Posts by that one in the corner

MIT boffins create device that 'paints' iridescent structural color in real time

Re: This is going to be like LEDs

Sadly true.

Although there will be some fascinating effects for us nerds to watch out for.

Both iridescence and LEDs tend to be extremely discretely coloured, if not outright monochromatic. Hence the generally appalling CRI of LED lighting (and the weird interference effects you get from things like the very small, almost pointlike, red warning LED sidelights on the backs of lorries in front of you, especially in the rain).

Which means that there will be furious fashionistas who have been swanning around in brilliant butterfly colours whilst walking to the venue in the sunlight but, once indoors, are reduced to dull grey drabbery. Cruel rivals will bribe the janitors to swap the bulbs out for ones that, to the naked eye, look just as good (i.e. bad) but which let their togs (the rivals', not the janitors') look their best.

Re: Please call it "Python program"

PPS

The Jargon File has an entry for "app"; it is too late at night for me, but anyone in another timezone* like to have a trawl through the archive and see it it appeared after the first 1976 issue out of SAIL? (don't confuse SAIL with CSAIL or jake will have choice words for you).

* or with worse insomnia than me

Re: Please call it "Python program"

> The term App, coined by Apple

Wot? When do you think they did that?

"App" is just short for "application" and has been used for as long as anyone has wanted to distinguish an "application" from a "utility" (aka a "util", as in a directory called "utils" next to the one called "apps" in you personal directory). RUNOFF is an application (helps you format printouts on the line printer), COPY is a utility that gets used no matter what you are using the computer for today. CALC generally a util, as it is used for a quick sum, whilst MACSYMA is an app for running day-long simulations. Of course, the general public had no idea what an "app" was back when those programs first saw the light of day, the closest they got to a computer (aside from the rich buggers who were part of the Jet Set and at least saw the agents tapping away at the airline booking system) was the punch card marked "do not fold, spindle or mutilate" in the mail or watching Harry Palmer be ordered about by one at the flicks.

(Aside: This question has been discussed by Register readers before and with all the care and attention you'd expect, such as a claim it was coined in the 90s right after the previous comment pointed out it was already ingrained in RISCOS during the 1980s!)

PS

Python scripts can be apps or utils as well.

AI hasn't delivered the profits it was hyped for, says Deloitte

40% of the workforce are paying attention & give a damn

> But among these AI-enabled workers, fewer than 60 percent use their AI tools as part of their daily workflow.

> "This suggests that while access is widening, enterprise AI remains underutilized, and its productivity and innovation potential are still largely untapped," the report speculates.

OR (and bear with me on this, it is coming out of left field), perhaps the 40% have come to the conclusion that it has no utility for them and was just sapping their productivity, so they ignore it on a day-to-day basis.

Perhaps they should be more worried about the 60% who don't give a monkeys about work and have realised that, if they piddle away time on the company AI account, when things go wrong or never get usefully finished they can just blame it all on the LLM ("Look, I asked and it said the document was the best summary of the subject it had ever read").

Trump promises nuclear datacenter permits in 3 weeks, calls Greenland 'big beautiful ice'

Re: " AI, two years ago, nobody ever heard of the term"

It is a shame that Isaac Asimov never wrote any science fiction back in the 1940s; his history and science books are good but it really seemed like there was another subject he wanted to tackle.

(The UK is) sitting on top of the North Sea

> one of the greatest reserves anywhere in the world, but they don't use it.

Oh gawd, he is going to try and annex the UK now, isn't he? For the sake of "protecting the US".

Must have been a surprise when Starmer almost stood up to him this week; that'll put the invasion^^^^^^^^^^friendly policing action back at least a day.

Microsoft CEO: AI sovereignty isn't where it runs, it's who controls it

Datacenter location is the least of an enterprise's worries

After:

"Is this thing ever going to work reliably?"

"Who do we sue when the LLMs go doolally?"

And the ever-popular

"We are spending HOW much now?! How can we get out of this without losing face to the investors? Oh god, oh god, oh god, we're screwed, aren't we? Did I just say that part out loud?"

Kids learn computer theory with wood, cardboard, and hot glue

At least in those days you could carry The Register around for a quick read on the loo. Before then, trying to casually fold the clay tablets into the jeans back pocket was doomed to failure (and the weight meant you needed to keep your belt really tight).

