Posts by Mike VandeVelde

NASA's billion-dollar launcher is behind schedule and burning cash

The hidden tax called inflation

I have $100 saved up in the bank. Inflation hits 10%. Now my $100 is only worth $90, I have lost $10.

I have one hundred million dollars in the bank. Inflation hits ten percent. My one hundred million dollars is now worth ninety million. I have lost ten million dollars. I still dont give a flying fornication what a cart full of groceries costs, but i have lost ten million dollars.

No wonder they are willing to flip the board game off the table to avoid that.

I am almost happy to pay a few extra bucks for some chicken for that kind of hidden tax.

Google trains a GenAI model to simulate Doom's game engine in real-ish time

We are doomed

'Chatgpt: I'd like to play a game with rainbows and unicorns where I'm the hero"

Hololens / vision pro : activate!

Robot nurse keeps intravenous fluids well adjusted.

CrowdStrike file update bricks Windows machines around the world

Re: Apparently affecting MS worldwide.

I think that if you provide goods/services to someone, and then present them with a bill - if the customer offers legal tender to pay the bill then you either accept it or you let the bill go. That's what legal tender means, unless society has already collapsed.

Wing Commander III changed how the copy hotkey works in Windows 95

Re: Decent game

Decent game. When Windows 95 came out I was playing Descent. The original. At BCIT a friend of mine had found a place a place on the LAN to store the install files. So we could walk into any computer lab and be up and running in a matter of minutes, since everything would be wiped out over night. He almost got kicked out for similar shenanigans, but ended up quite successful, deservedly so. Anyway.

I had my keyboard set up with my right hand on the number pad, 2,4,6,8 to turn, 0,1,5,3 for up/down left/right thrust. This was one of the first truly 3D games and oh man I could do tricks. Anyway.

Left hand - Q for forward thrust. A for reverse thrust. I could do reticulating spline barrel rolls around anyone. Spiralling geostationary orbits over any target. I dominated. Ctrl for lasers, and cheese and tap dancing rice Alt for missiles. Never could find any other keyboard combination that worked so well. Life has been downhill since then ;)

ChatGPT starts spouting nonsense in 'unexpected responses' shocker

Re: Just as far away as before

You take what was already old when I studied it 30 years ago. You add a trillion times as much computing power, a trillion times as much data storage, and a trillion times as much human entered data over the last several decades to draw on, and we still have nothing anywhere close to real artificial intelligence. Some interesting advances in data processing etc. Some clever seeming demonstrations. But nothing even anywhere close to actual artificial intelligence. Fusion power too cheap to be metered is much closer to reality. Flying cars are even closer to reality. IMHO. Not that we shouldn't be very worried about what we have managed to slowly come up with and much much more importantly what uses it is is being put to... Realistically we should be thankful it is so difficult because are we anywhere near ready for the real thing? Like I've said before it will be a choice between a ride on the Axiom from WALLE where AI decides what is best for us, or Idiocracy where we decide what is best for us. Or else Terminator where AI decides we need to be eliminated, which is frankly arguable.

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

With Mastodon, decentralization strikes back

Re: A Multi-pronged Approach is Underway

"regulatory curbs" - censorship is bad mkay

Online tracking is alive and well in link decoration

Re: Keep up the good work!

More like well meaning people putting AI on the job to combat the bad actors who are putting AI on the job.

What was that comic I saw...

Sender: I can use AI to turn this bullet point into a long email that I can pretend I wrote! :)

Receiver: I can use AI to make a bullet point out of this long email that I can pretend I read! :)

Look out porn and cat videos your reign over internet traffic is ending, the internet is mostly AI and bots pointlessly ineracting amongst themselves now.

Stolen Microsoft key may have opened up a lot more than US govt email inboxes

"but not until September"

"agreed to provide all customers with free access to cloud security logs – a service usually reserved for premium clients – but not until September"

They need time to scrub out all the "friendly" snoops first.

Study suggests AI cruise control could kill traffic jams by cutting out the 'intuition' factor

add some intelligence

"If there's a gap in front of you, you accelerate. If someone brakes, you slow down."

Pesky humans lol. Much more fuel efficient to do the opposite - as long as you end your data collection before the explosions burn 100% of the available fuel.

