dcminter

I vaguely remember the RSC doing a Christmas BBC Radio 4 skit years ago the gist of which was repeating "If you're <common phrase>, then you're quoting Shakespeare" for about 20 minutes straight.

Chat GPT and Claude's infuriatingly obsequious ways make GPP seem distressingly prophetic.

The electric monk in Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency makes me a bit twitchy these days too.

I read that recently. Neuromancer I had read before and found excellent again (and in places pithier in the era of AI). It's very quotable too.

The other two were much weaker; of the two Count Zero was least interesting though so at least it wraps up on a fairly high note.

I read the Bridge trilogy a decade or so ago (?) and I must re-read that soon too - I suspect Idoru will hit harder these days.

Ooh, do try "Farthest North" too, about Nansen's North Polar expedition. Quite fascinating and (I found) quite amusing to a modern reader for various reasons.

I generally prefer novels despite having originally got into SF via collections of Asimov stories, but I read the "Stories of your life" collection recently and it was quite stunning. I think "Tower of Babylon" was my favourite but they were all excellent in different ways.

I should get Exhalation.

I liked 1 & 2 a lot (I happened to read 2 before realising that 1 existed and that worked well for me).

3 & 4 I thought were quite poor.

Well in theory I'm reading "Blind Corner" by Dornford Yates, but it's so terrible I may not finish it. I adore Dorothy Sayers and have a sort of forlorn hope that another of the golden age crime writers will have something approaching her flair. In practice this is a third rate John Buchan-ish boys-own bit of tatt. So far. I suppose it might improve.

Instead I'm sneaking off to reread a Pratchett novel (he had very few duds until the Alzheimers really got its teeth into him).

After that/those I'm dithering between SS/GB by Deighton and some other re-read.

For some reason "5", even if constructed as phonemes came out as "frame" - I always wondered why. I've never seen it mentioned in the various short pieces about it online including its contemporary reviews. I wonder now if it was a bug in the particular rom I had and it was fixed early enough to not get much visibility.

In fairness I think a lot of people (me included) genuinely thought that would be an entertaining name for the ship, so the polling result wasn't necessarily wrong per se.

Also using Moto G-series phones for a decade or so now. Seems I have more junk (gambling apps, linked in, etc.) to scrub off them each time though.

I could see myself splashing out on a more expensive phone if it were less locked down - so probably never. However I don't play games and as a Gen-Xer my laptop is where the rest of my digital life lives; it makes sense that those for whom the phone is their primary device would prioritise it more (especially with somewhat predatory financing).

Given the AI-heavy page, I don't think your skepticism was unreasonable.

Dave Plummer's a well known YouTuber. He pops up in a couple of DEC groups that I'm in on Facebook. However I'm not a fan. He seems to take a lot and contribute only self-promotional videos.

The photo on this page looks very AI heavy. I'm not an expert but I really don't think those light panels are real (if they're real they're not contemporary to the machines they're in).

(Edit: I should qualify that I don't mean the panel with the octet switches, that looks roughly right - I mean the one under the 8" disks and the one on the vaguely Vax-pedestal looking thing)

While we're reminiscing, I never did understand why Sun paid a billion dollars for MySQL in 2008.

So far the best theory I've heard was that it was bait to make them tastier to IBM and Oracle - but even that seems kind of weak; had they really given up at that point? Does anyone have a better theory?

To save those browsing the google: "International Conference on Learning Representation" so an AI conference.

> ... what happened?

Seriously?

I have no special insight, but I think this commenter cut to the core of the problem:

> "I came to the comments because the web page for Enzo explains everything except what the hell it does. Then I couldn't understand the [submission] comment either."

I think you need to practice your "elevator pitch" technique before you submit here again.

This is painfully relatable.

A colander would allow the tea leaves through to no purpose. A colander is a type of sieve but a sieve is not necessarily a colander.

If you're making tea with a colander something is very wrong ;)

The Eurovision song contest includes Australia in its member nations. Mindblowing I know, but it's possible for a thing to transcend its name.

I remember Dolphin being a particularly painful one, and as I recall it ended up with some weird compromises (wasn't erasure supposed to avoid needing to update the bytecode format, but then annotations required it anyway? Something along those lines)

Java releases used to be glacial multi-year affairs. Lots of discussion of features that then missed the release train and you knew they'd not be with you for another multi-year period.

They made a conscious decision to switch to a regular six-month cadence and it's been all the better for it. The preview-mechanism has been terrific there too, allowing half-baked features to be aired without absolutely committing to something that turns out to be flawed.

Edit: Ninja-ed by Romario77's sibling comment :)

Perhaps this is a stupid question, but have you emailed the moderators (rather than assuming they're aware of the issue) ?

I think it's usually my IDE. I haven't seen it recently; not sure if I disabled it in a fit of pique, or if it just doesn't do that any more? (/me goes and tentatively pokes F1 on purpose for the first time in decades... yeah, it's the latter).

F1 still launches Help in some apps. I don't think I've ever done it on purpose...

I don't think it's very interesting even if true. I'm not that fussed about copyright infringement myself and I don't consider using archive.is (infrequently) to be condoning their DDOS.

Presumably you are and do. We differ.

They also choose to do nothing about uncharitable interpretations of their inactions. Should they act there too? Or do you prefer the hands-off approach when it suits you?

Rather than telling us that it is telling, perhaps you should tell us what it tells you and why?

> it is perfect to have two brothers and a brother-in-law

This is difficult to arrange at short notice :)

"Cats. Cats are nice."

> Bit of an odd comment overall.

It is, isn't it? Maybe there was a reason? :)

To make up for my tone (which wasn't intended to be snarky but without the missing fact probably came across as such), did you know Douglas once described the experience of trying to get Hitch-hikers made into a film as "like trying to cook a steak by having a succession of people come into the room and breathe on it" which is a description I treasure!