Posts by Jimmy2Cows 2511 publicly visible posts • joined 6 Feb 2015
It's not the only solution. What's wrong with a simple keyword search? They're just desperate to get payback on their AI investments and this is one more thing to needlessly shoehorn AI into. AI is not essential here, it's simply sn obvious follow-the-money decision.
Replanting a large chunk (i.e. a trillion) of the roughly 3 trillion trees humanity has felled will remove about that much CO2 from the atmosphere, reduce local and possibly global temperatures (greenery has a local cooling effect), filter more pollutants from the air (trees act as air natural filters), and even increase oxygenation slighty (increased photosynthesis), for far less cost and on about the same time scale as building a load of nuclear reactors.
I am very pro-nuclear, but if your goal is removal of existing CO2, there are far easier and cheaper ways to do it. Of course we aren't allowed to consider simple and cheap solutions. We can only consider solutions that force massive lifestyle changes on the entire planet, at eyewatering cost.
Surely the point is that it used to cost nothing at all to do it via a web form. Now there is a cost borne by the tax payer filing the submission. Doesn't matter that cost can be relatively small. There was no cost before. They made things worse, not better.
I doubt it's saving HMRC anything, since the input from all these different providers will still have to be processed. If that's automated, what was wrong with just automating the old web form? HMRC still has to maintain the automation itself.
Well, I think there's this thing called "copyright" that you might have heard of... but it's a relatively new concept so perhaps you haven't.
It's supposed to protect content producers from being ripped off. All the AI companies are conveniently ignoring it because they're backed by companies worth billions and have armies of lawyers.They are ripping off everything left, right and centre. Far more than any so-called "piracy" could ever hope to do. But, most individual publishers are too small to fight it.
As for why a non-profit would want to do this? Surely it just means they charge a fee for their services but it all goes into the directors' pockets and there's no profits to distribute to shareholders. Aren't ther also tax breaks for non-profits? Why wouldn't they want to do that? Plus it sounds nicer to most people. Not some greedy publicly-traded corporate entity in cahoots with some unseen business interest.
Like it or not, when putting something into a computer one expects it to give a correct answer. A calculator wouldn't be any use if it gave a wrong answer that seemed convincing, but you then had to check the result by some other method. AI is no different, and since AI is being pushed heavily as the answer to everything, that answer damn well better be correct every time. Anything less is of limited to no use, depending on your situation. And certainly not worth the cost and hype currently expended.
Maybe if US companies hadn't greedily offshored all their production capabilities in pursuit of ever-increasing profit and meeting arbitrary Wall Street expectations on continuous growth, the US wouldn't be facing a trade deficit in the first place.
Capitalist values are an underlying cause i.e. they did it to themselves, and now Trump is bitching about it like it's everyone else's fault. The cows are coming home to roost, and all the dominoes are falling like a house of cards.
Because at least then the arresting copper is supposed to justify that you look enough like the person they want, not just because computer says "Found one!".
Of course this doesn't actually work in practice either e.g. the number of wrongly arrested black people just because they're black.
Perhaps if there were some kind of penalty, and perhaps if at least some of it came from the salary of the arresting officer, they'd all be inclined to be bit more careful. But it should apply to all arrests, not just those based on LFR.
Surprised the list doesn't automatically include all subsidaries, parent companies, sister companies, and any other relationship.
Seems dumb to have to manually keep the list up to date. Affected companies just spin out another subsidiary and let whackamole commence.
Incompetence, badly drafted laws that don't allow it, or just good ole fashioned lobbying keeping it off the books...?
Could a drone's airframe survive the kind of abrupt maneuvers needed to escape a laser once tracked? Would it have enough power to do so? Drone has to move a relatively long way in a very short time to get out of the beam. The laser targetting system only has to change a couple of angles very slightly. Fractions of a degree given the distrances involved. Seems no matter where it the drone went, the tracker would stay on it, otherwise it's a crap tracker in the first place.
They're never perfect reflectors. Some energy is always absorbed. Dirt on the surface amplifies the effect. Heat from the laser quickly distorts and chars the reflector, making it uselss. Depending on laser power you might gain a couple of seconds protection, but it's never enough.
As for painting them. Same problem. The paint won't be perfectly reflective. It will bubble, blister, char, just the same making it rapidly ineffective.
All well and good, and it seems to be better at Python than, say, C++.
But without the skills to evaluate the AI's output, other than "it runs for my narrow scenario", I still question the overall usefulness. LLM's are notoriously bad at producing quality, secure, bug free code.
