Posts by nautica

AI bigwigs urge AGs to block OpenAI's profit pivot

"No matter what they say the reason is, the real reason is always 'money'."--anon

As ChatGPT scores B- in engineering, professors scramble to update courses

Re: Maybe the problem here is one of understanding the REAL problem.

"This meant extra work, of course, since the exam / test had to be crafted such that it was 'do-able' with the students' readily-available math / arithmetic skills"

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To be absolutely unambiguous as to what was meant (in the original comment), this sentence should have read (with emphasis added here, for clarity):

..."This meant extra work, of course, for the professor when writing an exam / test, since the exam / test had to be crafted such that it was 'do-able' with the students' readily-available math / arithmetic skills"...

Re: We're Already Boned

“Never confuse education with intelligence; you can have a PhD and still be an idiot.”

― Richard P. Feynman

Re: But when deeper thought was required, ChatGPT fared poorly.

"AI has by now succeeded in doing essentially everything that requires 'thinking' but has failed to do most of what people and animals do 'without thinking'. That, somehow, is much harder. --Donald Knuth

Maybe the problem here is one of understanding the REAL problem.

Not sure I understand the problem...

Went through 290++ credit hours of undergrad and graduate engineering work at a premiere science and engineering school. Never had a test / exam (multiple choice; essay; single calculus problems whose solutions required three pages or more in the provided test booklet) which was not given in the classroom, and which was not hand-graded.

Taught engineering / math for twenty years. First sentence of the course syllabus for every course taught read: "Absolutely no electronic devices (calculator; phone; etc.) of any kind are allowed while taking any test / exam in this course...". (This meant extra work, of course, since the exam / test had to be crafted such that it was 'do-able' with the students' readily-available math / arithmetic skills). All tests / exams were given in-room; none were ever "take-home".

Perhaps, in retrospect, the problem is easily understood: it's not the students who are lazy these days, but those who would "teach" them.

Boeing offloads some software businesses to private equiteer Thoma Bravo

AI much? Or, "Who needs software to check for brain-dead 'AI' usage?'

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Fifth paragraph from the end:

"... Partners can be asked to required to buy and sell more software..."

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"Proof-read carefully to make sure you [ed: or your use of 'AI'] haven't anything out."--Dave Barry

...or put anything extraneous stupid in...

Tesla fudged odometer to screw me out of warranty, Model Y owner claims

There is a very easy solution to this problem:

...don't buy a Tesla.

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"There is no problem so complicated that you can't find a very simple answer to it if you look at it right."

Douglas Adams, “The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time”

Intel flogs off majority stake in Altera to private equity for $4B

A very minor edit...

<sarc>Good too see the intel leadership never forgets to make a few dollars or next years bonus.</sarc>

FreeDOS 1.4: Still DOS, still FOSS, more modern than ever

When did you start "...sucking hind tit..."; start using copiers rather than writers, El Reg?

This is old news. In this business, old news is not news; it's simply OLD.

As you, and many of us, well know, Proven, this information appeared (at least) as early as two days ago, in Ars Technica, when it was news¹. You can read that article at: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/04/fire-up-your-compaq-deskpro-freedos-1-4-is-the-first-stable-update-since-2022/

(What is there about the word news that you don't understand, Proven? Oh, by the way: inserting that totally irrelevant, pique-filled snippet about the fact that you don't mention Brian Lunduke because "...He seems to hate my guts" does absolutely nothing favorable for your credibility. You seem to be completely, blissfully unaware that a such a statement by you says very much more--negatively--about you than about the object of the statement. Just thought you (and your superiors) would like to know that we know, however...)

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¹“FreeDOS 1.4 brings new fixes and features to modern and vintage DOS-based PCs"

'Independent developers are keeping the command prompt alive on PCs new and old."

"Andrew Cunningham – Apr 7, 2025 4:39 PM"

Boeing 787 radio software safety fix didn't work, says Qatar

'Loss of safe separation between aircraft'...is not what we want to hear...

