Posts by MachDiamond

Tesla Robotaxi videos show Elon's way behind Waymo

Re: Still waiting ....

"Rates of RTA deaths in the US are about 5 times higher than here in the UK "

The price of petrol in the UK likely limits miles driven. I also have a chuckle when youtubers describe a 300 mile journey as some sort of safari. That's a trip from LA to Las Vegas, one way. People will do that impulsively.

Since we 'muricans also have some of the worst public transportation, people will drive much more. Some of that is perception, but if I want to plan a long trip, the trip web sites will default to flying. Every month I discover another local train/tram/bus service that could get me someplace without too much fuss that I didn't know about. There's also many times where services don't join up so it mandatory to get a taxi. That can be hard if the once a day train finally gets in at 2am. I've been wanting to visit a property I have a piece of in Wales and a ceremonial 100m2 I "own" in Scotland. I just haven't wanted to fly (in coach). As a domestic terrorist, it's also a bit trying to get through airports, not that I'd try it right at the moment. I've now discovered how to book passage on a freight ship. Pretty much bare bones travel and subject to just about everything the gods can throw at it (rattling my drawers and cooking up a sausage for Offla). NY to Felixstowe would be around £1,000 each way with booking months in advance. Much slower, but a similar price factoring in the counseling to get past the security experience. Includes 2 large bags plus backpack for no extra costs and 3 good meals a day.

Re: Not looking good for Waymo

"In that case, Tesla have an advantage, in that they own a car company. Whereas Waymo are buying in cars."

Outsourcing the car development might be a bigger advantage. Waymo can request modifications from their supplier to get what they need without needing to have an office full of engineers on salary full time. Waymo might also want different cars for different markets or a mix of cars in a single market and can pick and choose. Tesla would have to spend the money to develop those different models to fit certain needs. The Cybercab is two passengers in good physical condition with one getting in and out on the traffic side. A Black Cab or whatever Cash Cab was using in the US seats more people and they can all get in from the pavement side and even bring prams and trolleys. Luggage stays with people in the passenger compartment. Sure, a sensor could be fitted in the boot to detect if there are things stored there, but if the latch stops working/freezes, it could be a long wait for a technician to be dispatched to sort it out. Normally, we don't have issues with the boot opening, but we also aren't using it dozens of time each day. If Tesla is going to build the Cybercab down to a price, I doubt they'll put thought into the reliability of high use electro-mechanical components.

California ghost-gun bill wants 3D printers to play cop, EFF says

banned from the pubs

This is like Trump putting outrageous tariffs on drones. Many new DJI products aren't being offered for sale in the US. I can't get OEM batteries for my Phantom 4 any longer and 3rd party batteries have odd issues due to DRM. They work, but I'll get errors. There's no parts support either. As DJI and Autel are the two largest small drone makers in the world and there's f-all made in the US in the same price bracket, they've effectively banned drones. I can't justify a $20,000 drone system to make photos and video for estate agents. The won't pay what I'd need to charge. Even a couple of grand is only just possible as I'd lose out on profitable aspects of the jobs if I couldn't provide drone photos. Over time, either the service will become unworkable from a cost/price standpoint and disappear entirely or only a very few jobs with high enough budgets will make sense. That will put many small business people out of business and raise the prices for those that can't do without it (GIS mapping services, remote inspections of radio towers, etc). If the same happens in machining, more small run and prototyping will go to PCB Way and JLC PCB in China as well as other Asian countries. Having to constantly fight the software to make parts for customers is time/money lost and that won't be sustainable, CAM software companies won't have customers in the US and will locate elsewhere in the world where their customers are. Wasn't there some talk about Making America Great Again? Nice sentiment if they weren't banning manufacturing and mining in the next breathe.

Re: from what i've seen and heard...

"Just think, the computer controlled machines that are used to manufacture guns in California will no longer be permitted to manufacture guns in California."

