Posts by Andrew Williams

AI models keep posting screenshots showing sensitive data from inside tech companies

So, data theft

Seems to be sop for AI.

UK’s uncrewed experimental sub shows it can fire torpedoes

Fully autonomous?

Or having a command and control communications link.

Both options are quite scary

Be a hater all you want, AI's here to stay

Here to stay...

Probably, but the so are serial killers.

Although, AI seems to be getting pricier by the day. Maybe it will for most people just cost too much.

Linus Torvalds says AI has made 'huge' Linux kernel updates the new normal

Secure backups

Preferably offline.

Just in case AI goes epic fail on an epic scale.

Hyperscale, hypersensitive: US teacher cuffed for applauding datacenter critics

Follow the money

It's a good bet those with the power to approve or not are going to get a lot richer.

Other than that, those employed will almost certainly be imported. Regular folk will see huge increases in water and power rates. And the likely negative environmental impact will be ignored.

Linux kernel team publishes 432 CVEs in two days

I am a little concerned

Large numbers of CVE's are likely to overload the people who deal with them. So, they will likely turn to AI to provide patches. And, so it will go.

From there it's a bit of a worry that everything will be sucked into an AI generated black hole.

Linus Torvalds tells AI haters to fork off

Is Linus paying for his AI?

AI is a lot like heroin.

Cheap/free starter doses until you're hooked

Then you're spiralling on becoming an addict, and broke.

GitHub pulls pin on npm's auto-run scripts

What's the bet

That a lot of folk will engage full numpty mode and choose to activate everything (as in what's happened up until now)

Angry bug hunter with Microsoft beef drops new Windows 0-day

They were, they are, they will always be

A very unpleasant and nasty organisation... speaking of Microsoft.

Grep this: Microsoft grafts (most) Linux commands onto Windows

Can't help thinking...

If soon regular grep etc will start behaving badly, slower etc

After all, embrace, extend, extinguish.

IBM wants Arm software on its mainframes to better support AI

So...

How does AI source, validate and manage its training materials? I dunno

AI bug reports went from junk to legit overnight, says Linux kernel czar

How is AI coming to its conclusions?

How does it do that?

Does it compare against other code that it has scraped for training?

To me there's myriad reasons why code can superficially look like it's broken, however... it works reliably, and accurately, and fast enough.

Age verification isn't sage verification when it's inside operating systems

It is quintessential California

In this age of Democrat supermajority, they can pass any law they like, no matter how insane. And they keep doing it. It almost seems like a contest, where they see if they can do something even more insane than the last.

Noting they're currently putting a tax on everyone in the state to help with the cost of the Malibu and pacific palisades fires. Not that a penny will ever go to actually do anything.

Linux Foundation kicks off effort to shield FOSS maintainers from AI slop bug reports

Kind of wonder...

Will AI bugger OSS or Closed Source first?

And, will the buggering be worse for OSS, or Closed Source first?

It's all kind of amusing and terrifying to consider.

US state laws push age checks into the operating system

Account?

Since when was an account anything to do with Open Source?

You can jailbreak an F-35 just like an iPhone, says Dutch defense chief

Kill switch?

Does it have one of them that the Yankees can use if Europe decides to bounce.

Misconfigured AI could trigger the next national infrastructure meltdown

Immutable...

That's the thing I think about when pondering AI configuration.

It will probably resist reconfiguration.

Linus Torvalds keeps his ‘fingers and toes’ rule by decreeing next Linux will be version 7.0

Size...

There's no chance of shrinking the kernel is there?

The most durable tech is boring, old, and everywhere

SSL etc

I would rather hope this stuff?(Somewhat Secure Layer) died a horrible death. But in that I hope that there was something better frolicking around that works.

Microsoft wants to replace its entire C and C++ codebase, perhaps by 2030

Well, there's this...

It seems to be that the rust rewrites going on in the Linux world seem to have one thing in common... that the coders are reaching for the "unsafe" option.

So, what to make of that? Is some stuff just not doable in a "safe" style? Or is it more to do with the coder?

Given the size of the Windows codebase,, well... are they going to take a lot of time and effort to recreate a different mess?

AI-authored code contains worse bugs than software crafted by humans

Re: I've said it once

Well, I have had experience of this... we don't need no stinking comments.

The twat in question believes that the code itself is sufficient, and he was taught this at university.

Rust-style safety model for C++ 'rejected' as profiles take priority

My bent farthing's worth...

Prevent folk from writing unsound code?

This flies in the face of the almost guarantee that the universe will create a bigger, better idiot to confound that goal.

Anyhow, back to working on code based on the latest "safe" black box frameworks/libraries.

Linux is about to lose a feature – over a personality clash

Who wrote this?

Because it reads as written by a person who is associated with the bloke who got his submission dropped like it's hot.

AI agents get office tasks wrong around 70% of the time, and a lot of them aren't AI at all

It's all a worry

In terms of AI "learning." As in, it seems to need to take copies of as much internal data as possible. Which pretty much means that your data has left the building.

