Posts by Catkin

World's top AI chatbots have no problem parroting Russian disinformation

Ah, you mean how the CDC explanation (not definition) for vaccines previously was 'killed or weakened infectious organism'? That a would be because mRNA vaccines hadn't been used successfully at a large scale before.

Similarly, in the early 19th Century, one might have written an explanation of an automobile as being powered by steam and a pedant in the 1830s might have argued that one powered by electricity or internal combustion is not an automobile and claimed that, while steam carts are harmless, these newfangled things are uniquely, intolerably and insolubly dangerous

I would say that while, within the broadest technical definition, mRNA vaccines are gene therapy, any attenuated viral vaccine also meets that definition too. It's definitely also a vaccine and, if you dispute this definition, it suggests you really don't understand how it works.

NHS boss says Scottish health board wouldn't give cyberattackers what they wanted

*The information would be appropriate to the broader type of information being stored

I'm not sure if it's a novel idea but what if all executives who run organisations dealing with personal information had to store a stack of very private material about them on every 'secure' server? That way, they'd have a personal incentive for cybersecurity.

The information would be appreciate to the broader type of information being stored. For example, a health executive would have to provide photos and details of any especially embarrassing parts of their body, to be afforded all the same security, but no more, as that which they provide to their customers.

The same concept could be applied to anyone proposing key escrow or other broken security for E2EE. Secure their nude photos with the same key used to decrypt everyone else's data and put the encrypted file online.

Researchers find Meta's withdrawal of misinformation tool hard to swallow

Re: Political misinformation monitoring tool :o

I hope you're not suggesting that a tool used to police misinformation could just as readily be used to censor information the government or big business finds inconvenient, comrade.

We need a volunteer to literally crawl over broken glass to fix this network

Re: Sounds like ...

The really silly thing is that you absolutely can have the appearance of broken glass without the danger. Prop companies make it from silicone rubber.

US Space Force wanted $77M to reinforce GPS – and Congress shot it down

Re: Sees a great idea

Please re-read my comment. The jamming resilience relates to the directional antenna (which drastically increases the signal strength in the chosen area), not the encryption. It can definitely still be jammed but it means either using a more powerful jammer (bigger, noisier target) or putting jamming equipment closer to the targeted area (within the reach of more countermeasures).

Re: Sees a great idea

It's a little more advanced. GNSS uses encryption in PRS to prevent spoofing but Block III GPS M-code uses additional directional antennas. This means a spoofer or jammer has to place their hardware closer to the target, leaving them more vulnerable to anti-radiation missiles.

Mozilla defies Kremlin, restores banned Firefox add-ons in Russia

Re: Considering considerations

I don't think they're necessarily the 'bad guys' I think that the risk of public embarrassment played more of a role than they'd like to admit.

Re: David vs Goliath?

There's different kinds of 'might', one is the threat from a despotic state, there's also the impact from the wider, freer world for playing nice with said despotic state.

Considering considerations

It's interesting that Mozilla would only start 'considering' the impact of the ban when it came into force and not beforehand. Especially given that they only reversed course after their 'considerations' occurred in conjunction with being publicly shamed. What a coincidence.

Gates-backed nuclear plant breaks ground without guarantee it'll have fuel

In my opinion, the big problem BNFL suffered is that their infrastructure was based upon ideas that were very sensible at the time but rapidly undermined by shifts in the market and technological changes. Magnox and the infrastructure to support it was aimed at plutonium production, then Britain found she had enough nuclear weapons; AGR was a cunning way to efficiently make the best use of the limited metallurgy of the day, then practical superalloys and advanced (conventional) metal manufacture came along and robbed them of their advantage (as well as the limitations of prior understandings becoming apparent at scale, hobbling AGR).

My biggest fear now is that the expertise which was so painfully gained has been lost to time. Ideally, the later-constructed AGRs would have instead been shiny new Gen III (or, perhaps, what might be described as Gen IIb) designs but the Winter of Discontent and preceding events meant the Heath and Wilson governments were eager to get something connected to the grid that wasn't reliant on miners or foreign oil, even if it wasn't the best long-term solution.

