Posts by that one in the corner

Bored developers accidentally turned their watercooler into a bootleg brewery

Re: Many moons ago, when I was gone for a week ...

> Software engineering has always been an aspirational term

For some reason, a few colleagues (usually of the manager variety, but not always) were annoyed when they found out that my passport always stated "computer programmer" and not anything more fancy sounding, especially as the hair went, the beard greyed and the colleagues appeared who had never handled a punched card. Perhaps it didn't help my telling them that, after a CompSci degree and postgrad studies, I knew full well what I was *actually* doing for a living.

Re: They forgot to add the right fungi

Bringing back memories of how sharing "ginger beer starter" was all the rage, from the 1960s to the 70s (as yours grew, it would be split in two, each half onto a piece of toast with some more ginger root and sugar, then dropped into water). Lashings of ginger beer were, of course, already popular before then, but this fad was more diy than delicious, to be honest.

In particular, the tales of people going on holiday and coming back to find a ginger liberally spread across the walls - including at least one garage that had been so damaged, the story went, that the bomb squad was called in to handle the remaining demijohns.

Re: should have left this job to the hardware team...

After having had to code around a board made with incorrect RAM* address line decoding:

Yes, yes it was a hardware problem.

RubyGems maintainer quits after Ruby Central takes control of project

What will be left by tomorrow?

Goodbye, Ruby Tuesday

Who could hang a name on you?

When you change with every new day

Still I'm going to miss you

Brit scientists over the Moon after growing tea in lunar soil

Re: And this

Do I spy a Lancastrian amongst us?

(Speaking from just the correct side of the Tees, in Durham)

Zuck has the power! Meta applies to sell excess electricity

Re: Meta control

Beside each plate on the long table stood a flagon of water. There was enough water along the table, the Duke estimated, to keep a poor Arrakeen family for more than a year.

Flanking the doorway in which he stood were broad laving basins of ornate yellow and green tile. Each basin had its rack of towels. It was the custom, the housekeeper had explained, for guests as they entered to dip their hands ceremoniously into a basin, slop several cups of water onto the floor, dry their hands on a towel and fling the towel into the growing puddle at the door. After the dinner, beggars gathered outside to get the water squeezings from the towels.

How typical of a Harkonnen fief, the Duke thought. Every degradation of the spirit that can be conceived.

Resell - "at market-based rates".

Not at whatever push-down price they managed to get for their "expected needs" to run the Metaverse, but, obviously, at whatever rate they can screw out of their buyers. Just make sure that their "wholesale" contracts are a lot less wholesale than they are; i.e. don't try to dell the lot to one or two others, but to as many smaller users as possible. Get it a close to "retail" as their license allows. Plain old business behaviour.

And in six month's time, they are making more from selling power (and "ancillary services") than they are from hosting the Metaverse (not a high bar, as things stand). In twelve month's time, the Meta "data center" looks like Willy Wonka's factory: nobody is seen going in or coming out, yet it still claims to be working to fulfill all the needs of every active Metaverse Users. Which is to say, absolutely none. It is now just a shell, hiking the price of power and providing no useful/unique service whatsoever, just keeping Zuck's fingers crossed that nobody notices the power bought to run a DC isn't ever flowing down that circuit.

On the bright side, if Zuck makes enough by manipulating power sales, maybe he'll let the rest of his computing empire dwindle the same way the Metaverse has and we can be saved from any more shenanigans by Facebook.

Nice try, sinners: Pope nixes idea of AI pontiff blessing netizens

Re: A marriage made in heaven

Huh?[1]

How do you start from "life is finite" versus "transcends the finite points of conception and death" (i.e. existence - hopefully conscious - continuing, somehow and somewhere, before and after what we can actually experience and see as "a life") and then manage to jump to "subjective versus objective standards"?

If you are not going to accept that "a life of three score years and ten" provides for anything other than subjective experience of, e.g. love, then what difference does it make if one's existence (as a conscious entity with continuity of personality and selfhood[2]) continues for three tens of scores of years, or three hundreds, or three googleplex scores of years (plus ten)?

