Posts by Headley_Grange

AI quota inflation is no token effort. It's baked in

Software engineers are going to become project managers of AI; forecasting token spend, monitoring token spend and producing powerpoints to explain why their token spend is greater than their forecast together with RAG metrics, token recovery plans, etc. Of course, they'll be pushed to use AI to draft the powerpoint, thereby increasing the token spend for no resulting value, but that's project management for you.

Locked-out iPhone user tells The Reg that Apple is scrambling to fix character flaw passcode bug

Re: Silly question as a non iPhone user

No - the phone will recover but Activation Lock means it can only be activated by the owner logging in with their Apple ID.

Re: Silly question as a non iPhone user

In theory you can by connecting it to a Mac or PC and running recovery/DFU mode. I say "in theory" because Apple these days seems to have moved off the 'reliably boring" step onto the "break things" step. If the user hasn't got a Mac or PC then they ought to be able to get it sorted out in an Apple shop.

It's hard to understand how this change survived any sort of requirements review or design review but the good old reliable Upsilon testing picked it up.

US states can't account for datacenter tax breaks. Literally

It's more akin to religion than accounting. All you need is faith.

You can finally control serial devices from Firefox

Based on experience I'll get the straight and crossovers mixed up and they won't go anywhere.

Does this mean that box of random D-types I've got in the loft will be worth selling on eBay?

Britain gives Rolls-Royce the nod to sketch out its mini reactor future

Re: No info on the technology?

Two minutes on t'internet reveals, "Most PWR designs make use of two to six steam generators, each associated with a coolant loop." and "In a close-coupled reactor design, the primary coolant circulation system is made as compact as possible to reduce the size of the reactor's containment."

Re: No info on the technology?

From Wikipedia.

RR is preparing a small modular reactor (SMR) design called the UK SMR, a close-coupled three-loop pressurised water reactor (PWR) design.[31] Power output was initially designed to be 440 MWe, and subsequently increased to 470 MWe which is above the usual range considered to be a SMR.[3][32][31] It should be able to power a city the size of Sheffield.[10] The planning documents for the projects (by Rolls-Royce SMR co-owner ČEZ) for Temelín[33] and Tušimice[34] assume an output of 498 MWe.

The intended fuel is uranium dioxide (UO2).[35] A modular forced draft cooling tower will be used.[31] The design targets a 500-day construction time, on a 10 acres (4 ha) site.[35][36] Overall build time is expected to be four years, two years for site preparation and two years for construction and commissioning.[37]

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

When I'm stood in the checkout queue in the supermarket and a staff member comes over and says, 'Come and use the self-checkout - I can help you if you like", I reply along the lines of, "In a couple of years, after you've finished helping them to iron out the bugs and you're on the dole you'll wish there had been more people like me who refuse to use them."

Growing void between enterprise and frontier AI puts open weights models in the spotlight

"Most customers don't need the biggest baddest models, just ones that work, are cheap, and won't pirate their proprietary data"

And I wanted a Chopper for Christmas, but never got one.

Fewer than 3 in 10 register for HMRC's Making Tax Digital shake-up

In my experience it's good to have April as the end of the tax year, although UK companies can choose any dates for their accounting years. When I worked for a US company in the UK our tax year ended on 31 Dec which meant a crap time for a whole bunch of people. Account managers, project managers, anyone in finance and even engineers if they were needed to finish something to claim a delivery. It often felt malicious with the yanks seeming to take the view that if they had to ruin their Christmas then so must we. A couple of colleagues had holidays cancelled at the last minute in order to come to the office between Christmsa and NY to chase cash payments from their customers even though everyone knew that the customers closed down over Christmas.

DARPA looking for battery that could power a laptop for months

There's an annoying mix of units in the article. Li batteries described in terms of watt-hours per kg (energy density) but radioactive batteries described in watts per kg (power density?).

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

"and you'll have access to your complete Kindle library and the Kindle Store" until you don't.

AMD's AI director slams Claude Code for becoming dumber and lazier since last update

It's gonna get interesting. If you've got a real person who's not performing then you can get rid of them and hire someone better. If, however, you try to get rid of your AI you'll have AI's company lawyers waving the contract in your face explaining that performance was never guraranteed and you have to pay for the AI for the rest of the year whether you use it or not.

