Posts by ArrZarr

Google Chrome pushes ahead with targeted ads based on your browser history

The two statements are not mutually exclusive, my friend :)

No fan of Google, but I'd disagree. Chrome exists for the sole purpose of being better than Internet Explorer.

The advertising side is just a bonus for the Goog.

Re: Halfway there

Display ad providers hav been using Websites as an indicator of topics for at decades now. Any marketer with half a brain[1] knows that websites are a strong indicator of topics - would you rather have your ads for selling fabric appear on www.debbiessewingtips.com or www.hornbytrainenthusiasts.com?[3]

[1] Not that all of us have half a brain. [2]

[2] Or the client is throwing horrific amounts of money into a marketing campaign with a horrible ROI

[3] Please note that I'm not talking about the ads that follow you around the web, known as remarketing in the field. Those already exist, just not quite as much in Google's walled garden as Google would like (that's what the privacy sandbox thing is about in the first place)

IT needs more brains, so why is it being such a zombie about getting them?

Okay, you didn't need to call me out like that.

The interesting half is when it's genuinely worth doing the work properly because the person who has to deal with any mistakes is the person doing the setup in the first place. Amazing how much it motivates me to do it properly in the first place when I know who will have to fix it.

Boffins reckon Mars colony could survive with fewer than two dozen people

Re: ...and the reason for this would be?

You can't settle in the canyons, the Martians use those when they punt their barge to work in the morning!

To be fair, 1mSv/day is a limit, rather than an acceptable amount. In a week you'd get the same kind of exposure to radiation that you'd get on Earth in a year.

The habs would be better shielded than a suit, of course, but I also don't think that you were suggesting that a completely unmodified old-fashioned diving suit was the actual answer rather than a descriptor of the technology level which would make EVA actions possible. I'd certainly expect some sort of self-contained apparatus containing enough air to get back home as part of an EVA suit!

Google launches $99 a night Hotel Mountain View for hybrid workers

Re: This was always going to happen

Considering how awful London is, I'd argue that Loch Cranachan is insufficiently far from that self-aggrandising monument to an empire it can't accept it doesn't have any more for anybody whose had the bad luck of needing to spend any length of time there.

- Signed, A Northern Lass.

Techie's quick cure for a curious conflict caused a huge headache

Don't you just hate it when the technology is actively out to get you.

Sure, naming a single random PC after the company is somewhat maximising the chance of something unfortunate happening, but the chances are still so slim that it'll cause any major issue that it just reinforces the point that computers are vindictive buggers and You Can Never Trust Them.

GNOME project considers adding window tiling by default

Re: Depends on screen size

Depends on the use case. I find 4k screens useful for certain spreadsheets (Optimised for 1920x1080 for users, but there's hidden stuff where having it all on one screen at 100% scaling is really handy).

It's not a common use case and even then it's a rare one in my workflow and necessity but 4k full screen (at 100% scaling) is useful.

Re: Once you try this, it is rather wonderful

Conversely, if every optional bit of functionality was off by default, the user experience would be rather awful out of the box (and you wouldn't know about a lot of functionality that is available without explicitly looking for it).

Therefore a balance is required, and while you may disagree with where the balance should lie, you can still turn it off.

Killer app

As dumb as it might sound, The edge snapping tiling was Vista's killer app for me. Not the 64-bit nature of the OS, not the aesthetic, but being able to work on 2 things side-by side using the full screen without faffing about with window sizes.

I only realised how much I relied upon this feature when I went to university (2010), where the Computer labs still had XP installed.

I kinda just assumed that this was default behaviour for all OSs now. It's been 16 years.

NASA mistakenly severs communication to Voyager 2

Re: Auto-correcting antenna aiming! Amazing!

While I'm not seeing to downplay the technological achievement of the Voyager missions, given the distances involved and speeds involved, Earth and Voyager are functionally stationary in terms of angles & such over short periods. I cba to do the maths but even if Voyager 2 were moving perpendicular to the earth, the angles change incredibly slowly.

Turning a computer off, then on again, never goes wrong. Right?

Re: Reminds me of an old (early '80s) AI koan ...

That tester is worth their weight in gold. If it works in their presence, it'll work in anybody's presence.

