Posts by Doctor Syntax

Tesla's numbers disappoint again ... and the crowd goes wild ... again

"I expect that it's news to the mayor of the city and the state legislature"

It's always news when you hear something for the first time. They'd have to be told anyway and he's a busy man now so he can't afford to have to do everything twice/

Re: Car sales, an entirely unscientific survey

OP says his car does 1400 miles a year. Car life may not be entirely related to mileage but, as OP suggests, it might outlive him. So why should he care about depreciation? Consumables will be entirely related to mileage and maintenance partly so.

Now what mileage is the robo-taxi doing? Consumables will still be entirely related to mileage even if they are cheaper. Maintenance and depreciation will be almost entirely related to mileage. And then you're paying for the operator's profit which is exactly zero for the OP.

Re: Car sales, an entirely unscientific survey

"renting out the parking spot in our apartment has yielded more income than I've spent on rental and taxis"

Then you're in trouble when nobody want to rent that parking space, aren't you?

AI revoir, Lucie: France's answer to ChatGPT paused after faux pas overdrive

Re: Educating AI

Almost.

Re: Lost in translation?

"Cat I've farted"

"File not found"

Re: I wish everyone would get it

Are you thinking of the travesty generator? Or did that just rearrange words into plausible sentences? I think I've heard of that idea somewhere recently.

Re: "cow's eggs as a nutritious food source"

Holinshed was always given to sensationalism. Henry's real concern was about methane produced by cows. As a renaissance man he was ahead of the curve on such matters.

"the company had failed to explain the model's limitations sufficiently and then went on to enumerate them"

Can they confirm the output consists of words?

Even Windows 10 cannot escape the new Outlook

Re: I'm sorry, *what*?

Again?

"Most versions of Windows 10 are rapidly approaching the end of the road. Support is due to end on October 14. While Microsoft has shown no desire to keep affected versions supported past that date"

With those reluctant to upgrade hardware even more reluctant if tariffs hike prices MS is set to make a fortune on an extended update service. I wonder what the annual cost of that will be compared to the one-off OEM prices it would have got for new W11 licences.

DeepSeek stirs intrigue and doubt across the tech world

"China's AI disruptor rattles industry watchers with unproven claims"

In other words, standard marketing practice.

WFH with privacy? 85% of Brit bosses snoop on staff

Re: so management are not measuring output

They wouldn't recognise productivity if it bit them in the ankle due to a lack of personal experience of it.

Re: My best workplaces...

"Logica had an unusual management requirement: project and business managers and/or their deputies were always in the pub on Friday evenings to buy beer and listen to suggestions and gripes."

Would that be for staff working on customer sites? A consultancy I worked for had that on a monthly basis, not so much for listening to anything, just getting everyone together.

Re: Idle hands - but whose?

Or their "Productivity scores' if they were using teams during the period that was available.

I doubt manglers like that would work out that productivity had an inverse relationship with use of Teams.

Idle hands - but whose?

If managers have time to spend watching their staff it suggests that the company could afford to get rid of a few and tell the rest to get on with their work.

Canvassing apps used by UK political parties riddled with privacy, security issues

Re: Is your Electoral roll data safe?

A few elections ago our local Greens produced a big wodge of newsprint, unlike the other parties who simply printed small fliers. Their delivery of this wodge fell somewhat short. Instead of finding its way into my letter box it was dropped on the path as a piece of litter. But then the Greens have been wilfully ignorant of real green matters for uears.

Re: Is your Electoral roll data safe?

"I asked if I could post his reply on the local community page, and was informed I could not."

You post his refusal to allow you to publish the original. That then has your readers wondering what it is that he's hiding.

Microsoft talks up 'significant capital investments' in AI as sector reacts to DeepSeek

Re: Can't stop now!

Followed by an anvil.

Guess who left a database wide open, exposing chat logs, API keys, and more? Yup, DeepSeek

Re: Amateur hour at Clickhouse

It's inconvenient. Disabling it makes life so much easier.

Re: Missed opportunity

Wouldn't Tigger be a better fit?

Re: All Live Operational Virtual Environment Systems are Go.

And we're stuck with him.

Startup plugs AI datacenters into biogas-powered energy

Re: Erm

A bit of lateral thinking would enable the two to be combined. Use wind when it's available and biogas (also wind?) when it isn't with some storage capacity for the biogas to balance things out.

And now something fun for a change: Building blocks of life in Bennu asteroid samples

"all five nucleobases that form DNA and RNA"

Good to see that being reported. I read a report in another place that ignored uracil which is arguably more important than thiamine. It's RNA which is at the business end of protein synthesis with DNA coming late to the party.

"one of the mysteries of the Bennu samples lies in the chirality of the amino acids they contain. Terrestrial life relies almost entirely on left-handed amino acids, but those found in Bennu exhibit no such bias"

I'd have thought it was entirely to be expected.