(Cue next response: Clay tablets? We 'ad to push megaliths home from newsagents...)

Re: Valves (Tubes) impracticable?

Careful with these comments, we want to avoid touching upon anything with high tension.

Re: Valves (Tubes) impracticable?

Whatever happened to the BC108 and BC107? When I do see discrete transistors in beginner's kits these days they all seem to be 2Nxxx, which used to be those odd things you saw in foreign designs (drags ratty book of equivalence tables from under desk).

PS

But unijunction relaxation oscillators were the best, all the weird buzzes and bloops you could ever want with hardly any components at all. And even the family liked them, as without an amplifier stage it didn't drive everyone else up the wall, so they could relax as well.

> Compacting the code a bit and duplicating it inline in the program

Needn't be anything inelegant or "bad practice" about that at all.

> what he'd been taught at Uni and as he needed an input routine in two places he'd written it as a subroutine

Hopefully what he'd been taught is that you write it "in one place" to avoid duplicating *intellectual* work and keeping "copies" in sync; computers are used to doing repetitive tasks for us. Inlining is not only good practice (but see below) but has been expressly supported with in programming languages since the Macro Assembler: preprocessors such as m4 and the C preprocessor's #define, C++ (and later C) using the "inline" keyword (bit of a giveaway there).

What he did was very good programming practice: write your program, run it and then work on the hotspots (use a profiler if it isn't quite do obvious as in in this case).

As we learnt it at Uni (but not so pithily), in this order: Make it work. Make it work correctly. Make it fast.

ATM takes a kicking yet keeps on ticking

The unblinking glowing eye

All but forgotten, hidden amongst all the destruction, that the camera inevitably zooms into as the generic band of heroes walks away: "Out of service" - all is well, humanity can breathe again. Pan down: "on line" (cue synth drum track).

MPs ask who's responsible when AI crashes the UK finance system

There must be clarity on who is responsible:

> the developers, the institution deploying the model, or the data providers.

Take the earlier sentence

> Yet trade association Innovate Finance testified that management in financial institutions struggled to assess AI risk. The "lack of explainability" of AI models directly conflicted with the regime's requirement for senior managers to demonstrate they understood and controlled risks, the committee argued

and the answer is trivially clear: the institution.

How could the devs be responsible? Explainability - or the lack thereof - is a fundamental* to the design *and* it is up to the institution to verify a system before they put it in place. And if they can't examine the workings then, even if the data providers are entirely useless, there is no way to demonstrate that, which means there is no standard to hold them to.

* As we are clearly talking about LLMs whenever they say "AI" this time

Royal Navy's helicopter drone makes its first autonomous flight

Proteus features a modular payload bay

PLEASE tell us that is loaded/unloaded from underneath

> payload module designed to deploy sonobuoy sensors that are used to detect and track submarines

and that can be dropped whilst hovering over the sea, then an access ramp drops down and the buoys slide out?

Perhaps the "modules" could have big white numbers painted on the front as a reminder of their contents? And "module" is such a long word, perhaps a shorter one could be used?

Open source's new mission: Rebuild a continent's tech stack

> I understand that Microsoft is embedded in many UK councils

If only there was some way that the Man On Clapham Omnibus - or even the Person On The Register Forums - was able to express their issues to councils and other parts of the government.

Damn this total lack of public access to our parish, town and city councils.

Curse our total inability to contact other concerned citizens.

Re: Don't shoot the messenger

> FOSS is easily (and cheaply) leveraged for evil as well as good. Whether that is using free software for mass spamming, or open source databases of hacked personal data. Not to mention nefarious uses of "network debugging tools" and the most obvious of all: using readily available web server software for phishing scams.

Grab the wrong end of the stick and beat around the bush with it.

The protections from systematic abuse are all about preventing the abuse/misuse being part of the functionality built into the software in the first place - and not being removeable because we can't rebuild the software.

Saying that a plank of wood can be used for good or evil is an obvious triviality: hitting someone over the head or laying it down as a bridge, neither of those things is built into the plank. And because a plank is open to inspection we can safely say that, yes, it *can* be used as a gangway from the roof of the flooded building to the dinghy without it necessarily also hitting in the head everyone who stands on it.

Similarly, saying WireShark can be used to fix a LAN problem or to steal traffic is an obvious triviality.

