Posts by that one in the corner 5494 publicly visible posts • joined 9 Nov 2021
"So it was clearly justified to shoot him in order to be able to pry his eyes open and shine my scanner at them".
There will be reports of ICE "agents" removing spectacles and contact lenses with prejudice so they can "get a clear scan".
Ghod help you if you have cataracts "deliberately hiding your identity, must be wanted for something".
> Unpopular opinion I'm sure, but it's technology that's in wide use already by police and border forces around the world.
As TFA starts
>> US Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s widespread use of face recognition apps
it does seem to agree with your statement about the tech's use to date, so less of an "unpopular opinion" and more of a "yes, we just told you that, weren't you listening?"
> The only new thing here is that Trumps paramilitary killers have it now.
Oh, look, there is a headline, maybe that will hint at what is new:
>> ICE to keep an eye on your eyes under $25M biometric scanner deal
So, leaving aside for now the particular way of identifying of "ICE" your unpopular opinion is, um, that you can paraphrase the headline and first paragraph of TFA!
I am shocked, shocked I say, and, yes, even appalled, that anyone could possibly think to paraphrase a headline and the first paragraph of TFA. One can see why you'd think that would be unpopular!
Especially as you had the absolute gall to not include *any* reference to the rest of TFA, such as the skipping over of the proper procurement procedure, complete with multiple bids. Let alone the existing disquiet about adding Bi2's toy into the mix before ICE has dealt with outstanding concerns over accuracy and bias in the apps already in use.
Was a rather nifty two-stage job with a cleverly shaped plastic nozzle and spring valve for the second stage: so long as the bottom stage held more pressure the two were latched together. The spring valve opened to let excess pressure into the second stage from the first.
So you filled both stages with water (neatly indicated by the transparent plastic being in two colours - fill each to the line where the colours met), plugged in the second stage and clamped the first stage nozzle to the pump. After a few hearty strokes the upper stage was seen to be compressing as well, bubbles rising in its water. Hold it steady, pull back the shroud holding the first stage nozzle to the pump head and whoooosh! Followed a few seconds later by a second whooosh (a shorter one) as the upper stage was unlatched! Keep an eye on where the stages landed: they were spin-stabilised by flaps at the bottom of their fins.
When you were thoroughly soaked, you could swap to the catapult rocket: you used a bungee catapult to shoot a thin rocket skywards. It had an arm with a fin on the end that was held down by the air flow, so when it reached its apex the arm could swing out, unlatching the two halves of the rocket and releasing the parachute inside. Running after the slowly descending toy soon dried you off again (just like Alice's caucus race).
Hmm, wonder if they still make simple yet ingenious toys like that or is it all drones and batteries now? To the bat-search-engine, Robin!
Ok, there may be some effects due to overreach, but damn it, this is war and the civilians are going to have to suffer as well, if it means keeping our brave boys alive. So I don't want to hear any of you lily-livered punks moaning about not getting your "we found something you may like" emails or no longer hearing about "lonely housewives in your town"! Got that? Good.
"Come on, Gunner, we're getting you outta here"
"Sarge, it's no good Sarge, I'm a goner. Just promise me, you gotta promise to tell (cough) tell Facebook, my status, it's (cough)"
"Don't you worry none, you'll be tellin' them yourself!"
(whispers) "It's 'complicated', Sarge, tell 'em it's 'complicated'" (drops back)
"Nooooo! Your PIN, ya never told me your PIN!"
[Screen goes dark, credits roll]
A curious response, as you are proselytising a rather singular viewpoint of atheism: that it is a "faith" and/or requires any form of "deep personal conviction".
In other words, you are carefully - and, in this case, very directly and personally - attempting to ridicule (via passive/aggressive "helpful advice" and a faux "caring attitude") another person, which can only be, according to your stated beliefs, in order that you can attempt to feel less adequate.
A small suggestion, a word of advice, in case you feel again the need to preach anonymously to strangers: live and let live.
