Posts by heyrick

Yup, +1. I clicked on the article to wonder why the EU had managed to mess up so badly.

But, no, the rights were not screwed.

Maybe it's an American thing, like the different interpretations of a movie "bombing" at the box office?

Re: The problem isn't that Musk isn't wrong in his answer

"However it is not its business to do this to the world."

While I can understand the Australian government's wish to have the videos taken down and the arguments that Australia's jurisdiction ends at its border...

...let's not lose track of the sight that Musk is fighting this using the American "anything goes" approach over a video of a terrorist attack.

What a cunt. This should have been taken down on grounds of decency and a less problematic target chosen.

Re: Car wash mode

If it can't handle a car wash, it probably wouldn't cope with the rain around here. It doesn't rain often in this corner of Brittany, but when it does you rapidly understand why the ditches beside the roads are at least half a metre to a metre deep.

Which means it's a bit of a crock of shit given that even the weird little Citroën Ami can cope with our rain.

Yes, this sort of thing was mentioned in an episode of The 3 Body Problem, that the ship commander guy wasn't too enthusiastic about the ship (especially its fuel consumption) and he said if he was in charge he'd not gave made a fancy expensive ship but would have commissioned a load of drones instead.

Makes sense, though. Ships are big, slow, intimidating, and need lots of people to make it work. But it's about fuck all use of your enemy has a couple of hundred self piloting drones with explosives attached. We've seen (in new years light show displays) the sort of control a drone can manage. A bunch of those things weaponised could be extremely damaging if inflicted against an unsuspecting populace. Set it to home in by GPS, fly below anybody's radars, and deploy at the same time, and it'll all be over before anybody knows what "it" even is.

Warships? Fighter jets? What use will they be? Those are things from an era when the enemy was countries. Half the time these days the enemy is an ideology with no geographic boundaries.

Re: How the great rewiring of childhood is causing an epidemic of mental illness

"let mommy check your food is the right temperature"

You're joking, right? Please tell me you're joking.

Oh, Christ, you're not joking, are you?

<cries>

Re: It's Zuckerberg

Problem is, politicians cost less than megafines.

Re: Bummer

What stood out for me is the 4G support. It seems quite a few of the basic cheapie phones are 2G...which is fine for texts and calls and no frills, but not quite so fine given that 2G is running out of road.

Re: Palantir In The NHS???

The problem is, the definition of who is a goodie and who is a baddie changes depending on which way the wind blows. For instance, it seems as if a worrying number of Republicans like Putin (still)...which about seventy odd years ago would have been an abrupt career ender.

Re: Vardøgr

"when I have reached for the phone well before it rang. :)"

That's the old GSM/GPRS signal interfering with things. Like "duuuh duh-duh duh-duh duh-duh duuuuh", yes?

I've done the same thing, by hearing that and knowing somebody was in the process of trying to call me.

I think you were hearing this on older phones because 2G uses amplitude modulation for low bandwidth data, like text messages and "are you there?" requests, and that coupled with the frequencies in use would induce interference in unshielded cabling (like to speakers); but this is a dim and distant memory so take with a heft of salt.

Re: Goodbye to "Personal" computers

"system compatibility is no longer a issue: at worst, you just select a different supplier."

Far too many English councils would like a word with you...

Re: You asked for it, so here it comes. Step aside if you don’t want nor deserve to be crushed.

"collective madness in support of the constantly misinformed and badly advised and incorrectly rewarded and tolerated"

Well, you've just described most (if not all) first world governments.

Can't even say "Vive la révolution" because there's too much apathy these days. "As long as it doesn't affect me..."

Start by kicking Google. This is a problem largely of their own creation.

Why? Simple. Instead of having websites to provide useful content, or to sell actual things, they slowly turned into sites that used paid embedded advertising for financial support. Is it in any way surprising that a few years later we started to see websites appear whose entire raison d'être was to carry adverts to make the owner money? And now, we're seeing the next logical step, using AI to rip off content to make a site superficially good enough to warrant being found by a Google search, but in reality it exists just to punt adverts to make money.

It's a lot like the adverts in Android apps. Once, you had little embedded adverts at the top or the bottom. Then along came full page adverts. Then full page with video. Then full page with video that can't be skipped until some time has gone. Then full page with time delay video that leads to another full page with a time delay and a static GET button. Just yesterday I saw one for, I think it was Alibaba where the close button was fake as was the "Not interested" button, tapping anything would toss you into the app store.

Google make their money on the adverts and probably count this fakery as a successful click, so they won't give a shit, it's all money to them.

As long as our "guardian of the internet", major mobile OS and browser creator, and prime advert flinger are one and the same, this situation will only get worse. But who has the money and resources to wrestle Android away from Google and try to make a less shitty ecosystem? It's a serious question, because my most recent Xiaomi phone has small amounts of advertising stuffed into the system apps now (like the file manager).

The real scourge is not spam, or AI, it's everybody being beholden to the quick and easy cash offered by embedded adverts. It's that that is shittifying everything.

Re: Maybe for writing tests ?

Wait a decade. We'll be firmly in the GIGO economy and nothing will work (only manglement will not know because the AI that answers the phone won't work either).

You at in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.

Re: It's complicated.

"It was at this precise moment I discovered Linux hasn't supported miracast since whenever."

I'm not a Linux user so no experience, but five seconds of Googlage found me this: https://github.com/albfan/miraclecast

"when I also had to show that LibreOffice can't be opened in PowerPoint"

Can't it save as PowerPoint? That being said, it's not really a surprise that proprietary software uses its own formats and doesn't really want to play well with anything else. In the FOSS world you're playing games in dealing with the closed nature of the contemporaries.

However, it's good to be prepared for such eventualities, as your post indicates (and I trust the IT director appreciated the foresight).

Re: All ERP migrations are complex

No, I meant pretty much what you said - standardised. Which is probably a better word. ;) I meant "centralised" in the context of one spec that works for everybody determined by the government (in an ideal world this would be done competently and not take two decades).

If it's one provider or a dozen, doesn't matter, they follow the spec.

Re: I'm surprised

"That's the kind of spineless, venal thing I've come to expect from the management at the Post Office."

As is the NDA. You'd have thought, after what had happened, they'd have wanted to be very open and transparent about the new system and, in particular, it's reliability. This "trust us" shit won't work, they burned that bridge in spectacular style.

Re: 'AI', another nail in the coffin of copyright?

I didn't downvote, but while copyright is broken and often enforced badly and/or in ridiculous ways...

...it is generally intended that a creator of content is able to have some say in how that content is used and some form of remuneration for their work/creativity. Now, yes, I know the "company" gets the lion's share and the actual creator gets peanuts, I did say it was a bit broken.

But the alternative - give everything to the world for free and have everybody copy it wherever and whenever? The obvious question to that is why the fuck would one choose to do anything creative in that case? For some people it's not a pleasing hobby, it's their livelihood. It's what they do, from the cute girl with the clipboard standing beside the camera to the dude banging out power chords at an insane pace.

I'm not a fan of copyright, but I don't have any ideas for what would work better (other than not allowing corporates to hold on to one idea for a hundred odd years...).