Re: Reminds me of an old (early '80s) AI koan ...

Oh Jake you sweet, summer child...

Your inexperience with Windows is showing here. Power-cycling with no understanding of what is going wrong is how 90% of the issues I have with my computer are fixed!

Although I am reminded of all the times that stuff starts magically working as soon as the relevant expert is watching from over somebody's shoulder.

No open door for India's tech workers in any UK trade deal

Re: This isn't the Brexit we voted for.

No. They're politicians. That lot especially are the utter scum of the earth, but to a cynical bitch like me it was immediately obvious from their wording that they were "merely presenting an option" as to what we could do with all that money.

Re: This isn't the Brexit we voted for.

As much as I hate to side with the raving lunatics that still seem to think that Britain still rules the world and therefor the UK can do better without the EU, the wording on the bus was "We send the EU £350 million a week. Let's fund the NHS instead".

It's evocative rhetoric but through luck or intention, does not mean that the NHS will get a single penny more.

To me, this means that about the only thing that camp leave didn't lie about was that they never promised to put that £350M/week into the NHS, they just implied it. Very strongly.

Ariane 5 to take final flight, leaving Europe without its own heavy-lift rocket

Re: Or how that

I am aware that the British very happily took all the HTP they could get their hands on following the fall of Germany in WW2, Black Arrow was the only major launch vessel (to my knowledge) which used it. It's less bad than the alternatives from an environmental stance but given how willing to break down HTP is, the Americans were probably sensible to use RFNA even before they tamed it as their storable propellant of choice.

Re: Or how that

While I'm just as miffed as you that our esteemed government screwed the pooch (plus ça change!), the black arrow concept was flawed with its use of HTP as an oxidiser.

It's possible that I'm biased due to only having really consumed one source on liquid propellants (Ignition!, pick it up.), concentrated H2O2 is not the smartest choice.

Boss such a tyrant you need a job quitting agent? It works in Japan

Re: taishoku daiko - the actual mechanics?

My Japanese isn't great but jumping over to Jisho.org and doing a big of digging results in the kanji 退職代行.

退職 (taishoku) literally translates to 1. retirement; resignation

代行 (daiko) literally translates to 1. acting as agent; acting on (someone's) behalf; executing business for

So I think you're fine ;)

Techie wasn't being paid, until he taught HR a lesson

Re: Unique keys

I guarantee that the the system would not have been difficult to implement, but it shows a surprising amount of foresight in the designers of the system.

Re: Unique keys

My surname is incredibly rare (600ish in the UK). I still get asked for DOB by my surgery.

Re: Unique keys

If you have the audacity to be trans, you need two NHS numbers once you transition. The NHS's core system cannot handle the flipping of M to F or F to M at all.

If AI drives humans to extinction, it'll be our fault

Re: Evil or enlightened

It turns out that the real AI was Jake all along.

Apple stomped all over NYC store workers' union rights, judge rules

Re: Workers rights in the US

But without Jones' laywers' incompetence, there would have been no evidence springing (On both levels of not sending the wrong thing or on warning Jones ahead of time about their blunder).

Officially, opposing counsel did not have this evidence sprung upon them and plaintiff's counsel followed the rules to the letter.

Re: Workers rights in the US

Before you stand in front of a judge investigating the case, there is the discovery phase of a trial. Both the Prosecution and the Defence are entitled to see all the evidence from the other side ahead of standing in front of the judge and, in this case, the worker's lawyers will have asked for CCTV footage from Apple themselves.

The days of springing evidence on opposing counsel are long gone.

Another redesign on the cards for iPhone as EU rules call for removable batteries

It's not just battery lifetime benefits.

A user-swappable battery without adhesive or any other BS can have its charge extended by the simple method of having one or more spare batteries. Sure, you could theoretically do that today with your ifixit toolkit and a tube of glue, but one is obviously just better than the other.

Google searchers from years past can get paid for pilfered privacy

Re: Huh?

You search for that, you get a page with those search results.

What you do not do is then click an external link to outside of El Reg's ecoystem that also passes your search term to an unknown third party.

An example used is the search term "Abortion clinics Indianapolis". Let's make this current and change that search term to "Abortion clinics Texas".

