Posts by DoctorPaul

Key aspects of Palantir's Federated Data Platform lack legal basis, lawyers tell NHS England

Is opt-out even legal?

So the best I can hope for is to be given an option (well hidden?) to opt out. How about assuming opt out and having to specifically opt in?

It's a bad enough idea, but Palantir?! FFS

The amber glow of bork illuminates Brighton Station

Re: "A toasted bacon sandwich"

British Rail toast was an epicurean delight, sadly lost to history.

HPE to pursue $4B claim against estate of Mike Lynch over Autonomy acquisition

Re: Puzzled Experts

It will need a full marine investigation to establish what happened but I believe that it's already known that the wreck shows that the keel had not been lowered, so anything above a "normal" strong wind would have caused a capsize. Then there are the issues of how an "unsinkable" boat went down and what was done, or not, to rescue the passengers known to be below.

Have to say that it's beginning to not look too good for the captain and crew. Wonder if there's such a thing as "Titanic Syndrome" when a ship is believed to be unsinkable.

Where the computer industry went wrong – the early hits

Re: Huge gaps in this history

Ah the things that you could do with a BBC Micro! Actually called the British Broadcasting Corporation Micro after Brown Boveri Corporation got upset.

In the early 1980s, before the existence of the IBM PC, I worked for a company producing full-screen interactive video training software using a BBC Micro with a video card connected to an analogue Philips laserdisc player (12" discs like a vinyl LP in size). Analogue was fun, not as easy as asking for a digital file - you had to tell the disc where to seek to and then add in a fudge factor for the resulting overshoot and rebound of the playback head.

And don't mention MSX. I was a founding partner in Salamander Software back in the day and with every major Japanese electronics manufacturer signed up it looked like a no-brainer to develop for. It didn't end well.

Dr Helen Fisher, MRI maven who showed just how love works, dies at 79

Re: Fajitas, yum.

I lost my partner of 35 years to Covid in 2020. Pretty sure that we said "I love you" to each other at least once every single day we were together, which was a lot as 90% of my career was WFH.

Re: Real science

Back in the day (OK it was the 70s) I was at uni studying physics and engineering, and I recall that we called sociology and psychology pseudoscience back then.

What we found most amusing was that the "scientific method" that they embraced was essentially Newtonian, while the "real" science had moved on to relativity and the quantum realm. I think that my brain exploded around the time I tried to get my head around quantum theory, that's when I changed from physics to engineering:-)

Developer tried to dress for success, but ended up attired for an expensive outage

Re: Hard Hats and Hi-Viz...

Naughty. Learned this the hard way back in the day, damn that plastic can be sharp! My fault for having a penchant for tidy wiring.

Who needs GitHub Copilot when you can roll your own AI code assistant at home

but each snippet is still very much 'trust but verify line by line'

So what's the point exactly?

Client tells techie: You're not leaving the country until this printer is working

Heck of a definition of "free", I'll pass thanks!

Twitter must pay over half a million to unfairly dismissed Irish exec

Re: Yankee employment conditions go home!

That would be the National Guard who shot fleeing students in the back at Kent State yeah? Some of us have long memories. "4 dead in Ohio"

Google's ex-CEO U-turns after saying staff 'going home early' killed winning

Managers were told to send reminders to staff "who are consistently absent from the office."

And that tells you all you need to know about what passes for "management" in the depressing majority of cases.

It's a software company FFS! If you're running a steel mill then WFH isn't an option but otherwise what happened to "set a task and monitor its progress". Oh of course, that requires competent management, 'nuff said.

Shout out to the handful of good managers who are a joy to work with (rather than for) and are remembered fondly many years later.

Elon Musk claims live Trump interview on X derailed by DDoS

Re: Elon is an arse

That's a given, the thing is, he's a STUPID arse.

I refer you to the fake Telegraph "detention camps in the Falklands" post that he fell for hook, line and sinker. What a complete fuck-wit.

Re: Interview?

"GBeebies" - love it and will use the term from now on.

I thought it was audio only? Takes some doing to screw that up!

