Posts by streaky 1792 publicly visible posts • joined 5 Jul 2010
No.
If you don't use the steering wheel or brakes on your car you crash into a wall.
If you leave SSH open to the world with password auth you're in deep trouble,
It is not on an LLM to magically infer what you wish it to do. You have to tell it.
That's prompt engineering. This is basic. This isn't any more an LLM's fault if you don't tell it than it's AWS' fault when people leave S3 buckets open to the world.
Why would an agent have confidentiality awareness if you never at any point tell it that it should behave in that way or how to behave in that way anywhere in the prompt?
They eventually add one in but then still give no detail that will help it.
Absolutely embarrassing. A better study title would be "Prompt engineering is hard - and we couldn't manage it".
Here's a protip though - LLMs will do prompt engineering for you, if you ask them to.. They'll also evaluate what you already have and suggest improvements.
I could go on for days about the disaster of the modern keyboard design. I won't, but, I'll pose some questions:
Why does tenkeyless even exist? Why does 75% keyboards? You're not a pro gamer who needs to get a keyboard into your flight bag, what are you doing?
How come we can't make a decent wireless keyboard at a reasonable price in 2025? We've been doing it with mice for years and the latency, bandwidth and battery implications are significantly worse for mice.
Why must you put keys so close to the edge of the keyboard that I can't use it on my lap, leaning back in my chair (which is best for my back)? At least the bottom edge anyway.
Do we really even need macro keys? Do gamers really even use them? And if they do, do they really need to be on the left side of the keyboard? Didn't we use to put them at the top?
RGB is nice (at least proper RGB through the keys so it lights up the letters, anyway) - but do we _really_ individually referenceable backlights? (to be fair this is weak because once you have backlights you're 98% there)
Why is it still not possible, no matter how much you spend, to have keys that don't wear smooth after less than six months - and why don't you sell caps at a reasonable price for when they inevitably do?
We're paying a lot of money for, it seems to me, _bad_ keyboards.
I literally last week binned an expensive Razer keyboard that had a failed space bar, and resoldering a new switch in didn't help it. I bought a Cynosa Lite to replace it in a hurry because it's cheap and actually fulfils a lot of my criteria. I wish I could get it with proper switches, but it's honestly the best keyboard I've had in years despite being one of the cheapest, nastiest keyboards I've ever owned. This shouldn't be a thing. I should be able to buy something like it with decent switches for, IDK, 80 quid, maybe a wireless option that works well for 100 or so? (yes, I know about the Ornata V3 - but low profile keys are the worst, it does prove we can almost do it and there's not really a good excuse though).
Another one of these nonsense APA "plis give TRO and have it apply nationally" suits that won't survive 30 seconds at SCOTUS.
The response to this one writes itself. Some of these judges are extraordinarily corrupt and it isn't going to end well for them.
A court, and certainly not a district court, doesn't have the power to enjoin the executive branch in this way. They'll do it, but they'll look very silly when a competent court vacates it all. There's no irreparable harm here anyway. Appallingly bad lawyering, one wonders how these people passed the bar exam.
Nah they'll get immediate time with a friendly judge, and Trump will be able to almost immediately appeal it to SCOTUS, which he's entitled to do. They'll send it back saying to the courts "you didn't really mean this, did you? would you like to try that again and do what you were supposed to?" and stay a bunch of the most egregious nonsense, at which point the district court will throw a wobbler, and then it'll end back in SCOTUS. It's a pattern that is emerging in US legal circles - Abrego Garcia is the case closest to going back for it's second run at SCOTUS, which Trump will win again, though there are others - and the second runs they're going to come back with very definitive language that courts at this level don't get to do this.
Yeah, they don't set international trade policy. That's an Article II power. For good reason too. Here in the UK that's a power held by the PM (though normally delegated to a minister) for the exact same reason. Trump was elected to create trade policy, and his views on trade were well known and understood by the electorate. Contrary to the filing this isn't even vaguely ultra vires.
"Enjoin Agency Defendants (and all of their officers, employees, agents, servants, attorneys, and others acting in concert with them or subject to their control or direction) from taking any action to implement or enforce President Trump’s IEEPA Tariff Orders;" isn't a power a district court in the US has which all but guarantees this is going down in flames one way or another - and Trump can take this directly to SCOTUS.
But that makes zero sense as a counter-argument. Ignoring the fact it's all OSS and LE is a non-profit, which has legal implications - hell, it was originally sponsored by Moz and the EFF. There's zero margin to be had, if you're right and they do that, where's the money coming from? There might be arguments about the usefulness and other things, but you can't find a profit motive from your scenario.
Even a "it's the NSA and aliens" argument is more rational than a profit argument in the scenario. And there's zero basis for that.
We're not going back to that world, because it's dumb, everybody knew it was dumb but allowed it to go on anyway - if we can't have easy cert issuance for free, it'll be opportunistic encryption or something and it'll be moot.