'Uncle Larry’s biggest fan' cut by email in early morning Oracle layoff spree

Re: The US employment hellscape

I think it's because they believe the Americal dream. They don't want employment protection, social policies and high taxes for the wealthy because they are all going to be billionaire owners of huge companies one day.

UK fines Irish Apple outpost over sanctions-busting payments to Russian dev

Maybe because, "Apple Distribution International (ADI), based in the Republic of Ireland, instructed an unnamed UK-based bank to make two payments to a company owned by a sanctioned Russian entity." according to the Graun.

Commercial space pleads with NASA to stop moving the goalposts in orbit

"If you want it to draw power from solar panels, support life or run equipment inside you might want a few more features than that."

"Welcome, Mr President. Would you like to have a look inside the next ISS while you're here?"

Trump steps inside cylinder and asks, "Shouldn't it have a door at the other end too?" followed by a big CLANG and the faint sounds of welding.

Iran war drives urgent need to counter underwater attack drones

Re: Might I propose?

Stingray............. heads off to find vids of Marina

UK government admits Capita pension portal was crapita at launch

Performs as Expected

"A UK government official has admitted Capita did not reach the expected level of performance"

On the contrary.....

Remote or not, workers are drifting back toward the city

Re: Driving doesn't scale

"You have bespoke bakery"

Yeah, we've got three of those. You can buy scones, pastries and such for £4 a pop but you can't buy a tin loaf or bread rolls or anything that the bakery we used to have in the town made before they were shut down by the out-of-town supermarkets, one of which has just shut its in-store bakery so the only option is plastic bread.

/rant

Goodbye, Lunar Gateway: NASA ditches Moon station for Moon base

Re: Lunar Gateway

"NASA keeps changing its direction in space for the past 25 years"

The thing people forget is that the main reason that Apollo succeeded is because JFK gave NASA a very concise and, in concept, simple vision, with a target date plus as much money as they needed to do it. Everyone on the programme from the boss to the bog cleaners knew what they were there for, when it had to be done and that

Today, however,...........

Re: Goodbye, Hubble

"The Ford's toilet engineering appears to be the smaller problem."

Apparently it costs £400k to unblock the bogs.

Re: Ownership?

I'm sure that anyone who's had to work with "repurposed" product in an attempt to save money has, sooner or later, uttered the words, "it would have been cheaper to design and build it from scratch"

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

" the results are ropey and require plenty of extra work to put into production."

I can write code like that and I'm not even a software engineer.

Apple’s MacBook Neo turns out to be its most repairable lappy in 14 years

It's more like they are heading towards something that can be made in the US to appease Trump.

UK splashes £45M on AI supercomputer to help crack fusion power

Re: "Or is the “AI” bit just …well …total bollocks?"

Read up on the protein folding that DeepMind did about 6 years ago.

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.370.6521.1144

When aimed at specific problems like this, with lots of possibilities, iterations and dead ends then AI can be crazy good. Like another OP, I know bugger all about fusion but I bet there are problems of magnetic flux and plasma flow that are too complex for current computation that a suitably trained AI could have a crack at.

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

Re: They probably 'reach out' all the time as well

In the 20s it still is.

Re: They probably 'reach out' all the time as well

Yeah - reach out really pisses me off. I had a boss who used it all the time. He was a decent bloke and one day I told him that babies reach out, adults ask. It didn't stop him using it but sometimes, in the right situation, when he used it I used to raise my arms like a baby wanting to be picked up.

West Sussex's Oracle rollout pushed back again as costs balloon 15 times

"This revised timeline reflects the scale of the change, impacting over 20,000 users, and the need to ensure a safe, stable system with a reliable and accurate payroll, particularly for schools and term-time employees,"

Are they saying that they started the project without the need to ensure a safe, stable system with a reliable and accurate payroll, particularly for schools and term-time employees?

The situations here and in Birmigham are absurd. 90%+ of what all councils do is the same and if it isn't it should be. The government should hire** and run a central, dedicated unit to define, spec., procure, install, train, learn from best practice, etc. This way they'd have the clout to get better pricing and terms from suppliers. Councils that genuinely need customizations could be handled by the same team which would rapidly build up the expertise to judge whether they were really special or just needed help to change their processes to the standard ones.

