Posts by tyrfing

AI will make anyone a 10x programmer, but with 10x the cleanup

"Vague instructions lead to diffuse results, he told the audience. Clearly thinking about what information you are giving to the agent is the work of context engineering, which, in the short time of agentic AI, has become an art form, if not quite a proper discipline yet."

Oh. My. God.

Someone said it out loud! Though not in so many words.

Clearly thinking about the problem, to the point of being able to articulate it to someone (or something) else, is an absolute requirement for actually being able to do the work.

Generations of pointy-haired (and pointy-headed) managers immediately cried out "But our bonuses depend on *not* doing this and blaming the resulting mess on subordinates!"

While wafting upstairs on what successes their subordinates wrest from the chaos.

Perhaps this AI thing, and the resulting "oh we can fire more people as a result" will actually make it clear that the value-add is being able to take the fuzzy stuff that the board comes up with and translate it into something that a machine can execute.

Head-mounted VR hardware will never happen, says Neal Stephenson - who coined the term ‘metaverse’

Re: 80 billion

I suspect much of the budget disappeared in the same way money was spent in pre-Musk Twitter.

I.e. wasted on hiring far too many people who didn't do anything that actually added value, plus perks whose main draw was "fun" instead of enabling workers to get stuff done.

Brilliant backups that kept data alive for ages landed web developer in big trouble

Hardcoding www.gerald.com to an IP address on the office network means that when they did the switchover, if he did what they asked and deleted the old site the office would not have been able to access it.

I suppose then someone would have complained, and they might have fixed it.

But that it was unnoticed for *two years*, is an indication that no one in the office really looked at the site.

Did no one in the office look at any updates after they went live, to ensure they look right?

Just because Linus Torvalds vibe codes doesn't mean it's a good idea

I am reminded of the "dog and pony show" that accompanies every new IDE.

Visual Basic had controls to access a database!

But not for anything other than the simplest cases. Anything even slightly odd and you had to build it custom from scratch instead.

Coming Wi-Fi 8 will bring reliability rather than greater speed

Re: WAN speed anyone?

Wireless is the default for home networks because most people either don't live somewhere they can run cable (rentals, condos, etc.), or don't want to.

You also have to re-run that cable eventually. What good is cat 5 when your new computers all have 2.5Gb networking?

For that matter, work has the same problem. Even if it's better designed for running those wires, it still costs money to do it, and yes cables do go bad.

I have a wired desktop that's close enough to the cable to run wired. But my TV is wireless as it's in a different room and I live in a high-rise condo so running inside the walls won't fly.

I live in Canada so this isn't a problem, but if you're in Britain and live in a heritage building good luck getting permission to run cable if it's even possible.

This makes sense.

Higher data rate generally implies higher frequency for transmitting. You can also do tricks like using phase modulation, but I think that's pretty played out by now.

Higher frequencies are running into the problem that most materials we use are not transparent to them, so you end up needing lots of transmitters. Which removes a lot of the advantages of wireless.

Better error correction algorithms would mean less need to re-transmit, which means better use of the frequency you have.

BOFH: The Christmas spirit has run dry – time to show some chiller instinct

Re: 44 gallon drums

I note that the inch is now exactly 2.5400 cm.

Pretty sure it didn't used to be.

And I recently learned that the so-called "45 pound" plates that I use in the gym for lifting are really just re-labelled 20kg plates. I guess it's easier to make one set.

One real reason AI isn't delivering: Meatbags in manglement

This sounds a lot like the problems with automating any other process.

The current process relies on people moving stuff along and handling exceptions without really having to think about them.

Automating it, for instance using workflows, requires mapping things out in detail. Including what happens when "unexpected" stuff happens.

This part is far more difficult than actually programming the automation part.

Especially if you have to persuade people to use the new version and not fall back on the old way. Which means you have to completely map things, or people *will* move back, and good luck getting them to trust it again.

AI is being sold as "well it will just handle that stuff". Which is completely false.

Microsoft wants to replace its entire C and C++ codebase, perhaps by 2030

Isn't this what killed Netscape? Rewriting the code base?

Microsoft must be feeling really complacent if this is what's being pushed. No competition at all.

Rosalind Franklin rover catches a break as NASA reaffirms commitment

This sounds lo me like without NASA it isn't getting off the ground. Note that Roscosmos couldn't do it.

Frustrated consultant 'went full Hulk' and started smashing hardware

"Non-profit" = "badly run, exists to make the founders feel good"

Can open source be saved from the EU's Cyber Resilience Act?

Re: GB left the EU

I keep seeing this, but I've never seen an example where when the UK was in the EU, it stopped a bad regulation from being implemented, or even slowed one down.

The UK had no say when it was in, but it had more obligations to follow the EU when it did stupid things.

