@ghalfacree@mastodon.social
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ghalfacree

@ghalfacree@mastodon.social

#Technology, #science, and #computing #journalist and #photojournalist. #Author, #Microbit & #RaspberryPi User Guides. Custom PC columnist. Bylines Hackster.io, Make: Magazine, The Register, Bit-Tech, Wevolver, Tom's Hardware, The MagPi, PC Pro, & more. For fun, #retrogaming, #vintagecomputing, #scifi. User of #opensource including #riscv, #linux, #libreoffice, #thegimp. He/Him.

Profile listed on #fedi22.

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ghalfacree, to magazine
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A new month means a new @InterzoneMag - and I couldn't have hoped for better weather to sit down with what looks to be another cracking issue of science fiction, speculative fiction, fantasy, and more.

If you fancy being on the receiving end yourself*, in DRM-free ePub format, subscriptions are available on the Interzone site!

https://interzone.press/

  • Subscription only delivers the magazine, good weather not included.

ghalfacree, to random
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I have to ask, Top Trumps research staff... are you absolutely sure that Edward IV was crowned in 1961?

johnl, to vegan
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I'm not keen on making fun of food that helps people eat fewer animals but, no, it really isn't streaky bacon is it.

ghalfacree,
@ghalfacree@mastodon.social avatar

@johnl
I tried that once. The white "fat" peeled off the "meat" as I tried to take it out of the packet.

ghalfacree,
@ghalfacree@mastodon.social avatar

@johnl Ah, I knew I had a picture somewhere!

Yeah, it wasn't great. The texture was weird and the flavour profile was "salt."

ghalfacree, to VintageComputing
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After a bank holiday delivery delay, I finally got the new RGB SCART cable for the Archimedes 420/1 - fully wired, this time.

Still no picture.

Next step'll be checking the sync jumpers on the motherboard, but that'll have to wait until I've the time!

ghalfacree, to gaming
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Just taken receipt of a fantastic gift from my father-in-law: two bags filled with boxed Acorn Archimedes/A3000 games - including David Braben's Zarch!

#Gaming #RetroGaming #VintageComputing #RetroComputing #Acorn

ghalfacree, to random
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"Why are you so anti gen-AI, Gareth," the voice in my head I like to think of as a somewhat critical friend asks. "Doesn't it lower the barrier to entry for artistic endeavours?"

Putting aside questions as to whether typing a prompt into an automated plagiarism engine is "artistic," it also lets people do this:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/czrlr3dw2x3o

What's gen-AI got to do with a failed real-world "experience?" Here's the site:

https://willyschocolateexperience.com/

The whole thing is gen-AI. Built in minutes. To scam.

An image very obviously the output of generative AI, showing a drawing of a garden tunnel light by stars, streetlamps, and the moon, as a decorative card. A banner at the top reads "'Twilight Tunnel' while text at the bottom promises "lightng, dimdicis, dim tight, twdrding, dippractions, dodjection, vivue sounds, enigemic sounds, ungirevel, sviide, emprety, ukxpected twits." For context: the image, with other gen-AI output, was used to promote "Willy's Chocolate Experience" in Glasgow - an event which, unsurprisingly, failed to deliver and which was shut down early on day one.

ghalfacree,
@ghalfacree@mastodon.social avatar

If you are using gen-AI in a project, please don't. Putting aside, again, the ethics of the whole thing, I am now adopting the approach of assuming anything promoted using gen-AI assets is an outright scam.

I doubt it will steer me far wrong, and I encourage others to take the same tack.

craiggrannell, to random
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Medium and Substack spam is becoming a big problem. These sites are going to need tighter sign-up processes if this is more widespread, or people are going to get pissed off.

ghalfacree,
@ghalfacree@mastodon.social avatar

@craiggrannell Yup. I've been added as a reader to a few Substacks, even though I don't have an account there, which is annoying - but I've been added as a writer to some Mediums, and that really sticks in my craw.

ghalfacree, to random
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Google, following the industry trend to AI-all-the-things, has released Magika - a machine learning model which can identify file types. It claims it can outperform traditional methods by 20 per cent.

I pitted it against BSD File on something I figured Google hadn't included in its million-file-strong corpus: CU Amiga's Mega CD-ROM coverdisc from November 1995.

Magika identified... one file correctly, a plain-text document. File? File got 'em all, and quicker too.

(An unfair test, I know!)

