Posts by Elongated Muskrat

PyTorch dependency poisoned with malicious code

Re: Epeen > Research

Equally, a live system in use by actual people shouldn't be pulling packages from an untrusted, uncurated repository, especially not in preference to trusted packages from an official repository.

Re: Logical extension of a ML package

Mentally, I'm comparing this to nuget repositories; there are official repos and there are unofficial ones. We wouldn't dream of letting some random submit a package to one of our internal nuget repos, and although I've not tried it, I'm willing to bet that the process of getting something into an official repo at least requires authentication and certification of the package. I also suspect these are curated by Microsoft, and anything dodgy would (hopefully) get removed with short shrift.

The process is probably pretty analogous to Go repos (I don't really know enough, technically, about either), and whilst I'm sure a third party org could quite easily make a nuget repo publicly available, the question of trust should be foremost in the mind of anyone thinking of using it. In this case, the issue of trust should also have been considered. Not only using untrusted third-party packages, but using that package source in preference over the official one. I get that these are "nightly builds" and not release builds, but still, where's the due diligence?

Moving fast and breaking things indeed...

Logical extension of a ML package

As far as I can tell, ML (such as those "AI" art algorithms) is largely based on slurping up as much "training data" as possible and then denying all knowledge when it produces things that are suspiciously similar to copyrighted works. This is just the logical next step - cut out the middle man and just move directly to stealing valuable data.

In all seriousness, though - why is this trusting a third-party package repository over an official one, and if they want any credibility at all, why does that third-party repository just allowing people to upload anything they like, including packages with identical names to ones in the official repository?

I expect to be reading more about how their security model is woefully broken in Bruce Schneier's next blog post...

Since humans can't manage fusion, the US puts millions into AI-powered creation

The fact that you're "talking" seemingly interchangeably about QM and relativity, when the two are still currently unreconciled marks you out as a nonsensemonger.

I'll take that as "Yes, this is gibberish produced by a ML chatbot."

There's enough nonsense posted here by actual humans, without adding white noise to the mix. Please stop.

What the hell are you gibbering about? The Avogadro number (which is a way of counting things by relating them to their unit mass) has bugger all to do with the periodic table, which is a means of classifying things based on how many protons they have in them.

Your post reads like someone has taken a physics library as input and asked an "AI" algorithm to write something that sounds like physics. At least aManFromMars writes authentic gibberish.

Somehow, I don't think we'll be managing gravitational fusion on Earth any time soon. Also, that has the flaw that once the fuel is used up, it tends to get a bit explode-y. Hardly controlled, I'd say.

Cops chase Tesla driver 'dozing' with Autopilot on

Yes, I read that, with the comma implied; note everyone's syntax is perfect, and sometimes language is naturally ambiguous.

Cyclists, or people lying in the road

not

Cyclists or people, lying in the road

Re: What gets me ....

Well, I suppose it has the advantage that when the wankers sell their white Audis and buy Teslas, at least they won't be trying to get into my boot at 95mph on the M4.

You're assuming that the "AI" can spot cyclists and people lying in the road. I seem to recall fatal incidences of it not doing so.

I'd say it's more a question of roadworthiness. A Ford Focus doesn't have a built-in "self drive" feature that relies on having your foot on the accelerator, and a car manufacturer is not responsible for bad or illegal driving.

Teslas, however, have a "feature" that is inherently dangerous is misused, and market this in a deceptive manner (calling it full self-drive or whatever when it is just fancy cruise and lane control). If there's a risk it can be accidentally activated, or that measures to ensure that it is not misused are easily countered, then there is a question of whether this "feature" actually makes the vehicle dangerously unroadworthy.

An IT emergency during a festive visit to the in-laws? So sorry, everyone, I need to step out for a while

Re: Not during Christmas, but not at the best moment either...

I once, many years ago, had my boss at the time call me on my personal mobile when I was at the bar in my local pub on a Friday night, to try to give me a dressing down, for a reason I can't even remember (but probably related to overwork and under-resourcing).

Since then, I have made it a policy decision to not provide my personal mobile number to work. On the rare occasion that it has been absolutely necessary, I have demanded written assurances that the number would only be used for that specific purpose, not passed on, and not kept for longer than required. My direct boss does actually have my personal number, but I can actually trust him with it, and I think he has possibly contacted me on it, once, via a polite SMS.

