Posts by mcswell

'Hundreds' of Iranian hacking attempts have hit surveillance cameras since the missile strikes

Re: Article 5 is not optional

More likely he'll use their non-response (should he request one) as evidence that NATO is useless. His boss in Moscow would be pleased.

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

The Sixth Day

But think: if it can clone all these things, you could send it to those mandatory meetings--and then get things done yourself!

Re: Scene

I see you're trying to move the Task Bar to the left-hand side... Would you like me to bork your computer?

Microsoft teases ‘reimagined SharePoint experience’ with added AI

Re: I’ve posted this before

It's been three years since I had to deal with Sharepoint (I'm blessedly retired now), and I was going to keep quiet because of my lack of recent experience. But your post makes me think nothing has changed.

I think the lack of findability is not entirely Microsoft's fault. The problem is that in a hierarchical file system, there's only one hierarchy, and that's usually the boss's view of what makes sense (or his assistant's view). Which maybe makes sense to him/her, but not to anyone else.

I'm not sure what the solution would be. People have suggested tags, but here again one person's tag may not be another person's tag. You don't want to have variant names (dog, dogs, pets,...). So you need need a catalog of acceptable tags, which is maybe ok until a new project comes along. Etc.

Another solution might be letting each person organize things the way that makes sense to them, sort of overlay hierarchies (defaulting to the boss's hierarchy if someone doesn't want their own). Then where do newly added files go in your personal hierarchy?

Or keyword searching (where every word outside of a stoplist is indexed). Maybe with synonyms (like the Olde Google).

Maybe the Sumerians or ancient Egyptians solved this...

6,000 execs struggle to find the AI productivity boom

Expedia: example of doing #4 (DON't)

I went to Expedia the other day to rent a car. Between them and the actual rental agency, something went wrong and I couldn't get a confirmation from the car rental agency that they had my reservation. So I tried the Expedia chatbot. But it seems to have only two answers to every question: show me Expedia's copy of my reservation (which is where I started) or cancel my reservation. No way to get to talk to a human being. Worse, when it offers you a link to their copy of my reservation and a link to cancel, those are the only two things you can do; you can't even type into the box, because it's blocked.

Whoever did #4 at Expedia (rethought the customer experience) needs to be fired.

AI productivity gains justify cutting interest rates

"Donald Trump's pick to lead the Federal Reserve, Kevin Warsh, has signaled he will lean on artificial intelligence as a key justification for cutting interest rates. In a December interview with fintech entrepreneur Sadi Khan, he described AI as ushering in 'the most productivity-enhancing wave of our lifetimes — past, present and future,' calling the technology potentially 'structurally disinflationary' in the same way the internet once was." -- as quoted in Financial World (https://www.financial-world.org/news/news/financial/30304/kevin-warsh-argues-aidriven-productivity-should-open-the-door-to-rate-cuts/)

I guess Warsh needs some excuse to push his boss's views on interest rates.

OK, so Anthropic's AI built a C compiler. That don't impress me much

Agist?

"The C language is 53 years old. That's older than many of you." Speak for yourself. I'm older than LISP, FORTRAN and COBOL.

And yes, get off my lawn!

Summoning the spirit of the BBC Micro with a Pi 500+ and a can of spray paint

Steam

Next project: Make one that has lots of gears--they have to be brass--and has a pressure gauge for the steam. And I guess has an old 1930s typewriter looking keyboard. Maybe like this: https://thumbs.dreamstime.com/b/steampunk-typewriter-26624007.jpg or this: https://i.pinimg.com/originals/df/96/84/df9684377a296526de7191fda4d48494.jpg

Edit: Someone has done something similar (minus the gears and steam): https://www.aclockworkberry.com/steampunk-typewriter-laptop/

Critical SolarWinds Web Help Desk bug under attack

Widespread?

"we have not observed widespread exploitation" Meaning the exploitation has been targeted, I guess.

Notepad will now tell you all the ways Microsoft has enshittified it

Re: Every Cloud

Yeah, but every silver lining has a dark cloud around it.

Re: Microsoft Recruiting Now - Professional Fuckit Uppers

It's your fault, you fired those people. Where else were they going to go?

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy goes wobbly on AI bubble possibility

The soothsayer says...

Sooner. Beware the ides of March.

Re: NFTs didn't affect the real economy

Sounds like AI's going to create many more jobs--for lawyers.

Majority of CEOs report zero payoff from AI splurge

Margin of error

"PwC warns that companies avoiding major investments due to geopolitical uncertainty underperform peers by two percentage points in growth and three points in profit margins." You can measure that???

Price, battery life, performance – that's how you sell PCs

Re: No thanks

You missed the point about new brand names. It's NEW! CLEAN! REFRESHED!

