back to article Eight things that should not have happened last year, but did

Happy new year! Tradition says that this is when we boldly look forward to what may happen in the 12 months to come. Do you really want to know that? Didn’t think so. Instead, here are eight of the tech things that didn't go as planned in 2024, in no particular order and of no particular significance except to paint a picture …

  1. TheMaskedMan Silver badge

    "dropping parcels in puddles and running away without pressing the doorbell will remain unchallenged by technology for some time to come."

    And, on one occasion, driving past my house - whereat I was standing on the doorstep, tracking app open on my phone - without even bothering to stop, and then having the bloody cheek to send me a "we tried to deliver but you were out" type email. Robodelivery has got to be worth a try!

    1. Andy Non Silver badge

      "Our drone has delivered your parcel. It is on your roof."

      1. Gene Cash Silver badge

        At least it got delivered! No puny human fail!

      2. Bebu sa Ware
        Coat

        It's in your living room.

        "Our drone has delivered your parcel. It is on your roof."

        Our drone has delivered your parcel to your living room... through your roof.

        No not Santa... unfortunately.

    2. Headley_Grange Silver badge

      The delivery robots will need Robot-Wars-level tech to get past the scooters which are left scattered along the pavements round where I live.

      1. Muscleguy

        Be careful one of those might be rigged to assassinate you. Or maybe you will just be unlucky when the battery gives up the ghost and spontaneously disassembles itself.

    3. Eclectic Man Silver badge
      Joke

      Or Mel Smith and Griff Rhys-Jones: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x8ij1d7

      The world was sooo much simpler then.

    4. Chloe Cresswell Silver badge

      I had a parcel to be delivered to a friend's business, on the 1st floor of a building.

      Driver delivered a parcel to the ground floor office, then sent a photo of the building saying no one was available.

      Photo even included my own car parked there...

    5. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

      Arrive on doorstep, ring bell, hand over two packages and drive off before I open the packages to discover that there must have been a third. Clearly Amazon still don't know that software should be designed to look for and handle things not being done right. It would be perfectly straightforward to alert the driver if he fails to scan out all and only the correct packages at a delivery point. I suppose it's always something to be done in the next sprint.

    6. Muscleguy

      Maybe it’s living in Dundee but my experience is good. The local Evi person is very good and reliable for eg.

      1. stjs16

        Same experience where I live - Helen you rock!

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Yeah, I have an actual persistent Fedex guy. "Here's my number. If you can't book a pickup after 3pm text me, and I'm still passing"

          As opposed to DHL's succession of randos driving a freshly carjacked unmarked van who pickup the next day, or the next next day, for sure.

          1. Not Yb Bronze badge

            We got so annoyed at DHL's inability to let us give appropriate default delivery instructions that so far, just having them divert the delivery to a local DHL service point is faster. "follow fence line to and through second gate to house do NOT turn left down hill" is 24 characters too long, and also seems to need to be given for every delivery.

        2. neilg
          Pint

          Same here, Jacqui once sent a pic of my parcel under the lid of the barbie behind the shed.

      2. My other car WAS an IAV Stryker

        Summer of 2023: My UPS guy noticed I was getting a lot of business items (especially heavy steel enclosures) as I was assembling things in the garage for eventual installation elsewhere [1]. The heavier items he made sure went to the garage doors on the side, not the front door, but still made sure I was aware so they weren't nicked. At the front door, he'll put the items in our plastic tote/storage bin (if they'll fit) and ring the bell [2], very nice when it's delicate/expensive componentry.

        1. This meant hauling the finished items myself to "The UPS Store" -- pickup was additional charges. At least *I* didn't have to pay for any of it aside from the gas, which is much less mileage than having to build all this in the office where no one was around to receive the parts deliveries AND there are no basic hand tools or testing equipment so I'd have to use my personal items anyway.

        2. In contrast, FedEx won't do either -- probably the cheapest delivery subcontractor of the local FedEx distro center whereas UPS drivers around me are direct-hired and union.

    7. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Glad it wasn't my parcel...

      About a week before Christmas I'd parked up at a local beauty spot for a walk with a mate and on returning found a (very surly) bloke had parked his car and had 100+ parcels strewn all over on the wet grass verge. He was roving about them, scanning each one at random with a phone before loading it back into his car. We watched him do this for about 40 minutes and he still wasn't finished; I reckon he spent over an hour at least doing this. Presumably he should have actually been out delivering them in this time, and I'm pretty sure that lying on a wet verge isn't what's meant to happen to Christmas parcels.