The "first option" makes no statement whatsoever about existence or non-existence of objective standard of, e.g., 'love', any more than it does an objective standard for 'green' versus 'blue'.[3]

The "second option" provides no useful addendum to the first.[4]

[1] I'm going to regret this, but as I'm not getting to sleep, may as well indulge one's worst impulses

[2] Otherwise the whole thing becomes irrelevant

[3] You can decide that this range of wavelengths is one and this the other - that will work for defining a standard for pigments (and the sale thereof). But is it useful for indicating a person's perception of what 'green' is when it comes to that turquoise blouse? And if it does - or does not - what value or lack thereof is there that anyone should give any concern to, beyond preventing your aunt from going to lunch in an outfit that does not fit the mode? You can have an interesting conversation over dinner on the matter (for certain values of "interesting", depending upon the skills of your interlocutor in the verbal joust) but beyond that, nothing. Some people are willing to take their umbrage over losing a postprandial dialogue to extreme lengths of physicality, but that is purely a "them" problem.

[4] Full stop. That is it.[5]

[5] Yes, honestly. Anything other claim is the purest of wish fulfillment. Even if you make, and can substantiate, a positive claim that identity existed before birth (which is an utterly huge claim, as there is no demonstrable indication that identity stretches from birth to 24 hours after birth!) and/or that it continues after death, that provides no logical basis for anything else to suddenly come into existence, not even Russell's teapot.

Trump admin says tech companies are abusing H-1B visas, slaps $100k a year to allow entry

Your link demonstrated that Britain as a whole, from the top down, *were* all for vaccines, to the point of being somewhat heavy-handed in their approach.

Yes, some people objected - helped by some clergy calling it "un-christian" (always useful for a bit of rabble-rousing). Understandable, in part (bar the pulpit banging), as the first vaccines were unknown and scary to the general public - they weren't a quick jab with a needle followed by a lollipop - and there wasn't the visible local history of mass vaccination demonstrably saving lives of the people in your own town (how could there be, for the earliest uses?).

And we didn't have senior "health ministers" working against the greater good.

Microsoft insists Copilot+ PCs are 'empowering the future' – reality disagrees

Re: C suite AI deployment roadmap

There did use to be a line in the middle, which read

2) ????

That had been added by the CFO when the CAO told him that the CSO thought something was missing, but the CIO reported back that the CTO said he couldn't understand; so the PA to the CEO asked the CRO to see if the CMO would take on the responsibility of removing that line item before the AGM. He was able to delete the entry but became exhausted, leading the other CMO to tell him that he needed to to take his ACU; so the task was reassigned to the CDO - who was delayed because the CTO (not the same officer) failed to review the BCH in a timely fashion and the CPO had to get a BMW PDQ. But that was involved in an RTA. Thankfully, the COO plays golf with the DCC of the BTP who used the OBN to go outside his COC and quieten things down, but still the CDO was MIA and before the CDO (no relation) could catch up on the paperwork and renumber the agenda, the CLO brought down the hammer on changes (which caused the CAIO's AI on AI to go into AOB, but that is a tale for another day).

To cut a long story short, despite the best efforts of our World Class C-suite, you will see that it was inevitable we'd have to present the proposal with what appears to be a numerical sequence shortfall.

MI6 reveals 'Silent Courier' dark web portal upgrade it hopes will help it recruit new spies

Confused

I thought that the oficial government line was that Tor and the "Dark Web" should be eradicated?

Slack threatened to delete nonprofit coding club’s data if it didn’t pay $50k in a week

When I first read the headline, I assumed that I'd misread "Slack" and this was just(!) going to be a story about another ransomware group with a name I didn't recognise threatening a non-profit: was expecting to read that they'd slipped a virus onto a PC.

Nope, the virus was SaaS.

AI can now design functional viruses – not the computer kind, either

Re: Random iteration

Not necessarily killing, just not reproducing (viably and in sufficient numbers).

But at least things are peaceful around the house.

