Posts by SnailFerrous

Tech is now rolling out the old grievance grift

Re: You lot were being paid?

Turn your hobby in to a career.

I've done 22 hours of hating Palantir this week. Where do I send my time sheet for the next payroll run? Or does that make me an hourly payed Palantir hater, rather than a salaried professional Palantir hater?

Minister gives Palantir's NHS platform a clean bill of health

On the plus side, integration with the MoD's Palantir subscription will allow a health minister to call in drone strikes on patients with particularly expensive conditions, union picket lines and other obstacles to cost effective management.

NHS to close-source hundreds of GitHub repos over AI, security concerns

A mixture of security by obscurity and bolting the stable door after the horse has departed. Neither are known for their success rate.

Palantir CEO: 10 percent of the world 'professionally hates us'

Mistake?

. “Maven met its moment across real world events in Q1 … When the stakes are highest, when failure is measured in lives and readiness."

So blowing up a girls school (twice) and killing over a hundred pupils and teachers with tomakawk missiles wasn't a mistake?

Microsoft's turned Windows into a cesspool, but it wants to do better

Re: What's wrong at Redmond?

Also, change the name from Microsoft to anything else (Use software from Anything Else Corp. It's really good!)

Also, demolish the buildings, plough the sites with salt and build elsewhere from scratch. .

IBM's AI coding 'partner' Bob hits general availability

Shirley Bob is a registered trademark of the Microsoft Corporation, from the mid 90s ill fated operating system.

Two men charged over series of arson attacks on 5G masts

Re: Technical insight

Look for the extra G to tell a 5G mast from a 4G mast.

PowerPoint punishment sent users into an infinite loop after lunch

Boredom is the Devil's Playground

Various pieces of industrial equipment running off Windows PCs, back in the naughties. I'd memorised the steps you needed to change the control software default language back from simplified, or traditional Chinese, Thai, etc after bored night shift staff had been at them.

DeepSeek's new models are so efficient they'll run on a toaster ... by which we mean Huawei's NPUs

When power used (wasted), size of the data centres being built and amount of money being borrowed are the key metrics and bragging rights for AI companies, then there is little incentive to optimise their models for anything other than perceived accuracy. When a company doesn't have access to infinite borrowed money that is gong to vanish in the upcoming crash and the latest and greatest hardware then they can optimise for other things.

Magnificent irony as Meta staff unhappy about running surveillance software on work PCs

"My preferred, and most used, notebook still has pages - and needs to be replaced when it gets full. Capture the keystrokes on that ya buggers!"

That's what the company issue Meta AI Ray Ban spy glasses are for. There is no escape.

Iran claims US used backdoors to knock out networking equipment during war

A country that makes network equipment and also plays the Great Game of Empire.

Embedding back doors in said equipment sold to other countries gives great advantages in any conflict. It is relatively easy to do. It is hard to detect it is either present during peace time, or doing nefarious stuff during a war. It is easy to deny, if caught. It is easy to accuse your rival equipment manufacturing country of doing it, while claiming to be squeeky clean yourself. It is very hard for anyone else to separate fact from propoganda.

Put all that together, then why not? This logic applies as equally to China as to the US.

NASA Inspector fears new spacesuits won’t be ready for Moon landing

If China did announce a moon landing in 2027, NASA could buy some cheap, working, if rather small space suits from Temu. Problem solved!

Growing AI power slurpage prompts MPs to examine low-energy computing

Already exists.

General intelligence is available from a subset of human brains already for around 300W power consumption each. No need for the artificial version. Bring on the Butlerian Jihad.

NASA working on ‘Big Bang’ upgrade to keep the Voyagers alive for longer

Big Bang

When I saw the title my first thought was crashing Voyager's one and two in to each other to see if the resulting FrankenVoyager had improved power consumption. However, they are heading in to the black in different directions, so that seems unlikely.

