Posts by Schultz

EU appears to find datacenter emissions easier to offset than lobbyists

Re: Greenwashing scam

The whole carbon trading was invented to avoid the obvious solution: tax fossil fuels. Taxes are rather simple, easy to calculate and collect (can't believe I am saying that about taxes). How about we replace that with a big international scheme involving many government bodies and corporations, complex legal requirements, a lot of paperwork...

There is an easy explanation for replacing a simple, transparent solution with a complex opaque one: obfuscation. So you can pretend to do one thing while actually doing another.

Former Microsoft engineer shrinks Notepad down to size

My notepad requirements...

Are met by Notepad4. I don't really worry too much about binary size, but I want the editor to open rapidly, and load/display files rapidly, irrespective of the file size. I also go used to syntax highlighting, which is a great help when dealing with the output of quantum chemical calculations and when hacking together a short Python script to parse my data files.

Google touts its tokenmaxxing and capex spending amid AI orgy

A bit of a letdown ...

A quick browse through the Gemini Omni Flash announcement page leaves me underwhelmed. A teapot representing the letter Z? A visual explainer of protein folding that illustrates that there are helices beta sheets without any meaningful illustration of what makes those form and interact?

Feels like they tuned their video generator a bit. Looks like a solution looking for a problem.

KDE bags €1.3M as Europe realizes it might need an OS of its own

Re: By Toutatis!

There are dialect translations for some Asterix series books. I don't think they allowed filthy Bavarian jokes though, it's supposed to be kids' books after all.

AI bats away ping-pong challenge as rise of the machines continues

Re: ROTM

Why do I have the feeling that they are a few years late. Oh right, there was the ping pong playing Kuka robot more than 10 years ago. And about that Chinese connection -- Kuka was sold to Chinese company somewhere around 2015.

Intel gets trapped in Elon’s reality distortion field as it joins in megafab delusions

What the heck is he talking about?

"Increasing power on earth has become harder over time and more expensive over time, but in space, it actually becomes cheaper and easier over time."

The production cost of electrical power has come down significantly due to the development of inexpensive renewable energy.

Delays? What delays? Oracle insists its $300B cloud contract with OpenAI is on track

"plenty of capital at our disposal"

... until someone cries 'fire', and the capital evaporates faster than a raindrop in the desert.

Superintelligence probably not happening, but AI will still reshape society, expert panel says

AI Ads. Not super-intelligent, but maybe enough to earn a buck.

Am I the only one who predicts that we'll just get more ads, more intrusive ads, ads that get better at tricking you. Plus search result that are intelligently engineered to guide your eyeballs onto sponsored content.

Seriously. Either you pay for your AI chatbot, or the chatbot will have to search for another employer. Considering that most of you cannot possible finance your fair share of the giga-$ datacenters, it's gonna be the corporate world paying the bills (maybe borrowing a little from your retirement funds) and, eventually, looking for a return on investment. Free content is funded by ads. Or did I miss a revenue stream?

High-stakes poker scam used rigged card shufflers, X-ray tables, and special glasses

Signaling is important

The legality signals that gambling is a legitimate activity. I think it should be illegal but there is no need for heavy handed enforcement. Just make it very clear that it's not a publicly sanctioned activity. Same should go for drugs. If people want to ruin their life or health, let them, but please don't encourage them. And I fully agree, there is need for public education about the problems with gambling.

A pet peeve of mine is sports betting. Do you really believe that you can run billion dollar businesses on sports gambling and there won't be any cheating? How much will it cost to buy a referee or a player? You only need to find the weakest link to buy a game. So obviously your favorite sports is corrupted by gambling. Go watch you local amateur team instead, they play for fun and not for money.

Fire up the gas turbines, says US Interior Secretary: We gotta win the AI arms race

...these changes were not due to SUV exhaust and barbecue fires

But the retreating glaciers are due to your stinking BBQ fires, so shut up and get used to cold cuts. Seriously, go hike in the alps if you still have any doubts about climate change. The vegetation gives you a nice indicator of where the glaciers were 50 years ago, 20 years ago, ... oh and you can also look at old photos if your imagination needs a bit of help.

Lenovo thought it could surf geopolitics, until Trump's sudden tariff changes

software [for] AI PCs "a bit later than expected."