The thing is, the actual thing is that they aren't manufacturing a whole gun in one go. It's parts and pieces and many things look much like something that might be a part for a weapon. If your CNC mill is telling you it can't machine a part as it "might" be in violation of some California Law, machines and software will be modified. There's no time for that nonsense.

G-code is also super primitive. One would have to run it in simulation and then analyze the results to see what it's making. If somebody sent me the gcode file for something set up for my 3D printer, it could just run as is. The biggest issue might be the printing envelope. As long as that's within the bounds of my printer, it's ok.

Rotsa ruk Shaggy

When printing a bank note, it has to be spot on. When printing parts for a firearm, there is all sorts of room for design choices.

Any checking algorithm will need to be secret which would mean that there would be no way to tell why your non-firearm part is being blocked from printing. Commercial printing companies will have to locate in states that don't have such restrictions as false positives will be very costly. Any implementation will need an internet connection as the database of reference designs could be massive. Who would maintain the code and database for this? The Ministry of Naughty Print Files with the head Czar ensconced in a gilded office building in downtown San Francisco?

The issue is that judges and prosecutors have gone rotten soft. The rapper Offset who was praised for being brave enough to appear for a performance less than a week after being shot is a convicted felon. I learned that while binging badgecam videos where he had been stopped for dark tinting on his pimped Corvette and the cops spotted 3 loaded handguns in the car and promptly arrested him for "felon in possession". This was before being shot. There wasn't backstory on this in the video and I can't be bothered, but a felony conviction and out driving an illegally modified car and tagged for what should be a major offense should mean a drastic lifestyle change. There's a lot of cherry picking on those video compilations, but there seems to be endless fodder to find people arrested that have rap sheets so long that inkjet ink is being bulk purchased to print them out.

The application of a serial number doesn't make tracking a firearm possible other than from an accounting standpoint. It's no RFID and a large portion of firearms used in crime are stolen. Somebody legit is followed home from the practice range and being a good citizen, locks their guns in their safe. A really cheap safe that's not that hard to break open and not hard to find in a house. If the safe is small enough, they just steal the whole thing and worry about cracking it open later. The owner (assuming legal ownership) will report the theft. The serial number fails to send out a beacon to satellites in orbit and the only way the weapon might be found again is if it is recovered from a crime scene. The really stupid perps will keep the gun after committing a crime with it, but they were going to get popped at some point down the road anyway being that mental. The videos they've posted on social media bragging about the crime while displaying the weapon, if allowed in evidence, will seal their fate, for the next 6 months.

Re: Why 3D Printers?

"3D printers print various types of plastic (ABS, PETG, PC, etc), which all are a pretty bad fit for temperatures and pressures inside a discharging firearm."

There's a lot more to 3D printing than just filament printers. 3D printed metal parts are very common these day and they aren't useful for making the parts that undergo lots of mechanical and temperature extremes. There are a few designs for small caliber one shot weapons but, they can pose as much risk to the shooter as their intended victim.

Amazon pays $11.5B to satisfy satellite-envy while cowering in Musk's shadow

Re: Side note on your side note

"try buying spectacles and choosing a frame"

As far as I can tell, China owns the entire market for frames. Perhaps there's some fruffy designer brand(s) made elsewhere, but I'm not going to pay those prices to be mo pretty.

Orbits matter

Starlink needs a huge constellation to be able to provide consistent coverage from a very low orbit. It's not a pure numbers game.

France’s digital directorate dumping Windows desktops, adopting Linux instead

Re: "Consider [the] Foundation’s scorecard of organizations that contribute to the Linux kernel"

"But switching away is probably going to be a long, hard, trek. I suspect much longer and harder than most Reg readers think."

A journey never begun and all that.

The best time to plant a tree is 10 years ago, the second best time is today.

For as much money as gets spent by governments on M$ licenses, they could have a pretty ripping IT department supporting Libre Office and other products AND contribute to those products with plenty of change left over for lunch.

The licensing overruns might be solved by limiting how many are supervised by one entity. Supervising license usage at one naval base is much easier than supervising the instances across the entire navy.

