Posts by RockBurner

'Hey! I'm chatting here!' Fugazi answers doom NYC's AI bot

“For the first time New York City business and aspiring entrepreneurs will be able to direct their questions to an AI-powered chatbot rather than having to scan through webpage after webpage going into the blackhole of uncertainty about how to open a business, how to run a business, how to answer some of the basic questions,” he said during the announcement. “That is behind us. AI-generated answering is in front of us.”

Maybe I'm naive - but wouldn't it be simpler, and far more efficient to just provide simple rules (and therefore answers) for these questions, in plain language?

High Court to grill London cops over live facial recognition creep

Re: More lies and bullshit from the Home Office

AIUI: it's not even PC Plod, it's a "trained" wetware contractor at best, and an algorythm (AI??) at worst doing the matching.

Don't click on the LastPass 'create backup' link - it's a scam

Re: I'm amazed this still works

It's virtually impossible to find these details in "new" Outlook. Drives me insane.

An old parking meter and a Pi make beautiful music together

re sabotage...

More likely the scammers who stuck up the phoney QR codes that link to fraudulent copies of the parking app website are the ones who sabotage the pay machines.

Doesn't need saying here - but worth pointing out as a reminder... ANY QR code that's physically accessible to the public is a target for a scammer to make use of by sticking up a replacement QR code over the original. If you have to find a new parking app, do it by searching the company name and making damned sure you're on the correct website, or downloading the correct app, before entering any information whatsoever.

I especially love* the fact that Ringo (IIRC) flatly refuses to remember my account login token, so I have to re-login every sodding time I use it. (Which, luckily, isn't too often)

* not

Lawmakers urge FTC to probe Trump Mobile over 'deceptive' marketing

Re: so...

... "Isn't American capitalism great?"

For American capitalists, yes.

GNOME dev gives fans of Linux's middle-click paste the middle finger

Re: Good riddance

Touchpads are the lowest form of user interface, I'd never expect decent functionality from any of them and avoid whenever possible. Apart from possibly touchscreens. <ptooi>

Re: Firefox ...middle-click on a link opens it in a new tab.

Seems to work in Chrome on Win11 too... who knew! :D

(well - I did know.... but I'd forgotten)

Re: Many years ago

"... How long did it take them to implement multiple desktops and desktop switching?"

and for a given (very low) value of "implement" at that.

If it ain't broke....

I've never understood the mentality of removing (as opposed to just disabling it) something just because you don't use it.

As above - by all means disable it, so those of us who do use it can re-enable and use it, but why "remove" it? I can't see the code for this being a massive bloaty chunk of binary that would make any difference to the file size of the OS download, so why strip it? There's far bigger chunks of code that could be optimised, I'm sure.

This definitely smacks of "I've got the power, I'm going to use it", which I suppose it all the rage these days.... <sigh>

Pizza restaurant signage caught serving raw Windows

Re: surely there's a market here.

"... and left the UK?"

Sadly not - there's one on the consumer-estate near me.

Infinite Machine e-scooter is like the offspring of a Vespa and a Cybertruck

Re: Form over function?

It also shows up that there's some serious lack of knowledge about real-world riding.

Without a proper front mudguard (ie one that covers the wheel for at least 15 degrees forward of the wheel hub) the bike and rider will get very wet and very dirty, very quickly as soon as it rains.

I've ridden a C1, it actually worked (rather top heavy admittedly), and if I'd had a non-motorway commute at the time, I would seriously have considered one. It just needed a couple of "curtains" across the sides to make it properly weatherproof as well.

I also had fancies of shoe-horning a BMW F650 engine (or similar) into one.....

Purdue makes 'AI working competency' a graduation requirement

Re: The bubble will have burst before they implement it.

"Trust nothing produced with AI. Do not pay for AI. Do not use AI."

Do Not Collect $200. Go Directly to J-AI-l.

