Posts by werdsmith

AI can't replace freelance coders yet, but that day is coming

Devstral from Mistral in France is the LLM that is customised/trained specifically for software engineering tasks. It is available as a small model that will fit on a PC and run on a 4090 level GPU if you want to have your own.

It is supposedly able to deal with larger software engineering problems as opposed to using generic LLMs which are good at the atomic chunks of code (which I described in another thread and got obtuse responses).

They are a nascent tech but are coming on leaps and bounds. Best not be an angry stockinger or fingers in the ears denier.

AI can't replace devs until it understands office politics

Re: This is what I keep saying

You are talking about a wider system, and I am talking about solving smaller logical problems within the system.

For example: "write C code to draw a procedural stars with a variable for the number of points" put this into chatGPT and it will do exactly that. It will also add in the stuff to initialise SDL and create a working mini app. I would just extract the bits I need. I've had no need whatsoever to try to define how the code will go about solving the problem.

Re: This is what I keep saying

That's not how LLMs work.

OK, please yourself. But it is how I use them, and it works very well.

Re: This is what I keep saying

There is no need to give it pseudo-code, or even an algorithm. You just describe what you want and the AI fetches up a solution which has its origins in work done in the past by a human.

The AI figures out how to solve the problem and meet the requirements.

As a user of AI, you should be able to read and understand the output and know that it serves the purpose and how it integrates into your wider project. It is truly good at this and some of us, when coding, do enjoy figuring stuff out ourselves and coming up with a solution - but sometimes when pushed for time it does come to the rescue. You can save the good bits for yourself if you want, or even challenge AI to come up with something better by whatever metric. It doesn't just get on and do stuff, it needs a coder to operate.

The modern stockingers are quite verbose in the coding industry, I notice many other disciplines are embracing AI and making good use.

Aussie rocket foiled by premature fairing pop

Re: That typically happens much higher up than the launchpad.

Vegemite is like Marmite for under 12s.

Ransomware attack on food distributor spells more pain for UK supermarkets

There was a suggestion that it was a 3rd party that allowed the attackers into M&S.

Re: These attacks are funded by ransom-payers

weighing the cost of the ransom against the financial loss expected if they don't pay it

The third factor, the cost of engineering systems and having competent staff to be resilient against attack would be far cheaper than either.

Re: Picture

I do recall a person who was let go based on the lack of tickets he was dealing with and closing. Management decided he wasn't needed because of their limited metric.

In fact he was pro-actively looking after his responsibilities so nobody needed to raise a ticket for him.

They learned this after he was gone and went on to be appreciated at a rival company.

No-boom supersonic flights could slide through US skies soon

Re: Comfort

6 foot 3 his how tall I am and I found it quite comfortable.

Re: Market research needed

For a Concorde flight the sensation of take off was *very* different from any other airliner.

Actually going past Mach 1 and cruising at Mach 2 was completely without fuss sensation wise, but the aircraft cabin had displays to show when it was happening and this was exciting (for me anyway).

And of course another 20,000 feet of altitude above the highest subsonic aircraft. So, in my experience, definitely more exciting.

Re: Supersonic flight without an audible sonic boom should obviously be allowed

Let's go a bit further. New York to Seattle. Head out north over the sea to Quebec, blast west at mach 2. Head south over BC. This will satisfy the requirement: " no sonic boom reaches the ground in the United States"

Also, blast out from Miami, staying well south of Corpus Christi should get you to San Diego without troubling anyone that matters.

Re: Market research needed

For shorter flights across the US perhaps supersonic has some merit.

For longer flights, the strategy is to fly overnight as much as time zone overlaps allow and to have a lie-flat bed and sleep the flight away. Then there is zero time lost.

For example, sleep 8-10 hours on a subsonic flight instead of sleeping in a hotel or anywhere then getting up to fly for 3-4 hours on a supersonic.

It would be less expensive all round to equip more of the airline fleet seats with lie-flat or cabin beds if such a market for wealthy people exists.

Of course, flying at mach 2 and 60,000 is a more exciting experience the first time.

Microsoft set to pull the plug on Bing Search APIs in favor of AI alternative

It will no longer produce reliable or sensible results. I hate it when the search engine returns "oh, do you mean $(thisunrelatedthing)" when searhcing e.g. for an error message or well, just anything.

If you just took 5 minutes to learn how to properly prompt a search engine you would never have to see that.

Next week's SpaceX Starship test still needs FAA authorization

Re: Picture of Elmo

Myth. I've lost count of how many times drunks in pubs have recounted this false story..

