Posts by Doctor Syntax

Microsoft suggests command line fiddling to get faulty Windows 10 update installed

"A true race to the bottom!"

It's a one horse race.

Re: When did Windows turn into Linux?

There's an obvious way form Microsoft to avoid such comments being made. Stop screwing up. Until they do Linux users will just keep pointing and laughing so put the blame for your pain where it belongs.

"Unhelpful error codes, complex fixes ... When did Windows turn into Linux?"

Obviously it didn't. It just keeps on being Windows.

Microsoft being Microsoft I suppose if there are partitions belonging to non-Microsoft products these will be trampled on as part of the procedure.

"completely breaks Edge"

You say that as if it's some sort of problem.

Drivers: We'll take that plain dumb car over a flashy data-spilling internet one, thanks

Re: "only five percent believe this surveillance should be unrestricted"

"When people actually believe that, there's no convincing them."

Agree fulsomely. Enthuse about how, if it will prevent one girl making a malicious or frivolous allegation ...

Re: "only five percent believe this surveillance should be unrestricted"

In order to understand this one needs to know not only what the actual question was but also the questions leading up to it. https://www.quotes.net/mquote/956752

Re: The older the better

"one only has to drive 3 minutes in any direction to see some piss poor driving"

That may be the cars taking over, of course.

Re: Rule 1 of good business?

This is their object. from my PoV their attempts at persuasion are more likely than not going to be counter-productive.

Re: "better insurance rates"

Given that insurance companies are largely run by weasels that ought to be a clear enough warning for anyone.

Re: Not coming here

"But very soon our dumb cars will be old enough to qualify (here in the UK at least) for us forking out something in order of £12 ($15) for every day we want to drive in town"

If a town doesn't want me to bring my money to their traders that's fine, I can get along without them. In fact, given that many towns have been anti-motorist for years it might explain why they now have so few traders.

"This echoes another survey published this week that found many drivers are willing to trade their personal data and privacy... and better insurance rates"

barnum was right.

Mandiant's brute-forced X account exposes perils of skimping on 2FA

Re: This is why I ignore the 2FA naysayers.

Not quite, if you're a scammer, but nearly. You can talk the mark's provider into a SIM-swap or you just go ahead and steal the phone.

Remember folks, if you rely on mobile-based 2FA whoever holds your phone[number] is you, even if it's not you.

Trump-era rules reversed on treating gig workers as contractors

Re: It’s all about the Greed

Just guessing, but did you choose and buy some sort of telephone as an alternative to waiting your turn to get the standard black one?

"Somehow society managed to survive, thrive even, for thousands of years before people could order food on their phone to be delivered. I'm sure it would find a way to keep on chugging even if all delivery services went away."

It's the technology that's changed, not the principle.

I grew up in a rural area, in fact, after a good deal of shunting about I live there once again. Back then a local bakery had a salesman who would go round in a car (a relatively uncommon item of technology for private individuals to own even in the '50s) to take grocery orders to be delivered a couple of days later. It was far more practical than my mother going to buy supplies for an extended multi-generation household when we lived half a mile from the bus route. Same principle as my neighbouring house-bound SiL ordering from Tesco, just different technology.

A green-grocer had a weekly sound with a mobile shop back then. Even earlier, so I believe, one of my grandfathers, a tin-smith, would occasionally make deliveries by horse and cart and years before that this valley was a trade route for pack-horse operators conveying goods such as salt from Cheshire.

Delivery services have been the difference between society just chugging away and thriving.

So am I. Initially it was more likely a sop to the trade unions - can't have these ununionised types going about negotiating for themselves and it didn't require the client to making what would necessarily be a self-serving determination. But, while at that time it was said the IR as it then was had tried to get the same thing past previous Conservative governments and failed, subsequent change of government not only didn't result in repeal, it also dragged the clients into doing HMRC's bidding. Plenty of blame all round.

"Take it or leave it" is itself negotiation.

If your are driving for Uber and have no other source of income, then you are doing it wrong and don't understand the "gig" business.

However the more general case needs to be addressed, not just Uber or even the driving market. If you make a rule based on Uber and no other source of income then there are other situations which would would be dragged in.

At the other extreme it used to be said for instance that there were several law firms which just serviced IBM's litigious habits. On the Uber-only test their employees might become IBM's employees.

Somewhere in the middle is the freelancer who lands a 3-month gig for S/W development, then gets an extension when the client themselves get a new contract that needs development and then another. Is the freelancer supposed to take the most unbusinesslike step of turning down a perfectly good contract just to prove to HMRC or its equivalent elsewhere that they're an independent business?

SAP to cough up $220M to drag bribery charges into recycle bin

I suppose the bribees still get to keep the money and SAP still gets to keep the contracts so it's just added to the cost of doing business.

It's a preview party at Microsoft, but do you really want an invite?

A company who's only purpose is trying to figure out what another company is doing and buy it if it looks threatening.

Re: There is a solution

Probably the best hint nowadays - and really no more than a hint - is whether it's become a subscription product.

X's 2024 plans include peer-to-peer payments in app push

Re: But why?

Why would Musk be under the impression people even WANT an "everything app"?

Wrong question. The right question is "Who would want an everything app?" and the answer is "Elon Musk".

Re: Trust them with your money?

You need to remember who pays for ASA. It's the advertising industry.

And his version of "try" will be "go ahead regardless".