    8. phuzz Silver badge

      I wouldn't fault the actual drivers, I'd lay the blame at the feet of the delivery companies paying the drivers peanuts and expecting them to deliver an unmanageable number of parcels per day. Better hope you don't need to eat or use the toilet, because there's no time in the schedule for that.

    9. mtp

      I watched the delivery man stop his van, spend 5 mins shuffling through boxes before deciding that he could not find mine then drove on. It was logged as "we tried to deliver but you were out".

    10. big_D Silver badge

      Our new flat's door is at the back of the driveway, the other flats use the front door of the house. Even with a big notice at the front of the house, most delivery services either "can't find us" or we are not there, when we are standing on the doorstep, waiting for them.

    11. Sorry that forum user name is already taken.

      Amazon, via UPS, proudly announced the delivery of a product I ordered - to an address that wasn't mine or associated with my account in any way.

    12. Blackjack Silver badge

      Delivery drones will eventually be a regular thing, even uf they probably will need people to remote control them outside of fixed routers and even then theee will be a need of human supervision.

    13. Strahd Ivarius Silver badge
      Coat

      He was right, you were out...side...

    14. munnoch Silver badge

      DPD do that to us every single fucking time. It happens so often that I'm sure its functionality built into the app that the drivers use. We are about 100 yards back from the road, so the AI scheduler has obviously calculated that the time lost doing our one delivery isn't worth it. They always manage to deliver the next day. Spooky or what?

    15. Jason Hindle Silver badge

      Dyslexic delivery drivers

      The local drivers seem to have developed dyslexia. We live at 32. A number of our parcels have gone to 23 in the last year.

      1. Andy Non Silver badge
        FAIL

        Re: Dyslexic delivery drivers

        Our postman has similar issues, we sometimes receive mail addressed to our house number, but the wrong person, wrong street name, wrong post code.

        I recently had a phone call from a company baffled why an important letter addressed to me was returned as "not known at that address". I'm guessing the postman put my mail through someone else's letter box - probably the correct house number, just a property in a different part of town.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Dyslexic delivery drivers

        I used to live at an address I'll anonymise as 'number five, Able Street'. The thing was, right next door to us was a small block of flats called 'Abel House', and further up the road there was a side street called 'Abel Cottages' and another called 'Abel Lane'. I got to meet most of the people who lived at the various properties with the number 5, as we were always swapping mis-delivered packages.

        1. Not Yb Bronze badge

          Re: Dyslexic delivery drivers

          Making a similar changes to the address to maintain a semblance of privacy... Our address is '782 Finns Rd'. Google Maps (and most of the rest of the routing software that uses it as a baseline map) tells drivers to turn on Finns Cove to get there, when they should just turn at our gate off of Finns Rd instead. I somehow managed to get our driveway properly put on Google Maps a while back, but someone removed the change recently.

          Last mile delivery is hard, even when they're trying to do it right.

    16. CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

      bloody cheek to send me a "we tried to deliver but you were out" type email

      I can go one better - had a delivery of a small bottle of fine whisky (unfortunately with the words "whisky club" on the packaging..).

      Got a "your package has been delivered" message, complete with a (time-stamped) picture of said package on the doorstep. But, two minutes later, when I went out to look, no package and, thanks to the doorbell cam, I knew no-one else had been near the doorway.

      One complaint to the supplier and one slightly abusive complaint to the courier (Evri of course!). Two hours later, the door cam alerted me that someone was at the door (no doorbell ring of course) - went out and the package had mysteriously reappeared (and there was a hastily disappearing delivery driver)..

      I suspect that Evri had got in touch with the courier (in a plain white Fiesta car!) and said in no uncertain terms to deliver the package or else. Needless to say, when I told the supplier that it had (finally) been delivered I suggested that they might want to look for a different delivery partner..

      I suspect that he got very few deliveries after that and/or got the boot.

  2. trevorde Silver badge

    (Dis)honourable mentions

    CloudStrike

    A 'minor configuration update' manages to brick a large portion of the internet

    RoboTaxi

    Overhyped reveal which underwhelmed everyone with Elon Musk promising FSD coming real soon now (again)

    Kyndryl

    Announcing lay offs - admit it, we were all expecting it

    Spotify + Uber

    Actually making a profit - no one was expecting this

    1. BeansB

      Re: (Dis)honourable mentions

      The fact that CrowdStrike wasn't on the list is dishonorable on it's own.