Now, if I get calls that I am not expecting from an unrecognised number, I don't answer them and I block the number. If I'm being charitable, and it's a mobile number, I might send them a "who this" SMS before blocking them. Anyone who needs to contact me urgently will have other means of doing so. Long gone are the days when a phone call gets treated as a priority interrupt.

The likes of Amazon who demand a phone number for their couriers can have good luck trying to call 00000000000.

Meet the merry pranksters who keep the workplace interesting, if not productive

Re: Pranking is abuse

I was with you, right until you started saying things like "SJW", "woke", and "snowflake" and it became pretty obvious that you are one of them. Don't you have a column to write for the Scum abusing some members of the Royal Family, or something?

Re: Mouse Balls! prank or hyjinx?

Did you ever pop one in a microwave for ten seconds? Pretty, pretty...

Apple 'created decoy labor group' to derail unionization

Re: So why don't employees quit already??

This isn't a dangerous industry where unionized employees are necessary to ensure the company implements the proper safety controls.

I'm so glad that I don't live in the US, where this is what people think unions are for.

For reference, in civilised countries, the thing that is in place to ensure that proper safety controls are in place is called "health and safety legislation". If employers breach this, they are liable to prosecution, not by unions, but by statutory bodies, such as the Health and Safety Executive in the UK.

The purpose of unions is to gain a collective bargaining position to ensure that the employers don't take the piss out of employees, for example by demanding long working hours, paying a pittance, and so on. Nothing to do with "dangerous industries"

Of course, unions have had a role to play in getting the health and safety legislation in place in the first place, in order to make workplaces safer, but they are certainly not responsible for ensuring it is followed (although they may enable reporting of violations in such a way as to mitigate fear of reprisals).

Every time I read a post by someone claiming that unionisation is unnecessary, I find myself wondering about their motivations. Union actions have brought us things like statutory maternity pay, weekends, paid holidays, fairer pay, health and safety in the workplace, and so on. These things are at the detriment of nobody, with the exception of unscrupulous and exploitative employers.

You wouldn't be on the side of the unscrupulous and exploitative now, would you?

Well the fact that the workers aren't unionised means that unions can't have been consulted, can they?

Elon Musk starts poll with one question: Should I step down as head of Twitter?

Re: Musk. Great ambition, great showmanship, but often a failure to deliver.

I think the key is in the tone. If you can't discern that, then you may have to work on your reading comprehension and critical analysis skills.

Whilst I agree that name-calling doesn't add anything to your argument, sometimes it can be used to comedic effect. Whether it's actually funny or not is another matter, and one that is largely down to personal tastes. It's really not worth griping about though.

Re: If I leased property to Twitter

I can sell him my account if he likes. I'll take the knock-down price of only $13Bn, cheaper than Twitter!

With pay strikes ending, BT merges divisions to save £100m in annual costs

The main rationale would seem to be “consolidation and rationalization of management teams, support functions, product portfolios and system, with annualized cost saving on £100 million” identified.

They're getting rid of one minor C-level exec?

Server broke because it was invisibly designed to break

Re: A service provider that doesn't bill because their attempted fixes failed?

Fuck me, Anyone who has never heard of VAT codes needs to be forbidden from touching any software that is remotely financial.

$Deity only knows that there are some horrible kludges in the dim and distant past in our software, but I can confidently say that hard-coding VAT as 15%, on everything, VATable or not is not one of them.

Musk bans private-plane-tracking @Elonjet on Twitter, threatens legal action

Re: Elon, you're a ...

Ahahahahahaha.

If you think @Jake ever had anything to do with his Muskiness, you've obviously never seen any of his other posts over pretty much all the time that El Reg has had a comments section.

As far as can tell, @jake has been active in the world of IT since long before His Muskiness was even born.

So your comment just smacks of desperate projection.

Re: I'm appalled

Ow! No! Stop! It hurts! The downvotes! They are having SUCH an effect!

Re: I have offered several times ...

To be fair, I don't know many lefties who own one of this turbo-milkfloats.

The rich people who can afford them tend to be rich people, and rich people tend to be right-wing, although not usually the nutjob type, just the "sell your grandmother to turn a profit" type.

