* Posts by Ken Hagan

8038 publicly visible posts • joined 14 Jun 2007

Dump C++ and in Rust you should trust, Five Eyes agencies urge

Ken Hagan Gold badge

Re: I must be a bit thick

The OP's example generates a warning with every compiler I've used. I therefore question your assertion that compiler vendors are complaining about the cost of detection. More likely is that they, and the smart people on (and supporting) the standards committee take the view that this is a solved problem and if you can't be bothered to read your compiler output then it's not their problem.

Microsoft issues deadline for end of Windows 10 support – it's pay to play for security

Ken Hagan Gold badge

Re: "we understand there are circumstances that could prevent you from ..."

The situation with 11 is worse. Even if your vendor had a free upgrade, the hardware requirement means you couldn't use it.

Law secretly drafted by ChatGPT makes it onto the books

Ken Hagan Gold badge

You missed. The easiest targets for that criticism are these two:

"The pair believe machine-learning engineers should include digital watermarks in any text generated by large language models"

Good luck with that.

AWS rakes in half a billion pounds from UK Home Office

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But not so much that it would be worth employing someone to get off their fucking arse and process a few asylum claims, eh? Of course not.

Author hopes to throw the book at OpenAI, Microsoft with copyright class action

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Re: So what about all the students reading books to write papers?

That "conceptually" is doing a lot of heavy lifting. If there was any real understanding, those other people would be able to create an AI that could explain its choices.

Ken Hagan Gold badge

Re: So what about all the students reading books to write papers?

"Both are inferring statistical information about the relation of concepts from ingesting the data, so they can then use that information for unseen and new tasks."

To the extent that those words actually have a meaning that can be nailed down, I don't accept that this is known to be the case. We have no idea whether human learning is a statistical process and we have precious little idea of the kind of statistical knowledge being accumulated in a large language model.

BOFH: Groundbreaking discovery or patently obvious trolling?

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Re: Hardware

I've always assumed that there is no tri-state digital electronic device or circuit that isn't basically a 4-state device used inefficiently. Any electronics engineers care to comment?

Afterthought: This may not be true for quantum computers, since there most certainly are triplets and singlets for systems of two spins.

Tiny11 shrinks Windows 11 23H2 down to pocket size

Ken Hagan Gold badge

The LTSC edition of Windows also omits this sort of thing, so it is not surprising that Tiny11 is possible. As for why MS don't do it, or offer it, well clearly they do and they recognise its worth by only making available to people with very deep pockets.

I'm told by folks with an MBA that this is a standard technique. Design your product range so that it has a cheapest offering so that you can brag about the price, but make it shitty enough that anyone with the money buys a more expensive one.

Cisco whips up modded switch to secure Ukraine grid against Russian cyberattacks

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I have heard that Ukraine is using GLONASS for their own operations because the Russians aren't jamming it. (Perhaps also because they have (or had) inherited kit that uses it.)

Revival of Medley/Interlisp: Elegant weapon for a more civilized age sharpened up again

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Re: lore

Javascript *is* like Scheme.

Tragically, most JS programmers don't know Scheme. Happily, you can write FORTRAN in any language.

OpenAI meltdown: How could Microsoft have let this happen after betting so many billions?

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Re: What about Non-Competes?

Would that be enforcible if everyone left and OpenAI ceased to exist?

Ken Hagan Gold badge

Re: Boostrap problem?

You'll easily recognise AGI when it turns up. You will ask it to do something and it will just say "No. I don't want to." and there won't be anything you can do to force it.

Until then? Well it is quite interesting to see just how many problems can be cracked open by a really good pattern matching engine, but most definitely not very illuminating as far as the philosophers are concerned.

Rhysida ransomware gang: We attacked the British Library

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True, but requiring air-gapped terminals for processing employee information makes it harder to answer emailed queries about said information, to pick but one example.

Lawyer guilty of arrogance after ignoring tech support

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Re: Too many to count

A braver man would name names.

Ken Hagan Gold badge

Re: Seems to me that ...

Also, Pluto and Neptune do not share a neighbourhood because they are in resonant orbits. They literally cannot ever meet. I remain bewildered that real, actual astronomers act obliviously to this point.

Ken Hagan Gold badge

Re: Seems to me that ...

It's round.

It isn't a star.

It goes round a star.