      1. Jou (Mxyzptlk) Silver badge

        Re: (Dis)honourable mentions

        This list got CrowdStriked.

      2. Giles C Silver badge

        Re: (Dis)honourable mentions

        Read the article carefully

        Quote

        One thinks of Instagram's 3.3 million lost connections, or Cloudflare’s 5m. Mere runners-up to KING of unreachable - Facebook.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: (Dis)honourable mentions

          "Read the article carefully"

          I think *you* should read the article carefully, it mentioned (and you quoted) Cloudflare, not Cloudstrike

          1. Giles C Silver badge

            Re: (Dis)honourable mentions

            That is a mistake in the article which I have reported the linked report correctly states crowdstrike.

            1. Cook942

              Re: (Dis)honourable mentions

              except it doesn't the link goes to an article on a cloudflare outage

      3. NiceCuppaTea

        Re: (Dis)honourable mentions

        And wheres the Vmware / Broadcom shame for basically holding most SME that virtualise to ransom!

    2. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

      Re: (Dis)honourable mentions

      "brick a large portion of the internet"

      Not a large portion of the internet, just a lot of individual but internet-connected computers running WIndows.

  3. Jou (Mxyzptlk) Silver badge

    Skipped a "Musk of decay" issue...

    ...he es fan our our (German) far-right extremes, who are SO far right + beyond any imagination dumb on top, that no other far-right within Europe wants to deal with them and distance themselves.

    1. James Anderson Silver badge

      Re: Skipped a "Musk of decay" issue...

      They said that about VOX on Spain. But when getting into power and collecting bribesxxxxxadmirers mattered suddenly VOX were OK just reflecting ordinary people justified concerns as far as the PickPocket party were could see.

  4. FIA Silver badge

    The $3,500 Apple Vision Pro face-hugger at $800 would still be useless.

    At $800 it would probably sell as the picture quality is amazing.

    Most of the reviews said the one thing it was good for was watching films and TV, but not at that price.

    1. Muscleguy

      I recently tried to watch a DVD on my old Macbook Pro with an internal DVD drive and screen sharing on this Air without one. All I got on both machines if sharing was on was grey screens on both machines, it did have sound.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        I recently tried to run an old 32-bit Mac game. Won't run on our 'modern' (i.e. 4 years old) Macbook Pro, 'cos Apple decided backwards-compatibility is for chumps. Runs extremely poorly on the old Macbook Pro, 'cos the battery is shot and therefore the Macbook decides to throttle the CPU to 50% capacity, with no way to override it. Trying to set up a OS 10.10 VM, but you need a physical machine capable of running that particular version to install the, er, installer in order to create a bootable USB...

        And people wonder why I don't like Apple.

        1. phuzz Silver badge
          Facepalm

          A couple of our devs got new MacBooks last year, with the new M series CPUs*, but then had to hang onto their old Intel based machines so that they could continue to run x86 VMs

          * (which are genuinely impressive in terms of their efficiency, I'll give them that)

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            We had that problem, too.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      I tried the in-store demo

      It was breathtaking. Amazing.

      Do I want one? Yes. Do I need one? Of course not.

      The immersiveness was truly incredible. I left feeling like I’d experienced the future in some way. When I was on the “beach” with 360 degree views I felt immediately relaxed. It has potential. But it needs content to make that happen.

      Failure though? I don’t think it’s deserving of that tag, honestly.

      1. Chris Gray 1
        Meh

        Re: I tried the in-store demo

        A friend is doing some temp work at an Apple store and wanted another friend and I to go in and try them. He is *very* nearsighted, so their set of pre-made lenses couldn't match him and so it wasn't super good for him, although he was impressed. I've recently come down with Diplopia (eyes don't align), so there is no way they could have worked for me. C'est la vie! We were assured that if we bought our own sets that custom lenses would work for us. Neither of us was at all convinced.

        1. Andy Non Silver badge

          Re: I tried the in-store demo

          I bought prescription lenses to fit inside my Play Station VR2 headset for around £70 from Germany. They work OK, but can mist up due to lack of adequate ventilation. I don't tend to play games much in VR. While it is fun and a great experience playing Horizon Call of the mountain, I feel a little travel sick after half an hour or so. It is also a faff setting everything up. I prefer gaming using a big TV screen in front of me, no hassle.

