* Posts by katrinab

6354 publicly visible posts • joined 6 Aug 2016

Mamas, don't let your babies grow up to be coders, Jensen Huang warns

katrinab Silver badge
Megaphone

Re: That's not what he said

Your "detailed spec saying exactly what the program should do and how it should react to all the various inputs and circumstances" *is* your computer program.

It sounds like you are just inventing a new programming language. It might be better than existing ones, but it is still a programming language.

Musk 'texts' Nadella about Windows 11's demands for a Microsoft account

katrinab Silver badge
Gimp

Re: Some elements of the operating system simply do not work

I don't think the Microsoft Store works without a Microsoft Account.

In my experience, it is generally only people who switch over from MacOS who use it.

As for me, if I am installing something, I first check if it is on WinGet, then I check if it is on the Microsoft store, and failing both of those, I install manually. I take a similar approch on my Mac, check HomeBrew first, then the App Store, then install manually.

Fox News 'hacker' turns out to be journalist whose lawyers say was doing his job

katrinab Silver badge
Meh

Re: Wallbox

As I understand it, you plug in your car as soon as you get home, but it doesn't necessarily start charging straight away,

But you can press a button to tell it you really need your car recharged as soon as possible, and then it will start charging straight away; but you will probably pay a higher per kWh price for the electricity if you do that.

It's crazy but it's true: Apple rejected Bing for wrong answers about Annie Lennox

katrinab Silver badge
Megaphone

Re: If Google loses, it does not win

by being approximately 1,000,000 times better than Internet Exploder ...

katrinab Silver badge
Megaphone

Re: Sums up the whole problem really

Except, you are the customer.

Or more accurately, you are their customers' customer. And if I no longer trust Google to give me the right search results, it means I no longer respond to their ads, which means their customers don't get my money, which means that Google doesn't get their money.

I've tried using Google to search for things I want to buy recently, and the results were so useless that I had to go elsewhere to find it.

katrinab Silver badge
Meh

Re: If Google loses, it does not win

They might not actually lose that much. After all, Bing is the default search engine on Windows, and pretty much everyone changes it to Google.

katrinab Silver badge
Thumb Up

Re: If you're on Safari

First you navigate - Netscape Navigator

then you explore - Internet Explorer

then you conquer - Konqueror

then you go on a safari - Safari

Juniper sued over HPE buyout after allegedly ginning up execs' wallets

katrinab Silver badge
Alert

Re: How many times ....

The switch could ask ChatGPT where to route the packets rather than just use the routing table.

Security is hard because it has to be right all the time? Yeah, like everything else

katrinab Silver badge
Mushroom

"This suggests the next possibility, which is that security is harder because we’ve set it up as an absolute requirement under all conditions, whereas we sometimes cut ourselves some slack on scalability and availability."

I don't agree. Security is always a compromise. We could secure our bank accounts in the same way that we secure our nuclear launch codes. But difference is that if bank account access gets into the wrong hands, it isn't the literal end of the world, whereas if the nuclear launch codes get into the wrong hands, well there probably is another security layer after that, but it could be the end of the world as we know it.

Are you ready to back up your AI chatbot's promises? You'd better be

katrinab Silver badge
Unhappy

Re: Disclaimer

But then people are going to confirm the answer with a human, and then you don't get any savings from using it.

katrinab Silver badge
Alert

Re: "In a few years, it will be a different story."

Even with "accurate" training data, it is still going to give you the "correct" answer to the wrong question.

If an answer to a question given in the training text is correct in certain circumstances and not in others, and that is explained in the text, the AI isn't going to be able to understand this context.

katrinab Silver badge
Megaphone

It will never[1] work

This is not a case where a load of incremental improvements over the years will make this an eventually viable technology. The whole underlying premise of the technology is fundamentally flawed and cannot possibly ever work.

[1] "Never" in this context means using improved versions of existing technology. It is possible that at some point in the future, there is a new discovery that makes actual AI possible. It is impossible to predict when or if that will ever happen, but we are not moving towards it at the moment.

Gelsinger splits Intel in two to advance foundry vision

katrinab Silver badge
Meh

Re: Been done before

Or the AMD/Global Foundries road to two separate companies?

Plenty went wrong for Global Foundries, but it was probably going to happen regardless, and the split means AMD is insulated from it.

Lender threatens to sweep MariaDB accounts over private equity bid

katrinab Silver badge
Meh

The offer would surely be fore more than the quoted price on the stock exchange? Otherwise nobody would pay any attention to it.

City council megaproject mulls ditching Oracle after budget balloons to £131M

katrinab Silver badge

Re: The streetlighting in birmingham has already been changed.

Lumens per watt for LED is actually lower than sodium, however because LED is white light rather than monochromatic orange light, you can get the same visibility with fewer lumens, and you can reduce electricity consumption by about 30% that way.

katrinab Silver badge

Re: What would it cost ...

Take Trading Standards for example; Peterborough has to deal with all the safety recalls for Whirlpool UK Appliances Limited, because they are based in the city; so when measuring output, you have to consider that they necessarily have to do a lot more output than for example Fenland next door.

katrinab Silver badge
Meh

Re: What would it cost ...