...neither is, "This flight will be on a Boeing aircraft."

Trump fires NSA boss, deputy

"...he was bought and sold like the traitor he is."

Quickly now...enter the word "quisling" into your device's searchbar...

Posterity--and due credit--must be served...

Here's how that quotation should be stated, anywhere and everywhere [many thanks for bringing this to the attention of all of us, Dan 55]--

"When a clown moves into the palace, he doesn’t become the king; instead the palace becomes a circus."--Elizabeth Bangs

(With deepest and most sincere apologies to Elizabeth Bangs)

Great job, Elizabeth...

"Just be glad you're not getting all the government you're paying for."--Will Rogers

“As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”

“No one ever lost money underestimating the intelligence of the American public.”

― H.L. Mencken...

And, as Calvin said to Hobbes...

“Sometimes I think the surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us.” -– Calvin ("Calvin and Hobbes" ©1989 Bill Watterson)

Eric Hoffer had MISTER Trump--and his brain-dead followers--figured out a very long time ago...

“Passionate hatred can give meaning and purpose to an empty life.”

“Rudeness is the weak man’s imitation of strength.”

“Should Americans begin to hate foreigners wholeheartedly, it will be an indication that they have lost confidence in their own way of life.”

“The hardest thing to cope with is not selfishness or vanity or deceitfulness, but sheer stupidity.”

“You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you.”

“An empty head is not really empty; it is stuffed with rubbish. Hence the difficulty of forcing anything into an empty head.”

“For many people, an excuse is better than an achievement because an achievement, no matter how great, leaves you having to prove yourself again in the future; but an excuse can last for life."

...And you'd better take very serious note of this one--

“Never forget that one of the most gifted, best educated nations in the world, of its own free will, surrendered its fate into the hands of a maniac."

"When a clown moves into the palace, he doesn’t become the king; instead the palace becomes a circus."--Turkish proverb

Vivaldi bakes Proton VPN into browser to boost privacy

“I would like to take you seriously but to do so would affront your intelligence.” ― William F. Buckley Jr.

Righteous indignation is fine, IF one understands hard words like "option".

"... I want flexibility, I don't want to be tied, and it's so goddamn cheap generally for a VPN,. Nobody should dictate what I should use."

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No one is "dictating" what you should use; this feature is an option. Not to put too fine a point on this, but "option" means, "If you don't want it, DON'T USE IT."

From

"Free Proton VPN is Now Included in Vivaldi Web Browser"

( https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2025/03/vivaldi-browser-now-includes-built-in-proton-vpn ) ---

"...To enable it:

Click the VPN button in the toolbar

Log in with your Vivaldi account

Click ‘Connect’ to enable the VPN...

"If you don’t want or plan to use Proton VPN for Vivaldi (because you don’t need a VPN, don’t trust Proton, or use a different provider) you can “remove” the feature easily enough: right-click the VPN button in the toolbar and click ‘remove’...

"...Whilst using a proper VPN client or setup will be more secure than relying on a browser-based VPN, this is far less fuss: it’s already there, free, and easy to enable – IF YOU WANT TO, of course."

You can read the full article here.

...and get back on those meds. Now.

An installation "oopsie" (which is probably not Vivaldi's fault)...

Based on its features shown on the website, I'd really like to install the new Vivaldi (the poor quality of all the rest of the browser world...which only continues to get worse with every iteration (of every) one, is certainly a very powerful motivating force, also.)

However...

When I try to download from the program, it (Vivaldi 7.2 for Linux Deb) will not install because Package Installer gives this message:

“Error: Dependency is not satisfiable: libnss3(>=2:3.35)”

I'll try later, when time's not at a premium.

This one weird trick can make online publishing faster, safer, more attractive, and richer

"First we thought the PC was a calculator. Then we found out how to turn numbers into letters with ASCII — and we thought it was a typewriter. Then we discovered graphics, and we thought it was a television. With the World Wide Web, we've realized it's one gigantic sales brochure."

