Posts by Catkin

DeepMind working on distributed training of large AI models

Re: Still Bullshit

Depending on whether you view the CCP as virtuous or cretinous, there's less or more bullshit respectively from it on topics that reflect poorly on said government.

It's not just Big Tech: The UK's Online Safety Act applies across the board

Re: Just another example...

I don't think the Act requires any quality for posts but, if it did, it would be even worse. The sort of person who believes laws can be used to prevent "shit" posts fills me with the same type of dread as someone who, seeing a mouse scurrying around, enthusiastically loads a machine pistol.

UK government pledges law against sexually explicit deepfakes

Re: Installing equipment?

I'm pretty sure the installing equipment relates to someone putting in a spy camera. While there would be issues for CCTV installers, I expect the purpose is to nab people who set up cameras in locations like changing rooms but are caught before anything personal is recorded.

At the same time, overly broad laws are often abused to the benefit of the rich and powerful.

That would have quite an effect on journalism. Any articles about a given individual that they approved of could be replete with high quality photos, any critical articles wouldn't be allowed so much as a caricature.

I can imagine politicians and celebrities being quite enthusiastic.

Scumbag gets 30 years in the clink for running CSAM dark-web chatrooms, abusing kids

Re: 2Hope the Other Inmates Take Good Care of Him

So, where are these so-called adults getting the idea that being sexually attracted to children is not an evil act. This doesn't make sense; it's just not in the natural order of things.

The evil act is the abuse. The attraction is almost immaterial as far as the evil, in the sense that it makes little difference to the victim what desire drove the abuser. As deeply unpleasant as I find it, I would prefer if people with those attractions felt at ease seeking help before they act on them because the alternative is sacrificing at least one child to 'detect' them.

Smile! UK cops spend tens of millions on live facial recognition tech

Plus, if someone points out that it's a waste of time and too many people start to listen to them, it's trivial to act in an 'anonymous complaint'.

It's not that they're physically lazy, it's more that investigating non-crime hate incidents keeps them very busy. They already had to give up on dealing with shoplifting and other similar actual crimes to make more time to 'check the thinking' of people who have incorrect opinions.

India's Moon orbiter was shifted suddenly to avoid Korea's and NASA's craft

Re: Wow!

They should fit horns to future probes so the pilots can get each other's attention.

Now Online Safety Act is law, UK has 'priorities' – but still won't explain 'spy clause'

Re: His Majesty's Stationary Office

I understand it's a joke but the good ideas committee, now they've dropped this turd on us, are probably working on forcing us onto CBDCs. The potential for abuse that lies in those makes even mandatory toilet cams look tame.

Study suggests X turned right just in time for election season

Re: There is nothing illegal about...

I suggest you re-read Karl Popper (it's barely more than 200 words). "Intolerance" doesn't mean ideas that we, in the modern day, describe as 'intolerant', it means an intolerance for peaceful discussion. By jumping the gun you, ironically, are starting to meet Popper's definition. It's perfectly fine to have your own ideas about how you should respond to people engaging in speech you find objectionable but please own your ideals, rather than hiding behind a distorted version of Popper.

I have no love for the far right but it's hard to claim that the tactic of chasing them off platforms has led to anything but huge electoral upsets. Pointing out a lie is infinitely more effective than gagging the liar.

Windows 95 setup was three programs in a trench coat, Microsoft vet reveals

Re: "Progress, eh?"

Rufus lets you roll an install drive without having to navigate a golden path. It also lets you do a nearly hands off install.

Scientists demand FCC test environmental impacts of satellites

Re: "Presently, there are 10,855 objects orbiting the Earth"

Acknowledging one (major and final) contributing factor does not mean denying other prior contributing factors. In this case, the legislation did not account for the impact of adding lifeboats and did not require re-assessment.

Yes but these chemicals are man-made [spooky noises].

In all seriousness, it's a valid point but the concern is that these might do different things to the atmosphere. As far as I'm aware, it's currently unknown what they might do and to what extent but there have been a range of proposals based on small scale experiments and simulations.

It might be harmless, it might not and it might be an easy fix or it might mean weighing the environmental cost of every ton we send up.

Re: "Presently, there are 10,855 objects orbiting the Earth"

All safety regulations are written in blood and, while I do not discount their overall validity, hastily written regulations often have unintended consequences. In the case of the Titanic, the regulations imposed in consequence led directly to the SS Eastland disaster.

By this I mean to say that equal evaluation should be given for any proposed replacements for materials of concern as well as balancing the wider impact of issues that curtail space activity.

Huawei's farewell to Android isn't a marketing move, it's chess

Re: Can't understand the apps

Thanks but the majority of my roof faces north and the south facing side isn't helped by some lovely ancient trees on the hill above.

Re: Can't understand the apps

Mine does the opposite. I keep telling them to take more of my money because I wasn't at home last winter but they keep acting as if I'm not going to use any gas this year.

