Posts by Elongated Muskrat

NYSE technical error sends stocks tumbling

Re: It's all fun and games...

We can only dream...

Twitter 'supersharers' of fake news tend to be older Republican women

Cesspit

I see the comments here have, predictably, turned into the cesspit of right-wing talking points that might be expected every time objective research demonstrates that stupidity and gullibility are more prevalent on the right of the political spectrum. No shit, there is disinfo on the left as well, just as not everyone on the right swallows bullshit so easily, however, what the article is reporting, are observable facts, rather than loud opinions on the internet. This is only proven in point by the number of loud opinions posed in response, as if these will disprove the research, which is itself, largely about teh propagation of those loud (but wrong) opinions, and how they are distributed demographically.

You can almost see "social media" eating itself in response, in real time...

Re: If they had been on the left ?

If I set fire to this straw man, would it provide enough light to illuminate the stupid?

Re: Pasty keyboard warriors

Methinks the (obvious) troll icon means that they are obviously trolling you.

Re: Pasty keyboard warriors

You used the troll icon, but it seems that either a lot of people either took your post literally, or took objection to you ridiculing the snowflakery of those who most often use the word "snowflake"

Screwdrivers: is there anything they can't do badly? Maybe not

Re: Screwdrivers can be used for anything

At Christmas last year, I received a new strimmer for the allotment. This contained, in the box, various attachments alongside the usual nylon "blades", including circular saw blades. On balance, I decided that I'd like my feet to continue to be attached to the bottom of my legs, and they have remained in the box.

It did, however, also come with a fairly decent pruning saw, which is handy, because a previous tenant saw fit to plant a plum tree on a vigorous stock at the end of the plot, and this needs constant pruning with extreme prejudice to prevent it becoming a 30ft monstrosity. This would have been the correct tool of choice for the OP, not a recip.

Re: Not screwdrivers but...

Sounds like they should have got a wicket keeper for you too.

Thanks for coming to help. No, we can't say why we called – it's classified

Free doughnuts in the departure lounge?

PayPal is planning an ad network built off your purchase history

Mobile ads are the worst:

Please sit through this 2 minute long unskippable ad with loud and annoying sound that you have to scramble to mute via a tiny button hidden in a random corner of the ad, for the fifth time in the last ten minutes, because perhaps you haven't quite yet vowed to never do business with whatever company is spewing this shite into your face. If you don't then respond by pressing the tiny X in the corner in time (after pressing it once already, being taken to the Play Store download for whatever app/game it is, closing that, waiting five more seconds and pressing the X again), whatever app it is that contains that ad in the first place will decide you didn't see it, and force you to watch it again.

I get that a lot of apps are funded by advertising, but advertising that appears to have been devised as one of Dante's circles of Hell simply is not necessary, and can't be effective.

I think they're what gets used to feed the Pi-Hole.

If PayPal keep this up, they'll just get their domains added to the block-list.

Re: You just bought a kettle...

Not with my personal details and purchase history you don't, scumbag.

Re: You just bought a kettle...

Literally the only time I'd click on an ad is by mistake. A mistaken click-through isn't worth the electrons used to transmit it.

If fewer pointless ads are shown, fewer pointless ads are clicked on by mistake. This could probably be proven by running an ad campaign for something nobody would possibly want, and still counting click-throughs on it. Left-handed screwdrivers, vegan slaughterhouse tools, or Rishi Sunak, for example.

A thump with the pointy end of a screwdriver will fix this server! What could possibly go wrong?

Re: Technical Terminology

I believe that is the technical term for a police battering ram.

Re: 486 DX/50

My understanding is that it is/was due to stiction of the spindle bearings.

I stumbled upon LLM Kryptonite – and no one wants to fix this model-breaking bug

Re: we need we need proper taxation of the rich

You need something with a bit of acidity to cut through fatty meat. Something like apple sauce, or tangy berries like redcurrant tor gooseberries.

You might find that some of it is very lean and gamey, however, due to the availability of time to the ultra-rich to work out. In this case, a long marinade in something to tenderise it a bit might help, such as pineapple.

Re: Trifecta of ignorance demonstrated

When in Prague, I visited the café that was a favourite with Kafka. Perhaps it is of significance that one of the things on the menu is hot chocolate containing absinthe. It might go some way towards explaining Metamorphosis. My wife assured me that it was delicious.

