Posts by KroSha

ChatGPT's odds of getting code questions correct are worse than a coin flip

Re: Oppositional Networks train for plausibility, not accuracy.

"Basically, we have created machines that can bullshit better than a human."

Better add Politician to the list of jobs under threat from AI then.

I've used ChatGPT a few times recently, as I've started doing some Powershell, which isn't my forte. It took about 10 iterations to get a script that worked; testing and feeding the errors back in, tweaking the requirements and generally fiddling about. That was about half a morning, to get a script that would have taken me days to research and write on my own.

I've also fed snippets from SO into it and had the bot comment it fully, so I can understand what's going on.

Great tool; use with caution.

Judge lets art trio take another crack at suing AI devs over copyright

The problem that I find is that the drawings themselves haven't been infringed on. As the complaint said, they copied the style, and artists have been doing that since time immemorial.

"I'm coming fer ya, Jimmy Who!"

Whose line is it anyway, GitHub? Innovation, not litigation, should answer

Ah, the UK Supreme Court. Another of Blair's little gifts that keeps on giving....

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey rebrands himself a 'single point of failure' and quits

Re: mmm cake; where's my cake?

"You are sort of re-hashing the argument about whether or not Twitter is a platform or a publisher."

Logically, it would clearly be one or the other. In reality, it's an ideological cess-pool.

Stuck inside with nothing to do? Apple fires out security fixes for iOS, macOS, wrist-puters... and something weird called iTunes for Windows

Re: iTunes is the new Flash?

Stop using iBooks. Get Calibre and Marvin.

Theranos vampire lives on: Owner of failed blood-testing biz's patents sues maker of actual COVID-19-testing kit

Re: Simple solution

Not really:

Judge: "And which of your products use this patent?"

ARM: "Well, y'honour, we designed this processor, which is in licensed production by AMD, this processor, which is being made by..."

See, common sense simples.

Browser minnow Brave nips at Google with GDPR complaint

Re: Google: Do No Evil

Vague, meaningless and incomprehensible to the average man, let alone the average user.

Microsoft Teams gets off to a wobbly start as the world and its cat starts working from home

Teams fell over for us this morning, then again at lunch when the USA East coast came online, then again just now when the West Coast woke up. Oh well.

Hello, support? What do I click if I want some cash?

Re: Wrong tool for the job.

7 was, and is. It really is.

Don't be fooled, experts warn, America's anti-child-abuse EARN IT Act could burn encryption to the ground

"Since there are no 'best practices' in existence, and the techniques for doing this while preserving privacy are completely unknown impossible, the bill creates a government-appointed committee that will tell technology providers what technology they have to use break."

FTFY

Sophos was gearing up for a private life – then someone remembered the bike scheme

Re: I'm still wondering

Kaspersky?

RuneScape bloke was wrongly sacked after reading veep's salary details on office printer

Re: When it gets as far as a tribunal ruling

Because it's not in the interests of the important people that Gov & EU listens to; the corporates. The EU is morphing into a globalist empire. There's no room for the workers to have more rights.

Bose customers beg for firmware ceasefire after headphones fall victim to another crap update

Re: Got the receipt?

Technically, your beef is with the retailer. The sales contract is with them, not BOSE. Of course, if they get enough returns then they'll start to harass BOSE to get their money back for faulty stock.

UK tech's gender pay gap: HP Inc closest to parity with 1.8% sliver – Civica, Huawei, Siemens straddle 40% chasm

Please stop perpetuating the claptrap of a gender pay gap. It has been many years since it was legal for men and women to be paid different amounts for the same work. It isn't that women are paid less, it's that they earn less, based on their choices, skills and experiences.

Any woman, in any industry, has the same opportunity to make it to the top as any man, if she puts the effort in. She probably has more chance, because of the PC crowd pushing for c-suite jobs to be "representative". Funny how they don't push for 50% of refuse collectors to be female, or sewage workers, or even warehouse pallet shifters.

Farewell then, Slack: The grown-ups have arrived

Slack is useful, but it's a bugger to search for one specific piece of info. I hate that some software houses use it as their user support.

Admin needed server fast, skipped factory config … then bricked it

Re: C'mon, Dr. S, this kind of trolling is beneath you.

Macs are tingley. If you use the "plug only" adaptor for an Apple product, there's no earth connection (even in the UK). If you have the extension lead, there is. I've had several people at work complain that their Mac feels fuzzy. I get it on my MBA if I don't use the extension cable, which I always do now.

My PC is on fire! Can you back it up really, really fast?

SWMBO did the same with a CRT iMac G3. It still works today!

