Posts by Sherrie Ludwig

Techie lured out of retirement to support software only he remembered

Re: Reminds me of the parable...

Fewer & fewer people know how to work with the basic assembly language and binary coding that used to be table stakes for any qualified programmer

My 70+ year old husband is working on a "six month project" for a company that bought the mainframe program he supported pre retirement. The six months is now 2+ years. He isn't complaining, the commute is a two meter shuffle.to the next room, the pay is nice even though the (US) quarterly return and estimated tax payments are a pain, and he enjoys his colleagues, albeit he has only met most of them by phone. And it keeps his assembler coding skills sharp

US auto regulators want to kill robotaxi brake pedals

Re: Bah!

True, but the intent here is clearly an emergency operation... and most emergency stop functions are not concealed beneath a flap.

So, what's a Molly guard?

Why Amazon hates 'human-in-the-loop' AI governance

Re: VP Eric Brandwine explains people aren't all that great, actually

I have never considered TASERing a computer before.

I have threatened "reprogramming" a computer with a fire axe, however. Have never threatened a human with that.

Met Police, Apple join forces to choke London's stolen phone trade

Re: Politicians are scared of blaming people for being idiots.

This isn't the usual story of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, but the thieves targeting the right places at the right times

Willie Sutton, bank robber, on why he robbed banks, "because that's where the money is".

Angry devs vow to flee GitHub Copilot as metered billing takes hold

Nobody here lived through the 1960s drug era

Every smack dealer ever: "The first one's free."

Ohio hits pause on datacenter tax breaks draining its coffers

When the proletariat arise

Data centers need power and water. Find the input pipes/wires, and termite is cheap and effective. Sort of like besieging the castle.

Re: why are we subsidising billionaires?

It would appear that the tax system has been subtly changed to benefit those who are already loaded with cash instead of helping those who are trying to make a living and benefit society.

Nothing subtle about it. Regan started it, and we are now in full-on serfdom of the under billionaire class.

MyPillow must decide whether to be firm or soft as ransomware crims demand pay

Moral hazard

I am torn between deploring ransom hackers and schadenfreude at a vile person's company getting hacked.

Brit mathematician lets AI agent loose with credit card – cue password leaks, CAPTCHA chaos and more

Re: All of this is just natural selection, for humans.

C. M. Kornbluth, "The Marching Morons" was prescient

Met Police's Palantir deployment has its own officers watching their backs

Re: Face recognition is nowhere near accurate enough

Every time I hear the "a few bad apples" quote I want to scream. Nobody remembers the entirety of the adage: A few bad apples SPOIL THE BARREL. If you, as an "apple", can't sort out the corrupting influences and toss them, you are going to be, despite best intentions, corrupt as well,. Just a matter of time.

Trump to UK: Stop taxing our big beautiful tech corps or face tariff tsunami

The Iran adventure isn't going well and he needs to distract the public.

The US troops have called "Operation Epic Fury" Operation Epstein Fury from the get-go, now they are calling it Operation Epic Failure.

The Correspondents' Dinner gunman was so obviously a stage-managed false flag from the White House it sounds like South Park had written it.

I wonder what new stupid shiny thing Steven Miller will cook up to distract next.

I am so, so tired of living in Bedlam, if I didn't have unmovable responsibilities (90+ year-old relative in care) I would be a refugee, and I'm no spring chicken. Spare a thought, or prayer, according to your beliefs, for those of us who opposed this from the beginning.

Re: He's no richer than he'd have been

After due process, of course.

Problem is, there is no due process in the USA anymore. The judiciary has been replaced by T**** stooges from traffic offenses court up to Supreme Court wherever a vacancy occurred, such that all the orange one's lawyers have to do is keep appealing until you hit the one who sees it their way, damn the law. And every suit takes so long to wend its way through the legal system that any sense of "swift justice" is a cruel joke.

Attention, gamers: The FAA wants YOU to be an air traffic controller

Self-crashing (driving) cars, now gamers for ATCs? It's shanks mare for me now I guess.