Boffins warn that AI paper mills are swamping science with garbage studies

Re: Shit "research"

I want to see AI research papers peer-reviewed by other AI systems. For a laugh.

Linus Torvalds goes back to a mechanical keyboard after making too many typos

RPi have changed the keyboard supplier for the Pi500 and so it is improved. I think Pi’s own keyboards are using the new ones too.

I like them anyway, I prefer the short travel low profile keys and the lack of clickety clack you get with mechanical ones. I worked in an office where the loud mechanical keyboards were banned because of the racket.

Mars may have vast underground oceans and enough H₂O to make it a water world

Re: Just cheese

I was considering the layer of caramel atop the layer nougat would make an ideal wave-damper

UK Ministry of Defence is spending less with US biz, and more with Europeans

Re: As it should be

Perhaps Moscow (on whom there's zero tariffs)

Zero tariffs are irrelevant when they are deluged with sanctions.

New Zealand kind-of moves to ban social media for under-16s, require age checks for new accounts

Re: In the Near Future

If he is wearing a baseball cap and muscle shirt then I doubt there is any hair to be greasy.

Re: OK at age 14 or 16?

Or BBC Bitesize GCSE. Or Khan Academy, or any number of YouTube videos that involve skilled educators explaining things carefully. How awful, what is the world coming to?

Some people will just object for the sake of it. "didn't 'ave that in my day. Never done me no 'arm"...."

Re: OK at age 14 or 16?

You will be surprised, then, to find out that the kids use mobiles phones a lot to help with their studies towards exams.

The final bookworm-based Raspberry Pi OS update arrives

Re: No love for x86?

To quote the maintainer on the official Raspberry Pi site:

"I very much hope so – I’ve been trying to get the time to update that for months now, but other things have got in the way – we were actually discussing it this week. So yes, I hope we will get the chance to update it, but we may well end up skipping bookworm completely and moving straight to trixie for it."

EU tells US scientists to dump Trump for a lab in Europe

Re: Universal Healthcare

20 to 30 days actual paid vacation.

That's quite mean. In my experience it starts at 30 and increases with service time. I am up to 35. And that doesn't include bank holidays, national holidays, christmas shutdown etc.

Three Brits charged over 'active shooter threats' swattings in US, Canada

Re: Re :- Swatting

Time goes quickly. 26 years ago.

Raspberry Pi slices Compute Module 4 prices

Re: Relentless price increases are not obligatory

The Raspberry Pi 5 starts from £40+VAT, considering it’s power compared to 2012 $35 Pi, computing with a Pi is considerably cheaper now.

A Pi Zero 2W is far more powerful and capable than an original Pi and costs £15 all on.

Duolingo jumps aboard the 'AI-first' train, will phase out contractors

Re: This time

There are no real human videos in Duolingo, it's all really weird cartoon like characters.

Windows isn't an OS, it's a bad habit that wants to become an addiction

Re: I'e already said this

Read the first paragraph and your question. Answer: virtually all of them

Re: Even With Windows Being Bad, Linux Is Still Too Hard for Most

As far as I'm concerned it's Windows that needs the technical know-how, constant tinkering and a fair bit of learning

Windows is fairly consistent. Whereas with Linux I get frustrated when I need to install yet another package manager. How often do Windows users need to clone a github repository and build the source?

Then spend an unquantified amount of time figuring out why the build didn't work?

Re: I'e already said this

And if people are letting games dictate their life, well, they are not serious people and nobody cares.

I think exactly that about people who feel the need to be sanctimonious about operating systems.

Re: Downvotes missing?

Indeed, if you have received a downvote that means you have scored a bullseye.

Personally I don’t ever use the upvote/downvote because I am older than 12.

Re: I'e already said this

Exactly. I run desktop PCs with Windows and Linux. I also use a Mac. They all do their jobs well and the criticisms I read on Register forums about Windows are unrecognisable in my every day normal use, in fact many are bullshit and misconceptions. Similarly, the darling golden child Linux has problems that are dismissed and overlooked here.

Elon Musk's X revenues in the UK crashed in 2023, down 66%

Re: 66% down

I think being human we can infer the real intention.

66 % down, the rest to go.

UK-based self-driving car startup Wayve heads to Japan for more driving data

So they're admitting self-driving doesn't work in all situations.

What do you mean "all situations" there are situations where humans drivers fail to work properly.

The difference between full self driving cars (that could go to a destination without a human even inside) and driver aids designed to reduce accidents is clear enough. It's good to have the full self driving as a long-reach goal to see what useful tech spins off as a result of aiming for that goal. Whatever saves lives is welcome as far as I'm concerned, we've come a long way in that respect and should keep striving toward zero fatalities.