--Douglas Adams (paraphrased}

Open source maintainers are really feeling the squeeze

Subtitle: "Overworked, under pressure, and subjected to abuse – is it really worth it?"

The subtitle precisely describes not only 'maintainers', but ALL those people who have, for years on end, happily--and very, very stupidly--taken on the responsibility of being the free lifetime-service-contract provider for friends and family who discovered that these individuals were more than happy to solve problems for free simply in order to display how smart they are.

Who are the smart ones in both these situations. (?)

[TL;DR: there is an elegantly simple solution to this nonsensical problem: it consists in saying, "That is really hard work. The solution will really cost money."]

"The hardest thing to cope with is not selfishness or vanity or deceitfulness, but sheer stupidity."--Eric Hoffer

IBM return-to-office order hits finance, ops teams amid push to dump staff for AI

TITLE: "IBM...to dump staff for AI". "A-I"--the ULTIMATE oxymoron; the ultimate scapegoat.

You simply knew that someone, somewhere would, eventually, have to come up with a good reason for for A-I, didn't you?

There ARE no good¹ reasons, so blaming it for lay-offs is as good a reason as any other--and much, MUCH better than almost any / every other always artificially contrived one .

[Don't mis-interpret the 'icon'; the 'Joke Alert' is to alert the reader to the joke which is being inflicted by IBM, and who(m)ever else will try to inflict this indignity on (critically-thinking) people who won't drink the "artificial intelligence" kool-aid.]

¹Using the psychological phenomenon of FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) in order to scam the sheeple, including government agencies, out of bilions of pounds / dollars / euros is NOT a reason--it is no more a reason than to try and justify investment in "green energy fusion reactors" (always fifty years away); that ponzi scheme known as "cryptocurrency"; quantum computing (always twenty years away); and "cold fusion".

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"I have found that the reason a lot of people are interested in artificial intelligence is for the same reason a lot of people are interested in artificial limbs: they are missing one."--David L. Parnas

Some workers already let AI do the thinking for them, Microsoft researchers find

Re: Is this a piece of your brain?

From David L. Parnas, (here); one of the preeminent pioneers of software engineering who developed the important concept of information hiding, so crucial to modular programming--among very many other accomplishments---

"When someone builds a bridge, he uses engineers who have been certified as knowing what they are doing. Yet when someone builds you a software program, he has no similar certification, even though your safety may be just as dependent upon that software working as it is upon the bridge supporting your weight."

...and...

"THERE ARE NO STANDARDS FOR COMPUTER PROGRAMMERS and no group to certify them."

The biggest microcode attack in our history is underway

"There's no underestimating the intelligence of the American public." --H. L. Mencken

“The major problem—one of the major problems, for there are several—one of the many major problems with governing people is that of whom you get to do it; or rather of who manages to get people to let them do it to them. To summarize: it is a well-known fact that those people who must want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it.

To summarize the summary: anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.” ― Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

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From H.L. Mencken:

"When a candidate for public office faces the voters he does not face men of sense; he faces a mob of men whose chief distinguishing mark is the fact that they are quite incapable of weighing ideas, or even of comprehending any save the most elemental - men whose whole thinking is done in terms of emotion, and whose dominant emotion is dread of what they cannot understand. So confronted, the candidate must either bark with the pack or be lost... All the odds are on the man who is, intrinsically, the most devious and mediocre. "

"On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron."

"The men the American people admire most extravagantly are the most daring liars; the men they detest most violently are those who try to tell them the truth."

Re: What is this article about again ?

"When you start feeling comfortable with Fascism, it's too late."--anon

Amazon, Google asked to explain why they were serving ads on sites hosting CSAM

"Proofread carefully to see if you any words out."--Dave Barry

TITLE: Amazon, Google asked to explain why they were serving ads on sites hosting CSAM...

..."...And US government adverts at that, say senators"

"No matter what they say the reason is, the real reason is always 'money'."--anon.

Blue Origin spins up lunar gravity for New Shepard flight

Re: Extremely unique...