        2. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: I tried the in-store demo

          One of my eyes doesn't "see" properly so in general 3D stuff doesn't work for me. It worked incredibly well on the AVP. Perhaps that's why it was so impressive to me - my first time experiencing something in 3D that actually worked.

          I guess like anything new in tech your mileage may vary.

  5. Boris the Cockroach Silver badge
    Happy

    Scene a darkened

    room in mid-late 2025.....

    Loudspeaker: You will accept co-pilot and recall for the good of m$

    You will accept co-pilot and recall for the good of m$

    You will accept co-pilot and recall for the good of m$

    You will accept co-pilot and recall for the good of m$

    You will accept co-pilot and recall for the good of m$

    You will accept co-pilot and recall for the good of m$

    Victim: oh god... just give me the cage full of rats over my head.. anything to end this....

    More seriously I predict 2025 will be the year of linux on the desktop (mostly after m$'s recall and co-pilot system get hacked to download everyone's pr0n collection )

    Happy new year

    1. ebruce613

      Re: Scene a darkened

      *Slightly* more seriously

      FTFY

    2. NiceCuppaTea
      Trollface

      Re: Scene a darkened

      Someone HAD to say year of linux on desktop didnt they!

      Happens every year

      1. M.V. Lipvig Silver badge

        Re: Scene a darkened

        2024 was my year.

        1. stiine Silver badge
          Linux

          Re: Scene a darkened

          Mine, too. Admittedly, I have Ubuntu running on the old machine and Windows 11 running on the new machine, but the new machine sits on a shelf in another room so I can remote desktop to it to do Windows-only things, while I use Ubuntu for everything else.

          The issue I have most often, but still only occasionally, is that sometimes Ubuntu won't display the mouse on the 2nd monitor after unlocking the desktop after switching the monitor (55" tv) back from my 3rd system, until I change the 2nd screen resolution and then let it revert.

      2. Not Yb Bronze badge

        Re: Scene a darkened

        My 80+ year old mom is running Linux on the desktop... it's been here a long while now. (which I suspect is the joke, of course)

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Should Not Have Happened But Did......

    ....a public enquiry into the Post Office/Fujitsu abomination.....

    What should have happened:

    (1) Jail time for Post Office senior management

    (2) Jail time for Fujitsu senior management

    (3) Cancellation of all those NEW CONTRACTS for Fujitsu

    1. Baird34

      Re: Should Not Have Happened But Did......

      In an ideal world corporate crime would have consequences for the culprits. As 2024 has shown we're a million miles away from a perfect world and heading even further away.

      Happy New Year!

      1. Herring` Silver badge

        Re: Should Not Have Happened But Did......

        Well, in the US they have tested a new method for corporate accountability but it's probably a bit extreme for most.

        1. eldel

          Re: Should Not Have Happened But Did......

          You mean they made the crook president. Yeah - I see what you mean.

      2. nautica Silver badge
        Big Brother

        Re: Should Not Have Happened But Did......

        "...As 2024 has shown we're a million miles away from a perfect world and heading even further away."

        MOST definitely, if one lives in the US of A.

    2. jdiebdhidbsusbvwbsidnsoskebid Silver badge

      Re: Should Not Have Happened But Did......

      And reversal of all the prosecutions that relied on evidence derived from Horizon followed by immediate assessment and compensation for all affected. Given the scale of the case, an independent cross party group of MPs and/or civil servants should have been put together immediately, defined some guidance on compensation levels and assess each case. Even 1000 cases, doing a few every day could be done in a year - top priority.

    3. Ochib

      Re: Should Not Have Happened But Did......

      The Post Office tried to deliver compensation to the relevant people, but just left a "You were out card" instead

  7. nautica Silver badge
    Happy

    From (very near) the end of the article--

    "...Ethical AI is not an empty phrase..."

    Correct. "ethical AI" is a compound(ed) oxymoron: the oxymoron--"artificial intelligence" made even more foolish and self-contradicting by the addition of yet another adjective: "ethical".

    Oxymoron; n,--

    "An oxymoron (plurals: oxymorons and oxymora) is a figure of speech that juxtaposes concepts with opposite meanings within a word or in a phrase that is a self-contradiction...