Remember the humanoid Tesla robot? It's ready for September reveal, says Musk

Teslas

I drive around Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada every workday and I am almost never out of sight of at least one Tesla. Sometimes 2 or 3 at a time. And parades of Amazon vans coming out of several massive warehouses. I am not at all pessimistic about seeing them all driverless this decade. If civilization survives climate change etc for that long.

Canadian ISP Rogers falls over for hours, takes out broadband, cable, cellphones

Interac

Interac is banking in Canada. It was a global pioneer. It is a beacon unto the world. It is truly unique, more important than universal healthcare. Today it is an albatross piling onto a global pandemic recovery and supply chain issues and rising interest rates and rampant corporate profiteering in energy and pharmaceuticals and etc. How did Interac end up with all of it's eggs in the Rogers corporate basket? Corporate basket case:

https://www.zeifmans.ca/blog/what-the-rogers-family-drama-can-teach-us-about-succession-planning/

How in the fuck did Canada's national inter-banking system end up in the incompetent hands of these clowns??? Write us a story on that please. How does one single telecoms company having "issues" bring down payment infrastructure across an entire nation? For dozens of hours???? Nobody could use a bank machine today, nobody could buy a transit fare to get to work, nobody could pay their bills, nobody could buy groceries. WTF? Please dig in deep and fill us all in on all the gory details. Vultures - sic balls!!

End-of-life smartphone? Penguins at postmarketOS aim to revive it

"greenies just don't care"

We were told 30 years ago that we needed to immediately start reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Every single year since then we have increased emissions. There is no existing plan that will see global emissions stop increasing for at least the next 10 years. And even those plans will be trampled over by industry and economic needs, just like the dozens and dozens of plans that came before them. The single remaining solution is mother nature destroying a larger and larger percentage of civilization every year until mother nature overwhelms our ability to rebuild. A war of attrition that we will lose. And then biodiversity collapse worse than the end of the dinosaurs that is already well under way, and then multiple runaway tipping point scenarios, and then humans only living on earth in space suits but with no capacity left to build and maintain space suits. Cheers!

Starlink's success in Ukraine amplifies interest in anti-satellite weapons

Re: Would ground/plane based laser be effective ?

If you can touch them, you don't violently smash them. You gently attach to them and thus drag them down.

Quixotic Californian crusade to officially recognize the hellabyte and hellagram is going hella nowhere

Re: UnitMcUnitFace

Unit y McUnitFace

We didn't collude with Twitter to throw Parler off our servers, says AWS in court filing

Re: Free speach

"So the 'Cloud' is now looking inside its customers data?"

The "data" that is published on the public internet???

Looming ventilator shortage amid pandemic sparks rise of open-source DIY medical kit. Good thinking – but safe?

Re: Socialism & communism etc have failed

Socialism & communism etc have failed at every time and in every place.

Capitalism is eternal? I doubt it. The house of cards will collapse at some point and something like this will do it.

As Australia is gripped by bog roll shortage, tabloid says: Here, fill your dunny with us

Re: Wash your hands as if

Wash your hands as if you just finished chopping jalapenos and need to change your contact lenses.

Why are fervid Googlers making ad-blocker-breaking changes to Chrome? Because they created a monster – and are fighting to secure it

RAZE

raze.

When customers see red, sometimes the obvious solution will only fan the flames

Re: EVERY SINGLE SEARCH RESULT was for a frigging VIDEO.

I wonder if the alphabet will end up like cursive writing or roman numerals. Anyone can video chat with anyone at any time so why ever write anything down. Text to speech and speech to text and automatic translation, knowing how to read will be as useful as knowing how to fletch an arrow or drive a stick shift internal combustion engine vehicle.

What today links Gmail, Google Drive, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram – apart from being run by monopolistic personal data harvesters?

Re: Who is forced to spy and who can choose.

Happens all the time but you won't hear about it

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

Re: Must be Huawei

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

Danger! High voltage: German customs bods burn half-tonne of weed in power station

Re: "Cannot be traced back to the source"

life is common in the universe, intelligence not so much. there's fungus... and that's pretty much it. fungus colonized the earth with meteors billions of years ago and is the main biomass on the planet today. our ancestors walked the mushroom dotted plains of africa hundreds of thousands of years ago and first ate the fruit(fungus) of knowledge which gave us some basic abilities in "imagine something novel and make it real". ever since weve been building/becoming a "better hammer" than random (?) meteors for further colonization. we are basically one of their recent experiments in monkey breeding. i hope they are happy with us so far and decide to keep us. *>D

5 reasons why America's Ctrl-Z on net neutrality rules is a GOOD thing

Re: @dan1980

a toll road you own where ford pays you a chunk of money to change the hov lane into a ford only lane to make their cars more attractive. then comes the gm lane and so on until all the regular traffic is using the shoulder and then the ditch. where the car companies are the googles/facebooks/netflixen of the internet. people already pay "by the axle" for internet connectivity.