"I have to be firm on this: unique is not to be modified. Adding very or absolutely is like putting a propeller on a rabbit to make him hop better. It won't work, and he won't be a rabbit anymore."--Roy Blount, Jr.

Google: How to make any AMD Zen CPU always generate 4 as a random number

Re: There is absolutely no problem here.

"...Elementary algebra

...The natural number following 0 is 1 and no natural number precedes 0. The number 0 may or may not be considered a natural number...but it is an integer, and hence a rational number and a real number...All rational numbers are algebraic numbers, including 0...."--Wikipedia

There is absolutely no problem here.

4 ('four', the fifth of the positive integers) is a random number.

Memories fade. Archives burn. All signal eventually becomes noise

Some people know how to solve a problem. Some don't.

It has been said that among some--possibly very many--tribes / nations of Indigenous American (amerindian) peoples that they solved the problem of information entropy in an elegant, very simple, fashion.

If there was information (or a story) whose preservation was absolutely crucial, then one person would tell another (with the strict admonition that the recipient(s) MUST tell two others)--each person being told must, in turn, tell two others, and each of those must tell two others, and...

The beauty of the scheme, of course, is the same as that of the tale of the payment asked of the emperor by the lowly peasant who invented the game of chess--the number of people who hear the story is exponentially (2^N) related to the number of times it is re-told.

(That the peasant was ultimately killed by the emperor is not relevant).

From the very end...

..."Those plastic tubs now serve another purpose: a reminder that I need to find better digital archives ... and a photocopier."

A fast scanning system would be a good addition to the mix.

You're going to do what to the feature? Microsoft defines what it means by 'deprecation'

from the subtitle: "...or if nobody knows what the heck you mean"

"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less."

"The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things."

"The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master — that’s all.”

--Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass

Intel has officially missed the boat for AI in the datacenter

Why do you use so many words, El Reg ?

From the title--"Intel has officially missed the boat for AI in the datacenter"

You would have been "spot on" (highly accurate, and certainly more succinct) to have simply said

"Intel has missed the boat"

Intel sinks $19B into the red, kills Falcon Shores GPUs, delays Clearwater Forest Xeons

Re: "...our world class design,"

One of my favorite sayings is, "If you have to tell people you have class, you don't."

AI agents? Yes, let's automate all sorts of things that don't actually need it

From the last sentence of the article...

"Someone is sure to appreciate it."

But just not me. ["But just not I", for all you grammar-nazis]

Astronomers red-faced after mistaking Musk's Tesla Roadster for asteroid

Astronomers red-faced after mistaking Musk's Tesla Roadster for asteroid

They should be.

How could any card-carrying astronomer possibly mistake something that ugly for an asteroid.

Boeing warns of more financial hits from strikes, costlier parts – and Starliner, of course

Boeing's Starliner, aka the Calamity Capsule

Given the facts that it's designed and built by Boeing, isn't the name "Calamity Capsule" somewhat redundant (no matter if totally apropos)?

Eight things that should not have happened last year, but did

Re: We all know that 'AI' is not really artificial intelligence.

“Why give a robot an order to obey orders—why aren’t the original orders enough? Why command a robot not to do harm—wouldn’t it be easier never to command it to do harm in the first place?”-–Steven Pinker, Canadian-American cognitive psychologist

“The upheavals [of artificial intelligence] can escalate quickly and become scarier and even cataclysmic. Imagine how a medical robot, originally programmed to rid cancer, could conclude that the best way to obliterate cancer is to exterminate humans who are genetically prone to the disease.”–- Nick Bilton, technology, business, and culture contributor at CNBC

Re: Should Not Have Happened But Did......

"...As 2024 has shown we're a million miles away from a perfect world and heading even further away."

MOST definitely, if one lives in the US of A.

"AI has, by now, succeeded in doing essentially everything that requires 'thinking' but has failed to do most of what people and animals do 'without thinking'---that, somehow, is much harder."

--Donald Knuth

Re: Wit For A Limited Audience??

