Posts by Dr. G. Freeman

Regulator says stranger entered hospital, treated a patient, took a document ... then vanished

NHS Fife are more annoyed that someone off the street walked in and did a better job of looking after patients (as in, "want you water jug refilled Mrs. McGinty ?" and "Cold Tom ?, I'll get you another blanket) than the actual staff, showing them up.

The data breach was that the person was handed a bit of paper with who's in each bed and what was wrong with them, didn't know what to do with that, so just put it in their pocket.

[This information is from the Dundee Courier (local paper), apart from the names of patients, so it wasn't me.]

AI threatens to automate away the clergy

Re: There's more to it

Know one Priest, who was busy with all that, and other stuff (chaplin for school, organising church groups) that he wished he could have Sundays off for a break.

I don't want to commune with the Big Guy.

Scared of a slap to the back of the head, and a God-like voice booming "Gordon, you muppet..."

Share your 2024 tech forecasts (wrong answers only) to win a terrible sweater

CERN turns all the knobs to 11, and maxes out the particle beams of the LHC, which collide and form the first stable wormhole to another dimension.

Turns out we're the evil alternate universe.

A guy called Nole comes over with cold fusion, flying cars, and a bug free version of Windows on a dirt cheap open source hardware Mac for everyone.

Vote now on who should take the lead in Musk: The Movie

I remember a couple of months back a poster promoting this, it had Terrence Howard as Musk.

Think that was a good choice.

Pope tempted by Python! Signs off on coding scheme for kids

Re: methinks you perhaps forget of whom you speak.

His Holiness strikes me as more of a Goons fan.

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

But what are we a simulation of ?

UK procurement is too glacial to bring AI into defense, MPs told

Tell me about it, still waiting for the cannon to arrive.

Scientists suggest possible solution to space-induced bone loss

I thought Stainless Steel Rats would be a solution.

Textbook publishers sue shadow library LibGen for copyright infringement

More worried about The Black Pig and her crew.

I'm finding I use sci-hub/libgen more and more these days, as the books and papers are getting harder to find.

I'll find a reference to a book, either it's not in the library (dark mutterings about the University,) or it's out of print, and not available at the usual booksellers, even second hand.

As for papers, well, the university, and personally can only afford so many subscriptions, and there's a lot of journals, and it just so happens to be published in a journal, 1) you've never heard of, 2) isn't part of your subscription bundle- looking at you RSC.

So, off to the high seas it is.

80% of execs regret calling employees back to the office

Re: We have expensive real estate.

Google's cloud offices are in another company's office

Like the cloud is on someone else's computer

We'd pay good money to see... oh dear, Elon Musk 'needs an MRI scan'

What about controlling giant robots to fight instead of themselves ?

Either using Elon's Neuralink thing, or even just remote control.

No squishy damage, but we still get a fight.

Way out in deep space, astronomers spot precursor of carbon based life

Re: Eh ?

Cosmic rays, and other high energy collisions give you CH3+.

Re: I for one

Well, anyone's an improvement on our current overlords.

BOFH: Good news, everyone – we're in the sausage business

The higher up here at the University wanted us to use AI in our work,

But due to mixup with the typeface "I" (capital i) was replaced with "l" (lowercase l) in the paperwork,

now have a minion/ PFY called Al to help me with things. He's currently away on the cake run.

Boffins snap X-ray closeup of single atom – and by closeup we mean nanometres

Fe (II) is pale green, Fe (III) is orange-brown, from the look of the complex it's in could be either

CERN spots Higgs boson decay breaking the rules

Just as we think we know what's going on, it changes.

Wouldn't be surprised if we tear up the standard model within twenty years

Take a 14-mile trip on an autonomous Scottish bus starting next month

True- didn't think of that. Keep forgetting you can travel North from Edinburgh if the trains are working, and the yellow buses are running- Haven't seen it since before the Plague.

Why would anyone leave the Kingdom of Fife by bus Autonomous or not ?

Know a few fifers who could rattle off over half a dozen reasons on one hand.

Silicon Valley Bank's UK arm bought by HSBC for 1 British pound in rescue deal

A pound ? Paid too much.

ChatGPT (sigh) the fastest-growing web app in history (sigh) claim analysts

The annoying thing about ChatGPT to me is, I asked it for a book recommendation on a subject, and the book (and Author) didn't exist.

"Folk Medicine in the Orkney and Shetland Isles" by Erland Lee-Paul

Oh, 07734! Internet Archive debuts vintage calculator emulator

Wish they did emulators of the Casio CFX 9850 or fx-115.

Or I could just wander over to my bookshelf and play with the real things. Nah, too far for my old hips.

AI cannot be credited as authors in papers, top academic journals rule

Think it's mostly due to, within a week, ChatGPT would be the most published author in all scientific disciplines by such a wide margin as to make any sort of metrics on papers published (h-index and the like) completely meaningless.

Elon Musk to step down as Twitter CEO: Help us pick his replacement

two candidates I thought of

The heir apparent, his son, Keyboard mash ?

or maybe because of the discourse on there, the Moderatrix ? (I miss her on here)

Neuralink's AI brain chip could be in humans within six months claims Elon Musk

I would say over my dead body, but probably would have it installed then.