ICE plans to scour Facebook, TikTok, X, and even defunct Google+ for illegal immigration leads

"Why ICE believes illegal immigrants who intentionally obfuscate their digital trails would freely broadcast the information they're looking for on social media isn't clear"

Considering the number of people who post assaults and thefts on their accounts, we might be surprised what they find.

Only way to move Space Shuttle Discovery is to chop it into pieces, White House told

Maybe they should look at how the shuttle got to its current location for inspiration.

They didn't build the Museum around where it last landed.

Admittedly it's been sitting there for a while, so it may be a lot more fragile now.

UK splurges £4.4M on drones, e-planes, and other flights of fancy

These will all go into the "increased NATO defense budget commitment"

Rather like that bridge to Sicily that Italy is counting.

UK to roll out mandatory digital ID for right to work by 2029

Re: Crapita, Palantir, Fujitsu, Oracle

Yes, I think most of the competent Scots emigrated, or were transported a while ago.

Yes, this is why there's no such thing as credit card fraud.

Workers: Yes, RTO makes sense. No, we’re not going to do it

Re: Message to CEOs : it's hopeless

But jobs that require workers on site are already onsite. They were onsite as soon as, and to the extent they were allowed to be open.

RTO is a combination of:

- we have expensive office space that is going unused

- we have an "office culture" which I was immersed in, and I miss it

- I have a need to be in meetings around a big table. I need to plot about who I'm going to sit next to, since I never stopped thinking of everything in terms of school

- the expensive office space has commercial tenants, and they're making noises about how they shouldn't pay such high rent if no one actually goes to that office and shops in their space

- I'm worried about people slacking off and the only way I know how to manage that is to hover over people's shoulders

- No one at home is interested in my golf score

It's crap.

How I learned to stop worrying and love the datacenter

Given the cost of power, if companies are actually building data centers in Britain it's because they think they can extract more money in subsidies than building elsewhere.

Better check how much actual money is spent building these data centers before cheering about it.

See high speed rail for examples of subsidy extraction while providing nothing.

Don't panic: H-1B visas will cost companies $100K only for new petitions

The whole point of the H-1B was to temporarily fill a position where no US worker had the skills. And to pay accordingly.

It was not intended as a career. That someone may plan on it shows bad planning on their part, and the corruption of the visa into something it was never intended as being.

It was also not intended as a cheap replacement for US workers. Or a source of bribe money for managers, but that's what it's ended up being.

There has been a lot of talk over the years about fixing the abuses. Raising the compensation minimums would work if it could be enforced, but it can't (see bribery above and look up kickbacks).

The government getting the money up front is an evil second best. They will misspend it, but it should cause some pain for the companies that are abusing it.

Removing the program and putting something else in its place would be better, but I guess this would cause too much disruption. For now.

In any case, where's my smallest violin?

Engineer turned a vape into a web server

Re: Surely the bigger question...

Can they ship the batteries charged?

If not, they need battery management when they're charged before selling, so they don't blow up.

But yes, the expectation these days seems to be that anything more complicated than a pair of trousers needs a display of some sort.

It's only a matter of time for the trousers as well.

Two wrongs don’t make a copyright

Re: Modification without distribution

And yet there have been court cases about this very thing.

In downtown Toronto, there used to be a mall called the Eaton Centre. There was an art installation of Canada Geese suspended above one set of escalators.

One Christmas, the mall tied red ribbons around the necks of the geese.

The artist sued, as this altered his vision of the installation.

I don't know whether the mail had bought the piece or only rented it, or the outcome of the case. And it's true that this is public display, not a private change.

But it is relevant.

Bug bounties: The good, the bad, and the frankly ridiculous ways to do it

"no, I don't look for criticals at all, they're too hard and take too long. I go for automation to get more efficient low- and medium-severity bugs.' The mediums are the sweet spot, because they pay more.."

Just like with taxes. Taxing the billionaires might get you lots on an individual basis, but you get less overall because there just aren't that many of them.

And taxing them more is really hard.

AWS pricing for Kiro dev tool dubbed 'a wallet-wrecking tragedy'

So you fire most of your developers because "AI will do it cheaper".

Then you find out a) you'll spend far more on AI requests than the developers cost and b) the code is still not up to even the standard of that put out by people whose understanding of the language you work in is quite limited.

What's that I smell? Could it be that you've left your irony on the fire too long?

This is fairly amusing.

SpaceX resets 'Days Since Last Starship Explosion' counter to zero, again

There's lots of modelling being done at SpaceX, but they are doing stuff in areas that no one else has done.

E.g. no one else had attempted to retrieve a booster. They tried using parachutes and gave up, so now they use boost back. No one else had done boost back either.

