Posts by tiggity

Re: Nah

Indeed, I know quite a few women who tried BlueSky & their accounts got banned for saying things opposed* to the general group think on that platform.

There are massive biases on all the platforms, at least if things were truly decentralised and you could have one account & use multiple social media platforms** then would stop a particular site acting as a gatekeeper as you would only be banned from that one site.

* Feminists generally making comments revolving around basic biological facts such as a man in a dress is still a man & should not be in female only spaces.

** if you must, or maybe don't bother. El Reg comments generally the nearest I get to social media.

Re: Just another example...

@Headley_Grange

Do you realise how difficult & time consuming it can be to make sure anything defamatory is removed by analysing things manually?

If you automate it then you get lots of false positives & irritate your users (& still probably miss some banned stuff) .. e.g. context analysis is key, use of the "N" word in a friendly manner between 2 black users is totally different from it being used by a non black user in an insulting manner toward a black user.

.. Try automating content analysis on e.g. a rape survivors group forum, would be masses of "red flag" content using automated analysis.

Then we have the challenge of Foreign language comments (not sure how admin of a small group is supposed to deal with that) - automated translation is not perfect and the "translated" English version may not seem a problem but possible the "Foreign" original did actually have a problem but poor translation meant the English output seemed hassle free. Have to say, not looked at the ruling in detail but I hope you could have a reasonable argument at not coping with non English content.

By many real world stories big companies don't care much about false positives as I hear lots of complaints from people about posts unfairly removed / suppressed - but most users of big sites seem to put up with it - but users are more likely to leave a small niche site if their posts are auto banned than one of the "big social media sites"

Re: Fire, retrain, redeploy

@AC

"An "ideal" job is forever and without much effort, because "experience"."

Experience is very useful- often the reason why initially at a company an employee is really struggling to do their job, but with time they gain the experience of what the job entails and become far more productive. In many roles where the work is complex its factored in that employees will initially not be very productive.

"AI" will not improve things for tasks that are really complex (& likely make things worse by "confidently" spouting something that is totally incorrect)

But hey AC, feel free to volunteer for an OP by an "AI" robotic surgeon... personally I will trust the human surgeon* with years at medical school followed by many more years "learning on the job" from more experienced surgeons.

* Not perfect - a lot of medics are not as good / clever as they like to think they are ** but better than "AI"

** My first degree (second one was computing related) was biology related & shared quite a few classes with medics.

@phuzz

"It's been obvious since the start of the computing industry, that eventually everyone who wanted a computer would have one, and we have definitely reached that point (probably 5-10 years ago tbh)."

Plenty of low income families would still like one (or more) but cannot afford them in the UK - as many schools discovered the hard way during lockdown when they found lots of kids did not have suitable kit for online work.

But, in reasonably well off countries, demand probably met for the more affluent sectors of society.

MS are trying their best to force unwanted hardware refresh cycle with the W11 debacle though.

... Plus there would be all sorts of demand in less wealthy countries where a computer is still aspirational for a large chunk of the population.

Re: "the seventh-largest political party in terms of seats in the House of Commons"

Might not be a protest vote - may be genuine Reform fans.

I'm a socialist, so in UK, not going to vote Tory, Reform etc. However, with Labour being Tory-Lite they are not an attractive option for me. If there had been a socialist party in my constituency they would have got my vote* & it would be a genuine vote, not a protest vote, as party most reflecting my views.

I would not be surprised if plenty of former conservative voters saw Reform as better representing their views than the Tories - never underestimate how much racism is (often barely) hidden under the surface in the UK

* There were no decent options in my constituency so I had to do the least bad option from the parties that were standing

Re: There are more and more of shit like this

@Dan 55

Indeed, would be really good if there were (very large!) financial penalties for incorrect / malicious copyright takedown requests, it does often get used as a way to silence people and / or monetize other peoples content (i.e. not a genuine mistake, but malicious use), especially because your average YT user has no way to contact a "real" person at YT and get malicious takedowns removed.

Re: Really?

Have W11 on work machine.