I shouldn't need to say this, but: /s.

touchpad

I have a laptop with a touchpad. I'm a touch typer, and apparently the heel of my hand would touch the touchpad, sending the cursor off to never-never land. I got tired of that, bought a Bluetooth mouse (< $10), and turned off the touchpad (simple setting). A wired mouse would of course work as well.

AI may be everywhere, but it's nowhere in recent productivity statistics

Re: Don't follow the IBM route if you care about productivity

"If a country's economic model is reliant upon a growing population, then it's a Ponzi scheme really, isn't it? And absent infinite land and other natural resources, it has to break at some point?"

Time to build Ringworld.

Re: Blame it on video games

> improved by 2.7 per cent annually from 1947 to 1973, but just 2.1 percent between 1990 and 2001

and I was wondering what happened between 1973 and 1990.

Developer writes script to throw AI out of Windows

PutinWare

"Developer writes script to throw AI out of Windows": Maybe we should call this PutinWare, since Putin was known for throwing people out of windows.

Re: An alternative method?

You can use the url noai.duckduckgo.com to to DuckDuckGo searches without AI.

AI industry insiders launch site to poison the data that feeds them

Ummm...maybe Terminator is a real threat

Yesterday I posted that Terminator is maybe not a real threat. Today SecDef Hegseth announced that Grok will be integrated into Pentagon networks, including classified systems. What could possibly go wrong?

Terminator, maybe not a real threat. But there are enough real weapons (drones) being given AI-like capabilities now that could be a real threat. They don't even have to be very sophisticated--land mines (and sea mines) are destructive enough with essentially zero intelligence, and these drones have a lot more smarts than that. At present the damage a drone can do is limited to either personnel damage or building-level damage. It would obviously not be too difficult to give them much more fire power.

Of course these drones are not LLMs, but finding targets could very well be something where an LLM could be a useful component.

Re: What the fuck are humans for?

Do you have a degree in cognitive psychology? Or linguistics? Or do you have some citations to studies in those fields that support your case?

If not, what makes you think you know enough to simply assert that much of human behavior is not LLM-like?

CES 2026 worst in show: AI girlfriends, a fridge that won't open unless you talk to it, and more

If the door won't open

...tell it to sing Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer, do.

Your smart TV is watching you and nobody's stopping it

Hisense and TCL

There's a simple solution to the Hisense and TCL issue: Donald Trump will just do a TikTok. Then both China AND the US can collect the data, and everyone will be happy.

FAA signs radar deals to drag US air traffic control out of the 1980s

I am sure that the system needs to be replaced, but:

1) "At record speed" does not engender trust. (Although as someone else pointed out, it's been in the works for years.)

2) The fact that the contractor also built the Navy's combat radar system makes it seem likely that classified information will get into the new unclassified system. It's possible to put a wall in place to prevent this, but it also seems possible that the wall will be porous. ("Hey, Joe, a question for you. When you built AN/SPY-6, how did you handle X?" "Here, let me show you the code.")

Re: President Trump's drive to modernize our skies safely at record speed.

Dr. Henry Jones, Sr: "I didn't know you could fly a plane."

Dr. Henry Jones, Jr: "Fly, yes. Land, no."

IBM's AI agent Bob easily duped to run malware, researchers show

Re: Two words:

Nuts, you beat me to it. I was going to suggest that IBM Bob was Microsoft Bob's son (or grandson).

When the lights went out, and the shooting started, Y2K started to feel all too real

My Y2K problem

I did have an actual Y2K problem. My printed checks had room for a month and a day, and then the number 19, with room for another two digits to be written in.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella becomes AI influencer, asks us all to move beyond slop

Re: Slop!

You dated yourself (and me, too).

Re: Treating an AI as having a mind for us to have a "Theory of Mind" about is NOT the way to go.

"When asked questions, LLMs sound confident, whether or not they're correct." You know, that sounds like a certain president. Are you doubting that he has a human mind? If so, you might have a point.

Re: Slop

I am no expert on the topic, but I have read that AI programs have been trained in things like protein folding and for other non-language applications but using more or less the same technology that LLMs have used, and have been reasonably successful. There also seem to be AI-type programs that are good at image recognition, and at generating reasonably real-looking (if not quite real looking) images (I haven't seen any six-fingered people in awhile). I'm sure there are many other areas where AI technology in the broad sense (not the LLM-only sense) is giving reasonably decent results.

So yes, there do appear to useful applications. And if it weren't for the over-hyping of LLM systems, we might be hearing more about these other applications.

Re: Well, he's right about one thing

"buzzwords that boil down to 'please buy our AI!'." Consider an alternate reality, where CoPilot was more analogous to Microsoft Office: you decided whether you wanted it, and if you did, you paid something for it. Instead Windows users have it foisted on them, whether they want it or not. (I almost wrote "we", but stopped because I switched from Windows to Linux a few months ago, precisely because I didn't want CoPilot on my computer.) And maybe there would be a free version on a website somewhere.