Well they might be different if for example one is 100% urban and one is mostly rural, but they would just select a different sub-set of the total modules available.

katrinab Silver badge
Meh

Re: What would it cost ...

Birmingham is a Lower Tier Local Authority, so some local government functions are performed by the Upper Tier Local Authority - West Midlands Combined Authority.

As an aside, Birmingham isn't the largest local authority in Europe, it isn't even the largest in Birmingham, but it is the largest Lower Tier Local Authority. Île de France (Paris region) is the largest Upper Tier Local Authority in Europe.

The split of duties between lower tier and upper tier local authorities is different in different parts of the country, and some places have unitary authorities that do everything. But surely you could have modules for each of the functions a local authority has to do, and each one could install the modules that are relevant to their duties. The only unique thing about Birmingham is that it is responsible for policing loan sharks in the whole of England, so they would need to develop their own module for that.

Meta seeks ASIC designers for ML accelerators and datacenter SoCs

katrinab Silver badge
Meh

Re: Struggle

Or they are looking for people who don't exist.

katrinab Silver badge
Pirate

Or just poach all their staff ...

katrinab Silver badge
Meh

Wouldn't they have more luck if they tried in for example Cambridge or Sheffield in England?

There isn't much chip design taking place in India. I'm sure there is something, but not that much compared to some other countries.

Of course you may well find lots of Indian people in those other countries working in those places that do have lots of chip design.

Ubuntu, Kubuntu, openSUSE to get better installation

katrinab Silver badge
Linux

Re: Non-issue

Would those people be able to install Windows?

My experience is, from downloading the ISO, to getting a useable desktop, Debian is a bit better because it has more out of the box driver support.

katrinab Silver badge
Meh

Re: Non-issue

Is it any worse than the partitioning section of the Windows installer? I don’t think so.

Persistent memory to replace DRAM, but it could take a decade

katrinab Silver badge
Meh

Re: Its gonna be hard to supplant DRAM

How long does it take to open a program? Depends on the program obviously, but usually it is a noticeable non-zero amount of time.

How long does it take to bring a minimised program to the foreground? Again depends on the program, but basically it is the amount of time it takes to redraw the screen which is pretty much instant.

That is the sort of speed increases we could potentially see.

katrinab Silver badge
Meh

Re: Its gonna be hard to supplant DRAM

If you can execute straight off the "hard drive", surely that could work out being faster than having to read it into RAM first?

Of course that would mean you have to think about programming it in a completely different way, and you would still have to "open" the file if it is on the other end of a network link, because the limitations of the speed of light mean that this is always going to be slower than some sticks of memory sitting about 5cm away from the CPU.

Euro shoppers popping more and more premium phones in the basket

katrinab Silver badge
Meh

Re: “it's very difficult to measure the replacement cycle at any given point.”

I'm not sure if the have to be, but I'm pretty sure most are.

katrinab Silver badge
Gimp

“it's very difficult to measure the replacement cycle at any given point.”

Really?

Surely they know from my Apple account that the 15 Pro Max I purchased replaced my 8+, so therefore my replacement cycle was 6 years. That 8+ replaced a 6+ (3 years).

India effectively kills e-wallet used by over 300 million

katrinab Silver badge
Meh

Yes, but spending the money presumably means increasing the balance in someone else's wallet in most cases, and that isn't allowed.

Cutting kids off from the dark web – the solution can only ever be social

katrinab Silver badge
Facepalm

All of these proposals seem to work on the assumption that grown-ups are more capable than children when it comes to computers.

I don't think that assumption should go unchallenged.

UK Cabinet Office hits pause on £9M Microsoft deal

katrinab Silver badge
Trollface

I'll do it for £10m plus a lifetime supply of brown envelopes ...

Apple makes it official: No Home Screen web apps in European Union

katrinab Silver badge
Megaphone

Re: Did anyone ....

The effect of this is that it is now going to be *more difficult* to deploy an app outside of the App Store than it was before.

PWAs are good enough for some use-cases, like the ones I work on. Now, instead of just sending the appropriate webmanifest with your website, you have to jump through all the hoops to provide an alternative app store, and you have to actually build the App for iOS.

European Court of Human Rights declares backdoored encryption is illegal

katrinab Silver badge
Meh

Re: Well good thing the UK had Brexit

Is their an "allure of Britain"? The number of refugees we receive is about the same as the EU average. Germany is the country they most want to go to.

katrinab Silver badge
Megaphone

Re: Well good thing the UK had Brexit

Nope, that is an EU law. We are no longer in the EU, so that doesn't apply.

Refugees are not obliged to seek refuge in the first safe country they arrive in. However, within the EU, they are required to seek refuge in the first EU country they arrive in.

katrinab Silver badge
Megaphone

Re: Well good thing the UK had Brexit

The ECHR was founded by their hero Winston Churchill.

