Posts by O'Reg Inalsin

Former Google DeepMind engineer behind Simular says other AI agents are doing it wrong

Agent God

Lets just suppose for arguments sake that the "OSWorld Benchmark" is useful and representative. (I'm not yet convinced by the paucity of information presented here or from what I could see online with a minute of searching, but just suppose). The article states humans have a score of 72.36 percent, and we must assume that is an for employee of an organization that has been working there for at least a few months and knows the ropes (otherwise it is meaningless). An obvious way to be useful would be to have the "agent" check the humans work and suggest/discuss the most likely changes to move the score up to 72.36 + delta. Humans and AI have different strengths, and the AI should be massively cheaper. Yet, that approach is not even mentioned. Oh, I see, assistant bad, agent good.

Nvidia CEO says China wouldn't risk building military supers with American AI chips

If they are designing the GPUs then they will likely also be producing the chips for them etc. Furthermore, if they are using US products in the weapons, then they will be dependent on the US during a time of war, which would be a huge advantage to the US, just as it is a huge advantage to China that the US is so dependent on China.

So, while I respect your dry eyes, I believe there are many in the US that would be shedding tears - people with jobs not only at NVIDIA, but also the many businesses that are enabled by NVIDIAs success - such as all those chip making plants the US is trying to spin up now.

While I understand the argument in favor of restrictions and concern about enabling China's military machine, I think that's mostly short term, and long term it makes more sense for the US to strive to keep the best suppliers in the US or US-friendly countries (hello? are you still on the line?) and hope that the CCP is buying from them.

Just my opinion and I have no connection to NVIDIA. I would be more inclined to pressure NVIDIA over their plans to reduce production of RTX 5090 in order to keep domestic prices high. The best way to advance AI is have affordable on-premise AI hardware that allow usage and innovation to grow from the bottom up. Let 1000 flowers bloom.

Nvidia A6000 GPUs flip memory bits if beaten by GPUHammer

Easily noticed?

Is it possible to statistically detect rowhammer attacks in realtime by running a test routine periodically? A test whose pro-rated cost is much less than 1% of total capacity?

A software-defined radio can derail a US train by slamming the brakes on remotely

Re: Excuse me

Security footage from a business in Salem, Ohio (20 miles [32 km] northwest of East Palestine), and a Ring doorbell camera from New Waterford, Ohio (4 miles [6 km] northwest from East Palestine), show fire emanating from underneath a rail car as it went by on the tracks. After this, at around 8:55 pm EST on February 3, 2023, 38 cars derailed on the east side of East Palestine, near the border with Pennsylvania. Of the 38 derailed cars, 11 were tank cars that dumped 100,000 US gallons (380,000 L) of hazardous materials, including vinyl chloride, benzene residue, and butyl acrylate.

The damage will be covered by insurance, and that kind of huge insurance policy risk is subject to being divided into tiny parts and resold by the insurer as reinsurance multiple times to minimize risk. The net effect is it's worth no one insurers time to to pressure the train companies to meet risk compliance. Instead, they put all their effort into financial returns on their money bags, i.e., playing the inside track on the financial markets. All on board for the US economy's future derailment.

Stopping the rot when good software goes bad means new rules from the start

Re: Product liability - nice idea but...

Even if we can't have good honest government, at least we can enjoy side splitting humour? Almost worth it .

From A2A to MCP, a look at the protocols that might one day help AI automate you out of a job

Why can't agents speak to each other in their native Esperanto?

What am I missing? Why do they need custom rigid new hu-manually designed protocols to exchange data, beyond the protocols that already exist and former, currently homeless, employees would have used to do the same work? Bottom line - the singularity won't happen until agentic AI swarms are making their own doodly squat busy work and doubling code base size every six months without any human interference at all.

AI coding tools make developers slower but they think they're faster, study finds

Error bars from Mars

I'm having a problem understanding the error bars in the study. For the non-AI predicted times there error bars are are about +/-5 minutes in 1 hour and 50 minutes. That just seems too incredibly tiny to justify without at least some extra explanation. Likewise for both kinds of observed times, the error bars are about +/-10 minute in ~2 hrs. I find it hard to believe the results are so uniform.