But it doesn't mean that at all. It's about Commissioner independence from EVERYBODY. They're supposed to operate at their own "look how smart we are" level where they're totally untouchable. They exist to protect the Commission's power base, and they do so incredibly dutifully.
Even if it meant that (and to be clear, again, it doesn't), that isn't how it works in practice.
In theory, there's the Parliament as it's own power base, but they can't initiate legislation, they can't fundamentally change legislation, they can't really in any practical way vote against legislation - all because of the Trilogue system. They can argue, they can protest, they can say "this far and no further" - what happens in these sessions? We know not, because they're totally secret and anybody who tells doesn't survive - not that they ever tell. All we know is the Commission _always_ wins - not mostly wins, not usually wins, ALWAYS wins. The EU Commission itself commissioned and published a report about Trilogue subtitled "Where European democracy goes to die". Not a thing has changed since that report was published.
Does that actually sound like checks and balances to you? Does that really sound like European Parliament has real powers?
"Head of the European commission is accountable to the commission, which is accountable to the European parliament, which is accountable to European citizens"
It never ceases to amaze me how little people who want to defend the EU know about the EU. I wonder if there's a correlation.
The head of the European Commission is accountable to NOBODY - least of all the European Parliament. Research the European Commission itself publishes makes this incredibly clear. European Commissioners themselves lose their pension if they listen to voters, it's right there in the rules of the road. They have an oath, maybe your should read what that oath says.
Something about, what was it? Oh, right:
"in the performance of my tasks, neither to seek nor to take instructions from any Government or from any other institution, body, office or entity"
The only people who know anything whatsoever about the European Commission and defend that are either incredibly stupid or former Commissioners themselves - usually both at the same time. Probably because they don't want to lost their _incredibly_ generous pension.
The EU is not a democracy, it has never been a democracy and wants nothing less than to be a democracy. It's not even a French and German project to control the rest of Europe - you could forgive it a little bit maybe if it was; it's something much more nefarious than that. Nor is it a corporatocracy despite showing many of the trappings; it's a hybrid of a few evil systems, but leans towards a sort of authoritarian technocracy.
"but your correspondent cannot recall the last time my iOS or Android devices fell over"
Remember that one time the EU pushed diesel because it was under self-imposed pressure over emissions and it worked out really well?
Microsoft could easily stop windows crashes by ending general purpose computing like Apple have by locking people into their platform.
Asking the wrong questions leads to the wrong answers and bad unintended consequences.Also the idea that iOS, Android and Linux doesn't crash is absurd anyway.
They're still at their heart GPUs. The fact they are aimed towards AI workloads etc doesn't really change that. Totally get what you mean though, I just don't think it makes much sense to call them something else when they're not something else. We do [also] have acceleration kit that isn't actually essentially just GPUs specced for AI loads.
Also the example you're looking for is it can't run Deepseek R1 - it has like half the RAM needed. It's massive for most models though. Remember that AI revolution?
Also they don't hold a monopoly, just there's zero price competition between the three major players. Maybe some day somebody will find out why.
It's the same thing as the current crop of climate alarmists who are completely detached from reality. I wouldn't even be surprised if it's the exact same people pushing that agenda.
It's not mentally healthy to believe these things with absolutely no evidence and if anything the evidence reaching a completely oppositional conclusion.
They'll start claiming "the science says" then "all science agrees" (by the way, phrases like these are completely oppositional to first principles of science which is how you can spot people who aren't really scientists a mile away, huge red flag - if science agrees, it wouldn't be science: it would be politics - I'm very reassured by the fact that not all scientists believe that the sky is blue and water is wet, and nor should they) next, ignoring the fact they're totally false as they are with climate science - the science doesn't say, and all science doesn't agree, in fact some of the most learned people in climate science totally disagree.
Same thing happened with the coof - some of the world's most learned epidemiologists and virologists etc completely disagreed - and have been proven right FWIW.
Why do we keep doing this? AI isn't going to kill people (of its own accord, anyway). AGI might not even be possible anyway. See a therapist.
Certainly no free tools as they won’t pay the MS tax to unlock the API.
Am I misremembering or didn't this all become how Microsoft essentially got away from their antitrust prosecution? I could google it, but I'm working from (25 years ago) memory - they were forced to unlock and document their APIs properly as part of it. Going back on that would seem to be highly problematic.
As long as you can patch at the local system level via other tools, it'll always be possible to force Microsoft out of the patching, and have tools that give you control over the process.
As somebody who wrote software that does this in a way that Microsoft would prefer wasn't a thing, the biggest threats IMO are the monthly roll-ups, the way they're engineered is highly problematic despite MS' claim that they exist to make things easier.
Microsoft trying to force themselves out of their most profitable sector: it's the servers, stupid - would seem to be a bad idea.
They'll get away with it as long as it's just drivers, and they don't prevent other driver install methods - it's when it becomes actual OS updates that people will (rightly, by the way) run away screaming.
Basically, if you think C should be consigned to History then you should be looking to also consign OS’s written in C to history and be designing something new more suited to the purpose of running Rust software.
