Posts by Neil Barnes

Brussels tells Google to hand rivals its search crown jewels as privacy row brews

Re: I'd be happy if...

No

Swarm welcome: Britain lines up 120,000 drones for Ukraine

Re: Open Standards?

Not so much teaching granny to suck eggs as delivering a chicken farm for her.

Shoe company says it's getting into AI infrastructure and yes this is the top

Betteridges' law of headlines applies...

" is the set of software products that the industry is now calling "AI" helping you...?"

Decades-old Linux UI bug fixed by dev younger than the window manager

A thousand times yes

Ms Szewczyk deserves many of these --->

for pointing out what should be the bleedin' obvious: when it's finished, stop messing around with it.

Waymo's self-driving cars face their toughest test yet: London

India is admittedly bad, but the average speed _is_ restricted to that of a tuktuk.

Mind you, in Bangladesh I have seen in one two-lane road junction, three cars, one truck numerous cycles and mopeds all side by side... And an elephant.

Microsoft sends Outlook Lite to the great inbox in the sky as memory costs skyrocket

They still manage to send an advert disguised as an email to my phone every time I have to use it, except for some reason if I'm in Uzbekhistan. I don't understand this: in the UK it gives me English adverts; in Germany it gives me German adverts... doesn't it speak Uzbek? Or maybe it just can't work out where I am?

I vibe coded a feed reading web app. It was enlightening and uncomfortable

Re: In sympathy

Goes to Lidl. Picks up ten bars of chocolate (because what's the point of buying one?).

Go through robotill.

for (x = 0; x < 10; x++) {beep}

Press done pay now button.

Machine calls an assistant because of this suspicious purchase. Who is busy on the real till...

Apple update looks like Czech mate for locked-out iPhone user

Re: 7 bit ASCII

It's even more fun where you have a keyboard locale that has shifted number characters (e.g. French) which are not recognised until the OS wakes up and does the translation. It's bitten me a few times that a BIOS password has used characters which are only available by touch-typing a US-104 keyboard, not looking at what's on the keys... (also sometimes applies to UK keyboards with the proper locations for keys!)

AWS: Agents shouldn't be secret, so we built a registry for them

Re: Pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed, and numbered?

Damnit Jake, you beat me to it. Have one of these -->

DARPA looking for battery that could power a laptop for months

Tsk, people are considering the wrong problem

Keep the existing lithium laptop batteries. Put the nuclear battery in a powerbank box. When you need it, plug it in; when you don't it's a (small) room heater. Of hand or foot warmer.

What could possibly[1] go wrong?

[1] The airlines might get a bit sniffy...

Amazon rewards loyal Kindle devotees by closing the book on old e-readers

Re: Kindles are the Windows of e-readers

Oddly, when I recently replaced a Kobo with a broken screen (I mean, the screen was broken, not that I replace it with... oh, you know) I found it extremely difficult to find a new one here in Germany - nobody offered it. In neighbouring countries, no problem, though many dealers didn't list Germany in their list of destinations. Eventually I got one in the UK the next time I visited. But I'm curious as to why...

Re: Not a problem with my paper books

Many of mine, too, but they're politely placed on the back pages, after the magic words 'The End'.

The first thing vibe coding builds is confidence it will help you succeed

It worked until it didn't

I'm a troll, trollio,

And I'll eat you for supper!

'Empathetic' Salesforce bots to help those fired by uncaring humans

Empathy? Kindness? Consideration? We've heard of 'em.

You bastards.

You absolute, utter, bastards.

Is it ever likely in the kingom of trump that businesses will wake up and realise that if they sack all their staff, they leave no-one to purchase their products?

Staff too scared of the AI axe to pick it up, Forrester finds

Re: mandated AI

And yet, as a lowly employee in the UK, I had five weeks basic annual holiday plus nine(?) days bank holiday, and sick leave on full pay for up to six months (after which, half pay).

Re: mandated AI

Well, I'd tend to agree, but when the definition of your boss's job is 'how much AI can I roll out?' then employees are not in a good position if they work better without it than with.

HP stuffs OpenAI LLM into new laptops in bid for small biz

useful, or creepy?

Creepy.

EU broadcasters say smart TVs and voice assistants are the next gatekeepers

Re: Big brother is watching and listening to your TV

Quite. We just had delivered an 'upgrade' to our Magenta basic real-time TV box (pictures delivered over internet) and it took a good half hour to turn off all the 'features'. A microphone in the remote? WTF?

