiting room

In Worthing, it is important to be Earnest.

Waymo hits the brakes after robotaxis keep missing the signs for freeway construction zones

The first roundabout in the UK that met my previously drive-on-the-right partner when she moved to the UK... Just treat it as six very short dual carriageways. I like that you can go either way around the middle bit, but you have to go the correct way around the satellites.

Re: This is insanity

But it's the warped masochistic whackjob that decides to get in the car.

I have wondered how such limit reading systems cope with Germany's selection of limits, limits at certain times of day or week, different limits depending on weight, or whether it's raining, end of limit being a case of having gone past the thing that the limit was applied for (like a crossing), or passing a road junction...

Germany went off the rails as wireless outage saw all trains cancelled

Re: SNAFU

Two things I have learned about DB in the six years I've been living here: first, they don't always run to time, or if to time, then not all the way to destination. And second, if it's an international long distance train, it's cheaper from the destination country than DB.

A modest proposal: Reformat everything to make documents more palatable to AI

Re: I'm sorry, aren't we talking about the All-Powerful AI ?

Remember the Rev. Swift's Modest Proposal?

Re: I'm sorry, aren't we talking about the All-Powerful AI ?

Because:

1) AI

2) ???

3) $$$

I mean, think of those poor techbros. Don't they have to eat, too?

documents were built for humans, not machines

The problem, then, is with the machines, not the documents?

But I'm sure some genius will come up with a scanned-image to DocLang converter? After all, the modern paradigm is that we seem to be in the business of having computers produce documents for other computers - rather than humans - to read...

Commodore gets into the phone biz with Sailfish-powered retro 'Callback'

Re: Peri Fractic

Aw... that's how he's named in the article.

Peri Fractic

What a wonderfully science fiction name! Have one of these ---->

(ah, but if only his parents had had the foresight to name him 'Pteri'.)

This is your BIOS speaking. Please fix me. Your PC is broken

Anyone else remember

those floppies that caused a 'magic mushroom' air freshener advert to appear on the PC internal speaker? Back in 8086 days?

Linux Lite 8.0 sheds Chrome, slims down, and finds its name fits better than ever

Re: X11?

Not this one. I'm still struggling to understand how a replacement for a legacy system which does not offer all the facilities of that legacy system can be considered a replacement.

But then, I'm also old and set in my ways.

Brit maritime agency heralds fresh global rules for crewless cargo ships

Mandatory Search and Rescue

... so our vessel, generally unable to 'see' anything smaller than a coastline or another large ship, failed to note the people in the lifeboat desperately waving and firing rescue flares until it was very close. Having reversed course to return to pick up any survivors, it was somewhat hampered by the inability of said people to climb a smooth vertical steel surface twenty metres high. Unfortunately, the survivors could not be assisted from the sea. Naturally, we issued a maritime emergency advisory call.

Your honour, we maintain that we did everything possible under the meaning of the treaty and should, rather than being fined, be congratulated for our efforts.

Serious ISS air leak forces NASA astronauts to temporarily take shelter in Dragon capsule

Re: Does Amazon do Prime delivery to the ISS?

Next day delivery may not be soon enough, though you'd hope they've already got a copy with them.

'Please do not vibe f--- up this software': Broken backups spark AI coding row in rsync project

And I cannot understand why more people appear to be unaware of this simple fact. It's nothing more than (expensive) text completion... intelligence is the last thing that should be considered one if its attributes.

Microsoft lets users exile floating Copilot button after interface rage

Re: Finally

1 - move icon to ribbon

2 - replace ribbon with a proper menu bar

3 - replace office suite with e.g. Libreoffice

4 - $$$

Space factories edge closer after experimental capsule survives hypersonic landing

High speed lithobraking.

The Varda W-6 capsule at Koonibba Test Range in South Australia

Well, yes, congratulations. But what part did the UFO in the top left of the picture play in this enterprise? I think we should be told!

Yes, you can serve a website from a $1 microcontroller

Re: How low can you go

Exactly. One does not do something like this to save money, or perhaps for any practical use. One does it to see if one can.

There is no serious practical reason for me to be writing a FAT32 driver in 65c02 assembly, yet here we are...

'Big AI' is subverting regulations just like tobacco and oil firms

Let's hear it

for stifling progress or even destroying the industry entirely.

Microsoft remembers that taskbars used to move

possible to "never combine" taskbar buttons

Isn't that standard? Although I recall I had to select it on Cinnamon (obviously I prefer to recall windows by taskbar icon position, and if it gets so full I can't read them, it's time for another desktop. I rarely fill four...)

Mozilla warns UK: Breaking VPNs will not magically fix Britain's age-check mess

Re: Impossible?

Time for the Butlerian Jihad?

SpaceX Starship completes Wet Dress Rehearsal, gets ready for launch

Re: 5,000 metric tons (more than 11 million pounds)

Oops, decimal point went into orbit! Thanks!