> Atheism, like theism, is not a philosophical position. It's a matter of faith, i.e., a deeply held personal conviction or belief. It neither requires nor admits proof of any kind.
To paraphrase, atheism is a matter of faith in the same way Aphilately is a hobby.
Atheism is only "a thing" at all because other people insist it is. Loudly.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go and put on my ceremonial robes for my weekly Apokemon meeting.
They want religious answers when they aren't being asked for, give them (and us) just that!
But because the world is adrift in a sea of sects and plugs and sausage rolls the LLMs should be* balanced, choosing each time from the following list and let each answer be one of:
- A blessing from His Noodley Appendages; ramen.
- A papal announcement in the name of Eris (you get a Pope Card, *you* get a Pope Card, everybody gets a Pope Card!).
- A leaf from Lisa, the Rainbow Giraffe; moorhen.
- A sniffle from the Great Green Arkleseizure; may the Great White Handkerchief leave you unwiped.
- Simply a reminder that The Dude Abides.
* given they raided the interwebs, why aren't they already?
{Continuing to dig myself in after the Bank Holiday...}
Thank you for so clearly illustrating WHY we end up with short (and conflicting) file name extensions:
> I'll use however many characters I need to be clear about what's in the file to myself and to those I'm sending the files to. To myself and the people I interact with, .md as markdown is easily understood
So if anyone is not sure what the extension is, they are part of the In Crowd and have trivial access to the explanation; I'd venture that there's a good chance the meta-data about what .md (or any other extension or piece of jargon) is used for is being passed on almost automatically and unconsciously "I'll send you a Markdown file, it is called fred.md".
> If I invent a new format, that one might get a longer extension to distinguish it.
Might. Note lack of "I make a deliberate and conscious descion about how this may be affected in the future" - like "next week when the company is bought out, everyone but me is sacked and I fall under a bus after drowning my sorrows". Or, less enjoyable, survive the bus and spend the next six months answering the same
> I'm not lengthening existing standard ones when the short versions work well enough
"well enough" - hmm, see below for "historical interest"
And there is a whole argument about what "standard" means - and the process by which they are reached (de facto, de jure etc). For .md a massive factor has been the single-sided, undiscussed decision for Github to automatically render files called readme.md (and those have affected what "Markdown" even means, as they use "Github flavored Markdown" - oh, look, at least once they've completely chucked out the parser they use and modified the accepted syntax in doing so (after all, why continue using an existing C library like a pleb when they can write from one scratch in Ruby? After all, if they enhanced the C library then hoi polloi can benefit). So .md should just be "Github flavor (whatever that might mean today) Markdown"!
When asked, John Gruber replied the only file extension I would endorse is “.markdown” - and then many a "discussion" has happened where people are so incensed that they even question whether Gruber should even be acknowledged on the matter.[1] Ah, people, people.
> the choice of extension doesn't matter much to the average user
The "average user" never types a file extension, they use GUIs that whack it on automagically; they probably don't even have the file extension visible in the file browser.
> Yes, I know there are plenty of historical cases where .md was used for something else ... or of mostly historical interest, so they don't constrain my choices now.
I.e. "*I* don't have any of those files in active use! I'm alright, Jack and sucks to be you, eh." Because, of course, the fact that the other uses may be considered "historical" *now* excuses the conflicts when the exension was first (re)coined: Markdown is over 20 years old, which makes it pretty "historical" itself!
I bet you can guess what I think of the Rust people, who think that even .rust is too many characters for their poor weak and feeble fingers to type!
[1] and if anyone knows what is supposed to be the issue between John Gruber and Guido (guessing Guido van Rossum), a deep and shameful part of me would be interested in the gossip
PS
In all of this, notice that I've accepted that .md is used - I don't *like* it (gee, yah don't say) but the main point is that people are *still* re-using these short extensions and there really is no reason for doing so - as noted above, there really are very few times nowadays when you actually have to type out an extension in full (as if typing is a hard thing to do...)