Tech support chap's boss got him out of jail so he could finish a job

Re: Brentry

"A colleague was denied entry because his name was flagged for terrorist connections, it was a false hit that took months to resolve but is one of the reasons I don't trust government to keep data safe and correct,"

I don't fly commercial anymore as I've come to the conclusion that I'm a domestic terrorist as I'd be "randomly selected" for extra screening on every single leg of every trip. I'd even wound up being gate checked a few times. Bizarre as my name is common as muck and I've never been arrested for anything, I don't belong to any dodgy organizations and stay well away from protests. I expect that having such a common name might be the issue as the government lot can tell one "John Smith" from the next (my name is not John Smith). I've also had background checks/clearances to work at Presidential speeches in the past. They® know who I am if they just bother to look properly.

"They looked through all our stuff, even the kids' rucksacks."

Many times kids will have fruit for snacks in their packs and that's a big no-no. Parents might not think about that having filed them into the "snacks" bin with the other things in the packs being activity items to keep the kids occupied during all of the sitting around doing nothing time.

Re: I didn't get in trouble. Others got in trouble for me.

"He was also very shouty. This tended to make people unfamiliar with him rather nervous. "

Yes, customs agents can be complete pricks. It's a shitty government job and they would have to assassinate a politician at an airport to get fired. They also have loads of discretion. Obviously, they can't grill everybody, but there must be a quota to show they are getting use out of the strip search rooms. There isn't as much fun screwing with a nicely dressed person with a business-like demeanor and these days there's all sorts of surveillance. There's also enough shouty dipshits that are begging to be f'd with that most days it's a target rich environment.

Dress nice, don't get pished at the bar and use drawing room language with your indoor voice when communicating with somebody that can make your life hell. Poking the tiger with a stick while nude and covered in sauce is never a good idea.

Re: $50

"The $50 bill is just held to the back of the passport with a rubber band. Sometimes your "emergency money" comes back with your passport, sometimes it falls off."

Any company that regularly sends people off to certain countries knows there will be a few non-receipted transactions that could vary quite a bit and expect there to be claims. If they don't pay those claims, employees won't go there anymore. Only the executives get paid enough to eat those costs.

Re: Wrong Visa

"I was threatened with disciplinary action from HR as I had used an ESTA rather than a visa"

Now you know that HR's main function is to cover the company's backside, not look after employees. Had there been an issue, you might have had cause for an action against the company.

The ESTA does say (now) that it's proper for business or pleasure under 90 days if you don't already have a visitor visa.

I've made it a point to always arrange my own travel. In this case, I'd also work with my manager on the scheduling. There's no way I'd try to visit 8 sites in 4 days that are all over the place. The US is massive and getting through airports, car hires, hotels, etc is tiring. I don't see how I'd be productive at any but the first site visit and worse than useless by #3. Doing at least some preliminary work by phone could weed out sites that there's no need to visit.

Re: I feel his pain

"Blagged my way across the border armed with the kind of luck and entitlement bestowed only by youthful stupidity."

Some of the Border Patrol shows demonstrate that the agents aren't complete noobs when it comes to people entering a country to work on a tourist visa. They know when they look at a suitcase's contents in many cases. Being honest is the best policy and they might be able to work something out. Make them suspicious and they'll put you on an outgoing flight pretty quick.

Re: Brentry

"The prospect of that sort of travel for work sounds great to me, but, I can easily believe it would become a PITA after a while."

I really enjoyed it when I was a roadie ages ago. Not that I got to see much as schedules were often very tight, I had no transportation and too young to rent a car. I didn't have a credit card either so if I got left behind, I'd be in a load of trouble.

The only international issues were when I worked with bands base in the UK. The entry/exit and work requirements are different than what my USAin carcass was subject too. When everybody was American, the tour chief would make sure everything was taken care of and we all knew what was expected. They were also careful to point out that in some countries "a little pot" can mean a death sentence. That wasn't anything to do with me, but good to know so I wasn't asked to carry somebody else's bag as they set me up as the fall guy.

