* Posts by EarthDog

436 publicly visible posts • joined 30 Dec 2014

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Voyager 1 space probe producing ‘anomalous telemetry data’

EarthDog

Re: 41 hours of latency sounds bad...

Compiled code does not imply correct code

EarthDog

Re: 41 hours of latency sounds bad...

Don't forget to run it through a simulator. The one you wrote before you sent the probe up so you test them side-by-side for months.

You do have a simulator, don't you?

Cars in driver-assist mode hit a third of cyclists, all oncoming cars in tests

EarthDog

Re: So technology works as intended...

clearly reading google maps

EarthDog

Re: So technology works as intended...

they're sandwiches.

Oracle really does owe HPE $3b after Supreme Court snub

EarthDog

Re: Happy Days

Keysight is what HP was when they were first starting out. Instruments and measurements equipment. Real engineering.

EarthDog

Re: First Amendment

Civil law is different than constitutional law, unless explicitly stated as in the bankruptcy clauses of the US constitution. That's why labor laws are needed. This is also hwy social media platform owners can restrict speech without strong regulation in place.

Open-source leaders' reputations as jerks is undeserved

EarthDog

Re: Arrogance and rude behavior are rampant in just technology circles?

In the shows I have seen Gordon was always kind to armatures. He often encouraged them and took time with them. The people who thought they were hot "stuff" and pretended to know more than they did were the ones who garnered his wrath.

So is it often in the tech world where self promoting charlatans with questionable skills can destroy open source paradigms in a short time. Unless corrected. And they should be run off.

EarthDog

High Standards

oft times the person with high standards who has to always "slap the wrist" of sloppy half bright monkeys who don't take standards seriously is branded the jerk, when it is the sloppy people who are the jerks. The sloppy people will create rework, breakable software (or other stuff), difficult maintenece, and basically just an ugly piece of work.

Hooray for the jerks.

Heresy: Hare programming language an alternative to C

EarthDog

Re: No moving targets

Exactly! I totally distrust a "on size fits all swiss army knife everything including the kitchen cabinet" approach. The fact we have to many programming languages, and tools sets, point out the problem with that approach. Stop looking for magic bullets..

EarthDog

Re: No moving targets

*The thing is, most of the new stuff was added because real people were using crazy workarounds to achieve what the new features add (if it could be done at all).*

That's a clear cut case of using the wrong tool for the job. This is because too many people do not have more than one tool in their tool box.

The pattern I have noticed is

1) Everyone uses programming language pLangX. It's a job requirement. But bloated or ill suited to many tasks.

2) Someone decides to clean up the situation and comes up with pLangX++ which works as intended.

3) Early adopters who understand the intent like it and begin promoting it.

4) As it gains adoption it shows up in job requirements books, training courses etc. begin to appear

5) Schools start teaching and managers hearing success stories begin requireing it.

6) pLangX++ gets pushed into areas it wasn't intended for and so new features are added.

7) eventually it becomes a bloated mess.

8) repeat cycle.

What a bunch of bricks: Crooks knock hole in toyshop wall, flee with €35k Lego haul

EarthDog

Re: piecing together!

I hear they are constructing a case

Server errors plague app used by Tesla drivers to unlock their MuskMobiles

EarthDog

Re: Internet dependency

But without it how can they track you and determine your purchase patterns?

A tiny typo in an automated email to thousands of customers turns out to be a big problem for legal

EarthDog

Re: A small percentage of the blame should go to the other RDBMS creators...

I see what you did there...

We asked you how your biz introduces new IT systems – and here are the results

EarthDog

THis can be dangerous.

From the article: *nearly half (44.6 per cent) of the direction came from the IT world: after all, they’re the ones who know technology best and, more relevantly, they know what tech (and therefore what products) are there to be bought*

Knowing the technology does not grant anyone special knowledge of the business ant The role of tech is to support the business. To do that they must understand it but in my experience companies love silos. Asking techies to understand a business is often much to ask for. The people to ask are the grunts doing the day-to-day work and their immediate supervisors, with some input from upper management for long term direction. But an attitude of "IT knows best" shouldn't be reinforced.

There's something to be said for delayed gratification when Windows 11 is this full of bugs

EarthDog

There's a difference between leading edge and bleeding edge. My time limit is usually close to a year.

There's only one cure for passive-aggressive Space Invader bosses, and that's more passive aggression

EarthDog

Re: Voted with my feet

Most of the jobs I've had revolved around w*king. The very important project that you worked furiously on for 5 weeks and then are told there would be a 180 degree change of direction rendering the last 5 weeks as nothing more than a furious w*king session. Then of course meetings....

Apple is beginning to undo decades of Intel, x86 dominance in PC market

EarthDog

Re: I guess the 6502/68000 aren't part of iApples's history?