Vibe coding platform Replit's latest update is infuriating customers with surprise cost overruns

If only TLA was about vibe codin with grok

Then this tune going round my head would be more appropriate:

Hi there, nice to be with you, happy you could stick around

Like to introduce "Legs" Larry Smith, drums; Sam Spoons, rhythm pole; And Vernon Dudley Bohay-Nowell, bass guitar; And Neil Innes, piano

Come in, Rodney Slater on the saxophone; With Roger Ruskin Spear on tenor sax; Hi, Vivian Stanshall, trumpet

Big hello to big John Wayne, xylophone; And Robert Morley, guitar; Billy Butlin, spoons

And looking very relaxed, Adolf Hitler on vibes... nice

Nvidia GeForced out of China as Beijing demands tech titans embrace homegrown silicon

Trump will retaliate and FORCE the Chinese to buy nVidia

How DARE they not buy these GPUs, they are great GPUs. Tariffs will have to be raised until the Chinese have no choice.

Ummm...

US tech giants pledge $42 billion in UK investment as Trump tours Blighty

Two nations will set up technology sharing agreements

We know how this one goes: the UK freely shares its IP, the US promises to send back anything it develops from it - and forgets to include "freely" in its half of the agreement.

We remember what happened with the jet engine. And the atomic bomb.

Li-ion roars can predict early battery failure, MIT boffins say

Re: The only problem I see

> How do they set up a double-blind test?

Well, first they have someone make up a batch of placebo batteries...

Re: From deep inside the battery . . .

One more horror of Cyber-conversion, when you feel your battery starting to fail: "Pain!" | World Enough And Time | Doctor Who

Why Microsoft has the name of an old mouse hidden in its Bluetooth drivers

Re: "using metric makes you a communist"

I understand that Belize is transitioning away from Imperial to Metric units.

Which is a shame, at least from the p.o.v. of some of my code, where you are expected to select Belize to get Imperial and mm/dd/yyyy* used in messages :-)

* Yes, I know it isn't supposed to be, officially, but it isn't totally unknown - that is good enough for this purpose; certainly haven't had any complaints from Belize about this; from colleagues in the UK, yes, after they've exhausted just rolling their eyes at me...

Ruh-roh. DDR5 memory vulnerable to new Rowhammer attack

Re: Ah, the memories...

Both cosmic rays and boring old slow alpha particles were found to cause problems, but it was the latter that was occuring far more often (and far, far more demonstrably), for certain devices.

The basic issue was very simple: some of the packaging materials used to make the ICs contained isotopes that released alpha particles; as that packaging was right up against the chips themselves those particles wandered onto the silicon and messed things up (oh, if only there was a ten centimetre air gap between the packaging and the chip; but I suppose that would rather defeat the object of making small ICs, so ignore that idea[1]).

There is nothing at all surprising at finding alpha emitters - they are all around us, every day. Say hello to your friendly neighbourhood uranium (and its pals): there is certainly no shortage of that in the environment (especially if you like to collect antique green glass). If you make up a general purpose packaging material, say plastic pellets[2], in a normal plastic-making factory, you may be picking up rock dust as a contaminant (along with cigaretter smoke - which is also radioactive, btw, general dust and shed human skin cells - icky). Nobody minds, because it isn't grossly affecting the products made with these plastics: it is the 1970s, everything is still big and bulky, the odd rough spot is fine! It may not even *be* from external contamination at the end of the line, your initial feedstock chemicals may be glowing (very) gently in the dark. Basically, unless you spend the money to clean things up, radionuclides are everywhere, man; they are crawling over your skin right now[3]!

Ah money - so unless and until you know that you've got a problem coming from the contamination, you just don't bother to do any better.

So the IC manufacturers (ok, let's be honest - Intel, it was mainly Intel we heard about) had dirty, dirty devices. Then everyone started pointing and laughing, Intel spent the money and cleaned up their packaging materials.

[1] Not that that air gap would have helped; yes, the primary alpha products would be stopped, but the horrid little buggers are things like radon. This short lived (3 and a bit day half life) product of uranium decay is a Noble Gas, so, whistling nonchalantly, it'd cross that gap, nestle up to the silicon, bide its time and *poof* suddenly decay, releasing alpha particles and taking your data with it. Just in case the radon didn't work, *its* decay products have even shorter lives, releasing more alpha (and a few beta) particles before peacefully resting as a thin, thin layer of lead (Pb) on your chip. Isn't Nature wonderful?