If you travel internationally for work, you need to bone up on what is required. Luckily, just about all of that can be found online. When I was doing it, I had to send away to the US State Department to get printed materials sent to me. It's also easier now to find tales of things like being denied crossing to Canada for a drink driving conviction whether you will be driving or not. A friend of mine had to find a piano player quick when his regular one couldn't get performer visa for gigs that were already booked.

"even though the sandwiches had just crossed the border the other way. "

Nothing in the "rules" contemplates sandwiches going one way and then the other in 15 minutes and the agent might have been told that allowing it could get them fired (from a government job!) and a loss of benefits.

In some places, border control checks people leaving and entering the country such as going from the US to Mexico. There's a lot of weapons and money smuggling. If you were trying that, you WANT to be caught by the US Border Patrol and not the Federales in Mexico. Coming from Mexico into the US, the products are drugs and humans.

"People just liked it better that way."

Well done! I can't recall any other TMBG's references.

World's smallest violin spotted at Amazon HQ as exec pay packets deflate

Re: "You just had to pay us enough to live!"

Yeah, that was entirely a mental health issue reinforced by The State. Not every job is going to pay a "living wage" and The State needs to realize that fact. Moving bog rolls and kitchen paper around a warehouse with a forklift is not highly skilled labor so it's not going to pay that well. Getting to be an expert in paper making will pay substantially more. The graphic designers that create the packaging will make more.

BOFH: If the meatbags can't agree on aircon, AI will decide for them

Re: Don't turn the thermostat up!

"You have to start with the temperature set low, to 16C or thereabouts. "

If you get the stuff in the room down to a lower temperature, it will take more time before the room feels uncomfortable. If the HVAC isn't sized to keep up, it will always get too hot given time. LED lighting has helped. Event spaces with theatrical incandescent lighting would always get too hot over time as the designers didn't take into account the 24kW or more of heat being pumped in from the lights.

Re: These people have DEGREES!

"It seriously blows my mind that otherwise smart people think their AC will somehow cool faster if they turn the temperature down to the minimum settable level. "

Another thing that doesn't work very well is turning the fan speed up to max. There's less time to transfer cold (or hot) to the air passing through. The distraction is that the faster moving air will feel cooler which leads to people believing that having a fan on will cool a room when it does the opposite. The concept of heat transfer just blows their little minds.

"No, it really doesn't feel right, but the pan actually boils faster if you turn the gas down a little to stop that happening."

Way back in boy sprouts we had water boiling competitions where we'd need to start from a pile of sticks and an empty tin can to a pint or so of boiling water. It got to the point where we would build an approximation of a rocket stove and put what was mostly a blow torch to the bottom of the tin. It also turned out that building a fire and putting the tin amongst the flames wasn't that fast. Fuel efficiency was a factor on long backpacking trips where there was only so much fuel for the camp stove. In plenty of places an open campfire wasn't permitted.

Re: I just knew this was going to come up

" However, in her car the temperature setting will be wildly under or overset even though this makes no difference. I'd estimate this is the same for well over 90% of the population."

I'm thinking that language might, once again, be the culprit. We speak of "turning up" the heat when what goes on is running the heating cycle longer. Turning up a volume control on the hi-fi makes it louder so that metaphor gets ingrained when it doesn't fit what HVAC does. More and more I notice how language influences thought. I've been studying more languages and that can often become apparent when translating.

Re: Don't turn the thermostat up!

"This will cost us £200 to fix."

Better to point out that the money will have to come out of the tea and biscuits fund.

Re: Type A Boss

"I asked one of the facilities engineers if they had ever suggested installing dual set point thermostats. Keep the A/C set to 80, but the heat down to 68 or 70 to keep the cold weather edge off. "Nope. Nobody dares confront the old bastard in the corner office. Live with it.""

