Posts by Lord Elpuss

Apple gets in on the AI PC hype, claims fanless M3 MacBook Air is fab for LLMs

Regardless of whether you're correct, that doesn't negate my point.

"An SoC simply means auxiliary components are integrated with the CPU and GPU on the same die."

I admire how you just casually throw 'simply' into that sentence.

"What makes Apple Silicon perform so well is its fast I/O (the basic M3 already has a 100GB/s memory bus, plus a clever cache and paging strategy) and UMA (which avoids having to move GPU data between RAM and GPU memory)."

You just described Apple's SoC. Which is my point. Well done.

Re: All Apple’s Machines Are Glorified Laptops Now

"Even their desktop machines are basically laptops in bulkier cases."

You could say literally the same about any manufacturer. Laptops and PCs are generally all variants on the same core chip or SoC, with different ancillary devices like battery, screen, power supply and active cooling added on dependent on the use case.

The only real 'different' devices these days are servers. And even - many to use the same core silicon with the R&D budget expended on GPUs.

"But, if you buy Apple's claims, that's the equivalent of 16GB on a Windows PC because efficiency."

It's 'because' SoC. Efficiency is the byproduct.

Spam crusade lands charity in hot water with data watchdog

Next time you think charity=good, remember: BLM is (was) also a charity.

Just because something CLAIMS to be supporting a good cause, doesn't mean it isn't run by scumbags intent on lining their own pockets.

EU takes a bite out of Apple with $2B in-app purchase fine

Re: Sweep

"Zero is already taken."

It doesn't generally work like that. Fines are payable - at least in escrow - within a short period of judgement being made. They can appeal and might have the money returned to them if successful (and interest is generally applied either way) but they don't get to simply delay in perpetuity.

Apple is fully entitled to determine the rules inside their App Store that they created, own, manage and curate.

But THIS - "...because the anti-steering rule also prevented developers from telling users about cheaper prices available elsewhere." - is bang out of order. And I completely support the EU in striking it down.

Work for you? Again? After you lied about the job and stole my stuff? No thanks

Re: BOFHess?

Bastard Operator from Hell-ess?

Still BOFH, shirley.

Re: Being polite is great

Exactly this. So you let the asshole boss get away with it by not saying he's the reason, and at the same time you throw the CEO, a decent guy, under the bus by allowing a toxic situation to exist in his company and deliberately keep that from him?

Re: Being polite is great

Still doesn't stop you saying "yes I'd be happy to help, here's my rate. Payable a month in advance.".

Then you're being cooperative and a team player, whilst ensuring that the probability they will actually retain your services is essentially zero.

Ooh that's evil.

Re: HP

"About two or three months later he reached out to me to ask if I was looking for work because he had an opening in the team."

Sure. For 7 figures, I'll prop you up. And for an extra 500k, I'll even take the fall for you.

Let's see how deep those desperate pockets go.

Re: Being polite is great

"I'd have done it a little differently. I'd have given them a figure for a day rate and swung the lead with it."

Exactly. Be polite, but always know your value. Desperate people tend to have deep pockets.

Re: "And to this day, the more he dislikes someone, the more polite he is towards them."

"My motto is "May The Bridges I Burn Light My Way"."

I don't burn all my bridges; some I leave standing for nostalgic reasons. But I have never regretted a single bridge I did burn, even if to an objective observer it would have appeared to be a bad choice. Sometimes it's better for your mental health to just strike that match.

They call me 'Growler'. I don't like you. Let's discuss your pay cut

Re: Depends on your definition of growler I guess.

Agree. Might as well call yourself the Mingemeister.

Hands up if you want to volunteer for layoffs, IBM tells staff

Maybe not monthly, but they're not hiding that this is a fact of life now.

Did NOT need that picture in my head just before lunch.

Palantir boss says outfit's software the only reason the 'goose step' has not returned to Europe

It's not relevant to Palantir's crowing about saving the world from goosestepping, no.

"along the way supporting US Immigration and Customs Enforcement's (ICE), which was accused of separating children from their families."

And you just.... snuck that in there. Despite it being entirely irrelevant and unconnected to the story. Like saying "...the author of this article, who once beat up a ginger kid in a playground. Anyway moving on..."

Google to reboot Gemini image gen in a few weeks after that anti-White race row

Re: Capitals

"I don't believe that black or white in this context are proper nouns."

They're also not a race. Capitalising them is a symptom of the creeping wokeism infecting 'journalism' in pretty much every sector nowadays - either because the publication concerned is genuinely rabidly left wing, or (more likely) they're afraid of the backlash from certain shouty and ethnically inconvenient quarters if they fail to toe the line and bow down before the wokerati.