Re: That was my first thought

It sounds to me like some sort of "category" issue; where the inherent behaviour of LLMs is unstable / unpredictable given a certain class of input.

It's probably non-trivial to fix, because there are three potential solutions:

1) Fix the underlying issue (which might be inherent to LLMs themselves)

2) Filter out the entire category of input, which would require identification of this within an arbitrarily complex input, something you might use a LLM for if it was 100% reliable and didn't choke on that input.

3) "Catch" the output from such bad input and halt. Again, it might be practically impossible to distinguish between bad output and valid, but similar, output, unless the LLM doing the filtering itself understands the input.

Given that (2) and (3) are probably practically impossible, that leaves us with (1): LLMs have an inherent design flaw. Perhaps we shouldn't all be jumping on the magical thinking bandwagon so quickly, and see "A1" for what it is: An unstable system that gives unpredictable output, and is thus inherently unsuitable for most purposes.

Re: Imagine the author sharing the prompt..

Indeed, the responsible approach to disclosure of a software vulnerability, is first to alert the software provider, to allow them to fix it, before then disclosing the vulnerability, so that others can be aware of it, and avoid it / work around it. There should be a suitable delay between disclosure to the vendor and disclosure to the wider community, to give the vendor time to acknowledge and fix it, but if their response is no response, then the responsible (natch) thing to do is disclose. The alternative is that there is an unpatched exploit out there that may be already known about and exploited by "bad guys" but which nobody has any knowledge of to mitigate against it.

Giving Windows total recall of everything a user does is a privacy minefield

Re: They missed an opportunity

At least Jeremy Bentham has the excuse that his head is made of wax.

Re: It begs the obvious question...

Now that I have alerted you to it, listen for it. It will happen. You will twitch.

Re: It begs the obvious question...

Exactly, as any fule kno, the plural of schema is schemata.

Re: It begs the obvious question...

Je suis vraiment désolé, mais je ne prends que du café aujourd'hui.

Vous voulez un biscuit?

Re: It begs the obvious question...

The one that makes me twitch is when people pronounce "cache" like "cachet". That, and people who don't grasp that loan-words from Greek, such as "phenomena" are plural, and that the singular is "phenomenon" (doo-doo-doo-doo-doo)

Re: "At present, Windows Recall feels like it was put together with insufficient thought"

It's the new "metaverse". Once they realise that it is, in practice, pretty useless, except for a few niche use cases, they'll bin it. They just need to get through the sunk cost fallacy stage first.

Re: It begs the obvious question...

I don't agree with the poster you are replying to, but I also don't agree with you, as the correct English pronunciation of forté is fɔːteɪ (forte, the Italian variant, used often in musical notation is pronounced fɔːti). If you speak US English, you might pronounce it fɔːt, but you'll also likley pronounce the name of a couple of well known Middle-Eastern countries as Eye Rack and Eye Ran, so forgive me if I don't take lessons on the pronunciation of my native language (or of loan-words from neighbouring countries) from you.

edit - I wrote all the above before re-reading your post and realising I'd misread it quite egregiously. Rather than ninja-edit or delete my own post, I will now correct myself (as I wish many other posters would)

You are, of course, totally correct, and the poster to whom you were replying remains wrong, possibly doubly so...

I hang my head in shame at my lack of reading comprehension, and present myself for punishment to the Headmaster.

Re: It begs the obvious question...

For clarity, and because the edit window has now passed, "none of which involve the user being spied on" would have been better written as, "none of which are to the benefit of the user, who is being spied on". All those use cases do indeed involve spying on the user.

Re: How much data stored?

How many processor cores is that going to keep busy? Are Microsoft going to pay for the wear and tear on my storage (even modern flash memory has a limited number of rewrites before it fails)? What about the increased electricity usage? While they're at it, they can chip in for the air conditioning in summer.

Start the reactor, Bearshark.

Re: TOTAL RECALL

Wait, this is Microsoft, not Elon, so no "get your ass to Mars".

Re: It begs the obvious question...

I can think of lots of use cases, none of which involve the user being spied on, but plenty of benefit for Microsoft.

