Posts by analyzer

Apple solves broken news alerts by turning off the AI

BBC worried about news accuracy

Since when??

Inquiring minds really, really, want to know

Arrow Lake splashdown: Intel pins hopes on replacement for Raptors

Re: Not what I want in a desktop

After the recent debacles regarding not just quality control at production level but also the 13th and 14th gen issues blowing up the ring bus, I would have assumed that Intel would need to earn some trust back before giving a shopping list of what desirable features should be available.

I really do hope that they have finally got their act together, no real competition is no competition at all and that is bad for all of us.

Judge orders NSO to cough up Pegasus super-spyware source code

Structure matters

Absolutely agree with all of that but if I were NSO I would be reticent to release anything that could give away the structure of the primary system. There are always clues in a section of software that can provide insights to further investigation of the wider system.

Additionally NSO should ignore any and all foreign court orders until they have been processed by their own court system, because as we all know, a states jurisdiction ends at its internationally recognised borders.

Authors Guild sues OpenAI for using Game of Thrones and other novels to train ChatGPT

Only if they train it with a proper dictionary, if they use the internet I'll give it 50/50

AMD's 128-core Epycs could spell trouble for Ampere Computing

AMD (x64) vs Ampere (ARM64)

So Intel are doing so badly at the moment their processors aren't considered worth comparing against by either of these two companies.

Much as I never liked their business practices, and the way they held computing back because they had no real competition, things like this really do need to be a 3 way fight; but it looks like another 2 to 3 years before Intel will be back on solid competitive ground and it also looks like they will be the little guy in the fight.

Pornhub walls off Utah in age-verification law protest

We need more, we need to see the crazy before it assaults our shores, we may even get a chance to vote the numpties, who think the crap is OK, out of office

Kremlin claims Ukraine hackers behind fake missile strike alerts

Re: Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity

Yes indeed it is russia, thus it is

Never attribute to stupidity that which is adequately explained by malice.

In russia, russia malices you!!

Someone has to say it: Voice assistants are not doing it for big tech

The great turn off

Managed to persuade the wife to turn hers off when she's not listening to music by just talking out loud when I was alone in the house.

She started getting all these strange adverts online completely unrelated to anything that interests her.

When she asked why that would be I started talking carburettors, after the very strange looks and a couple of days she stormed into the kitchen and pulled its plug.

OK, Google: Why are you still pointing women at fake abortion clinics?

Strange

Also curious that so many people refer to some strange idea that doesn't exist.

If you happen to be pregnant and don't want to be the bible can deal with that, Numbers 5:11-31, called 'bitter waters', that indicates this is not a crime.

If you happen to think that conception equals baby then the bible says you are wrong, Genesis 2:7, Job 33:4, Ezekiel 37:5&6, all these indicate that you are not alive until your God has breathed your first breath into you and infused you with the holy spirit.

Lastly Jesus confirmed that the old testament was divinely inspired, the veritable word of God and cannot be broken, John 10:35.

So if you are genuinely a Christian and support the false prophets of "Pro-Life" then you had better get back to your bibles and read them properly. Your Lord God expected 1/3 of pregnancies to terminate in the first trimester and some more in the second trimester.

For the simple people amongst you I'll say it louder

YOUR GOD SAYS THAT ABORTION IS NOT A CRIME AND JESUS AGREED WITH HIM.

Microsoft Teams outage widens to take out M365 services, admin center

Re: Also ...

Or the baud rate was only 1200/2400, and that would give the systems time to keep up

SCOTUS judges 'doxxed' after overturning Roe v Wade

Depends

Way back in the development of the English language a male was a werman (w pronounced as f or v) and a female was a woman, man was singular person and men, the plural.

So it could easily be argued that the all men are created equal part of that countrys very ragged and nearly destroyed constitution already includes all people. As their highest court is happy to dig back beyond when their country was even a thing it should pose no issues to go back another 5 or 600 years regarding the language.

Pictured: Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way

Re: I take it they rotated the 3d image

No need, in earlier galactic collisions Sage A* was tilted from the vertical with reference to the galactic disc by about 1 radian so we can see more. The brightest blob is light that is coming toward us.

Dr Becky , your friendly neighbourhood astrophysicist has an excellent explanation

A discounting disaster averted at the expense of one's own employment

Re: Is this a repeat?

Maybe a lingering forgotten bad memory?

Shoot the messenger is very common in the IT world

California suggests taking aim at AI-powered hiring software

HR huh?

As if we needed anymore proof that HR has nothing to do with humans

Intel counters AMD’s big-cache PC chip with 5.5GHz 16-core rival

Hold up a sec

So Intels latest chips beat AMDs last gen chips.

AMD still have AM4 after 6 years, Intel have had 3 different socket types for desktops in that time.

AMD still on DDR4, Intel probably using the fastest DDR5 that can be bought.