[2] Not claiming this is exactly what happened, I don't know the chemisty that was (is?) used for packaging the ICs in question; it could have been pelletised thermoplastic, or a two-part epoxy or... ; nor the specifics of how the contaminants got in; but the general point still holds: dirty be bad.

[3] And doing less damage than all the microscopic bacteria

Re: Ah, the memories...

Ok, I'll bite - who, aside from you, uses/used the phrase "alpha particle degeneration" (your comment was a Googlewhack - well, Duckduckwhack - for the phrase)?

And, aside from a bit of hyperbole (using "degeneration" implies something permanent or long-lasting, so one would think it referred to the physical structure of the memory degenerating, not just the stored charge, as we expect the charge to be a fleeting thing that'll be deliberately changing at a pace) what is inaccurate or misleading about that phrase to warrant using "so called"? Especially when you link to an article that actually describes how alpha particles from packaging cause data errors.

> marketing soon overcame the will of the greybeards

Marketing? Not Finance, looking at the BOM costs? Did Marketing really care about making sure the User knew you were using cheaper DRAM?

Yours, etc, Mr Grumpy-hasn't-his-cofee-yet

ChatGPT: Why do most of your users ask for help writing – prose, not code?

Re: Devised a method that meant no human read your work.

> LLM training has next to zero semantic analysis

True. There is no (interesting) semantic analysis explicitly performed by any part of the training, as far as we have been shown.

> hence their method would of involved the creation of a suitable semantic analysis network.

You might hope so, but - got a citation?

The apparent belief about LLMs, certainly what is peddled to us* is that they "magically" (as in, if they are, nobody knows how) create their own network which embodies semantic meaning, which is then spat out at us. Now, if these fine researchers are not eating their own dog food then we would really hope to have that explicitly stated, with reasons why.

Hence, instead of a vaguely hopeful "they would of" (sic) we really need solid citations.

Devised a method that meant no human read your work.

Well, duh.

They just fed all your inputs into the LLM training maw. As they do anything they can get their hands on.

The only "method" they might have needed to "devise" was to take a pre-trained base and feed it all your chat logs as "specialised data" - the same thing the LLM companies try to flog you to create chatbots "personalised to your business practices".

At least this time they are being honest about whether a human ever gets involved to vet the inputs for, you know, accuracy/usefulness/sanity.

Engineer turned a vape into a web server

Re: Just recently

Or look at Big Clive's videos and (carefully!) reuse the "Street Lithium" to power something interesting.

You may look at those specs and think that it’s not much to work with

> consisting of a 24MHz Cortex M0+ chip, 24KB of flash storage and just 3KB of static RAM, but it was still workable.

Luxury!

There is loads of stuff you can do with that - just look at everything that could be done on, say, an Acorn Atom, an interactive programming environment (admittedly, I blinged mine up with the full 12KB of RAM in order to get colour graphics or a decent game of Space Invaders) but it was still just 1MHz and a max of 12KB of ROM (so being able to easily change the code in the flash storage is an immediate advantage).

Running HTTP servers on tiny devices is hardly brand new - ok, this 2008 ATMega88 web server might be "cheating" using an Ethernet chip, but given the difference between this AVR's 8KB flash and 1 KB RAM there is loads of space on the Arm device to implement SLIP and do it all without extras.

Really don't want to demean this project - getting random boards into a programmable state is a pretty challenge in its own right and he did do all the necessary to get the response times down - but it is depressing to come across the line I've used for this comment's title, or variants on it, so often when MCU projects come up.

On the other hand, it is gratifying to know that there is (still) a large group of "non-programmers" that use/used original Arduino Uno boards (and equivalents) for art projects within 32 KB flash & 2 KB RAM when there are so many "pros" who can't imagine being able to work in such straitened circumstances.

Smart-blooded super soldiers: Coming soon from DARPA

Engineer Smart-Red Blood Cells to modify human physiology

To enable the drones to adapt to harsh environments. Assuming they last more than a week, what with the "enhanced hemostasis" giving them Deep Vein Thrombosis, strokes and heart blockages.

> Also left mysterious is how those SRBCs might get injected

Obviously, tubules extending from between the knuckles, duh (although these might get tangled with the Adamantium claws that other, equally sensible, DARPA proposals are working on).

