Posts by Buzzword 1033 publicly visible posts • joined 30 Jun 2010
I gave Bard access to my emails. Then I asked it a few simple questions:
Q: "Based on my emails, how much have I spent at Tesco in the last month?" — A: "You have spent £290.46 at Tesco in the last month" [Correct]
Q: "Based on my emails, what are my plans for this weekend?" — A: "I cannot find any specific plans for your weekend in your emails." [Wrong]
Most of the answers are terrible.
Q: "How much is a room at the Sunderland Travelodge on Tuesday?" — A: Spews out a load of Google search results, without actually giving me the answer.
Even trying to focus the results doesn't get me there:
Q: "How much did I pay for a room at the Sunderland Travelodge last Tuesday?" — A: "I could not find any receipts for hotels in Sunderland in your email." [Wrong]
It even fails on softball questions like this:
Q: "Are there any emails that I need to reply to?" — A: Yes there are two: [real personal email] and [random newsletter]
Bottom line: it's a long way off replacing human personal assistants.
The changes to Threading are really significant, and I don't think you've gone into enough detail here. The chat bar moves to the top (like Facebook); each thread is now like a Facebook post, with comments below it. This will reduce noise like "hello" or "thanks"; and it will be more searchable. Overall this should improve productivity.
TypeScript supports non-nullable and non-undefined types with the --strictNullChecks option. You can still break it by assigning a null of "any" type; but you can also prevent that with the ESLint rule "no-explicit-any". In theory this means TypeScript is perfectly type-safe; but in practice many developers don't use these checks; or don't enforce them on CI builds.
The Microlino costs € 12,500 and is classed as a heavy quadricycle (L7e).
Top speed of 90km/h, range 230km.
In France: you can drive unaccompanied at age 18 with a full B licence.
In Italy: you can drive unaccompanied at age 16 with a B1 licence, if the vehicle is speed-limited to 80km/h (50mph).
The Citroen Ami costs € 6,000 and is classed as a light quadricycle (L6e).
Top speed of 45km/h, range 70km.
In both France and Italy, you can drive unaccompanied at age 14 with just an AM licence. This is roughly equivalent to the motorcycle CBT in the UK: no theory test, just a one-day training course.
If you live on the continent and have (or are) a teenager who needs to attend college in the next town over, both of these are preferable to taking the bus.
When the meeting starts, share your screen and put the meeting agenda at the top. As the meeting proceeds, write the meeting minutes in real-time with everybody watching. This helps keep the meeting on-track and avoids duplication - everyone can see if a point has already been made. Similarly, if the meeting gets too long and the notes spill beyond what can fit on one screen, you can say "I think we have enough to take away for now" and call the meeting to a close.
If it takes two weeks to learn Javascript but six months to learn Java, then the stats will make it look like Java is more popular to learn.
If it takes a week to write an application in Java but only a day to do the same in Javascript, then the stats will show most development time is spent in Java.
The best metric for evaluating a programming language is some combination of learning curve + maintainability. (Perl is notoriously unmaintainable.)
One language (or framework) to rule the entire stack. This helps balance out resources across front-end and back-end. How many times has a front-end dev's work been delayed because the back-end devs are behind; or vice-versa?
Problem is, this doesn't solve the next level down in the stack. Somebody still needs to manage database changes, server configuration changes, auth model changes, hardware; and all the other weird and wonderful things further down the stack.
The smart move would be to put the millions into BitCoin, encrypt it with a strong password, copy it onto multiple media (USB keys, hard drives, DVD-R discs, whatever), and distribute those media to friends / family / associates. When you get out of prison, go visit all your old friends and see (a) who bothered to keep the device, and (b) who is willing to return it to you for the lowest fee.
Of course, all this relies on knowing exactly when the cops are coming and having the time to perform all the steps above before you're caught. Most criminals are greedy and prefer to spend the money immediately on tangible goods, rather than invest for the long-term.
You've linked to an article written by researcher Barry M. Lunt of Provo, Utah; who discovers that the best long-term archival medium is the Millenniata M-Disc. By an incredible coincidence, that same Barry M. Lunt is also the co-founder of the Millenniata company.
If you order early, they throw in a free Honor watch and router. As I have no need of either device, I think I'll just wait until the pre-sale is over.
The cynic in me thinks it's just a ploy to get their router hardware installed in lots of people's houses, all the better to spy on us.
Let's say you have a particular functionality requirement. It takes 20 hours to code it in Java, but only 10 hours to code it in Javascript. Your metric would conclude that Java is twice as popular as Javascript; when in fact it's just twice as tedious.
I'm not claiming that Java is less productive than Javascript; just that we can't tell from the given metric alone.
Once the novelty of teleworking has worn off, most people will realise that video calling isn't all that useful. Video phones have been around since the 1990s, but never became popular anywhere in the world. Even video-calling the grandparents on Skype is more trouble than it's worth. Far easier to just pick up the phone and make a voice call.