    "...Examples popularized by comedian George Carlin in 1975 include "military intelligence" (a play on the lexical meanings of the term "intelligence", implying that "military" inherently excludes the presence of "intelligence") and "business ethics" (similarly implying that the mutual exclusion of the two terms is evident or commonly understood rather than the partisan anti-corporate position)...

    "...Similarly, the term "civil war" is sometimes jokingly referred to as an "oxymoron" (punning on the lexical meanings of the word "civil")...

    "...Other examples [jokingly] include "honest politician", "affordable caviar"..., "happily married" and "Microsoft Works"... --Wikipedia

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Wit For A Limited Audience??

      @nautica

      Well....it's interesting to notice that the word "moron" turns up as part of "oxymoron".

      I say this because there are plenty of "morons" out there (thousands? millions") who would challenge the suggestion that there is ANYTHING AT ALL wrong with phrases like "military intelligence" or "Microsoft Works".

      I think your comment only has some relevance to a VERY limited audience.

      1. nautica Silver badge
        Boffin

        Re: Wit For A Limited Audience??

        "Well....it's interesting to notice that the word "moron" turns up as part of "oxymoron..."

        --Interesting perhaps (a simple artifact of translation from the original Greek;), but no more so than the word "lightning" turns up as a part of the common phrase, or term, "lightning bug" (with profuse thanks to Mark Twain).

        "...I say this because there are plenty of "morons" out there (thousands? millions") who would challenge the suggestion that there is ANYTHING AT ALL wrong with phrases like "military intelligence" or "Microsoft Works"..."

        --a not-in-depth reading of the comment indicates the following very important point: "...Other examples [JOKINGLY] include "honest politician", "affordable caviar"..., "happily married" and "Microsoft Works"...

        "...I think your comment only has some relevance to a VERY limited audience."

        --It was intended for none other than a "VERY" limited audience; please be assured that I am deeply indebted that you have lent credibility by commenting, and indicating that you are among those distinguished few.

      2. James Anderson Silver badge

        Re: Wit For A Limited Audience??

        I actually remember and used MS Works. It was quite s nice basic but usable word processer and spread sheet that came free with s new PC. And it worked quite well.

        As it negated the need for an office license it was quietly dropped.

      3. nobody who matters Silver badge

        Re: Wit For A Limited Audience??

        <......."I think your comment only has some relevance to a VERY limited audience"........>

        Those with a sense of humour, I would assume?

      4. SuperGeek

        Re: Wit For A Limited Audience??

        "who would challenge the suggestion that there is ANYTHING AT ALL wrong with phrases like "military intelligence" or "Microsoft Works"."

        Or how about Norton Systemworks? No it bloody doesn't!!

        1. Not Yb Bronze badge

          Re: Wit For A Limited Audience??

          Microsoft Vacuum, which isn't a product, but if it did, wouldn't suck.

    2. Old Used Programmer

      I will take exception to your claim that "happily married" is an oxymoron. It's why 2.5 years after her death, I still deeply miss my late wife.

    3. ravenviz Silver badge
      Unhappy

      Further examples include “humane slaughter”

  8. katrinab Silver badge

    Crowdstrike?

    Surely Crowdstrike was the biggest outage of the year?

    8.5m computers, with > 1 user impacted per computer definitely adds up to more than 11.1m Facebook users, and the systems that were taken out were a lot more important than Facebook.

    1. Will Godfrey Silver badge
      Coat

      Re: Crowdstrike?

      A trainspotters private vid. collection is more important than Facebook.

      1. M.V. Lipvig Silver badge

        Re: Crowdstrike?

        So's used loo paper, fished out of the public works.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Crowdstrike?

      Hear hear. A quarter of the laptops at $WORK were down because of CrowdStrike. (Now every time I hear "CrowdStrike" I imagine a bowler so bad they knock over 10 spectators. Crowd strike!)

      The Facebook outages I was only aware of because they were covered here.

      1. chivo243 Silver badge
        Coat

        Re: Crowdstrike?

        Wait, there were FarceBook outages?? I seem to remember the Crowdstrike kerfuffle, I thought it was some online game at the time! Now I see it's bloatware...

        1. Jou (Mxyzptlk) Silver badge

          Re: Crowdstrike?

          There there were several Fecesbook outages. But Failbook outage is nothing serious IMHO. If it is out for a day or two, nothing important depends on Farcebook, including remembering its actual name.