Still looking for a new TV, but finding one that simply displays the image thrown at it is getting harder. Getting an answer to the question 'what does this TV do in the absence of a network connection' seems almost impossible. Yes, I can block at the firewall, but I shouldn't have to. Nor should I have to provide a network connection to be able to accept a terms and conditions agreement. Finding one without dubious 'AI' changing the settings depending what I'm watching is also hard - that's the job of the material producer, to get it right before transmission.

O brave new world, that has such wonders in it.

Elon Musk wants to build 50 times more chips than the world currently produces, using 'new physics'

Re: Peak Musk...

As long as we get Servelan...

Microsoft: Removing some Copilots will improve Windows 11

Fundamentals?

Davuluri also promised a File Explorer will become “faster and more dependable,” by offering “a quicker launch experience, reduced flicker, smoother navigation and more reliable performance for everyday file tasks.” He also promised “Copying and moving large files will be faster and more reliable” and “substantially lower latency for search, navigation and context menus.”

Maybe I'm just old fashioned, but surely the file explorer - of whatever flavour - is fundamental to using a computer as anything other than a toy? One needs to know what data one has, and where to find it (and yes, that is broken on Android at least, but has the vague excuse that beyond phone-produced images, most things viewed/produced on a mobile phone are probably ephemeral).

Why is it that the MS file explorer is slow and flickery? Why is moving large files not reliable? Why do search, navigation, or context menus have such a high latency? These are fundamentals without which the entire system might be considered broken to the point of unusability: if moving files is not reliable, how can I trust anything on the machine?

Could it be layers on layers of models and languages all calling each other before they finally get down to the file handlers and up to the display drivers? Or (whisper it) have they perhaps been letting AI 'write' their code?

Turns out your coffee addiction may be doing your brain a favor

Re: Go for caffeine if you can handle it

I reckon I'm weird then; I can't conceive of waking up - usually around six - and not being immediately awake and alert (unless ill for some reason). I love the smell of coffee but hate the taste, so don't drink it at all, and get by on a couple of cups of Lapsang Souchang (https://www.theregister.com/2013/02/15/cuppa_round_up/?page=2). Cola I can take or leave; it neither wakes me up nor keeps me awake.

Re: Specificity

I got one in the bathroom, too!

(Though it's not too handy for the 'before' part of baking, and it can be quite worrying 'after')

Sorry, Amazon, you couldn't pick a worse time to bring a phone to market: IDC analyst

Re: while also putting Amazon shopping at the center of the experience

Can't comment on that - I was referring to the crap that's available for sale, from manufacturers unheard of with too many consonants in their names. (With 'you have been selected to be eligible for FREE Amazon Prime - for the first month')

while also putting Amazon shopping at the center of the experience

While I know there are masochists out there in the big wide world, I'm not sure there are enough who want to suffer this to make it a viable proposition.

Have you seem the crap that's on Amazon these days?

Struggling to put your AI aversion into words? Here's a handy glossary

Anthony Moser

Deserves one of these --->

But I am a hater, which is a kind of integrity. It means I am willing to disagree with anyone, even if it is rude. "But I only use it to–" "Actually if you just—" "The new models–" "I was making fun–" Stop. You're embarrassing yourself. I am embarrassed for you.

Exactly my view on all the other religions, too.

Google offers ‘vibe design’ tool that you can shout at to create a UI

You can speak directly to your canvas

Speaking to your canvas is strictly reserved for starving artists in lonely garrets.

Where's my other ear? --->

It's not a binary choice. Independent boffin builds a ternary CPU on an FPGA

Re: "There's no inherent reason computers have to encode everything in binary."

Heinlein's sentient AIs used ternary logic, as I recall.

Re: Surely a TrInary digIT should be called ...

In search, they should leave no stone unturned. Or no terns unstoned...

In the name of science: Boffins build fart-tracking undies

Re: The answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind

Damnit, beat me to it by four minutes! Have one of these -->

BBC World Service digital switch backfires as online audience drops

Re: What is the point of providing a World Service broadcast.. by Unicast

They did, and I have still not forgiven them. Bloody stupid idea.

Those who 'circle back' and 'synergize' also tend to be crap at their jobs

Re: Dilbert 'changing paradigms without a clutch'

I thank you!

Re: Mental health benefits of retirement

Heh. I'm still bouncing off sixteen variants for 'a' and 'the' and wondering why any sane species would ever invent accusative, dative, and genetive cases. They don't seem to do anything except give me a headache.

