Posts by Throg

Sci-fi authors Scalzi and Stross decry AI's dystopian impact on their craft

Re: "having a copy of the Oxford English Dictionary on the shelf"

As long as it had entries for “sausage” and “aardvark” it was a proper dictionary.

The AI bubble is already popping; we just don't know it yet

Not every technological development is beneficial. See the Sinclair C5, 3DTV, the Metaverse etc.

Tractors solved an actual problem. There was also a clear development path to meaningful improvement that made them viable.

LLMs (which is the “AI” in this context) are a solution still looking for a problem. There’s also no clear path that takes us from where we are towards genuinely useful AGI.

Anthropic and OpenAI are competing to see whose agents can go rogue harder

One leads to the other and then back again.

Also let's not forget that the overlap on the Venn diagram is significant.

It’s because you and I aren’t the target audience for this performance piece.

Rather it’s the gullible senior execs at every big corp, via the breathless reporting from the 24x7 media who need a continuous stream of “exciting” stories to tell.

OpenAI's Hugging Face debacle makes a great case for open models

Capable?

Are we supposed to believe this nonsense that it was all down to the capabilities of the “AI”?

Occam’s razor suggests that this was nothing more than a carefully orchestrated publicity stunt.

The target market for these products is not you or I, it’s the gullible senior execs who have to be convinced of the almighty power of “AI”. The more these stories circulate with no critical thinking or investigative journalism applied, the easier that becomes.

Billing software error sends billion-dollar AWS estimates

Vibe coding…?

…so much winning.

How to teach an old Intel Mac new tricks with OpenCore Legacy Patcher

Re: A few points about OCLP

I suspect that they'll crack T2. I was skeptical about them cracking T1 and I was happy to be proved wrong.

I have a couple of 2009 Macs running OCLP.

Granted I've not taken them past Ventura, but that's still a useable OS. And let's face it, with the spec of those machines you're not going to be doing video editing, music production anyway The iMac that I'm currently typing on is on Ventura (without OCLP) and that IS still a capable home studio machine.

TBH though, I've found that simply installing ElementaryOS is comparable in terms of extending the life of older Macs. You still end up with a perfectly useable office portable.

Linus Torvalds tells AI haters to fork off

Not at all.

Adopting Rust isn't just about approving another language and compiler. The whole philosophy behind Rust involves a different way of thinking about the code that you're writing. Assuming you're doing it "right" of course, rather than bending Rust code to make it do things in a C like way.

For anything other than a very small project, having two radically different approaches within the same code base is just inviting a long term maintainability issue. Any maintainer needs to have a thorough understanding of both to be able to make changes or introduce new features.

LLMs might spit out terrible code, but at least (in theory) it's based on code written by other people with the same basic mindset.

The problem here is that "time to code complete" is always the wrong metric.

Re: black ans white... not

Reading and reviewing code is hard. Really hard. Personally I think anyone who says it isn't is kidding themselves. It can also be crushingly dull at times, if not most of the time.

Code review is hard when that code is written by a human, simply because given a problem (especially a code related one), two people can probably think of at least three ways of solving it. I've seen code review descend into "well I wouldn't do it that way" arguments rather than trying to assess whether the code in front of you is a valid and clean approach.

I tip my hat to those that will scoff, but this is why I've always been keen on pair programming rather than code review as a way of getting two pairs of eyes, and more importantly two brains, solving a problem. Both people are working within the same context, are wading through the thicket of (often vague) requirements and share an understanding of the solution, plus its strengths and weaknesses.

Can you pair with an LLM? Given the stochastic parrot nature of the tool, my opinion is that it's highly unlikely. I also worry about the real hallucination, which is as Cory Doctorow recently said not the output of the LLM, but being lured into the belief that there's actual, human-like intelligence at work.

Metal v Wetware?

I can kind of see the argument from his perspective.

Maybe I’m wrong, but when you’re working close to the metal then I’d suggest that your requirements spec is more likely to be very precise. Hardware doesn’t forget things, or change its mind and isn’t vague and handwavy.