X marks the Notch, where smartmobe supercycles go to die

"Perfectly happy with my pixel2 at £450, half the price of an iPhone and beats them in every area..."

Cost more than my SE, and beats your Pixel2 in every area...

Torvalds schedules Linux kernel 5.0, then maybe delays 'meaningless' release

Re: As with the browsers

*cough*Chrome!*cough*

eBay has locked me into undeletable Catch-22 trap, complains biz bod

Paypal problems

A Polish games company I deal with has stated very clearly that they will not be offering PayPal as an option on their latest KickStarter. This is entirely due to the difficulties that they had getting PayPal to release funds after their previous £1.7m campaign.

Uber: Ah yeah, we pay women drivers less than men. We can explain!

It's not a "gender pay gap", or a "gender wage gap"; it's a "earnings gap". The men take home more because they work longer hours and have more experience and thus earn more. Women have an equal opportunity to earn exactly the same or more than their counterparts. All they have to do is put in the effort to achieve this.

Should ISPs pay to block pirate websites? Supreme Court to decide

Re: Follow the money

The question always boils down to who bears the cost when the party at fault can't be caught?

The answer is always: "The person who has something to lose."

In every other field, it's the original IP holder who has to take the counterfeiter to court, at their own cost. Usually, the judgement awards them costs, so they don't actually lose anything. But in these cases, they aren't going to get a court order, because they have no idea who the infringer actually is. So they end up out of pocket and the infringer has to find a new route to market.

If they actually want knock-offs off the market, they are going to have to play to get them taken down, at their own cost, or suffer the brand damage that comes with it.

Going after the ISP is like suing the Royal Mail for delivering the goods at the end of the purchase.

As Apple fixes macOS root password hole, here's what went wrong

I think you'll find that it'll be rolled in to the next beta release.

Re: Everyone hyping - slow down a little

I have, partially. I tried on my work iMac (10.13.1) and managed to get the System Prefs to unlock. I couldn't login as root at the login window or via the terminal.

$10,000-a-dram whisky 'wasn't even a malt'

@Spartacus

With gin, you'll always get a much wider range of flavours than with Scotch, as the flavours are what it's all about. Gin is easy to differentiate, which is why there are a plethora to choose from at the moment, all with their own distinctive taste.

Gin Mare is one of my favourites as well; try Bulldog or Martin's Icelandic gin. They're nice. But you're right, too nice to be drowned in tonic.

Apple hauls in $52.6bn in Q4, iPhone, iPad and Mac sales all up

"the Mac had its best-ever full year for revenue"

Possibly because the prices are at their highest ever and there has been a dearth of new models in recent years?

Even if the Touchbar is generally useless, lots are buying it, just because they need a new 15" MBP to replace the 2010 model that's died.

Don't fear the reap... er, automation: Puppet hopes to make IT boring, says that's a good thing

Re: "There's a lot of drama around deployments because they aren't fully tested."

PHB : "It needs to be deployed tonight. The COO wants it done."

Me : "Are you sure? It will probably work, but we haven't tested it yet and I'm on holiday for a week from tomorrow."

A week later....

PHB : "Where were you?!? I tried to get you for days! It didn't work!"

Me : "Show me."

<Demo>

<clickety>

Me : "Fixed."

Something similar happens every quarter or so.

IT reseller Misco UK shutters warehouse and distie centre

Re: "Release"

Is "terminating" any better?

Science fiction great Brian Aldiss, 92, dies at his Oxford home

A glass to you, sir.

For your imagination, effort and the inspiration you provided to young minds reaching for the stars.

Nationwide’s online banking goes down again

Agreed. I've tried a fair few of the online banking systems, between the wife's accounts and mine, and Nationwide is by far the nicest and most reliable.

I just pity the poor buggers that have had to work all Sunday to fix this, with glares from the PHBs.

Intel pitches a Thunderbolt 3-for-all

Re: Usuually when you hear about hardware standards you expect a bunch of mfgs signed up

Additionally, there's no way to tell if a port is USB-C or Thunderbolt 3. They both look the same. The current crop of MacBooks has a single USB-C port. It isn't a Thunderbolt port. I mistakenly tried to connect one to a MBA Thunderbolt port yesterday for Target Disk Mode.

Why is the Sinclair ZX Spectrum Vega+ project so delayed?

Re: Meh

Agreed. I would have made a fantastic xmas present for the wife, but her birthday is in July, so there's hope yet. Or there's xmas this year.

RCL's stance that they will refund anyone who wants out is commendable, but naive. They should have just said "crowdfunding!" and kept working. No point wasting energy on whiners. Better late than never.