I would envision that old thermostat being smashed when some equipment was being moved and, due to it's age, there was no exact replacement (new government regulations, etc) and that dual set point thermostat going in anyway. Plenty of variations on how the old thermostat meets its demise.

Re: There's an App for that.

downvoted for suggesting an app.

Shame on you.

"My offices were always 'orribly cold, so my solution was a small heater under my desk"

Ahh, the circuit breaker exploder.

Re: The only real solution is...

"but not fiddle with the thermostat, that was behind a small faraday cage."

It's so handy to have a CH751 key on my ring.

"Crank up the dial to "high," of course."

Having the flame on a gas hob going mostly up the side of the pot rather than mostly under is slower.

I'd have to take notes for it to be scientific, but if I get the flame correct, it seems like the pot boils faster. I also use the stove top kettle to get the water boiling for pasta rather than heating the water in the pot I'll use for cooking the pasta. The kettle is much better for boiling water. I start the pot with some water in to get it hot so I'm not dumping all of the heat when I pour the boiling water from the kettle in.

Re: I just knew this was going to come up

"Unless you set the timer to turn on well before you want the room to be warm an initial boost will be more effective."

mmmmmm. Once I was able to get a programmable thermostat, I could create set points so on a cold day, the heat would be lower during the time I was at work and at night since I like the room to be on the cool side. I ran some trials with turning the heat completely off during the day when I wasn't home and to cost difference was negligible. What was a difference was coming home to a warm house that hadn't been blasting the furnace for an entire hour straight. I haven't had cooling in too many places where I lived. Now I have an evaporative cooler (swamp cooler) and it gets controlled manually. The week or so in the very hottest part of summer, it might be on continuously. The other times I might turn it on mid-morning and turn it off at bedtime. Since it's on solar now with some batteries and ultimately grid backup, it's not a big cost. The complexity of on/off temp controls would mean yet another science project. The only thing I might do is come up with a system that uses a continuously variable speed fan to do MCPT (maximum cooling point tracking). The bulk of the time I have the fan set to low to get the best cooling. It's only when it's really hot, there's no breeze and the sun is beating down that I need to turn up the fan to move more air.

"I cannot count the times I told her the meaning of the word thermostat, but to no avail."

I've had roommates that could not be made to understand either. I took the thermostat off the wall, poked a hole in the drywall to go through to the other room (my office) and fitted a programmable thermostat with the old one left in place for show. He didn't notice. Once out of the cold and given some time to feel warm, he was fine and would turn the heat down even though it was doing F-all.

Re: So it's true, then

"You see! AI does led to job losses."

"Staff reduction" might be a better wording.

I'd also expect some complaints to a tribunal about hostile working conditions leading to piffle about aircon being a deity delivered right or something. MP's will run with it and pass a few laws regarding min/max allowable temps in workplaces regardless of costs or suitability since no provisions were made for places such as refrigerated food warehouses.

South Korea introduces universal basic mobile data access

Re: Universal basic mobile data access?

"Over here banks seem to be putting in shared ATMs as a way of meeting access-to-cash rules,"

I prefer to use cash for man things and use an ATM for most banking. When I need to go into a branch, I really need to talk with a human face to face. Phone support can be 'ing useless. I'm not going to scan my ID and email it to them. They can be so concerned about fraud that there's no way to do things. It's a bit more involved to commit those frauds inside a branch. Besides, I wind up getting to know the tellers and other staff and they know me.

The other side of that is the more banks become like a vending machine, they easier it is to move accounts as there's little connection to them. I'll buy a drink at the local airport from the vending machine near the pilot's lounge, but I have zero guilt in buying one from any other machine and will even bring my own.

Re: Digital ID Required?

"It’s why M&S, JLR et al struggled to do anything after their cyber attacks."

I'd never have a factory that couldn't operate as an island. For somebody such as M&S, there's too much downside to have a store unable to do business if somebody in a JCB digs through a bundle of cables down the road.