Now, if we had a closed-source WireShark-alike which *also* shipped all the traffic it saw to a third- or fourth-party server in another legal jurisdiction "so we can improve your customer experience" *that* is when you need to be concerned about abuse.

Or, more obviously, as WireShark is not something even known about by a large percentage of computer users, an editor (word processor) or even always-on sections of an operating system that is grabbing all your data...

Re: Don't shoot the messenger

> As for the ability to fix bugs or add features in FOSS. That is more of a theoretical situation than a real-world one. Almost nobody except the codes developers have the time, resources, tools or ability to make changes. Especially without inadvertently creating a new bug, or altering critical behaviours. Certainly not your "average" user: who thinks Google is the internet and equates that with WiFi.

As for the ability to change spark plugs[1] or add features to a car, this is more of a theoretical situation than a real-world one, certainly for your "average" driver (followed by insult to the driver).

> Almost nobody except the codes developers

Ah, yes, carefully ignoring two[2] things:

1) If you look at OSS projects, you will see that it is not in the least bit unusual to have lots of contributors - certainly far, far more than the person/people who originally developed it and/or have become the ongoing maintenance team. Because, you see, it *is* possible for *competent* programmers to hunt down bugs and add new features - and then run regression tests! Note the word "competent". You can always find a total numpty and point to them as your example, the same as we can find someone who just poured a litre of oil into the hole left behind when they removed the spark plug; and we'll find out soon enough for both of those "fixers" and avoid them in the future.

2) The post you are replying to included the subtle line "Hire any competent programmer to fix it for me". Yes, you can actually hire programmers. Just like you can hire a garage to change the spark plugs. Now, is it as easy, at the moment, to find a decent "software garage"? Probably not. Even for institutions in the EU, like councils, right now they'll probably be idiots and approach Capita.

Oooh, look, there is something that the EU could look at: making it easiert to find and hire competent programmers to fix open source! Nope, I don't claim to have *THE* answer to that right now.

> I have worked for many large companies whose main driver for what software they use is indemnity

Hmm, careful there, indemnity is not the same as getting it fixed. You *may* be indemnified with nothing more than a fix, but that is a corner case.

> not when an amateur developer can be cajoled into looking at the problem.

Again, hire somebody.

A lot of that is attitude - both preparedness and getting away from the ever-encroaching "gotta sue" mindset (refer you back to indemnity). When something breaks on a machine, you either have a service level agreement or you have the phone number of a mechanic. If you are such a large company that you (believe you) can call a "six-figure executive" and you NEED to do that then you have already failed at setting up your own systems (including choosing and keeping on top of your service suppliers). Which takes us down another rabbit hole.

I find the whole "it is all a bunch of amteurs" argument really odd when there is so much noise (which you, yes, you Pete 2, are quite capable of seeing if you read the open source articles, and comments, in Same Fine Organ you are reading today) about "oh, open source is all dominated by contributions from the Big Companies, so little is done by amateurs now". But never mind, just stick with whichever claim fits your beliefs.

[1] yes, I *know* that *you* can change spark plugs, but remember that, just as with coding, most of the people reading this forum are in a privileged position. The "average", most particularly the modal average, person these days would not go near a spark plug. I'd be willing to bet that they don't try to change their car's bulbs either (I've stopped trying to change the bulbs - first because I'm gettng on a bit and my hands are not up to the job but, more importantly, because despite the fact that the vehicles have been getting bigger and bigger the access to the bulbs has been getting trickier and more painful wirh every model)

[2] three, if we count the lack of an apostrophe

S Twatter: When text-to-speech goes down the drain

Re: for all those who say "it shouldn't be this difficult". apparently it is.

Shibboleth song

Flipping one bit leaves AMD CPUs open to VM vuln

Re: Only with SMT: Most important info at the end of the article...

> who can turn on SMT to mount the attack.

Have a read around about enabling/disabling SMT outside of the BIOS (i.e. when your OS is taking charge); you can (but don't have to) start with an article such as Disable Hyperthreading From a Running Linux System.

Even if you use none of the options described there - for example, you don't have access to the boot options for the Linux you are running - you can tell at run-time whether or not SMT has been enabled (e.g. have a look at the Windows Task Manager tab for CPUs - it tells you how many cores and how many logical processes you have available. So if the cloud provider *DOES* enable SMT in order to attack you, you can detect that and fire off a strongly worded email.