The whole AI PC concept screams "solution looking for a problem".

FAA gives SpaceX the nod for Starship Flight 9 but doubles the danger zone

"Hardware Failure"

I am sure they did some thorough research to figure out the rocket was lost due to hardware failure. A diagnosis that is exhaustive, succinct, and to the point.

So all they have to do now is to fix the hardware. It's rocket science, but how hard can it be?

Whodunit? 'Unauthorized' change to Grok made it blather on about 'White genocide'

Universal principles, human rights, and land ownership

We should be careful when trying to derive universal principles. We are all descendants of thieves, migrants, and murderers and if you try to argue universal rights across generations, then you should be the first to give up your current possessions. If you think your family was on the right side of history, then please remember that, going back /n/ generations, you have 2**/n/ ancestors.

In the list of human rights, ownership is pretty far down the list. There is a good reason for that, because one person's possessions can curtail another's freedom, and dignity. Ownership of something, such as land, is bestowed upon us as part of a social contract. You get to call that land your own as long as the wider society agrees upon it. And if you go back a few generations, you will invariably find that the land was stolen from somebody else. From the clergy during the French revolution. From the natives when the colonialists arrived (going back to the Roman times)....

We should be grateful to our neighbors, if they agree to live in a peaceful society with us. And we should not pretend that there are any fundamental, inherited rights that elevate us above our neighbors, Otherwise, how do you explain to your US American kids that you stopped paying taxes to your God-anointed king George III? He inherited his throne fair and square.

EU gives staff 'burner phones, laptops' for US visits

"Actually, they did [...receive an invitation to take over north America"

"So the Pilgrim Fathers received an invitation ... basically a member of the abenaki tribe named Samoset ..."

This is the ago old story of "we found someone who said it was OK". And if somebody gave you a finger, it's obviously OK to take the hand, and then drive him and his family off the lands and into some far-away reservation. We saw the same game unfold when the Trump and Vance families tried to play with Greenland, but somehow nobody wanted to wear the Maga hat with Mr. and Mrs. Vance.

AI is making hyperscalers' sustainability pledges look more and more like a Hail Mary

" What has AI ever done "

... Well, it translated that Italian instruction manual for me.

"OK, but beyond translating, what has AI ever done for us?!"

... Predicting protein structures?

"OK, but apart from translating and predicting protein structures, what has it really done?"

...

EU lands 25% counter tariff punch on US, Trump pauses broad import levy hike – China excepted

[Trump] was playing 4D chess to get these amazing trade deals...

Unfortunately the amazing gains are all in the 4th dimension. You may call them imaginary, but wait until he figures out how to square those gains. They'll become very real.

...the total mismanagement of Western economies over decades...

The total mismanagement that saw the world economy nearly triple in the last 3 decades? That saw healthy growth in every single western economy? Is is that mismanagement you talk about? Just trying to make sure we talk about the same Western economies here.

"No, Canada will not become a 51st state...."

I think you may underestimate the power of Trump. He may not be able to take over another country just by talking about it loudly. But armed with a sharpie, he can achieve amazing things. So don't be surprised if you wake up one day to see 'Canada' struck off the map, replaced by '51-st State of the biggest-ever US of A'.

Whatcha gonna do then?

Americans set to pay more on all imports: Trump activates blanket tariffs

Re: Liberals

Herman is hilarious. Labeling Marx, Lenin, Mao, Pol Pot, Castro, Maduro as liberals. Maybe some education is required to figure out when and where to use the word liberal.

Etymology:.The term "liberal" originates from the Latin word "liberalis," which means "pertaining to a free man or citizen."

Merrtiam Webster: Liberal can be traced back to the Latin word liber (meaning “free”).

Oxford Leaners Dictionary: willing to understand and respect other people’s behaviour, opinions, etc., especially when they are different from your own; believing people should be able to choose how they behave.

Cambridge Dictionary: respecting and allowing many different types of beliefs or behavior.

Hope you all learned something. But maybe the problem with Herman is not ignorance about the word liberal, but ignorance about Marx, Lenin, Mao, Pol Pot, Castro, and Maduro. Trying to herd these guys into a single category indicates a massive ignorance about history and politics.