There are four patents at stake:
6,502,135 - Agile network protocol for secure communications with assured system availability (filed 2000)
7,490,151 - Establishment of a secure communication link based on a domain name service (DNS) request (filed 2002)
7,418,504 - Agile network protocol for secure communications using secure domain names (filed 2003)
7,921,211 - Agile network protocol for secure communications using secure domain names (filed 2007)
All four of them mean broadly the same thing: When you try to connect to server X, the software first checks if X is known to be a secure server. If so, the software sets up a VPN to initiate a secure connection; if not, it initiates an insecure connection. The details vary between the patents, but the gist is the same.
I'd have thought there'd be prior art to invalidate all of them, but U.S. patent law is a curious beast.
"big tech has viewed remote working as a potential goldmine for years"
Really? The same big tech that insists all their employees live in Silicon Valley? The same big tech that builds shiny new campuses with all services on-site, so that staff never have to leave? I'll believe the teleworking hype when the FAANGs embrace it.
This particular article is about enterprise scenarios, where it's perfectly reasonable to be able to track users (i.e. employees) activity on enterprise systems.
On the broader question of whether FIDO tokens can behave like super-cookies, the answer is no. Your sign-in key for e.g. Google will be completely separate from your sign-in key for Microsoft. Neither company can access the other's keys - that's part of the WebAuthn spec.
Don't get me started on childcare.
In 2005, Childcare Vouchers were introduced, saving a higher-rate taxpayer up to £2,916/yr.
In 2011, higher-rate taxpayers' savings were capped at £1,484/yr.
In 2018, childcare vouchers were finally scrapped, replaced with Tax Free Child Care. This offers savings of up to £2,000/yr. If you earn £99,999, you qualify. But if you earn just £1 more, you face a bill for £2,000.
You can use pension contributions to reduce your "adjusted income" to below £100k; but pension contributions have an annual limit of £40,000, so if you earn over £140,000 then you can't bring yourself below the magic £100k mark again.
Even that £40,000 limit represents a new tax of sorts. The pension contribution annual allowance for the 2010/11 tax year was £255,000 but reduced to £50,000 for the 2011/12 tax year and £40,000 with effect from April 2014. Not to mention the fact that pension allowances taper off above £150k.
Look, I don't expect much sympathy for people on £100k+ wages. But understand that the environment today for skilled (i.e. high-earning) workers, particularly contractors, is nowhere near as attractive as it once was. No surprise that many of them are planning to leave these shores.
There have been a lot of tax increases in the last few years, making the UK a significantly less desirable place to work for high earners. Many contractors from EU countries are actively looking for work elsewhere in Europe; and fewer are arriving here.
Recent tax increases include:
* Pension Lifetime Allowance of £1.5m introduced (2006)
* Personal allowance withdrawal over £100k (2010)
* Additional Rate tax over £150k (2010)
* VAT rises to 20% (2011)
* High Income Child Benefit Charge (2013)
* Air Passenger Duty continuous rises
* Marriage Allowance excludes high earners (2015)
* Dividend tax (2016)
* Travel and subsistence expense clampdown (2016)
* Pension Lifetime Allowance reduced to £1m (2016)
* BiK (Benefits in Kind) clampdown (2017)
* IR35 for public-sector (2017)
* Tax Free Child Care excludes anyone earning over £100k (2017)
* Insurance Premium Tax rises to 12% (2017)
* Dividend tax threshold reduced (2018)
* Pension contributions capped at 20% (2020?)
The rising burden of regulation on limited companies means accountancy fees have been rising too.
"Developers using *INSERT SOFTWARE NAME* today are often including layers of indirection in order to port those old patterns to new ones," he said. "This shows up in bundle sizes, performance, and debuggability, and there are numerous newer libraries that don’t have these problems."
Applies to nearly everything. Windows. Linux. Office. You name it, it's a cesspool of legacy fixes, edge case hacks, and backwards-compatibility kludges. Let's put a strict time limit on all software - ten years of active development, five years of LTS - followed by not just a rewrite, but a completely new product every decade.
Yes, there are plenty of times when a NexDock2 and a Samsung phone, with their limited capabilities, are sufficient to work productively. But there are enough times when you need a proper laptop, so you might as well get one and save yourself the hassle.
Yes, there are plenty of times when an electric car, with its limited range, is sufficient to get you where you're going. But there are enough times when you need a normal car with longer range, so you're probably better off with a normal car.
As the original review of the NexDock2 pointed out, for the same money you can get a decent second-hand laptop. With a UK keyboard.
I'll get my flameproof coat.
I can just about understand advertising on bus stops, or on the London underground. But why does a public-sector website need ads? (NationalRail.co.uk is one of the worst offenders.) By definition, the ads are getting in the way of delivering the service. Does the local council's telephone line play radio ads when you're on hold? Do the local authority's offices have billboards plastered all over them? Just don't do it, guys.
The correct comparison is the number of Tile users versus the number of Apple device owners.
Tile has sold 25 million "tiles" since it was launched. Apple sold 70 million iPhones in the last quarter alone.
Therefore you have a far greater chance of a passing iPhone user finding your lost item than a passing Tile user.
FWIW, you can decorate your code with JSDoc comments (@type, @param, @returns, etc.), then use either the Typescript compiler or the Google Closure compiler to validate the type-safety. If you find yourself in an environment where you can't use Typescript directly, this is the next best thing.
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