Re: Mental health benefits of retirement

My doctor's practice has this down to a fine art.

They start by leaving an incomprehensible message (in German, of course) on the phone. They don't answer a call back. Their 'nobody here' message says they prefer email. They don't answer their email, either.

So I just rock up every three months for a blood test and a couple of days later for the results, and everything somehow works.

(currently doing an eight month five days a week intensive German course, but I expect the message to make no more sense at the end of it!)

There was a Dilbert cartoon - back in the day when Scott Adams was funny - which involved the sound of 'changing paradigms without a clutch'...

District denies enrollment to child based on license plate reader data

Re: Should-Be Obvious Failure

Donkeys are mammals. Aristotle is a mammal. Therefore, Aristotle is a donkey...

Do they actually still teach logic these days, even to programmers?

Medical equipment techs beg for right-to-repair lifeline

delays in receiving parts, service keys, manuals, and other necessary repair materials

Other than _uncommon_ spare parts, why are the others not included in the box when the machine is new?

Yes, yes, I'm old. I remember things you could fix once you'd bought them. I see no reason why this should no longer be the norm; the only reason for holding back on essential machinery - from cars to combine harvesters, from thermostats to hospital monitors - is blackmail, pure and simple.

Users protest as Google Antigravity price floats upward

Re: Fuck Google

Cum eos testiculis teneas, corda et mentes eorum sequentur.

Microsoft adding Xbox mode to Windows 11 – even the Professional edition

So commercial users won't buy that version

And domestic users generally get whatever version their computer comes with...

Just who are they expecting to buy this exciting new advertising opportunity product?

Linux PC vendor System76 tries to talk Colorado down over OS age checks

Re: verified at OS level

That will work well on this machine: it uses one of those newish Intel semi-cameras that offloads the image software to the processor (like the old soft modems used to do) and at the moment, it doesn't work with this linux. No piccies from the onboard camera! About which I am _not_ complaining.

Brit competition cops warn AI agents may not be 'faithful servants' to consumers

there's a risk the agent isn't exactly a "faithful servant" to the consumer.

. More of a bloody certainty...

RSS dulls the pain of the modern web

Liferea

A pun on the German for 'delivery' perhaps?

Microsoft Copilot to hijack your browser... for your own convenience

"so you don't lose context."

Well huh! All these years and I never realised I was browsing out of context.

UK still doodling digital pound while Brussels frets over payment sovereignty

Re: Digital currency

I don't carry _any_ financial instruments on my mobile. I do no phone banking or phone purchases. Ever. I don't have the banking application, the credit card application, or paypal and its friends.

Your mileage may vary, but I consider the mobile phone one of the least secure devices in my possession and an obvious target for criminality. So it's used to message, to navigate sometimes, to take photographs in the absence of better solutions.

A financial system which requires every user to have a mobile phone is broken by design, and probably equally by design insecure.

HR may have to cajole and soothe reluctant employees to get them to use AI

I definitely think I picked the right time retire.

Once upon a time, saving your bits meant punching holes in floppies

how many Windows installation disks were repurposed

As I recall it, very few. You jealously guarded your installation discs because you knew you'd need them, sooner or later...

MIT boffins aim to build injectable mini-organs that can fill in for a damaged liver

Re: Amazing!

I'll buy them a pint, too, in the hopes that they might do something for the pancreas while they're at it.

Chrome Gemini panel became privilege escalator for rogue extensions

Can't do that. Users might not decide _right_.

Microsoft's Project Silica promises eternal storage. It can't get there from here

Hence, of course, A Canticle for Leibowitz.

We can read 4000 year old pyramid inscriptions, but the media is a bit tricky to store and not particularly inforrmation-dense.

LibreOffice Online dragged out of the attic, dusted off for another go

a modernized UI with a ribbon

Well that's a deal breaker right there. As long as Libre Office continues to use menus as the great $deity intended, that's where I'll stay.

Funny, four thousand years or so ago the Mesopotamians invented writing, and now we've advanced back to pictograms (which, in spite of all their apologists, are firmly based on shared cultural norms) and indeed, bombing the descendants of those pesky Mesopotamians. That'll teach 'em.

OpenAI’s Altman says Pentagon set ‘scary precedent’ binning Anthropic

require approval by a human decisionmaker

They missed a word. "Currently". Easy enough for the Pentagon, or the Great Orange One[tm], to decide that human decisionmakers are not required, and bingo, they can let the automatic idiot handle everything.