Submarine cable resilience board announced on same day maybe-cut-by-China Baltic cable repaired

Re: Don't be a fool

"Who gives a shit, what dumb fucker imagined it would be safe to leave strategically important cables lying around unprotected in shallow waters?"

So when your car is stolen, or your house burnt down, you'd be Allright to hear the same comment from others?

Looks to me you just exposed yourself as the dumb fucker with your comment.

Judges not impressed by Amazon, SpaceX's attempt to have NLRB declared unconstitutional

"masses from Latin America ... think ... America ... gives them a big house"

Seriously? You think the persons who decide to migrate to the US do so without any knowledge about the real America? Do you go through your own life, and make decisions in your life, with such ignorance?

The migrants are ordinary humans, who see the opportunities they can have in the US and the lack of opportunities in their home countries. They are willing to take considerable hardship to get to the US and they are willing to work hard jobs that most US citizens would not touch.

I think the average migrants deserves much more respect than the average US citizen. The argument I heard in the recent US election was: "we deserve better because we are citizens", and not: "we deserve better because we work harder". To me, this indicates that the US is full of entitled assholes, who prefer to blame 'others' for their problems, instead of working to improve their own condition.

We know what Musk will probably dress up as this year: A victim

...tomfoolery afoot in Pennsylvania

Sounds like Pennsylvania has an election system with checks in place. I.e., things working not optimally (what does?), but working out the kinks.

Democracy is a long game and should be built to work even with some adversity. The fact that so many USAsians obsess about fringe cases of voter fraud or some delayed ballots doesn't tell us much about problems with the election, but tells us a lot about the US citizens. Democracy only works if the majority of people want it to work. In the US, a growing minority seems to care more about winning than about having a functional democracy and that is the root cause of their problems, not some misplaced ballots.

Amazon, Tesla, Meta considered harmful to democracy

Persona: I'd vote for them.

"Meta [...] certainly doesn't appear to have caused me any harm."

I guess you are lucky, because others have been harmed by Facebook et al. The most egregious case was the spreading of nationalist and racist propaganda through Facebook in Myanmar, resulting in killings and rape and causing 700 000 people to flee their home. It's not that Meta is out to hurt you. They just want to make money and if a million people get hurt along the way, here or there, than that's not a priority for them. When they came for the Rohingya, you didn't care. But who knows, maybe they'll break you society next.

Russia tells citizens to switch off home surveillance because the Ukrainians are coming

"Western Europe and the UK are mired in economic problems [...] Russia is not"

Mired in economic problems, but with an economy that is almost 1 order of magnitude bigger. Oh, and while the European economic problems are a bit of inflation, unemployment, etc., the Russian problems are that they fight a massive war.

So while your statements may seem factually correct on some level, they also totally ignore the reality of the situation. Russia is in self-destruct mode, throwing away a generation of economic development and a good number of their young men. Europe, OTOH, is running through their usual cycle of rich-country problems, one of which is that they start investing about 1% more of GDP into defense.

Norway's sovereign wealth fund aims to zap Musk's monster Tesla pay deal

Re: nose face spite

"if [Musk] sold all [his Tesla shares] as quickly as possible [...] the big shareholders would see their investments plummet"

But then Musk would see his personal wealth plummet. His exposure to Tesla is certainly much larger than that of other big investors, so he has the biggest interest of them all to keep the share price afloat. Unless if he can just pull some cash out of the company. No downside, really to eating 10% of the cake (company value) right now in cash and then sharing the rest of the cake (company value) with the other investors.

With 13 billion dollar debt and a negative cash flow in Twitter, I'd imagine that Musk has some interest to protect his personal wealth ... don't ever want those banks come knocking to ask whether you can still pay back your loans.

Tesla earnings

According to the March 2024 financial statement, Tesla's quarterly revenue is 21.3 B$, net income is 1.13 B$ and "Net change in cash" is -4.73 B$. Income and profit margins are down some 50% year-on-year, indicating that the market is not moving in the right direction for Tesla. The company future may strongly depend on protectionistic policies because Asian carmakers (especially in China) now sell similar sized electric cars at much lower prices. But protectionism carries its own dangers, because it may erode international sales.