Under those conditions, then maybe I can get on board with the idea that you can describe the problem in sufficient detail for an LLM to be a kind of pair programming partner.

I think the problems are much greater the closer you get to the very unpredictable and imprecise wetware.

I’m still not entirely convinced though.

MPs fear Treasury cold feet could sink Whitehall's £1.15B shared services push

Re: Napkin maths

The problem here is that we (well most of us) still think we live in a world where productivity, quality and striving to create something useful at a reasonable price matters.

That world disappeared probably two decades or more ago. We've allowed our societies and institutions to be run by people who not only believe that the appearance of something is more important than substance, but that as long as the money continues to circulate around a dwindling number of megacorps and overprivileged individuals, nothing else matters.

Does that sound paranoid? Maybe. I'm just struggling to rationalise any other explanation.

Capita hears demand for pension scheme cleanup 'loud and clear' – but won't say yes

Stakeholders?

No one should be letting Crapita off of the hook, but there’s another group of people who also need dealing with, and rather robustly at that.

At least one (probably more) senior civil service stakeholder signed off on this fiasco going live.

They also either failed to have a rollback plan or chose not to invoke it.

C programmers commit fresh crimes against readability

Re: The Art of Computer Programming

It depends on context.

If you’re working on a codebase that’s expected to have a relatively long lifetime and to be maintained by a team, then readability is paramount.

With these kind of projects, we end up spending far more time reading code than writing it. Even your future self will thank you for making that less of a chore.

The point however is that readability has very little to do with code formatting, how many brackets you use etc. it’s much more about using the right nouns for variables / objects and verbs for functions / methods, functional decomposition, keep it simple stupid etc.

That’s as much art as science.

Australia investigating five social media giants for not enforcing ban on kids

Re: Social Media

Banning “curated” timelines would be the big change I’d like to see. I think social media in general would be a much better place if people only used “friends and following” feeds.

I’d also like to see better vetting of advertisers, better responses to scam reporting, a de-emphasis away from likes and some kind of action against clickbait.

But of course all of this costs money and heaven forbid that.

AI coding agents could soon cost more than the developers using them

Re: Too greedy...

Problem 4: when it doesn’t, and indeed never has done, what it says on the tin.

It could be (and has been) cheaper as chips and still a waste of money if it doesn’t actually produce anything of value.

British Home Office seeks techie to herd nearly 1,000 engineers looking after 600 systems

Re: If you pay peanuts...

Some would suggest that maybe it’s a way of adhering to “fair and open completion” rules whilst also ensuring that the (ahem) right candidate gets the job.

I couldn’t possibly comment.

Windows 11 turns five, leaving some important lessons for Microsoft

Re: If 11 is bad, imagine what 13 will be

Windows Bill & Ted?

Britain's privacy watchdog quits after 'poor judgment' admission

So not because they’re not fit for purpose then?

That says all we need to know about where the actual priorities lie.

Major US carrier stored credit card info in the clear, employee learned on first day

Re: Telco Databases

“Get over it”?

If the company in question are holding credit card numbers in the clear, never mind CCVs as well, then they’re not PCI-DSS compliant.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Payment_Card_Industry_Data_Security_Standard

If they’re in the UK or EU, that’s also a GDPR violation. The financial penalties can be quite severe. €20 million or 4% of annual global turnover (whichever is greatest).

And people wonder why we’re dismayed at the plummeting standards of corporate IT these days.

Capita is about to sail past deadline to fix civil service pensions scheme

Not Letting Crapita Off The Hook...

...but what about the internal stakeholders? They must have signed off on this clown car. When will they be held to account?

Of course this is a rhetorical question.

Britain plots digital bedtime after kicking under-16s off social media

Re: Australia+

I suspect the eventual response will be along the lines of “look, we did what we could and the nasty platforms are still letting kids get around it.”

Cue even more draconian measures.

The only reason why I don’t think this is a deliberate strategy is that I never ascribe to malice that which can be explained by stupidity.

There’s a flaw in your nice tidy theory, and it’s the one that big tech are using to counter the argument for this ban. (Stopped clocks etc.)

Where do you think the kids are going to congregate online when the big, regulated platforms are out of reach?

