Posts by find users who cut cat tail

Japanese tech startups testing cash incentives for office return

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Extra money for the option I prefer anyway? Sign me up!

Videoconferencing fatigue is real, study finds

Re: Duh.

I do not care about investors, just hate WFH. I and also went to work in person basically the entire pandemic (it was almost never strictly prohibited without loopholes). There were about five of us in a large building. Happy times. YMMV.

Re: Meetings!!!

And I wish you both read the article before commenting.

The study compared people watching the same content remotely and live.

Meta's ad-free scheme dares you to buy your privacy back, one euro at a time

Re: Shocked?

> most people don't realize how much data about them Meta collects, or how valuable it is

So how do most people think Meta make loads of money (and people are not ignorant of that)? Their only real ‘product’ is you being on the platform.

It's time to celebrate the abysmal efforts to go paperless in the NHS

Paperless is and always has been an instrumental goal, not a terminal one. As another story reminded us not so long ago: Bad software destroyed doctors memory. If they cannot do paperless right, keeping dead trees is the lesser evil.

The world seems so loopy. But at least someone's written a memory-safe sudo in Rust

Re: Lameness

Not sure what the numbers mean, but you clearly prefer quantity over quality in your posts. So have another one from me for spamming the discussion.

Perhaps AI is going to take away coding jobs – of those who trust this tech too much

No, the big money will be in maintaining old COBOL (and even more obscure) code our society is running on.

Also, unit tests, despite their utility, do not check code correctness. If your unit test does not go beyond 7 it can easily verify that all odd numbers are primes…

Japan complains Fukushima water release created terrifying Chinese Spam monster

> relatively short duration

You mean 30 to 40 years?

US Republican party's spam filter lawsuit against Google dimissed

Re: No bias found, but…

If lots of people mark the same e-mail as spam it is quite obviously bulk, and most likely unsolicited as well. Surprisingly – to you, anyway – this spam detection can be achieved by individuals marking individual e-mails based on their opinion.

Microsoft teases Python scripting in Excel

Re: Pandas and Anaconda

R is nice. It is even more readable then Perl!

But seriously, if you learn Python for pandas, with some luck you might end up learning Python, a generally useful programming language. With R you end up with a lanague which is very efficient at specific things and frustrating when you need also to do some ‘normal’ programming.

Lost voices, ignored words: Apple's speech recognition needs urgent reform

> Do you seriously think that ANY company would ignore a market segment where they could make money?

Could they? Companies ignore market segments all the time – precisely because [they think] it is not worth it. Sometimes they are right, sometimes not.

Accessibility is hard and tends to or force you to change the design, i.e. get in the way. And Apple are not in the ‘everyone uses this’ business. They are ‘overpriced tat to show your superiority’ business. If everyone used Apple, Apple users would no longer be special. So to keep the air of exclusivity they actually need the unwashed masses to use something else.

> Your existing is wrong!

Did anyone say that? Please calm down.

AI on AI action: Googler uses GPT-4 chatbot to defeat image classifier's guardian

…allowing computer scientists to spend more of their time developing interesting research questions gradually lose all actual understanding of the subject and still produce papers.

Inclusive Naming Initiative limps towards release of dangerous digital dictionary

abort

abort() is a C/POSIX standard function. Pretty hard to replace immediately. More like ‘gradually phase out in 40 years if you really put lots of effort into it’. But I guess they are not bothered by such little details.

We just don't get enough time, contractor tasked with fact-checking Google Bard tells us

> Bard spewing incorrect information on politicians, for example, could sway people's opinions on elections and undermine democracy.

And we can't have that. What would then [other] politicians be for?

Deepfakes being used in 'sextortion' scams, FBI warns

Can't stop it

So, what to do instead? Generate vast quantities of such images. For everyone. For non-existent AI-generated lookalikes. For whoever and whatever you can in all possible variations. Make them easily available. Let everyone know.

Then they become banal and useless for extortion. Of course such pictures exist. Of course they are fake. Who cares?

Sure currently there would be legal problems, and with minors this is not likely to be an option, etc. But generally, the ease with which they are generated is not the problem; it is the solution.

Microsoft, GitHub, OpenAI urge judge to bin Copilot code rip-off case

Re: I don't see the problem

Because of the quotes you put around AI. It does not give answer based on understanding. Or at least there is no clear evidence for that.

Nice smart device – how long does it get software updates?

Re: IoS

That is basically the right approach to all ‘smart’ devices. In some cases there can be benefits if the thing is programmable or remote controlled or something. But… The piece with the complicated software has to be disentangled from the hardware. You have hardware which actually does something – and with that you may or may not have a computer (whatever the form factor) which provides the smarts. And they can be replaced independently. Because they have very different upgrade cycles. Then it perhaps can work.