A screenshot of a terminal session in which BSD File, a tool for identifying file types without machine learning, is run against the root directory of a CU Amiga coverdisc. Every single file is correctly identified.

ghalfacree,
@ghalfacree@mastodon.social avatar

Oh, and how long did each take to run?

Magika:
real: 0m0.289s
user: 0m1.282s
sys: 0m0.717s

File:
real: 0m0.006s
user: 0m0.003s
sys: 0m0.003s

The Future™!

ghalfacree,
@ghalfacree@mastodon.social avatar

@feld That's fair: my experience of libmagic has (thankfully) been purely as a consumer.

Extelec, to random
@Extelec@mstdn.social avatar

Google please if I'm looking for a technical query, having a popular answer from 2005 maybe isn't a good result.

Also some way of searching or sorting by age would also be useful (for retro stuff)

Just displaying the age of the answer

Oh sorry, you don't care about good results anymore, just who pays the most to be on top, my bad.

ghalfacree,
@ghalfacree@mastodon.social avatar

@Extelec You can search by age on Google - on desktop, anyway, not sure about mobile. Just click Tools and pick a timescale (for recent stuff) or Custom Range (if you want to eliminate newer stuff).

It doesn't make the results any better, but it at least gets rid of the ones you definitely don't want!

ghalfacree, to Futurology
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Thanks to a local charity shop, I'm finally going to find out what all the fuss is about. The world of Windows awaits!

ghalfacree, to random
@ghalfacree@mastodon.social avatar

It's the best time of the bimonth, despite the chilly weather, as @InterzoneMag Issue 297 has landed in my inbox. Hoping to dig in to it with my lunch!

ghalfacree, to random
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Frosty start to the week here in Yorkshire, but we had a heck of a sunrise this morning by way of compensation.

ghalfacree, to random
@ghalfacree@mastodon.social avatar

Dear Microsoft. Here is a list of things I want the Start Menu to do:

  • Show my installed programs
  • Search my local files
  • Provide access to system settings

Here is a list of things I do not want the Start Menu to do:

  • Show the weather for a randomly-selected town near my network's public IP infrastructure
  • Show tabloid headlines
  • Show programs I don't have installed
  • Search the web via Bing
  • Show adverts(!)
  • Attempt to engage me in conversation with a hallucinating LLM

Thanks.

ghalfacree,
@ghalfacree@mastodon.social avatar

@NormanDunbar @alvariviris ...I haven't used Windows for work since Windows 2000 was the new hotness. I run an entirely open-source software stack, except when a client wants something submitted as a Google Doc!

ghalfacree,
@ghalfacree@mastodon.social avatar

@NovaNaturalist I moved to Linux approaching three decades ago, back when it was really important you knew the refresh rates of your CRT monitor or you'd risk blowing the flyback transformer with a bad X config entry...

I don't miss Windows, but I also don't miss that!

ghalfacree,
@ghalfacree@mastodon.social avatar

@DanHakimi I've been using Linux on the desktop (and laptop, and my Sharp Zaurus PDA back when that was still a thing, I should find it and see if the battery still works) for more than 20 years now.

ghalfacree,
@ghalfacree@mastodon.social avatar

@WhyNotZoidberg You mean Bing Search, or Bing Chat? 'cos you can't turn either of those off in the settings, to the best of my knowledge. Group policies, if you're not on Home - but otherwise it's regedit.exe or bust.

ghalfacree,
@ghalfacree@mastodon.social avatar

@WhyNotZoidberg And for Bing Chat, the new ChatGPT-powered conversational agent brought to Windows 11 in the last update and coming to Windows 10 any day now.

ghalfacree,
@ghalfacree@mastodon.social avatar

@WhyNotZoidberg Do you mean "Privacy & Security", then "show search highlights?" That doesn't fully disable it - you have to edit the registry for that. (Or use group policies, but the Designated Windows Box here is on Home so that's a no-go.)

ghalfacree,
@ghalfacree@mastodon.social avatar

@WhyNotZoidberg It wasn't here - and I know it wasn't, because that setting was already off before the damn thing even got installed.

ghalfacree,
@ghalfacree@mastodon.social avatar

@jhannafin @NormanDunbar @alvariviris It didn't work when I set up the new Designated Windows Machine here, which was... well, I bought it second-hand in mid-August, so I guess mid-to-late August?

ghalfacree,
@ghalfacree@mastodon.social avatar

@matt
No, but it'd be much less annoying when I do have to use it.

Oh, but you'll have to change it in the underlying OS, not just by installing OpenShell: when I'm on Windows, it's almost certainly because I'm using someone else's computer.

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