Posts by Nick Ryan

Artificial General Intelligence remains a distant dream despite LLM boom

Re: Intelligence

They're a clever use of technology but there's absolutely no intelligence there. An LLM doesn't understand anything, it has no context and no way to validate nor test any results. All it can do is output statistically weighted previously consumed data in a way that makes it look like it's doing it in intelligent way.

The are distinct similarities between an LLM and a search engine because it searches previously existing information. It's just rather than the human refining the search and combining information from multiple results, the LLM does this in one go. Then, typically, the human has to refine the query to the LLM multiple times in order to get what the human wanted.

An example of LLM not being intelligent in any way:

Maths. Just ask the thing maths questions. If there is no scraped article listing the exact maths equation that you ask it then no answer will be forthcoming. There is no understanding of anything, just scraping of existing written texts and hoping they are correct. Pick two random four digit numbers and ask ChatGPT to multiply them and it can't do this. Apparently they are trying to train maths specifically so later it may be able to interpret such a question as "what is 6345 multiplied by 4665" but that's still not an understanding of maths, and understanding and prediction of new scenarios is a key component of intelligence.

Microsofties still digesting pay freeze upset by Nadella's 'landmark year' memo

...and yet it worked really well for the destruction of Nokia.

Re: So, landmark year and, for thanks, pay freeze

Adequate and acceptable reward is where it's at.

Capitalists often try to quite Adam Smith, however if you've read the book that the capitalism that typical capitalists want, where they can do whatever they want, human rights are an inconvenience to their profit making and they justify all this through a particularly twisted and evil "well, open market economics will sort out what is acceptable or not"... well that's not what Adam Smith wrote about. He didn't write about "trickle down economics" being an end aim either. He was all for regulated capitalism, where competition is enforced and retained, not where monopolistic practices rule. The privatisation of natural monopolies is one of the most stupid and ignorant things to do... but it could be done well in a well regulated and enforced manner. Unfortunately, when not regulated enough, they typically become an abusive scenario and Thames Water is a perfect example of this. The right wing Tory solution for this is... to deregulate more. /sigh

Re: So, landmark year and, for thanks, pay freeze

Microsoft shares are currently trading at around US$338 dollars each. Paying a dividend of US$0.67 is not a high yield compared to this.

Where the US$0.67 comes in is those shareholders who hold tens of thousands, or millions of Microsoft shares and have either owned them for a long time or have been given them.

For example, Vanguard Inc are reported to own 630,747,856 Microsoft Shares. There is no way that they paid anything close to US$338 for each one of them, but they are very much benefitting from a payout of US$422m from just this one dividend.

There are a reported 7,430,198,618 Microsoft shares out there. Bill Gates himself has 102,992,934 shares which is still a dividend payout of US$69m.

That kind of money flying around tends to make the shareholder's interests primary and anything else secondary. Providing a good service and value for money only matters if customers have a choice, a serial monopolist such as Microsoft's aim is to ensure that customers don't have a choice: i.e. pay the Microsoft rental fee.

If AI drives humans to extinction, it'll be our fault

Re: Ignorance is Bliss and Heaven Sent and Much Appreciated by AI and ITs Likes

Lucky we don't have any smart AIs then... not AIs really. Currently we have LLM algorithms processing billions of data points and producing probabilistic outputs of sequential results out. There is no understanding of anything, no context, no conjecture, no awareness at all. It's very clever stuff but there's no Intelligence whatsoever in it.

Security? Working servers? Who needs those when you can have a shiny floor?

Re: Clean keyboards

Had that on a good few occasions with user's monitors where they'd moved the position on their desk then thought they'd broken them, or a cleaner had inadvertently changed the brightness down when cleaning the desk under the monitor.

Microsoft Azure OpenAI lets enterprises feed corporate secrets to ChatGPT

Re: As the saying goes around here...

While I'm happy to bash Microsoft, and currently I'd like to bash a lot of their "developers" with big, blunt or even pointy things (gah... ) I do have to admit that the statement made above is, for once, very clear and concise.

