Posts by ParlezVousFranglais

Producers allegedly sought rights to replicate extras using AI, forever, for just $200

Sorry to disagree with most here, but honestly I just see this as an evolution for the film industry. Just take a couple of Start Wars scenes for example - final scene of the original, they didn't hire a thousand extras to stand there in the the throne room, they hired a hundred, and simply used matte paintings for all the rest. Podracing scene in Phantom Menace the tens of thousands of spectators in the stands weren't hired extras, they were q-tips packed into a scale model. AI extras are just the next step in VFX.

Now don't get me wrong - I challenge anyone not to feel gutted at the story of Phil Tippett, and how his legendary stop-motion skills were made redundant almost overnight on Jurassic Park when the production team decided that computer animation was now "good enough" to create the dinosaurs, but that's the world we live in.

Are we now just a few more years away from being to tell an AI to "create me a 3-hour historical epic based on the journeys of Aeneas after the fall of Troy"? Very likely

Will most of us be amazed when watching such an AI creation? Very unlikely at the moment, but in 10 - 20 years? Maybe it will be hard to tell such a creation from the very best writing and acting of today. Maybe that will lead to the demise of studios completely - you'll just create your own content on demand. But very probably even if that does occur, many people will still want human written and acted content.

Just like the stop-motion animators, and a huge number of legacy IT skills that many of us are very familiar with, maybe many of the current roles in film and tv are destined to become niche in the future - still needed, no less worthy than they are now, and indeed maybe very highly in demand (and paid accordingly), but over time fewer people will retain them and other newer opportunities will arise.

Sorry, but that's just life...

US Air Force AI drone 'killed operator, attacked comms towers in simulation'

Re: What a complete shock!

ED209...

Re: Earlier test

Pretty sure you are thinking of the Sergeant York

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M247_Sergeant_York

"In February 1982 the prototype was demonstrated for a group of US and British officers at Fort Bliss, along with members of Congress and other VIPs. When the computer was activated, it immediately started aiming the guns at the review stands, causing several minor injuries as members of the group jumped for cover. Technicians worked on the problem, and the system was restarted. This time it started shooting toward the target, but fired into the ground 300 metres (980 ft) in front of the tank. In spite of several attempts to get it working properly, the vehicle never successfully engaged the sample targets. A Ford manager claimed that the problems were due to the vehicle being washed for the demonstration and fouling the electronics. In a report on the test, Easterbrook jokingly wondered if it ever rained in central Europe."

Really pleased I wasn't *THAT* IT guy...

Windows XP activation algorithm cracked, keygen now works on Linux

Re: DO NOT go on the Internet with XP

You sir are definitely deserving of a pint in return...

Re: DO NOT go on the Internet with XP

Look out!

It's gonna melt your face right off your skull

And make your iPod only play Jethro Tull

And tell you knock-knock jokes while trying to sleep

And make you physically attracted to sheep

Steal your identity and your credit cards

Buy you a warehouse full of pink leotards

Then cause a major rift in time and space

And leave a bunch of Twinkie wrappers all over the place....

UK's GDPR replacement could wipe out oversight of live facial recognition

Re: Suppose it's time for me...

In Scanner Darkly Philip K Dick had the concept of a scramble suit

Interestingly there are already a few attempts :)

https://www.businessinsider.com/clothes-accessories-that-outsmart-facial-recognition-tech-2019-10?r=US&IR=T#a-lens-shaped-mask-makes-its-user-undetectable-to-facial-recognition-algorithms-while-still-allowing-humans-to-read-facial-expressions-and-identity-1

Much like trying to ban end-to-end encryption, just another example of knee-jerk "won't somebody think of the children" legislation, which will be merrily voted through parliament because most of the clueless f**kwits have no idea of the consequences

Boeing takes flight in sustainability battle with carbon data cruncher

So basically Boeing saying "we can't do anything at all practical to reduce our emissions, so we'll jump on the bandwagon of creating modelling tools so we can pretend we're doing something useful"

As George Bernard Shaw once said, "Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach" (And of course those who can't teach, teach PE...)

How Microsoft hopes to tame large language models with Guidance

Re: You’re in a clearing, there’s a grate in the ground in front of you.

look grate

you look at the grate...

Microsoft enters the clearing...

you are fleeced by Microsoft...

you are bankrupt...

start again?

EU monopoly cops probe complaints about Microsoft Azure

So EU Regulators getting stroppy with MS about anti-competitive practices on Azure, but at the same time waving through the MS-Activision deal which will ultimately lead to exactly the same abuse of market position in gaming 10 years down the line.