Slower (work laptop was originally on W10 & "upgraded" to W11 - so all the performance sapping / resource hogging stuff such as telemetry, AV & other security stuff, VPN etc was already there). Post upgrade performance was noticeably worse - this was noticeable immediately post "upgrade", so not down to applications getting updated & slowing things..

Teams even worse on W11 than W10 - though that could of course just be down to updates to Teams and unrelated to OS change, as with it being a work machine no control over updates to software as centrally controlled. so cannot hold off updates that have a bad rep

Dumbing down of configuration, trying to hide all the most useful stuff and instead only exposing config "apps" with limited functionality

Most "useful" (to me, YMMV) options on W10 right click menu options are not present on W11 right click, you have to drill down an extra layer to get to them.

This may seem trivial but PITA when you have "muscle memory" of how to do stuff, over course of a day lots of extra time wasted.

I hacked reg settings to get around this - the small stuff like that is the most annoying in daily use.

Re: People use it more than we expected?

Maybe they consulted AI before implementing it and the AI reassured them there would be low usage?

Re: We all know that 'AI' is not really artificial intelligence.

I like the classic Bertrand Russell quote about confidence.

"The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts"

Sadly too may people equate confidence with competence.

Re: apathy to AI services

@Like a badger

The guardian is happy to call a man in a dress a woman, so not too factual there. *

* As one of my degrees is biology related & I have spent more hours than I can remember in anatomy labs as a student (you begin with an intact preserved cadaver, by the end of the course just a skeleton remains as a group of you dissect it gradually over the course) & so can "sex" a body just from a skeleton (never mind a more complete body, which is even easier).

Thus I get irritated by gender identity presented as "real" as, like it or not, we are all stuck with our genetic sex & all the dressing up, (non ethical, IMHO) surgery & (again non ethical, IMHO ) use of hormones is not going to change someone's anatomy & physiology in anything beyond the most superficial ways.

Re: It's not very small, it's just very far away...

Indeed

I do a lot of walking and enjoy wildlife watching.

If I see a bird flying, unless it is conveniently near a tree or other geographical feature (so unlikely if it is "overhead") it can be very difficult to get an accurate idea of range (& thus bird size)

Only way for distant birds is to get bins on it (assuming its too distant for naked eye ID), can then (unless its something very unusually rare & unexpected!) ID the bird species*, & from that work out the size**.

So generally, for "overhead" birds its ID first & only then do I know the size

* Assuming scenario of bird(s) not calling as obviously sound can help in ID.

** Does not always work, as beyond a certain distance can sometimes be a struggle to be 100% certain on ID (e.g. the classic "commic tern" dilemma - observer could not be sure if an arctic or a common tern)

Re: I always wondered...

I have an Android phone

I use the calendar

.. Though in the most unexciting way possible ... *

I use it to give me a reminder on what evening to put out the various rubbish collections.

,,We have "refuse", "green waste" and "recycling" collections, however these are not all collected each week and not all collections are on the same day, plus the fun of collection days all changing when bank holidays anywhere near a given week, so there is a valid reason for this calendar usage** (especially as its one of my household chores so I get grief if a collection is missed & if it happens to be a collection where multiple weeks to the next one can end up with overflowing bins).

* Unless some other commentard has an even duller use

** Due to this level of planning I have ended up as de facto "binfluencer" on our cul de sac, with neighbours spotting what bins I have put out & then doing the same. So far I have resisted the urge to deliberately put out the "wrong" bins and then swap to correct ones at 2 AM

Re: What's the alternative?

Federated / metasearch tools are worth a try (though cannot easily craft precise search queries with a metasearch engine as just fires same query at different search engines & they don't all follow same rules on use of - " site: etc.)

Re: Sadly not a item of bad englishes

Though the author of the piece you linked to is from the US ... They take quite a different approach to English usage* than many of us based in the UK do.

* No noun that can't be verbed and all that!

Re: Doing the impossible

@Pete 2

Plenty of opportunity to make some of those interesting e.g.