    3. nobody who matters Silver badge

      Re: Crowdstrike?

      <...".....and the systems that were taken out were a lot more important than Facebook."......>

      Surely all systems are more important than facebook (well, apart from X perhaps?)

  9. GoreMaker

    The World Came to a Screeching Halt...

    CrowdStrike shuts down businesses and airlines worldwide for days... and that doesn't even get an honorable mention? Personally, I think that event should rank higher than Facebook's blunders.

  10. Tron Silver badge

    We all know that 'AI' is not really artificial intelligence.

    So will 2025 be when it gets rumbled as the tech equivalent of the emperor's new clothes? Or will they keep it going long enough to sell all the chips and servers for the data centres, before it collapses and they become weird museums? That is going to lose some folk some cash.

    It would be nice to see a proper, distributed social media service in 2025. One where users controlled what they saw, individually and communally, and the operator had next to zero overheads/interventions. BlueSky is just a Twitter replacement and doesn't appear to have worked out how to distribute it successfully.

    With President Musk in the Orange House, the US may start to look a lot like X.

    Oracle debacles may have finally made a return to paper advisable in some areas on cost and security grounds, and it could become a 2025 trend.

    And 2025 could be a big year for pet cosmetics. Oh brave new world.

    1. katrinab Silver badge
      Meh

      Re: We all know that 'AI' is not really artificial intelligence.

      "So will 2025 be when it gets rumbled as the tech equivalent of the emperor's new clothes?"

      That's difficult to predict. I think it will be more 2026/7. People buy into the idea that it just needs a bit more improvement. Obviously that is rubbish, the entire premise of Large Language Models is fundamentally flawed and can never work, but the question is how long it will take for people to realise that.

      The dot com bubble crashed on about 4th April 2000 [peak was 10th March, but it moved sideways for a bit before heading for the floor]. Plenty of people, including me, predicted it would crash at some point, but nobody really called the exact date, and I didn't attempt to.

      Bear in mind that blockchain hasn't actually crashed yet. It will though.

      1. Jason Bloomberg Silver badge

        Re: We all know that 'AI' is not really artificial intelligence.

        The entire premise of Large Language Models is fundamentally flawed and can never work, but the question is how long it will take for people to realise that.

        We still don't have anyone they'll listen to telling them that. We may have to wait until something truly horrific happens and the tabloids nail it to the wall; "AI kills thousands after misclassifying cancers as benign", or similar.

        I would hate to be having to cheer for that to hurry up and come along.

        1. katrinab Silver badge
          Alert

          Re: We all know that 'AI' is not really artificial intelligence.

          I think the big thing will be people experiencing AI customer service bots.

          1. bombastic bob Silver badge
            Devil

            Re: We all know that 'AI' is not really artificial intelligence.

            How about AI search instead of google? But the summary will need to be more informative, NOT sound "authoritative" nor be filled with "paid for" (or pre-programmed) BIAS. So a search engine that looks like 'grok' (but with less "fluff" in the output) is where I think we're headed. Grok provides you with links to the pages it summarizes.

            Grok is STILL affected by intarweb bias, so you could mentally remove a lot of the 'biased fluff' and pay attention to the list of web pages and summary info, and THEN it can be WAY faster/better than google or any other (real) search engine! I have started using it that way. What will cause the google's of the world to panic is how it would be WAY harder to monetize or be used to CONTROL THE NARRATIVE (if it is EVER to be TRULY USEFUL). I'd also expect MORE COMPETITION in this regard. THAT In My Bombastic Opinion is what we'll see change in 2025.

          2. stiine Silver badge
            Coffee/keyboard

            Re: We all know that 'AI' is not really artificial intelligence.

            Bite your tongue. The last thing I want is a VRU that understands the obscenities I'm directing at it.

        2. Richard 12 Silver badge

          Re: We all know that 'AI' is not really artificial intelligence.

          Classifiers are completely different to LLMs. Classifiers are actually useful - but limited and very difficult to safely deploy due to their black-box nature.

          LLMs may be worse than useless, it's hard to tell.

          I'm pretty sure that the only reason some people are buying into LLMs is because they produce very confident prose. A lot of people conflate confidence with accuracy.

          1. captain veg Silver badge

            Re: We all know that 'AI' is not really artificial intelligence.

            > LLMs may be worse than useless, it's hard to tell.