Smart guns are a neat idea on paper. They'll never survive reality

Re: 'Smart guns' - an inherent failure

" It is assumed I'm not an idiot ..."

I think I see the issue.

BT's hiring! 500 more customer service folk to answer your angry calls

Re: Customer Hatred

I left Orange for precisely this reason. They couldn't seem to understand that I didn't want to receive spam SMS about Orange services. After about 15 requests over 3 months, I ported to Three and have been happy ever since.

Say bye-bye to net neutrality next year, gloats FCC commish Pai

Re: A small side question.

That's a co-operative, which is probably dangerously close to communism/socialism for most USA-ians.

Plastic fiver: 28 years' work, saves acres of cotton... may have killed less than ONE cow*

Re: lifetimes and other matters

The guy who sold me my bacon roll this morning complained that they stick together. Maybe a bit more grease needed?

Accessories to crime: Facial recog defeated by wacky paper glasses

Re: Mr Potatohead

It's either that or Mega-City One Blob fashion: http://dreddreviews.blogspot.co.uk/2011/08/complete-case-files-06.html

Dropbox apologies for clunky administrator account access on Macs

"unfortunately some of the permissions aren’t as granular as we would like"

B******s! Under no circumstances does an app need permissions to the whole system in order to sync user files. It's running in user space and only needs user permissions, nothing higher, and certainly not root. As for granularity, I call B******s on that too. UNIX's ACLs and granularity go hand in hand.

I was dubious about the new Dropbox app ever since I heard it installed a kext. Definitely deleting it from my Mac now.

French, German ministers demand new encryption backdoor law

"... escrowed with every gov agency world wide who demands them, just how long until the well funded criminal gangs..."

You seem to be implying that these are two different groups of people.

Hello, Barclays? Why hello, John Smith. We meet again

Wrong biometeric

Nationwide have added TouchID to their iOS app. Touch isn't great and at least this is an alternative to the usual PIN. But voice just seems the most variable biometric to choose. What if you've a cold. Or it's windy, Or you're on a train. Or haven't good signal. Or are in a car...

Server vendor has special help desk for lying, incompetent sysadmins

Morning off for outsourcing

I used to work for a major UK "Service Provider". One day I get a call to a data centre down in Wapping. The contract requires response within 4 hours, so I get down there sharpish.

Seems that a new guy had started on the Security team. He beeped into the data room, with his pass and checked whatever he was supposed to be checking. On the way out, he didn't realise that he also need to beep out, and pressed the big button next to the door; the Big Red Button.

Taking the whole room down fried multiple servers and there were a good half dozen guys in the room, all trying to get clients' kit back up.

Avoiding Liverpool was the aim: All aboard the world's ONLY moving aqueduct

Boaters

"Strangely narrow boat users apparently sometimes complain at the delay.."

Some boaters will moan about *anything*. (See, that's a meta-moan)

Android tablets too bitter a pill for Dell

The company will also quit updating Android

Just to, y'know, get a final kick in to those that *did* spend some cash on them. When does the support end?

The Microsoft-LinkedIn hookup will be the END of DAYS, I tell you

They don't read them. I regularly get offers for things I am not qualified for and are not in my skill-set. I think that a lot of them think IT is like reading; you can read a book, so you can read a thesis, no?

Now Google backs everyone's favorite trade pact: The TPP

Re: Sigh ...

US article, written by US Reg hack, ergo US spelling.

Belgian brewery lays 3.2km beer pipeline

Re: Go visit

I went there for my stag. Brilliant place for a visit, and the Zot is very nice.

Dropbox gets all up in your kernel with Project Infinite. Cue uproar

Re: I don't get the fuss

In which case, sir, you are an idiot. There is a massive difference between hardware kexts and a data copy agent. Even if they "hacked the client", that's a user process, not a kernel one.

Currently, Dropbox has access to one folder on my system. The only non-trival item in that folder is an encrypted .dmg, to which Dropbox does not and will not have the key.

Anyone who gives an online syncing service "access to everything of worth on my computer" deserves everything they get.

China leaves Apple books, movies on the cutting room floor

Re: Encryption-related?

Wow, I didn't realise that you HAD to use iTunes! I wonder how I manage to load everything into Marvin and VLC on my iPad?

When is making $20bn in three months not enough? When your name is Google

Re: The original reality distortion field.

"why aren't they running a google sized enterprise?"

Because that would involve pulling their finger out their asses and doing more than just waving it in the air?

Because they'd actually be responsible for getting things wrong? Because they wouldn't just be playing with other people's money, but would be personally committed to fulfilling their own predictions?