Twilio reminds users that Authy Desktop apps die in March – not in August

katrinab Silver badge
Windows

Re: stupid names

It also works in Windows Services for Android, if you install the Google Play Store services.

Airbnb sees AI as its ticket to become a sprawling Big Tech giant

katrinab Silver badge
Alert

I read to the end of the article. I’m still none the wiser about what they plan to actually do.

Use AI to generate fake property listings?

Use AI to generate fake images for real property listings?

That’s just going to lead to a lot of unhappy customers.

Use AI to help people find the right property that meets their requirements?

Better to just use search filters like they do at the moment.

Use AI to suggest holiday locations?

Maybe, but I don’t think the extra sales, if any, would justify the cost.

Dumping us into ad tier of Prime Video when we paid for ad-free is 'unfair' – lawsuit

katrinab Silver badge
Meh

Re: Query: the timing of ads

The free shipping thing really isn't worth it for me.

Without Prime, and a minimum order value of about £20, I can either get free shipping which arrives about a week later, or pay £5 for next-day shipping.

Prime gives me "free" next-day shipping.

I usually only need next-day shipping about once or twice a year, so it is cheaper to just pay the £5 when I need it than to pay for Prime.

Meta says risk of account theft after phone number recycling isn't its problem to solve

katrinab Silver badge
Mushroom

Indeed, there is a lot of facebook stuff sent to a non-existent mailbox in my email server logs. You would think that after about 5 years of consistent bounces, they might get the message, but apparently not.

katrinab Silver badge
Black Helicopters

"they often still require i prove i am 'real' by having them send me a SMS"

The reason they do that is because it is a lot more difficult to get millions of phone numbers than it is to get millions of email addresses, so it makes setting up bulk accounts much more difficult.

katrinab Silver badge
Megaphone

Re: My guess

"The UK has less than 70 million residents"

But the average resident in the UK has 1.2 mobile phone numbers and 0.48 landline numbers. I have two mobile and one landline.

Angry mob trashes and sets fire to Waymo self-driving car

katrinab Silver badge
Meh

Re: Curious?..so never been to Califoria then..

My Volkswagen Up!, which is a lot smaller than that, is 980kg. No way is that truck 500-750kg. A Citröen 2CV is 600kg.

katrinab Silver badge
Meh

Re: Curious?..so never been to Califoria then..

I chose Glasgow because it is the largest city in Scotland, but not the capital city, and also the city in the UK with the highest rate of car usage. It also has the lowest rate of car ownership, but it seems everyone who owns a car wants to use it all the time.

It is a location in the north of the city centre, right next to the M8 motorway, and one that people are more likely to visit by car.

The number of cars in the scene looked to be about the same in both images.

katrinab Silver badge
Meh

Re: Curious?..so never been to Califoria then..

If you take for example this streetview image from San Francisco

https://maps.app.goo.gl/MscUNBmMhuF4J9P69

The white pick-up truck would definitely not be road-legal. I don't think the driver would be able to see the bottom of the lamp post

I think this would be an equivalent location in Glasgow, Scotland

https://maps.app.goo.gl/2oVU8GRsj1m72nrS9

You can see a difference in the sort of cars you find.

Microsoft might have just pulled support for very old PCs in Windows 11 24H2

katrinab Silver badge

Re: "My i7 3770 with 32 GB RAM..."

It didn’t have 32gb when I originally bought it. I maxed it out later when RAM prices came down.

katrinab Silver badge
Megaphone

My i7 3770 with 32GB RAM is a totally usable computer unless you want to play the latest games. Sure my newest computer is about 10 times faster, but most of the time that is the difference between waiting 10ms and waiting 100ms, not really noticable in real-world situations outside of animation.

katrinab Silver badge
Windows

Re: Linux's moment

Windows definitely does not have a consistent UI.

In any case, I don't think the UI is a problem for Linux. Going from Windows to Linux Mint for example is no more difficult than going from Windows 10 to Windows 11. Application support is the problem.

katrinab Silver badge
Meh

Re: Linux's moment

Never experienced any compatibility problems with Samba, at least on FreeBSD with the appropriate zfs acl stuff enabled. Figuring out how to get Windows to recognise zfs snapshots as shadow copies took me a while, but I got there in the end.

Even on Linux with a less capable file system (not all Linux file systems are less capable), not having the full range of extended permissions doesn't really cause a problem.

ChatGPT? Sure, I've heard it. But is AI coming for my job?

katrinab Silver badge
Alert

I'm not worried about AI taking my job. I am however worried about bosses who think AI can take over my job.

A previous employer thought that "the cloud" could take over my job. That company is no longer in business.

Infosys subsidiary named as source of Bank of America data leak

katrinab Silver badge
Alert

Re: Dependency

It is owned by Rishi Sunak's wife and father in law ...

Chrome engine devs experiment with automatic browser micropayments

katrinab Silver badge
Meh

Re: What's the first word you think of when someone says "Amazon"?

Barnes & Noble and Waterstones are basically the same company.

The corporate structure is somewhat complicated, but what isn't complicated is that both companies have the same CEO, James Daunt.