Posts by munnoch

Meta retreats from metaverse after virtual reality check

"Oh no!!!"

Said absolutely no one...

Optimus Schmoptimus - Boston Dynamics' humanoid robot is already in mass production

Re: AI or just CGI?

Notice the hands in the video are quite anthropomorphic whilst the "hands" in the still picture are terrifying alien like grappling hooks...

I would have thought for a controlled environment like a factory assembly floor the flexibility of humanoid robots is a completely unnecessary expense and doesn't really get you very far down the road towards being able to operate in unstructured environments like homes.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella becomes AI influencer, asks us all to move beyond slop

Re: Treating an AI as having a mind for us to have a "Theory of Mind" about is NOT the way to go.

They answer is in the question, LLM's are language models. They model language and they produce output that looks like language in response to inputs also in language. Language is of course quite important for the communication and discussion of ideas and knowledge but on its own it does not give rise to those things. Necessary but not sufficient.

Re: Well he's a goner....

"Bicycles for the mind"

When an MS CEO starts conjuring up the ghost of Steve Jobs you know its End of Days...

IPv6 just turned 30 and still hasn’t taken over the world, but don't call it a failure

Re: Backwards compatibility

No fan of NAT, but SIP broke itself all by itself by embedding the end-point for the RTP stream in its payload. A very important design goal is that the payload should have no knowledge of the protocol it is being transported over. What is needed is a way of referencing other end-points in the protocol header that the application can pull out as needed. If there was such a thing as a translating gateway it would be well documented as to how to translate these other end-point references. You'd still need all the UPnP nonsense though to start listening for the incoming stream.

Same thing that can break ftp although I think in nearly-2026 if you are doing ftp over the public internet you've got other problems....

Re: The real reason nobody wants to use it

Your point about API's is a bit of a non-sequitur. v6 had to introduce new variants of all of those. Difference is that v6 and v4 will forever live in parallel with each other whereas a v4.1 could have eventually absorbed v4 as a sub-set.

If they'd known back then they had decades to migrate then no doubt different choices would have been made. But they didn't so they didn't. Do you need any help to get down off your high horse?

Re: The real reason nobody wants to use it

I'm sure with a bit of creativity the optional headers in v4 could have been made to carry additional address octets. The argument against that is always about speed of routing but If you only use the extra address depth within private networks then that problem is greatly reduced because the core routers would never even look at the additional address depth.

That way instead of my ISP giving me a /29, which is an extremely wasteful way of letting me have 2 or 3 public facing servers, they give me a /32 (or a /40 or a /48) and I figure it out from there on down. Cloud providers could put literally thousands of servers behind each traditional v4 address whilst still having them all directly addressable. Hell, they could even charge more for putting you higher up in the routing strata.

Rule 101 about getting people to migrate to Shiny New Thing is make it completely backwards compatible with Crappy Old Thing so nothing needs to change on day one. I've used v4 almost my entire adult life but I expect to go to my grave without ever touching v6.

Accused data thief threw MacBook into a river to destroy evidence

Re: No data recovery required

Its on the removable bottom cover. Could dispose of that separately provided you have whatever non-standard screwdriver bit they are using this year to get it off. It'll still be burned into the electronics on the main board if that is recovered in a functioning state.

My OCD requires me to change the cover whenever I change the main board so that they stay matched...

Re: So Apple isn't that private after all.

"potentially access to your building"

This got me thinking. Surely there isn't just one code that anyone in the building can hand out and it will work in all perpetuity? I've probably answered my own question though....

AI faces closing time at the cash buffet

Re: Pointless

If the information you are looking for is in any way quantitative, i.e. where an exact match is required, not a "its got the same letters and numbers just not in the right order" sort of match, then its a lot less less than 90%, and more like 0% if the information you are looking for is at all unusual. Absolute waste of time and energy, literally.

Unfortunately all forms of search are going the same way. Ebay used to be a hold out where it always gave you exact matches, then they brought in a bit of spell correction, now its gone full on batshit, random. I have recently had several cases where I could search for two words that I knew were in the title of a given listing and it refused to show me that listing. I use ebay a lot for tech and car parts, close enough isn't, errr, close enough for me. Why does that make me some kind of outlier?

Coming Wi-Fi 8 will bring reliability rather than greater speed

Sounds like the sort of fanciful promises that were made for 5G. I believe we are still waiting for that version of the future to arrive.