Just recently I was reading an article about online attacks on US infrastructure as retaliation for the campaign in Iran. It seems there are even more attack surfaces to all sorts of things such as utilities and pipelines that are still on the public internet. Bonkers.

Re: everyone has a cell phone

"The alternative was to go to a police station and make a police report, requiring no phone, no app, no data."

Obviously, if you want to report your phone being stolen, you can't do that on your phone.

Re: Digital ID Required?

but having some ready cash to hand to pay for things is a useful backup"

I was on a long business trip and my debit card was compromised. Ever since then, I always bring enough cash to get home from wherever the furthest point is. I'm even more likely to pay cash these days as real time data can be breached and I'm not interested in anybody knowing I'm out of town for a few days. Train tickets I buy well in advance so it's car trips that leave the most bread crumbs.

Re: Digital ID Required?

"It's frightening to think they had digital IDs back during WWII where you had to present your digital ID to get your weekly ounce of butter ration. Oh wait, they did that without a digital ID?"

They did it with printed ration coupons. Imagine the cost to do that today. The cost would be stupendous and the fraud epic. Porch pirates would be snatching mail even more than they do now and post offices would need 24/7 armed guards.

Re: Universal basic mobile data access?

"without being punished by getting cut off from "your" bank account"

I do zero banking online and get by just fine. If the bank announced they were deleting branches I use, I'd be opening an account at their competitor down the street the next day.

"I pay £2.90 a month for unlimited calls, unlimited texts, and 1GB of 5G data"

For $14/month I get calls, text I don't use and 4gb of 5G data I never seem to use up. I just received an invitation to pay twice as much from another company that banged out about how low their prices are and how amazing the service while reselling the same T-Mobile. I could get a lower price but, the further discounts are smaller and smaller as a percentage. Quarterly gives the best return and I'm not tying the rest of the money up for a whole year. I'm waiting for the fiber company to offer a pay-in-advance deal and I'll gladly send them money for 6months at a time and chuck the cable thieves.

Sticky-note security turned gym into hall of '80s horrors

"I often wondered what I would do to a vending machine if given admin access."

If it was a local vending machine, I'd install a code I could use to get free stuff any time I liked. If it were someplace I'd never likely visit again, I'd want a complete code dump to be able to sort out how to root the same model someplace else. To make the carbonated soup thing enjoyable, I'd need to be there to see the results. It's also something that would be fixed too quickly and may prompt the application of the newest security patch.

Re: Manual

"As one lawyer put it, you can write whatever shit you want in a contract, doesn't make it legal or enforceable"

Ever shopped for an attorney? The only winning move is not to play.

In any contract from a blood sucking lawyer, there will be a severability clause. That means that if any clause of the contract is found to be unenforceable, the rest of the contract still stands. You won't get out of one by there being one part that doesn't pass muster.

Re: Manual

"Unlike today where you sign your life and first born away with EULA that can be updated at anytime without notification or consent."

And people wonder why I don't have an InstaPintaTwitFace account.

Here's how to watch the Artemis II splashdown

"There really wasn’t any reason why there didn’t seem to be a live TV camera in any of the small boats or in the command capsule."

I'm not sure there would much good video from inside the capsule. It only looks big due to a UFWA (Ultra-F'ing Wide Angle) lens with everybody tucked into an opposite corner. With all of them moving about in bulky flight suits, many cameras would be nothing but orange.

A nice media boat or two that could haul newsies around wouldn't have been that hard to sort out. They would have been beaming 8k video back to their networks and using professional lenses.

Re: What I didn't get was ...

"SpaceX just lift the Dragon capsule on a boat with just a few people involved."

I believe that the Naval ship had a docking set-up at the stern. They could have steamed over to the capsule, nudged it inside and winched it up to slide a platform/cradle underneath it rather than circling it with rubber boats full of high school dropouts. Did all of the naval personnel have life jackets on? It looked like many didn't. There are research boats that operate deep submersibles that have a crane at the stern for launching and recovering the submersibles. I expect they could pick up a capsule just as well and set it on the deck. With the trillions the US military can't account for, renting a couple of those research ships shouldn't break the bank. For twice the price, they could have their own. If this moon thing is to be ongoing, why not buy 4-5 so there will 2 usable when needed.