Calm down, Elon. Deep learning won't make AI generally intelligent

Blah blah blah

Downvoted because you think we've got it all figured out with neural nets and all that remains is to build a big enough one. Today we're barely baby steps closer to c3p0 from the automatons of a thousand years ago. Not much point to bringing religion into it yet.

China launches aircraft carrier the length of 13.6 brontosauruses

Re: Only 1 island

Believe it or not...this is the transcript of an actual radio conversation between a US naval ship and Canadian authorities off the coast of Newfoundland in October 1995. The Radio conversation was released by the Chief of Naval Operations on Oct. 10, 1995.

US Ship: Please divert your course 0.5 degrees to the south to avoid a collision.

CND reply: Recommend you divert your course 15 degrees to the South to avoid a collision.

US Ship: This is the Captain of a US Navy Ship. I say again, divert your course.

CND reply: No. I say again, you divert YOUR course!

US Ship: THIS IS THE AIRCRAFT CARRIER USS CORAL SEA*, WE ARE A LARGE WARSHIP OF THE US NAVY. DIVERT YOUR COURSE NOW!!

CND reply: This is a lighthouse. Your call.

The Obstinate Lighthouse

IDF now stands for Intel Ditches Frisco: Chipzilla axes annual tech conf

conferences in the USA?

Nothing to do with Trump keeping potential attendees out of the country?

Can you ethically suggest a woman pursue a career in tech?

Re: passed over for promotion by men half their age

"networking", is that a bad thing now?

Kids these days will never understand the value of money

cash

Here in Canada we have the Interac system for debit cards, it's a non-profit association of financial institutions, and cash lost the war like back in the 1900s. Every corner store / thrift shop takes them, every pizza delivery guy carries a mobile reader. Cash is still accepted everywhere, but Interac debit cards are ubiquitous and dominant. I don't think credit cards are used the in same way here because of the fact that Interac exists which is just all around better. I think Interac rivals universal health care for importance and I'm surprised I don't hear more about it. We just take it for granted and nobody else really cares what Canada is up to. If you want to see what a cashless society could look like then look into Canada.

Backpage.com kills adult section, claims government censorship

Re: Letter of the law

how about 100% of everything when new proper companies fill the market vacuum?

Icelandic Pirate Party asked to form government

Re: Liberal, Conservative, Socialist and Rhinos

I remember "bar cars on the skytrain" >D

Canada asks citizens: How would you like us to spy on you?

the smell of consultation in the morning

"How can law enforcement and national security agencies reduce the effectiveness of encryption for individuals and organizations involved in crime or threats to the security of Canada, yet not limit the beneficial uses of encryption by those not involved in illegal activities?"

My answer:

That's impossible. Anyone who would ask such a stupid question should not have anything to do with this.

8D

Loyalty card? Really? Why data-slurping store cards need a reboot

Re: I dunno why people get so worked up about shit like this...

But you don't really get a discount, it's just a mirage. If the loyalty program didn't exist then everything would be cheaper for everyone. It's the kind of capitalist market bloat that makes communism look sleek and nimble.

A British phone you're not embarrassed to carry? You heard that right

Re: Missing info in write up

Broken website. How does it compare to this:

https://www.bq.com/en/cyanogen-aquaris-x5

Who killed Cyanogen?

Re: future?

I'm looking at this:

https://www.bq.com/en/cyanogen-aquaris-x5

Exclusive transcript: WikiLeaks reveals ass call from a zoo

Re: "Pocket call" is more factual

commonly referred to as "butt dialed" round these parts

US plans intervention in EU vs Facebook case caused by NSA snooping

"Not wittingly."

Witlessly then.

Prof squints at Google's mobile monopoly defence, shakes head

Re: Clarification please

https://www.amazon.ca/Facebook/dp/B0094BB4TW

http://www.amazon.com/Uber-com-Uber/dp/B00NF3UFSG

Elon Musk takes wraps off planet-saving Model 3 vapourmobile

Here in the backwoods of Canada in my small town there are about as many charging stations as there are gas stations, and the electricity is something like 90% hydro. Plus a few lots empty for decades that used to be gas stations while they wait for the soil to become habitable again. So, this is happening, and it's a good thing. I feel for the rest of you out there in the barren waste lands.