But if you really want to know how well Smart Blood can turn out, have a look at

Greg Bear's "Blood Music".

Re: Everything is a tradeoff

> But the small obese ones survive the winter.

That is why you always see us programmers swarming in the Spring, before the next generation of jocks bulks out (and we have to beat a pasty retreat from the Sun in a couple of month's time).

Dirac audio glitch finally silenced in Windows 11 24H2

Re: Elephant...

> So how old / new is Dirac Audio?

If only there was another way to find out, but I guess we will just have wait to see if anybody in the forum is able to remember when Dirac was created, as there are no records of anything outside personal memory.

Just one more problem caused by The Withering. Best call KENT.

'Powerful but dangerous' full MCP support beta for ChatGPT arrives

AI can raise invoices and send them in response to a prompt

We are okay, they can't issue work orders to the production staff to assemble anything.

Hmm, can anyone explain what we want with an order for an electric wheelchair, robot arm with a syringe and, what is this? "A golden cocoon within which to incubate my offspring". And, is that really Julie Christie's phone number?

Open source Cloud Hypervisor adds (maybe futile) no-AI-code policy

Adding support for inter-VM shared memory

Clearly, I know nothing about VMs - 'cos that sounds like it is opening up new and exciting ways for VMs to corrupt each other, which goes completely against the idea of having VMs in the first place (if you want memory sharing between processes then run them on the same machine in the first place, virtual or otherwise).

(Unless, is this just really bad naming for a.n.other feature, such as dynamically (re)issuing physical memory between VMs so they get just the amount they need, at the moment? Without actually transferring data between them, i.e. scrubbing the memory contents before allowing a VM to access it).

Data destruction done wrong could cost your company millions

Re: What if the SSD or Motherboard has failed?

> Get a hammer and punch

Great if you want the exercise, or the therapy.

But for those who feel that an easier way must be possible, then an electric drill is up to the job*. Ok, you really ought to take the extra effort to clamp the drive down (also best to do that before taking a hammer and punch to it, btw); if you have a few drives to do then a simple wooden (ok, MDF offcut from B&Q bin, these days) jig will take fewer hammer blows to construct, be quick'n'easy to use - and, in the current climate of "refresh the fleet for Win'11" can probably be sold for a nice penny as a "specialist tool for safe destruction of hard drives".

PS

Drill into the cased unit, rather than taking out the screws; depending upon the material platters may shatter and keeping shards secure is best.

* Pillar drill even easier, but to be honest I don't anyone who has one if those - not in suburban England - but every bloke in the social circle has at least one electric hand drill. Actually, don't know that many with a hammer suitable for a punch, let alone the right sort of punch. Just hanging around with the wrong crowd, I guess.

Fire up the gas turbines, says US Interior Secretary: We gotta win the AI arms race

Re: Fusion power will eventually save the planet

> So, if a transition from 0.0002 to 0.0004 produces a significant effect, your, and my, perception of 'irrelevance' is, well, irrelevant.

Ah, you forget to take into account that these people are not only Observational Science Deniers, they are also Maths Deniers.

Catastrophe Theory - why, it is just a theory! And if we happen to go up a bit, we just have to go down a bit and it'll sort it itself out again.

Have you not seen the placards they like to wave: "Think Positive About Feedback"; "Hysteresis Doesn't Happen"

Re: Fusion power will eventually save the planet

> why are some of us so unwilling/scared to acknowledge, and take responsibility for...

>> I am too old

"And simply don't give a shit about what happens after I'm in the ground"*

* Well, after the rest of his body follows his head

> locally, regionally, and globally

It is no good arguing against his arguments, the differences between geological time periods, the Miocene and now, are so big and impressive that he can just shrug off any claims that human activity could ever be capable of, say, paving over the local soakaways and causing nearby fields and homes (of wildlife as well as humans) to be flooded; of overusing fertilisers and causing long stretches of waterways to foul with the runoff; of over farming, with monoculture, and causing counties to turn into dustbowls.

As for global scale - pshaw! Why, even our biggest, most impressive explosions have only limited localised effects! So, your little box goes click more often, that doesn't mean anything.

WTF does it mean to "win the AI arms race"? And "Existential threat"?