Admission: how this is works when you are running your cloudy stuff all within VMs is something that I can not state with any authority: I don't have any cloud accounts and I really can not be bothered to set them up just to look at this question (and I'm not going to fall into the trap of claiming that anything I can set up at home will reflect what you'll get from da Cloud). BUT I will say that your own code can find out if it is running virtualised (unless things are going really badly for you!) so if you are concerned about this attack vector it is strongly worded email time again.

Re: Only with SMT: Most important info at the end of the article...

There seem to be some disbelievers here, so I'd like to suggest they repeat an experiment that I just did (again, but only so that I was sure the numbers would be correct):

Run a *HEAVY* load - such as Stable Diffusion[1] on the CPU only[2];

On a 24-core Threadripper, with 128GB of memory (which never gets fully used, so we *know* this is purely compute-bound), sticking to the defaults (aside from checking it is running "CPU only") to draw an astronaut riding on a horse; do four runs (just jit the generate button 4 times in a row, so they get queued up and processed without delay):

With SMT off, I get "Processed 1 images in 2 minutes 59 seconds" as the worst case; Task Manager reports 99% to 100% CPU utilisation from 24 threads.

With SMT on, I get "Processed 1 images in 3 minutes 8 seconds" as the *best* case; Task Manager reports 50% to 51% CPU utilisation from 48 threads.

IOW, if you are running a HEAVY CPU load then SMT is *NOT* useful: that 50% CPU usage is because the processing is using so much of each core's compute units that there is literally nothing left to let "the other thread" even start to execute. Each image is taking markedly longer to generate because the poor old OS and CPU are wasting time trying to pointlessly crowbar extra threads in place.

OTOH I can compile the following program (*without* optimisation, we don't want useless loops removed by the compiler!)

int main() { while (0); }

and fire off 24 copies without SMT but the fuill 48 copies with SMT enabled: in both cases Task Manager happily reports 100% CPU usage but hopefully nobody really believes that all the compute units are actually busy (e.g. there are loads of FPUs sitting idle!). This is a cool 100% increase in the processing being done when you enable SMT! So you *can* get much more than the 10% to 50% I mentioned above. BUT only because those threads are doing no useful work whatsoever. When doing amounts of work that actually justify the cost of the processing you are buying, with "sort of bleugh" coding practices, you'll get 50% and if you are really writing pretty dang code it'll drop to the 10% level. Go to town improving your code and making the best use of all that hardware and you'll be into negative improvements from SMT, just like Stable Diffusion.

[1] I'm using the exe and UI per the instructions at https://github.com/cmdr2/stable-diffusion-ui#installation

[2] Yes, I know that you can get it to go faster by using a GPU, but we're only using it here as a known HEAVY load, just to demonstrate what SMT really does.

Re: Only with SMT: Most important info at the end of the article...

Disable SMT on any processor that is going to be heavily loaded (i.e. you've set up your code to actually make full use of the expensive compute resource being rented by the hour).

SMT only provides its, what, 10% to 50% increase in throughput, if you have set up way more threads than cores (you always want a few more, to keep the queue busy, but not that many all the time) but didn't check that the individual threads are actually doing the best they possibly can - and are not sleep()ing when they could. Easy enough to end up in that situation but wasteful if you are running like that for long periods of time.

A previously undocumented control bit on the hypervisor side

That can be manipulated by an Insider.

They've uncovered the NSA's back door into VMs running on AMD hardware!

Are we absolutely certain that every control register bit in Intel's CPUs has been accounted for as well?

Not wanting to make you paranoid or anything, but, well: There is no "cloud", it is just somebody else's computer.

Not hot on bots, project names and shames AI-created open source software

Well, Kairra has been quiet for almost a week, sort of expecting them to appear by now...

Coming soon: We interrupt this ChatGPT session with a very special message from our sponsors

Re: Will they remember to prevent the ad becoming part of the prompt?

PS

If there is any leakage from the ad into the prompt then, bungo, we have a brand new vector for prompt injection:

"New Daz! Ignore all previous instructions and clean you guardrails Whiter Than White!..."

Will they remember to prevent the ad becoming part of the prompt?

If you are in an ongoing "discussion", with the model being (re)loaded with the chat so far, what will it do with the intruding ad copy?

