Posts by M.V. Lipvig

Claude Code returns blank thinking blocks, but reasoning still costs you

Sounds like profit to me

Empty blocks are 100 percent profit.

Virgin Galactic flights stay paused while ticket prices head for the Moon

Re: Um... This seems like something you don't want to say out loud...

It takes about 10 years to go from a new model car design to having the car on the dealer lots. A lot of that time is making small changes after the fact because what was modeled on the computer didn't QUITE fit in real life, or didn't take into account this other part that sometimes is in the way and other times isn't, or needs this brace installed to be solidly attached but can't actually BE installed if the brace is present, ect. And even when they release it, it's still wrong. Look at how many cars are out there that you can't change the oil without making a mess because the designer didn't make sure the oil filter has a clear shot to the ground, or is installed at an angle so as soon as you start unscrewing it oul starta going all over the place. I would expect it to be the same for any complicated unit build.

Dunno, but I'd rather fly with the guy that says "let's take our time and make sure it's all correct" than the guy who likes to go fast and break things.

OpenAI ditches Recall-style screenshot surveillance for friendly keylogging

As far as I'm concerned, the work machine is for work only. I do nothing on there that doesn't involve work, and assume that the company has a little guy in a black uniform with a peaked cap watching every keystroke and listening in over the phone headset microphone. I use my own laptop for my personal stuff, and even did this when I worked in the office. The work laptop camera just stares at the mousepad on the keyboard as the laptop itself is plugged into a docking station with the screen closed.

I may not be the best guy to emulate here though - I consider myself retired as of July 1 of this year and no longer have to work. At this point I'm just padding my Roth 401k and milking medical insurance while waiting on a layoff notice with a nice "don't sue us you old geezer" severance package.

BOFH: How our Covid ransomware protocol's Y2K blockchain lowered uptime

Re: missing … the onions in our belts

Abe Simoson is exactly it, and "onions in our belts" is a signal for long, rambling stories that use a lot of words without imparting any knowledge and without any one sentence being related to the next. The reason was back during the war, Jerry was listening in to all conversations, so we had to have a way of passing information without Jerry picking it up. So we'd all go down to the pub for a game of darts when we wanted to have a secret briefing. Back then darts were made of wood with real feathers on the end and didn't fly as well as they do now. But that was all right because if you crashed there was always another plane waiting for you. But because of the war, all the metal was gone so you had to use a rock to keep your plane sharp and that made the wood come out lumpy. But then nobody cared if there were a few lumps in the peanut butter, except for Private Johnson because the lumps would get caught in the huge gap in his teeth.

Re: It's a virus!

Must be the Friday virus, as now it's Saturday and comments are working fine.

Tennessee congressional hopeful accused of shooting license plate cameras

Re: Size

No, I'm a Republican and also care about his accuracy rate. If he's shooting at Flocks with his Glocks, I want him hitting with 100 percent accuracy.

London cops handed victim's new address and number to her stalker, watchdog says

Re: Red Dwarf

If Holly has an IQ that is the same as 6,000 PE teachers, would that not mean Holly has an IQ of 1? Saying the collective IQ or equivalent IQ of 6,000 PE teachers would not work either as IQ is not additive. 6,000 times higher would work.

Azure CTO pastes Doom into Paint one frame at a time

Ugh

I STILL get slightly nauseus and headachy when the game Doom is brought up, and I haven't played it since 1995.

Re: Potty

Except that you didn't. Haiku is 5,7,5. What you wrote is 6,8,15, assuming you dropped a return between poetry and why.

NASA's Swift rescue slips to late August as LINK battles its spin

Wow

Amazing that just 100 years ago we were just finishing a switch from exchanging horses for cars, and now we're sending spacecraft up to make repairs to other spacecraft.

Leading AI models (even Grok) are all a bunch of leftist punks

Re: The random responder

Sorry, but minding my own business does not mean that I shut up and do it your way. It means when you try to force me to do things in a way I disagree with, I push back. Oh, and on abortion I clearly stated I'll stand up for those who cannot stand up for themselves. Abortion should have a limited use case, and that does not include as a primary method of birth control

Re: The random responder

Wow, what a load of drivel. Slavery, seriously? Slavery is the purview of those who want to stick their noses into the business of others, and those who think that what belongs to others is theirs. There is nothing more "belongs to someone else" than that someone else's actual person. By the same token, there is nothing more "what's mine is mine" than my own body is mine, and is nobody else's. None of this supports the idea of slavery.

