Posts by Anna Nymous

Eight days later, Microsoft Outlook users still struggle on iOS devices

Re: Dump Outlook and replace it

It's not that it doesn't "work" on iOS, it's that there's no iOS build for it...

"It doesn't work" implies it exists but is non-functional, which is not accurate.

Re: Traffic lights

Organized in a square pattern, but rotating 90 degrees around its axis every 17 minutes, sometimes clockwise, sometime counter-clockwise - because traffic lights are a commodity anyway...

Re: Dump Outlook and replace it

You're right that mail is a commodity, but standards are what make things work. Standards are even more important for commodities than they are for niche products. No-one cares about niche product, but commodities, those gotta work!

Unless of course you like that suddenly all of your electrical socket would output 330 volts at 240Hz because 'electricity is a commodity', instead of whatever they are producing right now (and more importantly, what all your devices expect).

Maybe you'd like to also replace what traffic lights look like? Instead of a vertical red/orange/green, we'll have blue, pink, white, and violet and combine them to signal different things you MUST to do at the intersection. I can't tell you what each combination of those colors will mean though, because that's my proprietary intellectual priority that I'm strongly guarding so it'll suck to be you when you get ticketed.

Oracle outage hits US Federal health records systems

If you really must have that chainsaw in the hands of that individual, then this is actually exactly the project you'd want that chainsaw applied to... It has been a failure from the get go.

Icon is One Rich Asshole Called Larry Ellison going through the government's jacket to fish out the wallet to empty it.

Maybe cancel that ChatGPT therapy session – doesn't respond well to tales of trauma

Re: One might suggest there are only two worries for 'AI'

What exactly is the point of "being polite to a hammer", even if it "costs me nothing"? Do you say "start, please" when you turn your car on, do you ask it "oh, what's wrong, are you not feeling it today, do you want to talk about it" when it gives you grief? Why not, it doesn't cost you anything... Why are you discriminating in your politeness against some objects or actions but not others? Where is that line for you?

There is no point in using these politeness constructs with devices or objects, because they are just objects. Objects don't have feelings, emotions, inner worlds, consciousness, etc. You are not causing harm to them (nor to yourself) by not being polite. I would actually opine that one would be causing harm to themselves and those around them when one is polite to these objects, because one then treats or starts treating an object like a human with all the rights and privileges that come with it. That is the danger point: these things in their current incarnation do not deserve those rights, privileges, etc. because they aren't human.

I find it deeply troubling that objects are being personified, and I don't think this is a thing we should encourage others to do!

Once you start attributing person-hood, or intentions, or feelings to an object that is created to deceive you _{(and I stand by my analysis that the current crop of AI has the explicit intention to deceive you; it has been/is being created by it's masters in such a way to make you believe that you are interacting with a human/human-like thing when what you are interacting with is not that - this is a hill my enemies will die on)} you erode defenses you have against being manipulated by these things. These things are explicitly created to manipulate you - case in point, they're already succeeding in making some of us think of them as worthy of pleas, deference, emotional consideration, and other rights and privileges we grant people.

Computers, nor cars, nor ships, nor hammers actively try to deceive you into making you believe they are human when they aren't. They are objects. These AI things are also just objects. Objects are not a thing to say please or thank you to. To that same effect, I find it curious when people say "thank you" to amazon's eves-dropping device. It's not a human, it doesn't have feelings, it doesn't feel bad when you don't say thank you, it doesn't feel bad when you don't order two tons of creamed corn even though it suggested that to you. It's there to get your money, nothing more. It doesn't work for you, it works for it's owners. Once you attribute emotions, feelings, consciousness, etc to these things, you open yourself up to manipulation and blackmail by these devices and objects out of fear of causing it emotional harm by not giving in. That way madness - and ruin - lies.

I'm not going to tell you what to do or what not to do. All we're doing here is exchanging ideas, but I will not grant person-hood, nor recognize that these objects of the current crop have any type of humanity or consciousness. These things are not worthy of our pleas or politeness.

I don't think it's the 'reasonably civilized' folk that are being polite to these tools. Civility can be misplaced. Civility is not always the right course of action. I think those using misplaced civility are those who do not understand that these tools are merely tools, I think it's the ones that have been duped by these tools that do that who are 'civil' to these objects... What's the point of civility towards a shredder when you've just fallen into one that is switched to the 'on' state?

I will continue to try to educate people of why they shouldn't grant person-hood or humanity to these tools.

Re: One might suggest there are only two worries for 'AI'

I reject the premise that AI has worries, desires, emotions, etc. It's not a being. It's a model of probabilistic weights.