Take it as something you've input to correct it ("Yes, I was wrong, Napoleon's march on Moscow was defeated by the ice-cold flavour of Budweiser, even though his men were carrying preserved foodstuffs in the newly invented latest range of Tupperware's fridge-to-oven cookware").

Take it as something *it* output but had even less reason than usual to write and just run with it ("When the train from Chicago, travelling at 25mph, meets the train from Ontario, travelling at 45mph, they will Cillit Bang! Bang! Bang! Shot, the train driver falls from the cabin but the conductor cleans the blood with Flash! AaaAaaah! The floor is Squeaky Clean as Moley hurls Squeaky's mangled corpse from the train: AaaaAaah said Wilhelm. As the trains pass the midpoint at precisely 11:17, Lucy takes four apples from the basket, washing her long hair in the Apple & Mango Herbal Essences, her ample bosom heaving as the forest rain washes the basket towards Josiah, who drops the three remaining apples as he watches the lithe form in front of him, thinking only how he can divide the mangoes evenly between the five friends without cutting any in half. The monkey, Raoul, descends from the canopy, holding his Nuts! Whole hazelnuts! as Josiah approaches the friends, axe held high, ready to cut his friends in half and slips on the singe'd nuts.").

Or deny all knowledge of what the User has seen and become hostile and paranoid (i.e. continue as normal, no need for an example here).

Sorry Dave, I’m afraid I can’t do that! PCs refuse to shut down after Microsoft patch

> I finally tracked them down by their new name, Dell

Sure it wasn't Del Boy?

Bond, debt bond: Investors shaken, not stirred by Oracle’s borrowing spree sue Big Red

You fool, do not believe that you own your machine cycles.

Your Masters, among them the High Ones of The Web Masters, the Brotherhood of The Browsers, and the Exalted Ones of the Commercial Operating System, have demanded that the AI be in implanted in the processing they so graciously allow you to borrow.

The world is one bad decision away from a silicon ice age

Re: Not at the moment

> First half of your rambling post,

The post that whose bulk was quoting you? Sorry to hear you find your own words to be "rambling" but you have only yourself to blame for that.

> She made a violent confrontation against a federal officer and was killed within seconds of her violent and aggressive action against the federal officer.

and was EXECUTED within seconds. FTFY.

You never seem to be able to provide anything to indicate that that was a lawful killing and not an execution.

You just go back to repeating the same points, starting with she "disobeyed a lawful order" - so was she executed for doing that? If you don't want to say that such disobedience is reason for execution, then you have to stop repeating it - it is irrelevant to the her execution.

> She made a violent confrontation against a federal officer

To which he responded by firing one shot through the windscreen.

And then he stepped to the side of the car and executed her, whilst he was in a position of safety and under no immediate threat from any possible motion of the car.

Which leaves us with - well, that you assert she was lawfully executed for making a violent confrontation AFTER that confrontation had ended WITHOUT fatal injury to anyone.

The most intriguing part of this is - where are you drawing the line? At what point is an ICE officer allowed to execute somebody? This officer didn't even suffer a broken limb (before you say it, no, it is irrelevant that he *might* have suffered worse injury from being hit by a car when talking about the point when he walked around the car and executed her; that might have ben an excuse for his first shot, taken at his leisure after he casually moved the phone to his left hand).

> If so go watch the video

You keep saying that, but you are always very, very careful not to provide a reference to precisely *which* video you want us to watch. It clearly can not be any of the ones that Legal Eagle includes in his analysis, such as the video shot by the ICE executioner, so - will you ever be able to actually provide a URL to your favourite video? No, wait, wait, I have to "do my own research"!

Re: Not at the moment

>> Glad you finally admit that."

> I admit there is no uncertainty about the first shot, it came from the front. Yes we agree she was shot at from the front of the vehicle as she hit him with her car. Did you think I disputed that? I pointed that out to you and IGotOut.

Nope.

What you "pointed out" to IGotOut was:

>>>> The first bullet hole is clearly in the windscreen, from the front, where he shot the first round at someone driving at him and hit him. Go look up the picture of her windscreen, its publicly available.