Cops hand Motorola £25M no-bid deal to keep 2000-era radios alive

You can buy Acme Metropolitan police whistles for about £10 each. Probably considerably less with a volume discount. There are less than a quarter million police and support staff in England and Wales. So they could be entirely equiped with this robust communications system for well under £2.5 million. Less than a tenth of the Motorola contract. Plus it won't be obselete when 4G is turned off.

Britain's atomic brain trust gives itself till 2030 to unpick fusion challenges

There are plenty of fusion power plants already in operation. The nearest is 96 million miles away. Just need to collect the energy from it.

Attention, gamers: The FAA wants YOU to be an air traffic controller

AI Use Case

Surely a use case for AI, with a chatbot to talk to the pilots. Ok, hallucinating the occasional non existent runway could be a problem, but they get it right 80% of the time and their performance should improve from learning on real world oopsies. "flight 238, come round to 370 degrees and land on runway eleventy."

Much better than having a shortage of meatsack controllers.

"Your landing is important to us. Unfortunately we are experiencing an unusually high volume of flights and all our controllers are busy. Please call back later."

Veterans Affairs has lost track of software licenses amid $985M bill

Re: $985,000,000

The ROI on buying politicians just can't be beaten.

France’s digital directorate dumping Windows desktops, adopting Linux instead

Re: "Consider [the] Foundation’s scorecard of organizations that contribute to the Linux kernel"

A the Schleswig-Holstein question that exercised many great minds in decades past. You know the one. Where/what the hell is Schleswig-Holstein?

RAF eyes cheap drone-killer as Typhoon jet tests laser-guided rockets

Re: Failure

Military types still really want them though, because they are just so darn cool.

Zap! Kaboom!

The development money will keep flowing.

Am I the only one who was expecting sharks with laser beams? Almost certainly cheaper than $40k.

Go for a walk, man: Sony's drive to create a car parked by partner Honda

Go for a walk man

Well done to the author of the headline. Another in The Register tradition.

NASA sets 'impossible' ground rules for relocation of 'flown space vehicle'

Gulf of 'Merica, please.

Make them an inflatable copy of an orbiter. Fill it with Helium. Call it NASA DiProton DiNeutron Anti Gravity Technology. Tow it to Texas. Get the signature on receipt and run away. By the time it starts looking a bit flacid and in need of a pump up, it will be too late.

Elon Musk wants to build 50 times more chips than the world currently produces, using 'new physics'

And the Iain M Banks, with the M novels were mostly about a galaxy spanning, egalitarian, anarcho-communist society. Not something you'd think a techno feudalist overlord would approve of. Silicon Valley tech bros never seem to properly read their scifi inspiration beyond the kapow space battles.

“Terafab”

Not XFab? He's slipping.

CERN eggheads burn AI into silicon to stem data deluge

Problem Solving, the CERN way!

Finding the root cause of any problems with the system involves smashing the custom ICs into each other and examining the pieces that fly off. Proper boffinry!

Struggling to put your AI aversion into words? Here's a handy glossary

Re: Kudos to Mrs Sawers !

It was too long to read, so I got an AI to summarise it.

"AI good. Let it do all your thinking"

Prince of PDFs, Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen, to step down after 18 years

“As a company that has prided itself on creating categories, our AI transformation begins with a focus on customer-centric product strategy to anticipate and fulfill the diverse needs of a large and growing customer base.”

Those words could be rescrambled in almost any order and the sentence would be just as meaningful.

Britain turns up the heat on homegrown ceramics for hypersonic missiles

Surely it would be simpler to outsource this and all other military equipment research and procurement to Fisher Price. Their products are known by all parents of small children to be utterly indestuctable and should easily survive hypersonic speeds and explosions. The bright primary colours may take some getting used to for a military more used to muted khakis and greys.

So much for power to the people – AI datacenters could jump UK grid queue

Let's ask AI to help.

ChatGPT, who should get priority connection to the national grid, you, or us meatsacks?

Whitehall can't cost digital ID until it decides how to build it

The first question.

Why? No one has answered satisfactorily why this scheme is needed and why whatever problems it claims to solve can't be done as well any other way. The explanations change from day to day. First it is stopping migrants working with no right to, then to make things easier for ordinary lower pond scum citizens.