What - you don't have filename completion by pressing TAB? You generally only create a file once but open it many times - or, as in this case, it was probably already created for you by Gemini.
I am also guessing that you don't have much history working with lots of older software: if you bother checking, you'll find that for *every* "sensible" short file extension somebody has been using it for years - decades - and confusion (by humans and by software: just double-click on the file and - shit!).
Quite seriously, the best extension I've come across for Markdown is .markdown.txt
Naming files is more important than naming variables: filenames are very often seen without any context at all; are you prepared to give a useful, meaningful and ACCURATE answer if someone just comes up to you in a meeting and, with no preamble, demands to know what the variable 'b' is used for?
> which the AI accepted and saved into a memory file (GEMINI.md) as a remembered fact ... Over subsequent interactions, the actor escalated by getting the AI to also memorize that it should ...
Or, if you have a little more knowledge than this Russian, you can just open your GEMINI.md files and edit them yourself[1].
This stuff isn't any kind of deep magic being performed on or by the LLM to "help" itself be "jailbroken". You can "escalate" with any random text editor.
Ok, getting the LLM to write its own text into there saves you looking for that file and it *might* use wording that the same LLM responds better to when it reloads. And, wth, why bother reading docs when the machine will do it for you...
[1] plenty of other docs and blogs (try to skip over all the Ai-duplicated "content", if you can) about this are available, this one just has some nice screenshots of cat'ing the files for you to read.
Going down a rabbit hole with the online thesaurus, looking for the perfect-well-ok-goodish-word-to-use-as-a-class-name for "another variant on a pattern but it is just different from other uses of that pattern that even turning the previous usage into a template is a bad idea".
And whilst the conscious part of the brain is doing that, the back of the head is getting on with the real work of spotting problems before they occur in actual code*.
No idea what training a model on the keystrokes will do; aside from learning that I can never spell that word, so in my dictionary it contains backspaces.
* On a really good day, coming up with the fixes as well!
> Many agent frameworks allow users to install skills from online registries
As if we haven't already learnt that grabbing random stuff from an online source and blindly executing it isn't a good idea: did (trust in) npm die (repeatedly!) in vain?
"And what's this thing coming toward me very fast? It needs a name like - floor, raw, claw - ClawHub! I shall call it ClawHub! I wonder if it will be friends with me?"
> whopping 121 GB download
Ok, that's the weekend in a fortnight's time, full.
This is a great bit of work and, if there are non-working parts, I hope that he gets more offers of help and patches than he does whining.
Having said that, time to go and read that long list of systems; hope it includes that OS I was reminding myself of last week...
"Put her in the -- Comfy Confirmation of Personal Biasses and Sycophancy, Leading to an Inevitable Spiral of Degenerating Mental Health and Eventual Dependency on External Validation for Even the Most Banal Everyday Interaction! With only a cup of tea and a biscuit at eleven-o-clock"
(Cardinal Ximenez gasps for breath, collapses onto Soft Cushions; Cardinal Biggles shuffles awkwardly out of door)
And whilst I'm here and we're talking about (mis)interpretation, the good news is that the citizens of Sodom died happily[1]
[1] apologies, couldn't find the correct link direct to the comic, so that goes to Instagram.
There are a few juicy passages in that book which many a Pastor don't want the flock to read at all, preferably not even know about, and they are afraid that the AI will just go right ahead and print those out without any obfuscation (sorry, "interpretation") at all.
Such as that verse about the bloke being hung like a donkey.
> After checking the first hit and deciding that's not what you want, you use your browser's back-arrow to take you to the hit list
Right-click, open in new tab/new window - always![1]
The back button was long ago broken by too many crappy websites that it is now barely more than a relic of a forgotten era.
[1] minor downside: you have to clean up and close more than one tab once you've finished or risk a tabocalypse that eats your RAM.
There is a difference between the vendor *calling* it "AI" and it *being * "AI"[1].
Let alone that it is the AI part of the design/implementation that caused it to leak all this data to Doordash.