Re: Western Wyoming geological (in)stability.

Both were required. If Fukushima had used SFRs or another design able to passively handle decay heat, the loss of power wouldn't have mattered.

Re: Western Wyoming geological (in)stability.

SFRs massively reduce nuclear waste, allow a wider range of core temperatures and don't require high operating pressures. It may seem scary but it solves for a lot of far greater hazards caused by using water as the primary coolant.

The really big one being that a well engineered SFR can handle decay heat without active cooling during an emergency shutdown. This limitation of water cooled reactors is what doomed Fukushima.

Rather conveniently, a British HALEU enrichment facility is currently being developed. Russia and China aren't the only game in town for uranium ore either.

Musk wants to ban Apple at his companies for cosying up to OpenAI

Re: Oh Musky

But dear lord when Musky starts attacking them, it almost makes you side with them, doesn't it?

While I wouldn't use his criticisms as instructive, I personally wouldn't do the opposite either. Acting contrary to an asshole still cedes power over your thoughts to their ramblings. For example, if he touted the value of consuming sugar, while I definitely wouldn't eagerly move to an all-sucrose diet, I also wouldn't reflexively remove all sugars from my diet.

Re: Musk being Musk aside, he has a point.

*privacy-destroying content scanning

Re: Musk being Musk aside, he has a point.

I'd also point out that, whether client-side or server-side, the software and hardware needed for "AI" is indistinguishable from the privacy-destroying content that governments keep trying to foist upon us.

Re: "Sold down the river"

How is its use appreciably racist? If anything, it acknowledges that slavery is bad and, at worst, it minimises in the same way that 'wage slave' does.

It's hardly difficult to find things to criticise Musk for without undertaking linguistic contortions.

Euro banks worry AI will increase their dependence on US big tech

Re: Euro banks shouldn't even be asking the question

Probably "I can make short term savings and deflect liability in the event of security failures."

Samsung union stages its first ever strike – very politely

Re: What ??

I've worked for a couple of employers where you just get a fixed number of holiday days per year but you have to use them for national holidays. It simplifies the process if you have to work (though I did also receive additional pay for coming in on a bank holiday).

Hubble will transition to single-gyro mode to gain a few more years of operational life

Might be worth sending an apology card to NASA if you have a reason to be concerned.

Australia drops legal action that aimed to have X take down stabbing vid

Re: Would love to learn he truth

I think it's possible that they either realised it would lose them votes if they continued to press the idea that they should act as censors for the entire world or they achieved the necessary effect from appearing to do something but didn't want to suffer the humiliation of a potential defeat in court.

Meta algorithms push Black people more toward expensive universities, study finds

Re: If anything

That's assuming expensive universities are necessarily better and that attendees are paying with money they have, rather than predatory student loans.

Re: Taking advice from social media

I think you're forgetting how Facebook started

Graveyards a favorite haunt for solar farms in Valencia

Re: Mmmm...

Put them on top of the 'condos', it's not as if they'll present the usual interference with plant infrastructure that occurs on buildings occupied by the living.

Energy buffs give small modular reactors a gigantic reality check

For the foundations, there are attempts to develop low concrete foundations but, especially at sea, these have corrosion issues. They're certainly not common.

For the substations, wind turbines operate at very low voltages (by electric grid standards) of a few hundred volts, up to 3kV (very rare, difficult to engineer and expensive to manufacture) so they're absolutely required. Even cutting down the number slightly causes efficiency losses and emissions from all the extra copper required for the thicker cables.

Another area where they're not so rosy is in carbon emissions. They're better than fossil fuels but the spreading out of generation means that they're more carbon-intensive than nuclear, thanks to everything from the concrete (especially for those giant offshore ones) to the increased number of substations (made drastically worse by SF6). Hydroelectric can compete but only under specific circumstances, namely, where you're not flooding fertile land and belching methane into the air.

