* Posts by MyffyW

2009 publicly visible posts • joined 11 Jun 2013

Microsoft promises Copilot will be a 'moneymaker' in the long term

MyffyW Silver badge

Tried it today - turning 12000 words of random notes into a PowerPoint deck. It basically just cut-and-pasted it into a pretty shit presentation. Not even particularly well formatted (not quite into additional limb or a missing finger territory).

Then asked it to compose an email thanking my co-worker for enrolling me in the trial. Was so fawning and gushing I actually blushed.

Deeply underwhelmed by Co-Pilot for office.

'Chemical cat' on the loose in Japanese city

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Re: Looks like Curiosity did it again

I'm glad I'm not the only one who felt sorry for the cat :-)

Brit chip industry wonders if UK budget will put its money where its silicon is

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Situation Normal

Unless we are talking about McCain oven chips, I wasn't aware we had a significant chip industry. I read the article and I remain to be convinced.

US and Europe try to tame surveillance capitalism

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Re: How many times?

It's certainly their business model

But I agree with the first poster, it's none of their effing business :-)

Please stop pouring the wrong radioactive water into the sea, Fukushima operator told

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It's powerful stuff. I found myself wondering if superheated dihydrogen monoxide might be the propulsion system of the future.

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Re: "could cause us to lose the trust"

Remembering fondly the TEPCO exec who help a glass of Fukushima water to show how safe it was, and then the look on his face when invited to drink it. His hesitation was perfectly rational, but lousy PR.

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"Half life ranging from negligible amounts of time to 5,000 years"

If I had to swim in it right now, I'd take the 5000 years please. Less likely to give me that ruddy glow I'm not looking for.

If it was soaking into the soil, I've prefer it to tend towards the "negligible", so my great-great^10 grandkids don't have to worry about it.

City council megaproject mulls ditching Oracle after budget balloons to £131M

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I had an app for that!

Surely missing a "C" and an "R" from that anon :-)

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Re: Why?

Vendors have traffic lights for client accounts, with unfolding trainwrecks often coloured a deep red. Which incidentally ties in with Oracle corporate branding ... serendipity?

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Re: So, continuing the follow-up of the disaster

Ah yes, I remember spending 15 minutes on the toilet and thinking "I'm billing how much for this"

China could be doing better at censorship, think tank finds

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Re: Was starting to feel sympathetic towards the censors

Very good ... now, Don't Stand So Close To Me ... the censors are watching Every Breath You Take

A small Alaska town wants a big bronze Riker

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Isn't that the plot to Road House?

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Re: Wait til the statue is up and the town finds out...

Ah yes, but two centuries are a long time in Alaskan politics.

Americans wake to widespread AT&T cellular outages

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Re: Well that's interesting...

"A communications breakdown can only mean one thing - I-N-V-A-S-I-O-N"

- Star Wars, Episode 1, The Phantom Menace

AI won't take our jobs and it might even save the middle class

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Back to plumbing then...

It won't, he says, let untrained people perform skilled tasks like catheterization. Thank goodness for that. I would not want some AI-trained clutz trying to shove a tube up my mary-jane. But surely this only serves to illustrate the previous "train as a plumber" guidance?

ANZ Bank test drives GitHub Copilot – and finds AI does give a helping hand

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Re: Did Copilot write the report

I suspect it might have written the bit that said "Copilot generated more code, although the quality of software generated was worse than human-built software".

We don't necessarily want more. I can remember a time when just having more code was a bad thing. I would argue it still is.

Tesla Cybertruck gets cyberstuck during off-roading expedition

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Re: Welcome to the Future?

I think Elon's "I want to get off" [world] tech is also still experiencing rapid unscheduled disassembly.

'Birthplace of Amazon' on the market for $2.28M

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Re: giving a healthy return of 52 percent

Remember that one day Amazon will be remembered in the same way as Standard Oil (or perhaps Sears). All this will pass, thankfully.