Do not grant these things personhood. Don't say thank you to it, don't say please - unless you like saying "please" to your hammer as well. These things are tools.

Mozilla flamed by Firefox fans after promises to not sell their data go up in smoke

Re: Waterfox - Setting / Privacy & Security / Certificates / Query OCSP - stuck "off"

Let me rephrase:

Why do you think you need OCSP or CRLs in the first place? What does this actually do for you that's meaningful?

Re: Waterfox - Setting / Privacy & Security / Certificates / Query OCSP - stuck "off"

Turning that setting to on leaves a massive trail from you behind. Every cert your encounter will be checked against OCSP, which means whichever server or set thereof you designated to be used for that now sees every single domain you visit and when you visit it.

Why do you even think you need OCSP?

Ad-supported Microsoft Office bobs to the surface

Re: Who is surprised?

> Ok , there's a learning curve

Is there though... ? Is there really?

Re: Fuck all the off M$

Anyone actually capable of making linux work for them isn't going to be shackled to M$ anyway.

These days Linux is as easy as Windows. In many cases, it's even easier to install and operate than windows.

Re: What's the point?

>...that people are lazy and only care about their personal convenience when I left facebook in late 20011...

Please tell me that's a typo and that you aren't a time traveler and that FB is still a thing in 20011 :P

Re: If you need it at all

And what's the point if you have the file locally but can't open it? It's not just about saving to OD only, it's also only allowing you to open files on OD.

Re: Fuck all the off M$

You may believe that, but for as long as you use MSFT software, they own y'er box, mate...

you'll love the adverts or you'll get some more beatings, until morale improves.

Re: Hotmail version

The approach of: "I have installed the latest version of office on your computer. They changed the UI around a bit and it's not called LibreOffice but it's office all right. It's just the latest and greatest version" also works...

Re: What's the point?

Oh but no... their MBA's have told them that people LOOOOVE ads, and they also LOOOVE missing functionality, and LOOOOOVE new versions of windows. They even made a presentation about it where they sliced and diced the data just so to even provide 'evidence' of it ("99% of the users we interviewed and retained for this sample said they wanted more ads, the remaining 1% were mutes who could actually say it because they're mute, but they indicated the same by pointing at the words 'we love it and want more' written on a blank piece of paper with out any other choice available to them").

I mean, why else would they shove those down everyone's throat? It must be because they are convinced people love that type of change.

Re: If you need it at all

> Pi Hole is your friend. I don't know if it would kill Microsoft ads out of the box, but certainly could be configured thus.

Depends on how they implemented it. All PiHole does is return 0.0.0.0 as the IP address for any domain on its list of domains to block. Normal systems look at that response and go "ok, I guess that must have been a user error in the domain, no biggie, let's just go to the next thing on my list of stuff to do".

So if these ads are implemented to deal with that properly then it may be fine and you'd see nothing. But if they implemented it where if ads don't display, the software refuses to work (think: the app keeps internal record of how many ads it's served you and if you don't meet a min-bar, the app refuses to work), well, that's a different matter.

Again, depending on how they implement it, it may put this product in a CPU death loop where every time it gets a 0.0.0.0 response for domain resolution, it immediately tries the next domain to pull instead of backing off. This could lead to your CPU maxing out because of the tight loop...

But that doesn't solve the problem of it only allowing you to save to OneDrive. You still can't save to your own machine with this edition as planned.

Re: What's the point?

> I'm not sure what demographic would choose to use an ad-infested version of MSOffice that can only save to OneDrive instead of LO, but it can't be too big.

You'd be surprised. I know I am continually surprised at the amount of abuse people allow themselves to be subjected to when it comes to advertisement.

MSO is what they know. It has the buttons where their users have been trained to look for the buttons. People _HATE_ change, even if it's just moving a button 20 pixels to the left. (Remember the amount of whining emanated - and continues to emanate - from some folks because Firefox made a change to its UI a while back?)

Things need to be broken the same way they are broken in MSO for people to consider the software 'working' - as contradictory as this may sound. MSFT isn't even compatible with its own Office Open XML spec. LibreOffice is more compatible (with higher fidelity) than Office itself. This is by design: it lets them cripple things deliberately to keep people on their software. People still consider MS Office as the 'standard' and even though it may be broken, people expect the thing to be broken in the same way MSO is broken.

It's a python-esque (the serpent kind, not the language) approach: every time the user exhales, constrict a little tighter, ratchet the pressure up and never unsqueeze, because ... money.

Out of interest: are there particular features you use in this particular product that are not present or available in something like a LibreOffice?