Unit 1 - Fundamentals of algorithms

No avoiding some maths, but could let the kids know the (often bad effects of algorithms) from influencing what they see on social media, to the ads they

Unit 2 - Programming

Creating something interesting is limited mainly by the programming skills and creativity of a pupil

Unit 6 - Cyber security

Create some honeypots, let them attack them. Turn the tables, they have to defend a system from attacks. Get them to look up some of the great content on real world red teaming

Unit 7 - Relational databases and structured query language (SQL)

Bobby Tables (unless you did it in 6!)

Unit 8 - Ethical, legal and environmental impact of digital technology on society

All sorts of interesting avenues to explore, from cyber stalking, surveillance society, lack of privacy, dubious practices (ranging from child labour, unsafe conditions etc, through to environmental damage) involved in some raw materials used in electronics, could add in the latest tulip boom (AI) & potential environmental damage from extra power generation for all the extra processing (never mind initial training being processing (power) intensive)

So a good teacher, could add lots of interesting stuff, though may well be the usual problem of timetabling where amount of course content to be delivered in time available does not give much time leeway to expand beyond the dry facts.

Although the exams changed over time, the continual issue of timetable restrictions making it a struggle to teach bare bones of curriculum tends to lead to dull teaching (it was the same in my day, same when my daughter went to school, I doubt it will change any time soon)

Re: Alternative

I use a wallpaper app on my work PC as that (compulsorily) runs Windows - one I wrote myself. It sets APOD as my background daily by default on start-up, but if I don't like that image, I can give it a "kick" and depending on settings I choose it will grab content of mine from Flickr, UnSplash or other image stores, or if I really fancy a bit of variety it will grab content from ANOther from one of those.

No spyware / security issues & works flawlessly (it also does other bits & bobs such as optional image resize or tile if image smaller than screen, adding descriptive text to the image etc.)

One day I should get around to publishing it in a public repo, but that will be a long time from now*.

* Code was thrown together quickly as a test of using various image APIs** & though it works with no issues, the code needs a tidy up before it goes in a public repo with me as the author (as its essentially still original created at high speed proof of concept code)

** POC of a flexible way of calling multiple image stores from same frontend (common API, various arguments, including the image store to use and behind the scenes translates that to appropriate API calls for that image store, injecting creds as necessary as POC was for a "generic" image grabber ) but using same selection criteria as much as possible (e.g. my content, other content, keyword searches, date searches, popularity etc) - APOD did not really fit into that, but I just like my daily astro images!

Re: Yeah I don't get it

OCR has always needed a manual check, lots of misidentification can occur (classics would be letter O and zero, lower case letter l (& sometimes i depending on image quality) and a one etc.)

A long time ago I did some handling of OCR output (back in the day when OCR lacked any "smarts", so some of the things I did then that are now done by some OCR implementations) and usually did basic error handling afterwards* (e.g. if a letter appeared amongst a series of numbers, then convert that letter to the likely number e.g. l to 0, similarly a number amongst a series of letters, then convert number to likely corresponding letter. Followed by running final output against a spell checker.)

So, could see the point of an "AI" trying to do similar post processing work.

* Not appropriate in some cases, e.g. if pulling in a series of serial numbers (or similar) which often had mix of numbers and letters then no point with a lot of the logic.

Re: Why would they bother?

@ForthIsNotDead

.. and as for NordStream, plenty of (credible) voices arguing that was a false flag operation, but the instant accusations against Russia are what stuck in most peoples minds.

Who knows what the truth is behind this incident, but again with initial accusations against Russia, that is what average person will remember (as if it turns out to be usual anchor drag style issue you can bet there will not be big headlines).

I'm not saying Russia are wonderful, innocent, honest & trustworthy (the opposite would be more accurate), but sadly "Western" governments are not really any better - it's lies & misdirection from all directions, but anything that happens that is unusual tends to instantly produce a politically useful "blame the bad guys" response rather than a more honest "we don't know, we may find out after further investigations".

Re: So let me get this straight ...

@Doctor Syntax

I think supporting evidence for alien life is obviously going to be a problem (certainly with current technology).