Twitter 'supersharers' of fake news tend to be older Republican women

Re: It is more than that

things that would be deemed to be completely socially unacceptable, or illegal, in meatspace are utterly unregulated in cyberspace

Could you please give an example?

Re: I might have a sensible idea

My concern would be that this makes citizen journalism severely challenging. I would err on the side of every idiot being able to parrot anything they believe is correct over a system that means when an individual uncovers evidence of genuine wrongdoing, they are hampered in their ability to share it. Simply keeping the ability to bypass the restrictions by rewording is insufficient because that obfuscates the source.

IT worker sued over ‘vengeful’ cyber harassment of policeman who issued a jaywalking ticket

Re: Strange thing to do someone for

Promoted, not invented (it originated from the term 'Jay Driver' meaning one who drives on the wrong side of the road) and is at least a decade older. Before it was codified, it more referred to pedestrians taking a route that spent excessive time outside of pedestrian areas.

OpenAI tells employees it won't claw back their vested equity

Re: Fuss about nothing

There's OpenAI Inc. (non profit) and OpenAI Global LLC (for profit). You can't hold a stake in a non profit.

Elon Musk says he doesn’t want 100% tariff on China-made electric vehicles

Re: Of course he doesn't

More Teslas are sold in NA than China. Perhaps he recognises that, if we really want to fight climate change, we need to get cheap EVs in the hands of the working classes, who far outnumber the well to do who can afford a Tesla. Personally, I cannot reconcile any government that professes to want to lower emissions slapping tariffs on EVs. Make them so cheap that people choose them irrespective of fast charging point costs.

Musk may be a prat but that doesn't make him automatically wrong.

UK PM Sunak calls election, leaving Brits cringing over memory of his Musk love-in

Re: Disappointing

I don't think one can extrapolate from non-voters. It would be no more accurate to claim that only 34% of the electorate actively wanted Britain to stay in the EU.

The real tragedy, to me, is that remainer MPs dug their heels in and empowered Boris rather than swallowing their pride and working productively.

Europe buying more Chinese phone brands as market starts to bounce back

Re: I wonder what the response

How often do you buy a new phone?

How two brothers allegedly swiped $25M in a 12-second Ethereum heist

Re: Good example of "novel" risks for tyro/blinkered coders

Thanks, I was worrying about despotic (or worse, despotic for the 'greater good') government when it came to CBDCs, now I can worry about Buttle and Tuttle as well.

Re: Good example of "novel" risks for tyro/blinkered coders

I'm not sure the exact same risks exist for CBDCs because it's centrally validated. There's certainly room for other vulnerabilities but, iny view, the most dangerous outcome for the individual is them functioning as intended.

The granularity and auditability they grant to governments means that a despotic government at the helm of a country wholly or largely using CBDCs as currency would be able to silently unperson any opposition for orders less manpower than is required for other forms of currency. I'd even go so far as to propose that a single suitably empowered individual (given appropriately poor oversight) could steer the algorithms needed to target their chosen deplorables.

Search history

I'm astonished that what seems like a rather sophisticated bit of work would occur in conjunction with such an incriminating search history. Either, I'm naive about the security a good VPN and a self sanitising distro can offer or they really did a crummy job of maintaining deniability.

Underwater datacenters could sink to sound wave sabotage

Re: So, sound waves can be a problem

I'm not sure immersion cooling plays nicely with spinning rust.

Apple says if you want to ship your own iOS browser engine in EU, you need to be there

Re: I absolutely adored my Mac Classic.

The starter kits come with a preflashed card and assembly is basically clipping 3 parts together. Personally, I buy my Pi's as boards because there are some much nicer cases out there.

