Posts by Rameses Niblick the Third Kerplunk Kerplunk Whoops Where's My Thribble? 550 publicly visible posts • joined 21 Jul 2017
When both sides of the political spectrum routinely argue that the BBC is biased in favour of the other lot, then they probably are broadly shooting down the middle. The real issue the BBC has is like any publicly funded institution - what they can pay people. The fact of the matter is the private companies pay more, so the best talent the BBC has gets drawn away by money. That applies to everyone from tech staff to journalists to writers and so on.
The problem is that there aren't any, at least not obviously. Instead it's more enshittified and more bloated with spyware. It's a downgrade, not an upgrade.
From my point of view it's worse than that - they are actively removing features I use. Windows Mixed Reality (as used by my HP Reverb G2 VR set) has been forcibly removed from windows 11 after I think Q2 this year(?) so "upgrading" to W11 will render this useless. And while I have discovered there are a couple of Linux projects designed to support it, the main thing I use it with absolutely does not support Linux.
So W10 is staying.
I hope they are factoring in to this offshoring saving the customers they will lose as part of this? I have recently moved four mobile phone contracts and my broadband contract away from Sky due to their terrible customer service and high prices for existing customers.
When attempting to negotiate my new fibre broadband package price to something even close to what they were offering new customers, one of their customer service "advisors" genuinely told me, "Well it's only fair, you would have got a great deal when you were a new customer with us". So now I'm PlusNets new customer.
If Netflix can pull their finger out and get the live broadcast rights for the F1 following their Drive to Survive success, I'll be able to leave Sky entirely, and be all the happier for it.
Maybe there are "unaired" episodes where the BOFH sees the PFY as getting too good at his job and becomes a threat, and ends up getting tricked by something like a long complained about but repeatedly found to be fine floor tile in front of an open window?
I'm pretty sure (but it's been a very, very long time) that in one of the very old episodes (as in before Simon was getting published on El Reg) that at least one PFY who was getting a little too ambitious has been, ahem, dealt with
Completely agree.
Any time any of these companies start saying anything is wrong, all it means is it's wrong for them, which by extension means "this will hurt our profits".
Since "their profits" in this case are built upon various forms of creative material they themselves did not pay for, I can only think this is positive news for the rest of us.
Who ever paid cash for a grumble mag? Shirley all y'all "found" them, usually stuffed into a local hedgerow or the like.
It's like fruit - some people like to get theirs directly from the tree or bush as nature intended. Some people are simply too busy and have to buy it from a shop.
Noughts and crosses is an interesting example. I'd not tried it before, so I did a couple of weeks ago with ChatGPT. After first claiming that squares 2, 4 and 7 made a straight line (they don't, obviously) and then trying to use another square twice, I asked it if it learns from each game it plays. It's response along the lines of "No, each chat is stateless so doesn't impact on others. I could play 1,000 games and not improve."
What was more interesting is that it went on to say that it's training data included examples of 'optimal' play, so it should know better, and offered to play what it called a 'perfect game'. It then went on to make equally bad (but different) choices. It said that even with perfect play it's possible to win if your opponent slips up. I called it out again, saying it shouldn't slip if it was using what it called 'perfect strategy'. Games after that it did do better, but it was a painful process.
Long story short, my experience (and not just with this, I've tried it for a few things) is that to get any LLM to actually do what you want takes so much instruction and cajoling, I may as well have just done it myself. It's like having small children, honestly.
"Direct vehicles taxes don't touch the side of the overall bill for motoring in the UK."
In 2025 - 2026, Vehicle excise duty is forecast to raise £9.1billion (https://obr.uk/forecasts-in-depth/tax-by-tax-spend-by-spend/vehicle-excise-duty/)
In 2025 - 2026, fuel duty on petrol, diesel etc (not including household fuel) is forecast to raise £24.4billion (https://obr.uk/forecasts-in-depth/tax-by-tax-spend-by-spend/fuel-duties/)
In 2023 - 2024, National highways spend £4.8billion on everything they did (https://nationalhighways.co.uk/media/fm1kq1hb/national_highways_ar24.pdf page 5)
In 2023 - 2024, Local authorities also seem to have spent £4.8billion on local road maintenance (https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/CBP-9975/CBP-9975.pdf)
So the UK motorist is taxed somewhere in the region of £33.5billion even before we count VAT on fuel (another 20%) and from what I can find out, the UK spends about £10billion maintaining roads. So, no I'm afraid this appears incorrect on the evidence I can find.
