Posts by Kimo

US to deny visas to foreign officials it says 'censor' social media

Re: Countries that censor social media, hmmm...

You would certainly be harassed by law enforcement, but as it stands in current court opinions speech becomes threatening when it is made to a specific person or group who are capable of acting on that threat and the speaker has reason to believe that they will take directions from the speaker. You have a sign in public that is not specific. That is protected speech. A crime boss says in the presence of undetlings "I wish the DA would go away." Not protected.

Microsoft puts $1B US datacenter builds on hold amid AI, tariff uncertainty

Good

Add up all the announced datacenters in Ohio and it comes to about 8x the entire state power usage. They wanted the public utilities to finance the upgrades. I don't want to see my bill increase so Microsoft and friends can put real writers out of work.

Signalgate: Pentagon watchdog probes Defense Sec Hegseth

Re: And why not

The flight details are considered classified until after they return to base. Reporting on movements during an operation is a big no-no, to use the technical term.

Taking bets

I know which IG is getting fired next.

How do you explain what magnetic fields do to monitors to people wearing bowling shoes?

Not a magnet but...

When we first got optical mice instead of roller balls, I had a user complain that their mouse was moving randomly across the screen. Turned out their mouse pad had a lenticular pattern, and the laser was bouncing off the ridges as they moved across the pad. Flipped it rubber side up and all was good.

British Museum says ex-contractor 'shut down' IT systems, wreaked havoc

Re: Closed

If the HVAC is down they will try to seal the galleries to keep temperature and humidity stable. Opening/closing doors and adding a bunch of people exhaling damp air can cause severe fluctuations that is damaging to artifacts.

Re: lax procedures

Look confident and carry a clipboard and/or walkie talkie.

Win a slice of XP cheese if you tell us where Microsoft should put Copilot next

Obvious really

To9 lazy to check, but the answer is Talky Toaster, now with CoPilot.

NASA wants ideas on how to haul injured moonwalkers

Re: The traditional boy scout method

I was wondering if they could just sew a channel in the legs and sides of the suit to thread a pole through.

Just toss 'em.

Check Lowes

I have a pretty sturdy handtruck that should do the trip.

Oregon Trail 'action comedy' film in the works from Apple

Or watch Miracle Workers: Oregon Trail. There was also a trailer for an Oregon Trail movie. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHps2SecuDk

I have gone over the Oregon Trail by wagon. It was a 98 Ford.

Re: Perhaps Not Quite History...

Even in terms of Europeans, Oregon and California were not empty. If the Hudson Bay Company had not sold supplies and bought grain from the first wagon train settlers, they would never have made it. The Willamette and Tualatin valleys had a mix of farmers (many retired Hudson Bay Company men married to native women), missionaries, and trappers when they showed up. A few traders had outposts along the route already and expanded as overland settlers became a steady business.

Parents take school to court after student punished for using AI

Didn't seem that severe. Sections that included AI got a zero. I give a zero for the first assignment that does it (final version, I warn them on draft versions and give a chance to correct it). Second time they are talking to the Committee on Academic Misconduct and they failed my class.

I teach a University class on writing for STEM. I tell my students that Wikipedia can be an introduction to a topic just like any encyclopedia, but they can't cite it. They have to follow the links to the source articles. It can also give them good search terms for using in journal databases.

I have shown them.in class how to brainstorm with CoPilot. It can limk to peer reviewed sources (mostly open access). I also intentionally show my students that it can be wrong ("How many 'r's are there in 'strawberry?') so they understand the importance of fact checking.

In classes in my department, students may use AI up to the point of creating an outline. Once they start creating content it has to be their own words.

It is not clear from this article, but he used AI to write portions of the script for a National History Day presentation. That is no longer background material, it is content.

Trump campaign arms up with 'unhackable' phones after Iranian intrusion

If I remember correctly several Trump associates, including Guliani, were caught in a phishing attack. The OS is never the weakest link.

Techie took five minutes to fix problem Adobe and Microsoft couldn't solve in two weeks

Dell/Microsoft support solved so many problems for me.

I would call and get put on hold so my boss would know I was working on a fix while I was actually Googling the solution. If I just looked it up I was obviously goofing off.

What do Uber drivers make of Waymo? 'We are cooked'

Re: Needs a catchy name

Problem Trolleys?

Feds claim sinister sysadmin locked up thousands of Windows workstations, demanded ransom

Re: "now faces up to 35 years behind bars"

Yeah, just off the top it is more likely to be concurrent sentences if found guilty, which means 20 max, ten more likely. If he takes a plea deal, 5.

Zuckerberg says Biden administration pressured Meta to police COVID posts

Was there pressure?

What I have not read anywhere was of any type of threat against Meta if they did not comply. Informing, advocating, and pressuring are very different things. Was Meta threatened in many way, directly or indirectly? Or were the Federal agencies doing their duty to advocate for voluntary action that could and did save lives, as is their mission? Does Zuck want to turn Meta into X, where misinformation is not just tolerated by encouraged??

Top companies ground Microsoft Copilot over data governance concerns

Re: Nope

The hospital is most definitely not free. Of the three parts, it is The Ohio State University that loses money.

