Posts by DoctorPaul

Bcachefs creator insists his custom LLM is female and 'fully conscious'

As Delain so poetically put it "Normal is not the norm, it's just a uniform".

It's been shown that if you are completely average in every way then you are actually a statistical freak or don't even exist. Examples (thanks QI) are:

1. USAF's attempt to design a universal pilot's seat for jet fighters. Measured every pilot, took the average, seat didn't fit anyone.

2. Advertising campaign in Australia to find the average Australian housewife. Crunched all the numbers, noone could be found who matched the criteria.

Burger King turns to AI to flame broil employees who aren't friendly enough

Re: Guest Experience

I've said it before but In-N-Out, really?

Always provokes images of the Out part of the process for me, which does little for my appetite.

Microsoft to auto-launch Copilot in Edge whenever you click a link from Outlook

Re: Well that lasted long

Well, probably not that fussed as they've used the OPM principle. (Other People's Money)

AI chatbots waffle on GOV.UK queries, then get facts wrong when told to zip it

"we need to understand where the technology can be trusted and where it cannot,"

Well that's simple then, it can't be trusted anywhere.

Any more questions?

Linus Torvalds and friends tell The Reg how Linux solo act became a global jam session

Re: Missed it all

Now that does take me back!

I put together the Windows 3 software stack that early UK ISP Nethead used to supply to their customers. Winsock, Netscape, Eudora, an FTP client and a menu/control panel to hook it all together.

Windows 3, so it couldn't have been my favourite IDE ever, Delphi, must have been Turbo Pascal for Windows.

Re: Amazing, the article actually mentioned GNU

You do realise that you're coming across as someone with a massive axe to grind don't you? Rhetorical question of course.

I don't owe an allegiance to any particular operating system, but what gave me a nice warm feeling about the article was how friendliness and cooperation between individuals could achieve so much.

And then you had to remind us of the dark side of the "community". Just wanted to ask - did you enjoy a good flame war back in the day?

Ireland joins regulator smackdown after X's Grok AI accused of undressing people

Re: Am I the only one ...

"Hell, no".

I've actually said that out loud to that particular advert. Except I didn't say "Hell".

You probably can't trust your password manager if it's compromised

Re: Bitwarden supports self-hosting

Bitwarden also supports self-hosting for free if you use Vaultwarden.

My first attempt was a struggle, mainly because I had to use dynamic DNS and that doesn't play well with the security certificates. Having moved to FTTP, a static IP address and a cheap domain name my second attempt was something of a breeze. Raspberry Pi 4 with Docker and Caddy and it pretty much "just works", with the added benefit of Caddy acting as a reverse proxy for things like Jellyfin as well as automatically updating TLS certificates.

Re: If you were serious about security

That's the system that I've used for decades, not sure why you need to spin up a mailbox to reply. With Mythic Beasts webmail using RoundCube I only need one actual mailbox and then in Settings it's possible to set up as many "identities" as you want. When you hit Reply to an email, if the address that the email was sent to is listed as an identity then the From: field is automatically set to that address. Simples!

Reviving a CIDCO MailStation – the last Z80 computer

Yep, Macintosh SE was what I wrote my PhD thesis on, beginning of the 90s if I recall.

How the GNU C Compiler became the Clippy of cryptography

Which is why it is called "antique glass" even if it's freshly made, if I recall correctly from those stained glass workshops all those years ago.

As for slow flowing, I thought that I heard that give it a few hundred years and glass panes will be thicker at the bottom, but maybe I hallucinated that ;-)

OpenClaw reveals meaty personal information after simple cracks

It's not that you deliberately try to catch something, rather you need to "cancel the reflex" and that can be tricky. So - slow reflexes and you miss it completely, moderate reflexes and you catch it (by the handle if you're lucky) and if you're really quick you pull your hand away as it automatically goes to catch the falling object.