And PowerPC, an IBM chip.

ChaosDB: Infosec bods could pull anyone's plaintext Azure Cosmos DB keys at will from Microsoft admin tools

EarthDog

Chaos DB

The name says it all. Seriously, not a name to give people a sense of security.

Keep calm and learn Rust: We'll be seeing a lot more of the language in Linux very soon

EarthDog

Re: Write C++ in any language

Most C++ and Java code I've seen could be written in COBOL w/ libraries.

Cisco warns 'unintentional debugging credential' left in some network switches can be abused to hijack equipment

EarthDog

No discipline...

I've worked as a sys admin, DBA, and QA. Talking with friends who have had similar careers we came to the conclusion that programmers have the self-discipline of incontinent baboons.

Chinese server builder Inspur trains monster text-generating neural network

EarthDog

Do they even know what the Turing Test is?

Here is the definition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_test

Excerpt from the wikipedia article * a three-person game called the "imitation game", in which an interrogator asks questions of a man and a woman in another room in order to determine the correct sex of the two players. *

So no, generating text is not the Turing test. The AI has to be able to hold it's own in a conversation which will then lead a human to infer the correct gender the machine is supposed to be imitating. Or the machine asking questions to humans to infer the humans genders.

First, stunning whistleblower leaks. Now a shareholder lawsuit lands on Zuckerberg's desk

EarthDog

The Great Old American Whine

(in a nasal whiney voice) "I'm not responsible".

IPSE: More than a third of freelancers have quit contracting since IR35 reforms

EarthDog

Re: Just an observation

my dues as 60 USD/ month, about 44 pounds.

Boeing's Starliner capsule corroded due to high humidity levels, NASA explains, and the spaceship won't fly this year

EarthDog

Re: an issue with the spacecraft’s valves

I don't recall rust as a problem in the 60s. There were other problems, but somehow humidity was not one of them.

Devuan debuts version 4.0 – as usual without a hint of the hated systemd

EarthDog

what's wrong with job security

Nine floors underground, Oracle's Israel data centre can 'withstand a rocket, a missile or even a car bomb'

EarthDog

yet. over time your enemy will evolve.

EarthDog

Re: can withstand a rocket direct hit

I'd seal off the entrances and the air intakes.

Brit builders merchant Travis Perkins opts for Oracle after ERP disaster with Infor

EarthDog

Never under estimate celllotape and elastic bands.

Or duct tape/gaffers tape.

And for god's sake don't lay off experienced staff part way through the process. Losing hundreds of years, or more, of knowledge will screw you over.

Former SAP leader's lawsuit claims she was canned for pushing corporate diversity

EarthDog

Re: "Nothing to stop them"

There are many things wrong about your comment.

1) You ignore the potential impact of culture. If you are socialized into reading "girlie" things you will. Women who do conform to that standard femininity are often punished for it.

2) In this day of modern equipment there less of a need of muscle mass in construction. But women heavy equipment operators don't seem to be common.

3) You make the assumption that diversity and excellence are at odds with each other. There is no evidence for it. This is a glaring bias.

4) Women forced to take time off is a failure of policy. Bias against people who take time off for family or health reasons is a social problem.

5) IQ tests tend to be biased to upper and upper middle class men as that is who conceived of the concepts in the test and wrote them.

6) Do I need to mention the wage gap? Women are clustered in helping professions which pay less. Meanwhile scams such as investment banking, which produces nothing, are higher paying and male dominated. Preparing the next generation or helping the sick is seen as lesser value.

Anecdote. When I started in the IT and Software at the Uni in the 80's our classes and the first few years after graduation the numbers were close to 50/50 male to female. Something happened to skew the numbers. It wasn't due to lack of ability.

Anecdote: a freind of mine was hired into a company to do GIS development. She had an MS, her name on a couple of papers, wrote several chapters in a text book, and quite frankly was the smartest person in the room. Eventually she was forced into field support and then quit due to being frozen out and given only grunt work to do. I doubt it was due to ability.

Firewalls? Pfft – it's no match for my mighty spares-bin PC

EarthDog

Re: executive assistance can sometimes be a good thing.

IIRC Dilbert once referred to support teams as "Denial of Support Teams". Your issue will be ignored in a random manner.

EarthDog

So basically the conversation should go like this:

You: we need hardware and software for a mission critical reasons.

Manager: oh, we don't have a budget for that.

You: I can lash together something from my personal kit.

Manager: Great!

You: Since it is my kit I'll have to have you sign a contract where you indemnify me and hold me blameless and a monthly lease of BIGNUM money.

Manager: How much money do you need in that budget?

Square-shaped hole in workers' wallets after payment system fails at peak tip time

EarthDog

Re: I never get tired of saying it

"Great, thank you. Saved millions over the years."