Rocket Lab ready to send a Hungry Hippo into space

Lot of wasted energy there...

If it's going to "spring" open like that.... isn't that going to impart some unwanted thrust impetus into the whole assembly while it's in freefall? I suppose it does depend on when in the launch process the maw opens, but it seems odd to have it move in a semi-uncontrolled manner.

Also - that canard's movement seemed a bit... rough?

Re: Was it Moonraker?

You Only Live Twice.

(also see volcano references above)

Tech leaders fill $1T AI bubble, insist it doesn't exist

I'd liken it more to the FLASH "bubble" (or 'fad'). It's a software that (possibly) has a use-case somewhere, but eventually everyone will realise those use-cases are few and far between, but not before everyone tries to use it for everything and eventually realises it just doesn't perform as expected.

Whatever legitimate places AI has, inside an OS ain't one

Re: "Whatever legitimate places AI has, inside an OS ain't one"

I think you mean "More likely to be right than any given AI response".

Unofficial IETF draft calls for grant of five nonillion IPv6 addresses to ham radio operators

Re: 400 million years in the future

Expect a cease and desist from the Lucas estate forthwith.

Samsung reveals its first tri-fold phone – and its desktop mode

Re: Trifold?

The digital rendering (for such it is), seems to have 2 hinges that fold in the same way. IE, each fold will put the two outer "leaves" being folded into a "face-face" arrangement with the central "leaf".

So ... if BOTH hinges work like that... which part of the time-space continuum is the left (or right) "leaf" pushed into when it tries to move into the same spatial coordinates as the right (or left) "leaf" which has been folded over the central "leaf".

I assume that this HAS been thought about.... but the rendering would suggest otherwise.

Google Antigravity vibe-codes user's entire drive out of existence

Re: THE NEXT BIG THING

"One of the earliest IT Rules people need to learn: Marketing lies "

It's a rule of life, not just of IT. Should be taught in kindergarten.

Ministry of Defence's F-35 blunder: £57B and counting

Wut??

"... has only recently begun talks with partner nations about capabikity requirments the new capabilities, ..."

Amazon Web Services’ US-EAST-1 region in trouble again, with EC2 and container services impacted

Re: Prompt

He's too busy at Microsoft.

The Chinese Box and Turing Test: AI has no intelligence at all

Re: That's not the right question

"... The only reason humans needed to be in the loop before AI was natural language understanding, and that's one thing that AI *is* actually pretty good at - certainly better than the frustrating IVR voicetrees that have you shouting "representative!" in no time. ... "

I'd debate that LLM/AI/Trenchcoated Autocompletes "understand" natural language, as opposed to "recognising" it. Subtle, but important difference. They can identify the language being used, and pattern match it as reference in order to parse their store of information, pick out segments of that knowledge that appear to be related to the pattern, then use pre-defined patterns (and guardrails) to generate a response that simulates a visibly similar pattern to the input language..... but never actually "comprehend" the actual meanings of either the input or the output.

How do you solve a problem like Discovery?

African or European?

Can we not just rename Washington to Houston?

(damn, beaten to the punch.... twice!)

You have one week to opt out or become fodder for LinkedIn AI training

Am I paranoid, or....

... does anyone else think that these "opt-out" checkboxes are simply a front-end function and do absolutely nothing to stop any of the data grabbing they allegedly prevent?

I haven't logged into LinkedIn for about 3 years, I wonder what my password is?

Amazon's AI specs aim to stop delivery drivers getting lost between van and porch

Re: Post codes

"... As far as I can discern, postcodes are based on a number of dwellings ..."

(this is from memory, I've not used the PO db for a few years)...

it's ... "something like that".

In towns & cities a post-code is often (but not always), a "street", ie a vaguely sensible collection of address that have some sort of connection - obviously real-life is not neat and tidy so this is only really a "guideline" in practise.

