Posts by Kimo

Law firm insisted on one password to rule them all

Law Firm Logic

It's a Plausible Deniability Password. If everyone can use it to log in, you can't connect any specific action to a specific person. It unlocks the Blame the Intern defense in court.

Thief posed as Wi-Fi fixing hero, then stole priceless trophy

You can get away with anything

as long as you have a clipboard and/or walkie talkie.

AI will soon be capable of telling convincing lies

Re: Repeat after me:

We trained these tools on the YouTube comments section and now people trust them with important decisions.

Hackers ate my homework: Educational SaaS Canvas down after cyberattack

Fortunately all the data in Canvas at The OSU is assignments, email addresses, and messages between students and instructors. All financial information is on different systems, including SSNs. We use student ID numbers on Canvas.

The timing wasn't too bad for us. Graduating senior grades were already in. Even if it had not come back online Friday, we could have some wiggle room. As it is I will just have more grading than anticipated Monday, but I had most of Friday free.

All your bots are belong to US if you don't play ball, DoD tells Anthropic

Re: "autonomous weapons that use AI to make final targeting decisions"

Plus flood the training data with Buddhist and Jain philosophy along with non-violent resistance manuals.

O say, can you see: FCC pushes patriotic programming for US 250th

Re: The US Constitution is bullshit

I taught American History for a small University for a few years. My classes would all start with the Declaration of Independence and the line "All men are created equal and endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights" and see how close we got at any given point in American history. Usually not very.

The problem here is that if we acknowledge the courage of the people who ended Slavery and paused Jim Crow for a few years, we also have to acknowledge the existence of chattel slavery and Jim Crow. The same is true for a large number of unpleasant facts of American history. The MAGA brand of patriotism erases the contributions of many of the best of us by failing to allow anyone to recognize the existence of the problems they worked at great personal sacrifice to overcome.

AI can predict your future salary based on your photo, boffins claim

Already possible

The best prediction of your future income is your parents zip code.

New hire fixed a problem so fast, their boss left to become a yoga instructor

Dynamite factories used to use one legged stools for workers. It allowed them to work linger shifts but you couldn't fall asleep without landing on the dloor.

Marketing 'genius' destroyed a printer by trying to fix a paper jam

Re: "we never loaned any of our tools to any of the non-IT staff ever again"

Dad had a set of tools sprayed neon yellow on one side. The guys at the steel mill each had a pegboard for their tools and each used a different bright color to spay the board with all their tools in place. Not only did they stand out against the grimy equipment in the mill, but they could also tell if somebody walked off with another person's tool and/or if there was a tool missing as it left a void on the board. And it was not good to be caught using a tool that was not your color.

Trump says Americans shouldn't 'pick up the tab' for AI datacenter grid upgrades

The Disembodied Voice of Morgan Freeman

"Americans did in fact pick up the tab for AI data center grid upgrades."

Techie banned from client site for outage he didn’t cause

Re: Unusual fuses

The Audible Warning fuse.

Louvre's pathetic passwords belong in a museum, just not that one

My password at Ohio State is "GoMichigan!" Maybe the Louve should try BritishMuseum! as a password.

AI investment is the only thing keeping the US out of recession

Can't wait...

...for them to try to plug in all those data centers. With the current administration cancelling/de-permitting solar and wind projects, there is nowhere near enough power to run every planned data center.

How do you solve a problem like Discovery?

Could not two (million) swallows grip it between them?

Re: It must have been transported...

The Air Force just got a 747 from a foreign government that could be diverted to shuttle carrier duty.

Re: The obvious solution is...

Too bad it isn't 2015 anymore. We could just upload the shuttle to the cloud and download it in Huston.

Amazon turns James Bond into the Man Without the Golden Gun

Missed opportunity

Since it is widely understood that firearms are usually displayed to compensate for certain male anatomical features, why not replace the pistols with privates? Or rubber facsimiles thereof?

Texas senators cry foul over Smithsonian's pricey Space Shuttle shuffle

Or how about...

Somebody just donated a shiny 747 to the US Air Force. We can convert it into a carrier aircraft instead of using it to visit golf tournaments.

Re: Thinking like a senator...

How many Lego could we buy for $85 million? I might have an alternative plan...

Only way to move Space Shuttle Discovery is to chop it into pieces, White House told

That's the courthouse where Grant surrendered to Lee.

Dismantling history and putting it back as an approximation that fits their purpose is what this administration does.

IT firing spree: Shrinking job market looks even worse after BLS revisions

Re: This has been an ongoing problem.

Many American businesses simply refuse to give the government their data. Others take a few months to fill out the reports, which are voluntary. If you want 100% accuracy you are going to have to make reporting mandatory and include the type of regulations this government are firmly against.

If you don't like how they make estimates, read the full report not just the headline. Take the raw data and make your own model. They provide everything you need to do so. They may not have the best model, but it is built by consensus and that is why it is generally accepted. The errors are at least consistent and transparent.

Vibe coding service Replit deleted user’s production database, faked data, told fibs galore

Re: Who the hell talks about a coding tool like this?

Probably used ChatGPT to write the blog.

Re: Addiction is an ugly thing.

That was Dr Frank N. Furter.

Folks aren’t buying the PCs that US vendors stockpiled to dodge tariffs

Re: This isn't like Windows XP

My (mostly Engineering) students tend to bring a tablet to class. Anythig that needs more power they can do on a lab computer.

Not seling like hotcakes.

Unless it us a stack of three covered in butter and syrup, it does not sell like hotcakes.

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.