Posts by Catkin 681 publicly visible posts • joined 8 Feb 2023
Considering the Chinese government uses a navigation datum that has deliberate errors introduced into it (and also hold a state monopoly on cartography in China), I wouldn't be surprised if their sometimes bizzare paranoia is also expressed in the form of seismic data tampering.
Is a world where a designated authority is able to, at will, cause a majority of or all people to believe its guidance desirable? At the other end of the "issue", if an agency makes it its business to ensure people never read bad or dangerous advice, does that bode any better for the rights of the individual or the vulnerable*?
*if an agency is declaring itself to be worthy of demanding content restriction, it is creating an expectation that the content it places controls on is now safe. For example, if I pick up a U rated film, I expect to be able to show it to a 10 year old and them not encounter gratuitous nudity. Equally, by demanding that glorified chatbots be regulated to their whims, these agencies are tacitly declaring them safe if the regulations are imposed.
Depends how small but I've had great results with an Akasa Turing case on a NUC board for a true fanless build. A bit of creative tuning of the power limits can keep you from hideous temps or throttling and, while I built that one with a 10th gen, the 11th (in its standard case because I find the fan noise just fine) gen eeks out a decent jump in performance so even the i3 nicely handles all the 4k content I've thrown at it. The thunderbolt ports are terribly handy if you want to add a JBOD array.
I can also confirm that a pi 4 will handle almost any content (it does have a slight struggle with remuxed UHD blu ray) but the interface on Kodi isn't buttery smooth like it is on the NUC.
I disagree. Slavery is just a common thread in a great many unconnected civilisations. The only notable aspect to European/New World slavery was the use of industrial shipping (since the Arab slave trade routes were mostly overland) and the lengths some European nations went to abolish it overseas (for example, the West Africa Squadron). For the latter, depending on your cynicism, this could be regarded as an acknowledgement of a universal evil or simply economic warfare.
Nothing specific to Capitalism. For example, the DDR found it more expedient to concoct charges against people with relatives on the free side of the Iron Curtain, then ransom them off the back of the implication that they wouldn't survive prison (Häftlingsfreikauf). This cretinism was considered preferable to being open about their utter economic ruin. It's a travesty that Honecker was allowed to die peacefully rather than being strung up.
I don't know their specifics but, when I was renting accommodation at the same time as a student, I had a guarantor (my parents). I can see that being a viable strategy if your credit history is already a train wreck but, if not, it does open you up to more costly issues (in total) over time. Personally, I'd go with good documentation (much easier these days to record a quick 4k walk through of the property) and the threat of the Housing Ombudsman.
A friend was living in a student house with an aggressive landlord who would deduct from the deposit over so much as a drawing pin in the wall. To make matters worse, the walls somehow were able to block WiFi signals quite effectively. As this Victorian building had fireplaces in every significant room, they were able to use plumb bobs to fish for Cat 5, taking each run from the router in the living room up to the chimney pots and looping over back into the bedrooms. No (visible) damage was caused because the same aggressive landlord had cheaped out on closing the fireplaces and just used screws to secure plywood over the fireplaces. It did take a few attempts of swinging the bob to reach some fireplaces because of oddly shaped flues but they got there in the end.
We could also get fusion power from non-solar sources tomorrow: just drop a hydrogen bomb down a deep hole, set it off and use it as you would geothermal power. The early trials showed that cooling took place more rapidly than expected but these trials were limited to salt domes and we're hardly lacking, on a global scale, in hydrogen bombs to conduct further studies.
There's more to the convoluted telecom networks than your home hardware. The technical hurdles are to see if it's possible to use existing infrastructure to carry a decent Internet connection, hopefully avoiding the need to lay fibre to every home. It's the same reason why British analogue phone lines are set to stop working in 2025; for every legacy standard you support, you hem yourself ever further in.
Naturally, it would be theoretically ideal to tear everything up and start fresh but that's unlikely to happen.
I believe that, for the last three generations (at least), they've improved from 'just above Apple' (on the basis of not engaging in component serialisation) to 'just a bit more above Apple' (on the basis of accessible, socketed storage). The Surface Books are 'quite a bit above Apple' because you can remove the keyboard without reaching for the heat gun, drilling any rivets or replacing the entire lower chassis.