It doesn't address siloing of the data within an organisation, or even if that's possible, but it's a pretty strong statement. I'd rather that they were a little more explicit though, for example "none of the data is accessible in any way outside of the controlling organisation and the controlling organisation can delete and manage this data in any way they need to".

38 percent of tech job interviews offered exclusively to men: report

Re: HR

Regrettably that is a stereotype that is cultural. In other cultures, women are very strongly represented in STEM subjects.

Which demonstrates that it's not capability, it's the cultural environment.

'We hate what you’ve done with the place – especially the hate' Australia tells Twitter

Re: What's Hate?

A dictionary definition of "hate" is: intense hostility and aversion usually deriving from fear, anger, or sense of injury. : extreme dislike or disgust : antipathy, loathing.

Source: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/hate

Other dictionaries are available, this just happened to be free and an easy one to link to.

You have aptly demonstrated the repeating of racist statements. People like you, who repeat such statements, enable and embolden the original perpetrators of such statements. They couldn't get away with it without the enablers and excusers of their messages. Your calling them "economic migrants" is a textbook example of belittling and singling others to apportion blame and to dehumanise them.

An efficient, human and appropriate immigration process would assess each application on their merits. This should be a fast, compassionate and above all fair system.

Some people seeking refugee status will undoubtedly be doing so for unacceptable reasons. However, we are meant to be a first world country. We claimed to be at the forefront and a leader against hatred and facism. Yet messages such as yours and intentionally destroyed immigration systems and the use of such systems and reporting on them has been used to fuel hatred and division. For what aim? For the good of our fellow humans, who are 99%+ genetically identical to us but happen to have been born in a different arbitrary location on the planet that we share? If you want to apply divisions and hatred based on "economic migrants" then the likes of Braverman shouldn't be in the country at all because her parents would have been rejected by her racist approach to immigration.

Re: Yeah, right

I wonder if it's similar to the UK's extradition agreement with the US? The one where the US can demand any UK citizen is extradited to the US before any charges are demonstrated, let alone proven, but where if the UK wants the extradition of a US citizen the answer is "no, they are a US citizen".

However things such as overt racism and the inciting of hatred towards others are proliferating. This is exactly the kind of thing that happened pre WW1, where racism and hatred of specific groups became normalised by controlling politicians and their media.

We see it now with the messages of hatred and division spewing out of the likes of Braverman regularly. We see it with the inciting of hatred towards refugees by dehumanising them and twisting things to make it all about "illegal small boats" - the fact that no route for refugee entry into a country is illegal and the international accords, that the UK was instrumental in, make this very clear and these international accords came about to counter the proliferation of racism and hatred that were instrumental in these wars. Therefore not only is the likes of Braverman inciting racism, hatred and division she is also lying about "illegal small boats". This is just one example, but when a current cabinet member posts such comments on Twitter, writes them for media such as the Telegraph, Mail and Express and elsewhere and then these same messages of hatred, division and lies are repeated by others which propagates these messages of hatred, division and lies and enables others to follow suit with their own similar messages.

That's an example of hate speech and why it's entirely toxic. Disagreeing is perfectly fine, and should be encouraged in many ways, but outright hatred and lying should never be considered acceptable. Otherwise we'll find ourselves in the situation where a criminal and proven serial liar is permitted into a position of power that they are entirely not suited for, for example Johnson.

With dead-time dump, Microsoft revealed DDoS as cause of recent cloud outages

stellar security prowess

I wonder which vendor is behind the Operating System that is powering these DDoS attacks? Maybe one that includes insecurity by design and adds routes for exploitation with every generation of new shiny and unstable releases?