Speaking as someone who was involved in what I believe was the first ever live stream of radio by an ISP in the UK. That was at Nethead in Clapham (south London) in the mid 90s and the technology used was an aerial hanging out of the back window of the second floor office above a shop with cheap radio tuned to Capital Radio and its line out connected to the single rack of gear which was all you needed to run an ISP back then. Happy days!

And as soon as the war was over he was voted out so fast his feet didn't touch the ground, resulting in a Labour government and the formation of the NHS

Google-commissioned report claims early adopters already enjoying fruits of gen-AI labor

Re: This is all in how they ask the question

As was pointed out elsewhere, the main people to benefit from a gold rush were the ones selling the shovels.

Cigarette break burned out a huge chunk of Africa's internet

Really Mean doesn't come close!

I worked in educational software around that time. All I can say is that the market was as bent as a nine bob note - and if that comment doesn't age me nothing will.

Under-fire Elon Musk urged to get a grip on X and reality – or resign

followed by counter-protests, some peaceful and some not.

Sorry Reg but that's up there with "there are good people on both sides" and really pisses me off.

Are you deliberately implying that as many counter-protests were violent as were not? I have seen NO reports at all of violence from counter-protesters, much more things like drinkers coming out of a boozer to hug passing Muslim protesters. Eight fascists in Brighton were met by over a thousand counter-protesters, no violence ensued and they fucked off back to wherever they came from.

The Reg's journalistic standards seem to have fallen off a cliff since you went left-pondian. That said, this is the first time that you have really disappointed me.

EVs continue to grow but private buyers are steering clear, say motor trade figures

Re: New

Really? In the last year or two I've made a few trips to rock gigs in the Netherlands and it's been an absolute breeze. Buying train tickets on the NL website is straightforward and on buses you just click in and out with any UK debit or credit card.

Re: Naysayer

Didn't I read somewhere that many fleet hybrids are only ever run on fuel, companies buy them because the subsidies reduce the capital outlay?

Re: Second Hand?

Upvote for the Herald owner.

Back in the day, our family car was a Triumph Vitesse and boy was that fun! That was when a major manufacturer like Triumph went "We've got a lovely little family car with the 1250cc Herald, why don't we drop in a sodding great 2 litre straight six and see how it goes?"

Re: Second Hand?

Applies to all modern cars...

FTFY a classic car fan.

Twitter tells advertisers to go fsck themselves, now sues them for fscking the fsck off

Re: Not really understanding the plan

Err, did it not occur to this mega-mind that suing people that you want to spend money with you probably isn't the smartest of ideas?

Re: curious

Think that's a reference to Adolf rather than John F!

What AI bubble? Groq rakes in $640M to grow inference cloud

Best sub-heading of the week

Just saying

Microsoft whiz dishes the dirt on the Blue Screen Of Death's colorful past

Re: BSOD has been rare since Windows 7

Wish I could upvote this more than once!

I was finally dragged kicking and screaming onto Windows 10 earlier this year, only made tolerable by the use of Start11 and WindowBlinds plus Incontrol from GRC.

What really pisses me off is that not only did Microshaft not offer a "classic skin", they continually sabotaged attempts by third parties to provide one.

Too late now for canary test updates, says pension fund suing CrowdStrike

And a dead parrot

Re: Unfortunatly your canary is really a (dead) parrot

Beat you to it with my "dead falcon" comment last week:-)

CrowdStrike shares sink as global IT outage savages systems worldwide

Re: Falcon + BSOD = Blue Falcon

'E's not pinin'! 'E's passed on! This falcon is no more! He has ceased to be! 'E's expired and gone to meet 'is maker! 'E's a stiff! Bereft of life, 'e rests in peace! If you hadn't nailed 'im to the perch 'e'd be pushing up the daisies! 'E's kicked the bucket, 'e's shuffled off 'is mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleedin' choir invisible!! THIS IS AN EX-FALCON!!

Readers of a certain age will not need an explanation.

