Posts by David Nash

Honda upgrades robot brain into OS for future electric cars

I came here to say...

I am waiting for version 5, so ASIMO V.

Tired of begging, Microsoft now trying to trick users into thinking Bing is Google

Re: Bing?

I have noticed that Swiftkey presents suggestions that, when clicked, open up in Bing. The trick is to ignore those and submit the search the normal way.

Apple called on to ditch AI headline summaries after BBC debacle

If that is the case it just shows that AI is not up to the job. Humans would not make the same mistake even for a poorly-written article, assuming it didn't assert outright untruths.

Asda hits the brakes on tech tweaks to avoid festive fiasco

How is this news?

A change freeze at busy periods is standard practice, isnt' it?

Brit telcos to clash in high-speed mmWave spectrum showdown next year

Re: 3G Auction

Exactly, why not just say "this is the price of the licence to use this portion of the spectrum" You each get a bit, if you pay up. Avoids the operators "nearly bankrupting" themselves and passing such high costs on to users. Wouldn't that also increase inflation, something Government is not keen on doing (or are mobile phone bills not included in the basket of goods used to calculate inflation figures?)

Classic Outlook explodes when opening more than 60 emails

Re: Users...

"The inbox should be for unread messages"

That's your way of using it and if it works for you, fine.

Others have their own workflow, thank you. If Inbox was only for unread messages it would only contain unread messages.

Some people should learn not to get so concerned about how OTHER people use THEIR computers!

Not sure I've had 60 open but "keep it open for future reference" works better for me than "try to find it later".

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

Re: Tle Law is A Ass

"Then you inform them that if AFTER hiring, that if a suitably qualified union member with more seniority applies - they will be replaced."

How can this be legal? Once the position has been filled, it's been filled.

And if it's because they have to be a member of the union wouldn't they be required to join when they are taken on?

Huawei's farewell to Android isn't a marketing move, it's chess

Re: Can't understand the apps

As you mentioned Euros I guess you are not in the UK.

In the UK in my experience (of my last 2 electricity suppliers) they will happily set up to take the bill amount rather than a fixed monthly amount designed to make it predictable (but which inevitably results in the account building up credit).

Will they not do this where you are? The disadvantage is you don't know the exact monthly amount. The advantage is you only pay the correct amount each month.

UK sleep experts say it's time to kill daylight saving for good

Also the winter time is the proper geographical time. So strictly speaking we don't get extra sunlight in the morning in the winter. We get the standard amount.

Re: Hmm

It depends whether the friends are to the east or the west. Those in the US are closer in time to us during the next couple of weeks.

Re: Just a minute! .....

Annoyed, probably. Because that's what we do!

Re: Time is an illusion

As soon as I saw the title of this comment I scrolled down to make sure someone had posted "Lunchtime doubly so"!

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

Re: Important word

I imagine it would depend on whether said payment is for continued provision of that service, ie. a subscription or license or similar.

If so then it's more reasonable to end provision of said service.

If it's only tangentially related then no, you can't just turn it off.

If you didn't pay your car repair man he is allowed to sue you but not to put sugar in your petrol tank!

Microsoft admits Outlook crashes, says impact 'mitigated'

Re: All your eggs in one basket

True but in this case isn't it the *app* rather than the communications provider that's the problem?

Linus Torvalds declares war on the passive voice

That's terrible, you were clearly right, the "but" doesn't make sense otherwise.

Tesla Cybertruck recalled again. This time, a software fix for backup camera glitch

Software Update

Since it has inexplicably become usual to refer to an OTA software fix for a car as a "recall" (why not also say "Windows recall Tuesdays"?) you are mistaken about the ability to do a software update in this case.

As the article says, " As this is a software issue, the update has already been pushed out and no further action is required from owners."

Bring the joy of train delays home with your very own departure board

Re: a very realistic product

Acclimate ? I think you mean Acclimatise.

UK's 'electricity superhighway' gets green light just in time for AI to gobble it all up

Thanks for the insights, not least reminding us (well me, at least) of the correct terminology -- if asked, I would have said overhead lines *are* cables. But you are clearly distinguishing between overhead lines and cables, and the difference is significant in this case!

Apple is coming to take 30% cut of new Patreon subs on iOS

Whenever I have tried to use an Iphone I get annoyed that they don't seem to like the concept of a "Back" button in the same way that I am used to from Android.

I can't remember exactly but something like: I am in Contacts...click an email...it goes into email, I send the mail, click Back -- should be able to get back to whence I came, right, which was contacts? Nope, I am stuck in email and the only way out is to go to the home screen and find contacts again.

Or I am in any app, finished, want to back out and the app should disappear...nope, I have to jump to home screen.

So the famed "usability" is just what you're used to. Sadly I come across apps even in Android where the native "back" button is ignored and you can only navigate via buttons provided by the app author. I assume these are ported from ios apps.

CrowdStrike meets Murphy's Law: Anything that can go wrong will

Re: Microsoft business as usual

I am interested to know what MS could have done to prevent this. I am far from a MS fan but they are taking a lot of flak for something they didn't do.

Running a buggy software at kernel level on any OS doesn't mean that OS is at fault.

I can fix this PC, boss, but I’ll need to play games for hours to do it

Re: The opposite

I heard it was MineSweeper. Same idea. Great little game!

Microsoft, Google do a victory lap around passkeys

The other point is that the passkey is stored on your device and the biometric or PIN is only used to unlock it to sign the message sent to the server. ie. if you use a PIN rather than biometrics, the PIN is of no use to the bad guy unless he/she has your device.