Re: Publicly available ≠ public

Your argument is that because the data is not made available by a public body, it is not public data?

Sounds like a bit of a pointless hair-splitting exercise.

The data is available to the public and has no restrictions on its dispersal. Whether it is officially "public information" or information that is publicly available is moot. People are free to share it.

(sorry, couldn't resist)

Re: Space Karen

Wibble

Re: I'm appalled

Quite right, I sometimes post as AC, if something I post would help to publicly identify me or my employer.

It's called the right to privacy, or Article 8 of the ECHR.

Re: I'm appalled

Commercial pilot? Must be some sort of military super-pilot with the reflexes to get a down-vote in, in the few hundred milliseconds between me hitting post, and the page refreshing on my browser. Because it showed up as soon as I posted my comment.

Obvious bot is obvious. I'm glad to see I've annoyed someone enough for them to waste their time setting a bot on me, and one that performs such a trivial and pointless task. I feel honoured, but also a bit saddened by the lack of anti-bot countermeasures the Reg seems to be suffering from (on a tech news site, no less).

Bring back the Moderatrix, I say! She'd sort 'em out!

I think they're too busy frantically hitting F5 and the downvote button on every post that conflicts with their distorted world view by contrasting them with facts...

Re: I'm appalled

Bikes don't tend to have much of a risk of mid-air collision if you don't know where they all are, and that's why there's not an internationally recognised agreement to keep track of where they all are.

edit - wow the downvote bot got me as soon as I posted that. I must be really annoying some idiot.

How is reporducing publicly available information "doxxing"?

Enquiring minds demand to know. Because the word (ugly neologism that it is) originates from making private documents available (documents -> docs -> dox -> doxxing), not publicly mandated tracking information of aircraft, which by law is freely available worldwide, for obvious safety purposes.

Also, knowing where a plane is, is not the same as knowing where the person who owns that plane is, unless... wait... that's it... Musk has one of those planes that turns into a car, like in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang!

He's really concerned that the child catcher is coming for his moronically named offspring.

To protect its cloud, Microsoft bans crypto mining from its online services

Re: Over selling

There's a third reason:

3. If mining becomes unprofitable, the miners will stop using the hardware that has been provisioned for it. Microsoft are then left with a lot of expensive hardware geared to a certain type of compute load that there isn't a market for (i.e. they have massively over-provisioned). They will lose money on this, because even if it is powered off, it's taking up space in a data centre, and if they unplug it, it's taking up space in a warehouse, and both of those things cost money to maintain. Mining workloads are a very narrow and specific type of workload, so those looking for more generalised compute capacity will need something else.

Re: How would M$FT know?

Mining algorithms tend to have a very specific and recognisable pattern of activity (which is how NVidia managed to do the whole LHR thing on their video cards).

Microsoft wouldn't need to know the exact details of your workload to be able to spot suspicious patterns, and investigate further. This might go as far as saying to you, "your pattern of activity looks very much like crypto mining. It couldn't be crypto mining though, because we don't allow that, and you wouldn't break your EULA. Do you mind telling us what you are actually using it for."

You'd have to be ready with a plausible answer, because "go away it's none of your business" is going to look extremely suspicious, and you might then find that Microsoft decide that they don't want you as a customer any more.

They don't actually have to prove anything either way, that would be down to you. Because "cloud" is just "someone else's computer", and they're perfectly free to say to you, "once your current contract is up, I don't want to let you use my computer any more".

Re: Over selling

It is exactly that. However, there is a world of difference between maintaining a capacity overhead, of, say 10%, to cope with reasonably foreseeable increases in demand, and building more capacity as it is needed, and having all of that capacity instantly swallowed up, so that nobody else has any headroom. Crypto-mining has the potential to go from close to zero demand to very high demand in a matter of hours, and then back down to zero demand again as market conditions change. The provider either has to provision enough overhead to cater for this, and have that hardware stood idle at times of low demand, or run the risk of losing all of their overhead capacity at the drop of a hat.

It's much easier (and fiscally sensible) for them to say "nope" to crypto-mining, and cater for the known average growth rate for demand, and plan to provision data centres when they know they are likely to be needed.