I vibe coded a feed reading web app. It was enlightening and uncomfortable

Re: "A cashier may lift 1-1.5 tons of groceries during a shift"

"A cashier may lift 1-1.5 tons of groceries during a shift"

As one who has been employed in this role, "lifting" is generally, in US supermarkets at least, mostly sliding items, aided by a moving conveyor belt, over a scanner. Although my last stint at this was in my sixties, I found the job not very onerous and the human interaction pleasant. I was able to suggest add-on sales that increased my employer's profits, or helped other businesses in the area, increasing my town's economic health "have you tried the burgers at _____? They are the best in the area!" Yes, there may be ads onscreen at a self-checkout but who bothers to read them or trust them?

As to the hype of "lifting", let's say you weigh 150 pounds. Presumably, you lift that with every step, especially while jogging or running. My goodness, a pleasant toddle around the neighborhood has you lifting hundreds of tons! Are you Superman?

Calling out corporate BS? There's a steaming pile to aim for

Re: In the mockery a glob of insipid business speak oozes through.

most grating obnoxious examples of modern business Bullshit lingo

I have a persistent eye twitch at "utilize". why don't you just USE it? Utilize always brings up a mental image of someone employing (there's a synonym!) something in a needlessly complicated and awkward way, like eating spaghetti using chopsticks while wearing boxing gloves and doing a headstand.

While you're here, could you go out of your way to do an impossible job?

Re: it happens within companies too

US National Guardsmen having to send their metallic items through the X-ray to make sure the rifle-shaped thing was...

AFAIK except for Air Marshals, the no firearms allowed in the cabin would mean that rifles would go checked baggage in the cargo hold. Yes, checked baggage does get scanned, but they wouldn't be carried through the TSA line.

Turns out your coffee addiction may be doing your brain a favor

Re: Specificity

My preferred coffee container is beside me as I type this, a red mug bearing a slogan you might recognize,, "keep calm and carry on". It is about 24 ounces, which is a size that I can down before it gets too cold to be palatable, but large enough to avoid jumping up every couple of minutes. Two of those is a nice start to the day.

Swiss e-voting pilot can't count 2,048 ballots after USB keys fail to decrypt them

Re: Should we raise one or two digits to Digital Cash?

Upvoting the AC for the link to a very good analysis of the problems arising from the Lancaster flood in 2015.

Techie was given strict instructions not to disrupt client. Then he touched one box and the lights went out

There seems to be an awfully large number of coincidental grid outage's, maybe similar to the million to 1 chance happening 9 times out of 10?

Since many people are doing lots of stuff, some of it electrical, at any given time, the chance that somebody is in a position that implies causation is quite high.

Denizens of DEF CON are 'fed up with government'

Re: Benjamin Franklin and human rights

I will consider all down votes to be from people who do not oppose slavery.

I will consider your consideration with the raucous hilarity it deserves.

Trump orders purge of 'woke' Anthropic from government

Re: Sugardaddy

More interesting is that if Trump bankrupts Anthropic then that could bring down the whole LLM marketplace.

Doing something good by accident?

Re: Kathy Burke said it best...

rump uses words like 'woke' deliberately

Yes, it's the compliment he unwittingly (the only way he knows how to do things, bless 'im} bestows on the humanist, enlightened, empathetic people and institutions that correctly see him as a temporary and vile interruption of a mostly reasonably functional representative democracy.

Engineer held hostage by client who asked for the wrong fix

Re: Banned from the site?

Good! Who would want to encounter that supervisor again?

Yes, don't threaten me with my fondest wish.

Burger King turns to AI to flame broil employees who aren't friendly enough

Actually BK, McDs, and Wendys are all circling the drain because of their outmoded business model.

They're still stuck in the '80s-'90s trying to sell fast really cheap crap. Unfortunately, because of inflation, their stuff isn't so cheap any more, but it's still crap.

Just find a local place that serves good food and patronize/recommend the hell out of them. In my Midwest USA town there are fast foods aplenty, but the local hole in the wall bar serves the best burger anywhere (locally sourced meat, perfectly grilled to medium rare as requested) , and their specialty, freshly made potato chips (crisps to the right-ponders). They also keep a bottle of A-1 sauce on hand for my husband and I, since we asked nicely the first time we came in.

The only fast food we ever purchase is Popeye's spicy fried chicken, haven't found any other fried chicken to top that.

NASA safety watchdog says it's time to rethink Moon landing

Re: Hmmm...

I have to wonder what our country did in the last ... say 30 or so years that has produced this outcome.

...Faux "news" and ilk.

"How did the Apollo missions manage to get there and back without refuelling?"