Sierra Space bursts full-scale inflatable space habitat module

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By Vectran's Beard

Is it just me, or does that material sound suspiciously like a Mitchell and Webb sketch?

NASA's Artemis Moon missions take a rain check until 2025 and beyond

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Re: No need to rush

Very concerned by the line "our hardware is performing according to requirements". No - you did not expect the charred heat shield to flake. It has now flaked. Must I recall (again) the minority report of a certain R Feynman?

Need to plug in an EV? BT Group kicks off cabinet update pilot

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Re: "comes from renewable energy, we're told"

"You have to wonder what they know that we don't."

Well not so much what they know, as what they have - coal reserves and plenty of people they can employ, coerce or force to mine the stuff for very little labour cost.

Doom is 30, and so is Windows NT. How far we haven't come

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Re: Word 6

I did my entire final year design project on Word 2. And the output still has the crisp perfection of New Orders Substance album cover.

MyffyW Silver badge

Re: Computer did get faster, software did get bloated.

Or Frontier, the only game to simulate our entire galaxy from spiral arms to 1m topographical features on a 720KB disk

Share your 2024 tech forecasts (wrong answers only) to win a terrible sweater

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Re: Unity

I would actually be intrigued by Windows as a desktop environment atop Linux. So - alas - it has zero chance of happening.

The good news though is the winner is clearly Spartacus. The bad news is ... You Ain't Spartacus :-)

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Is Q* the result of copulation between Janeway and Q out in the delta quadrant? Asking 'cos in the current UK winter freeze I'm suffering from my own deltaQ

Ukraine cyber spies claim Putin's planes are in peril as sanctions bite

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Re: "the civil aviation sector of terrorist Russia"

"Use the correct pronouns, or be fined or jailed"

oh please! are you hoping that a few transphobes are going to join your pound shop Soviet Union fan club?

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Jospeh Vissarionovich reports Civil Aviation Sector in Russia is "Dizzy with Success"

Oh bless. I've really missed RT from the airwaves, so glad to see it has made it into the El Reg comments section

Amazon to staff: Come into the office – it'd be a shame if something happened to your promotion

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Re: box-shifting-cum

@LybsterRoy - you sir, just made my middle-aged day :-)

MyffyW Silver badge

box-shifting-cum

That's all I read in the subtitle and I'm reduced to a fit of the giggles. I know Amazon are bad but comparing them to ejaculate seems a little harsh :-)

... on the other hand 20th century attitudes to office attendance need to be called out.

Woman jailed after RentaHitman.com assassin turned out to be – surprise – FBI

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Re: I hate to say this, but it's sad that there are homo sapiens so f'in stupid

yes ... it was *totally* a pun and not a spelling mistake on the part of yours truly :-)

MyffyW Silver badge

Re: I hate to say this, but it's sad that there are homo sapiens so f'in stupid

Canada Geese can be viscous, it's true,

But for weapon potential, it's "poo",

A curious shade,

of brown and green jade,

Comes out when they go to the loo.

[The writer is now receiving treatment for PTSD after a flashback to visits to IBM North Harbour and the "landscaped" lakes and gardens]

As the Top500 celebrates its 30th year, with a $5 VM you too can get into the top 10 ... of 1993

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Re: we opted to run Linpack in Vultr

vwls r s lst yr

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Re: SPARC power

I remember putting a 1GB hard disk into our file server at the start of my career.

I remember taking 1GB RAM modules out of a server little more than a decade later.

Nowadays you wouldn't buy a phone with just 1GB of RAM.

YouTubers kindly asked to mark their deepfake vids as Fake Fakey McFake Fakes

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Re: Yeah right

The one I find most amusing is the advert for the car I already drive. Not accessories, or servicing, but encouraging me to buy another. Because you totally do that on a whim...

SpaceX's Starship on the roster for Texas takeoff

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Re: Is it just me

Some of my friends did get me listening to Alice Cooper in my formative years - does that count as heavy metal contamination?

you're poison running through my veins!