False negative stretched routine software installation into four days of frustration

Re: Ah yes

Or in Microsoft land:

- True

- False

- OutofMemoryError

- Exception (from entirely arbitrary low level call, bonus points if it's just a masked exception from a lower exception and reads "an exception has happened")

Re: Marital Status: British

A few years ago a friend has a similar but opposite problem. He wanted to marry, in the UK, his fiance who was previously married to a highly abusive polygamist (he managed to be married multiple times). In order for the divorce/annulment to go through in her home country she had to have the approval of her husband. He had disappeared, likely for legal reasons, and they had to go through months of trying to track him down to the point that they could get to something like the legal status of "presumed dead". It took many months and cost a huge amount both in upfront fees as well as bribes in order to get the requisite amount of ribbons and stamps on the paperwork. Then they had to get this paperwork notorised by an acceptable individual which caused even more problems...

They did it in the end, but it was incredibly stressful for them both.

Re: Noisy installers suck.

Actions should be transactional.

Do this: OK, done.

Do this: [silence]

Whoever implements the latter should be: [silence]

Re: Noisy installers suck.

It is also highly important to log something as an error even if it isn't. Always makes the checking of logs more fun.

I had endless joy with Ford Sync - a load of crap that Microsoft supplied which explains a lot of the issues in it. The Bluetooth connection is entirely hit and hope, with the "connected" and "disconnected" status values being dependent on the current direction the wind is blowing. For example, hit the "connect" button and the Sync Bluetooth system will report that the device is now connected. Go back to the status page and it shows disconnected. This repeats until the Sync system is powered off which requires removing the battery terminal or figuring out which unmarked anonymous fuse controls power to the Sync system. Performing a "reset" (menu option) doesn't do a thing, only powering off.

This hell hole may have been fixed, but as the device is denying all knowledge of the USB connector applying the latest update is impossible.

Re: On the other hand...

Not declaring variables also near guarantees that the application will be as slow as a snail unless there is a very good compiler optimiser at work which will derive the exact type of variable required. If not, a variant type variable will be used instead and these are incredibly slow and inefficient.

Re: On the other hand...

A small lifetime ago some manager thought that he could code so knocked up scripts to do maintenance on systems, largely collecting data for remote transfer. Potentially destructive maintenance too as part of the process involved deleting old data.

No matter how many times I told him, he was of the opinion that handling dates in string variables and not in variables of the appropriate was fine. Even when demonstrated and shown how to fix the problem, he just carried on producing fail. Fail that involved deleting data on systems that didn't have the UK date format, which inevitably happened for German installed systems of course, let alone the default American install.

Open the pod bay doors, GPT, and see if you're smart enough for the real world

While for most of us, signing up for a facebook account is a chore and requires lots of unnecessary personal details... the sheer number of bot accounts that exist on Facebook, and are allowed to continue existing on Facebook, indicate that this isn't a problem for some people.

Re: We should, within our limitations as humans, act responsibly

OMG... is it possible to have ChatGPT create responses in the style of AManFromMars???

We're doomed.... doomed, I tell ye.

UK smart meter rollout years late and less than two thirds complete

It's the company metering for the electricity that saves the money, not the consumer.

There is no magic in function a "smart" meter that miraculously tells me what connected device is using what power, let alone which one is using the most.

Capita wins £50M fraud reporting contract with City of London cops

What's the betting that the employment speak is really outsourced poorly trained lackeys in some other country who are on a zero hours contract and have to provide their own equipment and Internet connection and train themselves at their own expense. Their hourly rate will be marginally above the minimum to survive in the incredibly poor location they live in... so something like US $2/hour.

Bonuses all round at Capita.

BOFH: Good news, everyone – we're in the sausage business

Re: CMOT Dibbler

it's only "named meat" if you foolishly leave the building passes on the cadavers.

Amateurs...

Wisely, some may so from experience, I put my drink down before reading a BOFH documentary.

Microsoft Windows edges closer to SMB security signing fully required by default

This feels like it is just ensuring that the data in transit is secure. Much like HTTPS.

This doesn't help to secure the end points, either or both of which can be compromised. Malware can still take over a client system, but the network communications it employs to communicate with other systems will be encrypted.