Real engineers with really good slide rules.

...and some Hidden Figures.

Hotel's rotary switchboard so retro it predates the concept of crashing

Re: I actually ran a switchboard

Tell me, in a few words, how we can help you today

That request unleashes in me a stream of words, in the most "dotty little old lady" form, to explain, with a lot of circuitous detail, and a discourse on the birds at the feeder by the window, until it interrupts and tells me "an agent will be with you shortly".

CIOs told: Prove your AI pays off – or pay the price

Re: Lie and leave

Good luck, have fun, don't die. Didn't they make a movie about that?

Re: doesn't include C-suite

Yes, "productivity improvement" always seems to skip that group, doesn't it? "Poor business returns" gets general worker layoffs yet often retains C-suite bonuses, the miracle of capitalism!

Has any organization tried the "fire the C suite, redistribute their salary and benefits to the rest of the company" route?

New hire fixed a problem so fast, their boss left to become a yoga instructor

Re: Quite a rare sight

My cursive is so bad (and I'm a lefty too!) that I switched back to block printing in HS (left side ponder here...) just to keep up with the teachers when taking notes.

Also a left-pond lefty. In high school I read that Leonardo da Vinci wrote right-to-left in reverse (mirror) script, so as a pastime I taught myself to do the same. After a week or so, I found it was rather quicker for note-taking. I could read even my scratchy handwriting easily without needing a mirror, but it stopped tiresome slackers from wanting to borrow my notes. Don't remember why I discontinued this, it was sort of fun.

Autonomous cars, drones cheerfully obey prompt injection by road sign

Re: Harry Lime had it right

IIf the dot was (Ronald Mac)Donald Trump then no, I wouldn't feel anything at all.

USAian here. I'd feel quite a few emotions: giddy exhilaration, profound relief, intense schadenfreude, etc. etc. Oh, and gratitude for who or what did it in.

Meta retreats from metaverse after virtual reality check

I don't remember the exact quote but....

hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy "nasally fitted fire" is what AI seems to be.

Engineer used welding shop air hose to 'clean' PCs – hilarity did not ensue

Re: BS

Way back in the 1960s when school science teachers were allowed to get creative we made "flour cannons" as a lab project. The biggest bang got the most points. Knocking a ship in the plaster wall was extra credit. IIRC, a very small amount (like a teaspoon) of flour shaken well in an enclosed space was quite impressive.

Techie 'forgot' to tell boss their cost-saving idea meant a day of gaming

.my Landy was a former agriculture Landy (pre-worn by a farmer, which came with its own benefits like an upgraded engine with more torque and pulling power, if I bolted it to the ground and drove the opposite way to Earths spin, I'm pretty sure I could have slowed down Earth)

So, you had the Antichrist from The Gods Must Be Crazy. Sweet.

Re: Vibration & banging ?

Beautiful car, absolute death trap.

A friend had something similar, driving around Chicago was dodgy because the taller cars never saw you. I (5' 10", long legs) sat in the driver's seat once and told Dave I couldn't steal his car. because when the door was closed I could not get my left knee between the wheel and the door to operate the clutch . Dave was several inches shorter and like many guys, longer in the torso than leg.

Welcome to America - now show us your last five years of social media posts

Born USAian...

I hate this, I never voted for this orange criminal nor his party, and I am stuck inside a crumbling country, which even in a "blue" state feels like Beirut in the calm just before everything went to hell. Spare a thought for those of us who can't get out due to age and familial responsibilities (I am legal guardian for an even more elderly relative with dementia).

Waymo chalks up another four-legged casualty on San Francisco streets

Re: Animals can't handle cars.

In the rural Midwestern USA, wild turkeys are quite a threat. A big tom stopped my friend's one-ton pickup (she hauls horse trailers) when his skull went through the radiator. I was coming home after working second shift when I had a deer run into the drivers' side of my truck. That was a cracked windscreen, the wing mirror torn clean off and a bent rear bumper. I stopped, adjusted to the new adrenaline level, and then went back to look for the deer, it had run off. Tough critters.

Microsoft's lack of quality control is out of control

Re: Program / Programme

"Autocorrupt" is genius. May I offer you a beverage?

New boss took charge of project code and sent two billion unwanted emails

How did they cope with it going the other way ????

Wow! We doubled our sales in an hour! BONUS TIME!! Yes, some mothers do have 'em.