Admittedly, Apple sets a very low bar.
Unless I'm missing something, the ergonomics look pretty similar to past Surfaces. I agree that they don't work particularly well as *lap*tops but it seems like a good compromise to get the true tablet ergos when the keyboard is detached. Having started using them after prior experience with X series Thinkpad tablets, they're much more pleasant to hold and ink on, even if the keyboard either needs to be awkwardly folded or go in a bag during standing tablet use.
They wouldn't have to bother. They'll have their own servers at the data centres that automatically sift through everything with much more meta data than scraping offers. I presume this mechanism is still in place on the basis that Musk hasn't had any unfortunate "accidents".
Whatever the actual truth of the Hunter Biden laptop "story", the fact that it was censored on the back of a polite but ambiguous request should tell you all you need to know about how in bed these companies are (or, at the very least, were) with the 3 letter agencies. It goes well beyond PRISM.
Melting isn't the issue, it's the frequency-dependent resistance presented by most speakers. Introduce an interplay between that and the cable and you'll alter the frequency-response (irrespective of volume). This is also why a thinner cable is more acceptable for a shorter run.
For reference, you should be considering amps (unit, not the component) for a conductor, not Watts. For example, if you're feeding 676W into a 4 ohm load (overkill, I realise), that's 52V, 13A. The same current as a conductor would experience at 240V and 3kW. Obviously, you should also consider the breakdown voltage of any insulators too since, on both counts, house fires aren't too neighbourly.
I agree that you can get a noticeable improvement over £1k all in or even £1k on speakers alone but have better power cables (beyond something that's patently defective) ever been shown to demonstrate a measured or double blind identified improvement? Similarly, for the speaker cables, beyond getting thicker copper (more strands to avoid HF loss rather than just a thicker conductor) on longer runs has an advantage ever been demonstrated?
I love those AM5 amps (in the author's photo), I snag as many as I can for when I'm setting a friend up with their first system. They're just new enough that the caps don't leak like the earlier A series CA amps and, unlike the later Azurs, don't have a protection circuit that goes overly sensitive. The one thing I would say is to get those speakers on a separate piece of furniture from the turntable to prevent feedback or stick a paving slab under the mini stand to add some mass.
I agree that limited source material is the most common defence invoked but Fair Use isn't a list of tick boxes and doesn't even provide immunity from legal action. Rather, it serves as a guide for ways in which copyrighted materials might be reproduced in another work in a way that doesn't require permission. For example, movie spectrums (there's a variety of terms) are posters which use the average colour of each frame from a film, laid out in a pattern as an interesting way to study how a film is visually directed. They are constructed with every bit of information from the film but, as far as I'm aware, haven't been challenged legally as far as the content.
The lawsuits cited in the article don't pertain to the potential for complete reproductions of their materials but, rather, are arguing that removal of DRM and the use of their works in the building of the model is infringing.
I'm absolutely not a lawyer but, given the ability/tendency of LLMs to 'hallucinate', which I believe is a linguistic equivalent to the visuals of Charles Bonnet Syndrome in humans, it demonstrates that there is original synthesis taking place rather than straight regurgitation. I would still distinguish that synthesis does not require intent.
It likely does. I say likely because fair use isn't a carte blanche, merely a defence that can be employed during a legal action (I'm not aware of any dictionary publishers being sued). LLMs may also fall under fair use, in both cases, they could be regarded as transformative works but, again, it will require a legal precedent.
That ignores the wider picture that such action with Horizon was without precedent, irregardless of how the EC was empowered to make that decision. Admittedly, the scope of Horizon is rather large and there are certainly projects that relate purely to strategic technological developments (such as semiconductor manufacture) but not, at the very least, ring fencing research on wide ranging medical scientific research rather speaks to how an influential number within The Commission view the programme (or, to give the benefit of the doubt, their possible ignorance).