Sure, you might be able to build applications over the top of it, for example based on its ability to sense the density of surrounding objects (which incidentally Wiz smart bulbs already do in a very simplistic manner to imply occupancy), but if anyone does they'll be crap and won't be supported beyond the initial poc.

At the moment 11ac does everything I need. I might get 11ax soon as the prices of used AP's reach pocket money level. One thing I've noticed though is that some 11ax AP's, particularly the ones with 2.5G uplinks, require POE+ i.e. they use more power than previous generations. Didn't see anything in the article promising smaller, less visually intrusive, more power efficient devices...

Microsoft wants to replace its entire C and C++ codebase, perhaps by 2030

Re: History Repeating Itself

In my experience its usually the developers themselves who are so unhappy with the mess that's resulted from unending demands to deliver something, anything no matter how quick and dirty, pleading to be allowed to start over with a clean sheet, sometimes in a new language or with a new framework. Just give us 3 months to rewrite and then we promise we'll get back onto your pipeline of unreasonable requests with renewed vigour.

When there is no balance of power between product owner and developers its inevitable it will all collapse, its only a question of how long it manages to stumble forward for. Magic fairy dust can't fix that interplay.

SoftBank scrambling to come up with $22.5B in OpenAI funding before New Year

So he's sold his NVidia stake, to raise cash to lend to OpenAI, so that they can buy NVidia product...

If he's sold the family jewels to help raise the first 100 bill, then how is he going to get on with the next 400? Over-committed? Hope so...

NIST contemplated pulling the pin on NTP servers after blackout caused atomic clock drift

You've obviously never looked at the output of ntpq.

Ntp is a very clever piece of software. Its one of the few internet protocols that has pages of mathematics behind it. If you set it up correctly with a handful of upstream sources to choose from the result is perfect time keeping for most practical day to day needs.

As humanoid robots enter the mainstream, security pros flag the risk of botnets on legs

"Give me your boots"

Kyocera claims 5.2 Gbps underwater laser data blast in lab tests

If you honestly think doing a firmware or even a sofware update on kit whilst its at the bottom of the ocean is a valid use case then you can't have much experience of doing updates here on dry land.

"Upgrading! Please ensure power and comms remain stable...".

Now, that is quite a short distance... Bit more work to do there chaps.

Covering the N Atlantic with a mesh of optical repeaters might be a way to counter attacks on cables.

Block all AI browsers for the foreseeable future: Gartner

Re: or a wrong flight might be booked

I just booked flights on some dodgy website referred by flightscanner. Honestly I must have had to click through a dozen pages of dark patterns trying to upsell me everything from insurance to automatic check in. What are the chances of an automated agent getting through that shit-storm without taking out a lifetime subscription to Encyclopedia Britannica along the way?

As it was I did opt for their optional "prime" subscription in return for 20 quid off. Supposedly cancel within 21 days from the account page to avoid the annual charge. All the account page does is direct you to call a phone number -- speak to a human! The AI powered live chat also directs you to call the phone number - speak to a human! The phone number answers with an AI agent which once it confirms your identity and that you want to cancel puts you on hold so that you can -- speak to a human! The human who finally answered then spent 5 minutes trying to sell me on the prime advantages. Nope, not interested, cancel me. Ok, we can offer you an 80% discount, instead of 100 quid it will only be 20 quid and we'll throw in some vouchers too. So that's me flat except I have punted the pain of cancelling it 12 months down the road. Now that I think about it, I'm an absolute idiot for having squandered this chance to get out.

So there's an indictment of the state of AI. Its still not good enough to negotiate discounts as a bribe to keep your business. No doubt we will look back on theses halcyon days with great longing for when it was possible to -- speak to a human!

China’s first reusable rocket explodes, but its onboard Ethernet network flew

Re: Ethernet on rockets

Hmm, so its basically real-time ethernet with the CSMA/CD bits thrown out and deterministic time division used instead. Which in my book means its no longer Ethernet!!

Even if it still uses RJ45's. Wait, RJ45's on a rocket??? (Yeah, I know it'll be something else).

Microsoft 365 boosts prices in 2026 … to pay for more AI and security

Re: Different planet

I have a very urgent need for everything related to AI to stay the fuck out of my life.

