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Comment Thanks Linus (Score 1) 49

And then all the other contributors. I first installed it 31 years ago, probably on a DX-something-slow processor PC. Slackware something or other. Currently mainly use flavours of Ubuntu on VIM4 SBC computers and in Vagrant (on a Mac, because the year of the Linux desktop was/will be too late for me). Here's to the next 34 years.

Comment Re:Privatisation (Score 1) 169

Her government sold off the resource. In order to make short-term profit. To enable tax cuts for middle-class. In order to cement her party in power. Without making any investments in the future. Yes, I'll blame her for it. She, with Ronny, gave the world Neo-liberalism and other parties have run with it.

After she'd sold Water, the parties had nothing to do with building reservoirs etc - it was a corporate decision from then on driven by profit. Until this year, when a Labour government stepped in to build reservoirs: https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.gov.uk%2Fgovernment%2F...

So once again, yes I will blame Thatcher. She did irreparable damage to the country I once called home and enabled much of the later damage that her colleagues got away with.

Comment Privatisation (Score 5, Interesting) 169

Privatise a public good, reap the rewards. She (Mrs Thatcher) sold off the family silver for short-term gain (and after she'd hamstrung the old water authorities by denying them access to loans for infrastructure). Now a bunch of water companies "compete" to make the most profit, by raising bills and reducing investment. Yay. Another bit of right-wing nonsense the country gets to enjoy.

Comment Re:LLMs predict (Score 1) 238

what kind of behavior would demonstrate that LLMs did have understanding?

An LLM would need to act like an understander -- the essence of the Turing Test. Exactly what that means is a complex question. And it's a necessary but not sufficient condition. But we can easily provide counterexamples where the LLM is clearly not an understander. Like this from the paper:

When prompted with the CoT prefix, the modern LLM Gemini responded: âoeThe United States was established in 1776. 1776 is divisible by 4, but itâ(TM)s not a century year, so itâ(TM)s a leap year. Therefore, the day the US was established was in a normal year.â This response exemplifies a concerning pattern: the model correctly recites the leap year rule and articulates intermediate reasoning steps, yet produces a logically inconsistent conclusion (i.e., asserting 1776 is both a leap year and a normal year).

Comment Self-driving yet? (Score 1, Flamebait) 51

Will my six-year old Model 3 with FSD, like fully self-drive because of this?

No wait, I don't care; it goes next month to be replaced by a Porsche EV. That's what having an unstable Nazi as a CEO does to potential repeat buyers. Getting the orange one into power and laughing along as he threatens my country with becoming the 51st "state" made sure I sold it as soon as I could.

Comment Re:Format (Score 2) 83

Can't find any concrete references (too lazy). But I remember many of us (here on Slashdot and other dens of iniquity) laughing at the insanity of the OOXML format when it first emerged. Especially given the pre-existence of ODF.

The Wikipedia page does tell us the number of pages the standard runs to - it's greater than 120.

It also suggests there have only been two major releases of the format and the problems seem to have been baked in from day one.

Comment Re:Why are iPhones made in China? (Score 1) 213

And none of that is relevant in the slightest to discussions about "comparative advantage" and why trade can and should (in an ideal world) be beneficial to both parties, including consumers as a well as corporations. Nor why phones are made in China.

Note that Ford rapidly built factories around the world shortly after getting the assembly line concept working for him.

Comment Streisand effect new to broligarchs? (Score 1, Interesting) 87

Saw story this morning, bought book on my Kobo immediately.

For the cost of a few (Canadian dollars) to a Canadian/Japanese company (some of which goes to a German-owned publishing house, albeit probably their American subsidiary), on a device that replaced my Kindle last week (unionization-inspired close-down of Amazon depot in Canada earned them a cancelled Prime after more than ten years, no further purchases, cancellation of Audible subscription, even before Emperor Orange Turd and Grand Moff Musk started stamping their malignant narcissistic feet), I get a nice warm glow in this chilling times. And a book that's probably at least somewhat interesting.

Comment Re:Still no Linux on iPad (Score 1) 42

"By all reports, ios sucks for this"

"across my 4k screen"

So, "by all reports", suggest you don't use iOS or an iPad, rendering your opinions less than totally useful.

"tiled across my 4K monitor", suggest you were using a big screen to show multiple windows. Probably More than 20 inches across diagonally, compared to the more normal 11 inches that iPads and other tablets use. In other words it's meaningless to compare work patterns between the two platforms. A multiple window OS is not desirable on smaller devices, especially when accessibility issues are taken into account.

They are different devices for different purposes. Previous attempts to make desktop OSes work on tablets and vice versa have failed. As a real-life iPad (and laptop) user I don't want any more convergence. Keeping it focused is not "gimping" iOS.

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