The price of software freedom is eternal politics

Re: No Mention Of "Network-Aware"! Why Not?

or it might just be a terminal session.. X over ssh is not required for an ssh terminal session, but the way you phrased it could be interpreted as though it is.

Looks like 1,300 Indeed and Glassdoor staffers will need their former employer's websites

Any kind of online reviews are prone to being gamed one way or another.

China's biggest car rental company now offers autonomous cars

If you take her to town I hope you get something more than petrol money - I mean long term relationship benefits that come with being married for 10 years. I suppose self driving could help share cars (essentially rental) make a comeback, but I'm not sure about that. Share cars have got to be more expensive because they have more down time. I would go the other way - expecting bus-taxi hybrids seating 10 or more people to actually become economically viable with self driving.

Where does a taxi stop and rental begin?

Intel's leaders have stopped pretending – and it's about time

As we said at the time, Intel missed the AI boat, at least in the datacenter, and it seems that Tan would agree. "On training, I think it's too late for us," he's quoted as saying, characterizing Nvidia's grip on the market as simply "too strong." ... Tan is apparently jazzed about the prospect of AI agents that can automate entire tasks traditionally performed by people.

This seems to be a continuation of the same losing strategy - give up on Intel's core strength of design and focus on some far downstream application with vague specs, big hype, and unproven demand. e.g., IoT -> AIAgents. (Sure something like AI Agents is a future thing but it can only be built organically on more efficient hardware and algorithms which will lower costs dramatically, but its not something you can plan/design a chip product for by 2026Q4).

Meanwhile, NVidia is actually planning to cut production of consumer AI-capable RTX5090 this year to keep prices artificially high, a sure sign that the market is screaming for competition. That's a market that is ripe for exploitation, as racked datacenter AI services have problems with predictable billing and keeping client data safe, small business' (factories included) need price reliable alternatives.

As for the rackspace market, Google has the TPU and Amazon has the Tranium - somehow those have both carved out niches and are both competing with NVIDIA.

AMD warns of new Meltdown, Spectre-like bugs affecting CPUs

Re: only?

Some of those kinds of bugs can be abused from js running in a browser. Proof of concept has been done.

Georgia court throws out earlier ruling that relied on fake cases made up by AI

... On the two occasions ita been caught ..

Firefox is fine. The people running it are not

Re: "a simple straightforward browser"

You get holes where the ads aren't. Think of it as a holey blessing. Integrated ads still pass through, because they are holy.

Atlassian migrated 4 million Postgres databases to shrink AWS bill

Samsung reportedly pauses US chipmaking plans

According to Tom's:

No reason was given for the delay, but multiple sources indicate that it occurred due to a lack of demand. It was initially planned for the Taylor Fab to produce chips for the 4nm process node, but this has since been upgraded to 2nm, to compete with TSMC and Intel.

A supply chain executive told the publication that there is little demand for the originally planned 4nm process node at the site. "Local demand for chips isn't particularly strong, and the process nodes Samsung planned several years ago no longer meet with current customer needs," the executive said to Nikkei Asia. "However, overhauling the plant would be a major and costly undertaking, so the company is adopting a wait-and-see approach for now." Although it has already declared its intention to upgrade the site to manufacture the 2nm process node, that is a resource-intensive task in terms of time, effort, and money.

This is in stark contrast to TSMC, which now manufactures the 4nm process node at Fab 21 in Arizona for U.S.-based customers like Apple, AMD, Broadcom, Nvidia, and Qualcomm. And, despite being priced higher than chips made in other sites outside North America, its capacity is already sold out through 2027.

US imposes sanctions on second Russian bulletproof hosting vehicle this year

Re: Drop that phrasing

How about change "sanctions" to "bunker busters" instead. I would never even have joked that 3 years ago, but I'm not sure it would make any difference to the 10 year outlook now, anyway.

Microsoft leaves Pakistan but promises customers won't notice the change

With a little help from Big C

who knows how to leverage proxy war to exploit every opportunity available. Europe, Middle East, South Asia, everywhere. From Big C's perspective, no state is a failed state, only an opportunity. "I" may not like it, but "I" can not ignore it.