McDonald's is not lovin' your bigmac, happymeal, and mcnuggets passwords

Re: On the flipside

Ah, recall seeing their ads occasionally whilst catching up with NHRA drag racing from the States.

What a name! Always conjures up unfortunate mental images of the Out part of the process for me.

Musk distracts from struggling car biz with fantastical promise to make 1 million humanoid robots a year

The writing may be on the wall for SpaceX

Just seen a report in the Grauniad concerning the possible merging of Tesla and SpaceX.

Tesla revenue falls for first time as Musk bets big on robots and autonomy

Re: selling CT's to the Gulf states has an advantage

It sure does. Shame it didn't occur to the Yanks before they deployed their military helicopters to the Gulf without any intake filters.

Emmabuntüs DE 6: A newbie-friendly Linux to help those in need

Re: Newbie

Pah indeed!

When I sat my final exams for a BSc in Engineering we still had to use a slide rule for calculations. This was 1975, electronic calculators had just become a thing but they were so expensive that not everyone could afford one, hence "levelling the playing field".

Challenger at 40: The disaster that changed NASA

It's all down to politics

Am I right in thinking that the O rings were only necessary because some politician made sure the boosters were manufactured in his State, so had to be made in sections for road transport? They could have been built on-site in a single piece but no, they had to bodge it with O rings!

Anthropic quietly fixed flaws in its Git MCP server that allowed for remote code execution

Re: It's not possible to do

The people writing this stuff really are script kiddies aren't they?

Rackspace tests customer loyalty with brutal email price hike

Re: Dreamhost is doing something similar

Check out Mythic Beasts based in Cambridge UK. A very happy customer, 3 quid a month (of which 50p is VAT) gets me all I need including catch-all email and pointing domains at things like my self-hosted Vaultwarden instance. Exemplary tech support as well.

Engineer used welding shop air hose to 'clean' PCs – hilarity did not ensue

Similar principle applied when back in the mists of time I worked at the fabled Ricardo Engineering at Shoreham, development engineers of the highest order.

This was the 70s but the Chinese lorry engines on the brake dynamometer were designed in the 40s and running at full load and peak revs the exhaust was glowing cherry red. Lesson 1, do not stand at the side of the engine, stand in line with it so you aren't collateral damage if things go bang.

Someone had one hell of a near miss when a top radiator hose ruptured though - superheated water ejected under pressure in a confined space sounds very very nasty.

Re: Well this works .... for me

At least that's a valid use for a leaf blower, which brings us back to the suck/blow debate mentioned earlier.

I've used a leaf vac for years, it sucks up the fallen leaves, I bag them up and dispose of them. All a blower would do is to spread them onto the street or neighbours' property, that would make me really unpopular around here.

Re: Unbelievable stupidity

Been there, done that.

Did I mention that the CNC software would only run on Win98?

Re: BS

I seem to recall from an episode of Time Team that in old mills one of the gear wheels would be cast iron and the other would be made of wood. Part of the reason was limitations in the size that they could cast metal, but spark prevention was an important consideration.

Re: BS

Upvoted for "my lower brain" :)

An old parking meter and a Pi make beautiful music together

QR codes as an attack vector anyone?

And don't get me started on crims sticking dodgy QR codes onto parking notices. You did take a really close look at the code on that notice didn't you?

US regulator tells GM to hit the brakes on customer tracking

Re: Privacy respecting safe driving or economical driving app?

Totally agree, and upvoted.

I'm 74 this year and my birthday treat to myself last year was blasting round Brands Hatch in a variety of performance cars ranging from a BMW police interceptor to a race prepped 66 Mustang. As well as the hands-on experience, the instructor feedback is extremely useful.

Then if you really want to take it to the next level you could do what I did before that - half a day of one-to-one tuition at drifting school. Knackered old Toyota with a welded-up diff, but boy can those things can take some abuse! The only downside - blisters on five fingers afterwards, but well worth the pain.