One of my hobbies is capitalising White in comments on left-wing sites, then watching the shouty activists tie themselves into knots trying to insist that capitalising Black is correct and proper but capitalising White is racist; whilst literally ANY argument you could bring to either justify capitalisation or deny it applies in equal measure to both.

Re: sigh

Agree.

Re: re. would that not mean that White people are now in the Global Minority

I checked the dictionary definition of Oppression and interestingly, there's no mention of a timescale before it becomes applicable. Maybe you should contact Oxford or Collins with your 'views'.

Or better yet keep them to yourself, and try not to be such a sneaky little racist next time.

Re: of anti-woke snowflakism

"I can't remember a huge uproar when a white man (named Tarzan) was crowned "king of the jungle""

The inspiration for the Tarzan story was an 11 year old boy, shipwrecked in 1868 off the African coast and allegedly adopted by monkeys. The boy was an English nobleman, the Fourteenth Earl of Streatham, and I think it's safe to assume he was as White as it's possible to be.

Don't look now, but your prejudices are showing.

PS the rest of your post is just vile racist and sexist reductio ad Nazium garbage, so I'm not even going to dignify it with a response.

Re: Not just "historical color calibrations"

And just like clockwork, there they are.

These morons are nothing if not predictable :)))

Re: Not just "historical color calibrations"

There is, unfortunately, at least one rabidly leftist lunatic here.

Re: Capitals

Good on you.

Personally I’d prefer capitalising neither, but in absence thereof I’ll take capitalising both.

Re: often feature White men

The latter.

"And in most countries that promote minorities, White people are the majority."

You wouldn't know it from Gemini. Which is quite literally the point.

Re: Not just "historical color calibrations"

"https://nakedemperor.substack.com/p/googles-woke-bureaucratic-blob"

That is utterly insane.

"Yes, people of European ancestry are between 5-10% of the world population and shrinking."

So where are all our subsidies, queue-jumping permits, mandatory quotas for promotions and other free stuff?

Don't you come here and disrupt our DEI kumbayah with your logic and facts. Begone with you.

Google suspends Gemini after epically (and comically) overemphasising minorities.

Google has adjusted the ethnic bias to a more socially acceptable level - representing minorities and PoC "in fair and equal proportions to White people, in accordance with our DEI practices".

And the Western world sleepwalks into the outright fallacy that minorities represent 50% of the population, while congratulating Google for their commitment to DEI.

Related note: my client has just announced that People of Color is no longer the socially acceptable term; instead encouraging the use of the "more inclusive" term People of the Global Majority, or PoGM. Putting aside my gag reflex for a second, would that not mean that White people are now in the Global Minority, and thus should be afforded any and all privileges associated with promotion of minorities?

Thought not. Clearly this is another "Have Cake, Eat It, Take yours and Eat That Too" scenario.

Judge slaps down law firm using ChatGPT to justify six-figure trial fee

My experience with ChatGPT (and some others) is that it's very 'early Wikipedia'-like. You can get some good answers IF you phrase your prompts correctly, and IF you apply thought and care to interpreting the output. Remember that early Wikipedia wasn't like it is now, it was the Wild Wild West - people creating pages willy nilly, rogue editors... you name it. It really wasn't reliable; and they put a lot of work into making it reliable. Now, it's quite good.

To me, the biggest problem with LLMs and generative AI is that it SOUNDS authoritative, even when it's spouting absolute shite. Which means people get into an authority bias mode, and switch off their logical reasoning centers.

In the same way they do when somebody puts on a white coat and a clipboard and tells you that RadioActivin-A will cure all your ills, despite having zero medical training or accountability.

Or the Finance intern puts together an Excel spreadsheet with an amazing looking frontend that gets senior management all gooey, but makes a rookie error in the backend that makes the conclusions useless.

Nope. I did get a mental picture of Dr Cuddy from House though. Mmm.

"These anecdotes, where someone - anyone - has used ChatGPT and "it didn't solve the problem, but I came way with a new idea" make me wonder if they could get the same result by using "Rubber Duck Debugging" and a random choice of new approach to the problem by, say, drawing a card from Brian Eno's Oblique Strategies deck[1]. Cheaper, far fewer resources needed."

They quite possibly could have achieved the same result in a different way. This in no way negates the point though; ChatGPT is one of many tools that can provide useful information IF prompted correctly AND if the responses are fact-checked and verified, and/or used as a 'feeder idea' to generate other lines of thought.