AMD still on PCIe4, Intel using PCIe 5.

AMD at EoL of Zen 3, Intel with latest Alder Lake architecture, not up to date could be sapphire rapids or raptor lake

Intel beats AMD, I would bloody well hope they would with all those advantages

Farm machinery giant John Deere plows into two right-to-repair lawsuits

Re: 640k

No it wasn't.

It was based on PRISM that Dave Cutler and team were working on at DEC as a 32/64 bit replacement for VMS.

When it got rejected by DEC manglement MS just happened to be looking for a new OS team and the NT kernel was born.

You've heard of HTTPS. Now get a load of HTTPA: Web services in verified remote trusted environments?

So which SGX?

I mean is it this one

2020

or this one

2021

I mean, they can't be the same one Intel are referencing since that one must be secure and we all know that Intel would never tell a lie just to sell silicon.

UK's competition regulator announces market study into music-streaming biz

Spotify user here

A subscription one no less, it's worth it not to have the adverts.

I use it to find stuff I haven't heard before and if I like it then I'll buy the CD. The wife thinks I'm a little insane doing that but I then also have the control of what, when and how I wish to listen.

I did try Amazon and Google but they are way behind Spotify in both range of music, new artists and usability of the app.

No idea how iTunes compares as I've never owned Apple kit.

So after costs and everything else is deducted how much of my tenner per month is going to the artists that I've listened to?

Spotify obviously knows how much and to whom I've listened so I would be really interested as to how they break the sums down.

Only 'natural persons' can be recognized as patent inventors, not AI systems, US judge rules

Judge is right

To gain a patent you have to swear under oath and under penalty of perjury that this is your invention and meets the requirements that patent law requires for a monopoly to be granted.

Once the AI* can do that and contend with the punishment dealt out for perjury** then maybe we should revisit this

* AI is currently just pattern recognition on steroids

**Not sure that's ever happened

Ransomware-skewered meat producer JBS confesses to paying $11m for its freedom

Most sophisticated??

Why is it always 'most sophisticated', 'most specialised', 'most magical' or whatever rather than the real reason 'We couldn't be arsed to pay the cost of proper security because that would affect the CXX bonus package'?

Apple sued in nightmare case involving teen wrongly accused of shoplifting, driver's permit used by impostor, and unreliable facial-rec tech

Re: It is not Apple or SIS who lied ...

Incorrect on both sides of the pond.

When official statements are made they are made by representatives of the company involved and these very same representatives present the view and position of the company they represent. A statement of shoplifting to the police is most certainly an official statement.

Therefore those employees that in their official capacity ordered police to make false arrests were implementing the will and the wonts of both businesses.

If that is not the will and wont of those businesses then the businesses are still at fault because they provided training that was insufficient to the task required.

Hope he is awarded a serious pot of dosh.

Microsoft hits Alt-F4 on Windows 10X: OS designed for dual-screen PCs axed

Re: So you might say ...

No they probably don't. There are so many aural brevity codes to choose from that different organisations could not communicate with each other with full clarity when Hurricane Katrina blew in. This prompted FEMA to nerf the 10 codes and replace the critical ones with one or two words, that was in 2005??

Once you get away from the 10 codes there are also so many others to pick from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brevity_code

Harassers and bullies succeed in tech because silence is encouraged

Illegal in the UK and EU

It is illegal to have a section of a contract that circumvents or breaks a law on this side of the pond. This applies to both personal and corporate contracts.

Where I work there has always been avenues to report bullying and harassment and has been posted up on notice boards and elsewhere for a few years now.

Turns out humans are leading AI systems astray because we can't agree on labeling

AI in everything is the problem

Current AI is just pattern recognition on steroids, there is still no real intelligence in any AI system. The single word tagging of pictures has been known to be suboptimal for a long time now and yet it is still done. If there was any of the I in AI then multiple word tags should not be an issue as it should be capable of recognition of multiple items in one picture.

Additionally, and I can't find the fine article that was in this exalted place, you can carry a tag around with you and be misidentified as the tag because the AI 'learns' the tag as well as the picture.

Certainly artificial, definitely not yet intelligent.

IBM, Red Hat face copyright, antitrust lawsuit from SCO Group successor Xinuos

Reread

So we can just hop over to Groklaw and change the name from SCO yes?

Drag Autonomy founder's 'fraudulent guns' and 'grasping claws' to the US for a criminal trial, thunders barrister

OOoooooK

So criminal activity took place in the UK, some impatient blinkered USofA company decided to skip due diligence despite warnings of imperfections and drop a metric shedload of dosh to buy said company. <-- that's certainly my synopsis

I just cannot see how this UK company harmed any USofA stockholders since it is the *board* of the USofA company that failed entirely to protect the company, and so the stockholders, by skipping due diligence. The US DOJ should be prosecuting the board members of the USofA company at the time of the takeover for gross criminal negligence or whatever they have over the pond, and the UK MOJ should be nailing up the cell door on Mr Lynch.