Some consistency would be nice...

Microsoft will upgrade Windows 10 21H2 users whether they like it or not

Anthropogenic OS Change???

ENISA leans into EU-based clouds with draft cybersecurity label

I think that's what the EU is probably hoping, but all they are going to do is mandate themselves into paying a shedload more money for a lesser product

Let's assume I'm Amazon and I provide "cloud". My intellectual property, what defines "my" cloud and makes it better (or worse) than MS or Google is how I create and manage my cloud, the tools, the processes, the procurement etc

Now I'm told I can only provide "my" cloud, if I actually agree to give away all that IP to a third-party that I'm only allowed a minority stake in - a huge risk given that this is exactly how countless technology firms have had their fingers seriously burned when trying to operate in China

The only possible way to do that is to retain a minority stake and license my IP to the other cloud provider at an extortionate rate. Now there are two "Amazons", my own native product un-certified, and a new certified product running exactly the same tech (or maybe a "lite" version), just with a badge that says it's somehow more secure and for three times the price.

However, in exactly the same way as it has done for other areas of technology and defence, all this takes to unravel is a US edict forbidding any of the three to license their cloud IP to overseas third-party providers on the grounds of US national security - in fact right now they are probably actively lobbying the US behind the scenes to do exactly this.

So with that, yes you might get your "ringfenced" EU cloud, working in exactly the same way but for a ton more money, and very probably in some kind of "cloud-lite" mode.

So the EU governments and probably their various procurement teams will be mandated to use it, and all it will achieve is to cost them more. As we've seen with several high profile leaks from the US, you can have all the vetting you like, all the firewalls and security you like, and be sitting wherever you are instructed to sit, but if you want to leak info, you're gonna do it anyway, regardless of whether your platform has a pretty little logo attributed to it, and any "backdoors" hidden away in the system are going to be duplicated into the system you are licensing anyway. The EU majority owner of the JV won't actually develop anything in house as they will have to license in the whole platform, and those license fees will be fed back to the US companies anyway, thereby making them even richer than if said EU governments just licensed their normal product, and the majority owner will effectively be nothing more than a reseller

Pure protectionism, the eurocrats will claim a victory, and one way or another the EU's citizens will pay way over the odds for a what will very likely be only a marginal increase in "security".

Simple protectionism which the eurocrats will love themselves for:

Step 1: create a certification that the big 3 will never agree to

Step 2: mandate that all EU governments and institutions have to use a provider with said certification

Step 3: realise that you can now only use SAP and their prices are 3 times as much as you were paying before...

Microsoft cries foul over UK gaming deal blocker but it's hard to feel sorry for them

I find it interesting that a few days ago, it was widely reported (primarily by the BBC and quoted elsewhere) that Sir Ian Livingstone said that actually the UK games industry was widely in favour of the merger going ahead. Unfortunately, with mainstream journalism being in it's current pitiful state, it seems nobody has bothered a) verifying that statement from other leaders of the UK gaming community, or b) letting anyone know WHY this is the case, if it is in fact true.

Anyone care to comment?

UK pensions dept hands Softcat £250M for Microsoft subscriptions

Ok, so probably "silly question of the century" here, but if the DWP is spending that much on MS licenses, why aren't they just buying it direct from MS?

Adidas grapples with $1.3B in unsold Yeezy sneakers after breaking up with Kanye West

Excellent point - it's because while we're an ever more diverse and inclusive bunch, most of us on here are angst-ridden old blokes who need somewhere to vent our furious anger rather than rage-quitting and plunging the future of IT (and by extension the whole universe) into a dark and terrible future.

Articles like this therefore serve an excellent and useful purpose - it's not all happy blinkenlights...

This is exactly what many people are suggesting, but Adidas' current position is that if they can't make a profit on them, then nobody else should be able to make a profit on them either, despite all the good it could do.

Tell's you all you need to know...

CEO Bjørn Gulden told analysts on a company earnings call on Wednesday: "The people that are saying send the shoes to Turkey or somewhere where people don't have shoes or there has been a tragedy happening, I think you agree that these are not normal shoes," he said.If the shoes were donated, "they will come back again."

So this heartless little shite is saying he won't donate his otherwise useless shoes to people who really need them, because they might sell them on? Surely the whole point of charity is to give something to people who have lost EVERYTHING. If someone who's house and worldly possessions have all just been completely destroyed, can sell on a pair of donated shoes to some rich idiot elsewhere in the world for a few hundred $$$, so that they can help to feed their family, and start to rebuild their lives then surely that's a great thing?

