Posts by Lord Elpuss

"Yes, people of European ancestry are between 5-10% of the world population and shrinking."

So where are all our subsidies, queue-jumping permits, mandatory quotas for promotions and other free stuff?

Don't you come here and disrupt our DEI kumbayah with your logic and facts. Begone with you.

Nope. I did get a mental picture of Dr Cuddy from House though. Mmm.

"These anecdotes, where someone - anyone - has used ChatGPT and "it didn't solve the problem, but I came way with a new idea" make me wonder if they could get the same result by using "Rubber Duck Debugging" and a random choice of new approach to the problem by, say, drawing a card from Brian Eno's Oblique Strategies deck[1]. Cheaper, far fewer resources needed."

They quite possibly could have achieved the same result in a different way. This in no way negates the point though; ChatGPT is one of many tools that can provide useful information IF prompted correctly AND if the responses are fact-checked and verified, and/or used as a 'feeder idea' to generate other lines of thought.

Related note: remember the harrumphing from the academic classes when Wikipedia was launched? News sites were replete with examples where 'experts' had reputedly quoted verbatim from the "encyclopedia anyone can edit", and ended up embarrassing themselves by quoting or promoting obviously erroneous information. Point being, Wikipedia is also a tool, useful in it's way but fallible and requiring thought and care when interpreting the 'conclusions' it brings; AI, and ChatGPT, is in this respect the new Wikipedia.

"It makes up the citations too, and be honest, you don't bother checking them."

So check them. It's not ChatGPT's fault you're a lazy fucker who can't be bothered to fact-check the output - in that respect it's no different to asking your know-it-all mate down the pub if he knows how xyz works, he gives you a bullshit answer and you roll that into your university thesis. And then flunk your finals because the professor actually does know what he's talking about.

A bad workman always blames his tools; it's your fault for not fact-checking, and you deserve everything you get.

Interesting. In Europe you can call 112 without a SIM, without it being unlocked, while roaming in a different country, and without access to your home network. Didn’t realise the UK was different.

"And if your phone uses a soft sim, you're just screwed."

Not really. You can just disconnect it/not enter the PIN code when asked. Then it's there, but not connected to your account.

Me too :)

Re: HP

"About two or three months later he reached out to me to ask if I was looking for work because he had an opening in the team."

Sure. For 7 figures, I'll prop you up. And for an extra 500k, I'll even take the fall for you.

Let's see how deep those desperate pockets go.

Re: Being polite is great

"I'd have done it a little differently. I'd have given them a figure for a day rate and swung the lead with it."

Exactly. Be polite, but always know your value. Desperate people tend to have deep pockets.

Re: "And to this day, the more he dislikes someone, the more polite he is towards them."

"My motto is "May The Bridges I Burn Light My Way"."

I don't burn all my bridges; some I leave standing for nostalgic reasons. But I have never regretted a single bridge I did burn, even if to an objective observer it would have appeared to be a bad choice. Sometimes it's better for your mental health to just strike that match.

Re: FUCK the king twat

Crikey. Which Royal peed in your cornflakes?

Re: Unscientific anecdotal sample

"However, a mate of mine who's been drinking at the koolaid fountain for a while says that older phones generally struggle on newer releases of the OS after a few years"

Never noticed this, and we've always had older iPhones in the family. My 11 Pro is as fast as it was new, in fact if the camera was a bit more up to date I wouldn't be thinking of replacing it. The only one that's truly slow these days by today's standards is the 5S, but that's been out of support for years now and it has a dying battery which no longer supports peak performance.

"many apps insist on the latest version of the OS"

Some secure apps such as banking do indeed ask for the newest (or newest -1) version of the OS, but most will let you go back several generations. And given that it's typically 7 years or thereabouts before the newest OS stops being supported, this is not generally a problem.

"...and use changes to ask for new licences"

Not a thing, and never has been as far as I know. Sounds like a bit of FUDraking to me.