Out in the countryside the post-code defined areas (yes, they're geo-spatial areas with boundaries) are a bit more random, so some might contain 20+ dwellings, some more, some much less (our one has 4 dwellings, but 6 addresses (iirc) - because one of them is a farm with multiple out-buildings and businesses onsite). The centroid of the area is located about 100metres from my dwelling, luckily in site of my gate, but if you're at the post-code centreoid you can't see my house! (the gate itself is mostly hidden in hedging).

Also - again, if memory serves, the PO used to licence the geo-information at different granularity levels for different prices, so it was very possible for cheapskate companies to buy lower-granularity information depending on their use case, or parsimoniousness.

Post-code GPS coords

The problem there is not the drivers', it's the company itself using the Post-Office database for deliveries, which (if memory serves) does indeed not go down any closer geo-spatially than post-code centreoid lat/longs. Or perhaps they're just still using an old version of the db they pinched 10 years ago.... There are other, better, (more expensive to access) data sources for postal address geo-locations.

Of course it does help when your address is actually contained within those databases.... Mine doesn't seem to be in a rather large number of them (next door is though!)

Clippy rises from the dead in major update to Copilot and its voice interface

Re: "the AI making so many decisions"

people keep saying it..... "Idiocracy was a documentary".

Is PHP declining? JetBrains says yes. And no

Re: One point in favour

Writing PHP daily here and you very definitely can distinguish between integers, numbers (decimals), and strings when needed. IIRC strict typing was introduced in PHP v7.

For Gene's reference - in PHP the operator ' + ' is always "add these vars", whereas the operator ' . ' (full-stop) is "concatenate these vars". Works well.

Benioff backs off: Salesforce chief says sorry for Trump troop talk

Person in public eye says what is thought to sound good in the moment and location.

And we're surprised?

SpaceX's Starship: Two down, Mons Huygens to climb

I'm still somewhat amazed that the SpaceX "Starship" doesn't look exactly like Herge's V2 clone. It's obvious they "want" to make it look like that....

https://playoffside.com/cdn/shop/articles/Tintin_Moon_Rocket_Photo_1024x1024.jpg?v=1649856051

Lowercase leaving you cold? Introducing Retrocide

Meh

Nice retro pastiche look, but methinks I'll be sticking to FiraCode and Inconsolata.

Solar flair: Logitech's K980 Signature Slim keyboard runs on rays

"laptop-style typing experience,"

Are there people who desire this??

Make Windows 11 more useful and less annoying with these 11 Registry hacks

How long will these last ...

... until the next update from MS overwrites the registry again?

Is there any way to make user-created edits to the Registry permanent? (or semi-permanent at least)

Toys can tell us a lot about how tech will change our lives

Adams was right....

"The Internet abhors a vacuum and it wasn't long before Wikipedia emerged, filling the factual space better than Britannica – then rendering it obsolete."

Is Wikipedia the proto HHGTTG?

Why Microsoft has the name of an old mouse hidden in its Bluetooth drivers

Re: "using metric makes you a communist"

On behalf of we in the UK:

Not on your nelly!

Space Command gets Trumped out of Colorado, voting conspiracy cited

"... Huntsville has enjoyed the unofficial title of "Rocket City" for many years. Many US military rockets and missiles were developed and tested at the US Army Redstone Arsenal site, and NASA Marshall Space Flight Center was established there. It was also the site where the Saturn rockets were developed ..."

Is it ... er.... "sensible" to put all the eggs in one basket (as it were)? I seem to recall understanding that there was a good, militarily sound, reason for having your organisations "spread out"....

Older developers are down with the vibe coding vibe

Like others I'm in the "over my dead body" camp.

Firstly, I've been keeping an eye on the "market-place" before wondering if it's worth a try, and everything, yes EVERYTHING I've seen or read has always pointed in the "nope!" direction.

Secondly: I dislike "black-boxen" as a matter of course:. I want to be responsible for the data that my code handles: feeding it into black boxes that do [diety]-knows-what with it is not top of my wishlist.