So I guess it's quite a big question whether Tesla can ever earn back that 56 B$ Musk bonus. How do they even propose to fund that bonus? Will Tesla end up as a highly leveraged (i.e., indebted) company that folds as soon as interest rates go up? Institutional investors might end up liable if they vote so blatantly against their stakeholders interests.

Tesla chair begs investors to bless Musk's billions or face an Elon exodus

Extraordinary compensation

He deserves extraordinary compensation. I believe paying him the 100-fold the yearly salary of his lowest paid employee should do it. If he wants more rewards, then he should invest his personal wealth into the stock with all the risks and rewards that Tesla offers to their shareholders. He should not take money out of the operational budget.

Musk definitely played a major role in drumming up the capital to make Tesla a serious car manufacturer. But it took an army of engineers and laborers to make it work and they all deserve their share of the rewards. Let's be serious, what will Musk do with those 50 billion that would benefit his shareholders or the wider society? Buy another Twitter?

Energy buffs give small modular reactors a gigantic reality check

it's called b̶a̶t̶t̶e̶r̶i̶e̶s̶, f̶l̶y̶w̶h̶e̶e̶l̶s̶, pumped storage...

If you look at how these methods scale, then it really is pumped hydroelectric storage. The Tesla powerwall-3 battery has a capacity of 13.5 kWh. A fairly new Swiss hydroelectric storage project has a capacity of 20 GWh. All the 600'000 powerwall batteries Tesla has installed, according to its own press releases, don't sum up to half that capacity.

So we really should build more pumped hydroelectric storage. Batteries, on the other hand, are affordable for individuals and may play a role for those who want their individual installations. Indeed, comparing the cost of the Swiss hydroelectric project with the cost of powerwall 3, the price difference may be less than a factor 3.

Where there's a will, there's Huawei to develop one's own chipmaking kit

Educated workforce out of thin air ...

The US has a real problem because some wealthy elements of society figured out how to game the political system to protect their privileges. The result is an education system that favors the rich over the smart and motivated, a tax system that collects from the working classes and allows the rich to evade taxes.

The good news it that the US is a democracy and the system can (hopefully) be fixed without massive turmoil once the problems become too big to ignore. The New Deal showed how the democratic system can work. China, OTOH, has no proven system to resolve societal conflict. They depend on a ruling class that may or may not follow enlightened ideals. The cultural revolution showed how that system can go astray.

Let's just hope that the US democracy survives the next showdown between the moneyed and the rest. Make no mistake, the Trump phenomenon is a symptom of a dysfunctional society, where the disconnect between the wealthy and the rest got out of control. In Trump, the wealthy found their piper to lead the discontented into the wilderness. But a decade or two in the future, Trump will be gone and the problems will have to be addressed. Let's hope they manage without bloody turmoil.

Equally, we may hope that the Communist party in China finds a way to improve governance and strengthen democratic elements within and outside their party. Unfortunately, their current leader seems to be more of a Führer than an enlightened party leader, so we may have to be patient to see any positives out of China.

We never agreed to only buy HP ink, say printer owners

Re: never again

Upvote Enter 2 *.

Sam Altman's chip ambitions may be loonier than feared

... quantum computing hardware and software

Last time I checked, quantum computing was still a fundamental science project. Yes there are companies collecting investor money and selling access to whatever-bit quantum computers but so far nobody has run a useful computation on these. It's a bit like fusion energy: we know it works in principle but we don't know if we can assemble a device that scales sufficiently to be useful.

Artificial intelligence is a liability

The fault lies with lazy humans

Humans love magic. Imagine you can skip the hard work because you can just wave some wand or enter some data into a black box. Wouldn't that be nice? Well, some people just a little smarter than you have invented just that. For a little fee, you can use that box and you can Be Rich without any hard work.

For the person understanding the workings of said black box, the limitations may be obvious, but fortunately more than 99% of humans have no clue. So there is a big market. If you don't want to be the customer, maybe you can be the reseller. And because nobody understands the limitations, the possibilities and the market are truly limitless (no liability!).

HP exec says quiet part out loud when it comes to locking in print customers

"HP have confirmed they hate theiir customers"

No, no, no, HP loves their customers! They love their customers like the invasive cat on some remote island loves the flightless, ground-dwelling bird chick. Tasy!