Senator Wyden recalls SOPA fight in bid to defeat encryption-weakening efforts

Please someone write an article comparing and contrasting all of this kerfuffle to CALEA which has been on the books for 20+ years. Private communication? Never heard of them, are they new? If you could hum one of their songs for me maybe I will recognize it but I kind of doubt it.

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

Spanish cops discover illegally parked flying car

Re: Rag Week?

It's a bit of a tradition around here:

http://www.vancitybuzz.com/2014/02/volkswagen-beetle-placed-atop-ubc-clock-tower-engineering-students/

FBI iPhone unlock order reaction: Trump, Rubio say no to Apple. EFF and Twitter say yes

"Don't be a tosser and ignore what a war is."

I'm sorry, I could have been paying closer attention maybe it slipped past me, but has someone declared war? I thought that was a quaint old tradition that has been neglected for the last 75 years?

Andreessen stokes the Facebook Free Basics ‘colonialism’ row

"A year ago, ‘zero rating’ wasn’t on anyone’s radar."

It was on Canada's radar. We didn't want it either. Which colonialists pulled the wool over our eyes?

http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/why-zero-rating-is-the-new-battleground-in-net-neutrality-debate-1.3015070

Facebook cares about you, yes you, so much it won't give up on India

"India looks to have taken away that competitive option from its own ISPs."

"Competitive option", nice euphemism. Tried here in Canada, we don't want it either.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/why-zero-rating-is-the-new-battleground-in-net-neutrality-debate-1.3015070

AI no longer needs to fake it. Just don't try talking to your robots

Re: @Nifty always something else next

It will be a choice between life being like an endless ride on The Axiom in Wall-E where AI takes care of everything for us and AI decides what is best for us, or life being like in Idiocracy where AI takes care of everything for us and we decide what is best for us. The singularity will come, anything will be possible, and I despair we won't make anything worthwhile out of it.

West Virginia mulls mother of all muni networks – effectively a state-wide, state-run ISP

Re: Run the layer 2 network as a gov utility, run the layer 3 as a private biz

All infrastructure should be public.

Nobody is going to build their own 2nd or 3rd road network, where you have 3 driveways in your yard attached to 3 separate road networks and you pick which one you want to pay for access too. So government owns the roads because there is no chance of competition, and a level playing field is provided. Private enterprise stays where it's useful, running taxis and buses and delivery vans and tow trucks and dump trucks etc.

Should be the same with internet. Government owns all the wires and provides a level playing field. Private enterprise can use those wires to offer internet service, software, servers, websites, etc.

BOFH: Taking a spin in a decommissioned racer? On your own grill cam be it

there is this to look forward to

http://bc.ctvnews.ca/translink-considering-driver-free-buses-for-metro-vancouver-1.1409838

Free HTTPS certs for all – Let's Encrypt opens doors to world+dog

"browser histories out of the hands of eavesdroppers"

"browser histories out of the hands of eavesdroppers" - How does that work then? I was under the impression that https secures the content, but the requests still have to fly around for everyone to see do they not?

Plus anyone could always have created their own certificates for free any time they wanted to, the news here is that these ones are trusted by default by browsers. Hands up who actually feels secure when your browser automatically trusts a certificate? Tumbleweeds... We've all heard how these certificate authority operations more or less function. Now handing out "trustworthy" certificates to anyone with an email address helps the "web of trust" how exactly???

I want to be happy about this because of the names involved but... Maybe they are just poking fun at a ridiculous situation?

American robocallers to be shamed in public lists

corporate death sentence

"There's an almost an instantaneously favorable gut response from people when you explain that they can revoke a company's charter, distribute their assets and put them out of business,"

http://www.multinationalmonitor.org/mm2002/02oct-nov/oct-nov02corp1.html

Ireland moves to scrap 1 and 2 cent coins

http://www.moneymuseum.ca/stories_shinplasters.php

Re: Works in Canada

I always thought they should have done a currency split - issue new money: old $5 is worth new $1, old dollar is worth new 20c, old nickel is worth 1 new penny, old penny is useful for cheap flooring.

http://adetailedhouse.com/2012/07/28/cents-and-sensibility-how-to-make-a-penny-floor/