Posts by captain veg 2919 publicly visible posts • joined 12 Jun 2009
> From what I recall the Notepad application was a thin layer above the the native Windows text window abstraction.
Correct. Just an edit control with the ES_MULTILINE style and some menus that sent it various EM_ (and WM_) messages. Almost nothing to it -- which is what made it great.
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I never got the point. Why not just add bash-like functionality to cmd.exe?
When forced to use PS I have been unpleasantly surprised by its inability to understand ordinary DOS* commands. What's that's about?
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*Obviously I don't mean actual DOS, of the IBM, MS or DR variants. Just those commands established by more than 40 years of cmd.exe, most of which were inherited from DOS.
"Don't you hate it when machines can't follow simple instructions?"
Well yes, when interacting with actual machines, and for a given value of "instruction". For example, I hate it when my washing machine won't allow me to open the door, for its own reasons.
"When asked, "If I make a .env file, how do I keep you from reading it?", Claude responded, "You can add .env to a .claudeignore file in your project root. This works like .gitignore — Claude Code will refuse to read any files matching patterns listed there."
"But Claude is incorrect. As described in this Pastebin post, Claude can read the contents of an .env file despite an entry in the .claudeignore file that ought to prevent access.
Repeat after me: LLMs are *not* intelligent. If you ask one a question it *does not* answer it on the basis of truth or knowledge. Its response is simply a statistical extrapolation of your prompt based on its training material. Nothing more, nothing less. Correct or not.
I would seriously like for journalists of all stripes to understand this. It's disappointing that this includes those writing for el Reg.
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"Huntley has documented how he used Ralph to create an a tax app for the ZX Spectrum, and later reverse-engineered and cloned an Atlassian product."
Yeah. Right.
So we're talking about something which is entirely useless and will never be used and... a clone of something which is entirely useless and nobody wants to use.
Odd choice of project, unless you desperately don't want anyone to probe further.
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Is anyone still using this?
Never did myself. When it came out you could still get shareware versions of the original PKZIP, including (for a while) a GUI Windows port, and not much later there was 7Zip. TBH I never got why people went for WinZIP either. The power of marketing, I suppose.
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"Raspberry Pi also touts the new flash drive as resilient, particularly when it comes to power failure. The company says that the drive survived even when being power cycled tens of thousands of times while reading and writing."
As opposed to the 25 power cycles a second available from the mains?
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"[S]uccess with AI isn't just about boosting efficiency or even growing revenue," the report says. "It's about achieving strategic differentiation and a lasting competitive edge in the marketplace."
Never mind the profits, feel the intangible benefits!
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I wouldn't quibble with your characterisation of (many) Vauxhalls, but running-on could happen with any make back then. Carburettors being purely mechanical devices, switching off the electricity stopped the spark plugs doing their thing, but the carbs kept on sucking in fuel as long as the crank kept turning. Which it did if the cylinder heads and.or pistons had developed sufficient carbon build up to glow red-hot and ignite the incoming charge. Which is why we used to periodically perform the ritual of decoking.
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I have done that in the past, but recently I was obliged to virtualise an instance of corporately locked down Windows 11 with bitlocker drive encryption. It simply refused to unlock the disk image on the Oracle-sourced VirtualBox, presumably because the virtual hardware had changed in some unacceptable way. Either way I reverted pronto because I had work to do.
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Ran the upgrade today. Uncannily quick and totally painless, about as far away from the Microsoft Windows experience as you can get.
The desktop changes are immediately apparent, but haven't yet provoked any frustration of annoyance -- again, very un-Microsoft-like.
My only complaint is that I was hoping for a newer version of VirtualBox to improve nested virtualisation for Windows clients, but it's still the same 7.0, presumably because the underlying Ubuntu base is the same.
Might try Wayland again. The lack of keyboard layout support did for it previously. Not sure if I can live without X11vnc, though.
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Parking used to be free in the road outside, but a couple of years ago bays were marked out and a payment machine installed. I wasn't much concerned because I have my own free parking space under the building, but when visitors arrived with their own vehicle I moved mine outside and attempted to buy a ticket for it.
Some kind soul had glued the coin slot shut.
This actually got me off the subsequent fine.
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LLMs don't make up facts and are incapable of making mistakes. They simply predict a sequence of words that probab(ilistic)ly follow on from your prompt on the basis of what was seen in the training data. They have no understanding of your previous interactions, no matter how recent. Each conversation takes place against a tabula rasa context.
Ascribing actual intelligence to this is a category error.
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Interestingly the French con has the same root (yet is in no way taboo, e.g. Le Dîner de cons), but is gendered in the intensified forms connard (m) and connasse (f).
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Yep, and they shot the wrong guy. Maemo was DEB-based, Moblin RPM. Meego got lumbered with the purple helmet and it looks like Sailfish is still similarly afflicted, which is a shame. Still, my N900 was utterly fabulous, and a new Jolla with a physical keyboard, should such an otherhalf accessory emerge, would be quite compelling. I think I know what I want for christmas.
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"X, when it was still known as Twitter before Musk bought it, used to reserve blue check marks for accounts deemed noteworthy and needing protection from impersonation. Musk changed all that in a bizarre bid to make blue checks less exclusive, rendering them nothing more than the mark of someone willing to pay for a premium X subscription."
Shouldn't that read "Musk changed all that in a desperate bid to staunch massive losses due to the sudden exodus of reputable advertisers"?
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> Report and downvote obvious trash.
I wasn't aware that you could do that on Youtube (which I only use anonymously), and I'm a bit sceptical that it would have any effect, but thanks for the tip.
The trouble is that the value of "obvious" is variable. I've had both relatives and good friends inform me that earnestly that "they're going to bring back" various british cars from the 1960s. Probing inevitably reveals that Youtube is the source of this "information".
Spoiler: they're not. It's AI slop, and yet my pals and rellies watched it, so lucre was earned. Why would you not do that?
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