Nope

I work at a large football team and medical center with a side hussle in running a University. We have both medical and student privacy laws to consider. This can easily get messy, I am sure the lawyers just noped out.

Developer tried to dress for success, but ended up attired for an expensive outage

The shit I used to get away with armed with a walkie-talkie and a clipboard...

Re: On-site security

Hunting season in Arkansas everyone's sporting blaze orange and camo.

Re: On-site security

Sounds funny, but the OHSA fine isn't.

Virginia's datacenters guzzle water like there's no tomorrow, says FOI-based report

Re: What are they doing with it?

Heating it. Which encourages algae to grow and sucks oxygen out of the streams it is dumped back in to.

Angry admins share the CrowdStrike outage experience

Re: Holidays

Absolutely. I haven't touched my Uni laptop for over a month. Campus systems were hit hard but we are always light on faculty and staff in summer. During a semester we would have more labs and employee computers hit.

Elon Musk ends OpenAI lawsuit without explaining why

Re: Of course he dropped it

He was likely going to have to pay for the legal coats of both sides. By dropping before an adverse ruling he has reduced the chances of that happening.

Google finally addresses those bizarre AI search results

Re: "limiting its reliance on info written by everyday users"

The Onion is staffed with professional writers. McSweeney's as well.

Boeing might be criminally prosecuted for 737 MAX crashes after all, says DoJ

Corporations = people?

"I refuse to believe that corporations are people until the state of Texas executes one."

French issue alerte rouge after local governments knocked offline by cyber attack

That required them to change le ampoule électrique.

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

I have the large format version. Does great photos or really fast monochrome printing.

US 'considering' end to Assange prosecution bid

Re: “The Land Down Under's”

You're thinking of Montana.

BOFH: So you want more boardroom tech that no one knows how to use

Re: Oh yeah !

Cloud sharing. Ducking autocorrect.

Re: But surely...

Big 4K. Comfy chairs. Sound system. Minifridge and coffee maker. Nobody uses it. This is the perfect movie/game room.

Well into the 2000s I keep a 35mm slide projector working in our state of the art stadium classroom because professors couldn't figure out PowerPoint of didn't have a student assistant to convert their slide decks.

Re: Oh yeah !

We'll call it Could Sharing. As in the mist in the room will be a mix of the minds of the various board members.

We put salt in our tea so you don't have to

Not all Americans

I grew up in the Pacific Northwest to Episcopalian parents, and there was generally a nice cuppa after church. Most of Oregon and Washington you could get a real cup of tea served alongside hippy herbal crap.

Then my wife and I went through over a decade of hell in Texas, Mississippi, and Arkansas. Her regular fights and taunts and fits trying to get a cup of TEA, not iced sugar water with a few leaves waved in it, were both epic and heartbreaking. On more than one occasion a well meaning but clueless server offered to microwave the Ice tea.

BOFH: Looks like you're writing an email. Fancy telling your colleague to #$%^ off?

Re: "coloured pencil office"

"These aren't baked goods. These are BAKED BADS!" ~The Tick

Re: Another one bites the dust

Two great energy wastes that waste more together.

US judge rejects spyware slinger NSO's attempt to bin Apple lawsuit

Re: "Suffered no loss"?

More likely it gives Apple grounds for additional legal action if they develop for later versions of iOS devices. You can't stop them, but you can sue them after the fact.

Equal Employment Commission sues Tesla for racist discrimination, retaliation at Fremont plant

For me it was when he called a diver who was on the ground a paedophile for calling out Musk's stupid idea.

Colleges snub Turnitin's AI-writing detector over fears it'll wrongly accuse students

Re: Turditin

If only we could train college administrators in this area. And if I am reading a paper, I am reading a paper. TurnItIn notes don't add anything useful.

If it's as good as their other products...

...it's crap. One university I worked for briefly required all papers to go through TurnItIn(ToOurDataMiner) which generated a percentage score. It counted repeated page headers as evidence of cheating, as well as properly cited quotations. I ignore the output entirely. The one person who did try to buy two papers and splice them together to meet an assignment requirement to talk about two creation myths was easy to spot without it, as the student wrote for shit and the paper they turned in was decently written but took a wild shift in tone at the halfway mark. And it didn't cover the requirements anyway.

Textbook publishers sue shadow library LibGen for copyright infringement

Re: They are blocked in France

My unit at a large state Engineering college have shifted almost entirely to using open access materials for course readings. We found that the textbooks just didn't cover what we teach very well, and they are far too expensive. It only takes a small investment in time to get our students information that is free to them.

BMW deems drivers worthy of warmth, ends heated car seat subscription

I understood. My point is that access to the cellular network is not free. If they offered a system to cut out their servers, I would have to pay to connect my car to a cellular network to use remote start. Hondalink costs $110 a year. Verizon charges me $10/month to add a smart device to my plan. Either option would cost about the same.

If it uses the cellular network, somebody is paying for it. If I'm in Bluetooth range, I could have used the keyfob. If it uses WiFi, it isn't going to work in a remote parking lot with no coverage.