* Posts by Timop

72 publicly visible posts • joined 3 Dec 2022

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OpenAI's ChatGPT crawler can be tricked into DDoSing sites, answering your queries

Timop

Re: All hail to the AI. May the AI kill us all.

Combine it with the previous fad that similarly has S for security in it's acronym: IoT. That has slowly creeped into many homes by this point for example in a form called Tuya (cheap wifi connected smart home stuff).

M4 MacBook Pro shows Apple is still glued to the idea of unfixable laptops

Timop

It keeps baffling me that with the state of engineering ability and material science know-how in 2024 hampering repairability would somehow translate into even thinner devices.

They probably use something like $100k+ jigs per assembly station in production to glue the things together that could also be cleverly designed assembly. Which would mean one could replace single part and not the only available module that "coincidentally" has all the expensive parts bundled in it. Like touch screen stuff for smartphones and soldering ram + SSD to laptops...

But on an other hand chasing as high revenues and profits ever possible would require the hampering repairability -part to be done as fully as possible....

Google Gemini tells grad student to 'please die' while helping with his homework

Timop

Re: Ironic

Just back it up with lot of marketing hype and hope billions can be earned with it before everything crashes and burns

Cast a hex on ChatGPT to trick the AI into writing exploit code

Timop

I am looking forward to seeing some innovative method that gets the LLM somehow to spit out all copyright owners of the training data.

Datacenters to emit 3x more carbon dioxide because of generative AI

Timop

"... But for a beautiful moment in time we created a lot of value for shareholders!"

Whatever it takes to fire relatively highly paid employees en masse.

Developer tried to dress for success, but ended up attired for an expensive outage

Timop

I'd love to see a workplace for hundreds of people where there is safety related rule that anyone can adapt to their needs with their own common sense.

The situation after 6 months would probably be pretty wild. Never underestimate the power of laziness.

Fragile Agile development model is a symptom, not a source, of project failure

Timop

The best receipe for disaster projects usually is to not do the basics correctly. The easiest way to stack things in a way that no matter what talented individuals do everyone is doomed.

I've seen in industrial engineering projects that some principles similar to be found in agile manifesto are easily available but the management struggles to understand them and that is why someone simplifies the idea into lifecack with zero context that they are able to follow blindly. What could (not) go wrong?

What we know about complex projects (for example oasis of the seas cruise ship) is that you can have easily 1000 different companies working their own thing without significant issues as long as majority of basic things are done correctly from the beginning of the project until it finishes and there is enough resources to manage surprises and there is handful of people who know 24/7 what the status is with everything so they can check the big picture in under 30 minutes easily.

Timop

Did you mean right tool for the people doing the job?

Management simply cannot let anyone to make such decisions, thank god we have scrum that fixes the problem and is also associated with agile ;)

Drowning in code: The ever-growing problem of ever-growing codebases

Timop

Re: Spot on Liam

The problem will disappear by itself as soon as AI can be harnessed to grow the codebase exponentially without human supervision.

Tesla's Cybertruck may not be so stainless after all

Timop

Re: its "ultra-hard stainless steel" [...] "transparent metal" [...] "literally bulletproof."

Just find a spot where a puddle can be formed. Then all you need is salt water and couple months time (reaction speed depends on temperature) and the sheet might have already tiny spot rusted through and any time water is introduced corrosion continues.

Timop

Re: My knives and forks don't go "rusty"

Yeah if corrosion resistance is required using same tools and working area for regular steel and stainless is absolutely forbidden.

Timop

Re: Stainless?

At least 316 is pretty hard material. And the one that can deal with chemicals etc pretty well.

Quick Google:

301: 41 HRC

304: 22 HRC

316: 56 HRC

University chops students' Microsoft 365 storage to 20GB

Timop

Re: "over half of all data stored by organizations not serving a useful purpose"

"we will be decreasing storage quotas significantly bit later on, please find out all imaginable reasons for it that sound even remotely sensible to help PR department"

Kaspersky reveals previously unknown hardware 'feature' exploited in iPhone attacks

Timop

Funny how the vector is bit similar to methods used to bypass new car locks, immobilisers etc through headlamp connector. Magic words transmitted to bus and bingo.

Tesla ordered to cough up data for Autopilot probe or face heavy fines

Timop

Re: Someone who has driven one

It is good that my car has assisted parking because it is impossible to get center of the parking spot manually. Looking out does not help because you can't see any ground within 2-3m unless you open the window fully and mirrors don't help because there are no straight lines in car side to help any alignment. And the reverse camera, huge barrel stretched to rectangle form.

Europe's largest city council runs parallel systems to cover Oracle rollout mess

Timop

Re: The right question

Absolutely! Because ERP is such a simple system with minimum amount of coupling (plus Integrations to financial stuff, document management systems etc) and people are just lazy because nobody has got it right ever.