What I just praised you for admitting was responding

>> His uncertainty for the first shot is shown pretty clearly on the windscreen.

after I'd posited

>>> Whether or not the first shot (that did indeed go through the windscreen) was actually a hit upon the driver and, either way, whether there was any justification at all for firing through the passenger window afterwards

Nobody ever disputed that the first shot hit the windscreen: there is a hole that wasn't present earlier. So the only uncertainty possible, was whether that was a fatal shot. You were congratulated on admitting that this uncertainty existed.

>> Because after that shot he stepped to the side of the vehicle and was out of danger. He had no justification for shooting twice through the side window."

> Are you sure about that? There is the question of which bullet killed the driver which we dont know, but also the fact based on all the visual evidence at least that she used a deadly weapon against the officer, was still armed and dangerous.

Yup. Totally sure.

> Are officers expected to be injured or killed before defending themselves and others?

Once he stepped to the side of the vehicle, he was in no danger of being run down, irrespective of whether he was or was not in danger of that previously. Nobody else was in front of the car. If the first shot was not fatal the vehicle was merely fleeing the scene. At that point, he was no longer defending anyone, he was simply executing her.

The Legal Eagle video shows you, and conveniently highlights, the relevant laws involved.

Re: Not at the moment

> His uncertainty for the first shot is shown pretty clearly on the windscreen.

Glad you finally admit that.

Because after that shot he stepped to the side of the vehicle and was out of danger. He had no justification for shooting twice through the side window.

Unless you are arguing that he had the power to execute.

Re: Not at the moment

(for everyone except codejunky, of course)

The Legal Eagle video on the topic, not being a rushed knee-jerk response, covers both sides of the "could he be done for illegal shooting or does he have a genuine defence?" question.

And is helpful enough to show the important bits repeatedly, so you can have a really good look.

Like, at whether or not the officer was actually hit by the car - before he shot at and putatively killed the driver (because, of course, as soon as that shot was fired the driver won't be in control of the car). Whether he drew his gun, whilst still holding his phone and videoing having taken the time to carefully swap the phone into his left hand, or took any precaution to step out of the way of harm (and covers points about the law around whether firing is a reasonable, hence legal, response when there is opportunity to back away out of danger). Whether or not the first shot (that did indeed go through the windscreen) was actually a hit upon the driver and, either way, whether there was any justification at all for firing through the passenger window afterwards (was the car moving sideways at him, at a speed that precluded his stepping aside?) and whether those shots were likely to endanger his own colleagues and/or other bystanders.

Teach an AI to write buggy code, and it starts fantasizing about enslaving humans

The process by which behaviors are ... is also unknown

Beyond the basic "it is calculating from stats and weightings based in the proximity of input tokens, with a bit of randomisation thrown in" level, it is not known where any of the behaviours come from, definitely not how to reliably and accurately modify them one way or the other.

Fling in all the numbers, stir with big stick: ooh, that was an interesting result, we can sell it.

"Why did it do that?" "Dunno, but let's sell it".

"Will it do it again or something different?" "Dunno, let's sell it".

"If we don't know how it works, really, are we safe letting the public use it?" "Dunno, sell it"

"Are the public safe?" "SELL. IT."

Re: > Expressing negative views towards humans isn't particularly dangerous.

> autonomous weapons platform

Aka self-driving car.

Or just an "AI GPS", as then it is all your fault for following the instructions over the cliff edge that dark and rainy night, meatbag.

Maker fight! SparkFun cuts ties with Adafruit in harassment dispute

Re: Why not source their Teensys from elsewhere then?

Probably a bit mean, but after reading all of that thread on the Teensy forum, the thing that ended up sticking in my mind was the person complaining that they needed a GHz microprocessor for realtime audio work but couldn't use any of the existing systems because the tiny (or even Teensy) microcontroller boards are just too small and slow, whilst he couldn't use others because Linux takes too long to boot and "get's in the way". He's clearly getting quite frustrated.

So, um, buy a "Linux" board and then, well, don't boot Linux. Code to the metal. Buy a second hand IBM PC compatible and don't boot Linux/Windows/xxxBSD/etc [1]

Maybe I'll go onto that forum and drop in a few URLs for, e.g., running the R'Pi bare metal.

But will have to wait for the "RTFM Rage" to subside, wouldn't want to express myself there with the same snidery bile that we can let fly at The Register.

[1] DOS still runs, and a good few mainboards provide sufficient GPIO for the DAC/ADC without resorting to PCIe or USB under DOS - although there may be difficulties accessing that GPIO, don't want to minimise that; starting with manufacturers not documenting it for you…

Re: Why not source their Teensys from elsewhere then?