However, given life has occurred here*, & the huge number of possible planetary systems out there, we have to assume a high likelihood of alien life elsewhere (but the same maths of huge size / numbers of planetary systems & likely extreme difficulty of a civilization surviving and developing interstellar travel also makes visits unlikely as, if such a thing has occurred may be a huge distance away).

.. Though if there are alien races capable of traversing those huge distances, I wonder if "disaster tourism" is an alien thing, if it is they will be flocking here in their droves to watch a species do its best to trash its planet /environment.

*albeit our planet has advantages such as plate tectonics, temperature allowing liquid water, magnetic field to ward off lots of nasty radiation, etc. that have made conditions (relatively) stable for many hundreds of millions of years (so helpful to complex life development) but that may be relatively rare (but big numbers so will still be lots of earth like planets**)

** We only have life on earth to work on, but cannot ignore possibility that very different (not necessarily "carbon based") forms of life may develop on non earth like worlds***

*** Boltzmann brains enter the mix .... not even going to dream of opening that can of worms

Re: And other social media?

@Khaptain

Though it has changed a lot in what you can get away with.

I remember when at school, decades ago, lots of us around at a party (kids parents away), a female & I had got "intimate" in one of the "out of the way" rooms.. However, part way through one of my friends opened the door & saw us, slapped me on the arse as a laugh & to try and put me off (& called to lots of others to see too).

Although lots of people knew about what had happened, & gossip around school the next day in true wild fire style, with no mobile phones at least there was no video / photos of such an event, I would imagine kids these days have to be a lot less restrained in their partying to avoid the risk of problematic phone footage (maybe that's partially why drink & drug use is relatively low in recent generation compared to years gone by to keep self control* in such situations).

* Though given my excessive libido & hedonistic tendencies as a sixth former, doubt my party hard approach would have changed much if mobiles were around back then!

Re: $125k in baguettes

The original article already slipped in a dough pun.

Re: Dumb

I recently purchased a "dumb" TV from Cello (UK company)

Though not sure if they do big "dumb" TVs (this was a small TV)

Re: Done some things, not done others

@AC - excessive fuel prices in UK are less due to "green altar sacrifices" than to letting big business gouge the UK public.

None of the "essential utilities" should have been privatized, the UK public have paid the price in monetary terms (and in other ways e.g. rivers / coastlines awash with sewage)

@TheMaskedMan

TBF, the "that was ... This is..." type of DJ is often* a lot less irritating than those DJs who chat excessively .

* A rare few talkative DJs are entertaining / informative, but far too many are just wasting time that would have been far better spent just going straight to the next track.

My vinyl gets played (coincidentally, currently deciding whether to upgrade cartridge on my old Pro-Ject* or go all in and get a high end turntable rather than a budget one.

Ironically I gave one of my picture disks away to a friend recently (who is captain of a team I play for & usually drives us to matches with no payment required, so it was a thank you gift).

.. as they do not have a record player, so it won't get played any longer (though I think it will be displayed on the wall - picture disk being used as a picture)

TBF, they are a big fan of that particular band and and have all their music on CD, but like many people these days don't have anything to play vinyl with.

* The old, no frills P1 model

Re: I can do that without an app!

@MachDiamond

"Let's see, I have an app to:

Keep lists of what I need at the store (food, hardware, auto parts). No more managing bits of paper"

Is it that difficult to have a piece of paper in your pocket?

My shopping list manages fine on paper (a bit of IT involved as have a typical "weekly big shop" document* & print that out, crossing out with a pen stuff not needed that week)

That way when I go to the shop I have zero need to look at a phone (& no phone visible means no way for local low level crims to clock my phone & try and nab it as a change from shoplifting)

* Yes, the lists is as geeky as you would expect based on the several shops I typically visit for a weekly shop, products ordered on list based on visiting shops in a most efficient order, and for each shop ordered so that it is an optimal route in the shop, no doubling back to revisit aisles**

** No issues with the small shops such as greengrocers, deli etc, but stuff I get from supermarkets is a pain as they keep changing layout far too frequently for my liking so I periodically have to edit the product order for those items that are supermarket only as old route becomes sub optimal with layout changes.