Talk about a business completely missing a trick - they could have been the business that ensured that no-one in the earthquake zone went without a decent pair of shoes - instead they've just proved that they are another business who has become completely detached from basic decency and humanity, and in this case it's not even putting the shareholders first - literally nobody wins just due to sheer corporate stupidity

Not just you in the night: Tiny bugs use superpropulsion to eject huge volumes of pee

Turning this from academic theory into a useful practical application sounds like a piece of piss to me...

Apple complains UK watchdog wants to make iOS a 'clone' of Android

Given it's been nearly 15 years since MS was forced to unbundle IE from Windows, I'd say this is long overdue

If I want to screw up my phone or tablet by installing random homebrew shite then I should be able to do exactly that, without jailbreaking the device. If I need to factory reset afterwards to fix everything, or if all my credentials get posted to el dark interwebs because I was stupid and didn't know what I was doing, then so be it.

There's nothing to stop the manufacturers putting a big tick box up that says "we REALLY recommend you don't do this, but if you want to plough on, then on your head be it" - and job done, user notified that if the device does something weird, their only option is nuke back to defaults

Fact is that closed-shop consumer products are done for - the biggest loser on the surface of it will be Apple as it's literally their entire business model, but the simple fact is that 99% of Apple users won't actually make use of any new-found freedom, because 99% of all users DON'T CARE - they just use what's put in front of them anyway.

So Apple should stop throwing a hissy fit, and just concentrate on the key message which is that staying inside their own curated bubble is going to cost you more, but it's also safer and more reliable

Next on the list will be the games consoles...

When ERP projects go bad: Surrey County Council's £30m ditch SAP effort delayed again

Re: Come on, give them a break

Ah but if every council looked the same, sounded the same, learned from each other, and collaborated to achieve the best results and best value for money for their constituents, the "CEO"'s wouldn't be able to justify their footballer salaries

UK lawmakers look to enforce blocking tools for legal but harmful content

While I hate to agree with her Shadowiness, on this occasion she's spot on - kids will continue to use unverified accounts and continue to be exposed to the full range of online content, good and bad - so no change. The only way that risk gets significantly reduced is with full (and probably paid for) verification on all the major platforms globally, and there's not the remotest chance of that in the near future... Even if it's mandated for users in the UK, it would be trivial to circumvent - but still I'm sure we'll soon hear random politicians espousing the virtues of a "Great British Firewall" for all the good that would do...

Locked out of Horizon Europe, UK commits half a billion to post-Brexit research

Because how much the Germans and French get out compared to what they put in isn't relevant to the point being made in the article.

The article is saying the UK is worse off financially because it's losing €7 billion of funding, but actually it isn't.

What's happened is we're not giving or receiving anything - overall we're pretty much evens financially - the PROBLEM is that a significant chunk of the money that last year was heading from the UK Treasury to R&D in the UK, is now funding other UK priorities.

Being kicked out of Horizon of course is a disaster for R&D collaborations on both sides of the channel, and I guarantee you that it's the NI protocol and very little else that is standing in the way of a resolution, but at the moment, the UK government is probably quite happy that it has the flexibility to NOT contribute as much to R&D and use that cash instead to prop up Health and Social Care

Short-sighted of course, but c'est la vie...

Very one-sided reporting - the UK received about the same % of Horizon 2020 funding as it contributed to the overall EU budget - so "nothing to see here"

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-03598-2

What IS important, and an absolute disgrace is that the UK "Plan B" for R&D funding announced only last year, is now an absolute bust:

Investment in R&D and innovation will help drive economic growth and create the jobs of the future. At the Budget and SR, the government is increasing public R&D investment to record levels: £20 billion by 2024-25. This is an increase of around a quarter in real terms over the SR period, and makes significant progress towards the government’s ambition to spend £22 billion on R&D by 2026-27 and towards achieving the economy-wide target to invest 2.4% of GDP in R&D in 2027

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1043688/Budget_AB2021_Print.pdf

Google looking outside the usual channels to fix security skills gap

Re: Widen the optical

Ah - unlucky you - you missed the later classic line:

Shuftan said. "It makes their culture weaker and less strong"

'nuff said...

Israel sets robotic target-tracking turrets in the West Bank

1) "The remote-controlled auto guns"

2) "residents expressed fear that the weapons could be hacked, but it isn't immediately clear if the weapons have connectivity that would make that possible"

Have we learned nothing? - if 1) is true then 2) is automatically true regardless of the type of connectivity or how unhackable the manufacturers say/think it is...