Firefox slow to load YouTube? Just another front in Google's war on ad blockers

3 strikes and you're out ...

... so I switched away from Chrome.

See, Google and I had this unwritten contract. I got to use their free services and browser while keeping annoying advertisements at a minimum (ublock, etc.). In return, Google could use all their tools to monetize the shit out of my internet activities.

If Google doesn't keep up their end of the deal, why should I? Let's move on.

IBM-led advertising X-odus gains steam as more flee Musk's platform

Nazis versus Leftists is the wrong paradigm

Look up Stasser and the left wing of the nazi party. The party called itself national socialists for a reason.

Maybe we should be more selective with the labels we apply to people. And stop using these labels as a convenient way to discredit those we disagree with. OTOH, your use of language does help me recognize your personal set of biases, so carry on.

Nvidia boss tells Israeli staff Mellanox founder's daughter was killed in festival massacre

The way to defeat terrorism

All we have to do is look at Ireland / Northern Ireland or Austria / Northern Italy (South Tyrolia). The way to defuse terrorism is by granting meaningful autonomy. One side's terrorists are the other side's freedom fighters and once a reasonable degree of freedom is achieved, the terrorists melt away.

Xenophobia is running strong in this one ...

CowHorseFrog: "By having so many babies they are creating a hell hole that is Gaza. Its utter madness to have 8+ kids when theres no future in the shithole tht is Gaza."

Here are the actual numbers from Wikipedia (go to the Wiki page for reputable references):

"Out of 224 listed countries and territories, the West Bank ranked 48th with a total fertility rate (TFR) of 3.2, and the Gaza Strip ranked 31st with a TFR of 3.97 according to The World Factbook in 2018.[13] In 2018, the West Bank had an estimated population growth rate of 1.81% (country comparison to the world: 56th) and the Gaza Strip had a population growth rate of 2.25% (35th)."

So we have a nice example of xenophobia coupled with an inability to look up the numbers. Full points.

Another redesign on the cards for iPhone as EU rules call for removable batteries

Just learned to break open our family phones ...

and found that replacing batteries and screens is quite feasible, if you have the weird screwdrivers, a guitar pick, and some patience. I guess that newly acquired skill will become quite useless in the near future.

Concerning the limited lifetime of phones, I guess it's time to figure out how to prolong that lifetime. For most of us, it's not a hardware issue anymore -- the email app, messenger and browser worked just fine on my old phone. But the software obsolescence made me get a new phone this year.

CERN spots Higgs boson decay breaking the rules

"Too many alternatives to the Standard Model"

The fact that there are so many untested (and some times untestable) theories out there indicates that we throw too much money at theoreticians and too little at experimentalists. This results in a lot of pointless theories and then a lot of PhDs ("Quants") messing up our financial system.

BOFH takes a visit to retro computing land

Re: A phrase to remember

Just repaired an old HP-42s, so my kid could have a calculator for school. Turned out to be a real PITA, but free42 somehow violates the school's no-phone policy :(.

Here's how the data we feed AI determines the results

Re: It's useful

Turn that logic around: If the AI can do it, it's not new and most probably useless.

And don't be all impressed that the AI might pass an exam: The exam itself is only useful as indicator that the examinee might have the smarts to do do useful stuff in his future career.

US, NATO military plans leak: Actual war strategy or pro-Kremlin shenanigans?

Simple explanation for low Russian death count on Mediazona

According to the Mediazona website:

"These numbers do not represent the actual death toll since we can only review publicly available reports including social media posts by relatives, reports in local media, and statements by the local authorities.

The real death toll is much higher. Besides, the number of soldiers missing in action or captured is not known."

So they don't count soldiers who were not officially killed in Ukraine. And the Russian Army seems to have a lot of I centives to keep the official numbers low: Financially they are on the hook for widow pensions, etc., if they acknowledge a war death. And I won't have to spell out how hight casualty numbers might affect their PR efforts.

So, pointing to the Mediazona numbers to question other counts is a bit nonsensical. RtFM!

