Posts by Doctor Syntax

Stack Overflow simply bans folks who don't want their advice used to train AI

Re: If they won't let you change your answers to a protest message

"Then the mods won't notice"

And neither will someone who needs the help you originally gave to similar people, trusts it because of the reputations and is now mislead by it.

Re: re: To be honest, SO was never good.

Brilliant!

Dell customer order database of '49M records' stolen, now up for sale on dark web

Re: "we do not believe there is significant risk"

It certainly isn't for me, at least not as a join.

And it begins. OpenAI mulls NSFW AI model output

Re: There is a theory, lighthearted...

A complaint from a Betamax owner?

UK's National Cyber Security Centre entry code cracks up critics

The smart thinking would have been to leave the pads uncleaned but change the code to something that didn't used only two of fewer of the four.

I told Halle Berry where to go during a programming gig in LA

You sorted out an Oracle problem in a fortnight, even if it did take 20 hour days? Birmingham council and Edinburgh University want to speak to you right now.

Italy's climate super computer, Cassandra, to combine HPC with AI

Unbelievable!

Cassandra? Really?

BOFH: The greatest victory is that which requires no battle

Re: Synthia

"Sadly this episode isn't so much satire as contemporary reportage."

There's a difference?

ML suggests all that relaxing whale song might just be human-esque gossiping

Someone featured on last year's Royal Institution Christmas lectures was taking a more direct approach to interpreting what they meant. He was recording them and filming them to associate the sounds with the activities they were doing at the same time.

Wondering when AI will turn up at your work? Microsoft says look behind you

Re: Still not convinced

"it seems to have a few niche uses"

You can add a "Chat now" feature to your web site to lose customers just as affectively as an untrained agent with a script and for less money.

Oh, yes it is.

"Microsoft says look behind you"

So it's going to be a bit of a pantomime?

Oracle ULA audits are a license to bill

"The things is, the software doesn't get sold to the people who get to install it."

So let the people in suits buy Orrigble but install something else. The suits aren't going to know and it'll frustrate the hell out of the audit vultures..

Re: Goods

Like the OP said, it belongs to a world in which goods and services don't figure.

The only way to win is to not play.

Experimental remix finally brings the former Unity 8 back to Ubuntu

I suppose it depends on your use of your system. I tend to be data-centric so I want a desktop that allows files and folders to be placed on it. Someone who's app-centric would welcome a UI that turns the desktop into a big start menu. We have a choice and everyone can get the sort of UI they want.

68 tech names sign CISA's secure-by-design pledge

No doubt the words of the pledge will be as meaningful to them as such statements as: "Your privacy/security is important to us.", "We always put security first." and the evergreen "Only a small number of customers were affected.".

Has Windows 11 really lost marketshare to Windows 10?

Re: "what happens next?"

"In the 1800's railways cut the roofs of 3rd class carriages to make the other classes better in comparison. Airlines do similar things now with economy class."

No, that's just Boeing.

"An 'AI PC' is just a reasonably-specced PC using modern components."

That won't be the manufacturers' PoV. As far as they're concerned it's a top-end machine with some fancy co-processor, preferably one that'll be outdated by next-year's co-processor. And it will be essential

"I realise that this is probably an unrealistic hope, but is there any chance we could have a thread on Windows which doesn't consist of a load of people telling us 'just use Linux'"

I suppose that might happen if there was a thread on Windows that didn't rapidly turn to its enshittification.

Tesla devotee tests Cybertruck safety with his own finger – and fails

Re: "The frunk is powered and shouldn't be closed manually"

Manula opening and closing, air struts etc. are for poor but sensible people. This is not the Tesla market. Closing it with a mobile app should tell you that.

Re: Stupidity is without limit.

It depends on whether they've already reproduced.

Dell to color-code staff based on how hybrid they really are in RTO push

"If they realize that, why would they compound the problem by making that real estate more expensive with HVAC, bog rolls, people using the elevators, etc?"

There's a big word at the start of that sentence. Just two letters but it's a big word.

The weight is just causing inertia.

That real estate is weighting them down.

"This is true of remote work everywhere, it limits your career advancement opportunities."

Could you explain in a little more detail how this might apply in the company my daughter works for? It's international with an HQ in Dublin. We think there's a UK office somewhere but, being interviewed online when she was recruited, she's never visited it. The professional staff are almost entirely working at home, meeting online and in teams which span countries and continents.