Instead they go straight to huge government database, which, as has already been pointed out, is the go to answer for everything that Labour has had since the Blair/Brown days.

That Larry Ellison donates millions to the Tony Blair Foundation has nothing to do with it, of course.

SETI admits its search for alien life may be too narrowly focussed

Re: What’s the bet

Or a 419.

Greetings sibling in Zork

You may be surprised to hear from me. I am a semi-spouse of the former head of the Galactic Central Bank. Following a coup, she was deposed from her position and disintegrated by the new regime.

Having heard of your planet's moral probity I am reaching out to you for your help in the matter of transferring Two Hundred Million Galactic Credits we are owed from an account to which we no longer have access. For this help, you will receive Two Million Galactic Credits. This offer is completely legal and legitimate and highly unlikely to see your planet vaporised by Galactic battle cruisers.

Please send us details of your bank account and we will make all the necessary transfers.

Royal Navy races to arm ships against drone threat

Re: Calling the huntin' shootin' and fishin' brigade

Nothing to grouse about.

NASA’s asteroid defence mission slowed targets by 1.7 inches per hour

Inches? Microns? Where are the internationally recognised SR (Systeme Register) units in this article?

US state laws push age checks into the operating system

Re: I see differences...

Without age verification on IoT gadgets a child could use a Talkie Toaster and burn themselves on a hot piece of toast, or a waffle.

Gamers furious as indie studio Cloud Imperium quietly admits to data breach

Re: Is it just me..?

Not just you. I put the made up DOB in the notes of the Keepass entry for that login. Just in case it ever comes up. A different DOB foe each login where they don't really need it.

Re: "sophisticated"

More sophisticated than the org that they breached. Just having the hood on their hoodie up makes a hacker more sophisticated. Well known fact.

Britain's creaking courts to use Copilot for transcriptions

Copilot trained on the scripts of every episode of Dixon of Dock Green.

M'lud, the defendant then said "It's a fair cop guv. Looks like you got me bang to rights".

Rogue devs of sideloaded Android apps beg for freedom from Google’s verification regime

Re: The Windows atrategy...?

To be fair to Google, the motto isn't dead. They just removed the n't.

SpaceX's faulty Falcon spewed massive lithium plume over Europe, say scientists

Re: Devil's advocate here...

Or a glass of tincture of hemlock. All natural and organically grown.

Google presses play on 30-second Gemini musical slop generator

"If you've ever wanted to make music but have neither the talent nor the inspiration, Google has the AI tool for you"

I thought Punk was invented for those that have no talent, or inspiration to make music.

Copilot spills the beans, summarizing emails it's not supposed to read

Re: Why?

AI generates the verbose, overlong emails. AI summarises them again. Why not just email the AI prompt you might otherwise use?

DARPA's autonomous missile-firing missile advances toward flight tests

Re: Plus ca change

When preparing for the next war, weapon company profit margins are the top priority, so complex and expensive. When actually fighting a war, effectiveness, literally bangs per buck, is the top priority.

Dutch cops arrest man after sending him confidential files by mistake

Re: how to tell the difference?

If when you click on it, you feel compelled to say "We're in.", then it is a download link.

If Microsoft made a car... what would it be?

And after every patch Tuesday, yoi have to leave the engine running overnight, while it installs updates.

Re: Trabant!

At one point, the Austin Allegro came with a square steering wheel, reminiscent of the MS Windows logo used at various times.

GitHub appears to be struggling with measly three nines availability

So is one nine 90%, or 9%, or 0.9%, or 0.09%, or 0.009%?

Smartphones cleared for launch as NASA loosens the rulebook

Age appropriate technology

"For example, the Nikon Z9 camera planned for Artemis III will be almost a decade old by the time the mission launches, and technology will have advanced in the intervening years. ®"

Surely, they should be using 1970s era cameras to go with the 1970s designed space shuttle main engines and solid boosters. That probably means a poloroid camera for capturing all those moon walking holiday snaps I believe poloroid cameras have become cool with the kids again.