Obvious parallel is obvious

The phrase "Big Brother is Watching You" entered the English vocabulary with the publication of George Orwell's 1984, with the sinister connotations it now holds, but imagine if the book had never been published, or didn't have "Big Brother" as an entity, and how innocent the phrase would sound. Indeed, in the book, the phrase is supposedly reassuring, and a signifier of the constant propaganda that inhabitants of Airstrip One are fed.

In the future, then, will the phrase, "Windows Recall is Helping You" enter the vocabulary in the same way? Something that is presented as a useful feature for the user, such as Big Brother's protective gaze, has a true nature that is much more sinister? "All data is held on your device" for now, but we all know the heavyweight "AI" processing will take place in a data centre somewhere, and I struggle to believe that those snapshots won't be sent there, even transiently, for analysis, and processing.

The underlying benefit for Microsoft of doing this? Data analysis. Profiling. Targeted advertising. Does anyone honestly think that three-letter agencies wouldn't want their go on this fairground ride as well? We'd be naïve to think that they aren't already salivating at the thought. As for the potential to sell that data on, especially in jurisdictions without adequate provisions for privacy (*cough* the US *cough*), well, how long before that valuable profiling is used for political targeting, not just plain old advertising? It'll be Cambridge Analytica all over again, but with richer, higher quality data.

So, it's a hard nope from me.

NYC Comptroller and hedge funds urge Tesla shareholders to deny Musk $50B windfall

Re: X musks the spot

NeuraXink? Indicating the usefulness of the brain implants once the untethered nano-wires work themselves free, as they reportedly are doing.

It's not really phonetically writeable in English, but the closest I can come is the sound of a short ear-shatteringly loud blast of white noise, which, incidentally, is what comes from a lot of his supporters.

Re: Usefull to know

Well, unless UNISON is a name shared by more than one organisation, there is actually one bunch in there, what with them being the UK's largest workplace trade union.

Re: He earned it

I'm willing to bet that he thinks neoliberal economics are left-wing too, because the word "liberal" is in there. It's not possible to educate such people, no matter how many times you point them in the right direction. See also: "Nazis were socialists" and belief in things written on buses.

I prefer *Xitted out, *Xat out, or **Xcreted.

* The 'X' is pronounced as the ʃ phoneme, "sh".

** The X is pronounced as the name of the letter, "ex"

Re: He earned it

The deal was that he got the money if he raised the company's stock price by the agreed upon amount, which he did.

I guess you've missed reading several of the articles that have already explained why that agreement was deemed void by a judge, then?

To summarise it for you:

Person A promises Person B a reward that comes from the coffers of Shareholder C; Person A is determined by a judge to be too close to Person B, and acting in the interests of Persons A and B, whilst they actually have a responsibility to act in the best interests of person C. The judge determines that person B can't have their reward, as promised, because the basis of that promise was flawed.

To provide a metaphorical parallel in the form of an example:

You ask me to look after your car for you. I promise my friend he can have your car if he buys me an ice cream. He buys me an ice cream. Does he get your car?

An attorney says she saw her library reading habits reflected in mobile ads. That's not supposed to happen

The thing about coincidences, is that it would be weird if they never happened at all (due to the nature of randomness). However, if you started getting several adverts relating to the Justinian riots in Constantinople, shortly after reading about it, you'd probably have reasonable grounds to dismiss coincidence and become suspicious.

Whilst the odds of two random events coinciding in some meaningful way, are way higher than people might think (due to the sheer number of things that can coincide, and their constant occurrence), the odds of a third thing then coinciding with both of those is very tiny, and if you add a fourth, or even fifth thing all lining up along the same line of coincidence, the odds that it actually is a coincidence are practically zero.

If two very unlikely things coincide, such a very specific book topic, and a very specific advert on the exact same topic, the odds of coincidence are, I would say, also very low in this case, especially when you have reasonable grounds to suspect that those are targeted adverts.

Re: Christine Dudley was listening to a book on her iPhone while blah blah your title is too long

I'm pretty sure that I passed the 30 milestone some years back (unless the last x years have been a horrible, horrible dream), and I still frequently play computer games on one device while listening to/watching something streaming on the TV on the other side of the room, quite often whilst also keeping an eye on messages coming in on my phone. Perhaps you don't have the mental agility to do this, but the idea that it is somehow reserved for under 30s is a frankly bizarre misapprehension.