Not that adding security to such a thing isn't a good idea, but being realistic about what it will achieve and the scope of improvement is important. Much like a firewall, most of the vulnerabilities are at the end points and not the firewall itself through which holes have been intentionally made. In this case it's data transit encryption which helps to prevent network packet snooping related attacks - which is all HTTPS does.

AI needs a regulatory ecoystem like your car, not a Czar

Some of the arguments feel similar to the concept of trickle down economics...

Re: If I hammer in a nail with a lathe...

I am sure that AI will arrive sometime... but what we have right now is a tidal wave of marketing bullshit around machine learning and abusing the AI/Artificial Intelligence terms until they have no meaning whatsoever. The majority of the "AI" implementations are nothing more clever than a developer putting in a couple of extra IF statements. Intelligence requires understanding and context and this is something that is utterly missing in all of these marketing-AI implementations.

While ChatGPT and similar are very clever uses of technology, there is absolutely no intelligence within them. This leaves them as AS - Artificial Something... or Machine Learning and Machine Output, which isn't nearly as snappy. There is a session state which helps refine the output of the end session, which is a big step up from simpler/previous systems,

In the end though, the ancient maxim still applies... GiGo - Garbage In, Garbage Out. If the source data is crap then there's a high likelihood of the output also being crap.

Microsoft: For better security, scan more Exchange server objects

Ah, the wonders of pre-emptive multi-tasking, Microsoft style.

Starlink's rocket speeds hit a 50 megabit wall for large downloads

Re: It is a radio service

I used to suffer daily with VM's throttling even though always denied that they were throttling and in fact everything was unlimited (lies).

If I left things, such as a torrent download, going during the day before 8pm then my broadband would be hobbled within an hour or two until it was barely serving up web pages. Then, miraculously, around 8pm this fixed itself. Every time. I found that if I throttled the torrent download to a low rate then this hobbling didn't happen. Which was very annoying when I needed to download an .ISO image or similar size from the Internet/Torrent.

Airline puts international passengers on the scales pre-flight

Re: Perfect excuse

"A bee can glide about as well as a hamster"

Citation required.

Or at least a link to a proposed scientific study on this alleged phenomena.

Seriously, boss? You want that stupid password? OK, you get that stupid password

Re: Simples..

It was only a few years ago that I had to state, repeatedly, that in no way was it acceptable for a supplier (software house) to implement a fixed login password for themselves just in case. Their excuse was that it might be needed just in case we lost access to all the admin accounts. Nope, still not happening.

BOFH: Get me a new data file or your manager finds out exactly what you think of him

Re: Oh the pain!

Don't forget the frequent "your call is important to us" lies. If it were important, they'd hire more people to answer the phone.

Re: Oh the pain!

Or an online service that for no reason whatsoever is only available during office hours.

Here's looking at you DVLA.

First ever 64-bit version of Windows rediscovered … and a C compiler for it too

Re: Actualy came across a 64-bit XP on a customer site.

Why do we keep saying the 9x Windows are "DOS-based?" Once the 9x kernel boots, the Win32 system takes over and the DOS subsystem is elevated to a VM, providing a compatibility layer for 16-bit drivers when needed.

This is because these versions of Windows were unable to boot themselves, they require another operating system to start and initialise the computer then start Windows. Therefore they were dependent on DOS. Compare this to NT which booted straight into the NT Kernel and didn't require a different OS to be loaded first.

Phones' facial recog tech 'fooled' by low-res 2D photo

Re: Something doesn't add up here ...

So what has happened to degrade the feature since ?

The subtle combination of marketing, bullshit and cost cutting.

You wouldn't even need the marketing bullshit AI... just hand an application a few photos of an individual from different angles (the more photos the better) and the application can generate a 3D model of the head with appropriate textures. I've not looked at these applications for a few years now but they were pretty good than and I can only guess that they will have improved rather more now.

Once you have a 3D model of a head there is a lot that can be done with it.

Re: Biometrics!

