Posts by that one in the corner

Amazon confirms it locked Microsoft engineer out of his Echo gear over false claim

Re: Keys not yours

> Just wait till the power company locks your out of your “smart” thermostat.

2021: https://news.yahoo.com/power-companies-taking-over-smart-185552524.html

"Have you ever seen your smart thermostat go rogue? Galveston, Texas, resident Shelby Rogers recently did, and discovered that her power company had manually changed her air conditioning unit to be set at 80 F."

https://www.theverge.com/2021/6/18/22540015/psa-energy-saver-program-smart-thermostat-adjust-temperature-heat

"Known as demand-response programs, some Texans were taken by surprise this week, as their thermostats were turned up without any action from them."

From those and other reports[1], it appears that the "affected" had voluntarily signed up to let the power company do this, to get a bit off their bill and those "surprised" were just the usual suspects who didn't read the T&C (or the instructions for their home units) but the point is, the ability is built into those things (think you'll still be able to override using the app? That they had written for them?).

In the US, at least.

Re: What, no backup strategy?

Wow, you leapt from keeping up the convenience of his lifestyle to rape?

Re: no backup strategy, SMH stupidity

Shout. Shout!?

Our throats were so sore from eating t'gravel for breakfast we had to catch foxes at night then make 'em bark at door for us to be let in.

Well, I say "in"...

Re: no backup strategy, SMH stupidity

> that ALSO depends upon internet connectivity with a cloud provider (Apple's Siri).

The way Siri was talked about in the article confused me a bit (I don't have a setup like Jackson's; surprise!), so did a little digging. It appears that if you have a new enough shiny Siri can work locally doing the voice recognition on your iDoodad.

So let him have that point back.

Now start to ponder that Siri really is listening in all the time, even when you are disconnected, gathering all those useful little nuggets...

Re: no backup strategy, SMH stupidity

No, the Luddites provide a sabot on a bit of string, so you can throw it at the door.

Re: What, no backup strategy?

And he continues "left me with a house full of unresponsive devices"

You seem to be assuming that "primary" meant he had a secondary means of controlling *all* of his devices? And yet they remained unresponsive.

Maybe "primary" here was more casually used, to refer to the most often used mechanism when interacting with his surrounds? And for that subset of his surrounds, the only?

Re: What, no backup strategy?

Dunno about you, but what makes somewhere "home" and not just "the place I'm living in" is, among other things, the feeling that "this is *my* space" (our *our* for the fortunate) and I have control over it (barring force majeure).

If the light stops working then it is frustrating when it is down to physical reality: the bulb is old - ah ha, I planned for this, quick swap, smugness (or didn't and grrr, self); the entire village has lost power, time for the good old Blitz Spirit, crank up the Victrola.

If the light stops working on the whim of someone else, that is an intrusion into the "home" - it may as well be a hotel for all the sense of "belonging there" that is left. And that "someone else" doesn't even know you! It isn't even personal, you are literally nothing to them other than an account on their screen.

Maybe one happy day you too will enjoy a home and not just a roof over your head.

What, no backup strategy?

"This wasn’t just a simple inconvenience, though," he wrote. "I have a smart home, and my primary means of interfacing with all the devices and automations is through Amazon Echo devices via Alexa. This incident left me with a house full of unresponsive devices, a silent Alexa, and a lot of questions."

Hopefully, the first question being: why did I tie my house so thoroughly into a third-party cloud, without considering what it would do to my lifestyle if it was interrupted in any way?

If he had the nous to do some of it locally, what was the gain supposed to be in outsourcing the rest?

Not his computer in control, means it wasn't really his home...

Music bosses go after Twitter's unlicensed soundtrack to the tune of $250M

Interesting list of tracks

"Another brick in the wall (pt 2)" is there - 'cos Elon don't need no education - but Twitter doesn't seem to have "Money".

Decision to hold women-in-cyber events in abortion-banning states sparks outcry

Restricts drag shows in public places

RIP Danny La Rue, Dame Edna Everage, Dr. Evadne Hinge and Dame Hilda Bracket.

Sad that you are no longer here but at least you can not see as misguided parts of the world turn against you and your kind[1]

Perhaps PBS could show a retrospective of their work.

[1] that is, good Saturday evening entertainment and people who knew how to do their make up well. They were all good enough for the Royal Variety Performance at the London Palladium[2] but not good enough for Tennessee! Pah!

[2] As if the RVP isn't public enough, the Palladium is only 273 metres from Saint Georges, Hanover Square (that is less than 900 feet)! Shocking, how could they have allowed it, etc etc.