In reality, I would expect all cloud providers to be doing their best to quantify anticipated demand, probably to a high degree of accuracy, and then to work out what the error margins are for that, and provision just over exactly that amount, and no more. That way, they minimise costs and maximise acceptable contingency.

Take a look at the historical price graphs for bticoin. There are several periods of exponential growth (followed by sharp falls by about 60%). These coincide very well with "halvings".

Basically:

1) sometimes, but often the farms are in countries where electricity is cheaper, due to poorer environmental regulations, or abundant cheap renewables, such as hydro or geothermal

2) yes, through economies of scale

Re: Over selling

I think the actual reason may be a bit more subtle. Microsoft know that mining on cloud hardware isn't cost-effective. What they're actually worried about is that it might become so, if, for example, the cost of certain cryptocurrencies spikes. What they don't want is for someone to jump on there and immediately buy up all of their capacity, to mine while the price is high, and turn a quick profit, at the expense of their other customers. This sort of spike in demand would be reputationally very bad, because of this impact on other customers, who might start to question the wisdom of relying on "someone else's computer" for their workload.

Re: Over selling

I'd say that if I'm buying "compute" from a cloud provider, I'd like to pay for exactly the compute I use, and the provisioning should be invisible to me.

Sold by the processor cycle, if they have oversold and under-specced, then they are selling something they don't have. Equally, if I have provisioned a server, and it's not doing anything, I shouldn't be charged for anything other than the costs incurred by having it provisioned and sitting there, powered up, doing nothing.

The moment people realised money could be made, the economics moved fast to favour those who could use the cheapest electricity, and made it uneconomical for everyone else. With electricity costs through the roof at the moment, I can't see how it is economical for anyone except those with surplus power to burn (maybe some renewables at peak production?) who can do it "for free", and that doesn't factor in hardware costs.

Way back in the dim and distant, you could "mine" bitcoin using a plug in USB stick that looked like a big pen-drive.

I have a couple in a drawer somewhere. I ran them for a couple of years, consuming maybe a few tens of watts, which is a rounding error in my electricity bill, then stopped, because the time between getting block rewards from a mining pool (of something like 0.00001 BTC) was getting into months. At the time, the sum total of all the BTC I'd "mined" was something around £75, and my hardware and energy costs were probably double that.

It's also worth pointing out that I did this as a curiosity, without a massive financial outlay, and not expecting to make money back from it.

Because of the BTC inflation since (over a period of more than a decade), that £75 of BTC is now worth a couple of grand. Not a massive amount, and I've "spent" about half of it (mostly exchanging for Amazon vouchers, or buying stuff from Pimoroni who accept BTC), but I do have something to show for it, just about, over a looooong timescale. However, with this sort of strategy, unless you were to sink lots of money into it, speculatively, early on, you'd hardly be making a living from it. I do wonder how the massive BTC farms in places like China do turn any sort of profit, especially now, when the hash rate is going up and up, and the hardware now needed isn't exactly cheap (we're talking peta-hash, not the mega-hash scale mining of 2007).

On the whole, I think the only way you could (potentially) make money on it now is to sit on some BTC you already have, and wait for the next "halving" when the price will (probably) jump again. I think there are going to be a few more of these, IIRC, abut 4 years apart, by design. That relies on knowing what is going to happen in the future, and the past is, of course, no guide to that. The price may well have fallen to zero before then.

US Dept of Energy set to reveal fusion breakthrough

I have to say, that I'm hoping that we will eventually get to the point where we have reasonably efficient processes (probably via clever catalysis or bioreactors) to produce synthetic fuels as a drop-in replacement for hydrocarbons, with the feedstocks being carbon dioxide and water (plus energy). Then the problem turns into one of providing the energy, which can be from renewables, or nuclear, or fusion if it ever works, or whatever. From a greenhouse gas point of view, that is then neutral, the fuel is simply a high-density energy carrier.

Things like hydrogen have real problems: hydrogen likes to quantum tunnel through things, so a tank that will happily hold natural gas may leak hydrogen like a sieve, and hydrogen is not only explosive over a wide range of concentrations, but is odourless and burns withy an invisible (to the human eye) flame. Those are significant safety barriers to overcome. Fuel cells still need fuel (really they can be seen as slow combustion that provides electricity over heat).