Re: Many of us by used iPhones

Yeah I got that, but begs the question why when a phone with an internet connection can offer so much more. Unless you enjoy going Luddite-mode.

Re: “it's very difficult to measure the replacement cycle at any given point.”

"Do all fruity phones have to be signed into an iCloud account these days?"

No they don't. But the vast majority will be.

Re: Many of us by used iPhones

Begs the question - why have a SIMless SE2 in the car and not just connect your SE3 when you need to? A SIMless phone is only getting 10% of the value of CarPlay unless you tether it to a hotspot, in which case why not just use the hotspotting phone as your main phone?

Re: "illegal under international law"

"Now, you can, and probably will call this 'whataboutery'. It's ok for Budanov and his Special Needs goons to assassinate political opponents because currently, he's our nazi. "

Don't misunderstand me: the other cases you mention may well be equivalent, and may well be equally unjust; they're just not relevant to Navalny's case. Whataboutery is not about casting aspersions on the legitimacy of the other cases, it's about saying that they have no bearing on the discussion at hand. Classic example, Trump and Biden. Every time an article is posted on the criminal charges faced by the morbidly obese Cheeto, some idiot will pipe up in the comments saying "B-b-b-but Have you seen what Biden's done? HE's the real criminal!" It may be true. It may not be. But it has no bearing on whether Trump is or is not guilty of the crimes for which he has been accused.

Re: "illegal under international law"

"Put up, or shut up. All your doing is demonstrating the abysal depths of your imagination. I reported the last post, but hopefully a mod can step in and confirm I've made zero posts to this topic as an AC."

Jellied Eel you and I disagree a lot on this forum, but I believe you're not AC. You and I have differing views, but AC is just shitposting.

Re: "illegal under international law” @Lord Elpuss

It’s irrelevant to Navalny’s case. For an AI bot, you’re not really on top of your game here.

Re: "illegal under international law"

” The Democrats are currently in the process of trying to make sure an ex-President and Presidential candidate either dies in prison, or is bankrupted. You don't see any hypocrisy?“

I’m not American, so not only do I not see any hypocrisy, I legitimately do not care. Your political games are irrelevant.

” But the reality is he's dead, and until there's an investigation, nobody knows why.“

It doesn’t matter why. He was unjustly imprisoned in a gulag; that’s enough of a contributory factor to make the State guilty of murder, regardless of whether he died of poison, stabbing, tiredness, excessive flatulence or old age. It. Doesn’t. Matter.

” You may not have heard of an American citizen and journalist by the name of Gonzalo Lira”

It’s irrelevant to Navalny’s case. To claim that here is whataboutery, one of the weakest and most transparent last-gasp arguments of a failing debater.

Your entire counter argument amounts to “Don’t look here, look over there!”. It’s pathetic.

Re: "illegal under international law"

"As for Navalny, there is currently no evidence that he was murdered."

You mean, apart from the whole locking him up in a Siberian gulag on manufactured charges thing? Even in the utterly unbelievable scenario that he died of natural causes, he was still murdered by the regime.

Putin apologists are despicable. Jog on.

Re: Arguments

I can say with absolute certainty, based on your drivel here, that yes I am in fact a better human being than you. товарищ.

Re: Arguments

"The whole situation in Ukraine is due to provocation by the US."

It saddens and worries me that humans* like you are walking the earth.

*_{possibly stretching the definition}

Re: "illegal under international law"

"So was invading Ukraine. So is murdering Alexei Navalny. That doesn't appeared to have stopped Putin in either case. So why would it stop him trying to put nukes in space?"

It won't. What might stop him though is the suicidal damage it would cause to his own and his allies' infrastructure in space. Space nukes are very, very effective (see also: Starfish Prime) but they are indiscriminate and have far reaching effects; including a high energy electron cloud that persists for months after detonation, destroying or damaging any non-hardened electronics it comes into contact with. Even Putin's not mad enough to put his own country back in the technological dark ages just to prove a point.