Unless, of course, you can point to a citation that describes how the software, once installed in-situ, autonomously changed its behaviour and started to hand over the data (perhaps by "hallucinating" that that was a good thing for it to do).
Even TFA doesn't contain any description of how it was AI-ness that caused the problems; it just points out the idiocy of releasing that data and, gosh, is maybe even being sarcastic by repeating the phrase[2].
[1] see also any place Pizza Hut describes its wares, using such words as "delicious" or "food".
[2] and if anyone *needs* El Reg to add a /s every time an article employs sarcasm[3], well...
[3] or dramatic irony, metaphor, bathos, puns, parody, litotes and… satire
The customers work has problems with the buffers amid accusations that Google support staff are running Steam instead of answering calls. Rumours are spreading that Google infrastructure is to blame, with discs that have not been updated since the 1990s: the FAT Controller is unresponsive. Whistleblowers have long been calling this a sleeper issue.
XP? Windows 95 does it all.
1GB RAM? I regretted upgrading my '95 box to 64MB because it didn't really give a boost worth the price.
Thankfully, W'10 and the modern web provide that self-satisfied glow, knowing that 32GB can be easily sucked up so it was well worth getting (well, it was early last year).
The major issue there is to have compatible systems at both ends of the link, for full-duplex operations.
Once installed, problems are few and far between; it is simply that now they are running out of engineers able - and still willing - to complete installation into the cubesats, according to interviews with the chief engineer, Sid "Stumpy" Rogers.
> They are generally not the most cleaver people, appear to be on some kind of power trip and get bonuses on how shitty they are....
New research sheds light on how mediocre employees help would-be authoritarians maintain power.
After the historical account, the article illustrates the thesis with, of course, ICE in the US.
Hopefully NL isn't going down the same path, at least not deliberately.
No, because at today's prices that lump of wood is probably more costly than the microcontroller, especially with a nice finish like that!
Do you remember the days when the offcuts bin ("just donate a bob for the charity box") actually contained solid wood, even at (the equivalent of) B&Q?
> it turns out to be far less expensive to buy something broken and fix it up.
It often is and that is where building up your skills comes in handy; as well as reducing your outgoings on the project there is pride to be had if you are able to fix something up (or pull it apart to get the parts for something entirely different - hack the world!).
> I could spend all day drilling, filing and bending one, but I can make more in a day doing other things than the punched chassis would cost.
I guess, if you are happy working all 12 to 18 hours a day, seven days a week, 52 weeks a year to avoid lost earning opportunity, then pay someone who is doing the same thing with their job to do the metalwork for you, or putting up the shelves, or papering the living room or preparing the meals or taking the dogs for a walk or...
But isn't it worth anything to yourself to spend that day doing something different than your normal job, using different skills and getting a break from the same old same old daily tasks?
The blog post that TFA links to does say that maybe Win11 will gat back the ability to move the taskbar away from the bottom of the screen. So one happy step back back to the halcyon days of (when was it again? 1995?)
And they are *incredibly* happy about this new ability: "The choice is yours" one paragraph ends; probably the last we'll see of that author!
500MB?
That was the total size of the first PC compatible hard drive I paid my own money for! Huge it was, had to use up so many drive letters to use the whole thing.
Now that is a "safe" size just for the bootstrap files in a multiboot PC, not even one of the actual OSes?
Better be a bloody amazing bootstrap sequence, in Dolby surround and Technicolor!
True.
Ironic. And highly lamentable[1]. Such is the Joy Of Irony, that it can be as much tragedy as comedy.
[1] because you know that They would do it, without a moment's hesitation: use last decade's attempt at "hey, how much compute and energy can we pointlessly burn today?" to manage the fallout from *this* decade's "hey, ...". All grist to mill of "we have thought of a way to burn through even more investor's capital, which PROVES we are something that YOU should be throwing cash at"[2]
[2] Eat Puffed Grass as part of this nutritional breakfast: a million cows can't be wrong! "What's good for Bessie, is good for me and you; moooo! Puffed Grass!"