So they're the ones gathering the data which will go into the models.

In a different area, in biology there's lots more modelling done than before, but sooner or later you still have to go to human trials.

These are still test flights. If nothing went wrong, they'd be saying "What else could we have tested?"

Datacenters selling power back to the grid? Don’t bet on it, say operators

The idea fails a basic look at the premise.

When is the battery storage at a data centre going to be used? When it can't get electricity from the mains.

When would it make sense for a battery storage facility to feed power back to the grid? In exactly the same scenario.

So rather like with solar power, they feed energy back when it's not needed. When it's needed they can't feed it to the grid because they need it for themselves, which is the reason they built it in the first place.

Heat can make Li-Ion batteries explode. Or restore their capacity, say Chinese boffins

Can it be done to a phone battery?

One of the reasons phones now have fixed batteries is because basically everything inside that's not electronics is battery. So removing them isn't really possible. This was supposedly to increase capacity.

Of course another reason was that if your battery dies you have to get a new phone instead of a new battery. The phone manufacturers were never enthusiastic about making replacement batteries so this market was quickly taken over by third parties. Which was another reason to make it impossible to switch them out.

Need cash? Your IPv4 stash can now be collateral for $100M loans

I'm reminded of, I think it was David Bowie(?) who was selling shares in his portfolio at one point? It was commented on as being a new thing at the time, though it seems to have since been normalized.

I suppose it's not all that different from getting a loan based on any other intellectual property (as opposed to physical property). I assume the company has the right to use the addresses and hasn't borrowed them from some other entity.

User complained his mouse wasn’t working. But he wasn’t using a mouse

I wonder whether Fred was moving the mouse around to look busy.

Rocket Lab says NASA lacks leadership on Mars Sample Return

Re: Size of problem

Surface gravity 38% of Earth. But an atmosphere roughly 1% of the pressure. Atmospheric drag would make a large difference.

Most of the problem is that the plans tend to assume that the fuel and oxygen is shipped from Earth. Which makes it an enormous problem.

Landing empty and generating the fuel and oxygen on Mars would make things much simpler. There's a lot of talk about that.

101 fun things to do with a locked Kindle e-reader

This issue hasn't been explained properly in *any* of the articles I've read about it. I had to go to Amazon to find out what's actually happening.

If your account had a record of buying a Kindle e-ink reader, then there was the possibility that you didn't have wi-fi or cellular access. So how do you load books onto the device? They allowed you to download the encrypted book to a computer, so you could then load it onto the device via USB.

The encryption was designed for that specific device, so if you had multiple readers you had to download it multiple times.

IMPORTANT:

****

If You Didn't Have A Record Of Owning A Kindle Device, Amazon NEVER Let You Download The Books.

****

"No compatible device found"

How can you read them without a Kindle device? An app on another device, e.g. phone, tablet or computer. It's what I've always done.

Of course, once you download the file, cracking the encryption is a possibility, though of varying degrees of illegality depending on your specific jurisdiction.

I do wonder what the people shouting about this were actually doing with the files, which they won't be able to do now. I presume they all had a device but no other method to transfer books, which is now useless. This wasn't a campaign to drum up views and clicks via feigned outrage, oh no...

Rather than add a backdoor, Apple decides to kill iCloud encryption for UK peeps

Re: Without an understanding

The UK citizens voted the current government in.

Apple had two choices: shut it down for UK people, or make *all* of their customers vulnerable to UK spying.

Why do younger coders struggle to break through the FOSS graybeard barrier?

"It often feels as if you need to surpass whatever the existing functionality is."

Well yes. That's what contributing code is - you're supposed to make it better. Faster, does more, less code or similar.

To be making changes just to see your code in there instead of whatever was there before is pandering to ego.

Dell ends hybrid work policy, demands return-to-office despite remote work pledge

Re: Nonsense

There was a recent meeting where someone asked our boss about return to work (2 out of 5) and office space. Since before everyone went home the office was jammed, this was a valid concern.

He waffled about the studies they had done, then said two things:

1. we could support more, e.g. 3 out of 5.

2. they based this on "less me and more we".

The second one parses out to everyone getting a small desk, sufficient to put your laptop down. Everything else is "collaboration space". I guess on the idea that the return to office is to enable greater amounts. Never mind that the ones who haven't yet returned are the ones who don't need to collaborate, or only rarely.

The first point seems to parse out to "don't complain, or we will make it worse for you".

This assumes you are allowed to record, and think to do so, and can search the recording.

Many organizations don't allow it, or allow only for certain purposes (none of which are "quick calls"). Sure you can search the transcript, if one is produced.

Apple called on to ditch AI headline summaries after BBC debacle

I wonder if this headline generator is actually less accurate than the average human doing the same job though.