Re: Game Theoretic Analysis

"And the winners write the history books."

I remember reading somewhere: "isn't it incredible that throughout history, the Good Guys have always won."

Re: Violent Elizabeth Putin

"Wild seeing Trans people grouped alongside Putin in your example but go off I guess."

AC is still right though. At least as far as the rabid militant activists are concerned.

Speaking from the deliciously ignorant platform of Haven't a Clue, I would assume that yes they would cancel out; smaller antennas are as capable of damaging smaller electronics as larger ones are with larger electronics.

But I don't know. We need somebody with radio engineering expertise here.

True, however the antennas are only small because the electronics they're attached to are also very small; and thus very sensitive. When you're talking about a system with 25 billion transistors on a single chip (e.g. the Apple M3) then a voltage spike doesn't need to be very big to cause chaos.

I'm not a radio engineer, but I'm pretty sure that while the wires in electronic devices may be small, the electronics they're attached to are even smaller; and thus even more vulnerable.

I would say the EMP risk to systems has got larger, not smaller.

Re: It's nuts but

There are a ton of reasons why not, but nothing that's likely to bother the multi-chinned bowl-cutted dictateur du jour who - let's be honest - isn't the most stable of isotopes at the best of times.

Re: A Kodak Moment?

Well, quite. Apple are a lot bigger and more influential than Kodak ever were, but the point is still valid; you can be the best, most innovative and most efficient company; but if you're delivering last year's product instead of next year's, you're still going to die. Having deeper pockets doesn't change the outcome, just the timeline.

Re: Yes, you really are the product

Not with my use case, you didn't.

Re: Yes, you really are the product

Doesn't work for my use case. Or age, quite frankly. I'm 3 years off pension, and not up for trying a new OS at this stage.

Re: No problem

"You can't use Android if Apple is mandated by your employer."

Very true. But that's not to say that you can't use your work equipment purely and simply for work, and buy other solutions for personal use that work for you. That way, any productivity or usability issues are the company's problem and not yours.

Back in the days when I worked for IBM, we were issued ThinkPads and a Nokia 6310i. The Nokia was brilliant. The (IBM-built) ThinkPad software image was shite. There was no differentiation by jobrole, so everybody had laptops with 30-odd startup items, of which YOU would use maybe 3. The rest was just bloat slowing everything down. I remember Intranet Labor Claiming (ILC) as this angry little red icon sitting in the taskbar that was completely useless to me as I didn't use it in my job, yet regularly consumed 100% CPU and brought everything to a standstill.

Because it was a company laptop, I stopped stressing about it. Just explained to my boss that ILC crashed my laptop AGAIN, and the tech spec that needed to be at the customer by 3pm had been lost. They'd now have to wait until after the weekend, but that's really not my problem. Sorry. Enough of those kinds of situations, and bosses higher and higher up started to put pressure on to get us some decent kit.

Last I heard they'd moved to MacBooks. That was after my time though.

Re: The core truth...

""...the idea that users could install safe and secure apps that Apple can't tax, block, or control is terrifying to them""

Yes this terrifies them. But to be fair... any marketplace is only ever going to be as secure as the curators can make it; which for PWAs is sweet bugger all.

Re: Killer App & Price

True - I misunderstood the original point.

Having said that, Apple has already demo'd Object Identification, and to a lesser extent has integrated it into iOS and iPadOS. It has also demonstrated some incredible object locking skills in VisionOS, where tiles apps and info windows are tethered to real-life objects. It's not a great leap of imagination to combine these two concepts; they can do it now, it just needs to be actually done.

Re: Killer App & Price

"The trouble is that all of those "killer apps" are "twenty years away"."

Some are right here, right now. Watch Marques Brownlee's review of the Vision Pro, and look for the bit where he has a lifesize 3D rendering of a Formula 1 car in his office; with infographic callouts and floating blueprints. The Vision Pro is capable of a LOT of sci-fi things, today. The question is whether they can be translated into actual use cases rather than interesting curiosities.