Given the vast majority of code on the public internet is for "why doesn't this work?" or "how do I do XYX?"-type questions where the associated code is full of bugs, this result is no surprise at all. If the things are fed on stuff that's 90% wrong, expect its output to repeat the same bugs up to 90% of the time.
My "much less interesting" remark was tongue-in-cheek with respect to UNIT.
What happened in Staufen is certainly very interesting, and and perfect example of why rushing into geothermal extraction without a thorough understanding of the subsurface geology, and what can go hideously wrong even with the best intentions, is a bad idea.
Meanwhile in the real world, a much less interesting problem already happens:
How exactly does this geothermal fracking not cause contamination problems, while that complaint is often raised for oil/gas fracking? The act is the same, just the extraction goal is different.
I suppose it depends on what the contamination is. If it's oil/gas seeping into ground water, that's one thing. But if it's the fracking fluid itself seeping into ground water, then that will be a problem for all uses of fracking, not just the ones you disagree with.
Also as stated in the article: On January 20 this year, President Trump signed an executive order calling for much tougher vetting of foreign aliens
Doesn't matter that Obama did it first. That was bad enough. Trump is doing it now. He could (yeah, right) have stopped it. He chose to go all-in. That just makes them both authoritarian hypocrites.
None of that changes the point about MAGA hypocrisy, i.e. demanding freedoms and less government intervention while simultaneously supporting crackdowns on freedoms for anyone who isn't one of them.
More subscriptions, fewer low-rung meatbags (tending toward zero) leeching off those subscriptions seems to be the underlying jist. There's some bollocks lurking behind that about managing the risk landscape of multiple vendors different AI agents. A pile of corporate buzzword bingo, and it probably won't work well but who cares.
Worry not. Give it a few weeks a Trump will order all US traffic lights changed to red, white, and blue. And red will be at bottom and mean 'go'. Anyone who doesn't like the BIGLIEST MOST BEST PATRIOT traffic signals is a SAD LOSER who HATES THE USA!
Now, where's that Emperor Trump icon...? Settled on pirates because he's more buckaneering mob boss than presidential at this point.
Hmm... that statement places a milk order every time I take the milk out of the fridge to, you know, use it. Not convinced you've thought this through.
You at least need a minimum time window to expire where milk is not in the fridge before ordering more. And I don't want it to wait until there's no milk before ordering more. It needs to see I'm running low, but not out, and then order in advance so I don't run out. Then it needs to adjust for different milk bottle sizes, different types of milk (full, semi-skimmed, skimmed etc).
Does it need AI? Maybe it needs image recongition ML to evaluate milk bottle size, milk type, and how much milk is left. Does it need an LLM for that? Hell no. Wrong sort of AI.
Ahh you're one of those people who believes everyone should think and act exactly like you, and no one has any right to a lifestyle that differs from your interpretation of what's "right".
Make a lot of noise seeking attention, complain about non-issues, generally stick your oar in where it's not wanted, instead of just minding your own damn business.
What's your opinion of an "impractical car" got to do with a complaint about the state of the roads? Especially when you then complain about massive SUVs, which are emminently more practical than non-SUVs at dealling with our crappy roads.
You seem to be one of those people that thinks everyone should drive a tiny car, regardless of circumstances, just because you don't (appear to) like bigger cars. Get over yourself. Other people's choices are none of your business.
You clearly don't understand, or are ignoring, that all the legally required safety tech in modern cars has forced even small cars to become much larger. It's got absolutely nothing to do with oversized American cars. 99% of cars for that market aren't sold here anyway.
And you're wilfully missing the point. The absolute average size of modern vehicles is irrelevant. Parking space size has never adjusted to the current reality.
I will never try to tell anyone what size of car they should be driving based on my beliefs, biases, and dislikes. It's simply nothing to do with me. Someone wants to drive a small car? Fine. Someone wants to drive a big car? Also fine. Either way it's none of my business, and it shouldn't be anyone else's.
My son and his wife had to buy a larger car (SUV actually) because their baby seat wouldn't fit behind the front seat in their old car. That's a practical need based on safety and is completely up to them. Nobody has the right to say otherwise. Really don't understand where people get off sticking their nose into places they've absolutely no business being.
Nothing at all to do with most bays being sized from an average car from the 1950s, while the average modern car is much larger.
Nothing at all to do with trying to cram as many parking spaces into a site as possible, and who cares if customers can't open their door and actually exit/enter their car without dinging the adjacent car.
Never mind that some people need a big car because of large family, disability etc.
