Posts by 0laf

Googe gif search nastiness

Other unpleasant weirdness..

Just yesterday following a conversation with my significant other about coffee I put the word "cortado" into the Google GBoard gif search on my iPhone.

I was expecting gifs relating to a short milky coffee.

Instead I got fairly graphic gifs of people cutting their arms/wrists/legs and other forms of self harming.

After 30min of searching I found some sort of feedback to report this behaviour.

Checking now it's still doing it (not that I thought Google would do anything after my message). The only idea I came up with is that "cortado" means 'cut' in Portuguese.

But why a UK English phone brings up wrist slitting instead of coffee I don't know.

A normal google image search doesn't show anything like this.

I'd be interested if anyone else sees behaviour on GBoard this or if it's just my phone that is fucked up.

The need for most people is gone or going. The PC was the gate to the printer but now QR tickets on phone are now being widely accepted so you don't need the printer and if you don't need the printer you don't need the PC wired to it.

A PC on/under a desk with a big monitor and a full sized keyboard is still the best device to do work on. But for a lot of people they're not doing heavy number crunching 'work' they're doing a bit of typing and devices are coming which will allow them to use the big screen and keyboard without the big box.

Continuum could have been a winner there if MS wasn't so fucking awful at being innovative as opposed to selling licenses for slightly updated version of the same shit for the last 20yr.

Gamers will still like a big box, tinkerers like me will still like a big box, but we're a shrinking minority.

Facepalm

Typical C-level / vendor response. Never minds the basics look at the shiny.

I think the NHS needs to get its shit together on its IT foundations before getting hot and wet over bleeding edge AI and robotics. Or it'll probably end up as a literal bleeding edge when the AI isn't patched and they have to pay some Russians 3 bitcoins to decrypt it.

I think, that the problem with driverless cars will always be liability.

If I as the driver will always have to be liable for the actions the car takes, and therefore will always have to be alert, sober and able to take control then really what's the point. As it's been demonstrated if I'm observing the car drive and not driving I'll quickly lose concentration to the point of not being able to take over at short notice even if I'm not asleep.

Until I can pass liability to the manufacturer and at that point climb into the back of the car blind drunk and go to sleep after slurring "home James" then I struggle to see how this can be used practically.

MS likes to kill its kids doesn't it.

WinPho8 was actually pretty good at what it did, but MS couldn't quite be bothered to put the effort in to compete so it died.

Now Cortana, admittedly I pretty much hate all of these assistants but at least Cortana would read out my texts in the car by shouting at her. Siri won't.

Then there was Zune

How many abortive projects has MS had over the years? They must have pissed billions up the wall.

Thought it was the Ruskies. Could you just pick one bad guy please?

But the Norks don't have sell anything the Muricans will want to do in house. Not like Kasperski.

They're not just looking for random enemy to continue the perpetual war as a distraction from Trumps dementia, and excessive state control of populations are they

I remember being a young impressionable student at an undergrad open day at I-Can't-Remember university.

And some post-grad bastard thought it would be funny to throw liquid N2 at my bollock region. No harm done but I wasn't amused.

I did do science at Uni which was probably a mistake because it's hard, jobs are crap, short term contracts and poorly paid.

When I got my BSc(Hons) you could get more working on tills at Tesco than in a lab. And at least the job at Tesco was permanent.

If you can find it... Radio 4 did a new series of the old C4 comedy sketch show Absolutely.

They did a skit of "what if Facebook could talk". It was quite good at highlighting how stupid FB really is.

Well duh

Of course you're being profiled.

You can see it clearly when it makes suggestion to you. And the company will analyise this for a few purposes. The one we'd all be ok with would be to help with the selection of new shows and films.

But then we'll also be analysed for other monitising opportunities.

I'm sure it's only a matter of time before we have to pay extra to avoid adverts on Amazon or Netflix.

Automatic profiling has a specific mention within the GDPR. I wonder how Netflix etc intend to stay in compliance with that. Or if they intent to try to trade in defiance of it.

When I was a kid the most boring thing around was waiting your turn to play a computer game with your mates. Now people are making millions from other people who are queuing up to do the thing the rest of us tried to avoid doing when growing up.

I like you tube for a few things but not much. Old music videos and tracks that are hard to find. Funny dog and cat videos and idiots eating very hot chili peppers.

Nothing shocking. Most Gov departments have hundreds of certs all bought by different contractors at a different times registered with random addresses and no central record of what is where and running out when.

It'll be increasingly common to see these errors in the future as everyone has jumped on the https bandwagon for and will likely have lost all the data for the certs.

Is it just me that really doesn't see much to get excited about here.

It's a variation of a laptop / transformer 2 in 1 type thing that's been around for ages. It got a sim slot which lots of things used to have for a while then they went away becasue everyone was tethering and now it's back and that's a big thing, apparently.

And it's using a different processor than usual but then who really gives a toss as long as it works ok.

So it's got kindof meh features, kindof meh big/small and it's meh powerful for a kindof meh price.

People who want cheap things will still buy a clunky underspecced celeron laptop and then complaint about it. People who want faster things will buy a surface 4 and then complain about it. People who like shiny things will buy a macbook of some variety and then curse internally.

Meh.

" widower lost her husband two years ago".

It's doing a lot more than raising eyebrows if widowers are a 'her' there.

I think only the truly desperate are buying winmob.

We bought in heavily and are now paying the pricing having to shift over to android.

Winmob actually worked well for us for it's purpose but lack of supply and support means we're escaping as fast as contracts allow.

Personally I liked the OS but again lack of support was the killer.

MPs will be data controllers in their own right so I wonder if the ICO will be investigating this blatant failure to comply with Principle 7 of the DPA.

I suppose MPs are too important to be bothered to follow the infosec awareness training they will have been provided. But then will access to some of the UK's most sensitive information it's not like they'd be a target or anything. It's not like Damien Green's alleged porn habits might have been used by a less scrupulous foreign government to blackmail him.

Noooo sure;y nothing like that would ever happen

Except for Google. Because that's good snooping which you will want.

But they'll try to stop the bad snooping, unless it makes money then it's good snooping.

Just ask Amber Rudd she'll tell you why you don't need to worry. She can make the electric magic only do nice things that Amber wants. And everything Amber wants is nice.

If you disagree you must be bad and you'll be taken away