The irony here is that Dell specialise in the technology that makes this possible. How odd that they don't seem to have that degree of faith in the efficacy of their own products.

Council claims database pain forced it to drop apostrophes from street names

Re: Input validation

A hacker with the key.

If the hacker already has the database key he probably doesn't need your passwrd.

Re: I've seen worse

I remember the end of Johners' obituary on the Beeb. It was a shot of a microphone with the sound of him dissolving into speechless giggles after the "failed to get his leg over" comment.

We shall not see (or hear) their like again.

Re: I've seen worse

The Asian theme continued with India St just down Botanic Avenue. When I started in research in QUB one of the undergraduate's family home was there, closer to the University than the halls of residence & most student digs.

Re: BS7666

"our timekeeping system uses decimal hours"

I've used a surveying staff marked in decimal feet. The Hiller borer was metric, however. My very first FORTRAN program was to combine the two into a nicely tabulated set of figures so I could draw out the sections by hand.

Re: Tail wags dog

"Logically, the other two should have been Huddersfield and Halifax rather than Kirkless and Calderdale."

I don't know about Calderdale vs Halifax but I doubt that Huddersfield actually outweighs that of the collection of other towns such as Dewsbury & Mirfield to any significant extent. What it does show is that the whole thing was an ill-conceived mash-up of two quite distinct areas - more than two when the rural areas are taken into account.

Nor is naming an area after Barnsley a good example. On that basis I can just about see Barnsley from where I live. It would have at least made more sense to have taken the ancient Agbrigg/Staincross boundary as the Barnsley boundary.

Re: Input validation

It may be stored encrypted and decrypted as needed. It could also be stored as all possible digrams or trgrams, salted and hashed.

Slaithwaite in West Yorks is Slowit ('ow' as in 'wow') in dialect, Slathwaite otherwise but used to be Slaythwayte to British Rail.

Or the Isle of Axholme

"Street" in village names often refers to a Roman road. e.g. Spital in the Street on the A15, the old Roman road of Ermine Street and no doubt more hygienic than it sounds.

Re: I've seen worse

"So you looked for them, then"

The last, of course, brings to mind the classic line of cricket commentary "The bowler's Holding, the batsman's Willey".

The villages of Overton, Middlestown and Netherton between Grange Moor in West Yorkshire were originally Upper, Middle and Lower Shitlington.

Re: BS7666

"some Amazon marketplace sellers put absolute gibberish on the labels"

And in the product descriptions.

OTOH I don't think there really was a Betty at all.

This apostrophe would cause non-locals a bit of puzzlement given that it replaces 5 letters not to mention the missing 'U' from 'BURY':

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@53.6449441,-1.7758415,3a,37.5y,171.44h,79.34t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s6j2bb7p8he-sGAhCV59-6w!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?hl=en&entry=ttu

Re: Yes

Thanks & sorry about the typo. My fingers are getting a bit fat these days.

Muphry's strikes again.

Ouch!!!! Intruding apostrophe.

Slightly OT but still a place name...

Is the middle bit of Royton-XI-Towns pronenced "eleven"?

Re: BS7666

"to see how they cope with ç"

I wonder if that's why Brighouse no longer has aa road named Alençon Link.

Re: Tail wags dog

Consider yourself lucky. At least your metropolitan council is named after a place within it. I live in Kirklees, the council area, not the actual Kirklees which is in Calderdale.

Re: apostrophe problems

Do you mean this ASCII character: ' or this ASCII character `?

And another council with more things on it's mind than mending pot-holes: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ck5k38lje2yo

Cops finally unmask 'LockBit kingpin' after two-month tease

For $10million there's every prospect of him drinking in a bar in Moscow and waking up in Poland or some other country convenient to the US.

Palantir's CEO calls 'woke' a 'central risk to Palantir, America and the world'

Re: "a 'central risk to Palantir, America and the world' "

"And overselling yourself"

But if they don't oversell themselves nobody else will and he wouldn't want that.

"the central risk to Palantir ... is called woke"

So it can't be entirely bad, then.

Valve vexation: Boeing's Starliner grounded again

Have the crew done a runner or just demanded danger money?

Brit security guard biz exposes 1.2M files via unprotected database

I wonder if, when a contractor is working on a building that Amberstone guard, they send along one of their security guards to oversee the job.