Yup. People who don't understand this comment don't write software - doesn't matter who's team owns it, it's going to be a pain to maintain; and you don't necessarily even need an OS written in Rust - probably just a new Linux kernel. It is doable.
Projects like Redox do exist though.
Canada is being a little bit delusional that it thinks it has power here. In every sense.
Canada might be the US' biggest supplier of various things but that's because the US doesn't have many energy suppliers. Give the US the opportunity to develop their own supply further still, and they're going to do it. You don't want these sorts of things to become permanent if you're Canada, it'd be the end of everything.
Clearly Trump wants a deal on something, the smart play will be to meet him halfway like he's looking for. He's a political used car salesman (and I mean that in a good way) - if you annoy him he'll sell you a badly welded undeclared cut and shut and you won't like it. Everything he does is transactional, not ideological and you can use that to your benefit if you're not ideologically-driven. Even Mexico has got this figured out. If you come back at him with ideology not transaction, you _will_ lose.
Pretending the SEC ever looks at the tape to figure out who did what.
Not on the cards.
If they do, they won't get to it until 2045 - and that's not a hyperbolic guestimate of when. If they do it'll be a speeding fine that's just a fraction of what they made.
The good news is hedge funds and pension funds lost a lot of money last week and retail investors bought the dip and made a lot of money when the market realised it was being dumb.
There are actual reasons - Nvidia is a half trillion dollar company tops, accounting for potential future growth, not the > 3 trillion company the market thinks it is.
It's been broken for decades.
The US has known it has been broken for decades. The US government has held many hearings on it being broken for decades.
The US likes that it has been broken for decades - else they'd have done something about it. As would many other countries.
Hoisted by your own r'tard and whatnot.
(Also something something China's grip on the ITU).
What, you mean the executive branch of the US can't just legislate?
IDK why somebody would write an article like this stating something so plainly obvious.
GOOD NEWS! Trump controls the other two branches of the US govt - whilst I wouldn't expect him to always get everything he wants, I'd imagine he'll get a lot of it.
In all fairness I don't think that's valid - operational C-levels in my experience tend to be the up at the crack of dawn, if not first in the office something close to it types. Which is fine - but they also do a completely different job and don't tend to get called at 11pm or worse to fix problems.
"We've observed that it's easier for our teammates to learn, model, practice, and strengthen our culture; collaborating, brainstorming, and inventing are simpler and more effective"
Your culture is bull, give me an interesting problem, pay me a fair wage and - most importantly - leave me alone.
By the way, citations to Atlassian: you'd think they'd know a thing or two about this sort of thing.
Our company hasn't yet, but I have a long-standing contract that says I'm WFH from before covid so boohoohoo if my employer ever pulls a dumb stunt like this, won't affect me. They're (rightly) terrified of doing it with software folk though.
Meme quotes aside.. It would be cool if we could look at CPU arches again given how x86 is even more absurd than it was when AMD bent humanity over that one time.. The number of (major/security) bugs that have happened since that simply wouldn't have happened on Itanium is nuts.
I'm no expert, but it seems like defrauding a US federal law enforcement agency with criminal enforcement powers seems like a bad idea.
I mean if you do the thing they're supposed to be law enforcing against you're going to get a speeding fine and nothing even close to what they're supposed to be doing - but actually directly defrauding *them* so they are the direct victim as opposed to, y'know, people who own stock in things, pension funds etc, it won't end well for you.
This is the same CMA that allowed MS to acquire Activision Blizzard?
.. really?
Horse has bolted on ever keeping MS under control ever again. Might as well train your sights on something else, we're all gonna be working for MS in a few years, one way or another.. Maybe US regulators can do it but they don't seem very interested in trying.
"stopped individuals from running their own SMTP server, due to classifying them all as SPAMMERS"
If you don't know why, you shouldn't be running your own mail server. Also not really, no - my mail server isn't, never had an issue with SORBS - but then I know how to run a mail server which is circular to see first point.
As a Brit, who owns bits of lots of companies, ignoring the utter nonsense above - I'd strongly advise against an IPO on the FTSE given neither FTSE nor either of the two major political parties are willing to fix the FTSE, go NYSE instead.
Take the advice of CEOs who have floated on the FTSE and have learned hard lessons. There's plenty of them around.
I thought everybody had figured out that you can just use kvm/qemu at this point, with a side bonus of it even runs under WSL2 if you're a Windows user..
As for topic, isn't the entire business world running away screaming?
Basically there's no reason for vmware to exist at this point, last one out please turn off the lights.
If normies knew how easy lock picking is, people wouldn't bother using locks. I use ABS ultimate at the back of my house because I know I can get in without keys if I lose them and a BS-rated electronic lock at the front because I know that even if Yale's servers are run by a spotty teenager who (unofficially) works for Mi5 and it all runs on Windows 98 and an era-appropriate Perl install and none of it has been maintained since then it'll still be more secure than the absolute best physical lock money can buy.
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