If you can't use AI then it's bye bye, Accenture tells staff

Did Accenture just cut itself out of the deal?

If all anyone needs to do is consult AI, open to all, then why pay Accenture for people to do just that?

Hardware inspector fired for spotting an error he wasn't trained to find

Our local livestock market has an exhibition space, and any number of overhead sockets.

I attend a flea market held in that kind of building. Keeping the electrical outlets out of the combustible material like straw, and away from liquids which might cause a short, as well as being out of the reach of curious or bored animals are all reasons to do this. It also means that reconfiguring the interior for all its uses but keeping power available to those who need it (and paid extra for it, on occaision) is simple.

US cuffs 475 at Hyundai–LG battery plant – feds tout largest single-site raid

LG and Hyundai have a play...

LG and Hyundai should find a night, ensure there are no people on the premises, and DETONATE the facility, razing it to the ground. Then exit the US market effective immediately, to show who "holds the cards:".

OpenAI eats jobs, then offers to help you find a new one at Walmart

Re: At OpenAI, we can't eliminate that disruption.

It's the "self-checkout" and "right-sizing" of the Internet. Notice that WalMart and others are ripping out the "self-theft checkouts", and finding that policing those are eating up more employee hours than just having cashiers? Which is interfering with the "right-sizing" (firing to increase C suite bonuses).

Bank reverses decision to replace 45 customer service staff with AI chatbot

Re: It’s unclear if the AI failed to perform as hoped, or...

Since I am at "dotty old lady" age, when I get the stupid "tell us in a few words what you want ", I launch into the most verbose description of my query I can. Usually, that's faster than saying "agent" or representative" repeatedly for, "a customer service person will be with you shortly".

Politically hot parts of US Constitution briefly deleted thanks to 'coding error'

This was a test to see if anyone noticed.

Trump teases ‘approximately’ 100 percent tariff for imported semiconductors

Also, as soon as I read "Exemptions available for chipmakers who promise to build American fabs" my first thought was "Foxconn Wisconsin plant scam mark 2".

Damn, you beat me to it. My thoughts exactly.

'It looks sexy but it's wrong' – the problem with AI in biology and medicine

Re: It's worse when AI Slop pretends to have medical knowledge

The legal knowledge ones have already been well roasted by several judges when they hallucinate citations.

Sanctions with a side of possible disbarment:

Mata v. Avianca:

. A 2023 US case where lawyers submitted a brief containing fake case citations generated by ChatGPT, according to The Conversation.

Michael Cohen Case:

.

In 2023, Michael Cohen's attorney submitted a motion with fabricated case citations generated by AI, according to NPR.

Anthropic Case:

.

In a 2023 copyright lawsuit against AI developer Anthropic, a data scientist cited a made-up academic report, which was later traced back to an AI hallucination, says Epstein Becker Green.

Georgia Divorce Case:

.

A Georgia appellate court overturned a divorce judgment after discovering that the trial court's order relied on fictitious case law from a brief prepared by one party's attorney, according to Farella Braun + Martel LLP.

Mike Lindell Case:

.

In a 2025 case, a judge fined attorneys representing Mike Lindell for submitting a filing riddled with AI-generated mistakes, including fabricated cases, reports NPR.

UK High Court Case:

.

The UK High Court has warned lawyers to stop misusing AI after fake case law citations were identified, reported The Guardian.

Congress tries to outlaw AI that jacks up prices based on what it knows about you

So, public library?

Sounds like you go to the public library (in the poorest town near you, if you have a choice) to use their computer to research airline prices. Use a debit card with a smallish amount of money and no overdraft protection (to avoid getting spurious charges on it in case of keystroke logging and such) on it to book your flight. Would that stymie the pricing model?

Fujitsu sorry for Post Office horror – but still cashing big UK govt checks

Re: Whoa! Get some perspective here....

"Fujitsu didn't kill anybody"

No, at least 13 people died by suicide due to their incompetence. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/10/world/europe/uk-post-office-scandal-report.html

Yes, I wrote a very expensive bug. In my defense I was only seven years old at the time

Re: Remarkable !

Why this remarkable person isn't the President"

Because they are not fucking stupid, nor a congenital liar, which are currently prerequisites for the job.

Also, an admitted female. In the USA, a complete disqualification.