Open source databases: What are they and why do they matter?

Re: MariaDb and BSL

Second that. Here, have a useful DB decision chart for free:

Can SQLite handle this?

Yes → Use SQlite.

No → Consider other options.

The crime against humanity that is the modern OS desktop, and how to kill it

I like the button on the top. So you have to move it because of people like me. You are welcome…

Anyway, the important points are (a) you can move it wherever you want (b) the default is not actively annoying/harmful.

Awkward. At Chrome summit, developer asks: Why should anyone trust Google?

Exactly. Many of the ‘contributions’ should not be developed at all. And definitely not at Google. And become critical on top of it.

Re: Technologies

You are being tracked to get better targeted ads – they say. No ads, no need for tracking.

The planet survived six hours without Facebook. Let's make it longer next time

> One is what it teaches us about Facebook's importance to our daily lives.

I read about the outage in the news the following day. Not surprising that I wouldn't notice – but apparently no one else cared enough to mention it either.

It's the end of the world as we know it, and we should feel fine

If we stopped chasing the upgrade, I haven't noticed. Sure, the reason for upgrade used to be ‘it brings these nice things I need/want’, whereas now it is more ‘my old stuff is no longer working – again’.

But perhaps we are reaching some kind of equilibrium. I would not call it a good thing. It means about half of ‘improvements’ will make things worse. Probably more than half, knowing humanity and the second law of thermodynamics…

Sort-of Epic win as judge kills Apple ban on apps linking to outside payment systems

Re: Two wrongs don't make a right, apparently

Sure they will be shafted. Also there is also the third party, not always mentioned, the lawyers. And this party always wins.

Anyway, Apple are wrong on the principles and EPIC are wrong in the specifics. This is one of the cases when one wishes “can't the two just somehow annihilate”? That would leave the world a better place…

Git 2.33 released with new optional merge process likely to become the default: It's 'over 9,000' times faster

Re: Git is not a file revision system

Taking snapshots of a filesystem is a good mental model for Subversion – it is probably the mental model almost everyone uses when working with it. So I do not know where you got the ‘thinking error’ idea.

CVS versions single files. SVN versions entire directories (trees). Git… makes simple things look complicated.

Apple says its CSAM scan code can be verified by researchers. Corellium starts throwing out dollar bills

Re: Encryption? Apple AI? So what would this be?

You wanted to know? All right then.

You have two options. Give us the decryption key. Or spend a few years in prison. You don't have the key or say it doesn't exist? Then your options are limited to the second one.

Google Groups kills RSS support without notice

Re: RSS isn't dead.

For driving Maps are at least basically usable. Have you tried to plan a trek through forests and hills… I mean the immense grey void?

Google Maps can disappear any time – and good riddance.

Russian Arm SoC now shipping in Russian PCs running Russian Linux

Re: Quintessence

Because our capitalistic overlords would never…

Perl's Community Affairs Team chair quits as org put on ice by code language's foundation

Re: Dont go away mad, don't go away sad. just go away.

You obviously do not understand. The only code that apparently matters nowadays is that of conduct…

Hey, AI software developers, you are taking Unicode into account, right ... right?

> treating any email that contains such characters as spam

Easy if you only speak English.

If your native language is RTL on the other hand…

> we don't need to worry about the AI uprising any time soon

AI uprising has never been the problem. We will destroy ourselves using dumb machine learning long before getting close to developing a general AI.

The way it is going someone soon nukes a country while trying to erase an old Johnny Cash collection…

Microsoft's Surface Laptop 4 now includes AMD options for biz customers, boasts up to 19 hours of battery life

Re: Square screen, central touchpad. Nice.

> no numberpad to give a central touchpad

What?

My NB has numeric keypad (which I use) and central touchpad (which – like all touchpads – mostly just gets in the way and gathers dust and grime and crumbles).

Atheists appeal to higher power for intercession over alleged sins against privacy

Re: I wonder what the split was over.

If the organisation's goal is to ‘demystify atheism’, which I am pretty sure is oxymoron, why not have a schism while you are at it…

Wi-Fi devices set to become object sensors by 2024 under planned 802.11bf standard

Re: I suppose this was inevitable

The reason is always the same: You would install those more mature technologies intentionally and persumably have some control over their use. Whereas with this you will have little choice as WiFi is ubiquitous.

Satellites, space debris may have already brightened night skies 10% globally – and it's going to get worse

Re: Blankety Blank

Can we please not?