Antitrust: GoDaddy under fire for banning DNS automation tool in favor of its own

Re: Go daddy can go **** themselves

Same here, had set up a few simple web sites for friends, originally with Gridhost who eventually got subsumed into the GoDaddy empire.

Moved everyone to Mythic Beasts a couple of years ago - apart from not wanting to deal with a company whose CEO likes to massacre wildlife and post photos of it online, the performance was utter crap compared to Mythic. While I was cloning the mailboxes for my own site I was able to run the same search in adjacent tabs of the same browser - on a mailbox of a few thousand emails, Mythic returned results in a few seconds while GoDaddy just span its wheels and eventually timed out.

Speed limiters arrive for all new cars in the European Union

Re: The big, nay, MASSIVE problems with all that tech..

We used to call it "defensive driving", anticipating potential problems.

I got my bike licence at 16 and by the time I got my car licence at 17 I was fully schooled in the art, given that as a biker you tended to end up dead if you didn't.

If people had to do a year on a motorbike before getting a car licence I'm sure that driving standards would improve, and the fatalities should subside after a while!

Re: Yeah, nah.

I'll see your 2012 dinosaur and raise you my 1989 BMW which I have just treated to a serious engine rebuild. It's got all I need - fuel injection, electric windows, option for ABS and CC.

I got my licence in the 1960s and never in my life have I bought a new car, so I reckon that this petrol-head has a lower carbon footprint than many :-)

My understanding is that back in the day when speed limits were first introduced, the speedometers could only manage +/- 10% accuracy (I'm old enough to remember Smiths chronometric speedos) so to be legally fair you had to let someone be 10% over in case their speedo was reading 10% under.

Roll on a few years and speedo accuracy obviously improved, but funnily enough I swear that every car sold has a speedo that reads 9% over! The basis of most 1960s claims of having "done the ton" of course.

Users rage as Microsoft announces retirement of Office 365 connectors within Teams

Re: Cloud bollocks

That's what I thought until Microshaft turned off the activation servers for Office 2010, so much for a "perpetual licence"

Techie installed 'user attitude readjustment tool' after getting hammered in a Police station

Re: Shepherd's crook...

"Sound techs"? Reminds me of the early 70s at university when I did a bit of work as a roadie for friends who had formed a rock band. I was 72 last week but I still wind up things like extension leads that way.

For the uninitiated, crook one arm at 90 deg and hold the plug between thumb and forefinger, then start looping the cable between upper arm and gap between finger and thumb. When done, simply straighten your arm and you are left holding a neatly coiled cable.

Screwdrivers: is there anything they can't do badly? Maybe not

Re: Not screwdrivers but...

Ah, trying to cancel a reflex, that's an interesting one.

You drop something, the reflex is to catch it. The question is, is your conscious mind quick enough to cancel the reflex if the object you dropped was something like a soldering iron? Ninja points if you're quick enough to catch it by the non-hot end!

UK Surface owners can now take misbehaving laptops to Currys

Re: Where the customer comes third or forth

Been doing that for more than a couple of decades thanks to catch-all redirection.

Still rather enjoy the confusion it can cause - "Can I have your email address?". "Sure". "But that's us!"

Big brains divided over training AI with more AI: Is model collapse inevitable?

Sorry just don't get it

Someone correct me if I'm wrong but I believe that even the most ardent fans of ChatGPT accept that these systems sometimes "hallucinate" and state things as fact when they simply are not. Ergo you cannot trust anything these systems produce without checking the authenticity of the output.

So just what is the point? It reminds me of "50% of my advertising budget is wasted, I just don't know which 50%".

Still, what do I know? Maybe just a little given that my PhD is in AI

Samsung shows off battery tech it says will see you gone in nine minutes

Re: What's the catch?

400v or 800v

And that's another potential problem. (Pun not intended!)

If you are unfortunate enough to be involved in a major accident in your EV, I believe that the emergency services will not touch the car to extricate you until they are sure that it won't apply that voltage to them, with fatal results.

Does anyone know if the problem is genuine, or have I been watching too many episodes of Police Interceptors?