San Francisco billboards call out tech firms for not paying for open source

They always ignore me when I ask for the industry standard wealth transfer fee.

BOFH: The Boss pulled the plug on our AI, so we pulled the pin on him

It could be similar to the fire extinguishers from the 1997 Christmas party (published at the start of the 1998 run).

41-million-digit prime crunched by datacenter GPUs

Re: Is this any more useful than "AI", or more amusing cat videos?

*sorry if I've misunderstood and this is more a question about possible impacts on the world at large

Re: Is this any more useful than "AI", or more amusing cat videos?

Should the measure of whether we permit someone to do something with resources they've paid for be whether it's "useful" or not?

AI firms and civil society groups plead for passage of federal AI law ASAP

If you covet totalitarianism, remember that for every Stalin, there's a lot of Trotskys and, by definition, you're much more likely to end up as the latter.

Not that Trotsky wasn't a brutal totalitarian too, his main complaint was that Stalin wasn't brutalising the 'right' people and he only changed his tune after losing out on the opportunity to do so to an entire nation.

Musk's $1M election lottery raises serious legal concerns, says Pennsylvania governor

Seems like the smart move would be to sign up and reduce the chances of a Republican winning. Any Democratic winners could even donate their winnings to the Harris campaign.

Linux admin asked savvy scientist for IT help and the boffin blew it

I have fond memories of our BOFH sending new PFYs to hunt for the token to teach them life isn't fair.

Tesla, Intel, deny they're the foreign company China just accused of making maps that threaten national security

Chinese cartographic paranoia is extreme, to the point that their geodetic datum (GCJ-02) is intentionally distorted in a pseudo-random fashion to frustrate map making exercises.

It's unlikely the charges are a sign they specifically captured anything sensitive, since any private map making in China is illegal without the consent and involvement of the government. They've even arrested and fined geology students. It's also a nice little money spinner for the government, since even using their wonky coordinate system (the only system that is legal to use in the country) requires a licensing fee.

NASA's Europa Clipper leaves for Jupiter's moon atop Falcon Heavy

It's pretty incredible that we're living in an age where they defend sacrificing a rocket booster to complete a mission.

Vulcan Centaur avoids FAA scrutiny after losing solid rocket booster nozzle

Vulcan, as stated in the article, is a ULA (not SpaceX) rocket.

Uncle Sam lends $1.5B to reignite Michigan nuclear plant in 2025

Re: Clean energy?

Sorry for being unclear, that's what I meant when I mentioned cold, rocky reservoirs. It's why Norway can get away with hydroelectric that's relatively low carbon, while other projects emit huge amounts of methane.

Re: Clean energy?

I think that limits you to hydroelectric built with 19th Century techniques. Wind turbines produce huge amounts of composite waste (unless you want to run a literal wind mill) and solar creates heavy metal wastes. Both of these are harmful to humans and, unlike radioactive isotopes, heavy metals will never decay into something less harmful.

End-to-end, modern nuclear has a lower carbon footprint than anything but hydroelectric built under very specific conditions; namely, reservoirs built on rocky terrain in cold climates. That doesn't mean we should abandon these technologies but we should be realistic about their impact rather than going 'oooh radiation scary'.

Samsung fined just $8K for exposing chip fab workers to X-ray radiation

Re: 94 Sv ??

The translation could be making it a little murky but it could be entrance skin dose, which is basically all the radiation the individual was exposed to, rather than the radiation that was absorbed. This is handy to know because the absorbed dose calculations might not take back scatter into account when calculating the absorbed dose. However, it's still a surprisingly large difference.

Messaging app makers' dilemma: Keeping comms private and funding open source

Paradox of security

-criminals use E2EE to facilitate crimes

-E2EE cannot be completely banned without seriously limiting the Internet

-not having E2EE puts me at greater risk from criminals

-politicians admit they cannot entirely combat crime if criminals use E2EE

Therefore, banning E2EE will not make me safer. If it is possible to backdoor encrypted communications but keep it safe from criminals, the politicians proposing such measures can demonstrate it for a few years by using it themselves for their most sensitive communications. In fact, go one better: they can put cameras around their homes (even in the bedroom and bathroom) with the stream entirely accessible to anyone but secured with a key held under the same conditions they propose for our escrowed keys.

With Granite Rapids, Intel is back to trading blows with AMD

Hopefully, with the subtitle Dark Moon Ryzen.

Elon's latest X-periment: Blocked users can still stalk your public tweets

Re: Not that I like Twitter

Plus, if an individual wishes to spread abusive lies, they could block the target to slow down them finding out.

Re: The story goes..

This scenario wouldn't be affected by the change. Perhaps if Musk wants to view tweets from people blocking him, though I doubt he'd personally have had an issue before.