Tiny Linux kernel tweak could cut datacenter power use by 30%, boffins say

Re: Kernel

Indeed it is. But even if the result of the fix is that virtually no time is spent on handling the network stack prior to that nearly a third of the time was along with all the other stuff the kernel has to do. I doubt that the time not now spent on handling it will be spent in an idle state using no power, there'll always be more stuff to do on a server.

The server would have had to have been spending an awful lot of time in kernel to get that sort of advantage.

White House asks millions of govt workers if they would be so kind as to fork right off

Fire first and ask questions afterwards.

Garmin pulls a CrowdStrike, turns smartwatches into fancy bracelets

"The gnashing of teeth from obsessive stat counters could be heard from around the world."

They could start counting their gnashes.

Memories fade. Archives burn. All signal eventually becomes noise

Index new stuff so the situation isn't perpetuated. Any time anyone has to hunt through the old stuff for something, index that something once found. Gradually the bits that matter get indexed.

Re: Interesting

"History would suggest sheep skin vellum and oak gall ink is a long term archival technology."

Oak gall tends to fade a bit. Carbon black ink is better.

'Bro delete the chat': Feel the panic shortly before cops bust major online fraud ring

Re: Who were the real brains?

Over the years we've seen bigger fish in the cyber-offensive line being crap at their own OpSec.

"The Register understands that the chat logs were swiped from Picari's phone when he was arrested just a few months after the messages were sent."

Not very good at following his own advice.

ASML makes hay while Sun shines, but Trump could rain on its parade

If the US starts breaching WTO agreements at scale at what point does the rest of the world start sanctioning them and disregarding any sanctions they've been placing. It could take Trump's successor a fair while to dig out of pariah status.

Trump tells Musk to 'go get' Starliner astronauts

"It has yet to respond."

This is an improvement. They didn't respond with a poop emoji.

Good timing.

He makes it look like it was Biden responsible rather than a large USian corporation but if he'd left it any longer more people would realise it was what was just coming up on a (delayed) schedule.

Or Trump.

The curious story of Uncle Sam's HR dept, a hastily set up email server, and fears of another cyber disaster

"Someone literally walked into our building and plugged in an email server to our network"

Was it carried in disguised as a sink?

Re: Cat's out of the bag.

"there's a chance people won't get paid at all,"

Well, Musk seems to have a hand in it so it wouldn't be surprising.

You probably have more CIO experience than the incoming White House CIO

Re: Tech knowledge does not equal good CIO

Immovable objects also include higher management including, possibly especially, in government. It's more likely he was chosen for a reluctance to do that.

.. and being the chairman's nephew or something similar.

Re: Simple test

Wire snark is what we do here.

I'm sure if he lacks a bit of experience Musk will be able to spare a few minutes of his time now and again to give him a few pointers. It shouldn't be a problem for he man who knows everything.

Spending watchdog blasts UK govt over sloth-like progress to shore up IT defenses

"Sure, the pension contributions are sizeable"

If that's so it's a big change since my day. It worked like this: there were no deductions as such but the salary was reduced by what was supposed to be the equivalent amount. The notional deductions were not invested in a fund as the Civil Service pension scheme was, and presumably still is, in essence, a Ponzi scheme. The scheme was a final salary scheme paying 1/80th of final salary for each year's service (I left for a 160th scheme) with, of course, the salary reduced by the notional contribution amount.

The public perception was that Civil Service pensions were gold-plated. True, gold-plating is used to make cheap look good. They certainly weren't solid gold.

I'd advise anyone thinking of applying for any of these posts to look very carefully at what's offered - you'll be dealing with rip-off merchants.

Ubuntu upgrade had our old Nvidia GPU begging for a downgrade

"And if you're on Debian 11 or a relative thereof, it might be time to switch distros."

Or don't buy Nvidia Useful to know.

Oracle finance system at Europe's largest city council still falls short 2.5 years later

"the project to replace an aging SAP system"

What's worse, an ageing system or a shiny new one that doesn't work?

Trump eyes up to 100% tariffs on foreign semiconductors, TSMC in crosshairs

Re: MR

"You literally cannot make it in the US without permission from Sony."

If you have the capacity and re-engineer it, you can, if you're inward looking, ignore the patent. In practice the first will be a stumbling block, don't know about the second. Inward looking? Check.

Re: Tariffs = twatenomics.

What point? If he goes ahead he's only going to weaken the US. China and Russia know that even if he and the voters don't. They also know it'll take a long time for his successors to claw their way back.

Re: What fucking dipshits

Are they winners? How much of their wealth is actual cash and how much is in their share portfolios. Share values aren't going to hold up in an economic collapse and inflation will eat up the value of the cash.

Re: Yeahhhh...

"That's called an "election." We have those here, you know. People choosing their leaders, and all that?"

They then need to accept the consequences of their own actions. The unfortunate part of that is that those who voted otherwise also have to accept the consequences.

Re: Elections

"Trump isn't who needs to be concerned, it's the Republicans in Congress that will be worried. "

All true, but that's their problem, not his.

Re: What fucking dipshits

They're going to get some education in economics fairly soon. Experience is a dear teacher but there are those who will learn by no other.