Had Microsoft done that, I suspect Microsoft would be the subject of a lot less complaining.

Finally - a terminal solution to the browser wars

Why?

I'd like to understand the advantage(s) of this. In the past I have used Lynx, but I don't remember why (and of course Lynx can't do images). I get the vi keys, but apart from that why would I want to run a browser in a terminal?

IPv6 just turned 30 and still hasn’t taken over the world, but don't call it a failure

Re: The real reason nobody wants to use it

Sure, but how often do you need to remember an IP address? On those rare occasions when I do need to do s.t. with an IP address, I copy-past it--regardless of whether it's IPv4 or 6.

What the Linux desktop really needs to challenge Windows

Yes but

Adobe doesn't seem to agree with you. Now I probably have a similar opinion about Adobe as you do---in my case, I had no use for most of their products, and the UI on Acrobat kept getting worse and worse every year (I know because the place I worked for required Acrobat, rather than some other PDF reader/editor). But you and I aren't Adobe's target, it's people who need their capabilities and prefer not to use some other app that requires them starting over more or less from zero, and which might not give them all the capabilities they need.

User insisted their screen was blank, until admitting it wasn't

Re: Reminds me of the time ...

While we're off-topic, I had a terrible time touch typing on my acer. I think the palm of my hands would occasionally touch the touch pad and send the mouse cursor off to who-knows where. Eventually I got a Bluetooth mouse, and disabled the touch pad. Now I type happily.

Why do bit barns keep bumping up our bills, Senators ask DC operators

Re: Good news

I keep thinking that too, but I suspect what will happen instead is that your connection costs (a flat rate, usually billed monthly that keeps you connected to the grid so you can get electricity at night or on cloudy days) will just go up. A lot.

Electric cars no more likely to flatten you than the noisy ones, study finds

Re: Vehicle weight?

The cars I'd worry most about being hit by are the ones that make the most noise--the ones that sound like they had their mufflers removed, and the engine timing is set so they backfire when they take their foot off the gas. That's because those drivers try to break the speed of light, whether they're on the freeway or back roads.

US Navy pledges $448 million to test if Palantir is seaworthy

You left out step 4.5: Change the requirements after the building has started.

Microsoft won't fix .NET RCE bug affecting slew of enterprise apps, researchers say

Re: "The neanderthal user should have manually verified the WSDL file"

The JW expected to be lifted in 1914.

Windows Insiders get a glimpse of Microsoft’s agentic future

Re: I want a OS that works

Yes, keeping large companies buying Microsoft is probably their concern. And when other companies started making stuff that could pull IT budgets into their corner, Microsoft got really worried. But by building AI into the system they controlled--Windows--they figured they could prevent those other companies from taking their business away.

The other part is the old saying (probably older than many commenters here) that "Nobody was ever fired for buying IBM." And of course the new saying is "Nobody was ever fired for buying Microsoft." At least Ms hopes that is true.

ICE-tracking app developer sues Trump admin after Apple spikes the software

Re: Criminal culpability and the ICE-tracking app

Exactly--just like the makers of guns have culpability if someone uses their gun to commit a crime.

Oh wait...

Porsche panic in Russia as pricey status symbols forget how to car

What, me worry?

From the article"...engine kill systems were pushed as an anti-theft device. But "the technology could also be used by hackers to cause havoc and could also be used by totalitarian governments to shut down vehicles belonging to 'enemies of the state.'"

Yeah, and all those inexpensive cars being built in China...

Tech leaders fill $1T AI bubble, insist it doesn't exist

1849 San Francisco

The market for shovels, pickaxes and gold panning pans is pretty good. But we've seen a lot of poor miners.

Lord Nelson

Can you say "joke"? I knew you could! Oh wait, you can't?

Dell says Windows 11 transition is far slower than Win 10 shift as PC sales stall

Re: "the potential of the AI PC"

About the same as the potential of the 80286 chip was back in the mid-1980s: nothing much.

US Navy scuttles Constellation frigate program for being too slow for tomorrow's threats

Re: You have got to be shitting me

We already built the next negative number of ships, and they were launched before they were even built!

Re: This isn't to speed up delivery to the fleet

You guys (thames and not-spartacus) seem pretty knowledgeable. I served on an Adams-class destroyer (Goldsborough, DDG-20), and while they served well, I'm aware of two major problems: the 1200 psi steam plants were too hard to maintain (too complicated and using boiler controls that didn't hold up under at-sea conditions), and aluminum superstructures (which I'm told were an issue). The Arleigh Burke DDGs were designed, I assume, to fix at least the former problem; did it? What was the next generation of DDG-like ships supposed to fix, and did they?

OpenAI’s viability called into question by reported inference spending with Microsoft

Re: It's the same money caught in a loop.

My wife and I are going to do this. So long as it's not taxable income, we'll have tremendous cash flows!