Pension portal launch fail sends Capita running to Microsoft for help

132,100 complex remediation cases

I presume this is to do with cock-ups in individual account balances not 132k bugs in their platform? Then again...

Aisuru botnet turns Q3 into a terabit-scale stress test for the entire internet

Re: 'Aisuru' - meaning in Japanese

Yes, as a literal translation but not the phrase you tend to use on an everyday basis. Occasionally ai-shiteru, the continuous present version. My wife tends to use dai-suki -- literally very fond of, which is a more familiar way of expressing affection.

Zig quits GitHub, says Microsoft's AI obsession has ruined the service

At my last place (literally last because I haven't worked since), the DevOps guys seemed to be absolutely convinced that they ran the company. They acted as if they were the product. Instead of just being a service that sits in the background in support of actual external customer facing activities. From what I hear their attitude hasn't been corrected in the last 24 months...

Re: I have just retired from this now broken industry, and it feels good…

I wouldn't be too sure about that...

Google Antigravity vibe-codes user's entire drive out of existence

Re: I am deeply, deeply sorry. This is a critical failure on my part.

Thoughts and prayers...

You could argue that the companies touting agentic software should be taking that precaution for you.

Google and Apple ordered to stop fake government TXTs

Guide Rail

That's an impressively fast and accurate pan by the camera. I'll bet the chap who wrote the software to point it was well chuffed.

DARPA making low-hanging satellites that use air to move

Re: How can this work?

Feels like it must violate some physical conservation law.

Ignite awash with agents as Microsoft triples down on AI

Shindig

Do I have to attend in person or can I just send my agent?

Britain's first small modular reactors to be built in Wales

Have you ever looked at the figures for pumped storage as a proportion of overall UK generation? Its little more than a rounding error. Absolutely tiny. And all the good sites are already taken.

Existing schemes like Cruachan were built at the same time as the first generation Magnox reactors. Not as a way to store energy but as a way to provide a responsive infill for peaking demand. The infamous rush to boil the kettle during the advert break. Nuclear plants being incapable of throttling up and down rapidly. Those nuclear plants also gave birth to the off-peak tariff for the same reason that you couldn't turn them down very much overnight so you had to find a market for the output no matter how much of a haircut you were forced to take.

Yes, plans are afoot to build new, bigger schemes but they are still modest in the great scheme of things. To be able to do hydro at a meaningful scale you need the geography of Norway. Norway sells us a near constant 1.4GW. None of our schemes will get anywhere near that. For a few hours maybe, but not 24x7 day in, day out.

And wind doesn't just go off for a few hours. When there is a depression it can go off for days on end. Usually in the winter when solar is doing bugger all. Storage to cover this shortfall involves just staggeringly big numbers. The potential energy of moving mass around just can't cover that. You need the energy density of chemical bonds.

What GBE should really be doing is buying up gas stations so that these can be run on a non-profit basis when they are required (not if). Be the generator of last resort. At the same time take responsibility for a strategic reserve of the fuel needed to power those stations to decouple us from global shocks that require domestic energy prices to be reset every 3 months.

Ubuntu 25.10's Rusty sudo holes quickly welded shut

Re: Rewrites are nearly always bad

The other problem is that rewriting brings to light existing stuff that doesn't work, or doesn't work as expected. Do you maintain that brokenness in your new shiny version because that's what people are used to? Or do you do force your "correct" version on everyone (if you ever finish the rewrite that is...).

Re: sendmail.cf

Right, the m4 macros are so much more obtuse than just learning the config file in the first place that I could never bring myself to use them. I still run a hand-crafted sendmail.cf on the family mail server. It doesn't get changed very often... The thing that many find difficult is that the rewriting rules are declarative not procedural so you need to put your brain into a different mode to follow them.

Techie ran up $40,000 bill trying to download a driver

Re: Implausible to say the least.

I lived in a company apartment in NYC for a year. The internet service was via cable modem but only the downlink, the uplink was over the phone line. Obviously I brought along the server running my DNS and email so the phone line was pretty much permanently pegged up by the server. I believe local calls were free but wasn't there a time limit after which they started charging? I was never asked to pay anything...

When I moved back to the UK, DSL was in its embryonic days fortunately.

Microsoft's data sovereignty: Now with extra sovereignty!

"the EU Data Boundary"

Bet there will still be a SPOF in the US...