If you were to search that today and click what looks to be a legitimate link to an actual clinic but is actually a Conservative anti-abortion group's site, they now have your IP address and your search term and can do *whatever they like* with this information as they can collect it without any interaction with a privacy policy or whatever. You're in a shithole US state so there's no GDPR covering your pregnant ass.

There are ways to protect yourself through a VPN or TOR but most people don't use those services.

Airline puts international passengers on the scales pre-flight

Height plays a big part in weight. If somebody is at the upper end of a healthy weight while being 6'6'', they'll weigh the same as somebody who is obese at 5'6''.

Beyond that, muscle is considerably heavier than fat by volume, so somebody who looks particularly svelte might be considerably heavier than they appear if they have a lot of muscle while not showing it.

Watchdog calls for automatic braking to be standard in cars

Re: Unintended consequences

While I wouldn't go that far, I'm firmly of the opinion that since I'll be dealing with any crashes that could be considered "my fault", then they had damn well better be my fault rather than my car deciding it knows better than me how to deal with the situation I'm in.

NASA experts looked through 800 UFO sightings and found essentially nothing

Re: I know how crazy this is going to sound, but...

If you can bend the 4th dimension through the 5th dimension, bending it to a specific point in the third dimension is just part of the maths.

Australia fines tech companies for exploiting foreign tech workers

Re: "the plethora of deadly creatures found in the one-time prison colony"

While I'll grant you the insensitivity point, the fact that Oz was a Prison Colony for a chunk of the last 200 years is a statement of fact.

BOFH: Get me a new data file or your manager finds out exactly what you think of him

Re: Useful idiot?

Just use "They" and its conjugations my friend ;)

Makes life way easier.

Microsoft finally gets around to supporting rar, gz and tar files in Windows

Alternatively just workaround it. The right click menu has a number of extract options* that don't require you to ever open winRAR, neatly sidestepping the nag.

*Y;know, in the old contextual menu that's only available in Windows 11 through an extra click for some unholy reason.

Lenovo Thinkpad Z13 just has this certain Macbook Air about it...

Re: Tiny Keyboard?

Maybe if you read the article, you would have noticed this sentence - "The 13.3 inch screen is a 1920×1200 (16:10) display,..."

Re: Yup

Unless you're not massively tech savvy and rely on your PC generally being able to get up and go by itself without much user tinkering.

Win10 isn't an amazing OS, but for all its faults, you can generally rely on installing it on a PC and expecting it to work without needing to worry about hardware compatibility.

There's also the fact that most businesses use Windows or Apple OSes as their default so it's easy for users to learn how to get around one OS for personal and professional use.

Linux gaming has made great strides over the past few years, but games are designed & built for Windows PCs.

Win11 has some deplorable design choices. Top of my list are the limited places you can put the taskbar and the contextual menu so pathetic that they give you a button to just use the old one, but for all its numerous flaws, it has the same benefits as Win10.

I'm not asking you to like Windows, but do remember that *Nix Is Not For Everyone.

Nearly 1 in 5 academics admit close encounters of the anomalous kind

Re: As with so much in these Troubled Times...

As time goes on, I find myself becoming more and more certain that Neurotypicals are a myth made up to make us all angry at each other.

Professor freezes student grades after ChatGPT claimed AI wrote their papers

Re: What happened to hard work?

First sentiment feels wrong to me, but web search is a tool and the results you get are dependent upon how you use the tool.

Second sentiment is pretty spot on.

Third sentiment feels right but only when applied to absolute efficiency gains, which have diminishing returns in their very nature. In my experience, the big efficiency gains happen when The People Doing The Work push for a major IT upgrade and The People Doing The Work get to make the relevant decisions rather than The People Who Manage The Money.

</opinion>

Re: LLMs: plagiarism devices

"Monitor managed to not lose"

A story for the ages. Both ships spent the fight playing the worlds angriest game of skee-ball off the other ship's functionally impenetrable armor.

Re: Education itself is partly to blame here.

It all comes down to "Different people are different".