They seriously believe that "Colossus: The Forbin Project"* is a documentary, or "Terminator"**, and the "AI" that China will build is going subjugate the human race, or wipe it from the face of the planet?

(Nope, tried a few times to come up with something other than "China might be sell more cloud time to access their AI than America manages to sell", but given nobody is running these LLMs at a profit, why is he worried? Except, of course, China "winning", then inevitably going bankrupt from doing so, means he won't have a bogey man to scare voters with hence it is the existence of his political career that is at risk. Clearly, that career is more important than global earning).

* other classic SF movies are available.

** see, told you there are other classic SF movies

Inventor who encouraged Elon Musk to make Optimus says most humanoid robots today are 'terrifying'

Why not just go Full Octopus and use whichever set of limbs are useful for the moment?

The drummer from Little Mermaid had a friendly smile and wouldn't be at all threatening as it scuttled up the bookcase and across the ceiling bosses, carrying a teacup and sugarbowl.

More interestingly, Robert L. Forward suggested a fractally bifurcating design, nicknamed The Christmas Bush, in his novel "The Flight of the Dragonfly" (renamed "Rocheworld", how dull). Trickier(!) to actually build, especially with the way it separated into multiple parts (although those were very human-friendly, including a hair comb that could, among more serious uses, move to tidy and keep unruly locks neat all day). Think TARS etc from "Interstellar" but a lot prettier and more cylindrical.

> Few humans are suddenly rendered automobile

Rendered immobile!

Good grief, now ottokoreckt is getting obsessed with Transformers.

Someone with the knowing could do worse than to set up a server that can be sent these sorts of claims - and it will then repost them to remind us when the date arrives, whether they come to pass (or don't, as may be).

Admittedly, it could be a bit - repetitive - with the antics of a certain person or two, but it would be entertaining nonetheless.

If I may suggest it be called Sherwood.

> Because the robot will work moreorless 24×7, won't require comfort or smoke breaks, demand pay rises...

If you're trying to make a case based upon costs, don't forget the flip side: when the servitor needs replacing, the robot is a capital cost, on top of the monthly repair and maintenance, whilst the new human is just getting pretty much the same as the last and no extras. Or you could lease, and lose control of your monthly budget to the whims of a third party.

Few humans are suddenly rendered automobile because the vendor has decided to deliberately pull support, close their servers just to force you to buy the new model (or because they went bankrupt, were bought out by a competitor or simply realised their biggest revenue stream was actually their packaging/logistics department).

Most humans come with standardised attachments; sometimes, there are a few inoperable items, but rarely do you encounter extra limbs. The next model of robot will come with, or without, whatever is deemed fashionable (or were available to the manufacturer in a cheap lot) and the uniform tabards will need to be remade, again.

Re: You are looking in the wrong direction

> cheap labour dressed up as robots

Perhaps dressed in a leotard and forced to do an embarrassing dance on stage.

Re: Entertainment

> Humans invented the wheel

> Nature never invented the coaxial slip-ring

Don't place any bets on that.

Fun how we've always tried to keep claiming that Humans outdid Nature with regards to the Wheel. Nope. Nature has Wheels, many of them.

What we have is The Axle. And, in particular, the Heavy Load Bearing Axle.

Using axles, we've been able to make useful rotary devices at a large range of scales, from watchmaking to open cast mining machines, which have indeed surpassed what Nature has managed (so far, and in the ecosystems that we currently have available). But when we start to look downwards, we spotted the Fabulously Famous Flagellum under the visible light microscope, then all sorts of amazing machinery at the molecular level, which is where Nature absolutely rips us to shreds, cleverness-wise.

Robotics firms are trying to roll out a highly complicated product

> when they should be starting with something simple

The "upstarts" are trying to roll out ludicrously, pointlessly, complicated products, for some weird reason.

Actual robotics firms have been in business for centuries*, gradually improving them as the techniques, materials and mass production of parts improve.

Aha, lookie there, the magic words "mass production", your clue to where you should look if you want to see successful robotics in everyday use. Well, there, and your washing machine; the old one, that went whirr and clunk rather than the one that beeps when it loses the WiFi connection. And anywhere that has a lifting device controlled by a yellow box with one big red button and a few smaller ones; the fewer the number of buttons compared to the number of motions available the "more of a robot it is".