Lebanon now hit with deadly walkie-talkie blasts as Israel declares ‘new phase’ of war

Re: If an Icom IC-V82

I made no comment on their overall right or wrongness, just that they don't meet specific legal definitions.

Re: If an Icom IC-V82

These are neither mines nor booby traps because they are remotely triggered, rather than responding to the presence of a nearby indivual/vehicle or handling.

Lenovo turns to India as source of AI servers

Is the Indian facility manufacturing the actual semiconductors? I can't find any references to it.

Feds pull plug on domains linked to import of Chinese gun conversion devices

Re: Repeal the de minimis provision

Thank you for the detailed explanation. I probably wasn't clear and didn't mean that it's a ploy to make more money for big business, I meant that it's not wholly against their interests to repeal it.

For the sake of transparency, I should say that I'm a hobbyist tinkerer and getting things like machine parts from aliexpress and similar lets me affordably pursue my hobbies. I remember the dark days before these sites got the ability to pay their customs, you could often end up paying Royal Mail more for the privilege than the value of the customs or, sometimes, more than the base value of the item if they were feeling particularly loopy (for mistakes, you had a choice of paying or returning, which works for big businesses leaving RM holding the can for the customs payment but is greatly imbalanced against the individual). The alternative was a UK importer/stockist, who would often charge an outrageous markup (because the item was too niche even for Maplin/RS) or lumping it because your requirement was beyond the point of commercial viability for a business to import and stock.

I personally equate buying silver earrings off those sites to buying them off a guy at the pub or out the back of a white van: if they're selling 'silver' jewellery below the market rate of base silver, it feels like it's on the buyer. I suppose there is self-interest there but it does feel a bit like hobbyists being told that their hobbies are less important than someone who can't think critically before paying for tat.

Re: Repeal the de minimis provision

Just because a provision is beneficial to one corporation that does not mean repealing it will necessarily be beneficial to the individual. The jobs created by repealing de minimis will not be manufacturing but rather a handful of warehouse workers at corporations that are large enough to maintain an inventory stateside, taking advantage of the economies of scale on import processing fees.

While Amazon likely profits more from de minimis, they are still well placed to be a major player in profiting off a repeal, as they currently are in Europe, because their warehouses and ability to harvest purchase data for predictive inventory management gives them an edge over smaller businesses. For very specialist items which are too niche for large corporations to care about, the consumer ends up paying more in processing fees than actual duties.

US govt halts medical study into Havana Syndrome, cites 'coercion' of participants

Re: I Thought I Had a Solution to My Woes for a split-second

I think the reason Eddie the Eagle enjoyed more praise is because there were no other British ski jumping Olympic applicants. In this case, there were plenty of other Australian applicants and, whether there was foul play in the selection process (unlikely) or not, there is a feeling that she potentially 'stood in the way' of someone who might have done better.

Re: I Thought I Had a Solution to My Woes for a split-second

My sincere apologies for not considering the diverse needs of all comment readers and failing to include an appropriately clarifying icon.

Re: I Thought I Had a Solution to My Woes for a split-second

She had a doctorate in the subject. Specifically, the title of her thesis was "Deterritorializing gender in Sydney's breakdancing scene: a B-girl's experience of B-boying". Sadly, for Australia's Olympic dreams, no one thought to look into whether 'deterritorializing' required one to be proficient at breakdancing.

Re: Rationality

While it's possible, it's a bit like on a medical drama when they check the patient "for all known poisons and toxins" except any potential interference might not be continuous.

WHO-backed meta-study finds no evidence that cellphone radiation causes brain cancer

Re: 5G sucks here

Damn, I guess Gates got to them

Re: 5G sucks here

Just in case you're still looking, for Android, it's under the connections->mobile networks option. For iOS, it's under mobile & data.

EV sales hit speed bump as drivers unplug from the electric dream

Re: the average journey

Yes, the overall impact was a rise of 0.1l/100km for petrol non-hybrid LDVs in France. The figure after that rise was the one I quoted.

I'm unclear on the significance, could you please clarify?

Re: the average journey

Those figures are from the IEA. The average age of a car on the road in France in 2021 was 10.5 years so, while you might see older cars, they're not representative. The age figure is from an automotive lobby group but please feel free to provide competing figures if you feel those figures are more accurate:

https://www.acea.auto/figure/average-age-of-eu-vehicle-fleet-by-country/

Please also provide hard data that you feel is more accurate to support your guesstimate if you doubt the accuracy of the previous post.

Re: the average journey

36mpg seems incredibly low. The average fuel economy for purely petrol driven (not including hybrids) LDVs in France in 2019 was 5.8l/100km or 17km/l or 48Impg

https://www.iea.org/articles/fuel-economy-in-france

I'd also point out that diesel achieves, on average, better fuel economy and, thanks to strike-inclined truckers, is cheaper per litre in France.

Woman uses AirTags to nab alleged parcel-pinching scum

Thank you for the thoughtful answers.