Re: Mixed Feelings

> As for autism, why is there such a correlation between trans and autism?

Dunno. And neither do the authors quoted in your citation (as is clearly indicated at the end, quite correctly).

But that doesn't mean that you get to fill that void with your pet theory (unless you've also done all work to show why you are correct, which you would back up by including the relevant citations, of course).

> Going by the babygaga list a good portion of German men are closet trans as they pee sitting down.

I wasn't entirely convinced by that article, but as they don't actually mention standing to pee (despite the section headline suggesting that is what they'll talk about) AND even they say not to judge on the basis of a only a single indicator, we can dismiss your radical take on this as one as well.

Re: Women in Jobs?

You seem to have lost the first half of that sentence you are quoting, which seems a shame, it isn't too long to quote in its entirety (we wouldn't anyone to accuse 2A discussions of cherry picking, would we /s)

"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

> The requirement is that in ... the people must be armed.

You believe that the people are *required* to be armed? Where do think this is, Switzerland?[1]

> (to defeat the British)

Nope, they were looking beyond that fracas (as were the British by then, other things to do Old Bean).

[1] Yes, I know it is only the militiamen, 18-34 and fit to *be* militiamen...; curiously, that sounds closer to what the US 2A intended, but IANAL, not USAzian etc etc.

The ZX81 finally gets the keyboard it deserves

Re: How times have changed..

> With someone like Apple, you can be fairly certain that if they say something will be available in 30 days, it will be available in 30 days.

These days, probably.

Back in the day? Not so perfect (<cough>Apple III<cough/> <cough>a working one<cough/>)

Re: *twitches*

> it looks like it's trying to replicate the concave-ness you'd get with some keyboards back then.

And the concave keyboards you can still get, using shaped keycaps and/or a curved backplate (the later for the really posh).

Personally, I love the concave keyboard: hanging over the home row, flexing the fingers mostly with the middle joint and the ends move in an arc that matches the curve of the keyboard.

But as I've said before, all my workaday keyboards are 30 plus years old juggernauts - whilst the more portable (!) newer mechanical jobbie to make the laptop usable is all weird and stepped rather curved. Shudder.

UK smart meter rollout years late and less than two thirds complete

Use a water mister to dampen yourself, rub thoroughly with shower gel; use a strigil to get most of it of yourself and only use the shower proper to rinse off: as you say, 10 seconds should do the trick.

Gen Z and Millennials don't know what their colleagues are talking about half the time

Re: Most misused list - where is "steep learning curve"?

Time along the y-axis: bold choice.

Re: Most misused list - where is "steep learning curve"?

They chucked me out of the stacks for excessive pedantry unbecoming a library ("Where do you think you are, mate? The Oxford Union?")

Re: Most misused list - where is "steep learning curve"?

Ok, but I'd love to see how you're going to collect the data (say, on a weekly basis) to draw the graph of actual versus the planned/expected/commonplace plot for "amount of information that has to be absorbed in a set amount of time".

And give a cogent explanation of why that graph is the one that springs to mind every time anyone uses the concept of "learning curve".

No, seriously, if that is a sensible and useful and useable way to plot the data then I'm open to learning how; but right now I just don't see how it could be made to work.

Re: I'll Be There

"A Touch of Cloth" - must watch that again.

Re: Uniting the world

If you're food is cremoed, mate, it's time got crack a stubby and throw another snag on the barbie; just keep an eye on it this time, right!

Grok sounds like baby talk

The splendid irony is that, of *course* it sounds like baby talk!

I always thought that was a clever move by Heinlein.

Working with the old idea that languages will tend to use the shortest and simplest words not for the simplest concept but for those most often encountered: up, cat, fork etc; you see this happening with commonplace acceptable abbreviations for the voiture omnibus or telephone.

*All* of those simple words are the ones we teach our children very early on, for the obvious reason that they deal with the things our offspring encounter as frequently as we do. But because we grownups also need to use them, and consider what they refer to as commonplace, you just accept the usage without taking any special note of it.

So Heinlein takes a concept that is, oh so very rarely encountered in Real Life and gives it a really short and simple name, knowing that it "sounds like baby talk" (even readers pointed this out; others took it and ran).

Heinlein is pointing out that this Really Good Thing, which is totally commonplace for Valentine Michael Smith, known to him since infancy, is so very much lacking in our society.

Re: .. One lump, or two ..