Post Office slapped down for late disclosure of documents in Horizon scandal inquiry

I see that a couple in the States have been sent down for 15 years on a charge of involuntary manslaughter for their actions that resulted in their son shooting a number of his classmates.

Given that the actions of Vennels and co led directly to a number of suicides I can certainly see a moral case for charging them with the same offence.

Also, in the case of the 60 or so postmasters who have already died waiting for justice I would hope that damages are still awarded and passed on to their descendants. I wonder precisely how many children of postmasters also had their lives ruined by this outrage.

Engine cover flies from Southwest Airlines Boeing 737 during takeoff

Re: There is a joke here, somewhere

Ah, Captain Lockheed and the Starfighters - that takes me back!

UK skies set for cheeky upgrade with hybrid airship

Re: Really???

Years ago visiting from the UK and heading north from Toronto was rather taken aback by the sign outside a town saying something like "ThisTown welcomes the cottagers".

Double whammy is that I'm pretty sure that the notice was on behalf of the local Baptist church!

Google's AI-powered search results are loaded with spammy, scammy garbage

Qwant anyone?

Many thanks to the commentard who recommended qwant some time ago.

Been my default search in Firefox for a while and I must say that I get the results that I want at the top of the list pretty much every time.

3 million doors open to uninvited guests in keycard exploit

Re: The entire industry is a mess

Ah yes, pretty sure it was a Formula One in France that gave my partner and I an "interesting" experience many years ago, probably the 90s.

It was a completely automated affair, no staff on site at all, well certainly in the evening. You turned up at the front door and used a control panel to pay by credit card whereupon you received a paper printout with room number and key code.

Great. Payment made, code received and off we go to the room. Door opens fine with the code, only problem is that there's a bloke asleep in the bed!

No staff remember, so sorting that out via an entry phone intercom at night was an interesting exercise. Turns out the guy was working at the hotel as a decorator and someone had put him up in the room but obviously without putting the information into the booking system. Pretty crap system to allow that but I guess that it was cutting edge in the 90s.

What strange beauty is this? Microsoft commits to two more non-subscription Office editions

Re: Upgrade? Not me…

I thought that I was OK with a "perpetual" copy of Office 2010.

Then M$ switched off the activation servers.

The end of classic Outlook for Windows is coming. Are you ready?

What is this Outlook of which you speak?

Been using PCs since the early 80s, from BBC Micro via OS/2 to all versions of Windows up to Win10 (and I only moved there from Win7 a few weeks ago).

Never in my life have I used Outlook, a statement that will remain true until my dying breath. I think that my first remote access to email was via a 300baud modem from my BBC to the university *nix box, then when personal email became a thing Eudora did me just fine for years before I finally moved to Thunderbird.

That said, all my desktop email these days is done using the Roundcube web client and 3 quid a month to Mythic Beasts for hosting. Never, ever use the ISP provided email!

Apple's Titan(ic) iCar project is dead as self-driving dream fails to materialize

Re: I don't get it either

Which is why I'm sticking with my 1989 BMW E30 cabrio that I've owned for over 20 years.

When I first owned it I was living in central London so the automatic gearbox was a real benefit in that sort of traffic. And then I taught myself to left foot brake which is relatively straightforward with only two pedals, and that half-second quicker on the brakes definitely saved me from a massive coming together with a white van some years ago.

Former Post Office boss returns CBE to sender over computer system scandal

Re: A scandal of epic proportions

Went online to send a parcel via Royal Mail recently but went to postoffice.co.uk due to a bit of brain fade.

They no longer offer Royal Mail delivery, just crap like Evri. Sad really.

Revamped Raspberry Pi OS boasts Wayland desktop and improved imager tool

They broke VNC

Got a handful of Pi's and all of them run headless.

Default for this is VNC but it doesn't work with Wayland - "maybe next year".

So it's back to the legacy version for now.

‘How not to hire a North Korean plant posing as a techie’ guide updated by US and South Korean authorities

Re: Best code ever!

But did it work?