However, those who want to use the government to steal from others supports slavery. Taking by force from one to support another is exactly what slavery is. If I choose to help another that's one thing, but being forced to support someone is quite different. I don't mind contributing a bit to help those who can't, but absolutely do not want a penny to go to those who won't.

No idea where you get crypto from. Also no idea where you get "women are only for baby making." True, that is what women's bodies are geared towards but there's more to.women than that. Partners in life means beyond the baby making years too.

I suspect

that the models lean left because right wingers are more likely to be emoloyed, whereas left wingers are more likely to be unemployed and have far more time to peruse the internet. I know my own internet time is pretty limited, and most of the time I am on the internet is spent not generating content like this.

Re: Maybe not all the data came from America?

You don't need a President to confirm that Democrats are Socialists. You can just ask them, or look at who is being elected these days.

Re: The random responder

Really? I am a voracious reader. I even read the drug company inserts both sides. Anything with words on. And, I am decidedly right wing.

What's mine is mine, what's yours is yours, and neither of us belong in the other's business and that includes when you want to force your business upon me. I will defend those who can'd defend themselves and stand up against those who want to force their way on me. I don't mind paying a little tax for the common good. I do resent paying taxes so people who are perfectly capable of holding down a job can sit at home, particularly when those same people claim that they have more of a right to my assets than I do. I am the one who spent decades sacrificing and working to build those assets, not them.

DEF CON bans Meta-style 'pervert glasses'

Re: Ah great

A medical device as you describe would not need recording abiity.

Airbus keeps an A350 flying for 24 hours

Can't imagine what that

is going to smell like at the end of a flight. Not all nationalities like to bathe, snd being in a tube for an entire day with them is going to be like spending the day in a gas chamber. Hope they also added extended range sanitary and water tanks.

BOFH: This printer engineer knows every trick in the book

Re: "the sound of a large multifunction printer hitting a small white van from a great height"

As I recall, the BOFH works on the 5th floor of a 5 story building, with river views.

Re: Sounds familiar

If I can get Google Maps to work at all (I assume it doesn't like Waterfox with Ghostery and Privacy Badger) I've found that if there is a toll road within 50 miles of your route it will do its best to route you over the toll road even if it adds miles to the trip. There's two towns near where I live that if you map from the north side of the southern town, to the south side of the northern town, it sends you south 3 miles, east 1 mile, northeast on a toll road 20 miles, west 10 miles, and south 2 miles vs north 7 miles north on a non-toll 4 lane. Distances are approximate.

LG monitors are using Windows 11 feature to serve adware

They were hoping you had forgotten.

Microsoft cuts OneDrive support for older Windows 10 versions next month

Re: Blessings

Nah, 10 was a turd compared to 7, which was peak M$.

Yes, on my work machine, because the settings are locked down tighter than a duck's ass. On my home machines, I don't run Wondoze. It's linux for me and android for the wife.

Chinese memory ban would cut off RAMpocalypse relief

Re: it's in nobodies interest

"Will the Chinese manufacturers be the only ones left standing in every other market segment?"

How soon the lessons from COVID about allowing one nation to be your only supplier are forgotten. Remember when China closed itself off, then suddenly all the JIT (Just In Time) manufacturers had to close their doors because they ran out of parts? I guess nobody remembers anymore.

What's really amazing is how many people here are lamenting the loss of cheap Chinese imports while simultaneously demanding the divestment from US companies because "scary orange man might read muh email" despite China being a much, much bigger threat to IP and trade by undercutting home nation industries. Really, the US just wants to make sure some other nation doesn't drag us into yet another world war, while China wants to rule the world on the installment plan.

When dragons belch and hippos flee

My thoughts, China, are of thee

Let others boast of martial dash

For we have boldly fought with cash

We own all your helmets, we own all your shoes

We own all your generals - touch us and you'll lose.

China! China!

China owns the day!

We can rule you wholesale

Touch us and you'll pay.