Global EV sales continue to increase, but Plug-in Hybrid momentum is growing

Re: While CSIMON is driving in another direction

I actually very loosely agree with you, I just believe you've misinterpreted what is admittedly a somewhat gadfly approach to the discussion as an outright attack. I think that, as you said, the bigger picture is important and what I was trying to point out is that, in my view, we do financially penalise people who currently own IC cars. In some cases, to the point that I believe some individuals are driven into making lifestyle choices stemming from not being able to afford to operate one. This isn't just direct interventions, actions like the scrappage scheme put money in the pockets of some existing drivers but also took vehicles off the market that would have otherwise made driving more financially accessible.

I recognise that the hostility I generated is sadly down to the current state of political discourse on the environment but I am pleased that some people were willing to consider the discussion in good faith.

That seems quite reasonable to me, thank you for taking the time to lay it out.

I think you misunderstand. I'm not portraying having a car as a voluntary choice for even the majority of car owners, I'm stating that quite a few life choices (where to live, what job to work, ect.) are made, at least in part, based upon the individual being able to afford car ownership. By 'life choices' I don't mean some frivolous decisions that are easy to make one way or the other, I mean very large-scale, long-term decisions that would require significant sacrifices to alter.

I understand your concerns about me having an agenda but, for the points I have raised, I am more interested in getting people to think about what the wider consequences are for their proposals and their justifications. For instance, if the government has a duty to make driving EVs affordable, does this duty extend to those who cannot currently afford cars or are they outside the scope of consideration (even if they also make financial contributions through taxes)?

I am much more interested in why, given the current socioeconomic landscape, proposed government policies (including a non-interventionist one) are justifiable than I am in a 'yes' or 'no' answer.

edit: could please I ask you to specifically state what you think my agenda is, if you still believe I have one?

Thank you very much for taking the time to ask. I would say that there's no obvious answer that seems entirely fair to me.

I would point out that, at the moment and in the past, there is already a divide between people who can afford to drive and those who can not (putting aside those who choose not to). Therefore, I would ask whether the status quo is fair and needs to be preserved.

In its simplest form, I think it can be boiled down to: how do we balance the needs of the environment against the needs of those who have made choices based upon being able to afford to run a car, in a way that is fair to those who have made involuntary choices based upon not currently being able to afford a car?

I think that shifts have already happened with the dual slow boils of increasing vehicle standards and the fuel escalator, it's just that EVs are going to lead to more acute choices and, rather than policies that make good sound bites, we really need to have a grownup discussion about what the priorities should be for future governments.

I understand that people get defensive over that statement and I don't mean it in a dismissive sense, only as far as how much support the state should provide to ensure people have access.

For the whole global conspiracy bit. I think that current policies are and will continue to progressively take the bottom earners off the road, more due to a 'let them eat cake' attitude, than an active stance.

Re: no one needs a car to live

The original post I replied to mentioned the price of charge point electricity in relation to subsidised home electricity. It was the reason I brought up relative necessities.

Re: no one needs a car to live

I realise that it's enormously difficult to live a comfortable, convenient life in many places without a personal car but I would say it's orders less of an obstacle than, for example, living without mains electricity in the home. If we are discussing subsidising electricity for EVs on the basis of necessity then it seems to me that the enormous duty placed on petrol or diesel (accounting for the majority of the price) starts to become less justifiable too.

I'm not one of those bicycle fetishising, inner city evangelists who tells you off for even thinking of owning one.

I don't see it getting any better as fossil fuel use declines. If anything, governments will be on the lookout for extra revenue. Also, compared to petrol stations, the number of customers per day per area of land is vastly lower so charging station owners in desirable locations will do even more to squeeze out a return on their investment.

As for home electricity subsidies, no one needs a car to live. I don't mean this as some authoritarian environmentalist statement, I mean that I find it hard to put running private transport in the same category as heating, lighting and food preparation.

SpaceX set to literally rock Florida with more and bigger Starship launches

Re: What's the margin for error?

Looking at the location for the tower and the direction it faces, I assume they intend to slew over the ocean first but I have no inside information to confirm.

The chopsticks seem ridiculous but so did landing a Falcon 9 lower and that thing went boom a lot of times. I wouldn't write off SpaceX just yet, at the very least, as far as Starship reusability.