It is easy to open any link you want in a new tab. Just use the middle mouse button (or whatever works in your browser).

It is rather annoying when links open in new tabs and you do not want them to.

Linus Torvalds worries kernel 5.12 might be ‘one of those releases’ that lands a tad late

Re: So what?

Distribution kernels may or may not be LTS kernels. For instance your 5.8 is not LTS (regardless of how long the distro intends to support it).

What's in Fedora 34? GNOME 40, accelerated Wayland, PipeWire Audio, improved Flatpak support, and more

Re: bloatware like Wayland

Sure, X11 carries lots of baggage – show me Wayland after 35+ years and then we can compare.

Also, one reason why it is smaller (beside X11 containig lots of stuff quite irrelevant nowadays) is that pretty much everything X11 does is against the Wayland philosophy – forwarding, making screenshots, programs positioning their own windows, … Yes, I am aware that many of these things can actualy work in Wayland. The developers are not completely Poettering-level insane. Fortunately. But anyway…

X11/Xorg has shown its strength by integrating lots of things no one even dreamed of in the 80s. Sometimes seamlessly, sometimes less. I am looking forward to its 40 year anniversary.

Re: GNOME 40?

It is the percentage of features left (i.e. not removed yet) compared to GNOME 2. Also apparently the padding of every GUI element – in olympic size swimming pools.

'Business folk often don't understand what developers do...' Twilio boss on the chasm that holds companies back

The business folk often don't understand…

Make it a full stop.

I am not even judging. It is just how it is.

GitLab latest to ditch 'master' as default initial branch name: It's now simply called 'main'

Re: Aargh...

→ minecrafts person

That's what I read on the first pass anyway…

FYI: A smart-speaker box can monitor your heartbeat using high-pitch beeps and a pinch of algorithm – study

One more reason

One more reason to avoid smart speakers as hell.

If a person is confined to the space covered by ultrasound emitted by smart speakers, they can monitor the heartbeat. What is the utility? Don't know, probably none. What happens when someone takes it seriously and tries to ‘make it work’ in practice? Disaster. All kinds of. The best possible outcome is that it will not work. Of course, the Googles and Amazons will see another data stream to record and keep, so they will grab it anyway. They always do.

India's demand to identify people on chat apps will 'break end-to-end encryption', say digital rights warriors

Re: Strictly speaking nobody's anonymous

> Requiring people to idenitify themselves would go a long way to restoring civility on the 'net.

That is the old theory, and it could even be true some time ago when people still could be ashamed or afraid of consequences or something. Not any more. Now you double down – the more outrageous things you say, the more important it is to do so. And it works.

I have watched the real-name policy applied by some news sites here (or “news” sites – though not consipracy theory pedlars, just news somewhere on the tabloid spectrum). The result is that all the insane crap in discussions continues happily, now just labelled with real names and towns.

Half a million stolen French medical records, drowned in feeble excuses

Re: Alistair, you have my sympathies

500 ml is a medium size tea mug. I need about 5-7 per day. Beside other things I drink (see icon). And that is in winter. In summer the intake goes up and becomes mostly water. Drinking a 1.2 litre jug in one go means I am just momentarily thirsty. I must be a different species…

The perils of non-disclosure? China 'cloned and used' NSA zero-day exploit for years before it was made public

Re: TL/dr

I refuse to learn from the 60s. Can I have them back now?

Microsoft says it found 1,000-plus developers' fingerprints on the SolarWinds attack

Re: How many of those fingerprints

Microsoft probably needs 100+ people to produce Hello world.

Supermicro spy chips, the sequel: It really, really happened, and with bad BIOS and more, insists Bloomberg

Re: And what about Huawei?

> Presumably Huawei probably doesn't install NSA back doors to let the US spy on Chinese citizens.

They can't. There is no space left. Already too many Chinese backdoors there…

Terraria dev cancels Stadia port after Google disabled his email account for three weeks

Re: This is weird

If you could actually make Google completely delete your account this way, I would probably call it an improvement.

UK.gov awards seats on £2bn 'digital outcomes' framework to suppliers – one of which doesn't even have a website

Re: So..

And yet absolutely bananas.

Salesforce: Forget the ping-pong and snacks, the 9-to-5 working day is just so 2019, it's over and done with

Re: WFHSS

WFH = never leave work

That is what it is all about.

Location tracking report: X-Mode SDK use much more widespread than first thought

…we do not categorize all usage of trackers as malicious…

We do.

Maybe the entity with malicious intent is the app developer, maybe not. But there is always one, somewhere.