Posts by Rafael #872397

I am, technically, a robot

Beep boop let's kill all humans, starting with the ones in marketing, then lawyers.

"Noice internet you've got here. It would be a pity if it was invaded by pirates, ads, criminals and bad web designers".

Re: Free Speech Absolutist

"A democracy is when I boss you around. A dictatorship is when you boss me around" -- Millor Fernandes, a Brazilian writer, journalist, humorist, and playwright.

Re: At the rate Japan's population is shrinking

Round it down to 2525 (if man is still alive...)

AI Feng Shui Expert

Why not?

"Your model ch'i is misaligned. That will be US$ 20K."

Re: If you don't know how to interpret the code the LLM comes up with

You could ask another LLM what's wrong with it. With the proper tools (and prompt engineering!) you could even let them talk between themselves, discuss the code, fight about indentation and language preferences, disagree about variable names, and just stop working together because their partner is an a**hole. Just like real meatbag programmers!

Then you can add a third LLM to act as the group's leader and a fourth as project manager and see what happens. It'll be LLMs all the way down!

Re: The enshittification continues

"Our records show that you've accessed our site seventeen trillion times this month. That's why there are $1497,45 missing from your account".

Re: you just slap Microsoft with multiple Billions of £$€ fines

It looks like you're writing a lawsuit. Would you like help? I have all the information that is required...

Re: "Demurrage can de-incentivize the hoarding of money"

I am quite sure the rules will be different for meatbags and companies.

Re: Humans are still worse than AI

Check out the Feijoada (pork and bean stew) and Pudding flavored beers at https://revistabeerart.com/news/repense-cerveja-gastronomia

I'm sorry. I'm so sorry.

Re: Answered your own question

its maker, Borland, wanted a little extra if a customer planned to distribute the binaries.

My father bought me a copy of TP4.0 from a trip to the USA. If I recall correctly, for around $50 you got the compiler and a big honking manual with ALL you needed. I had a lot of fun with that.

Some years later Borland released TP5.5, and then Borland had an official reseller in Brazil. I recall they had some discounts for users of older versions. I called them and asked about the discount and a very naughty representative told me that since I bought my version outside Brazil it was not considered a legal copy (!!) and I would have to pay the full price for the new version, which was way outside of my budget. Thus, a pirate was born.

Re: Elon Musk and Zuckerberg fight

We have CGI. We have generative AI and deep fakes. WHERE THE HELL IS THAT MOVIE???

Re: Take responsibility

Don't use drive, but do use Onedrive (cos the 6 user deal is brilliant value for money)

Always store locally, and preferably on multiple computers

My take on OneDrive: started using it for the same reason, and used the same procedure. I was using it to synchronize three Macs (work, home, and laptop for travel).

After some time I noticed that some of the files were not stored locally -- any attempt to open them required downloading. Also, the OneDrive app on the Mac is slow as hell, kept "looking for changes" or similar bullshit. Also, it crashed *silently* from time to time, making the computers out of sync. I got plenty of different versions of files that were out of sync.

Aside from the crashes, beachballed with an alarming frequency. Searched for solutions online, and almost all the suggestions were on the line of "reinstall and resync", which would take days.

I am evaluating Dropbox now, at least it is faster -- and more expansive, but honestly, the time I spent faffing with OneDrive was way more expensive for me.

Re: A first?

"We enjoyed running the vetust Windows ME"?

Re: Kids nowadays ... Sigh!

ChiWriter. That is all.

"Zoom did not use customer audio, video, chat, screen-sharing, attachments, or other communications like customer content (such as poll results, whiteboard, and reactions) to train our AI models,"

Which is just too bad. They could use my audio+video+chat to create an AI version of me to attend endless virtual meetings while I sleep or goof off.

And what about my flying car? Won't somebody think of the children and make it safe first?

Re: Not very good, and not of any use indeed. Try again in 10 years.

Or not. Remember the whole frenzy around 3D televisions?

Re: What I cannot understand ...

People are saying that it is the BEST EGO that there is. Believe me.

(closest icon to whatever the f*ck is on his head)

Re: rm -r *

I want to play ITPTSD too!

I was an intern in a university department that had the ONLY PC with a 10-Mb (go ask grampa) hard drive in the whole university. And it was used by some assistants to run Lotus 1-2-3 or similar (tell grampa I said "hi"). We used that computer at night to develop some very simple tools with Turbo Pascal (better not wake grampa again).

One day we got to the office and there was a herd of office workers around the machine looking puzzled because "everything was missing". We discovered that one of them inserted a 5.25" floppy disk and typed "format c:". "Are you sure"? "Why, yes, I am sure".

At the end of the day, the boss was talking to us about the importance of backups... lesson learned.

Re: I know how crazy this is going to sound, but...

Great, now "The Galaxy Song" is playing in my head. At least it is drowning the strange clicking voices that were there before....

Re: Because now it is going to be built on generative AI!

How sad it is that NFTs are already forgotten!

Short, shameful confession

I keep punch cards (the ones I used at the university!), 8-inch floppy disks, and such in my office, in a small museum/shrine. Recently I got hold of some Jaz disks and some hard disks for 1980's computers. I'm still looking forward to buying a ZX-81-like model we had in Brazil in the 1980s...

Old fart icon because...

Re: the blather about curated news

Even all adblocks cannot stop some news sites from showing "sponsored content", ads disguised as news. In a Brazilian news site there were lots of ads for "NFT, the future of investments" or similar bullshit.

Speaking of this, where is Kevin Warwick nowadays?

I was going to say "any branch of any government" but you beat me to it.

I have zero sympathy for the advertisers themselves getting scammed.

In fact, what are the adult sites displaying those ads? I'd like to visit it regularly to help the scammers in their noble cause of taking money from advertisers.

Re: That Ye guy

Obligatory Tom the Dancing Bug: https://www.gocomics.com/tomthedancingbug/2022/12/09

Re: Perl is confusing

I'd say. I still cannot understand why is there a "unless" statement, and why "use strict" is not a default feature :-)

Re: It's always six months away

Plus, at this point who'd want Musk in their brain except for the doofs who still worship him in spite of the Twitter debacle?

Those are probably the same ones willing to drill a hole in their heads.

Re: Simple Compromise?

Just for reference: the basic iPhone 13 mini costs 699 US dollars in the US store. It sells for 6599 Brazilian reais.

According to Google's currency converter, 6599 Brazilian reais is 1257.34 US dollars.

I know that there are many taxes on electronics in Brazil, but at that price range, they could at least include a voucher. The charger bought separately goes for the equivalent of 36,39 dollars.

Icon because you can get lots of good beer in a local pub for 36,39 dollars.

Re: "Businesses should dump Windows for the Linux desktop"

Some 20 years ago I was teaching CS at a local college and was managing a laboratory with Linux machines for the programming classes. The computers had just the basics: a text editor, one free IDE, browsers, etc.

The lab worked great for our purpose.

Some people in a local branch of the government got wind of this and decided to copy the idea to save money on Windows licenses. After they converted one of their labs their boss came to visit and asked about the software they planned to use, and I got a frantic call asking "where can we download Autocad for Linux". They got really upset when they learned that they could not run all their applications on Linux as if it were a free, compatible version of Windows.

(icon for the "20 years ago" bit)

Re: Wow !!!

SMBC is wonderfully weird! I strongly recommend "Science: Ruining Everything Since 1543", a collection of cartoons you can read for free on the site *plus* amazing short interviews with some scientists and writers.