            I don't find it hard at all. LLMs are impressively good at generating content which is plausible but wrong. In most contexts -- like say, computer programming, or reporting the news -- this is definitely worse than useless. If your business is disinformation then you're quids in.

            -A.

            1. Tron Silver badge

              Re: We all know that 'AI' is not really artificial intelligence.

              quote: LLMs are impressively good at generating content which is plausible but wrong.

              So we could replace MPs with them, and save a sack of cash!

          2. tiggity Silver badge

            Re: We all know that 'AI' is not really artificial intelligence.

            I like the classic Bertrand Russell quote about confidence.

            "The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts"

            Sadly too may people equate confidence with competence.

        3. pstath444

          Re: We all know that 'AI' is not really artificial intelligence.

          LLMs are a bad fit for Gen AI indeed and people will get dissapointed with that. But on the other hand they are great with summarizing, editing, building upon already existing content. So while they do have a limited use case right now, they are indeed a facilitator for an exponential productivity growth in specific sectors. The issue is the economics. With the current pricing GPU and power requirements I am not sure how many will be willing to pay. But tldr because its not good enough for Gen AI or reasoning it does not mean that its not good enough for lots and lots of use cases.

          1. teebie

            Re: We all know that 'AI' is not really artificial intelligence.

            summarizing, editing, building upon, and fictionalising already existing content.

          2. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: We all know that 'AI' is not really artificial intelligence.

            From my experience, all they do is take a paragraph and run it through a thesarus several times.

        4. nautica Silver badge
          Boffin

          Re: We all know that 'AI' is not really artificial intelligence.

          “Why give a robot an order to obey orders—why aren’t the original orders enough? Why command a robot not to do harm—wouldn’t it be easier never to command it to do harm in the first place?”-–Steven Pinker, Canadian-American cognitive psychologist

          “The upheavals [of artificial intelligence] can escalate quickly and become scarier and even cataclysmic. Imagine how a medical robot, originally programmed to rid cancer, could conclude that the best way to obliterate cancer is to exterminate humans who are genetically prone to the disease.”–- Nick Bilton, technology, business, and culture contributor at CNBC

          1. Richard 12 Silver badge

            Re: We all know that 'AI' is not really artificial intelligence.

            A cognitive psychologist is extremely unlikely to know anything at all about 'AI', and is perhaps more likely than average to misunderstanding what it is and how it works.

            They've spent decades or more studying humans. Of course they're going to project their experience of human cognitive behaviour onto something that can imitate it for a few paragraphs.

          2. doublelayer Silver badge

            Re: We all know that 'AI' is not really artificial intelligence.

            All that quote suggests is that Steven Pinker doesn't understand a lot of things. I'll give him the order to obey orders thing; understanding that takes more knowledge about how the systems are very imperfect. The not harming humans thing, though, should be eminently simple to understand, at least in the case of making an order that could accidentally harm humans and preferring that the AI think through and reject the command rather than carrying it out.

            The job title makes this a lot worse, though. A cognitive psychologist should understand that humans often do things outside of purely rational logic that they would prefer not to do. All sorts of negative behavior is done for irrational or indirect reasons which makes it harder to stop than if it was a simple mistake. Many of the rules we attach to AI, either real software or fictional or hypothetical versions, is designed to prevent that type of emergent behavior from causing big problems.

  11. nautica Silver badge
    Meh

    "AI has, by now, succeeded in doing essentially everything that requires 'thinking' but has failed to do most of what people and animals do 'without thinking'---that, somehow, is much harder."

    --Donald Knuth

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Infamy, infamy, everyone has it in for me!

    Just wait until the Mango Messiah bans AI because it produces too much negative (“fake”) news about him!

  13. RobLang

    I think there's an error here, Crowdstrike had the outage, not Cloudflare.

    1. Sir Sham Cad

      Technically, Crowdstrike didn't have an outage, they just caused everybody who used their product to have an outage. Totally different, you see, as anyone responsible for their uptime 9's will tell you.

  14. Roger Kynaston

    Oracle. Again.

    There will be a slew of scandals with failed projects again. They will do something else terrible with Java again. They wil be Oracle again.

    1. Richard 12 Silver badge

      Re: Oracle. Again.

      Oracle Java is not long for this world. Everyone who can is ripping it out, and everyone who cannot is figuring out how.