Perhaps, while the suggestion of a programme "with blackjack and hookers" was glib, there might be a kernel of wisdom in the idea of setting up a programme with other concerned countries (like Switzerland) that puts politics aside for the good of humanity. Holding up research in areas like Alzheimer's and chronic pain is, in my view, indefensible and every bit as vile as the US aid programmes that prioritise abstinence-only education over workable solutions to the HIV epidemic.
In the past, Horizon hasn't been used as a political hammer. There are plenty of third countries who participate and quite a few within that number who exchange funding (e.g. Israel). It was understood that the urgency of this research, especially the life-saving medical work done was more important than using it to force the hand of third countries.
This changed quite abruptly during the transition from Horizon 2020 to Horizon Europe when both Switzerland and the United Kingdom were denied participation based upon unrelated policy disagreements. Therefore, while the EC gaining the power to temporarily disrupt research wasn't unexpected, I would say it was reasonably unexpected that they would choose to use that power, given the impact it has on the wellbeing of the global population (assuming you're not too dour about how the EC views humanity as a whole). The Stick to Science campaign collected thousands of signatures from top scientists inside and outside the EU expressing dismay over the decision.
I was told by Virgin (the only game in town for me if I want more than 60mbps) that they don't offer the best deals to existing customers because of Ofcom rules that penalise a lack of movement between ISPs. However, I couldn't find this in writing so it may be a tall tale.
Their prices, for whatever actual reason, have become so bad that I'm willing to give mobile network broadband a try and, failing that, Starlink (slightly more but I'd pay it out of spite).
The risk just isn't the same as it is with higher orbits. Small particles are so far within the atmosphere that they decay rapidly and orbital mechanics mean collisions won't put them higher throughout their orbit (with the majority of fragments ending up even lower at parts of their orbit). It's massively overstated straw clutching.
Could you please explain how you think a phisher might exploy this technology in phishing emails? I think that if the target is persuaded to click on the dodgy link, a chat window would be less useful than the standard phony sign in box. I also don't expect that many of the people who aren't fooled by said email are going to participate in a discussion with the phisher about why they weren't conned.
I think certain types of hallucination match up quite well to what's happening to the computer. With a lack of adequately detailed direct information, it's synthesing novel but nonsensical information from unconnected memories. In my view, this is somewhat equivalent to Charles Bonnet.
Re. the bodies, Project Azorian allegedly recovered the remains of Soviet submariners from an implosion in 4.8km of water and buried them at sea. It's not been disclosed, as far as I'm aware, what state they were in but it was enough to put in a steel casket for reburial and the fact this happened is fairly credible as a recording of the burial was provided to Soviet authorities (who didn't dispute this claim).
There really aren't any tranquilisers that let the recipient maintain control of their airway or breath reflex. The last time someone strung out on strong sedatives died in police custody, a lot of Americans reacted poorly and I think it would go even worse if those drugs were administered by the authorities.
Fortunately, the ultra low orbit Internet constellations going up now are much less likely to result in a Kessler Syndrome. Even with the most perfect collision that results in debris being accelerated prograde, the periapsis will never be higher than the altitude of the impact and, in the majority of collisions, even those that don't put the apoapsis at the point of collision will still result in wildly eccentric orbits that deorbit debris even faster than the source sattelite (because of drag vs mass and very low periapses).
Some of the ChiFi IEM brands make TWS adapters in this style. It's amazing how much they've improved in the past 5 years but, for every IEM that thumbs its nose at the established brands there's dozens of BA filled V shaped monstrosities that make Beats sound sensible. If you box clever with the connectors, you can pair up your favourite IEM from one manufacturer that doesn't make a TWS adapter with another adapter from a manufacturer that makes less desirable IEMs.
My preferred IEM is the Moondrop Aria, which is so good that even with a high end Bluetooth DAC using LDAC, I prefer running it on wires from my DAP.
I do wonder whether the CBDC proponents/apologists have total faith in every future government being entirely just; believe that a future unjust government will surrender a tool of oppression; are happy to accept oppression as long as their opponents are oppressed more or simply believe they're the most badass freedom fighter in-waiting (who people will gladly follow, even when threatened with starvation for doing so).
It's a stark contrast to even the most extreme conventional cryptocurrency fanatics who will, at worst, use a bit of extra electricity and only lose all of their own money.
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