If we can find a path to easily synthesise hydrocarbons, for example, propane and butane for gas burning appliances, and longer chains such as heptane and octane for liquid-burning engines, then existing supply lines and technologies can be used. Technologies which have already had well over a century of refinement and efficiency gains. We don't reinvent the wheel if we don't need to.

edit- a quick google show that such chemical reactions driven by sunlight are currently at about 1%, producing methane and ethylene. That's a start. For comparison, photosynthesis in plants is about 11% efficient.

Electrochemical redox reactions producing hydrocarbons from CO2 and water look to be about 13% efficient, which is promising.

Both of these are from research papers published in 2019, so this is very much cutting-edge stuff at the moment.

If it has one person in charge at the top, and the population has no recourse to removing them (usually done via a public vote, but sometimes via Madame Guillotine) it's an autocracy. Merits or otherwise of such a system aside, just because you don't like the word, that doesn't mean that's not its meaning.

Don't make me point you to a dictionary.

Re: Cold Fusion PR

ChatGPT is QAnon AICMFP

Re: scary stuff

I'm likening nuclear fusion (possibly wrongly) here to lighting a fire; you only need to light one corner of a bonfire for the whole thing to go up, and presumably, if you can get fusion "going", you only need to ignite enough to initiate the reaction, and the heat is then enough to ignite the rest of the mass. The physics, of course, is almost certainly far from being this simple, but I'm kind-of wondering out loud if the general principle applies.

Re: scary stuff

This is because the target for those lasers only contains enough hydrogen to produce that much energy when it fuses. More hydrogen = more energy out, once it has ignited.

Twitter will lose 32 million users by end of 2024, Insider Intelligence predicts

Yes, this is true. The problem being that those who rise to the top have a tendency towards being psychopaths, because the ability to tread on others is advantageous in gaining such power.

It's worth noting the adage that the extreme left and extreme right are pretty much indistinguishable (cf Stalin and Hitler), but this isn't necessarily a problem with leftism as such, but more the failing of the ideology, and the fact that if there is an opportunity for someone to abuse the system, someone will. I'd say that Stalin, himself, was a right-wing authoritarian (much like Putin) and that he "gamed the system" to gain power under the pretence of communism. Actual soviet communism didn't really last very long at all after the October Revolution, and gave way to authoritarianism very quickly.

Anyway, tl;dr: eat the rich.

I can't think of one person I know, many of whom are what you so charmingly describe as "the liberal left", who has ever though that Musk was anything other than an overprivileged arsehole.

For reference, lefties don't tend to approve of billionaires, the wealth of whom is derived from unfettered and unregulated capitalism, at the expense of the workers. Whether you lean to the left, or to the right, trying to cast neoliberal* economics, which are very right-ring, as leftism is a category error.

*Don't be fooled by the "liberal" bit in there, I know it's a trigger word for a lot of the hard-of-thinking.

What the fuck are you talking about? The quote is from a rather well-known film. I didn't think it needed attribution, because to the vast majority of people, it would be immediately obvious. Silly me, I forgot exactly how much stupid there is on the internet.

Not everything has to be a "tweet," you know.

Re: Musk is apparently considering doing a Trump thing ..

...unless you're one of their major customers, and the lack of liquidity from you not paying them means they can't afford lawyers...

It wouldn't be the first time that people have been put out of business by this sort of tactic, and it should be stamped on a lot harder.

If I had any sort of commercial relationship with Twitter, right now I'd be demanding cash up front, like utilities do with people who have bad credit ratings.

I see the angry Muskovites are here to readily downvote anything remotely critical of their messiah.

“Good. I can feel your anger. I am defenseless. Take your weapon. Strike me down with all your hatred, and your journey towards the dark side will be complete.”

This assumes Twitter will still exist in a year's time.

Given the number of law-suits Musk is currently attracting for doing things like failing to pay severance pay, trying to turn offices into dormitories, and getting rid of legally mandated mechanisms for tackling abuse, and the fact that advertisers, the only source of income apart from trying to charge people for coloured ticks, are fleeing like rats from a sinking ship that is also on fire, I'd be very surprised if Twitter doesn't file for bankruptcy well before then.