Having just noticed that the US DOJ tries really really hard not to prosecute rich people the stockholders should be suing the members of the board at that time.

Facebook and Google’s Australian pay-for-news nightmare finds a European admirer

Re: Please tell me you missed "#sarcasm" on the end of that.

love it

European Commission redacts AstraZeneca vaccine contract – but forgets to wipe the bookmarks tab

Re: Clearly states the first batch is manufactured in EU, not UK

The EU is 3 months behind the UK regarding AZ orders.

Sanofi has not yet failed but have run into difficulties that could take a further month or 2 to overcome.

The EU is helping AZ build production inside the EU borders.

It was the EU that made the Irish border a hard one for purely bully tactic reasons and gave the facile excuse they are 'frightened' that there may be vaccine leak from NI to the rest of the UK. Despite the UK being far ahead of the EU in terms of vaccine distribution and the NI NHS being supplied from the UK mainland,

There are good things about Europe but their response to this is certainly not one of them.

Takes from the taxpayer, gives to the old – by squishing a bug in Thatcherite benefits system

Re: Timing

It's all good, everybody knows that the US completely turns any British story around to fit their needs :-)

What happens when the internet realizes the stock market is basically a casino? They go shopping at the Mall

big short selling

So 140% of shares of GME are placed in a virtual manner on a bet that they will fall in value, none of this naked short selling stuff going on no sirree.

Nowhere is it reported about what percentage of shares are now placed in a virtual manner on a bet that they will rise.

If the fall number is larger than the rise number then the hedge fund could be in very serious debt, sob, sob.

If the rise number is larger then some redditers will be out of pocket.

Now the thing about share contracts is that there is usually a time limit to how long you can borrow the shares. So how long are the contracts bought by the HF and /r and do they overlap. If /r have to close first then the share price will collapse and the HF will make big money. If the HF have to close first then how much money /r makes or loses will depend on the percentage of shares in options to rise.

Also what's the opposite to naked short selling?

Dressed long buying?

Naked tall obtaining?

MediaTek's latest Dimensity phone chippery is 25 per cent faster than its predecessor, supports 200MP cameras

Tri configuration?

What's its name?

HuGe.big.LITTLE

UlTrA.big.LITTLE

MaSSiVe.big.LITTLE

People need to know these things, investigation is required

Search history can calculate better credit ratings than pay slips, says International Monetary Fund

Scary then hilarious

Non users of septic media are thus potentially sidelined in future, that's kinda scary. Then there's this quote

“Governments should follow and carefully support the technological transition in finance. It is important to adjust policies accordingly and stay ahead of the curve.”

The very thought that *any* government could 'stay ahead of the curve' is just so funny.

Icon, the consequence of the level of horror and humour colliding

Banking software firm tiptoes off to the cloud with MariaDB after $2m Oracle licence shocker

Features yes but..

There are a vast number of features in Oracle RDMS but how many of them actually get used in a typical application and how many features are used just because it's the latest thing. It's a bit like MS Word, an un$(deity) number of features but how many actually get used?

The car comparison is actually really appropriate, both have a wheel on each corner and an engine but you can buy 14 Fiestas for your 1 Rolls Royce ( New 2020 versions ). The Rolls may be much nicer in all comparisons but 1 Rolls will not be able to do the work of 14 Fiestas and the maintenance cost of 1 Rolls is higher than the cost of 14 Fiestas.

If you really need the Rolls then by all means you should get one, but don't diss the humble Fiesta when it can still do a decent job.

US govt wins right to snaffle Edward Snowden's $5m+ book royalties, speech fees – and all future related earnings

No hipocrasy at all

All governments borrow money from future taxes these days, they are not only morally bankrupt they are essentially financially bankrupt as well.

So you could end up with all their money, but there'll be this huge -ve sign in front.

China sets out world domination plan for its digital currency

And so begins the middle game

Chinas BRI is very extensive, giving them a huge market to play with this. It may well become the only digital currency that is sovereign backed and there are large parts of the world, including the oil producers, who may well have no problem using it.

As Chinas economy continues to grow faster than the US this is the biggest threat to the dominance of the US dollar since it took over from Sterling. This presents the US with a major issue of debt repayment, a big chunk of which will need to be paid back when the transition occurs. The UK got away with it because that transition was relatively smooth, well it cost the empire over the next 30 or so years but hey. If the US fights tooth and nail because 'exceptionalism' then it will be very painful collapse of its empire.

The power of Bill compels you: A server room possessed by a Microsoft-hating, Linux-loving Demon

Visions of foriegn nightmares

Twice in the 80s for some poor Vaxen where a stake in the ground was the building earth and it needed watering. First time took a week to hunt down, second was deja vu.