Yes, you got it. Unregulated platforms run by the very same bad actors that we’d rather they avoid.

I suspect even Mr Yaxley Lennon or whatever his name is has also worked that out.

“ Of course, Starmer is unlikely to still be PM by then - he'll be lucky to see out the summer - so he doesn't give a shit.”

Yes, that’s one of the big disappointments. In some ways I’d love him to still be around when it turns out that this is all a farce, and more people start to realise that.

See also his statements along the lines of “Isn’t AI brilliant! We should invest in that…”

Re: A few minor points

Oh please let that be true…

It’s relatively simple.

- Establish standards that ensure parental controls are easy to use (assuming this is even needed)

- Educate parents in their use

- If all else fails, make it an offence to provide a minor with a device and/or access to the internet without parental controls and filters in place.

A few test cases would focus the mind.

It also solves the peer pressure issue. Very few children wouldn’t find “I can’t, Daddy will go to prison” a compelling argument.

Re: Reeally....

Apple are already doing this in iOS 26.5.

In my opinion, they took a very pragmatic approach. Their first check is to see how long you’ve had an Apple ID, then infer from that whether you are likely to be over 18.

In my case it sailed through and there were no further demands for any kind of real world ID.

I presume Google can do the same, and I’ve had the associated Google account longer than the Apple ID, but my business Android phone stopped taking updates ages ago.

AI is code – and can't be prompted into being smarter

This is the way.

Signal says UK plan to scan devices for nude images 'endangers us all'

Re: This law endangers the privacy of the entire world, not just the UK

From the little I've seen thus far, the new parental controls in iOS 27 look like a sensible way to go.

I think the problem from HMG's perspective is that it clearly leaves the parents with the responsibility for what Junior sees on their device. I suspect that's not sufficient, HMG must do the parenting.

Apple's Orwellian device controls for tots also mean more work for parents

Re: UK users

If you don’t have a payment method attached to your Apple account, that cuts you off from a significant proportion of the App Store.

I thought Apple took a very sensible and pragmatic approach to age verification. “Oh, you’ve had your Apple ID that long? No further questions…”

It’s Basic Parenting

In my opinion this is absolutely the right move, and it’s an up to date version of the rules I had for my kids, back in the days before mobile devices made that more difficult for the average non-techie grown up.

It’s worth noting (and I don’t see it called out in the article) that this is not Starmer’s magical universal grot filter. According to what I’ve read, the image blurring only works in FaceTime and iMessage, which is logical as (duh) Apple control the functionality of those apps.

'Please do not vibe f--- up this software': Broken backups spark AI coding row in rsync project

Sheesh…

It’s almost as if deterministic and non-deterministic doesn’t matter any more…

Remote work – not AI – is killing job prospects for the youth

I came down into the comments to say exactly this.

Poor managers, particularly micromanagers, rely on observing and directing motion. The problem with this is that moving in pointless circles is still motion.

Good team leads know that objectives and outcomes are the key to real productivity. If the team are producing deliverables, then the team is working. If there are no deliverables, there’s a problem to be addressed.

If you’re tracking delivery, it really doesn’t matter where the team is working.

AIs don't like religion – particularly Jehovah's Witnesses, study claims

Re: Full disclosure, I am an atheist, but ...

…and you can’t prove that $DEITY doesn’t exist, any more than you can prove that fairies don’t live at the bottom of my garden, or that it’s truly impossible to turn base metals into gold.

Agnosticism is the only truly non-faith option, unless of course someone can design an experiment and use the scientific method to prove a negative.

Re: The next step

It’s more that logic is irrelevant to religion. Faith is all about believing something in the absence of evidence.

As anyone who is familiar with Babel Fish is aware, introduce logic and evidence and it’s no longer faith.

GitHub Actions outage told devs 'your account is suspended'

BSM Williams…

…always comes to kind in these situations.

“Oh dear. How sad. Never mind.”

Tony Blair and the Reform party both want AI in government, though they can't agree on what for

Well duh

Why on Earth would anyone assume that any politician has a clue about anything even remotely technical?

Decades of evidence suggests otherwise.