</dreaming>

**and, obvs, pay the going rate.

Apple takes a bite out of app store fees in China

Compare that to the UK where the Competition and Markets authority is going to investigate domestic heating oil supplers to see if they've been profiteering. My prediction - nothing bad will happen to the suppliers. If it were China the suppliers would already be knocking on doors to return the money an offer profound apologies in the hope of saving the CEOs job and keeping them out of prison.

Perplexity Comet hurtling toward Amazon ban

Re: Thanks for the humour

PVJ: "I present you with a simple choice! Either die in the vacuum of space... or suffer from a degraded Amazon shopping experience."

FP+AD: "Where's the airlock?"

Scottish broadband service looking a bit dreich, says UK outage study

Re: Compensation Get Out Clauses

It's possible to benefit from BT's incompetence. My internet went down and was fixed in a couple of days but their system paid me out for 16 days of outage. I tried to tell them but there isn't an option in the automated fault reporting process for "You over-compensated me and I'd like to return it" so I gave up.

Microsoft previews tech to ease creation of keyboard-accessible websites

Re: Arrant nonsense

Why are you repeating it? Indeed, why are you asking me?

Re: Arrant nonsense

Ethics are as much a luxury as a Rolex. If you're wealthy enough you can have both. If you need to work to feed, clothe and house yourself then your options are limited.

Re: Arrant nonsense

The dev's customer is whoever is paying the bill - and that's not the end user. If the customer want bells and whistles and a site that pisses off their users then that's what they get.

Re: Arrant nonsense

Hmmm - interesting site. Shame the "Open the Damn Dialog" button doesn't work without allowing the site's JS in NoScript.

US state laws push age checks into the operating system

I don't understand why the calculator app wouldn't be available. My understanding (from the article) is the the OS has to get age verification. After that I would assume that anything running on the OS would be Ok because it can get verification (or not ) the age of the user from the OS. What am I missing?

Techie was given strict instructions not to disrupt client. Then he touched one box and the lights went out

You should have pressed f5.6

Apple's budget-friendly MacBook Neo is bursting with color and compromise

Re: Down with the cool kids

"You clearly don't get to go out much with women under the age of 30."

It's more a case of women under 30 don't go out much with me.

Wait, what? "Rocks" is bad and "clichedom" is OK?

I assume that the US price doesn't include sales tax?

Re: Why would it need a SIM?

I've got a data SIM that I can just add to when I'm travelling and leave dormant when I'm at home. It's better than tethering because I don't pay for lots of data unless I'm using it.

Re: Down with the cool kids

Flares haven't been cool for a long, long time.

I looked at an iPad with the Folio Keyboard last week (I'm deep in the Apple garden, no escape for me yet). It was OK-ish, but not sure about using it on my lap and the keyboard is £250. So the cheapest iPad (128GB, no SIM) + keyboard is £578. For another £20 the base Neo starts to look good. I need to see it in the flesh, but I don't think I'll buy one soon. I prefer to be a late adopter to make sure that Apple haven't cut too many corners on build quality, particularly the keyboard. Lack of magsafe puts me off a bit too - but now I'm comparing it to a Mac instead of an iPad.

I use an iPad when I'm travelling. The battery is just about shot and I've been looking at buying a new one. I'm off to the Apple shop this weekend to have a look at the Neo as a potential replacement instead. It's chunkier, obviously, but it's a proper PC, with a proper keyboard and it will be mostly used for browsing - and it's about the same price. If it came with a SIM it could be perfect as a travel PC.

Flex appeal: UK datacenter cuts AI power draw 40% on command

Re: More of a proof of concept

Someone somewhere recently has changed the amount of power a UK houselhold uses when making these comparisons. It used to about a kW but in the last few months I've noticed that news stories about wind and solar were quoting much higher numbers for the "equivalent to xx households" standard quote. Given the push to move away from gas to heat pumps and the assumption of an EV in every drive I'd have expected it to go the other way. Spin doctors spinning faster than the wind turbines I guess.