NASA decides to bring Crew-11 home early after astronaut health scare

"that option might not exist"

No "might" about it surely?

Cloudflare CEO threatens to make the Winter Olympics a political football after Italy slugs it with a fine

My pi-holes run unbound so I'm completely independent, works a treat.

How hackers are fighting back against ICE surveillance tech

Re: Regardless of one's views…

There's a point of view that the Roman Empire didn't disappear, it just changed its name to the Catholic Church.

HSBC app takes a dim view of sideloaded Bitwarden installations

Re: So is anyone actually happy with their bank's digital offerings?

I've been playing "musical banks" for the last few years, well they were giving money away!

That means that I've had accounts with all of the major banks (avoiding the likes of Revolut) and the one I've stayed with is Chase.

The app works well with nice touches like notifications the moment money leaves or enters the account, also the day before a regular payment goes out so it's easy to keep money in a saver account until it's needed. From the way that transactions update in real time, I suspect that their IT infrastructure is more modern than some where transactions are marked as Pending until the following day. Cherry on the cake, if you need to phone them do it from within the app and you are pre-authorised so you avoid all the "I just need to ask you a few questions to establish your ID".

EU won't scrap tech regs just because Washington dislikes them

Re: Vance should be renditioned to Haiti

How would you tell the difference?

No, I'm not planning on visiting the States any time soon.

Gmail preparing to drop POP3 mail fetching

Re: An alternative option...

That's the system I've used for decades - yourcompany@mydomain whenever I sign up anywhere. So I have just one mailbox but hundreds of email addresses that deliver via catch-all redirection.

Roundcube web mail at Mythic Beasts makes it the work of seconds to add an "identity" so hitting Reply makes that email appear to come from yourcompany@mydomain. Then in addition I have Thunderbird installed on my desktop and use that to take an occasional local copy of the whole mailbox, best of both worlds.

When it comes to security, my attitude is which is most likely - Mythic Beasts are taken off-line and all backups destroyed or my local hard drive dies or my laptop is stolen? POP3 seems to be a case of all your eggs in one basket.

Starlink to lower orbits of thousands of satellites over safety concerns

Re: strange idea

Why does that make me think of "Catch a falling Starfighter"

Welcome to Wendy's! Before your order can be taken, you must first reset this kiosk

A Five Guys opened years ago at our local shopping centre. It was a standing joke with my partner that we'd never seen it with even that many people in it.

Europe's cloud challenge: Building an Airbus for the digital age

Re: Airbus and US products?

So the Gloucester Meteor and ME 262 were based on US technology? What the f are you smoking? Just remind me, who invented the turbojet engine?

BBC tapped to stop Britain being baffled by AI

Re: Why a TV licence?

There's more to the BBC than it's TV output, that's the whole point.

Death to one-time text codes: Passkeys are the new hotness in MFA

I did exactly that last year. My passport had expired and I didn't have any plans to travel abroad, but I'm over 70 now so I have to renew my driving licence every 3 years. Easy to do online, but I realised that without a passport "on the system" it could get a bit tricky.

OpenAI turns the screws on chatbots to get them to confess mischief

Re: Can we please call it an LLM, not an AI

Couldn't agree more.

It seems that language and reasoning occur in completely different parts of the brain and are independent of each other. So by definition no matter how good the bullshit generator it will never ever reason. (PhD in expert systems here)

Latest Windows 11 updates may break the OS's most basic bits

Upvoted, have used Start11 since it was Start8. It does a good job and they don't take the piss with the pricing. Hadn't heard of Directory Opus, sounds worth checking out.

Whatever legitimate places AI has, inside an OS ain't one

Re: "Whatever legitimate places AI has, inside an OS ain't one"

I'll happily vilify LLMs when they are proposed as the foundation of general artificial intelligence. It's the big selling point of the current "AI" bubble - "throw enough processing power at it and it will magically happen". And it is never, ever going to happen I'm very glad to say.