This is a discussion I've been having as well - how do you quantify the saving?
I'm quite prepared to believe that users saved in the region of half an hour a day. Some of the documents which have to be produced by civil servants in all organisations are prime for automation of some kind in my opinion. However from an organisational point of view, how are you quantifying that saving? More importantly how do you bank that saving? The organisation I work for has 500 ish people in it, so the current yearly cost of copilot for all would be north of £100k. Taking average salaries, that's between 3 and 4 FTE employees. I can tell you right now I don't have an extra £100k floating around in my budget just waiting to be used, and it's a big enough number that getting sign off for it as an IT project will be next to impossible (we don't like spending money on IT here apparently), without the ability to demonstrate a monetary saving elsewhere.
So simply put, which 4 (or more) people are being let go from the organisation to pay for this? Or how else are you documenting any return on investment for this project?
I've said it before and I'll say it again:
In the days before the vote, Brexiteer In Chief Nigel Farage stated "In a 52-48 referendum this would be unfinished business by a long way. If the Remain campaign win two-thirds to one-third that ends it"
So why was a narrower margin of victory for leave not treated as "unfinished business"? Farage went on to say that a narrow win for Remain would lead to a second vote, but according to Brexit favouring voters, that would be undemocratic and against the will of the people.
It's long past time for the second vote that Farage promised us.
As ... someone more than capable of doing 99% of their IT departments jobs
Oh really? And what are the IT departments jobs jobs at a large unitary authority? And if you're so amazing, why don't you work there?
It always amuses me that people who've never worked in the public sector assume the people who do in fact work there are simultaneously useless and get huge amounts of renumeration. If everyone there is so awful and the job is that cushy, why don't you do all you can to get a position there? Clearly the obvious choice, right?
If anyone can point me to a How-to guide for keeping my Windows Mixed Reality (I know, the clue's in the name right?) VR headset going with Linux, than I'm there. Otherwise my Win10 gaming box will find itself firewalled from the rest of the network and anything sensitive removed
"I can argue that crashing in to the fire truck is not my fault because I was using Autopilot!"
"A superlative suggestion, sir, with just two minor flaws. One, autopilot is a poor marketing gimmick and not something any sane person would put their life in the hands of, and two, autopilot is a poor marketing gimmick and not something any sane person would put their life in the hands of. Now I realise that technically speaking that's only one flaw but I thought that it was such a big one that it was worth mentioning twice."
So... No innocent until proven guilty then?
I'm not sure that running from the police and leaving the country in which you're accused (which had no extradition agreement with the US) for another country (which very much DOES have an extradition agreement with the US) is the best look for someone claiming innocence.
Everything he was arrested and imprisoned for in the UK was entirely his own doing (running from a European arrest warrant, breaking house arrest etc) and was very much not innocent of.
I've been waiting for this:
The ability to speak does not make you intelligent as given to us by the sage Qui Gon Jinn twenty five years ago,
It'll have a very good future in politics.
I wouldn't count on it
I don't know anything about space rockets, so to listen to Elon Musk speak about them, I think he's a genius.
I don't know anything about electric cars, so to listen to Elon Musk speak about them, I think he's a genius.
I do know at least something about tech stacks, website coding and web hosting servers, so when I listen to Elon Musk speak about them, I realise he's a freaking charlatan.
As a result, I now have zero faith in his space rockets or electric cars.
If a person was recorded on video booing, and then viewed the recording I think they would feel the full cringe.
FYI kids don't say 'cringe' anymore since they realised the adults started using it.
Cringe got yeeted.
(And yes, I know no-one says "yeet" anymore either)
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