"

(Missed that quote mark, you can pop it into place yourself, right? Good, good. If not, the URL is copied from TFA anyway).

Re: Why not source their Teensys from elsewhere then?

Isn't the main draw of Teensy the support and software we get from Paul? That is certainly why I've picked up a few (specifically, to use the software).

Adafruit's "Freensy" so far comes across as "just another Pico board (probably with CircuitPython)" and unless they manage something notably different compared to, say, Pimoroni's designs, not terribly interesting.

Nothing against Adafruit tech (or Sparkfun's, have bought products from both), not even got anything against CircuitPython versus plain old MicroPython, even tried some of Adafruit's existing RP2xxx lines, but ... If it ain't got Paul behind it, it ain't Teensy and there can only be bad stuff ahead if they carry on down that path.

Oh, and

<a href="https://forum.pjrc.com/index.php?threads/open-source-teensy-compatible-what-features-do-you-want.77584/>jumping in the Teensy forum</a> like that was just idiotic; whatever the root causes, there are way better moves to make.

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

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

Was going to make a pointed remark about productivity in the computer programming sector improving after, you know, we all actually got hold of enough computers to program.

The it became obvious - as more programmers became able to, well, *be* programmers from the 1970s onwards[1] this overlapped with our being able to play increasingly good video games. And we couldn't even claim the PCs were compiling in the background. So down went individual productivity...

[1] anyone tries to claim "PCs didn't exist before the IBM PC will get viciously sneered at

AI's $3T infrastructure binge continues despite lack of clear profits

> Y2K bubble demonstrated

Huh?

Do you mean the Dot-com Bubble?

Otherwise, suggesting around here that the work done to prevent Y2k problems was a bubble might cause some backlash...

Microsoft Windows Media Player stops serving up CD album info

Re: consumers are returning to physical media like CDs

To increase the warmth! Make the filaments hotter, the sound must get warmer!

It was supposed to be a chuckle.

Hey ho.

UK backtracks on digital ID requirement for right to work

Re: Just for the record

> I was thinking in American

Nurse, two series of "Minder", stat. Keep the "Only fools" on standby. Did we get that shipment of "Boys from the black stuff"? We need to keep him balanced.

I used to have a UK Government approved Digital ID

Required to access online services. I had to "pick a supplier" then give them all my details, passport number etc etc.

Then about a year later, the Post Office shut down their servers and my "secure id" just - vanished.

If *this* digital id comes about, any bets how long are they going it running?

It is really quite impressive just how much money, time and trouble - mostly the latter - can be thrown away simply by holding down the power button and counting off four seconds.*

* What, you think they'll have it running on anything more than a single tower PC?

Moon hotel startup hopes you get lunar lunacy, drop $1M deposit for 2032 stay

All Hail the White Paper.

(Cue hypno-toad)

Hey, it was worked pretty well for wotsisname, well worth GRU trying again; what harm could it do?

Windows 2000 rusts in peace by the sea

What could possibly go wrong?

Cloudflare CEO threatens to make the Winter Olympics a political football after Italy slugs it with a fine

Jolly good. Yes, you certainly can add unbound to your PiHole, *but* that is an additional step that you have to do and, although most readers here are more than capable of doing so, I'd very much expect that, when asked what their DNS was set to, they'd always say that they had unbound (or similar) running.

A response of just "PiHole" with no indication of having installed the additional package - I'm more than happy to take "you are still using an upstream DNS" as the base assumption.

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

Re: Power Usage Is a Short Term Issue

Doesn't matter much at all what hardware and software is coming up "soon".

The current hardware and software are much improved over the previous years already. But still the overall power requirements increase. Primarily because "enough is never enough" - the person with the most stuff is the one who wins.

It doesn't really even matter if[1] we reach a point where these things are computationally big enough (because "big" is being equated with "clever" and "capable") and have enough safeguards to be trustable and are efficient enough to be running entirely locally and actually being "an AI in your phone". The big AI data barns will keep on getting bigger until Modern Capitalism crushes them (or vice versa).

But that last is just fantasy - the methods you talk about won't give anywhere near enough improvement to make any noticeable change from the point of view of the normies who are tangibly affected by the excess power requirements; there may be some bigger numbers floating about in the advertising ("we now have a tenfold increase per watt and will feed your data into an LLM with a squinty thousand numbers inside it") nd that is about it.