Got metrics to prove it?

EarthDog

We're sorry

Square says. Very very sorry. So very sorry. You have our sympathies. SO we're sorry. Saddend, yes we are also saddened. Very saddened.. SO we are sorry. SO very sorry.

It's bizarre we're at a point where reports are written on how human rights trump AI rights

EarthDog

Re: A Fate Destined to Be, or Not To Be Considerably Better than Death ‽

badly written AI comment?

EarthDog

AI rights are property rights'

And far too many peple see property rights trump human rights. At least in the mind of many. It needs to be made clear that Human Rights come first with no half measures.

Technology does widen the education divide. But not always in the way you expect

EarthDog

They went from "tech is fun" to burnt out cubicle worker in about 1 year. So much for getting everyone to program by High School.

Boffins say Martian colonists could pee in buckets, give blood if they want shelter

EarthDog

Re: Crap science and crap science journalism

the best use for human waste is fertilizer

EarthDog

The logistical problem is huge. Assuming the water and other critical materials are found on Mars, there is a boot strap problem.

You need to get enough people, equipment, building materials, etc to Mars to boot strap the process in the in the first place. SO for years you will have to supply the colony long enough to the point where thay can grow enough food, mine enough water, mine enough construction materials, set up workshops and factories so they can repair and/or manufacture all the building materials and machine parts they need to hit the critical self supporting point.

People make is sound so easy; we mine then asteroids, send them to Mars. THen we take the water from the moon ad send it to Mars. We set up a colony and Bingo! We are living on Mars.

We should just sit back and work on transporters ala Star Trek and get those working and and hey! Problem solved ;)

EarthDog

Re: $2M bricks

there's not a construction worker shortage. There's a shortage of workers willing to do the ob for the wages and benefits they are offering.

EarthDog

Where do you get the water for the blood?

OK, so we use bodily fluids. Including blood. Assume we can recapture a fair bit of water from urine or blood, but some will still be contained in the material matrix. It is likely to be bound up for a long time. SO replacement water will be needed from somewhere. Either Martian or from Earthian. so we're basically back to where we started.

AI caramba, those neural networks are power-hungry: Counting the environmental cost of artificial intelligence

EarthDog

Re: Human alternative

But of course the human brain is doing much more than that at any one moment; processing visual light spectrum data, maintaining gase exchange processes, pumpumping and monitoring nutrition and waste products throughout the human, processing sound waves, building planning maps of futures events (I'll get done with this and have then have a pint), etc.

I don't think there is a machine yet that could approach this amount of tasking in 20W. You'd basically have to run a the giant factory with thousands of subsystems 24/7 on 20 watts to match the human brain.

EarthDog

More data !=better models

Dirty and biased data will lead to a bad model. Adding more dirty and biased data does not help at all. Meanwhile a smaller data set of clean and representative data will give better results.

It also looks like they just are discovering the concept of parameter sensitivity analysis. If a parameter doesn't cause an appreciable change to a model either throw it out or stop training it.

EarthDog

Re: "we're not doing enough to make AI more energy efficient"

Most programmers I've met have been really sloppy. Now imagine if you will layers upon layers of sloppy code from firmware level, to frameworks and libraries, to the actual AI implementation...

EarthDog

Re: a hotdog shaped van

https://www.oscarmayer.com/wienermobile

EarthDog

Re: machines and entropy

evolution has already optimized Beast Machines

Ghosts in the machine learning pipeline will be impossible to exorcise

EarthDog

Re: For Whenever Taking a Walk on the WWWild Side of Life .......

Upvote this post. If you downvote it you will be teaching to become better. (And that is how you break algorithms and training).

Biggest takeaway from pandemic lockdowns for Microsoft? Teams stopped talking to each other

EarthDog

Re: Worked for us

how did you measure productivity?

Imaginary numbers help AIs solve the very real problem of adversarial imagery

EarthDog

Re: Can't resist...

root out the negativity

Adding AI to everything won't make sense until we can use it for anything

EarthDog

Re: 25 years in IT has made me increasingly cynical about AI ...

Like usuable nuclear fusion, AI has always been 20 year away.

EarthDog

All data suck unless it is carefully reviewed and vetted. Which is impossible. The data stream is hopelessly polluted, once a bad datum enters cleaning the data stream is impossible. This can be unintentional (typos happen), a bug in the system (Buttle can become Tuttle), intentional (I often use false DOB or other information when I am forced to sign up for something) or malicous.

We then use those data to "train" AI. Of course the AI is going to suck. At worst, when used in state security, military, or other life critical applications, it will be deadly.

AI shouldn't be unless 1) it is a non-critical e.g. suggesting movies or 2) in a well constrained environment where data can be vetted, e.g. space exploration.

Remember children, GIGO.

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