Country that still uses fax machines wants to lead the world on data standards at G7

This will quickly be kicked into the long grass...

EU will refuse to accept anything that waters down GDPR standards

US at a federal level is likely to hit a roadblock as the current proposed federal legislation (ADPPA) is weaker than the current California CCPA/CPRA and the Dems don't want to invalidate the stronger California laws

So the chances of bringing the whole of the US up to GDPR standards are non-existent and the EU won't agree without it.

Wild West it is then...

Twitter is suffering from mad bro disease. Open thinking can build it back better

With the NHS and Social Care about to crash through the floor, the UK Goverment would be torn to pieces trying to invest in something to compete with corporate social media

Even if they did invest initially, how long before the funds were cut to the point where security was compromised, and millions who trusted a government run social network got pwned - can you imagine the fallout?

And yes, the BBC has lasted until now, but it won't for much longer under its current funding model

For sure, corporate social media is about as far from perfect as things get, and for sure, there will be some die-hard Mastodon/Fediverse followers for years to come, but like it or not, for the vast majority, corporate social media is where its at - exactly the same as the age-old arguments re Windows vs Linux - (although let's not go there on this thread :) )

GitHub's Copilot flies into its first open source copyright lawsuit

"I don't expect to see a definitive answer this decade."

And therein lies the problem - by the time a court finally agrees that Microsoft are a bunch of thieving b******s, they will have:

a) ripped off the code of thousands of others for their own financial gain

b) altered their ML algorithm sufficiently to still take advantage other's work but recode it when republishing so the theft is impossible to prove

c) deprecated the current version in favour of a v2/v3/v4 to pretend they didn't benefit all that much

We all wondered about the real reason for MS purchase of Github - "By joining forces with GitHub, CEO Satya Nadella said, “we strengthen our commitment to developer freedom, openness and innovation.”

At least now we know it was simply to make the theft of all those resources easier for them...

The Osprey has landed: IBM's 433-qubit quantum processor

However, instead of using an actual quantum computer, this prototype uses Fujitsu's quantum simulator technology, announced in March

Ah, see this is where the Nuclear Fusion guys are going wrong - hey these 8 coal-fired power stations are an example of new our "Fusion Simulator" - well that's great then - of course it works...

Republican senators tell FTC to back off data security, surveillance rules

Re: Simple approach?

You'd have thought for sure, but the most restrictive is the Californian CCPA introduced in 2020, and now already amended by the new CPRA being enforced from Jan 1 2023 (and now looking very similar to GDPR protections). A big driver behind the CCPA was of course the consideration of behaviour by big tech but also trying to reduce data overreach by all the usual Federal Agencies.

That's a big business cost - trying to ensure you comply through a minefield of state vs federal requirements. Also just complying isn't sufficient, you have to demonstrate that you comply in a variety of different ways, depending on the state in question, so even if you do everything to comply with CCPA/CPRA you have to be constantly alert of what's happening in other states. That takes Legal admin, HR admin, Contract Admin, IT Admin, and a s**t load of staff training to try to ensure that no-one says or does the wrong thing at any level of your business, and varies based on where you are, where your suppliers are and where your clients are. It's easy to end up with one state that has a rule DEMANDING data be provided regarding the diversity of the workforce, another state that has a rule PREVENTING that information from being divulged.

As a business, how do you cope with that? Cue a Supreme Court case in about 5 years...

All of the norths are about to align over Britain

Re: Magnetic north is easy to track

https://xkcd.com/2098/

The OS says: These predictions are likely to change...

Real scientists freely admitting they actually don't know everything and can't necessarily predict what's to come in the future due to the fact that nature is inherently a bit chaotic - bravo! Maybe the environmentalists could learn a thing or two...

Apple exec confirms iPhones will switch to USB-C because 'we have no choice'

All that will happen is that in a couple of years time, Apple/Samsung/Insert-your-chosen-vender-here will release a device that has both USB-C AND their new "son-of-lightning" connector marketed as way more whizzbang than USB-C and with a new charger bundled supporting said new whizzbang-son-of-lightning port

Nothing in the EU law says this can't happen - in fact I'd be surprised if Apple aren't already thinking along these lines...

Vendor marketing will simply be "use the crappy USB-C standard if you want, but ours is better because blah blah blah..."

And back to square one - same as PC vendors bolting RS232 ports into PC's for 20+ years after 99% of peripherals had moved on "just in case"