Bright spark techie knew the drill and used it to install a power line, but couldn't outsmart an odd electrician

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Yes, my dramatic story arc had already predicted fun and games with differential earths. Remembering fondly (sort of) the "earth" we had at one plant which registered about 100V. Well it kept you on your toes ....

RIP: Frank Borman, NASA commander of first Moon mission

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Borman - Lovell - Anders

I remember sewing an Apollo 8 mission patch onto my denim jacket (don't judged - it was 1987) and the beautiful imagery of the figure 8 mirroring the orbit of the moon. RIP Frank, you inspired me even if I'm still frustratingly earth bound.

Wipro: Get back to the office for three days a week or else

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Re: Letter

yeah ... it's the insanely long office leases. Maybe flogging off our HQ building and signing up to a faustian pact with a property management company wasn't such good business after all. Who knew!

From Apollo to Space Shuttle, Thomas K Mattingly's stellar journey ends at 87

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That is a truly awesome - and humbling - XKCD.

ty

Musk thinks X marks the spot for Grok AI engine based on social network

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Re: Grok

Grok is definitely the answer, if the question is "how can I further enshitten the platform formerly known as Twitter?".

Infosys co-founder calls for youth to work 70-hour weeks

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Re: It does

For those of a certain age in tech our incomes will have increased by a large multiple over the last couple of decades, however that has nothing to do with long hours, and a lot to do with education, training and realising the benefits of working well with others.

Over a long enough period of time long hours achieve nothing in and of themselves. And billionaires bring precisely zero insights to the discussion: their experience is as divorced from the argument as that of the low-caste "manual scavengers" that die in their sewers.

King Charles III signs off on UK Online Safety Act, with unenforceable spying clause

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Re: Safe

Kahn's "stop the proles from travelling" cameras are bad not a thing

They might be describable as "stop the proles from choking to death", but I would prefer to avoid hyperbole and stick to the facts.

It is 20 years since the last commercial flight of Concorde

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Re: Gorgeous aircraft

Watched it coming into land at Manchester a few times, so graceful. And one dark evening I remember it going over our house (a good twenty miles downrange from the airport) with the landing gear stuck and having to fly at low altitude - my goodness! What a noise!

NASA celebrates 40 years of Discovery, the longest-serving Space Shuttle

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Re: Spaceship

Well ... Nixon also curtailed the Apollo programme, which given it's experimental nature (and if left to run for long enough) would possibly have had further casualties. Space is dangerous. Nixon was an autocratic old fsck who was rightly removed from high office. But his culpability in Astronaut-hazing is not quite so clear cut.

Artemis II Orion service and crew modules slotted together at last

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Re: Is the minivan an approved Reg unit of volume?

Agree, I think somebody at the El Reg eyrie needs to check their Maths. 9000m3 is positively roomy :-)

Windows 11: The number you have dialed has been disconnected

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Re: Tim Cook's punishment?

Likewise, and whilst I suspect I know which particular berry, just checking in case you are still an Apricot user?

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Re: Tim Cook's punishment?

As a comprehensive girl, I too welcome a little bit of further education from my accomplished peers.

As a north country girl, though, I don't have any experience of using gotten in a left-pondian manner.

MyffyW Silver badge

Yes, Linux has lots of options. Was about to write a case for the defence, but then I remembered this little gem:

"The licenses for most software are designed to take away your freedom to share and change it. By contrast, the GNU General Public License is intended to guarantee your freedom to share and change free software--to make sure the software is free for all its users."

Sorry kids, Infosys and Wipro have cancelled graduate recruitment

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Re: Why

Sure, it sucks to employ them, or be employed by them. But, being Prime Minister isn't the well paid gig you think it is. You need a spouse with Infosys-wealth just to heat a swimming pool in North Yorkshire these days.

MyffyW Silver badge

Re: Manglement

Yes, I saw that one and a little bit of sick came up into my mouth followed by a PTSD flashback of being asked to "please do the needful" by a petrified co-worker who hadn't the backbone to stand up to the landed sociopath who thought he was our manager. Oh happy days....