  15. John Smith 19 Gold badge
    Coat

    How about the Elon Musk "Adrian Dittman" sock puppet account?

    This is a) AN Other person with a really good voice changer that turns them into the spit of the Muskie one b)Leon can't be bothered to fake it

    I'll let others decide.

    But that does leave an interesting question.

    Because generally speaking where there's one sock puppet account......

    What of his other 200 million+ "Followers" ???

    Happy New Year to all Committee members.

  16. anonymous boring coward Silver badge

    I'd probably add, as number 9, Trump being reelected.

    1. neilg

      Number10

      Appropriately: Labour & Starmer being elected.

      1. anonymous boring coward Silver badge

        Re: Number10

        Because the Tories had proved themselves so competent?

        1. neilg

          Re: Number10

          Your username is remarkably accurate. I thought No. 10 Downing Street & No. 10 on the list was "humerous" or so I thought. - This is El Reg, take politics elsewhere.

          1. desht

            Re: Number10

            You must be new around here.

  17. big_D Silver badge

    To be fair...

    but Recall's modus operandi of scraping everything you did on your desktop and sending it to Microsoft is a genuine chart-topper on Planet Creepy.

    I'm not a fan of Recall and don't want it on my computer, living in the EU and not having a Copilot+ PC means I'm safe... for now...

    But, the one thing that Recall doesn't do is sent the data to Microsoft, it doesn't even send it to your M365 account, so you can access it on other devices. It is locked to the device you are currently on.

    1. anonymous boring coward Silver badge

      Re: To be fair...

      "But, the one thing that Recall doesn't do is sent the data to Microsoft, it doesn't even send it to your M365 account, so you can access it on other devices. It is locked to the device you are currently on."

      Sure thing...

    2. JoeCool Silver badge

      Re: To be fair...

      are you suggesting that the stored data is immune to hacking ?

      The only safe data collection is un-aggregted data collection.

      1. doublelayer Silver badge

        Re: To be fair...

        No, they are not suggesting that. They are suggesting that it does not, by design, send the collected data to Microsoft. Surely you can see how those things are not the same. At one level, you might just want to know whether negative things can happen as a result of Recall: absolutely yes, probably lots of them. At another level, you might want to know which bad things are most likely and how they could happen, and if you jump to the conclusion that the bad thing is that the data is sent to Microsoft's servers for their perusal, you've named the wrong bad thing.

      2. big_D Silver badge

        Re: To be fair...

        No, I doubt it is immune to hacking, thereagain, it is stored in an encrypted database protected by Hello ESS, the data that it scraped probably wasn't - E.g. web sites visited will be unencrypted in the web browser history, documents worked on will be on the hard drive, network share or connected OneDrive... This assumes that the user a Copilot+ PC with Hello ESS and has turned Recall on in the first place.

        There are so many genuine problems with Recall that regurgitating the FUD that it sends the data back to Microsoft is totally unnecessary. Concentrate on the real issues with Recall, don't make new ones up that are easily disproved, that just makes the arguments for the genuine problems look weaker by association.

    3. John Smith 19 Gold badge
      Gimp

      "But, the one thing that Recall doesn't do is sent the data to Microsoft,"

      Yet.

      As usual in these situations it's a question of how much M$ will pay them.

      Or if they just flat out take them over.

      One more f**king time.

      It's our data, not yours.

  18. xyz123 Silver badge

    Eight other things that should have happened last year but didn't:

    1. Oracle going bankrupt

    2. Oracle going bankrupt

    3. Oracle going bankrupt

    4. Oracle going bankrupt

    5. Oracle going bankrupt

    6. Oracle going bankrupt

    7. Oracle going bankrupt

    8. Oracle going bankrupt

  19. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    ... "things that should not have happened last year, but did"?

    How 'bout 12,500 layoffs at a computer manufacturer whose name rhymes with "Swell"?

    And all the folks at other firms who suffered the same fate?

    I'd say that qualifies.

  20. Sparkus

    No mention of....

    multiple outages **and** breaches from Optum?

  21. sabroni Silver badge
    Unhappy

    Apple entering a new sector with very expensive tech will never not be news

    Remember back in the old days when El Reg understood the word "always"?

    I know all the kids are saying "never not", that doesn't mean we have to abandon "always" and follow them.

    What's wrong with:

    "Apple entering a new sector with very expensive tech will always be news"?

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