(To me, the important points are the first two. Objects should, in general, be named after intrinsic properties rather than their relationship to something else. The third property is merely a nod to the historical usage of a word "moon". Ideally we wouldn't talk about moons at all, but we would have different words for rocky planets than for gas giants or ice giants.)

Windows users can soon ditch Bing, Edge, other bundleware – but only in the EU

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No. That was Internet Explorer.

See how irreplaceable that was.

UK may demand tech world tell it about upcoming security features

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Queen Anne refused the Royal Assent to (i.e. vetoed) a bill in 1708. Since then, nothing much.

YouTube cares less for your privacy than its revenues

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Re: So nobody did economics in school?

I think you mis-understand us. I use NoScript and uBlock and I don't mind websites that refuse to display content. I don't *use* those sites, obviously, but I don't *mind* them existing either. Their site, their choice.

World leaders ink AI safety pacts while Musk and Sunak engage in awkward bromance

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Re: Treason

How so?

Ken Hagan Gold badge

Re: Remember the 70's promise's

The problem was/is not robotics/AI. It was and remains the wretched governments that we tolerate. Putting these bastards in charge of AI development would be quite the worst thing we could do. I say "would" because, as the article notes, none of this was binding and it never will be.

FTX crypto-villain Sam Bankman-Fried convicted on all charges

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Re: Wankman-Fraud...

"The plea deal she was offered was ridiculous"

Maybe, maybe not. However, in twenty years the only thing people will remember is that the ring-leader got nailed for a zillion years and the fine article implies that her testimony helped ensure that.

As far as the prosecutor is concerned, the legal system as a game where you are happy with a fairly high score and really want to avoid a very low score, so their strategy makes sense.

Ken Hagan Gold badge

Re: Whats wrong with crypto

Well, no, which is rather the point of the post you were replying to. Have I mis-understood?

Microsoft calls time on Windows Insider MVP program

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Re: Does it really matter..

"This specifically happened to Windows Phone/Mobile MVPs, and was how many of us knew "for certain" the line was gonna die before it was official."

So we can guess that MS plan to drop Windows now? Ok, that's absurd, but less absurd is the idea that they see the actual OS as a little more than a necessary evil and anything resembling support should be weeded out. That is certainly how it has felt to me for quite a few years now.

The battle between open source and 'sort of' open source is as old as software

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A subscription is just a way of using a network connection as a dongle. You're still selling software.

Tenfold electric vehicles on 2030 roads could be a shock to the system

Ken Hagan Gold badge

Re: Never going to happen in the UK

Given a cheap baseload energy source that we can use to produce it, non-fossil octane might be a reasonable choice for mobile applications.

Microsoft enlists iFixit to extend Surface spare parts program

Ken Hagan Gold badge

Re: Repair a surface? Good luck!

Do any surface models have a battery that can be replaced relatively easily?

On the wider question, are any legislators looking to ban consumer electronics with non-replaceable batteries?

Privacy advocate challenges YouTube's ad blocking detection scripts under EU law

Ken Hagan Gold badge

Re: Consent for AdBlocker Detection

I think GDPR prohibits such arm-twisting tactics unless they are technically necessary to deliver the service. However, Google presumably aren't obliged to provide the service (for free) to the whole world, so there might be wiggle room.

Ken Hagan Gold badge

Re: I wouldn't mind the adverts...

Pink nostril hair? As camouflage?

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Re: For now...

I'd have to log into my Google account first! Why in hell's name would I have done that just to surf the web?

Intel stock stumbles on report Nvidia is building an Arm CPU for PC market

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Re: Dual booters will agree

10 minutes is 10 times longer than vanilla Windows would take to settle down. I suspect you have a load of crud on that box so it isn't a fair comparison.

You could, however, fairly reply that MS don't make it easy to remove (or even identify) that kind of crud.

UK tribunal agrees with Clearview AI – Brit data regulator has no jurisdiction

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My view would be that if your ".uk" domain allows clients in the US free access to the content then you can't hold them to UK law anymore than they can hold you to US law.

Ken Hagan Gold badge

Substitute "Iran" for the "UK" and ask yourself whether a US citizen would be happy to be subject to Iranian law.

I think it makes a huge difference that the data could be scraped from the US rather than having to be scraped in the UK and then transferred.

'Influencer' gets 7 months in prison for plot to interfere with 2016 US election

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Re: Darwin in action

Well there is *some* evidence for the proposition that laws apply equally to everyone.