I'm not implying there aren't, I'm assuming there are, and I'm just curious what they would be...

Re: As long as the paid-for versions remain ad-free.

> I have no problem if ads are used to support a free version.

I do. People shouldn't be using a defective product. They should switch to LibreOffice or other open alternatives.

Advertisement is theft. Theft of your attention, your privacy, of your security, of your bandwidth, your CPU cycles and thus electricity, your peace of mind.

A pox upon it!

Microsoft's drawback on datacenter investment may signal AI demand concerns

Re: The AI "Bubble"

You make a good point, but I'll expand on this a bit...

None of the things where you mention and say "look how that went" were unfit for purpose. In fact, those things you refer to offered actual meaningful improvements. Legit improvements.

AI is different. It doesn't actually work - not as advertised and not in actuality. Some people call it "hallucinations", but that's not what those are. It's buggy in a way that can't be fixed. Even generally speaking, it doesn't actually work, it's unfit for purpose.

I think that's where the difference of opinion lies: a bunch of folks (especially here on el reg) think that the thing just plain doesn't work and is nothing more than snake oil. If it worked, if it actually did the thing, then sure, I'd be all for it. But I have yet to see compelling evidence of it actually working in a way that adds meaningful value.

So yes, let's see how it goes. It's too bad that the price of finding this out will be so great, especially if it turns out not to work...

Re: The AI "Bubble"

> If nobody wants the product despite ridiculous amounts of marketing, then stop making it.

You gotta learn how to think like an MBA. You're not doing it right... The thinking goes like this:

"If nobody wants the product, despite ridiculous amounts of marketing, then obviously the customer is wrong. How they fail to see our genius is beyond us, but clearly they fail at it. Besides, my bonus depends on me being able to flog this thing of. So we will force the customer to pay for it and make it ridiculously hard to avoid paying for it. We'll roll it into the basic packages as a necessary dependency that everyone has to buy anyway and jack the cost of those things up for everyone claiming 'added and crucial functionality'."

That's how these creatures think...

Re: Err...

> Not really, apprentices do not scale as fast as AI, they need rest, fall ill and threaten to unionize.

Not even just that, they demand these things called "wages", because they insist that they need to buy food and have housing. How dare they even demand such luxuries...

#include "Monthy Python - Four Yorkshiremen"

Hey programmers – is AI making us dumber?

Re: Ding Ding Ding !!!

> I don't know if "deliberate enfeeblement" is accurate but...

How about "Learned Helplessness"?

This open text-to-speech model needs just seconds of audio to clone your voice

Re: I hope nobody

Even the dirtiest rag journos only publish stuff that is at least new or unexpected to their "readers". Who'd publish this?

Re: My bank...

And rat out on you to you health insurance so that they can jack up your insurance premium, all without telling you the reason why (and get a cut in exchange for providing such a valued service to their "partner"), you mean?

What? You thought you would be the one receiving your diagnostic results? That's funny!!!

Current crop of AI only has only one purpose

The current crop of AI has only a single purpose: deception.

GenAI's explicit purpose is to deceive you, to make you think a human was involved when none was.

And deception is not exactly the behavior of honest folk.

The argument for "scale" ("but we can do so much more with AI, that's why we use, not to deceive you") falls flat on its face. If that were genuine, then they'd make it abundantly clear that the thing you're interacting with is a machine. But they don't, they hide that, and work very hard at hidden this from you. This is exactly what this article is about: trying to be the best at impersonating someone else to a believable level.

Machines should identify themselves as machines, so that those forced to interact with them know exactly how much the other side of the line values them. "Your call is very important to us"??? Bah, lies!

Creators demand tech giants fess up and pay for all that AI training data

Re: Scheme of things

They used to be in power in the past as well, and then weren't. We can do that again! It is not too late!

Re: Scheme of things

> You won't win a fight against big corporations, so embrace what they do.

No! That is how authoritarians and fascists get into power. Our liberties are interconnected, and to sell out ones own liberties is to sell out everyone else's liberties.

This mentality is wrong and there is no compromise on this. No!

Re: Scheme of things

I'm afraid Poe's law has struck here and would appreciate an indicator of your intent.

Re: “The question is, how do we move forward?”

To rephrase your question: "Why do companies get away with stuff an individual would not get away with?"

It is irrelevant whether or not it is "too hard" to untangle the unlicensed content from their models, its infeasibility should not factor into the decision at all. Either they can continue to use their model, provided they can remove all unlicensed content in its entirety as well as from any up- or downstream data sets they use, and provide third-party verified proof they did so, or if they can't do the complete aforementioned, then they can't use any product(s) derived from the illicitly used materials. It's that simple.