The core issue is the application of one size fits all methodology to schools and education in general. At 4 or 5 you get pushed into a pipeline that you won't get out of until 16 (or 18, or 21/22) and taught, for the most part, in the same way as everybody else despite different people being different.

In my experience, exam boards feel do a decent job of accommodating the majority of people but those at extremes like the good doctor and I really struggle with the half that we don't get on with.

And anyway, I needed a way to start the post.

Re: More misunderstanding of what an LLM is

We know that we need to be skeptical because we're jaded old misanthropes who don't trust new tech until we've got our hands on it and thrown it down a flight of stairs or ten to see what falls out.

The strawman professor I've created isn't. I agree with you, but my issue was with you being surprised that a professor in an unrelated field misunderstood the concept.

Re: Education itself is partly to blame here.

Just to be the voice of dissent, I've always been awful at coursework but really good at exams. A perfect world would have one coursework option and one exam option of identical difficulty for the same course.

Not going to go into why coursework was so hard for me, but despite getting an average of 99% over the four science exams I took for GCSE, I didn't get an A* because coursework.

Re: More misunderstanding of what an LLM is

I'm sure that the lecturer with a PHD in classical Greek literature is incredibly tech savvy.

University professers tend to be smart, but we all have our areas of expertise.

You might consider the distinction of what LLMs are and aren't to be obvious, but the aforementioned lecturer would consider the distinction between Sappho's East Aeolic dialect and Homer's Ionic dialect obvious.

We live in a big world. There's a lot of knowledge out there and none of us can know all of it.

Re: @Filippo

This is true for the current level of artificial intelligence, but not necessarily true for the future.

It's also worth noting that it's unlikely any idea expressed in an essay is truly original, even at undergraduate level. Good luck having any sort of unprecedented opinion on Romeo and Juliet, for example.

If the assignment's purpose is to check the student's understanding of a well-documented thing, then original thought is genuinely not required either. It's a rare student that will have insight on intricacies of the water cycle that experienced geographers haven't had and published a paper on already.

For the record, I agree on the ideal of education that you state but education can't just be on independent thinking, there must also be knowledge transfer. All the independent thinking in the world won't be much help if you're starting from scratch on 2+2=4.

National newspaper duped into running GPT-4-written rage-click opinion piece

Re: Writers

Considering how chewy their posts are, at no longer than about a paragraph, a whole article written in that style would probably read with the undeniable grace and finesse of falling down several flights of stairs.

I'd genuinely love to see it. Trying to read it would be like exploring the depths of the Amazon Jungle, cutting through undergrowth while struggling to progress at all in the slightest. Knowing that every step risks your body & mind with the myriad ways your trek could go wrong!

Re: For Worlds Leading Greater IntelAIgent Games Players ‽

Over the years, I've gone back and forth on whether you were an account powered by AI, left to run rampant on El Reg's servers.

How does it feel to be less coherent than an actual AI?*

When are you upgrading to become amanfromMars 2?

*The person about to comment on ChatGPT etc not being an AI, we get it. You're very smart. Now be quiet - Mummy and the machine are sassing each other.

FCA mulls listing rules after Hauser blames 'Brexit idiocy' for Arm's New York IPO

I don't really understand why streamlining the rules will help here. From the article ARM chose NY because it was a better choice, not because London was too complicated to get onto.

UK government scraps smart motorway plans, cites high costs and low public confidence

'Twas a beast indeed. The fact that the car weighed under a ton before people got in helped the gutsy little bugger no end though.

Chinese company claims it's built batteries so dense they can power electric airplanes

Re: Pling!

Interesting, thanks!

Deplatforming hate forums doesn't work, British boffins warn

Re: If you feed the trolls ...

I don't frequent those forums. I have seen a couple of people who did nothing to deserve being targeted beyond already being vulnerable get targeted.

Beyond that, the internet has a well-recorded history of going after people without sufficient evidence and making people's online lives hell for nothing more than an imagined slight (just look at twitter). While there are people who deserve bad things(TM) to happen to them, this is what laws and a functioning police/judicial system is for rather than vigilante justice.

Finally, not sure what you're talking about manipulating teenage boys into becoming femboys, but either you're talking about trans girls or effeminate boys and they're allowed to be whoever they are without you judging them, thank you very much.