Thirdly: I have enough difficulty understanding the code I wrote last week (mainly due to poor memory, despite copious commenting), so updating things is always a voyage of discovery (often it's even pleasant! :D) : I have no wish to be debugging random mixes of plagiarised code that is highly likely to contain oddities and bugs that are not readily apparent even at the 3rd close look.

Good morning, Brit Xbox fans – ready to prove your age?

Re: Those who choose not to verify their age...

... No user (read "AI") generated content (read "advertising")? ...

BWAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAH

Oh... I needed that....

Oh, you poor sweet summer child...

McDonald's not lovin' it when hacker exposes nuggets of rotten security

Proofreading?

"We don' need no stinkin' proofreadin'!" (All media sources everywhere at the moment)

I blame an over-reliance on automated spell-chuck and grammur tools built into every single article writing software available.

Microsoft keeps adding stuff into Windows we don't want – here's what we actually need

Some nice ideas there

1: yep - would love that, will never happen

2: oo - nice, but the implementation, as you say, is pants.

3: maybe I'm not enough of a keyboard warrior, but I daresay a lot of people would appreciate it - however where do you stop..... MOD... MOD-2.... MOD-3... MOD 4 (the Revenge!)

4: I can barely remember the "standards"....

5: F-ME YES!! PLEASE [DEITY] YES!

6: meh

7: PLAESE [DEITY] YES!! And while we're at it - STICK APPS TO THE WORKSPACES I PUT THEM ON!!

8: Yeah - that would be nice.

9: Be even better if they kept the audo controls in just one place... sodding fed up tinkering with audio in the OS AND audio in Teams every sodding day.

10: well, dur.

Extra things I'd like:

A: KEYBOARD CONTROL OF WORKSPACES!! Yes I can flit back and forth across the varios workspaces setup to my hearts content... SO WHY CAN'T I MOVE APPS WITHOUT THE MOUSE?!?!

B: Notifications I can re-find after they've been "acknowledged" in the OS popup which disappears the instant my eyes flick to it, so I a) can't read the notification or b) I click it and then it's NOT in the manually dragged out "Notifications" modal.

LLM chatbots trivial to weaponize for data theft, say boffins

Re: privacy / security guardrails...

If you're talking to a trusted information source (eg your GP), and they are using one without telling you, then you have no control over that.

Desktops and printers in coffee shops? Starbucks Korea tells customers to 그만 해

Re: Had the opposite over here

"... The bank couldn't show him unless he took his device in with him. Would've needed to take desktop PC and monitor in. .."

Do it. And video the experience.

Re: Now I understand

For reference see the under-appreciated cinematic art-piece "The Rebel", starring one Anthony Hancock.

"I don't like froth!" :D

No more 'Sanity Checks.' Inclusive language guide bans problematic tech terms

Re: CONTEXT

".. without knowing who wrote them (and why) their meaning can be totally misunderstood ..."

Applies equally to anything and everything written at any time, including what's on the Internet.

Re: Quite possibly

Wow. I won't use "greybox pentest" lightly ever again. Although at some point the lack of acceptable terms might lead us to using UUIDs for technichal terms, for fear of an outrage. That should give us ~10 years, before d7e909ab-62f2-4fa9-a23a-6fb79657d3c0 is deemed offensive in the context of 4b7a903e-962a-4f68-9dd4-230017a0c5a9

I didn't know you spoke LLM!

Meta training AI on social media posts? Only 7% in Europe think it's OK

"simple..."

" .. they must provide people with clear information about these activities and give them a simple route to opt out of the processing."

I'd like to see the variation between Meta's definition of "simple" and the ICO's definition of "simple". (in fact I'd like to see either.... just to confirm either party actually have any knowledge of the term... )

Microsoft eventually realized the world isn't just the Northern Hemisphere

Re: Oh, whoopee doo

oh the dreams we dream....

https://xkcd.com/927/