Hmm, Maxwell's

> ducks in a row

Ok, so what the bleep does it mean (and when would you use it outside of the office)? All the multiples of ducks I've ever[1] seen are in random squabbling groups or in a (relatively) neat V-formation - at a stretch, you could call that two rows.

You do get *ducklings* walking one after the other, if the parent is on the move across land, but what kind of monster would make a metaphor out of lovely fluffy ducklings? Anyway, it never lasts for long, once they reach the river/stream/pond/tin bath they are all over the place (as though the steering was just a wee bit off - one foot bigger than the other? So cute!)

[1] and even in the least duck-filled portions of my life I'd expect to encounter the quacking beggars at least once a week during the season.

Re: the jargon file

Just be thankful you aren't "delivering quality to the customer".

Human Populations Are Not Quantised!

> Boomers don't look up things they don't know

Ah, "Boomer", another one of those terms that gets bandied about without checking that it means the same thing to the reader as it did to the writer (you know, the sort of thing that this entire article is talking about!)

Since I were a nipper in the UK, The Baby Boom has meant the rise in births in 1946, straight after the war, which caused significant extra (given that rationing was still in place, etc) social upheaval. For example, having to build new schools and find adequate numbers of teachers in order to keep up with the cohort as it aged. Schools that were then in danger of being underutilised the following year and more so the next, as the boom was a definite spike: by 1947 proper British values had set in (and absolutely everyone had been reminded about the joys of baby sick and wailing at all hours of the day) so things pretty much settled down again to the usual pace.

Those Brits are all 76/77 years old now. A strangely specific group of people to be targeting with respect to their abilities with respect to dictionaries, encyclopaedias and the like.

However, apparently, the US just kept on at it, from 1946 all the way to 1964 (presumably the more greatly spread out population meant they were less troubled by the wailing from up and down the street in 1947 and then it all just became a habit). So they have a lot more "Baby Boomers" with a far wider age spread.

Can I take it that it is Our Overseas Cousins you are referring to and whose inability to use reference materials is in question?

BTW According to Wikipedia, "British people usually define" those born between 1960 and 1969 as Baby Boomers! First I'd heard of it! This claim is backed up by Wikipedia using a link to a single paper from 2017 in the journal "Working With Older People" (which, as you know, is one of the great trend setters in British culture), which paper uses the term pretty much just "because we want a catchy readable title" not because it is usual! Wikipedia then goes on to claim that this ten-year cohort makes up 20% of the UK population, because the Wikipediots have referred to an "article" on yougov.co.uk which was nothing more than a headline ripped from another article that clearly stated it was using the US "definition" of "Baby Boomer"!

Sigh. Rant nearly over, conclusions:

* Wikipediots don't even bother reading the material they link to

and

* these "generations" only refer to the US, at least up to the point where t'Internet has tried to homogenise culture (that would be "Z", I guess). So it has been weird looking up what all these supposed generations[1] mean in order to follow a Register article about results from a UK survey!

[1] In my day we didn't have these fixed so-called "generations", we knew that babies are being born all the time, so "my parent's generation" meant something different to different people. Human Populations Are Not Quantised!

Re: Gus from Drop the Dead Donkey

> "Let's run this idea up the flag pole and see who salutes".

That one was in use way back in the 1950s (Gus probably picked it up from his grandfather): Mad magazine was poking fun at it back then, as can be seen in the book-format reprints such as "Madvertising"[1]

[1] don't guarantee it was in that volume - they wore put a fell to pieces long ago - but it seems likely.

PS hopefully you all know that Don Knuth's first publication was in Mad magazine in the 1950s, the "Potrzebie System of Measurement"; possibly November 1955 as the thickness of that specific issue was used as one of the basic units as published.

Re: Most misused list - where is "steep learning curve"?

> "Steep" when used with "learning curve" generally means that it's going to be difficult (as in a steep climb) so it's viewed negatively.

Grrr.[1] It *never* "means" it is going to be difficult - the learning curve is a well-defined thing (plot of measure of learning against time) and has few well-recognised forms (usually involving plateaus as learning is put into practice etc etc).

Presumably you meant to say something more like:

>> "Steep" when used with "learning curve" is mistakenly believed to indicate that it's going to be difficult (as in a steep climb) so it's viewed negatively.

Fundamentally, none of the people who misuse it know that a "learning curve" is even a Real Thing, so we drop into the pool of people for whom another quote from the article is apt:

> Even more shamefully, 83 percent used a word they didn't know the meaning of in a professional situation.

[1] Sorry, but this one really gets my goat. Calm, breathe in; hold; breathe out. Ommmmmmm

> In fact, this is plain rhetoric

Aagh, well, um - no. No, it isn't rhetoric. Certainly not "plain rhetoric". Sorry.