If we were serious about holding people accountable (but we'd have to be a nation of laws for that, and we aren't), then there would be actual repercussions and accountability for the officers of the company. Isn't that why they are paid the big bucks, because they are 'responsible' or something? If you want to play CEO or be some other senior officer of the company or hold effective power over direction and activities of the company, that's great, but that comes with strings attached: you will be personally liable for the activities of the company. Let's see how much law breaking still happens if we remove that immunity...

Similarly, if "companies are people", let's start executing some of them: corporate death for the entities and prohibitions for any of its officers on being an officer of any company, or have effective control over the direction of a company.

But now watch the courts kowtow to these perpetrators and not only placate them, but ask them for their own suggestions regarding "how would you, as the person being told to appear in front of the court today, like to go about rectifying things? Oh, you suggest a pinky promise to not do it again but keep what you have? That should do, of course...". Anything suggested by these perpetrators as reparations should be immediately dismissed as not enough, because nothing they will suggest would move the needle one angstrom.

Datacenter energy use to more than double by 2030 thanks to AI's insatiable thirst

> Time for politics to really set priorities. And stick to them.

They have, you've just now come to realize that you're not a priority for them. You're not even on the first 7 pages of the list of priorities (which consists of 8 pages).

Google torpedoes 'no AI for weapons' rules

Re: what's that Skip?

What's that Lassie, someone pushed her down the mine shaft?

Re: Would you like to

Well, they certainly don't intend to add an opt-out to the system, that's for sure.

Re: don't be evil

A comma is easier to miss than an exclamation mark. I am convinced they always stuck to their original motto, and we just never registered that comma:

"Don't, be evil"

Windows 11 stages a comeback – still miles behind older sibling

Re: Not really

> (And yes, I'd switch to 'Nux like a shot if family wouldn't object to it so much.).

You could get a shiny 'Nux and a new family...

What are the applications that keep said family on windows?

Hands-on jobs to grow fastest, because AI can't touch them

Re: "administrative roles that automation can easily replace"

The terms "buggy" and "not fit for purpose" seem more accurate, though...

Are you better value for money than AI?

Quantity versus quality

I guess we'll be in for an even bigger avalanche of even lower quality products and services from those companies that buy into this nonsense...

The difficulty about -e.g.- booking travel is not the booking travel part. It's the fitting it into all the other things that matter to the traveler and not all of which are expressed to, or even /expressable/ to the system. In the time it takes to go back and forth with the system ("prompt engineering", what a dumb term) and still not getting what you wanted, you could have booked it yourself and finished another task.

What these systems do is do a bad job at the so-called low hanging fruit, and do nothing for the actual hard bit, while selling it as the opposite of course...

OpenAI denies it is building ad biz model into its platform

Re: Ads are a cover

Big data is not about ads, ads and big data are both about control.

OpenAI adds ads to it's business model

I, for one, am eagerly awaiting next month's follow-up article titled "OpenAI adds ads to it's business model".

Cynical, moi?

Microsoft reboots Windows Recall, but users wish they could forget

> "It can go several minutes between making snapshots, leaving gaps in the timeline."

That 'complaint' seems like a very odd one to me, it translates in my mind as "Hey, you have gaps in your surveillance of me and I don't like that, do MORE surveillance". That's a very odd flex right there...

GlobalFoundries fined $500K for violating US sanctions

Re: So

I am always surprised that these fines never start with a "forfeiture of all revenue(*) originating from the illegal behavior".

That being said, I would like that to be then followed up on with "on top of that forfeiture a fine of a percentage (say 5 percent or so) of the average of the annual revenue reported for the duration of the illegal activities, as reported to its shareholders and public markets, levied per year the illegal activities occurred"

But I know, I know... now I'm being all unrealistic and such...

(*) NOT profit

Embattled users worn down by privacy options? Let them eat code

> without strong enforcement from somewhere else, it won't make a change.

I wholeheartedly agree that strong enforcement is needed!

> Great idea, why don't we call it DO NOT TRACK? Oh right, we have that already and it does not work.

It does work, it signals your intent that you wish not to be tracked.

However, it is being sabotaged by those who benefit from ignoring that intent, and are hell-bent on exploiting and abusing you and everything there is to you. The problem is not that "it doesn't work", the problem is that is being actively circumvented/ignored/... Your signaled intent is intentionally ignored and discarded. That is the problem.