I switched bank precisely because old one had closed nearby branches, a local(ish) branch is important to me as I don't want to use an app or website for financial transactions.

Lots of people CBA doing that and so are forced the digital, low customer service route.

..trusted web proxy

@Lee D

If I want to install an addon that can alter all sorts of things then that is done at my risk - the browser is welcome to give me hideously dire warnings about possible security risks, but should not prevent me installing what I want, at my own risk.

If I install backend software to do "blocking" I still have to put some trust in at that stage instead, e.g. if I run Privoxy I could look at all the source code (just like I could for browser addons such as UBO etc) but probably won't, I will just "trust" it (albeit with safety of knowing plenty of technically skilled people will have inspected it, but we all know code inspections do not always spot every issue))

So, risk no matter what stage I have some "adblocking" functionality, and for non technical users I would guess a browser addon is far more likely to be used than e.g. proxying software (& setting it all up), also if we think about "easy" options such as Pi-Hole, for those using ISP low functionality / locked down routers, then adding a basic "1st level" protection such as linking up a Pi-Hole may not be easy for them.

Browser addons are a (IMO) a good way for your non tech savvy relatives to have a safer browsing experience (& I know from bitter experience if you do something more complex for them, if anything ever goes wrong on their system (even though totally unrelated, e.g. a classic "break lots of things" dubious MS update) they always blame you ... so I long since stopped being IT tech support for relatives! ).

Given that websites are flinging all sorts of nastiness at me, then I would sooner use a browser addon I trust (to some degree of trust) rather than just let a website fling all sorts at me & be unable to do nothing about it (we assume I have no backend protection for sake of this argument, i.e. bog standard user).

Disclosure: I use UBO, NoScript & other defensive addons, plus some backend IP/DNS filtering too, but backend stuff not much help when some ads / nasty content served from DNS I may want to allow (tempting as it is (as lots of malware makes use of Cloudflare & similar CDNs to appear innocuous - a Cloudflare URI serving content looks more trustworthy than e.g. evilmalware.com URI) So I cannot ban all Cloudflare IPs as some sites I want to visit use it, hence NoScript is useful for fine grained control as I can see what is served from where and choose to allow (or not) script from a cloudflare URI).

NoScript is, for me, the most important browser addon for security reasons (with heavy use of JS in ad serving it also indirectly blocks a majority of ads)

For me ad blocking via UBO is secondary but mainly for

1. Performance - no / few ads makes a big difference to navigating around the web.

2. Stops pages jiggling around - with async loading, many web pages "move" as yet another bit of ad related content is loaded, this jiggling around increases likelihood of clicking on the wrong content (as page rearranges itself just as you click, so you click on something you did not want to). By having an "immobile" web page without async ad loads, it reduces chance of an accidental nasty click.

3. A long and indefensible history of ads being used to serve malware, so basic sensible browsing to try and protect yourself (if ads had remained, few in number per page & as a small bit of text (or image) with a link then there would be no need for all this, most of us only began to block ads when it became a JS frenzy with large amounts of large space consuming ads per page)

@graeme leggett

Maybe someone is a fan of Jamaican lager

Not sure about the robots of the night learning thing - the improving with practice is all well and good, but could be a bit unpleasant for the first few people it trains on!

Re: Public opinion?

@Dom 3

"I buy bottled water for my coffee machine (else it dies in six months)."

You could try descaling your coffee machine.

I live in a very hard water area (the nearby peak district is scenic, but limestone rich)

I just give the coffee machine periodic empty runs with citric acid dissolved in water (way cheaper to buy that in bulk than to get proprietary descaler products, & you can get it in food standard quality, but do need to ensure machine thoroughly rinsed through a few times after as, food standard or not, you don't want a high acid content drink!)

Descaling periodically can be a PITA, but it avoids the plastics issue of using lots of bottled water...and occasional descaling always useful to keep the machine internals healthy even if your water is not super hard as buildup just takes longer to kill your machine in areas where water hardness is not really obvious.