But no, it's all numpties buying massive SUVs. (And mo, I don't own an SUV).
Only places I've seen get parking right, from the customer perspective are:
1. Costco, since their bays are sized for US cars, and
2. in the last few years Sainsbury's, where they marked a foot wide space between each parking space (though maybe that was just round here, no idea how widespread that is).
Everyone else seems more than happy to shoehorn their customers into undersized parking spaces.
I thought the MOT system is already rate limited. A testing station cannot submit MOT pass info faster than the time it is believed is needed to carry out a proper MOT. I've seen this happen. The MOT happens a bit quicker than expected, but I've had to wait because the system wouldn't let the garage log the details more quickly.
Of course, some places will game this, doing a 5 minute "MOT" for cash and then just making the customer wait until for the timeout.
"Businesses want to move to AI PCs but not pay a premium as there are no compelling business cases," said Ranjit Atwal, research director for Gartner's Quantitative Innovation Team.
Bollocks. If there's no compelling business case, why would businesses even want the upheaval of moving. Gartner continue to bullshit as usual, even when there are some reasonable points buried in the garbage (e.g. users can't be arsed, don't see the point, no compelling business case).
Anyone in the space industry should also look out. NASA and astrophysicists for instance... No "cis-lunar operations" "or trans-Neptunian orbit" naughtiness for you. Off to the re-education centres for you.
That said I half expect NASA to be shut down, or become a wholy-owned subsidiary of SpaceX, so Musk can bury SLS once and for all, and divert NASA's entire budget to his own goals. And I'm not sure it's only a half-expectation.
The "needed" social change is why it hasn't happened. Asking billions of people to accept a markedly reduced quality of life is a guaranteed vote loser. This is why it's being forced in slowly.
Look at the ICE vehicle mandates for instance. Only those don't work either, because not everyone can, wants to, or is able to live with an electric car. Most people that want one, can afford one, and have the space to charge it conveniently, already run one. The mandates are already panicking the car manufacturers, and we're only at the beginning. Pushing ahead will put a lot of manufacturers out of business, leading to mass unemployment as the resulting supply chains and collateral industries collapse. Another vote killer. One the governments hoped would be someone elses' problem in the future, except it's biting now.
Look at the green energy push, with no thought to how the grid can handle things, what happens when the wind doesn't blow and the sun doesn't shine. Trillions of ££££ needed for transmission infrastructure and storage, but no money to fund it. So we push on regardless, needing gas peaker plants to fill in the gaps, and help keep the grid stable.
So even forcing it slowly won't work.
Mass tree planting is cheap, effective, you can plant fast growing species that can lock up tonnes per year per tree, which are still suitable for construction lumber.
But as someone said above, where's the money in that. All the carbon schemes are just a wheeze for someone to make money. They don't actually solve anything. CO2 production is at best moved around. Never reduced. Tree planting can have a return as a lumber investment, but not on the timescales investors demand.
The simplest, cheapest and most effective solution is to plant a shit load more trees. Humanity has cut down something like 3 trillion. Even if we stopped generating all CO2 now, it's still in the atmosphere.
Plant a trillion trees over the next few decades, CO2 is removed from the atmosphere as they grow. That CO2 is locked away as the trees or as useful, usable lumber.
No need to try forcing massive social change on the entire planet. No need for expensive solutions that don't actually seem to be solving anything. No need for pointless "carbon credits" and all the trading shenanigans that goes with them.
And before anyone says that's impossible, drone-based planting and automation takes the human labour out of the equation.
Nah... every elligible worker should accept. The admin just to sort that out will bring the federal government to a grinding halt. The cost of the 8 months pay severance package will bankrupt the country, and it really will collapse when all federal employees quit en-masse in September.
Of course they'll probably just pick people at random, rather than "waste" a load of time deciding who really should be dumped and who they really need to stay. Would still be funny to have his bluff called.
Who the hell writes these procurement contracts?
If you (i.e. Oracle) can't do it for the price you quote, in the time you quote, you should be contractually on the hook for the excess. That will stop deliberate lowball quotes that are only issued to win a bid, knowing they can balloon the true price once the deal is signed.
Better still, make it illegal to make such grossly low estimates. with the provider's executives personally, criminally liable for any transgressions.
Meanwhile, UK councils: take some damned advice on how to define an ITT and how to negotiate the bloody contract, how to set the terms that don't leave you over a barrel down the line. FFS get together with the other councils that also fucked it up, see where you went wrong, then write out 200 times "I won't do that again.".
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2025