"Rhetoric" - another word that is being buggered about with by management and politicians!

It means language that *is* effective, but that is being eroded away as people start calling this kind of guff "empty rhetoric" (which is sort-of correct usage) and then it gets bandied around as if it can *only* be used to refer to the empty kind.

Re: I'll Be There

I feel you, it's no good; enjoy the silence: I just can't get enough.

Management jargon is at most 6000 years old

> their preference is to essentially gaslight people by forcing them to redefine the meaningless drivel that they spew to actually have some form of worthwhile meaning which they can change at will by saying "no, that's not what I meant".

So just like Creationist arguments using the word "kind".

Suspired

A new jargon word! Um, what could it mean?

"I live and breathe suspicion of anything new" - no, that be "suspiration".

"My suspicions about this have expired, we should go ahead".

Re: Communication

Shakar, when the walls fell.

Re: .. One lump, or two ..

It was always obvious that a ginger snap could take an edge, but how that was done with a bourbon and a pink wafer we may never find out. We really, really hope we never find out.

Re: Thanks El Reg...

You must have missed the memo. Management have retroactively repurposed the nomenclature "jargon" to better synergise with their visions.[1]

[1] and the voices.

Most misused list - where is "steep learning curve"?

I've not heard *anyone* outside of a few specialised TV programmes[1] use that one correctly for *years*!

Plot "% learnt" or "ability to do useful work" against time and it becomes blindingly obvious that a steep learning curve is good - everyone is finding it easy to learn, or there isn't much to learn in the first place.

But no, management thinks "steep" is bad. The very people you would hope could read a graph. Although it does explain a lot:

"This will lead us on a steep profit path". " Steep? Can't have that, we want a shallow path, much easier".

"Sales growth is steep this quarter." "Steep?! You are fired, the lot of you!"

[1] about teaching, including the one about the Red Arrows in training.

38 percent of graybeards

still had some self-worth left and were trying to fight the management Bullshit speak.

The other 62% *were* The Management and are the ones spouting this bollocks (to be gleefully taken up by the 41% of youngsters in sales and "creative" positions who just follow whatever is trending within a 10 metre radius.

AI promises vendors 15 minutes of fame with investors

the new soup is 13 times hotter

Being a lover of a chicken korma, I know exactly how my guts would react to that AI designed soup.

Strangely, my guts have the same reaction when I read the AI-related press releases.

On hearing there will be an upcoming dramatic announcement: "Tums Tums Taaaa" [1]

[1] actually, Gaviscon, but that name works even less well.

NASA to tear the wings off plane in the name of sustainability

How about some tension, not just compression?

Trussed wings are flying all over the place (it is the scale that is changing here) so how about going one step further back and adding some strength by using guy cables?

Probably a bad idea (drag and all that) but it just seemed an opportunity to let the pylon be used as a support for wing walking: who wants to be the first to stand the whole way on top of a transatlantic flight?[1]

[1] don't think RyanAir wouldn't if they could make it work: although to reduce drag they'd advertise that you are one of the lucky few passengers who gets to lie down during the flight. Be warned: in an emergency situation, you would be required to pull-start the engines.

Ooh, you got so close:

Lettuce hope this Truss lasts longer...

Software picks out more satellite photobombs in Hubble image

Re: Time to move the telescopes

The directional aspect of newer street lights is a definite improvement, but the broader spectrum of the LEDs is, for skywatching, worse than the old sodium lamps: you used to be able to filter out just a narrow band and cut through the glow. Even just naked eye using suitably coloured specs (and a bit of practice, using hands to block out the sides) suddenly the big city sky could be interesting. Plus bright white lighting being more confusing to wildlife.

If only LEDs could be made with a narrow band output...

Re: Surely the positions of all satellites are known

Satellite locations need *lots* of tracking to determine with precision, particularly those in low Earth orbit: the atmosphere fluctuates and hence the amount of drag changes, ruining your nice Newtonian orbit calculations.

Determining which satellites will appear where and when in Hubble's field of view needs more precision than "can this satellite get a radio signal to/from Texas right now?" (especially if[1] that can be based upon the satellite watching for an up beacon and shouting back "cooee" when it sees it) and guess what level of precision the operators work at?

[1] if, I said, if: haven't checked if the current crop of comms satellites use this sort of helper. Anyone care to chime in?

At last, Microsoft lets Windows 11 share files with Android apps

> "C:\Users\John Doe" is shared as "/sdcard/Windows

> only the files in a user's Windows profile folder are available to WSA.