The argument put forth in support of DNT not working is like saying "Telling people you don't want to be murdered and then you are murdered doesn't work, so it doesn't work". The problem is not the sign, the problem is the violent actions on the part of the abuser. To take it a step further: you shouldn't even have to opt-out, you shouldn't even have to say you don't want it. The fact that someone applies it to you is wrong in the first place. If you really want to be tracked, state that. Then these abusers can have their way with you!

Re: Irony

> Anyone employed in an industry connected to the web (physically or by market) probably relies upon data harvesting revenue to a greater or lesser extent.

Probably, and I think it's pretty telling w.r.t. the actual main product-facade that is being peddled by those organizations.

If your revenue model is coming from providing a no-cost-to-end-users service/content and subsidizing this via advertisement, you are explicitly stating that "no-one thinks what I provide is valuable enough to give me real money, no-one would give me money for what it is that I do, so I have to forcibly extract it from them in another way by selling their information and eyeballs". You're literally stating that what you "sell" is not worth money.

I am aware that this site here gets by via advertising. I would actually pay real money for access to El Reg.

Icon is me rummaging in my jacket pocket, finding the random coins that always get lost in there...

Re: What really annoys me...

That would require a cookie, which wouldn't be allowed to be set if you decline setting cookies.

However, the point is not to get your informed consent. The point is specifically to wear you down so that you allow them to set cookies. Some of the evidence for this assertion is that it's easier to let them set all cookies than it is to decline them.

If one really wanted a solution: wouldn't it be much easier to just respect Do-Not-Track? Because that signal is pretty easy and pretty much covered everything needed. I don't think I know anyone who can or would make an informed decision on "Sure, I want to be tracked by X and Y but not by A and B, oh, and C is fine as well, but only for purpose D". DNT is simple enough.

Even if that setting comes with a default value of 'on' (indicating "I wish to not be tracked"), it's still a default and should be respected. Note that it was argued that "because firefox sets Do-Not-Track to true by default, it's not what the visitor 'really' wants, thus we can and will ignore it" but that's just plain BS. If advertisers really cared about explicit user intention, they'd opt for the more certain "a user who switched it from 'Do-No-Track' to 'Track-me-please' has given explicit consent to be tracked and so is fair game".

This quote by Frank Bitterlich comes to mind on the tracking that we are subjected to:

I'm sick and tired of the constant "... but we need the advertising revenue" whining. You're not making any advertising revenue. You're making tracking revenue. ... Who on this planet would accept someone ringing your door bell and going, "Excuse me, sir, we need to make sure the junk mail we fill your mailbox with is relevant, so I just need to have a quick look at your book shelves and the products in your fridge. If you could just step aside for a second..."

Amazon, Tesla, Meta considered harmful to democracy

When you extol the virtues of your corporate overlords, I feel you are misguided but you have that right to be misguided.

> Democracy means we should be able to vote them out.

Some questions on this statement:

- Can you vote?

- Do you vote?

- Does your vote get counted in the way that it should, with your vote receiving the same weight as everyone else's vote?

If the answer is yes, then you can "vote them out", but you have to also realize that probably fewer people than you think exist, agree with you {and|or} more people than you think exist, think the alternative options on the ballot is/are even worse.

I think that you should at least entertain the possibility that you're in a minority. And remember, if you're a minority, one of the better political systems to be in, is a democracy.

Musk dreams of launching five Starships to Mars in two years

First

Can said billionaire go first? I mean, surely such monumental leap for mankind can only be honoured enough by his personal participation, no?

Imagine how many retweets he'd get for the first Xeet from/on Mars...

No way? Big Tech's 'lucrative surveillance' of everyone is terrible for privacy, freedom

Re: A Small Price to Pay for the good of Olicharcs

> When will business wake up to the "snake oil" that is big data.

"Data is the new oil" should be interpreted in the context of "Exxon Valdez" and "Climate Change".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_says_no

They don't just sell you stuff. They also sell you, to anyone who's willing to fork over a couple of bucks, because that's how cheap you are.

In almost all of the cases where you're the thing that's being sold, it's not to grant you things. It's to deprive you of things: your money, your opportunity, your future. This sold data is treated as the Truth, and so when a system makes a determination about you (say, your mortgage rate [or even whether or not you get a mortgage for the place you want to live in], or how much you'll pay for insurance, or how much that flight will cost you, whether you get health insurance, etc), based on this data which is almost always incorrect, incomplete, wrong, irrelevant, ... then you will be told "NO", and also that "there is no appeal, but we have a bag of sand for you which you can go and punch".

You may not have been murdered (which I recognize is pretty bad and terminal), but your future will have been solidly and negatively impacted by it. So congratulations, you get to live a long life as a won't-have.