Microsoft's GitHub under fire for DDoSing crucial open source project website

Timop

Re: Local mirror?

Why bother, just intimidate someone to give you the resources you need for free.

Time running out for crew of missing Titanic tourist submarine

Timop

Re: Jerry-riggedness?

Yeah there are some simple issues like thermal expansion differences between CF and titanium which is not that nice in the long run if you have >30 K temperature differences on each diving cycle.

Heads for carbon delamination and tails for fatique fracture in titanium.

This AI hype is enough to drive you to drink, lose sleep

Timop

Re: Chicken? Egg?

I have understood that research about isolation has more than enough proof that loneliness is root cause for multiple issues. Including observable physical changes in the brain that probably affects behaviour.

But if you prefer to work in solitude (your boss just got the AI memo?) there should not be at least much ill effects.

Twitter now worth just a third of what Musk paid for it

Timop

Re: Vanity Pair

So in Elon's eyes it is +100% because of the increased mentions?

Dell reneges on remote work promise, tells staff to wear pants at least 3 days a week

Timop

Re: It's not for everyone...

Modern mass production stuff is not going to happen in a garage. Plus add logistics costs to each step and you have $150 product costing $150000 being produced with completely inferior production methods and you are lucky if the thing does not spontaneously collapse.

Bit like someone has skipped manufacturing history since first steps of Henry Ford.

AI is great at one thing: Driving next waves of layoffs

Timop

You can calculate a budget for AI training with following formula: Qty of employees to be replaced * AVG yearly salary * 100 years (because calculations are so precise that this is fully valid way of doing things).

And don't hesitate to be really optimistic about getting as high numbers as possible so you won't be that much limited by the training cost.

Elizabeth Holmes is going to prison – with a $500m bill

Timop

Re: Insufficient Evidence?

Insufficient evidence, insufficient connections. Sometimes the line is just too blurry and these things might accidentally mix.

And now I started thinking about billionaires getting higher return to capital compared to averages. Bit like the playing field was tilted by design.

Gartner: Stop worrying and love the cloud, with all its outages and lock-in

Timop

How convenient to pick aviation as reference.

Aviation industry has common goal of high security standards and extremely low accident rate. This increases viability of every aviation company.

What if they could have major vendor locks with monthly billing no matter if someone dares to fly or not and for those who must it does not matter how bad accidents will happen because migration to competitor would still be worse option financially?

Uncle Sam mulls dumping monolithic software stacks for modular blocks

Timop

Starting huge software projects committing to principles that were in fashion couple years ago and companies are silently already backtracking out of. What could go wrong?

Miffed Googlers meme on CEO's $226M pay award amid cost-cutting campaign

Timop

Imagine if you had ability for emphaty and take 10% effective paycut yourself while cutting costs. Yeah you'd loose millions but you probably could afford it. Easily. And majority of workforce would appreciate the act. A lot.

But who cares about disgruntled employees who you can sack next time costs are being cut. Plus you get to keep every single million you think you absolutely deserved.

Orqa drone goggles bricked: Time-bomb ransomware or unpaid firmware license?

Timop

Re: Not the Only 'Unprofessional' Company

Found similar stuff with expensive Dell. There was some unlicensed application used within some proprietary dell control software or similar.

Academics have 'no confidence' in Edinburgh University's response to its Oracle disaster

Timop

That sounds hard work, why don't we just skip about every step of that and trust that someone will figure out a way to fix the gigantic dumpster fire when the reality kicks in for the project team and/or the customer.

Yeah we have messed up all our previous projects but our luck will turn eventually.

CEO sorry after telling staff to 'leave pity city' over bonuses

Timop

Worst part is that no matter what profit margins are, 5%, 15%, 45%, you just got to have 4-5% on top of that next year or no bonuses for peons.

SpaceX's second attempt at orbital Starship launch ends in fireball

Timop

Re: Starship hasn't had the most successful history?

"how many more tests before getting something reliable ?"

Something between 1 and n

Probability gets higher the closer infinity you get.

I am getting a feeling that their approach might not be able to achieve this. Too much stuff fixed already and less room for adjustments with each change (plus possibility of additional issues arising due to changes being introduced). It is easy to paint oneself in corner really fast. And full reboot of whole design would be required.

This kind of test prototypes fast -stuff might not be the solution companies actually need. It requires thorough understanding about the wicked problem being tackled.

Sometimes it would be really useful to spend extra month with simulation software trying to get as many viable options as ever possible just to have more prototype backlog just in case plus better understanding about the issues that need to be solved aka must win battles.

Timop

They probably should stop chasing the icing stuff and use regular sugar instead. It might help with the valve.