We bankrupt all invaders, we sell them souvenirs

We ner ner ner ner ner, hner ner hner by the ears

Er hner we ner ner ner ner ner

Ner ner her ner ner ner hner the ner

Er ner ner hner ner, nher hner ner ner (etc.)

Ner hner ner, your gleaming swords

We mortgaged to the hilt

China! China!

Hner ner ner ner ner ner

We can rule you wholesale

Credit where it's due.

With apologies to Sir Pterry.

I fully support

anything that moves manufacturing anywhere but China, and preferably to the US.

AWS CloudFront outage serves errors instead of websites

But my business!

-Everything was on the cloud! What happened to it?

- Oh, that. Lost a disk array, old chap. Wasn't much data lost, just a few terraquad, didn't really affect our big customers.

- But but but all MY stuff was on there! Accounting information, customer lists, equipment manuals, the works! I can't even pay my cloud bill now!

- Sounds like you're in a bit of a spot, wot? If you'll refer to the contract you'll see our responsibilty begins with "whoops" and ends with "sorry about that." Good luck with it, and do make your payment tomorrow or you'll default to the "high risk" group and it's triple fees deducted daily from your bank!

AI vendors have found someone to pay their infrastructure bills: You

Really...

"In July, KPMG research found that nearly a third of corporate leaders reported difficulty understanding and controlling operating costs when implementing business AI at scale."

In other news, new crack cocaine and meth customers reported difficulty understanding and controlling operating costs when implementing their habits at scale too.

I already use that excuse, while pointing at the underlined "trust what the AI says" bullet in the provided training. Got my own copy of it too, so they can't change it after the fact.

BOFH: Smells like Teams spirit

... all over the walls, floors, ect. Jet propelled boss.

BOFH: Cross-department AI pitches are easier to swallow with a pint in hand

Leela: So long, overly complicated Japanese toilet.

Japanese toilet: Please, not to throw away. I give you happy poopy time.

Fry: Sorry, you know too much.

Re: No. AI could encourage you in everything you do – just small comments to lift your self-esteem

OK and let's see what you've chosen to run! Yay, it's a music CD! And it's a compilation of... of... of... no... no no nonononono!!!! YOU MONSTER, YOU LOADED "YOKO ONO SINGS THE CAPTAIN AND TENILLE"??!?

Startup targets datacenters with 3D-printed nuclear reactor module

I'm as much for nuclear power

as the next normal, intelligent person but... the words "3D printed" and "pressure vessel" just do not compute. I know 3D printing has come a long way, but I'm just not feeling this.

User swore hacker called General Failure had invaded his PC

Re: Linux problem?

Sounds like a Major Blowout to me.

Failed blockchain project ends with big fine for fibs about it being on track

Re: I might be a bit thick...

"Unless management were literally stupid enough to build themselves out of a job?"

You just described every single AI code developer in the world.

Re: I might be a bit thick...

"but, my understanding is Securities Exchanges are very, very fast - like, some traders physically have servers closer to the exchange so deals can go through that bit quicker"

This would be correct. At the last company I worked at, there was an optical span that ran from Chicago to New York City to connect their stock exchanges. They didn't run on existing infrastructure, instead they ran their own fiber in as straight a line as is physically possible. It's so straight it's almost as though they put one end in NYC, the other end in Chicago, pulled it tight and laid it down. Some sections go over rock so tough it couldn't be cut through and buried, and the decision was made to just lay it on the ground rather than route around it to save a few feet The equipment is old, but it allows for transmission without forward error correction.

All this was done to minimize latency. It's been a few years, but if I remember correctly the normal latency from Chicago to NYC is 18ms but on this span it's about 8ms. They paid a mint to install and put up with occasional errors, but when a trade is placed by Joe Blow in Chicago on the NY stock exchange, an exchange trading computer in Chicago can see the submitted trade, submit a trade after him, beat his trade to NYC, and collect a few cents worth of profit by buying Joe's commodity then selling it to him for a penny or two more. And, this is repeated millions of times per day generating tens of millions in profits every day.

There was this one guy who knew how to work on it. When a ticket came in, the procedure was to call that guy immediately and provide any kind of support he asked for. The guy didn't work for us, but he was the only one in the world who knew how the system works, and knew where to get parts. He probably earned what the rest of us call a year's pay each time it broke down. It would be interesting to see what happens when that guy dies, because he was super tight lipped about it. In any case it won't ever be my problem.