The idea being that a fully integrated advertising platform would let you etc but under no circumstances would it let you identify those potential customers who are so fed up with advertis that they'll actively avoid any product which has its ads shoved in their face because that would ruin our business of selling adverts to advertisers

"has anyone thought about how much it'll cost to run all that new stuff?"

No problem. Just buy it in. That doesn't cost anything unless you actually pay.

PC 'price hike' coming as cost of memory soars – analysts

the market has "bottomed out."

Raising prices could change that.

AI flips the script on fingerprint lore – maybe they're not so unique after all

How many false positives did it suggest?

Office gossips beware – chitchat could choke your career chances

John and Jill in tech are sleeping together

Newbie, excited to have discovered a scandal: "Have you noticed that $HIM and $HER always leave together."

"Well, they are married."

Boffins demo self-eating rocket engine in Scotland

Let's hope they teach it to know when to stop.

Data wrangler Zuckerberg becomes world's least likely cattle rancher

I'd argue that Dave Bruback was even less likely and yet that's how he was raised. Or maybe there are other contenders.

We need a musical notes icon.

ShinyHunters chief phisherman gets 3 years, must cough up $5M

I'd have hoped a sentence would have been long enough to serve as a deterrent to others.

Top LLMs struggle to make accurate legal arguments

I'd expect this to be an application at which ML would be particularly bad.

From my experience of listening to legal arguments in court, usually about whether something is admissible as evidence, they seem to hinge on decisions made in a given set of circumstances and how the current, novel set of circumstances, can be considered as equivalent or near enough so for the same decision to apply vs whether they're sufficiently different that it doesn't. Apart from a need for logic, judgement and ability to put things persuasively the ML is at an obvious disadvantage in relation to its material. It will have encountered the previous circumstances in the training material but the key adjective above was "novel"; it won't have encountered them before and without having the understanding of both, won't have any means of relating the two. No wonder it serves up some random response.

Re: Quite human

Similar to (sadly) many people search engines.

So a LLM made by a search engine corporation can be expected to be particularly bad.

Google's TPUs could end up costing it a billion-plus, thanks to this patent challenge

I can't help wonder whether a jury of randomly selected citizens is the best tribunal of fact in such cases.

Former Post Office boss returns CBE to sender over computer system scandal

Re: How many fraud and theft cases in the 80s?

It's called "arm's length".

With OpenAI GPT Store imminent, apps are already being ripped off by copycats

Re: My word.

"I shall try to find my violin."

I have a microscope you can borrow.

Cutting-edge microscopy reveals bottled water has 'up to 100 times' more bits of plastic than previously feared

Re: Mount Inaccessible

What comes out of the tap is supposed to be drinkable anyway.

But until I was nearly 14 we lived in a house with lead pipes and unfiltered spring water as the source of drinking water. At some point a municipal piped supply was provided but the 3rd tap, the spring water tap was preferred as drinking water. Like you, last time I checked I'm still alive very many decades later.

According to the directer of the Traad Point water research lab on Lough Neagh lead in potable water only became a problem with central heating and working wives, the combination resulting in water sitting stationary in warmish surroundings for many hours during the day so that the concentration built up. In a multi-generational household with seldom less than two adults in the house and where there would be ice on the inside of the windows on a cold morning that was not a problem.

'Only 700 new IT jobs' were created in US last year

"the firm didn't immediately respond to our questions. "

That's what happens when the call handlers are replaced with AI.

Private lunar lander Peregrine mission's now measured in hours, not days

"From: Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, UK Space Agency, and The Rt Hon Michelle Donelan MP"

You'd think even a history and politics graduate would know to check on progress before bragging.

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

Re: "this hack is an EV driver..."

HMG;s target was for every motorway service station to have at least six rapid or ultra-rapid chargers by the end of 2023 with a "rapid" charger adding 100 miles range in 35 minutes. If I were to buy an EV I wouldn't be happy having to spend 35 minutes for every 100 miles of a long journey. That's if I could find a vacant charger and, were EVs to be universal as HMG wants, this target certainly comes under the definition of pisspoor because the chance of finding one would rank with being hit by a low-flying porcine. As it happens the RAC, apparently based on the Zapmap app you mentioned in another post, is only met by 40% of service stations.

Re: More Magical Thinking

Whatever the battery technology the overall infrastructure need is to be able to replace the energy provision currently supplied by liquid hydrocarbon fuels. What's being done to achieve that?

COVID-19 infection surge detected in wastewater, signals potential new wave

Re: Why did everyone get vaccinated?

For some people thinking of evolution is hard if not proscribed.

Re: "the only figure that really matters is hospitalisations"

Complacency is also counterproductive.

Virus in sewage is taken as an early warnings of possible hospitalisations to come.

Another airline finds loose bolts in Boeing 737-9 during post-blowout fleet inspections

Re: BOEING... or Boding?

Just as well that it was in the garden, not on the house.

"fly the flag"

Did he also risk flying the company's product?

Re: Shameful

It's shameful how Boeing's management is flying the passengers into the ground.

FYFTFY

Re: A gross understatement?

Maybe it suggests that "the area in question" should be the entire aircraft when conducting these inspections.

UK PM promises faster justice for Post Office Horizon victims

I see that Vennells has now given way to public pressure and handed back her CBE but intends to make no further comment until her evidence to the enquiry*. I'm not sure that this is enough to be described as doing the decent thing.

* If the PO's foot-dragging keeps going it might never get to this point.