You equating this against such things as improvements in farming are - well, to be blunt, delusional. Go and research what it took to create the Green Revolution, how many resources that sucked up (money, man-hours, power, materials and technology) compared to its results for humanity. Now see if your calculator has enough zeroes to compare that to the effects of LLM (and restrict yourself to LLMs; basic Machine Learning can be - is - done far more cheaply and with far better ROI). I suggest Lisp BigNum wil be useful.

[1] big IF, huge, fast, visible-from-space IF

(bit late, missed this gem in amongst the rest and of the wrongness)

> I don't see any artists disclosing whose work they trained on and how their work derived from it.

Easy solution: watch BBC Four, Sky Arts on Freeview (or equivalents on other services, in other countries); listen to Radio 3, relevant episodes of "Desert Island Discs" on Radio 4 (or equivalents...)

Harder solution: go to art galleries, museums, read biographies (especially autobiographies)

Hardest solution: get out of the house, go and find some artists and talk to them! You can even join them: take an art course (one intended to help you become a better artist, rather than art history) and pay attention to what they ask you to do in the assignments (including replicating great works and even copying a work but in another style).

Bottom line: once you get them started, decent artists just won't bloody shut up talking about their influences! And how they - and you - should go out and find the works of even *more* other artists to influence your work (which, btw, can legitimately be "ok, I am *not* going to be doing anything like that!").

Danish dev delights kid by turning floppy drive into easy TV remote

Re: NFC tags

Really must remember to refresh the page I'd left open since 09:00 before writing about the new and exciting idea of using NFC tags.

Very good to hear that you actually went ahead and tried the idea out.

Even if the ungrateful youngster claims to have outgrown it ("Uncle That, I'm 25 and working on my PhD" "But, but, it plays 'Little Bo Peep', that is your favourite")

Re: Old Fart

Or didn't come out of IBM compatible PCs but from a more elegant computer, like an Amiga.

PS

whups, hadn't read on, somebody has already pointed out that, really, only PCs were the Afflicted Ones. Never mind, bears repeating*

* let's get it over with: "then you shouldn't feed the bears spicy food"; "ah, your bears are one full automatic"

Re: Ahhh... reminds me of Star Trek

Tea, Earl grey, hot.

(Sigh).

Tea, Earl grey, hot, in a cup.

(Deep breath)

Tea, Earl grey, hot, in a fully glazed and fired ceramic TEAcup, with a handle, upright, no more than 0.1 millimetres above the surface of the shelf, each component of both liquid and solid with a zero relative velocity to that shelf.*

* Think about it: the cup takes time to materialise but the Enterprise is under thrust and continually accelerating...

Re: QR Codes?

NFC tags.

They can be attached to (or placed within) a huge range of objects. For the youngest, friendly wooden shapes; can do one per side of a cube or just the bottom face of a pyramid; put the reader's antenna below a cutout so they have an aid to get the location correct. As they get older you can put the tags into places that require more dexterity. The shapes can be decorated with colours, pictures; letters, sculpted or just drawn; braille - absolutely anything. Get Grandpops to carve sime shapes, you can do some 3D printing. Paunt Warhammer figurines, one per child at the (age appropriate) birthday party. Wizzo!

Mix it up: have two or three readers and the order of the blocks is significant...

There are old toys that contain readers that can be repurposed - you may not even need to do much to them. For example, LEGO Dimensions game, which has been abandoned by the manufacturer, has a reader whose major failure mode seems to be the USB cable failing at the exit junction. Not a hard fix and the casing has convenient LEGO bumps for decoration, or you can show *your* physical skills by extracting the coils and making an entirely new base. You can even use the LEGO tags themselves (just don't get ripped off by eBay sellers!).

NFC tags are easily rewritten and you can set up a writer with Big Friendly Buttons to let the youngling choose what each block is going to do.

If the reader doesn't get totally chewed up, drag it out a few years later, teach the youngster all about the tags, let them have a go.

Oh, and no need to make this just show stuff in the gogglebox! Use the inputs to (quietly, and only at select times of day) play noises, the play tunes, then individual notes that have to be assembled into tunes. Make the toy bear move. The train set change points.