"Well....it's interesting to notice that the word "moron" turns up as part of "oxymoron..."

--Interesting perhaps (a simple artifact of translation from the original Greek;), but no more so than the word "lightning" turns up as a part of the common phrase, or term, "lightning bug" (with profuse thanks to Mark Twain).

"...I say this because there are plenty of "morons" out there (thousands? millions") who would challenge the suggestion that there is ANYTHING AT ALL wrong with phrases like "military intelligence" or "Microsoft Works"..."

--a not-in-depth reading of the comment indicates the following very important point: "...Other examples [JOKINGLY] include "honest politician", "affordable caviar"..., "happily married" and "Microsoft Works"...

"...I think your comment only has some relevance to a VERY limited audience."

--It was intended for none other than a "VERY" limited audience; please be assured that I am deeply indebted that you have lent credibility by commenting, and indicating that you are among those distinguished few.

From (very near) the end of the article--

"...Ethical AI is not an empty phrase..."

Correct. "ethical AI" is a compound(ed) oxymoron: the oxymoron--"artificial intelligence" made even more foolish and self-contradicting by the addition of yet another adjective: "ethical".

Oxymoron; n,--

"An oxymoron (plurals: oxymorons and oxymora) is a figure of speech that juxtaposes concepts with opposite meanings within a word or in a phrase that is a self-contradiction...

"...Examples popularized by comedian George Carlin in 1975 include "military intelligence" (a play on the lexical meanings of the term "intelligence", implying that "military" inherently excludes the presence of "intelligence") and "business ethics" (similarly implying that the mutual exclusion of the two terms is evident or commonly understood rather than the partisan anti-corporate position)...

"...Similarly, the term "civil war" is sometimes jokingly referred to as an "oxymoron" (punning on the lexical meanings of the word "civil")...

"...Other examples [jokingly] include "honest politician", "affordable caviar"..., "happily married" and "Microsoft Works"... --Wikipedia

Workday on lessons learned from Iowa and Maine project woes

Lies, damned lies, and statistics: works only when software is involved.

From the title: "Nine in ten of our implementations are a success, CEO Carl Eschenbach tells The Reg"

One can only imagine exactly how well it would it go if the CEO of Boeing, Kelly Ortberg, said, "Nine out of ten of the flights of Boeing aircraft are a success."

Schneider Electric warns of future where datacenters eat the grid

"“People worry that computers will get too smart and take over the world, but the real problem is that they’re too stupid, and they’ve already taken over the world.”

– Pedro Domingos, University of Washington.

Christmas 1984: The last hurrah for 8-bit home computers

Douglas Adams was one of the smartest people any of us has had the pleasure of knowing...

"The idea that Bill Gates (one of the founders of Microsoft) has appeared like a knight in shining armour to lead all customers out of a mire of technological chaos neatly ignores the fact that it was he, by peddling second rate technology, who led them into it in the first place..."

Douglas Adams

"First we thought the PC was a calculator. Then we found out how to turn numbers into letters with ASCII — and we thought it was a typewriter. Then we discovered graphics, and we thought it was a television. With the World Wide Web, we've realized it's one gigantic sales brochure."

--Douglas Adams (paraphrased}

Re: Well......

"...The Osbourne[sic] was an interesting device, but that screen was a bit small..."

In Adam Osborne's inimitable style, the "...bit small..." screen (you are much too kind; it was described in the press as "...the size of a postcard...") was defended by him in several bellicose, argumentative responses as being more than large enough, as "...the displayed text was the same size as the text of an ordinary newspaper..."[paraphrase] (!)

Osborne never did explain away the difficulty--to say nothing of the upper-body strength required--of holding a 24.5-lb, 1.4 cu.-ft machine as close as one could hold a newspaper.

Pretty good rules to live by...

"I've come up with a set of rules that describe our reactions to technologies:

1. Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works.

2. Anything that's invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it.

3. Anything invented after you're thirty-five is against the natural order of things."

---Douglas Adams