That's if I have understood it correctly. I did wonder what I was missing with the whole "login with a PIN" thing, which just seemed like a less-secure password. But it makes sense in this context.

Elon Musk's latest brainfart is to turn Tesla cars into AWS on wheels

Re: Perverse logic

Buying a vehicle = jumping into a cult?

Adobe sells fake AI-generated Israel-Hamas war images – then the news ran them as real

" Hopefully that's not a sign of things to come."

Of course it's a sign of things to come. In fact things already here, obviously.

Robot mistakes man for box of peppers, kills him

Re: Failure in the humour dept.

I would say that most of the humour in these comments remains respectful in this case.

I think trying to make your point by implicitly attacking the parents of other commenters is rather low though.

New information physics theory is evidence 'we're living in a simulation,' says author

simulating consciousness is not the same as being conscious

...until we prove that we are simulated, then we change our minds and actually it is!

SoftBank boss Masayoshi Son predicts artificial general intelligence is a decade away

Re: Those who refuse to learn from webcomics...

If anyone can ask the AI and it will make them rich, then almost everyone will be rich, therefore nobody will.

Scripted shortcut caused double-click disaster of sysadmin's own making

cd /tmp && rm -rf *

Any time I have to enter rm -f * (let alone -rf) I do the cd first, then make sure I am where I think I am and that ls returns what I expect, before entering the rm.

I wouldn't have the balls to enter it all in one go as above.

Police ignored the laws of datacenter climate control

Re: Convenience

It's fine using it as a drying room. It's less fine using it as a server room!

You've just spent $400 on a baby monitor. Now you need a subscription

Re: This is why I'm missing out on a lot of stuff

I am sure a lot of customers* of this kind of thing don't have a clue about how it works, what it does or doesn't connect to, they are just buying a baby monitor.

*Not me, my kids haven't been babies for many years. And I avoid such connected/subscription/spying devices anyway.

Bermuda, your data, Google's gonna take your US data

Why they allow transatlantic communications?

No, no, no! Disco joke hit bum note in the rehab center

I saw the sheet music for that in a shop in London.

Yes, it was exactly what you expect.

Re: "If he downloaded Hallelujah, the problems would have been much worse"

So what do ya rhyme with Hallelujah?

Lawsuit claims Google Maps led dad of two over collapsed bridge to his death

Exactly, you don't expect a road to just disappear.

UK judge rates ChatGPT as 'jolly useful' after using it to help write a decision

But he said he took full responsibility for the paragraph, so essentially he did say it. I would liken it to using a thesaurus to get the right word -- a bit more than that of course but as long as he's reviewing and agreeing with what it said, he is the one that's saying it legally.

Probe reveals previously secret Israeli spyware that infects targets via ads

Re: How to pay

Currently it has only trailers for its own product. IIRC the notion of ads are for a lower-tier. I might be wrong though.

US Department of Justice claims Google bought its way to web search dominance

Re: The rest use Google

Downvoted not because I am a Google bot, or even a fan, but I disagree with the assertion that people don't use Google, they use StartPage (or similar).

I have never seem anyone using StartPage, almost every time I see someone searching it's via Google.

Ex-Twitter employees pull Musk back to money table over missing severance

Re: Who are you catering to who has been living under a rock?

Because they want to call it Twitter, which is a much better and well-known name than X, especially as it's pretty much impossible to be taken out of context (whereas "X" could be various things in different contexts), but they feel obliged to mention its real name.

Normally I see it written as "X, formerly Twitter"

NASA wants to believe ... that you can help it crack UFO mysteries

Re: It's a good thing....

The problem with those who seem convinced that they are aliens is that only the poor-quality images remain unexplained. Could it be that they are unexplained due to their poor quality, rather than because they are unexplainable by Earthly standards? Seems likely to me.

Similar to photos of Bigfoot, Nessie, etc.

Since almost everyone does have a decent-quality camera on them most of the time now, it's strange how there are NO clear and unambiguous images of such things.

GitHub alienates developers by force feeding them AI recommendations

Exactly, that comment in the article got it right:

"We are here to get work done, not engage with whatever your algorithm thinks we like"

IBM Software tells workers: Get back to the office three days a week

Most people still prefer talking face to face when that's possible

...Citation needed...

Re: Where are the facts & figures to support a return to the office ?

And not just Covid. Other viruses are available and also make you feel like crap.

Google rebrands 'android' as 'Android' to remove any doubt about its affiliations

Re: Logos

Agree with the capitalization thing but why bother with the 3D robot? What's the point?

Mozilla calls cars from 25 automakers 'data privacy nightmares on wheels'

Re: Audi was OK - maybe they still are

Agree on Mercedes. Trying to cancel the membership elicits a response along the lines of "write to us at this address".

Re: US conservative "fear" meme

" smart meters are still meters, not shutoff devices"

Exactly - in the UK this is not true. They are shutoff devices, or "move to pre-payment tariff" devices (I seem to recall hearing about this).

What happens when What3Words gets lost in translation?

Some northerners turn ERs into A so Panda and pander would both be panda.

And conversely southerners like me turn A into ER so "panda" and "pander" are exact homophones.

That's a little unfair.

Also accents, especially non-English ones, change the sound of vowels all the time. We can usually understand them from context but as pointed out, there is no context in a W3W.

Cruise self-driving taxi gets wheels stuck in wet cement

Wet concrete

Was it not coned-off? A human wouldn't necessarily know either if it was not coned. And if it was coned the issue is more serious - "AI car ignored cones"