I've seen some really bad and inaccurate headlines.

Are you better value for money than AI?

Re: Back in my day…

The hype around 4th generation languages (counting them as "ones and zeros", "assembly language", "FORTRAN et al. compiled or interpreted", and 'whatever a 4GL is") was that they were supposed to be usable by 'ordinary people". I.e. managers and secretaries (instead of employing those weird "programmers").

And in some cases they sort of, kind of, were. For example, SQL can be used at a much higher level than previous means of storing and accessing large amounts of data.

However, they still need training to use. Or you end up with cr*p systems. See pretty much every set of SQL queries designed by a manager.

Which people eventually learned. So the hype died down, and they're on to the next thing.

Which now seems to be AI.

"Now headcount is coming into focus."

Well that would be because headcount increased drastically a few years ago due to everyone been required to stay home. So internet usage increased and there was increased money flowing in.

But people are not required to be at home anymore, so the money river has dried up. And much of that increased headcount has not increased productivity, so it's just increased cost.

Overall, I think AI is more of an excuse than anything else. It's replacing people that didn't need to be hired in the first place, but it saves face for the boss.

American cops are using AI to draft police reports, and the ACLU isn't happy

Re: Next up

What body pays that fine, with what money from what source, and where does the money go?

Worst case, it's the Mail fining itself, the money going to next year's budget (to be fined again...)

Bitfinex heist gets the Netflix treatment after 'cringey couple' sentenced

I wonder if anyone got their Bitcoin back? Or is it still sitting in the police lockup as "evidence"?

Tech support chap showed boss how to use a browser for a year – he still didn't get it

Re: Screen savers

I have two. Of course these are desktop keyboards.

Re: "learnt many things about how not to run a company"

On the other hand, that sure sounds like Germany has kept the guild system alive. Where do you think the "Master" title comes from?

Are there limits on how many Masters there can be in a given city?

Smile! UK cops spend tens of millions on live facial recognition tech

And this tech likely won't work as planned.

It's a numbers game. Bruce Schneier said it a couple of decades ago when they first got enthusiastic about it. If you scan a lot of people trying to match against a small target list, any given match is far more likely to be a false one.

Facial recognition works better if you're e.g. using it for entrance to a secure facility. Then your target list is a much larger percentage of the people you're scanning.

But police like sitting at a desk and only stirring when there's an alert. Glorified security guards. And a lot of them are likely not much good for anything else these days.

Now Online Safety Act is law, UK has 'priorities' – but still won't explain 'spy clause'

Re: But...HOW?

Whether a law is passed has nothing to do with whether it's practical or even possible to comply with it.

See the law almost passed to dictate the value of pi. Or any other attempt to require a back door decryption ability in an encryption technology.

Legislatures tend not to be experts in any given field, so they rely on expert testimony. We currently have a crisis, more or less worldwide, where we're discovering that many of the experts called to testify on things, are either corrupted or cranks.

Australia tells tots: No TikTok till you're 16... or X, Instagram and Facebook

No penalty for users = no possibility of enforcement.

Even with penalties, I don't think it will do more than slightly slow them down.

I suspect that if Facebook has fewer underage people than it did, it's because it's not the thing to do anymore. They're all on Instagram or Tiktok instead.

Musk, Bezos need just 90 minutes to match your lifetime carbon footprint, says Oxfam

"Oxfam International executive director Amitabh Behar"

Now do his carbon footprint.

Harvard duo hacks Meta Ray-Bans to dox strangers on sight in seconds

Unless they have Facebook branding or something they won't be identifiable as such.

Even if these guys make them as branded (it sounds like they won't, since they did it as a proof of concept), it's possible now.

Cue knockoffs from other people fairly quickly.

It does depend on whether wearing glasses in general will be fashionable. It might be, but we might have a Red Guard movement.

Red team hacker on how she 'breaks into buildings and pretends to be the bad guy'

Re: She doesn't fit the hacker stereotype

A successful break-in involves *whatever gets you in*. Often there is no code-writing involved at all.

It's like when you're changing a business process. Sometimes it involves code, but that's the easy part.

Getting people to actually change what they're doing to a different, better way is much more difficult.

Some of the other commenters are saying things like "I bet their security is much better now." I'm not so optimistic.

After the break-in the people who directly allowed it due to bad practice may actually change that practice. At least for a short time.

Go back five years later and there will probably be someone else doing the same thing though. Among other things because likely very few people are still around in the same role from that long ago.

BOFH: AI consultant rapidly transitioned to new role as automotive surface consultant

He's clued in enough that he likely knows a designated spot close to the building is actually a bad way to maintain your car.

However, there's probably a policy that if you don't use your spot you lose it - unless you're on the Board of course.