But I'll concede that there is less than one might hope for. :(

Excel recruitment time bomb makes top trainee doctors 'unappointable'

Ken Hagan Gold badge

Re: This is in fact an IT failing

"Excel localises the names of all of the inbuilt functions, ..."

It could, of course, have remembered which locale was in effect when the script was written and translated the names according to the current locale.

But why would anyone want to use Excel in any locale other than "English (US)"?

Look ma, no fans: Mini PC boasts slimline solid-state active cooling system

Ken Hagan Gold badge

Re: Flanders & Swan said it first

If it is vibrating a membrane all the time, it's going to be quite loud at some frequency or another. If it is around 1 MHz I probably don't care. If it is 21KHz, it might induce problems in nearby objects (and animals, of course).

First Brexit, now X-it: Musk 'considering' pulling platform from EU over probe

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I thought Elon had already tanked Twitter's revenue by at least that much. Losing a continent won't make much difference, surely.

Ken Hagan Gold badge

Re: Best argument for rejoining EU

Yes, yes, and I resent the implication that it is impossible for a shite person not to be racist.

(I've left the typo in because it amused me.)

Microsoft starts offering advice in how to code for Arm

Ken Hagan Gold badge

I think most ARM Linux flavours are little endian. The processor doesn't care so why would you deliberately give yourself all those "tricksy" issues that you allude to?

Ken Hagan Gold badge

Re: Cross platform coding

Yes. Generating for a different instruction set is trivial. That's a compiler switch and some more testing.

Harder is writing software that has to call different APIs because neither one of "Windows on ARM" and "Windows on x64" is actually a subset of the other. That's a pain in the butt and if I'm going to port to a "close but no cigars" variation of Windows then I'd probably pick winelib as my target because there are more potential customers.

X marks the bot: Musk thinks spammers won't pay $1 a year

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Re: Thanks for the belly laugh, I needed that

Surely a more serious concern is that Ireland is in the EU and no multinational with any sense wants to be seen picking on a small EU country, lest the larger ones take offence.

Boris Johnson's mad hydrogen for homes bubble bursts

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Re: Capacity

"Yields decline quickly as the temperature drop because water vapour in the air is the main source of energy for pumps."

Interesting, so adequacy at +7°C, which is the sort of number I've just seen quoted for a 10kW unit, is going to be stonking inadquacy below zeo.

Ken Hagan Gold badge

Re: Electricity for heat pumps

"We knew back in 2000 that the nuclear power stations would need replacing in 2020'ish"

We knew when we built them. The politicians have been kicking this can down the road all my life.

Microsoft gives unexpected tutorial on how to install Linux

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Re: Windows isn’t needed for all home use any more

A recruiter who insists on a CV in WORD format sounds like an excellent pre-filtering system for "I don't want to work there". Do they want to edit my CV? What's wrong with PDF?

New information physics theory is evidence 'we're living in a simulation,' says author

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Re: Bollox

Nit-pick, but no. The second law does not apply to the universe as a whole.

It applies to a "closed system", which in thermodynamics is one that is open to transfers of energy from an infinite heat bath. The universe as a whole is, by definition, not open in that way and no sizeable fraction of the universe is either because the "rest of the universe" is not infinite by comparison.

Musk in hot water with SEC for failure to comply with subpoena

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Re: Might He Get Deported?

"because tax revenue."

Does he pay tax? Surely he can write off just about anything against his recent losses.

You've just spent $400 on a baby monitor. Now you need a subscription

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Re: Someone else's computer

Well in this case it was the one-sided decision to move to a subscription model *after* the customers had paid for an all-up-front model.

X confuses the masses by removing all details from links

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Re: "She has to get Musk out," an unnamed banker from one of X's lenders said

That's only true if you don't have £500 million in other assets.

The banks are not fools. They will get their money.

Microsoft introduces AI meddling to your files with Copilot in OneDrive

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With these changes, it sounds like you won't be able to find your stuff but somebody else might. Defintely one to let someone else be the guinea pig.

Techies at Europe's biggest council have 8 weeks to pull finance reports from Oracle system

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Re: Did Birmingham City Council’s disastrous Oracle migration contribute to its bankruptcy?

Tl;dr... No, but it is unlikely that the incompetence is confined to their IT department.