Related note: remember the harrumphing from the academic classes when Wikipedia was launched? News sites were replete with examples where 'experts' had reputedly quoted verbatim from the "encyclopedia anyone can edit", and ended up embarrassing themselves by quoting or promoting obviously erroneous information. Point being, Wikipedia is also a tool, useful in it's way but fallible and requiring thought and care when interpreting the 'conclusions' it brings; AI, and ChatGPT, is in this respect the new Wikipedia.

"It makes up the citations too, and be honest, you don't bother checking them."

So check them. It's not ChatGPT's fault you're a lazy fucker who can't be bothered to fact-check the output - in that respect it's no different to asking your know-it-all mate down the pub if he knows how xyz works, he gives you a bullshit answer and you roll that into your university thesis. And then flunk your finals because the professor actually does know what he's talking about.

A bad workman always blames his tools; it's your fault for not fact-checking, and you deserve everything you get.

Americans wake to widespread AT&T cellular outages

In (at least) the Netherlands, you absolutely can.

https://www.rijksoverheid.nl/onderwerpen/alarmnummer-112/vraag-en-antwoord/wat-gebeurt-er-als-ik-alarmnummer-112-bel#:~:text=112%20bellen%20zonder%20beltegoed%20en,krijgen%20voorrang%20boven%20andere%20gesprekken.

Call 112 without calling credit and without a SIM card

You can always reach the emergency number 112. Even if you call with your mobile without calling credit and without a (valid) SIM card. All 112 calls are given priority over other calls. Did the connection suddenly drop? The central control room employee will then call you back if your details are sent with the call. Your details will not be sent if there is no SIM card in your mobile phone.

Interesting. In Europe you can call 112 without a SIM, without it being unlocked, while roaming in a different country, and without access to your home network. Didn’t realise the UK was different.

"And if your phone uses a soft sim, you're just screwed."

Not really. You can just disconnect it/not enter the PIN code when asked. Then it's there, but not connected to your account.

Me too :)

Cellphones aren't tied to their primary network for calling 911; this is built into the cellular standard. In fact, you can call 911 without a SIM, as long as your cellphone can see a network. So if people are unable to call 911 but there is still an active network (of any description) in their area, it'll be one of two things:

1. the problem is indeed broader than 'just' AT&T, and other networks are experiencing problems too.

2. OR the cellphone thinks it's still connected to AT&T and therefore won't try other networks automatically.

If 2., then removing the SIM should allow you to call 911, as the cellphone will then not remain tethered to AT&T, but will default to whichever (working) network it can pick up.

Crowning glory of GOV.UK websites updated, sparking frontend upgrades

Surprised you didn't mention baby incubators.

Re: FUCK the king twat

Crikey. Which Royal peed in your cornflakes?

Euro shoppers popping more and more premium phones in the basket

Re: Unscientific anecdotal sample

The battery specs aren't different, but the radio frequencies are. And that could definitely account for different power consumption figures.

Re: Unscientific anecdotal sample

"However, a mate of mine who's been drinking at the koolaid fountain for a while says that older phones generally struggle on newer releases of the OS after a few years"

Never noticed this, and we've always had older iPhones in the family. My 11 Pro is as fast as it was new, in fact if the camera was a bit more up to date I wouldn't be thinking of replacing it. The only one that's truly slow these days by today's standards is the 5S, but that's been out of support for years now and it has a dying battery which no longer supports peak performance.

"many apps insist on the latest version of the OS"

Some secure apps such as banking do indeed ask for the newest (or newest -1) version of the OS, but most will let you go back several generations. And given that it's typically 7 years or thereabouts before the newest OS stops being supported, this is not generally a problem.

"...and use changes to ask for new licences"

Not a thing, and never has been as far as I know. Sounds like a bit of FUDraking to me.

Re: Many of us by used iPhones

Yeah I got that, but begs the question why when a phone with an internet connection can offer so much more. Unless you enjoy going Luddite-mode.

Re: “it's very difficult to measure the replacement cycle at any given point.”

"Do all fruity phones have to be signed into an iCloud account these days?"

No they don't. But the vast majority will be.

Re: Many of us by used iPhones

Begs the question - why have a SIMless SE2 in the car and not just connect your SE3 when you need to? A SIMless phone is only getting 10% of the value of CarPlay unless you tether it to a hotspot, in which case why not just use the hotspotting phone as your main phone?

Cops turn LockBit ransomware gang's countdown timers against them

Re: Where?

I'm guessing it's a .onion site.