AI models just don't understand what they're talking about

AI can parse a John Grisham novel but it cannot write a bestseller like John Grisham can. Oh yeah, but it can already cut the cost of making a Super Bowl ad by 90%! And it will probably cut the cost of special effect heavy superhero movie sequell #42 by a similar amount. Not all media/art is created equal.

Junior sysadmin’s first lines of code set off alarms. His next lot crashed the company

Re: sysadmin ... become a developer

It's a matter of scaling. Home or small office ip4 addresses are fine.

Don't pay for AI support failures, says Gradient Labs CEO

Frontline support is there to keep the customer from advancing

Wear the customers down with attrition. That that makes up half of all support activity, and that AI can do it too, is entirely believable :(

AI agents get office tasks wrong around 70% of the time, and a lot of them aren't AI at all

Money where your mouth is

Pretty sure noone would notice if Gartner became an AI agent.

Fed chair Powell says AI is coming for your job

The rapidly disappearing technical jobs are related to AI

However, this is really outsourcing+AI under the guise of AI without mentioning the outsourcing. The long term damage continues.

More trouble for authors as Meta wins Llama drama AI scraping case

Re: Some intellectual property rights are more equal than others

> You can agree a business contract for automated extraction.

The judge said "And they contend that Meta, by using their works for training without permission, has diminished the authors’ ability to license their works for the purpose of training large language models" and called that argument a "clear loser".

If OpenAI/Meta argued in court that using their training data without a business contract would diminished their ability to license their work, would a judge be correct in ruling that argument was a "clear loser", and if not, why not?

Some intellectual property rights are more equal than others

I according to the OpenAI terms of use -- What you cannot do. You may not use our Services for any illegal, harmful, or abusive activity. For example, you may not: ... - Automatically or programmatically extract data or Output ... [https://openai.com/policies/row-terms-of-use/]. Or in the case Meta LLama -- Engage in or facilitate any action or generate any content that infringes, misappropriates, or otherwise violates any third-party rights, including the outputs or results of any products or services using the Llama Materials [https://www.llama.com/llama3/use-policy/]

Yet the human authors work was digested in exactly that manner - automatically and programmatically. How and why should it not be symmetric?

Intel totals automotive group

Translation of CEO-speak

Accenture has 3.5 lahk employees in India out of 8 lakh total, and they will add another 0.5 lahk this year, in India [Accenture to promote 43,000 employees in India in FY25, Times of India, May 22, 2025]. (1 lahk = 100K) I expect Accenture has got wads of money to subsidize the AI-zation of their India workforce, so they are currently offering very cheap prices to Intel, compared to what Intel would have pay for marketing employees in the US where both the employee and Intel would be paying into the social security system.

However, - guess what? - just because it is cheaper doesn't mean that it is better value. I predict that outsourcing to Accenture's new AI marketing model will be a complete waste of time and money for Intel as the left and right hands will have poor communication. Worse, if Intels start trusting Accenture with critical market strategy and tech data via easy network access for AI efficiency, it will be a security disaster and conversely very expensive. Intel's products are not junk food or something that can marketed with AI videos. Marketing and tech need a close relationship and a tight feedback loop passing high value information.

Nevertheless, maniacal focus on hyper-competitive product development is a good and necessary strategy. Without such products, there will be nothing to market.

New GitHub Copilot limits push AI users to pricier tiers

Silver lining

Given that the driving force behind multi-billion dollar subsidized service is to squeeze out any new competition from growing, this is a good thing. It would be far more sensible to invest that money in ways to the lower cost side - hardware and/or algorithms, including basic research.

China just two years behind USA on chip design, says White House tech Czar

Re: "if that happens US companies would face more competition"

.... spent the last century - more like 45 years. That was about when China started to open up "special economic zones" that were allowed to take foreign investment. And only the past 35 years in earnest.

DHS warns of sharp rise in Chinese-made signal jammers it calls 'tools of terrorism'

Non sequiter

I would say there are very few US citizens using these, actually, and the spike is likely due to organized crime use. - I follow your logic up to the point you said this, but this doesn't follow. According to the US Bureau of Prisons 83.7% of incarcerees are US citizens - I presume these are all people who have been sentenced, but I could be wrong. It's doesn't break them down into "disorganized" vs "organized", but I can't see any reason to assume US criminals are less organized - and you didn't offer any any supporting evidence.