Hopefully won't start humming relevant Cranberries song.

India's – and Infosys's – favorite son-in-law Rishi Sunak is next UK PM

Well done for him becoming the next former Prime minister.

From the article, looks like he needed that job- means he won't be scrimping and saving anymore.

Post-Brexit 'science superpower' UK still hasn't appointed a science minister

Why ? Humour mostly.

The low hanging fruit of inappropriate middle names (such as my own- Oliver Douglas) and silly acronyms thereof . Inherited Dad's sense of humour and pattern baldness.

Well given the state of things of departments that do have Ministers, for example The treasury and the right honourable Kwasi Kwenneth Kwarteng, maybe it's a blessing that we don't have a science minister.

Think how bad science could get with government meddling.

BOFH: You want presentation layer, but we're physical layer

Given some of the people I work with it's a moot point.

It may have been the company's (or even another employee's) but it's their personal one now.

Even if it still has the previous owner's name engraved on it to prevent that sort of thing.

China discovers unknown mineral on the moon, names it Changesite-(Y)

Re: A question

Means its got a lot of yttrium in its structure compared to other minerals with the same structure and other mineral composition.

formula: (Ca8Y)Fe2+(PO4)7

Rest in peace, Queen Elizabeth II – Britain's first high-tech monarch

I can only save a certain number of times before losing the data ~ God

May she rest peacefully having done her duty.

AI chip adds artificial neurons to resistive RAM for use in wearables, drones

https://spectrum.ieee.org/researchers-grow-brain-cells-on-a-chip

here's a quick look at it.

Artificial neurons are grown in a dish, rather than picked out of something living.

UK government lines up billions to refresh legacy tech in 600-system tax dept

Re: Taking all bets

Given one of the Prime Minister candidates, Infosys can't be ruled out for the contract.

Going for 12 years late, and at least double the cost, and by that point the systems will be out of date again, so new contract drawn up to replace them.

Claims of AI sentience branded 'pure clickbait'

Re: generally agree...

Somehow printers can smell fear, and act accordingly.

James Webb, Halley's Comet may be set for cosmic dust-up

Shouldn't be too difficult to get there, it's not rocket science.

James Webb Space Telescope looks closer to home with Jupiter snaps

Re: Very disappointed

In all seriousness, why not use it to take pictures of Uranus, Neptune, Pluto, etc ?

Or is it they're too far away to get anything decent (like the Hubble Pluto picture ?)

NYC issues super upbeat PSA for surviving the nuclear apocalypse

Having a wry smile at the link to Nukemap, while talking about vaporising New York, as the guy who developed it, Alex, is based out of Stevens Tech in Hoboken (Go Ducks !!, spent a great year there as an undergrad) which if the bomb drops on Manhattan, is within the fireball.

No comment on the Stevens cafeteria food being better after nuclear fallout.

China says it has photographed all of Mars from orbit

If we ask nicely, could they find Beagle for us ?

Chinese boffins suggest launching nuclear Neptune orbiter in 2030

You're about 12 years too late

'Red-rated' legacy IT gets refresh in UK as US battles theirs with bills

Will they be replacing the BBC Micro that runs the Jobseeker's Allowance system ?

The one where it takes three working days to do anything.

Voyager 1 space probe producing ‘anomalous telemetry data’

Re: "Thats odd"

*boink*

It hits the side of the fish bowl.

NASA's InSight doomed as Mars dust coats solar panels

We need to send somebody up there with a water bottle and a squeegee.

Or a big feather duster.

Do all the martian probes, get the research really going.

BOFH: You'll have to really trust me on this team-building exercise

Re: Even more disappointed!

https://youtu.be/KeMMow_Itqw

Shouldn't have googled it, tune's stuck in my head now.

Capgemini wins contract to look after legacy HMRC Aspire tech

Because Crapgemini can't tell it apart from its

Endeavour Logistics Beyond Ownership Workfow.

Boys outnumber girls 6 to 1 in UK compsci classes

From what I've found doing "get kids interested in science" outreach over the years is, they both male and female, love doing the hands on, messy stuff, but hate the read chapter six and do the problems side of teaching.

So my thought is, maybe Comp Sci is going up against other subjects in the timetable that let you do fun stuff, with less reading, so those with only a passing interest go "well, could do that, but techy drawing* is less homework, so I'll do that instead"

know when it was my time to Choose standard grades (equivalent to English O levels) back thirty years ago- it was a choice of Chemistry, Computing or Geology as they were timetabled at the same time- Chemistry won, due to, well, a girl called Amanda....

* don't know what it's called now, was rebranded as Graphic Communication when my nephew failed it.

BOFH: Gaming rig for your home office? Yeah right

Re: Poacher turned gamekeeper?

No, just a case of why does this (L)user get a better rig than I've got, and get to play games on it at work ? That's my job.

Plans for UK rival to Silicon Valley ditched

I remember getting a call from a recruiter early turn of the century (2004-5) for a job in Cambridge, was told it was commuting distance from Scotland (they were based in Nodnol), so wouldn't get relocating money.

UK science stuck in 'holding pattern' on EU funding by Brexit, says minister

Re: Funding

You'd be surprised at the amount of stuff spoken in English at CERN over pints. Some of it is even science-related at times.