The reason for my optimism? A recent article in, I think, Futurism. LLMs do an amazing job of replicating the way in which humans process language, which is why they are so good at generating convincing bullshit. However research using CT scans has shown that completely different parts of the brain are involved for reasoning and for language, and individuals without language are able to reason.

So language and reasoning are two completely different things and no matter how much money and computing power you throw at the former, it can never achieve the latter.

Windows 11 needs an XP SP2 moment, says ex-Microsoft engineer

Re: Jump to Mac?

WinBoat looks like an interesting idea, halfway between Wine and a full VM as it were. Claims to let you run any Windows programs on Linux, including Office apparently.

Waymo chalks up another four-legged casualty on San Francisco streets

Re: Animals can't handle cars.

Moose versus pickup rarely ends well for either. A moose stands at just the right (i.e. wrong) height that a head-on collision results in a couple of tons of moose torso coming through the windscreen, usually killing the occupants.

OBR drags in cyber bigwig after Budget leak blunder

Re: I'll wait and see

He has now resigned.

Microsoft exec finds AI cynicism 'mindblowing'

Re: Don't even get me started on ...

Qwant works pretty well for me.

AI slop hits new high as fake country artist goes to #1 on Billboard digital songs chart

There's always what is termed Symphonic Rock which is my particular thing, very big in Europe especially Finland where there's a church where the whole Mass is celebrated with heavy metal music. Brilliant live music scene as well, been to some wonderful gigs in Holland and Belgium with great local venues and tickets about 20 quid.

Check out the likes of Nightwish, Delain, Edenbridge, Within Temptation, Visions of Atlantis, Beyond the Black, After Forever, Elysion, Nemesea, Evanescence and for a good laugh Battle Beast.

Big Tech's control freak era is breaking itself apart

Re: "Open source is the ticket out of here." Etc

More a case of "that gives us a competitive advantage in the marketplace, so keep it to ourselves".

Similar to the way that hospitals in the NHS used to cooperate and share ideas about best practise until the introduction of free-market principles meant that they stopped sharing as any good ideas they came up with would give them a financial advantage.

ChatGPT, Claude, and Grok make very squishy jury members

Re: Why do they always seem so surprised when this sort of thing happens?

Reminds me of a genuine case here in the UK where an African Grey parrot was removed from the public display because it was teaching the other parrots to swear at visitors! Not sure if that counts as sycophancy.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-lincolnshire-67990806

Google Cloud suspended customer's account three times, for three different reasons

Re: Happened with my son's account

For a start maybe use Thunderbird and keep a local copy of your mailbox.

Protonmail might work well for you, plus it will automatically export your mail from Gmail during setup and then redirect any further emails on to the Protonmail account.

Google parent company spending like a drunken sailor as capex triples over 2 years

Re: We will all be paying for this

After years of dental woes I've just had to have some dentures fitted, so I bought some cleaning tablets that you drop into a glass of water.

On the top of the pack is a QR code to "download the app". WTF?!!!

Actor couldn’t understand why computer didn’t work when the curtain came down

We didn't dress up but back in the early 70s we had the real thing - the Department of Parapsychology was an official part of the University of Sussex ("The only brothel with a government charter" Baroness Summerskill) and as "interdisciplinary" was the buzzword us science students had to write an arts/science dissertation.

I did mine on the subject of "Coloured Magic", leading to an oblique reference in the Times Educational Supplement to the effect that Sussex was "the only university where you could do a degree in engineering and witchcraft".

Interesting times, wouldn't be who I am today if I hadn't been there, done that. Remember a talk by Michael Bentine, famed Goon of this parish - "It's OK to do drugs, it's OK to do magic, but please don't do them at the same time". As Lemmy so perfectly put it, "The summer of 71 was the best time of my life. I can't remember any of it but it was the best time of my life". Amen to that.