Re: How much data was asked

Except that, as the article states, it is explicitly not permitted for the library to do that. Asking someone to sign an agreement that requires something from them that you are legally not allowed to ask for is known as an unenforceable contract term (or similar, IANAL), and just because they agreed to it doesn't make it permitted.

For example, you could agree to allow me to harvest all your organs, while you are still alive. Even though you have agreed, if I were to go ahead and start cutting you up, I'd still be committing various crimes.

When you read a line of text, do you trace it with your finger and mouth each word out loud, or, do you do as most people who have been reading all their adult life do, and read a line in a couple of seconds, with internal monologue voicing each word? Look at that line of text - how long did it take to read, and how many words was it? 10 words a second sounds about right to me, for a moderately fast reader, so why not for a fast listener.

You could probably train that skill just by listening to some American podcasts, where they seem to talk so quickly that it's a wonder they have any time to even breathe.

One plausible explanation?

I've long suspected that the Alphabet services on Android devices are actively listening and categorising conversations. Why do I think this? Because very specific conversations had in private, in the presence of Android phones have coincided with equally specific adverts, where the subject of those conversations have never entered into a computer, e.g. by including that subject in search terms on Google.

I've experienced this a few times myself, and anecdotally heard about it happening to many others. The obvious conclusion (be it right or wrong) is that your phone is listening to you, and those conversations are going off to a data centre somewhere to be categorised so that ads can be "personalised" to you.

It's not beyond the realms of possibility here, then, that the audio books being played on one device (the iPhone) are being snooped by services running on the other device (the Android tablet) and are being used to categorise unwanted adverts via this snooping. In essence, it's a side-channel attack on privacy.

Of course, this is pure conjecture, and proving any of this would be even harder than untangling the various information leakage supposedly going on through the straightforward channels.

Techie invented bits of the box he was fixing, still botched the job

Re: Sleepiness is the Enemy

I guess that wrote off your weekend plans.

Re: Split disc

Singer? Sure those were washing machine drives, and not sewing machine ones?

Alright, alright, I've already got my coat on.

Destroying offshore wind farms is top priority for Trump if he returns to presidency

Well, yes and no.

I don't believe China has any rules about forced labour, so they're hardly breaking those rules when the reportedly high population of "re-education camps" can churn things out cheaper than paid employees in the West.

Of course, the US won't pick them up on this, because when they abolished slavery, they put in a bit about how it didn't apply to prisoners, and the US has both the highest per-capita and absolute prison population in the world, the value of whom to the US economy, as forced labourers, is immense.

I guess Chinese prisoners are just more motivated. Trump will probably level the playing field by introducing an executive order to harvest and sell prisoners' organs, to catch up...

Tesla nearing shareholder vote to grant Musk $46B

If I owned Tesla shares, I'd sell them now, wait for the inevitable price crash (which will either be because Elmo has taken total control and driven it into the ground, Elmo has left and investor confidence has floored, or Elmo has left and the remaining board members have driven it into the ground because of sheer lack of competence). I'd then buy the shares back when the price has floored, wait for the inevitable buy-out, and either sell them again when the pre-buy-out bounce happens, or hold onto them as a long term investment once the company has matured under sensible ownership.

Really, I don't think there has ever been a better time to short-sell Tesla shares.

He hasn't even installed a monorail* in that hollowed out volcano old emerald mine.

*As far as I know

Something something interest payments something something social media site something something overpriced buy-out something something advertisers leaving in droves...

I think there is a third argument that not only can be made, but which already was made, and tested in court:

3) Those who promised the pay-off to Musk in 2018 were too close to Musk and were acting in their or his best interests, and not those of the company which they were employed to represent the interests of.

That's my reading of the reporting on the judgement made by the judge who previously struck down this payment, and my reading of why Musk needs to have a shareholder vote now to allow him to take hold of those shares. If those shareholders think he should get the shares, so be it, but the reasoning for doing so would not be the original "agreement" in 2018.

It's also worth noting that the targets that Musk purportedly has now met probably didn't include things which, given the last few years of Musky activity, they might now include. Things such as not causing reputational damage to the company by association with his name, through the acquisition of a previously popular social media site and tacking hard to the far right. They didn't of course, but since they have been rendered irrelevant due to the judge striking down that agreement, that argument is totally moot.