Precisely this. Biometrics are a fine replacement to a user identifier, but absolutely should not be considered a replacement to the secret component of an authentication system.

Unfortunately, the combination of Hollywood movies and dumb developers/marketing droids have led us to the idiocy where facial recognition is considered as secure as a username and password combination. It's not and never can be; it's only a replacement for the username component.

This said there are some scenarios where being able to unlock something like a mobile device with a fingerprint or facial scan has value, but it should never considered an adequate replacement for anything where real security is required. Somehow most banks, and these are notoriously useless with security such as their plaintext storing of passwords and demanding letters "3, 4 and 9" of the password, haven't yet deployed biometrics in insecure ways.

Like everything security-wise it's the balance of security vs convenience. Having no lock on a door is much more convenient that having a lock and requiring a key to open a door. But then having a door without a lock is more secure than having no door at all and just having a hole in the a instead. Where it gets particularly stupid is where there is a door with a lock and then a hole in the wall right next to it, or around the back or similar.

Gartner: Stop worrying and love the cloud, with all its outages and lock-in

Re: why does ANYONE listen to these morons?!

For many years I've applied the truism that the only useful thing about any Gartner report is that they waste a bit of time while being the first to guess who paid for the report.

Microsoft makes Windows Server 2022 licenses a little less cynical

Re: If you're running Server 2022

Not quite... but we're currently at the sage where if you don't run everything as rented accounts on azure then obscure and intermittent authentication errors crop up.

CEO sorry after telling staff to 'leave pity city' over bonuses

Re: Remember folks.

It's worse than this because on a wider scale the success of an economy is based on the accepted value of these shares. Not on the plight of those at the bottom, not on poverty, not on homelessness, not on inequality... just on share price.

Astronomers clock runaway black hole leaving trail of fresh stars

Re: SO which is it?

Beyond a reasonable size, everything is unique. This zooming black hole is massive, the likelihood of it not being unique is pretty much close to zero. There may be similar, but not the same; hence unique.

Paid and legacy Twitter verification now indistinguishable

He's the most famous sports person on the planet.

I am assuming that you are North American and equating "USA" to "planet". In other words, he may be well known in the US but quite likely relatively unknown amongst the remaining 7.8b population of the planet.

Microsoft promises it's made Teams less confusing and resource hungry

Oh hell, that's awful. So much of the fluff in that page is anti-usability and contrary to decades old established user interface design principles.

Re: A tale of two Teams

Don't worry, you can add Teams Basic and Teams Premium to the mess for the additional later pain of hell and unnecessary complexity.

Re: Kudos to MSFT

Teams on a Mac is a godawful app, bloatware, buggy, and it just feels like a bastard stepchild no one wants.

The version of Teams running in Windows is little different.

RIP Gordon Moore: Intel co-founder dies, aged 94

Re: And I had just bought some more Xeons, too…

That looks just like it, thanks.

$13,000? I was way out with my memory/guess :)

Errors logged as 'nut loose on the keyboard' were – ahem – not a hardware problem

Re: Nut on the loose

Yep... the incompetence of some of the libraries that I have to use is stunning. Expected errors are thrown as exceptions rather than returning a useful status value. Short sighted developers will claim that this is not a problem because after all, the developer can track each exception type and handle it as necessary... which is true if one doesn't mind then having to murder the program flow at the same time but more critically this relies on every damn layer in the entire code stack working in this fundamentally broken way. In the end what really happens is that you open a file and rather than get a sensible message such as "file locked" you instead get a low level exception cascaded from somewhere deep down mired in a dependent library which reports something like "an error has happened" and you are left with no clue as to what the hell us going wrong.

Exceptions are for exceptional, unhandled cases. Anything expected should be handled gracefully. It's not difficult but there are plenty of troll-wars in certain forums regarding this. In short, if you want an application to have a useful lifetime longer than a week in the real world, handle errors gracefully and log the things that go wrong. An application that compiles is not a tested application.