From Intel to the infinite, Pat Gelsinger wants Christian AI to change the world

Re: Reverend Lionel Preacherbot

Which is why allowing beliefs and the ceremonies that surround them to be a protected characteristic is so fundamentally wrong. If that's what you need to get through the day then knock yourself out but do not expect any concessions from the rest of society.

AI blew open software security, now OpenAI wants to fix it with an agent called Aardvark

"LLM-powered reasoning and tool-use to understand code behavior"

Bollocks.

<EOM>

Robotic lawnmower uses AI to dodge cats, toys

"The device is well-adapted for the UK climate and will return to its charger if it detects rain"

The two parts of that sentence seem to be at odds with each other. Unless the objective is to never have your lawn cut...

Re: I really can't see them taking off (at least not in the UK)

There'a a robot lawnmower on a front garden near me. Every time I pass and see it I marvel that its still there. Presumably its geo-locked or paired with the base station to make theft pointless but a crim may not realise that until after they've made off with it.

VodafoneThree to offshore UK network jobs to India

Yeah but most people would give up food and warmth before their mobile...

If and when people become that price sensitive then you set up an MVNO offering much the same service at a cheaper price point. Throw in a few freebies like unlimited Whatsapp to differentiate yourself from all the other providers.

The secret of commerce isn't selling the most at the highest possible price point, its selling at ALL possible price points to the full spectrum of potential customers. Make each of them think they are on a special rate (cheap as chips or reassuringly expensive) but its essentially the same product with a bit of window dressing each time. Car manufacturers are masters of this.

Meta to sell $30B in bonds to build AI datacenters

$30B principal at a rough average of 5%pa makes around $1.5B just to service the debt... plus the sinking fund for repayment.

Cyberpunks mess with Canada's water, energy, and farm systems

But no Maple Syrup has been leaked...

Except when the stick bit is set...

EY exposes 4TB+ SQL database to open internet for who knows how long

"They assume you know what you're doing"

And we they, where they are the cloud infra providers.

Would it not be a good idea to have "Stop me if I try to make any part of this DB (including its backups) public" as the default behaviour?

Microsoft just revealed that OpenAI lost more than $11.5B last quarter

Re: In other words...

Whats that in double decker buses stuffed with fivers?

AI layoffs to backfire: Half quietly rehired at lower pay

Re: Hey kids....

Its almost as if they factored that in...

Marks & Spencer swaps out TCS for fresh helpdesk deal

Re: What's the saying, "penny wise and pound foolish"?

Well, they did identify one big inefficiency...

The Chinese Box and Turing Test: AI has no intelligence at all

Re: Someday AGI?

"to offer basic vision for the blind"

Not really, the sense of vision is very much done inside the brain. What these implants are doing is stimulating the optic nerve in a way somewhat similar to how the retina would. Fantastic stuff but in no way related to AI.

My assertion is that AGI will never happen. Certainly not on the trajectory we are currently following with generative LLM's. Like the man said, its nothing more than a fancy cut and paste. An evolutionary dead-end. ML will have some uses. Once trained up its not bad at various forms of diagnosis but that's just pattern recognition, its not like it worked it out from first principles.

Machine learning saves £4.4M in UK.gov work and pensions fraud detection

Re: How much did this system cost to implement?

In an other area of commerce returns like that would be so dramatically and obviously indicate that the solution was unfit for purpose that you would expect the contract to be dissolved and the provider to scuttle off back under a rock in abject shame.

But not with AI/ML. Keep shoveling the 50 pound notes into the furnace...

MPs urge government to stop Britain's phone theft wave through tech

Re: Repairable? or Theft-Proof?

I've gotten more and more into the habit of leaving my wallet behind and relying on my phone so losing it when some distance from home represents a bit of a nightmare scenario.

My bank allows me to withdraw from an ATM without a card but you need to generate a code in the app... Setting up the app on a different phone istr is a massive faff of confirmation codes that might even involve a letter in the post. Finding a branch thats still open and staffed would be nothing short of miraculous. I think I'll get back into the habit of carrying a physical wallet.

New boss took charge of project code and sent two billion unwanted emails

Re: Regomize as "Nick"

I had a front row seat for that one. Arrived at work in the Tokyo office to be told -- "that big swinging dick has blown up the bank!".

After Barings I moved to Merrill. who blew up, then Bear who blew up...

Re: The only thing I find odd about this story

Indeed, someone needs to explain to him why he was promoted to manager...