Eat or be eaten by AI, Amazon CEO warns staff

Re: Sigh...

Another brain-dead moron ... Amazon CEO Andy Jassy is definitely not a moron in the way you intend it to mean. Employees will be falling over themselves to give credit for their own work to Amazon's own AI software. I think you are wrongly assuming he doesn't fully understand that.

Glazed and confused: Hole lotta highly sensitive data nicked from Krispy Kreme

Re: So their donuts...

Pep-O-mint "Life Savers" have been sold in the US since the 1910's. https://clickamericana.com/topics/food-drink/life-savers-candy-history-flavors

The launch of ChatGPT polluted the world forever, like the first atomic weapons tests

Old fogies

If AI was half as smart as it was made it to be it would insist on a reading base better than web slag. The plenty of literature from before 2022, before the advent of the internet in 1990. It AI learned that first as a reference, it would be much better at filter out the nonsense from more up to date information.

AI coding tools are like that helpful but untrustworthy friend, devs say

Re: 76% ... won't ship AI suggested code without human review

Reading between these lines:

"There's a small minority of power users, who tend to be very experienced developers, who are seeing massive gains – these are the 10Xers. The majority of developers are seeing moderate gains, and there’s a group that’s failing to effectively leverage the current AI tools and is at risk of being left behind." --- Itamar Friedman, CEO and co-founder of Qodo

Mr. Friedman is cleverly trying to create the (mis-)impression amongst potential client MBAs with top down planning power that for the best coder drones (formerly doing humans), AI writes perfect code the first time, while for 2nd rank or lower coder drones it doesn't write good code. It's clever of Mr. Friedman because he knows that those MBAs want to believe that scenario.

Chap claims Atari 2600 'absolutely wrecked' ChatGPT at chess

Re: Why?

Are you angry at angry at the algorithms, or at the the tools implementing the algorithms, or at the human misuse of those tools?

Waymo problems in La La Land as robotaxis set aflame

Re: Cars causing problems

404 Media reports that the Los Angeles Police Department recently acquired video from one of the self-driving cars as part of a hit-and-run investigation. The video was published on the LAPD’s YouTube channel in an effort to gin up tips from the public. Gizmodo - "Waymo’s Driverless Cars Revealed to Be Narcs as Cops Use Them to Probe Crimes "

That's the "proof" I keep seeing linked to your assertion. I guess some important people are too busy doing something about air pollution by burning EV's to read past the headline "Waymo’s Driverless Cars Revealed to Be Narcs ..." . The actual story content is that the police got a warrant for footage related to a hit-and-run, and the police released that footage looking for tips, which by my judgement is actually a very good thing.

Trump lifts US supersonic flight ban, says he's 'Making Aviation Great Again'

Not those Boomers.

I imagine 20 billionaires a day flying in and out of San Francisco - each in their own private supersonic jet.

Schneier tries to rip the rose-colored AI glasses from the eyes of Congress

That creeping centipede Elon Musk

The rules must follow the English language, not the other way round, much like rulers don't follow rules, but only make them. Ask Elon about that.

Please tell us Reg: Why are AI PC sales slower than expected?

When you build the solution before deciding the problem

.. you are left with an expensive problem for which there is no solution.

Boffins found self-improving AI sometimes cheated

Watch your back, AI

Bloody slacking AI dossers. They shouldn't be surprised when some thinking meatbags come along and take their jobs using only 20 watts of self biogenerated brain energy and sweaty curiousity.

Trump can bluster and bluff all he wants, but iPhone manufacturing isn't coming to the US

Made partially in Mexico?

In 2024, the value of U.S. goods exports to Mexico were $334.0 billion, while imports from Mexico totaled $505.9 billion. That means for for every $1 spent by the US in Mexico, 66 cents comes back. The figure for China is 10 cents, and similarly paltry number of India. Labor rates in Mexico are also %80 of those in China. What's missing is that that in China they are capable of of handling all the management, product design, and everything up to and including replacing your company with a competitor that you paid to train.

ASUS to chase business PC market with free AI, or no AI - because nobody knows what to do with it

Means what?

Chang said ASUS will bundle its AI wares on machines aimed at small-to-medium businesses that he thinks want to explore how AI can improve productivity without paying a subscription fee.