* Yes, I said centuries. You do know about the looms, don't you? And, no, you do NOT need to have modern computers, or even any electronics at all, for it to be a robot, that is just reflecting the current (and not always necessary) trends: when all the robots are controlled by self-renewing organic artificial neurons (just keep the glucose tank topped up) they will be mocking you for claiming that anything using something as crude as "electronics" could ever be called a robot.

‘IT manager’ needed tech support because they had never heard of a command line

Re: On-topic, eventually.

> interesting times quote originated in the counterweight continent.

It probably wasn't ever really a Chinese curse, but, um, *really* hoping you aren't suggesting that Pterry created the phrase - aside from anything else, if it wasn't already well known in English then we'd not recognise why he'd titled the book that way when seeing it on the Waterstones bookshelf!

1,200 undergrads hung out to dry after jailbreak attack on laundry machines

> It is NOT a commercial entity with 'shareholders' as one of the posters suggested.

Well, obviously, otherwise

>> Management company Duwo kept the room open, allowing students to capitalize on the free washing services, for a few weeks

would never have happened.

Privacy activists warn digital ID won’t stop small boats – but will enable mass surveillance

Re: Time...

Careful you don't go out on a pedallo, or the US military will take you out in totally justified strike.

NASA bars Chinese citizens from its facilities, networks, even Zoom calls

Re: “Our mission is maintaining American dominance in space,”

You *do* know that NASA has been doing other stuff since Apollo finished?

Oh, and that the later Apollo missions did science, once they'd demonstrated the basic idea worked with 11?

Not forgetting that NASA was founded in 1958, so if it was purely about Apollo and they did those things before the end of *that* decade that would've been really impressive...

New Really Simple Licensing spec wants AI crawlers to show a license - or a credit card

Re: Turnstiles and toll booths

We can already see the turnstiles - haven't you noticed the increasing number of sites that suddenly stop and put up a page that "checks the security of your connection"* or that you are a human? The ones that get triggered if, for example, you are skipping through a catalogue (nope, that's not the one, next; closer, but no, next; oh for bleep's sake, not this tick box again)?

So far, I've not found anything trustworthy on how well these interruptions work - although they will slow down bot crawling, the same way that you use delays in logins to slow down attempts to brute force entry. Anybody got the data they'd like to share?

And talking of data, anything on user responses to this? If humans get pissed off and close the page, then your turnstiles are failing the other way.

* Stupid claim, nothing to do with security on either side; gain your customers' trust by lying about why the page is being presented.

Albania’s prime minister wants to appoint an AI to his ministry

Re: "incorruptible"

Who needs backdoors to corrupt an LLM's responses?

Marketing claims, uncritical "reviews" in trade organs, over-inflated CVs - all taken in and regurgitated without the weary human bullshit detector.

Microsoft reminds developers VBScript really is going away

Re: How to Future Proof? Simple....

True - which means that it is *way* past time to have had The Talk with management. If you started right now, you *might* find all the places that VBScript has crept, unnoticed, into all the company workflows*, but will you replace every single one before the Final Update** that stops them all working?***

* and don't forget that "workflow" not only covers that document automation system you got 17 contractors in for, back in 1998, and still boast about, but also means the 114 "just a quickie" scripts that were done as favours to PAs, as trivial fixes for the Sales team, as just something HR needed "only for one week as we get used to things", ...

** and company policy is tight, all the machines get all the updates, except for those two that are kept off the network and run the no-longer updated UI for the machine tools (see, we *have* thought it through and allow for special-case exemptions, we won't be caught out)

*** bugger, it was 116 quickies and nobody got paid: all the bank transfers went through without a hitch, but because those dozen lines of code failed to copy the exchange rates over, the multiplier was left at zero...

UK Home Office dangles £1.3M prize for algorithm that guesses your age

Re: No AI required

No need to donate a whole tooth - just go all Marathon Man* on them.

* Or X-Files Mulder Probing for the younger folk

Linus has had enough of links that point to 'stupid useless garbage'

Where is a Vetinari when you need one?