That and if some evil bugger manages to hack AI then they get a gigantic data playroom of data, yours and dat from everyone else who uses that AI. And it gets scarier if AI's are actually sharing data.

As US scientists flee Trump, MP urges Britain to do more to nab them

A list?

Who are these scientists fleeing for their lives... or grant money? Is there a list?

Dems fret over DOGE feeding sensitive data into random AI

As if AI isn't being used all over by government minions and government data hasn't already been scraped and out there for whoever to see or use.

US senator warns 'China is cheering' for proposed NASA budget cuts

Re: China is cheering... every day

And rely on Boeing? Epic move

New SSL/TLS certs to each live no longer than 47 days by 2029

Looks like the initial death throes of SSL/TLS.

Crew-9 splashes down while NASA floats along with Trump and Musk nonsense

Boeing

They are the sole and root cause of this.

AI running out of juice despite Microsoft's hard squeezing

I am still baffled that environmentalists and global warming folk haven't reached the point of burning the AI folk at the stake. The amount of energy required for AI isn't a good thing apparently.

AI bubble? What AI bubble? Datacenter investors all in despite whispers of a pop

And other than mad theft of data, I am still wondering what the tangible benefits to AI are.

Membership of New Zealand’s domain registry suddenly triples, which isn't entirely welcome

"Responsible for" was pretty much code for giving full ownership to.

Does terrible code drive you mad? Wait until you see what it does to OpenAI's GPT-4o

I am a little surprised that AI hasn't been consumed by internet porn.

Diversity, equity, and inclusion is not an illusion, but it soon might be

Re: Seems to match

I would have stopped at merit. Adding anything else is detracting from the job.

OpenAI's ChatGPT crawler can be tricked into DDoSing sites, answering your queries

If only...

This AI frenzy does a quick death. I wonder how hard it would be to get them to destroy themselves...

American cops are using AI to draft police reports, and the ACLU isn't happy

Weird dichotomy. The world plus dog pimping AI, and then there are those that are pointing out that AI sucks or is dangerous.

Boeing launches funding round to stave off credit downgrade

I am sure there's a Russian, or Chinese, or even Indian aerospace group that would happily consume Boeing and spit out the indigestible bits.

Iran's cyber-goons emailed stolen Trump info to Team Biden – which ignored them

Really? Ignored? Yeah, nah.

Have we stopped to think about what LLMs actually model?

Mostly I think this is a gigantic data heist.

Pretty much none of the "AI" crews seem to care one jot about the data the ownership or copyright of the data they are taking to train their systems.

Core Python developer suspended for three months

Well, it's one more way to self-destruct. From what the steering group has said (per the piece) that's the likely end result.

Microsoft bigwig says the Feds catching Chinese spies in Exchange Online is the cloud working as intended

Re: MTG does not decode

I call your MTG and raise you with "The Squad."

MIT professor hoses down predictions AI will put a rocket under the economy

To me the Chess and Go AI that could beat the elite showed what AI could do... if you had a very small (limited) knowledge base to learn from and used the feedback of human experts to train it. But that's not what the pimped version of AI is. It appears more and more to present as the result of around a million psychopaths googling

I stumbled upon LLM Kryptonite – and no one wants to fix this model-breaking bug

Simple. A lot of greed. A lot of folk desperately hoping for something, anything.

Wiley shuts 19 scholarly journals amid AI paper mill problems

Are the various institutions going to shed those who are zipping out AI papers? As in the humans who chose to really have zero involvement in the science.

Microsoft is a national security threat, says ex-White House cyber policy director

Leopards... Spots...

Microsoft was a predatory monopoly. It still is a predatory monopoly. Nothing has changed in over thirty years.

Cloud Software Group snubs GPL obligations, say critics

Obligations

I think they have the legal obligation to provide the CE source upon request, at the point of last release. Noting here, that the prices they are asking for their commercial edition is pretty much cost prohibitive for small to medium size businesses. I am just bloody lucky I kept a copy of the CE installers around.

Securing open source software: Whose job is it, anyway?

Weird

The proposal that OSS should do better (will be held to account for not doing better?) with regard to security...

Well, there's a whole lot of quiet about this being expected/demanded of proprietary software.

Apple's had it with Epic's app store shenanigans, terminates dev account

Epic

Seem to be a bunch of asses, who seem to be losing bucketloads of cash, and think by antagonising Apple they might get to survive if the EC takes pity on them. Not exactly a bunch of rocket scientists.

IT suppliers hacked off with Uncle Sam's demands in aftermath of cyberattacks

Warrantless searching in 3, 2, 1

There are no provisions to stop this. Other than that, there is zero chance of their being enough people available and competent to do this sort of job, so why exactly is it even a thing? An executive order?

Biden hopes to squeeze loopholes to slow China's devouring of US AI chips

Where are these chips made?

At a guess China, or maybe Taiwan, South Korea maybe?

If they’re being made in China, well…