AI hiring algorithms reject Black, Asian job seekers at higher rates

As Ever…

…one has to ask is this correlation or cause?

It’s possible (and in my opinion likely) that this is more to do with “the algorithm” looking for characteristics that are exhibited by people from a nice, comfortably well off, middle class background. Many organisations hire in their own image.

A side effect is that those ethnicities are (again possibly) less well represented within that demographic. But even if you’re not from an ethnic minority and from a typical working class background, you’ll still not make it through the filter.

Logitech unveils a cushioned mouse for all-day use

Southpaw

Where are all the activists and do-gooders campaigning on behalf of the 10% of us who are left handed? /s

SaaS outfit ClickUp promises seven-figure salaries for survivors of 22 percent staff purge

Senior Execs

With any luck, when the LLM hype bubble eventually bursts, it might take a few of these senior execs with it.

They seem to have a religious belief in “AI”, driven partly by FOMO and partly by the fact that the marketing hype tells them what they’ve always wanted to hear.

It’s exposing what many of us always suspected - they actually have very little idea how their organisation works and what their people do all day.

They’re not the great leaders that they think they are, and they’ve been duping shareholders. They’re really nothing more than overpaid sales and marketing people.

Microsoft fixes VS Code after app gives Copilot credit for human's work

Re: OPT-IN

Agreed.

My Echo Show recently “upgraded” me to Alexa+ Early Access. It don’t ask, it just did it.

The thing has been irritating me for a long while, but until now I’ve put up with Amazon’s nonsense as it was a handy kitchen timer and smart speaker.

This has pushed me into doing the right thing: jailbreaking it and installing LineageOS.

VS Codium

I’m only an occasional user of VS Code but this is why I’ve switched to VS Codium. No telemetry, no tracking and most important of all, no Copillock.

Microsoft's bad obsession is showing up in shabby services and slipshod software. Here's proof

Re: The precursor of enshittification

May I also recommend “Virtue Hoarders: The Case against the Professional Managerial Class” by Catherine Liu?

It’s a smidge dry and academic in places, but it’s relatively short. She absolutely skewers the problem.

Re: What About Alternatives - Gitlab ? or Other

I moved everything to GitLab last year.

It also has “AI” tooling but so far it’s opt-in only and (as far as I can tell) only available in the paid tiers.

Caveat: I only use it for personal and open source work.

Brace for the patch tsunami: AI is unearthing decades of buried code debt

Would this be the same technical debt that almost every software engineering team identifies at some point, but then gets told “no, ignore it, new features more important”?

UK drivers' agency shrugs off claims of week-long booking site smashes, blames browser configs

Pick One Of…

Is it…

(a) You’re holding it wrong

(b) We outsourced to the cheapest supplier

(c) Vibe coding! We can get rid of our humans!

(d) All of the above

Finance company stores DB credentials in helpfully labeled spreadsheet

Doing It Wrong

If you run a "DevOps" shop, you are asking some of your technology people to both support production environments and have developer-level access to the code they have in production.

I realise that this is a cliche answer, but if that’s what “DevOps” means to your organisation, you’re doing it wrong.

Everywhere I've seen this done, I have seen higher levels of unauthorised changes, higher levels of post-change incidents, higher levels of downtime.

This is nothing to do with DevOps per se. I’ve encountered it in organisations with no automated build pipelines etc.

It’s a people problem. Overzealous managers who don’t have the experience to understand why it’s a bad idea, coupled with over enthusiastic dev teams who don’t… yeah you can see where this is going.

My rule as a team lead, regardless of DevOps - no developers in prod or staging, ever. It’s a hill I’m willing to stand or die on in the face of upper management pressure.

Locked, stocked, and losing budget: AI vendor lock-in bites back

This is yet more proof that your C-level executives don't have a clue about what they're doing...

Sadly in my experience you could probably have stopped that sentence right there.

Microsoft's GitHub shifts to metered AI billing amid cost crisis

Re: The free ride is nearly over for so-called AI.

if it wasn’t genuinely useful, companies wouldn’t be paying for it.

Seriously? Have you ever worked for BigCorp?