4chan and other web sewers scraped up into Google's mega-library for training ML

Timop

Re: Devil’s advocate

He got the memo about potential state subsidies involved in AI business and decided to jump in.

CAN do attitude: How thieves steal cars using network bus

Timop

Re: Why

Mandatory height adjustment for brighter xenon/led beams make things much more trickier. Unless you have redundant car position sensor built inside the headlights.

Timop

Re: Why

Have you ever tried blinker when you have for example seat belt alert or similar beeping all the time? At least all post 2008 cars I have tested this with have been 100% SFX from loudspeaker with the blinker sounds.

Samsung reportedly leaked its own secrets through ChatGPT

Timop

Re: Seriously....

Imagine how much you can mess around with confidential information when you got 70 hours a week to look extremely busy at work.

Virgin Orbit lays off 85% of staff as funding deal falters

Timop

Re: Meaninglessly diluted and overrated brand anyway

SEPArated or something thicker?

China crisis is a TikToking time bomb

Timop

Re: China's low standard does not mean western's high

Compare this to the case where a certain billionaire said publicly that government is meddling way too much or something similar and believe it or not he disappeared completely for weeks and then announced that everything is fine and he will be stepping down.

Errors logged as 'nut loose on the keyboard' were – ahem – not a hardware problem

Timop

Re: Aaaaargh!

People will definetly appreciate how management treats them as numbers in these metrics instead of actual people. Just a firm reminder about metrics getting bit worse when someone has big problems in their life will definetly help. A lot.

But you gotta do what you gotta do in order to make it easier for the certain people to fire for example 50 000 employees at once.

Just the kind of places where people will innovate and go for the extra mile on a weekly basis ;)

Eufy security cams 'ignore cloud opt-out, store unique IDs' of anyone who walks by

Timop

Did you mean one should create an remote exploit to these doorbells that somehow drops all WAN connections before any IDs get uploaded to Anker servers when one walks by? My moral compass is now confused.

Here's a fun idea: Try to unlock and drive away in someone else's Tesla

Timop

Re: You laugh

My car gives the most annoying beeps if car is running and you jump out and close the door behind you if you keep the key in your pocket. Well within the range where the fancy touch the sensor to unlock doors -feature works. I suppose there are different detection areas and door unlock and start engine use different circuits.

I will definetly test at some point the multiple ways this arrangement will also fail in practice.

Welcome to Muskville: Where the workers never leave

Timop

The feeling when you have slept at office overnight and grab your laptop and get "login failed" prompt. And then find out the web auction listing for all your belongings.

Ex-Tweep mocked by Musk for asking if he'd actually been fired

Timop

Re: Just think Elon

Suddenly I realised why SpaceX crew is so fast and successful with their attempts. They have extremely high motivation.

CEO Elon Musk wants out of Tesla tweet jail. Lol, no, says SEC

Timop

This guy might be world fastest deal signer. Too bad award for it is not to be able to escape the deals.

Musk's view count antics are perfect cover for Twitter's paid API failure

Timop

Re: It's not entirely clear if Musk's changes have had the effect he wanted

Can't stop thinking about situation where someone realizes 5 minutes after the launch that he/she really should have done some background checks first.

Feel free to use this as a plot for 9 months long slow TV horror movie. Make sure nobody can leave as soon the film starts rolling.

Scammers steal $4 million in crypto during face-to-face meeting

Timop

Cryptocurrency - to the people who are capable of auditing everything properly themselves just to prevent getting scammed.

It's your human hubris holding back AI acceptance

Timop

"AI system's recommended answer (D for the question above)"

So Dunning & Kruger effect prevents people taking advice from AI that seems to have similar effect of its own?

A moment of silence for all the drives that died in the making of this Backblaze report

Timop

Re: How busy are the devices ?

Vibrations might be large risk and it is easy to simulate resonant frequencies nowadays and make sure that nothing starts resonating while full rpm.

Speed changes etc might be the trickier thing. Because you need to set the component frequencies somewhere and definetly not to full rpm frequencies. So there might be some edge cases that wreak havoc inside the drive.

Timop

Re: 1% failure rate

This is easy if you have to manufacture only single golden sample.

Try adding variations from part tolerances and assembly process etc. And produce truckloads of drives weekly. Or maybe even daily.

What is Google doing with its open source teams?

Timop

Yes if you define "no resources" through shareholder demands about exceeding certain level of ROI for each quarter. Naturally the level should exceed the level of previous quarter.

Timop

1. Sack 90% of workforce

2. Next groundbreaking product magically appears

3. Earn gazillion dollars and no need to share it with greedy employees demanding getting paid monthly

Standard bean counter stuff.

I am starting to believe that lean etc was rebranding with the sole purpose of stripping long term commitment to employees and ability to rotate jobs and other nice stuff for employees from Toyota Production System.

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