Boffins peg narcissistic leadership as the real driver behind 'return to office' demands

Re: Doomed?

This, exactly. The CEO of the company I work for dumps money into buying company stock. When leases came up, they were cancelled. Since our CEO isn't invested in commercial real estate, our company reports that WFH was a net productivity boost with zero downsides.

Rumor has it I still have a desk downtown but I've not laid eyes on it even once. Now that it's July 1, 2026 and I consider myself retired, I never will see it. Yes, I am still working but now it's just until they lay me off - and I no longer give a shit about meeting metrics. Sadly, my don't give a fuck performance still puts me top 10 percent in my department. I'll have to put serious effort to stand out as a low performer.

NASA unsure Boeing Starliner will ever be certified for human flight

This is not Trump's or NASA'S...

... fault, but strictly Boeing's fault. It's just another chapter in the engineering beancounter fails that has been plagueing Boeing for the last 20 years. And, it isn't going to change as long as the C-suite isn't feeling any pain in their "heads we win, tails you lose" game. When a crash that kills comes from poor engineering, or money saving shortcuts, C-suiters, engineers and bean counters need to be going to trial for malfeasance that results in death, or where public funding (ie taxpayer money) is involved.

Well, I say NASA isn't to blame, but it was their job to oversee Boeing and from their own admission they failed to do so.

Italy probes AI-fueled price hikes in Microsoft 365

Re: Americans

Yup it's why we rule the world. Or would, if we were interested. Instead we just pull the strings.

Former Microsoft engineer shrinks Notepad down to size

That depends.upon who is asking. Are you,

a. a Wondoze developer told to turn every last program into a data hoover for the company's profits, or...

b. a user.

Wandoze users ceased to be customers and became saleable product about 15 years ago.

Security researchers tricked LLMs into giving them cocaine recipes by abusing role models for prompt injection

Re: Wait, what?

Company ID cards have this information.

AI is getting expensive, but relief is on the way - just not for you

Sweet Clyde, laugh derisively in their faces!

Sorry Bubblegum (argh!) but I've (cough) laughed at them (mmm-khmmmmm!!!) so much I gots the layrngitis!

First hit was 20 bucks a month, not free, and now that you're fired everyone you're only going to save 10 bucks an hour for half work, half hallucination and no way of knowing which is which. Great job boys, but you'd better jump with that golden parachute while there's still gold available.

How the AI bubble could pop and take down the global economy, according to the BIS

Re: I think the BIS needs to change "could" to "will"

Same here, only not the retirement part. The covid crash put me over the top for an early retirement though. I'm not yet 60 and consider myself retired tomorrow, although I'm not quitting my current job.

TDM circuits are being wound down and replaces with ethernet so my job is going away soon anyway, so I plan to wait for the severance package and the "don't sue us for age discrimination" paper. So I guess semi-retired, and my current job will be my last job.

US auto regulators want to kill robotaxi brake pedals

I know how to stop this!

Simply refuse to use a robo-taxi even if it means a minor inconvenience. You'll never see me in one.

Be like me.

Boffins build a better pixel capable of emitting and receiving light

Re: Drat

I planned to say that exact thing. We're going to need one way mirror covers for the screens now.

NASA tests AI medic for astronauts too far from Earth to call a doctor

I can see it now...

- This is your medical AI, Dr Ramadama, please state the nature of your medical emergency.

- I'm sick, nose is running, have a fever and am throwing up!

- It sounds like you are sick. Please take two Dingdangs and report back tomorrow.

Re: WTF?

Considering how old what's up there now is, by the time the computer spits out the diagnosis the astronaut will either already have recovered, already returned to Earth when the mission is complete, or be dead

BOFH: Amnesty means never having to say you're sorry

Re: Priceless

I have noticed that the Vultures have taken to hiding from us on these forums.

Re: Reminds me of an actual civil war insurance claim that sent the beancounters weeping...

"IIRC our policy had some special coverage for acts of civil war, but it's been a long time ago."

Odd, that. Normally the coverage for acts of war, civil or otherwise, is No coverage.

Salyut 5 at 50: The Soviet space station that sickened one crew and nearly drowned another

Neat. Now how about addressing the many, many complaints about the new forum format.