The thing they do have dialed in now is a very good fix on where the capsule will splash down so the boats can be much closer. I was also surprised that the astronauts were ferried by helicopter when going in one of the launches (if there was room in any of them) might have been faster.

Re: What I didn't get was ...

"Or ridiculous "front porch"."

It would be a whole lot of "not fun" to have one of the astronauts going for a swim while trying to exit the capsule. 9ish days in zero G isn't a lot, but it can be much like getting out of bed after having a bad flu for a week.

I'll second the Keystone Cops reference. Once the vehicle was safed and there was no chance of leaking MMH, it should have taken no more than 20 minutes. I was flabbergasted given the sunset was fast approaching and there was a boat load of VIPS on the boat waiting for the astronaunts. I expect the astronauts were itching (pun intended) for a shower.

NASA needs to get its media act together. The talker was saying the splash down was at "7:05" when it would have been 17:05 local and other events would happen at "6" something. I was thinking that there was no way that the capsule could be an hour late until I sorted out that the dunderhead wasn't reading the prompter and should have been saying "sixteen" most likely due to having no clue. There should be a nerds feed that dispenses with all the idiots and just sends out information. Even Capcom was off. The woman doing a lot of it had odd inflections that made some statements sound like questions. The video from the craft was dismal. I understand that the crew doesn't want cameras on 24/7, but some shots of something other than an engine bell in 240p or a BSOD would have been much better. Those Deep Space Network giant antennas can handle the bandwidth. Cheers to Madrid and Canberra for continuing to host. There did seem to be many times when two of the "smaller" dishes were in use with the big ones listening to the Voyager craft that now have a nearly 2 day signal round trip. I'll just say that there is better coverage from some Bald Eagle nests here and there.

(1) The flight surgeon probably would have likely wanted to see them much sooner as well to get their vitals as soon after landing as possible.

Suits won't quit AI spending, even if they can't prove it's working

Re: repeated again for emphasis

Another explanation is manglers haven't wanted to put any effort into understanding what can be done and where the limitations are. They are being sold a magical "easy" button connected to nothing. Much like the crossing buttons at traffic lights. They approve "AI" and expect a bonus, fewer whiny employees and "scale like nobody has ever on the planet ever seen before ever".

Re: Humanity

"Connections was a brilliant series."

The James Burke one, yeah? Hamster also did a short series along the same lines.

I'd love to see more of those shows. Most people don't stop and think about all of the things that go into a manufactured product and the immense amount of engineering that came before to have something as basic as a screw and nut. Anybody that's worked on very old kit may have run across fasteners that were hand made and filed to fit. Steam locos can have many many hand fit parts. Oh what a joy it is to build modern things and just order common spec parts from a supplier and not worry that they will fit together.

Re: Humanity

"Sadly, I asked to change ONE VARIABLE, and the guy was at the ChatGPT prompt again."

It's the same with people thinking AI will put photographers out of work. One might spend hours in the studio and the art director wants to move a couple of things a few mm this way or that. Or change some lighting, move the camera, add some condensation drips, whatever. They might even want the model to only have 4 fingers and one thumb. Picky, picky, picky and hard to make those changes in AI without affecting other things.

"I thought an inability to recognise bullshit was a required qualification for C-suite positions."

The training ground is HR where staff aren't bothered to know anything about the job positions or even what the company does.

AI slop got better, so now maintainers have more work

"The models have gotten better."

Better at what is the question to be answered. Elon started measuring performance in power consumed so many metrics are completely useless. Even pure computing metrics such as COWflops* are often quite useless. There has to be useful output before efficiency and value can even be considered.

*Complex Orthogonally Weighted Floating Point Operations per Second

A dose of cute <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4kPfBM6XkGc>