Techie studied ancient ways of iSeries machine, saved day when user unleashed eldritch powers, got £50 gift voucher

took 3 times to read this

Each time I suffered a deep gut wrenching feeling from times long ago and thought forgotten, I'll bet that I'm not the only one.

Folk sure like to stick electric toothbrush heads in their ears: True wireless stereo sales buck coronavirus trends

Amazed

That no one has mentioned bone conduction headphones. I use these all the time now when out and about as you can still listen to everything around and still play music, etc etc. Granted the playback is not as deep and rich as headphones or earbuds but if you don't want the proverbial 59 bus up your arse they do the business.

Exoskeletons-as-a-service offered as helping hand to warehouse workers exhausted by pandemic

Already been there

Exoskeletons were tried out in one of our warehouses for a few days. The general feedback was that there was a genuine difference between with and without when picking. Major problems were battery life, we could only get a maximum of 6 hours use before changing but it took nearly 10 hours to recharge. As our warehouses are 24/7 that would mean 2 spare batteries for each exoskeleton. This of course pushed the cost up quite a bit, but to the point where even the people who would benefit felt that was too much when our maximum weight is 25KG.

Renting may change the economics but the back of the envelope says it would increase case costs by about a penny per item, and it may sound like a really stupid thing to say at the moment, food retail can't afford another increase in costs.

Tech set responds in wake of American protests, police violence and civil unrest

Re: The next step...

If corporations are people in the USA, and the IRS tax American people on their worldwide earnings then why aren't these American people being prosecuted for tax evasion?

The obvious reason, to me at least, would be the money they pour into US politics to dictate how things are done. So just turning off the Washington cash tap would likely have far more effect than postponing a few things that don't really matter and chucking chump change around.

Just an idle thought.

Huge if true... Trump explodes as he learns open source could erode China tech ban

Yeah right

You call that satire now, but you just wait and see what happens if the orange oaf gets to see it

Sadly, 111 in this story isn't binary. It's decimal. It's the number of security fixes emitted by Microsoft this week

Disappointment

That no one, and I mean no one, took advantage of that being a Nelson. The headlines possible from that.

Microsoft users sinking under a Nelson of fixes

A Nelson of fixes broadside Microsoft users

The possibilities that have been squandered :-(

Britain has no idea how close it came to ATMs flooding the streets with free money thanks to some crap code, 1970s style

lil Bobby tables

I tried the above at the login screen for a brand new super duper system being introduced but used users instead of students, it didn't work but when I used employees it did. Anon because for some strange reason I haven't been hauled up for a disciplinary and I'm keeping it that way.

Who's still using Webex? Not even Cisco: Judge orders IT giant to use rival Zoom for virtual patent trial

Re: Am I the only one using Google Meet?

Certainly not, the business I work for has gone GCloud big style and Meet ramped up very rapidly after lockdown started.

Written Sunday March the 61st 2020

China strings up red tape barrier that shows businesses they're better off buying local tech

Unlikely, the US has become a very 'fragile' trading partner over the last few years. It no longer wants to do business with the rest of the world unless we bow down and kiss your current incompetents feet, sorry meant incumbents there but it still fits.

China is just pointing out that they require certainty and security of supply neither of which the US can ensure. This is noteworthy because it is being done at a national level but there are many firms who are investigating possible escape from US made critical infrastructure.

This is what happens when a lying, cheating, untrustworthy guttersnipe of the lowest scum level possible gets elected to lead the largest economy on the planet.

NASA mulls restoring Saturn V to service as SLS delays and costs mount

lmao

Love it AF

Internet use up 40 per cent in San Francisco Bay Area – but you know what’s even higher? Yep, alcohol, weed use

Re: Makes sense

Between 60% and 70% alcohol content which is 105 to 122.5 proof in the UK 120 to 140 in the US. It has to be at least 60% ABV to destroy the fat coat of the virus and must stay on your hands for around 20 seconds. If it is more than 70% ABV then there is insufficient other content to hold the alcohol and it will evaporate too quickly.

How do I know? Even if I drink that bottle of 14 YO Balvenie matured in Caribbean rum cask in my drinks cabinet in one go I will still have more alcohol on the outside of me :-(

Data surge as more Brits work from home? Not as hard on the network as their nightly Netflix binges, claims BT

Not quite, in a full lock down food and pharmacy will still be running so some poor buggers will have to put up with a gen pop trying to infect them.

We regret to inform you there are severe delays on the token ring due to IT nerds blasting each other to bloody chunks

Doom

Ah Doom, well named, slaughterer of many a lunchtime network

Uncle Sam challenged in court for slurping social media info on 'millions' of visa applicants

Re: Slightly confused...

Yes, that is what they are saying, it's one of the few differences between an ESTA and a full visa.