In the battle between Microsoft and Google, LLM is the weapon too deadly to use

The article's arguments against AI ...

are based on the fact that people might figure out how to do bad things with the knowledge provided by it? Well, you could buy physics and engineering books to figure out how to build a bomb ... no AI required. I guess that's how the North Koreans did it.

From my playing around with ChatGPT, it seems that this AI provides an interface to make searchable information more accessible (i.e., summarizes your search results in coherent sentences). It doesn't fundamentally change the available informtion or change the fact that technology can be used for good or bad purposes. Of course, there is the saying that sufficiently advances science always looks like magic. I guess for the uneducated masses, the current AI is the magic engine that will allow you to build a nuclear bomb or perform other sufficiently complicated 'magic' tasks.

OpenAI rolls out ChatGPT plugins, granting iffy language model access to your apps

Next Step ...

...will be Microsoft opting you into sharing all your data within your Windows / MS cloud ecosystem. Win11 already requires enough comupting power that they should be able to train on you data locally before uploading relevant (marketing) information. Suitably anonymized, of course. Except if you reside in the EU, where they'll require proper consent and anonymization, somewhere in the 2030s.

But apart from my cynical view of the MS/ChatGPT cooperation, do you guys think the new AI engines represent a new user interface to information (+(natural language), +(compilation of multiple sources), -(reliability / reproducibility)) or does it acutally 'generate' knowledge? It seem like everybody assumes the second, but I am somewhat sceptical.

Bing AI feels like ChatGPT stuffed into a suit – not the future

...past their mid-30s most people struggle to pick up new skills...

I find that pasr 30 I became more selective with the skills I want to pick up. All those wasted hours learning totally useless skills, or skills that age faster than you hamster... Those hours are just not coming back.

Those young kids always think that the latest fad will completely revolutionize their world. Then they spend a large amount of time debugging the latest fad, reproducing and fixing all those old errors, and feeling very smart about it :).

UK prepares to go it alone on post-Brexit science plan

...what the EU wants in a completely separate area

Separate area? Such as signing and abiding by a Brexit agreement.

There is no separate area, the EU agreement is a package deal and you can't pick the parts you like and renegotiate the rest. The EU tried to make this clear from the very beginning, but British politicians were a bit preoccupied with internal politicking and never seemed to get the message.

Intel wants another €3.2b from German gov for Magdeburg mega fab

Free money ...

... so you have given us billions to build this thing. It would be a pity if all that money would go to waste! How about you give us a bit more and we'll consider actually building it. It would be a pity if you'd loose an election because you wasted all that taxpayer money!

It was a mistake to start offering money, but then they did it before and it also crashed and burned back then. But those politicians love this type of thing: they get to spend other people's money, they get a bunch of excited press releases and photo-shoots, and it works magic if they suddenly are out of a job and try to find a place within some friendly industry.

Time for the government to remember its core functions: pay your teachers, maintain a reasonable social net to keep your society stable, fund the army.

It's been 230 years since British pirates robbed the US of the metric system

My favorite story ...

The American in the ski rental was offered the 1-meter-80 skis, would those be the right size for him? He was unsure and asked whether the clerk could tell him the length in cm.

Microsoft patent eyes ads in streaming online games

Not just for games...

They should bring out their ad-supported version of MS glasses and they can start replacing billboards in real life! Imagine the possibilities, those hours of driving enlivened by interactive ads. It'll be good for the economy and good for the user too. (Honest, judge, that cyclist jumped out from behind the Budweiser ad.) Also imagine Clippy offering you a helping hand in those mundane daily tasks. What could possibly go wrong?

Why did Microsoft just buy fiber optic cable company Lumenisity?

Re: Latency is everything

Latency is only important for high-frequency trading, i.e., some broker trying to interject himself between a buyer and a seller by buying faster and then selling with a mark-up. There is no benefit of high-frequency trading to the wider economy -- it has a negative effect as it drives up the cost of trading. So this shouldn't be a good long term business to invest in, as the business model will vanish once the regulators get their act together and agree on shutting it down.

But there is a benefit of low latency data transmission for almost all aspects of computing. The only question is whether hollow-core fibers are the tool for the job. Trading signal attenuation versus speed means that the benefits of hollow core fibers come with a significant cost. So it's a matter of finding the right niche where this trade-off is worth the cost.