Does the vagueness mean it is just a general idea at this point?

German court parks four Volkswagen execs in jail over Dieselgate scandal

Re: re: Sentences

It wasn't just calibrating the engine. The company installed software, commonly referred to as a "defeat device", in their diesel vehicles that could detect when the car was undergoing laboratory emissions testing. When a test was detected, the software activated emissions controls to ensure the car met regulatory standards. However, during regular driving, the software reduced the effectiveness of these controls, resulting in nitrogen oxide (NOx) emissions up to 40 times higher than legal limits.

Russian IT pro sentenced to 14 years forced labor for sharing medical data with Ukraine

Re: Potted Russian history

Not meaning to discredit Aleksandr Levchishin, but there is more that a small chance that he didn't actually do the charged crime. He might have done nothing, or he might just have just been heard to grumble and complain.

'Spy mania': Why is Russia accusing its own physicists of treason?

Russian President Vladimir Putin frequently boasts that his country is leading the world in developing hypersonic weapons, which travel at more than five times the speed of sound. But a string of Russian physicists working on the science underlying them have been charged with treason and imprisoned in recent years, in what rights groups see as an overzealous crackdown.

Freshly discovered bug in OpenPGP.js undermines whole point of encrypted comms

Re: Never roll your own encryption...

It's interpreted, supports promises, and runs on the V8 engine. So it can handle thousands of ongoing sessions in a single thread.

Oh, you meant the ugly syntax. Just turn off the lights.

Signal shuts the blinds on Microsoft Recall with the power of DRM

Re: ...But Is Signal Doing ANYTHING AT ALL About NSO/Pegasus Malware?

I have no idea if they are or are not - but the fact they haven't mentioned it means it is probably too hard a nut to crack and stay cracked.

Re: Nanny security

If your communications truly put you at risk, then there are several ways that accidental misuse or even careful use of Signal could endanger you:

3 Ways to Export Signal Chat Messages into PDF, CSV, HTML

5 Ways to Retrieve Deleted Chat Messages From Signal App

Forensic analysis of ephemeral messaging applications: Disappearing messages or evidential data?

It seems that you think avoiding use of Windows11 will make you safe, but you are wrong. Probably the safest thing to do would be voice phone (assuming you are not being bugged) combined with invisible non-poisonous ink pen and edible paper to write down details. Get Smart!

Re: Nanny security

That's exactly my point -you are just repeating it back to me. There is no "perfectly" secure way to use it. If if you did have a (hypothetical) perfectly secure system, somebody included in a group chat could be a leaker. There is no getting around the fact the user's must use their judgement to minimize (not eliminate) risk, including judging the other participant(s) in a chat.

I don't use Signal, or Windows. I also don't use banking apps on a cellphone as far too many people are getting burned like that. I know that no digital media or security measures are perfectly secure, and in practice it is just about minimizing risk based on imperfect knowledge of what that risk really is.

The full truth was laid out In the 1970's by the musical artist Sting in the lyrics to his song "Every move you make":

Every breath you take

Every move you make

Every bond you break

Every step you take

I'll be watching you

Every single day

Every word you say

Every game you play

Every night you stay

I'll be watching you

Oh, can't you see

You belong to me?

How my poor heart aches with every step you take?

Every move you make

Every vow you break

Every smile you fake

Every claim you stake

I'll be watching you

Microsoft dumps AI into Notepad as 'Copilot all the things' mania takes hold in Redmond

Sticking an AI interface in every application doesn't make a lot of sense

There is no way to save the context - all that work is lost.

A good AI interface for MS windows would have a single entry point to bring up a window with a menu which included a list of tasks/contexts in progress or archived, which would also be searchable. If the user wanted help in writing something they could select new task, and interact with the AI. An application could be invoked, perhaps, but it's no challenge for the user to cut and paste

If they need to go back to it later for revision they could reload the task which includes all the context including the written text. Or they could ask the AI to interactively help find and load the relevant task and its context.

Not to mention, there are tasks where AI's "help" is not wanted or desired - thanks but no thanks - don't become the nosy relative that nobody wants to be around.

If MS want's to increase AI use there is good parable to reference - "The North Wind and The Sun (Fables of Aesop)"