Trump blinks: 'Substantially' lower China tariffs promised

Re: Looks like China Learned the Lessons of the Opium Wars

Just as certain classes from both these Islands and all countries therein were complicit in Imperialism (along with France, Spain, Portugal, Netherlands..... etc) the peasant classes of all these nations were subject to exploitation as bad as suffered anywhere in the Empire. Including England, and the closer you get to the centre of power the harder it was to rise up against it before being crushed.

I love how the people of the "Celtic" nations love to portray themselves as victims of the English. But in fact all of our ancestors were victims, not of a particular nation but of a particular class of society and that class were landowners everywhere.

Re: Dementia

I have been assuming that Trump didn't come up with this on his own, but has been colluding with a coven of like minded advisers who are are certain to be more intelligent that him.

I wans wondering if maybe these other folk know what they are doing and have modelled and have an expected outcome. It couldn't possibly be Trump blindly following a simplistic specious idea could it?

Surely not the president of the USA. Takes me back to Spitting Image "The president's brain is missing" sketches.

How to stay on Windows 10 instead of installing Linux

LOL, it's harder to keep M$ running that ANY flavor of Linux.

Yeah it's good to keep repeating that on Reg forums, preaching to the converted and all that.

But it's total crap. Objectively bullshit.

It takes one click to join Uber One, but quitting might need 32 actions

Re: So my conclusion is

I've never been in an Uber, never watched Netflix and don't use Meta social media. Not many of us left.

Google, AWS say it's too hard for customers to use Linux to swerve Azure

Re: Hmmm

If you want to use your SQL Server license in AWS or GCP then you must have software assurance to enable the "Mobility". Regardless of whether it's on Linux or MS Windows. You don't need SA for on premise.

Re: Hmmm

I think getting out of MS SQL is much harder for more software than getting out of Windows. But there are Linux versions of that.

Linux versions maybe, but MS still wants the licence money for it, and the problem described here is MS making it hard for people to use Cloud other than Azure using licence money as the weapon.

Europe's cloud customers eyeing exit from US hyperscalers

Re: Hard to escape if....

Google don't make changes to API without notification and deprecation. Its possible to keep up with the changes.

AWS claims 50% of Azure workloads would jump ship if licensing costs allowed

Re: AWS would do the same if it could

Self hosting is indeed a cheaper option. It has been demonstrated here where now only dev boxes remain the cloud, and they are all self contained on VMs, no special managed services.

If we needed to quickly scale up for a massive web global website, for example, this would work better in the cloud. But that's not us.

They reel 'em in with the cheap VMs but then you need this and this and this and this and this and it's all getting very complicated so you need more support staff and structure and so it goes on.

Tesla fudged odometer to screw me out of warranty, Model Y owner claims

Re: "because the warranty had expired and the recall didn't apply to him."

With modern poor road maintenance, bushes tend to get a bit of a hard time.

EU gives staff 'burner phones, laptops' for US visits

Re: I might have to do that as a US citizen

I was stopped at the border from Canada to US, at Detroit. The border guy wanted to look in our coolbox to make sure we had no apples.

Ahh but a rifle is OK in the US, nothing more than a household implement. But a clock on the other hand.....

Dead or alive, Britain hands Schrödinger's industry £121M

The difference is between research and blackmail by companies who want the taxpayer to subsidise them.

Official abuse of state security has always been bad, now it's horrifying

Re: Meh

Obviously not what I said so well done keeping to form. The anti-Trump propaganda seemingly wedged into an article which doesnt really seem to fit in with the propaganda.

So, obviously it is what you said then. Your form keeping is immaculate.

Re: Meh

So it was a good read as long as it didn’t have any content you didn’t like / agree with.

Tech CEO: Four-day work week didn't hurt or help productivity

Re: Friday is my favourite working day of the week

I work Fridays because I want the work off the table before the weekend, I don’t want it waiting for me on Monday.

But it’s near impossible to get hold of a colleague on Friday afternoon. Seems to be some kind of unspoken agreement.

Boeing 787 radio software safety fix didn't work, says Qatar

Re: Who makes the radio

I don't believe that these changes can be made to a type certified aircraft, even a simple PA28 without the help of a licensed engineer. It's also incredibly expensive probably more than the cost of a used PA28 to install a decent Garmin unit coupled up to the flight controls.

Re: Radio stuff

This has all been assessed, the data is gathered the evidence reviewed and the governing authorities deemed it safe for those phases of flight where they now allow it.