So everything under the profile folder is available to Android apps? It isn't possible to set up, say, C:\Users\John Doe\Android and map just *that* to /sdcard/Windows?

Because that would be far more secure against rogue Android apps (and if you *want* Android to see something out of your Documents you can always move/copy it there with Windows Explorer).

> Also, the WSA needs to index shared files before the apps can access them, which can take some time if there are a lot of files.

Why does it seem like this is being done in a clunkier way than just mounting a file share into the Android filesystem? Or has Android been shorn of such extravagant functionality from its Linux parentage? Anyone with understanding of the internals (left to) Android care to chip in on that?

These Microsoft Office security signatures are 'practically worthless'

I have seen "password protected" documents

Good use of scare quotes.

I received a medical file from an insurance company GP via email, with a note that I would receive the password the next day. Didn't spot the note, just saved the attachment and double-clicked: it opened immediately, no password, no encryption, perfectly legible.

In the consultation, tried to point this out, was poo-pooed "Look, it asks for a password when I try to open it".

Except the doctor's PC had MS Office and I have LibreOffice...

GitHub accused of varying Copilot output to avoid copyright allegations

Re: Software is not a creative work?

> instead of obsessing about lines of code, many of which are probably indistinguishable from lines used in thousands of other applications across scores of different domains.

Instead of obsessing about individual notes, many of which are probably indistinguishable from notes used in thousands of other scores across lots of different styles of music.

Instead of obsessing about groups of letters[1], many of which are probably indistinguishable from words used in thousands of other books across scores of different genres.

> visual design, interface design, component design.

> But it's the design that's by far the more creative aspect

Yikes, this is starting to sound like an argument from a "creative" who hasn't had the enjoyment of coding something new :-( But putting aside such derogatory remarks (tut tut Corner, Old boy):

Copyright only covers the *expression* of an idea/design/... and even by your own argument, that is the code (there are other ways to express the idea/... - you may have drawn your UI out on paper and written in the Pantones - and that is also copyrightable; but the code is the expression that is actually *useful* and worth disseminating).

Depending upon your location, you may be able to get a design patent on, well, the design; you may also be able to trademark some of it (e.g. a particular shade of purple used in a specific context - a list of applicable contexts is available from your local trademark office).

[1] yes, given the nlocs in something like Firefox, comparing lines of code to words in a novel or notes in a score is reasonable: certainly makes it easier to structure these comparisons!

Beams from brightest gamma ray burst ever seen were pointed directly at Earth

Narrow core with wide sloping wings

That is clearly the signature of a Xeelee Nightfighter dropping to subluminal speeds.

Coming straight towards us, you say? Oh dear.

Clippy designer was too embarrassed to include him in his portfolio

Re: ChatGPT-powered Clippy

PS

> the words are stochastically related

I know this isn't the the correct phrase (as in, it is gibberish of almost ChatGPT-like levels) but you what I meant, right? Bother, what is the correct way to describe it?

Re: ChatGPT-powered Clippy

The ending of that R'Pi article just begs for an update:

> David is hoping to upgrade it by introducing a machine learning vision model so Whiskers can look at a handful of different ingredients and give you ideas for dishes you can make using what you have.

"Beat the eggs until stiff then slowly add three tablespoons of Marmite. Fold in 4 ounces of baking powder and one level teaspoon of flour[1]. Layer over the chopped beetroot[2], top with toast and leave to set in the fridge. Serve with custard. Feeds 4."

[1] the words are stochastically related and hence "all the right words", but as a wise man once said, "not necessarily in the right order, I'll grant you that."

[2] however, the beetroot was just an hallucination by the LLM; probably a blessing in disguise.

Clippy kept making it through every level

Asking the public which character to keep in and Clippy kept on winning the vote?

If only they'd named him Clippy McClipface it would have been obvious what was happening...

Lawyers who cited fake legal cases generated by ChatGPT blame the software

30% of what?

> "So far, we've seen this method improve the accuracy of Bard's responses to computation-based word and math problems in our internal challenge datasets by approximately 30 per cent," it added.

Sadly, not well enough implemented to know that it is meaningless to quote an improvement without providing a baseline (or the resultant, either will do): Up from 70% to 93% is better than 3% to 4% accuracy rate.

Overestimated the technology's abilities

Created a ChatGPT login on Saturday: the disclaimers were succinct and straightforward to understand.

If Steven Schwartz and Peter LoDuca are going to claim to the judge that they were unable to read and comprehend those simple texts...