* Posts by fajensen

1360 publicly visible posts • joined 18 Jun 2008

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Someone had to say it: Scientists propose AI apocalypse kill switches

fajensen

I'm really not getting what the scenario is here.

Most likely: AI's trained on Internet Data will keep pushing each others killswitch for shitz and lolz!

Forcing AI on developers is a bad idea that is going to happen

fajensen

Re: Software Development != Coding

I think you are underestimating.

The ChatGPT / Grimoire of today is smart enough to read the PDF-datasheet for a part, like an ADC converter, and from that it can produce Python (or C) code to set up the part's registers so that the part is configured. The typical mistakes is that sometimes it will get the lsb/msb-order wrong and sometimes it will miss that there is a specific ordering of the steps to be performed. This means that instead of spending hours reading a PDF, one can get something going well enough to begin debugging on it in one session, with time for coffee,

I think AI is at the "Widely Affordable Tools Turning Rooms Full of Drafters and Tools Into a Couple of People in a Converted Barn"-stage. There will be tonnes of projects getting done because now the niches, and small-scale, becomes possible.

Eventually "capital" will slurp it all up and turn it beige, because "capital" always wins.

fajensen
Trollface

Re: Repeatable patterns

The structure of data and objects will likely have the common characteristics of model that produced it.

Like Stackoverflow.com?

Why do IT projects like the UK's scandal-hit Post Office Horizon end in disaster?

fajensen
Pint

Well, the solution to having made a mess of something is covering it all up with an even bigger mess!

fajensen

Re: Testing can be bad for your career

Been There, Done That. Your former boss has more guts than mine, though.

In my case it was that Management wanted me, a lowly project manager 3-4 layers "below" His Lordship, to relinguish the scope of "my" project and sign over 12 MEUR to "Our Favorite Contractor" instead of going through EU procurement, like, the law says. On top of all that, the procurement paperwork were prepared and approved by Procurement so we would waste about 1 years of tedious work.

I told him that it was much better that he did this transfer on his own authority because it was his budget and his scope. He didn't like that very much. Pehaps because the person signing this could be going to jail or at the very least end up in front of an inquest.

He especially didn't like that both Procurement and "Our Favorite Contractor" disagreed and sided with me. In the end, it went for procurement and "Our Favorite Contractor's Minion" got the contract with the proper process. I believe the Minion was pushed in as a shim because "Our Favorite Contractor" had become suspicios of the leadership. They know that working too closely with morons is how your project ends up in arbitration.

The consequences for me were that no work arrived at my desk ever after, which was nice for a while. I ended up leaving.

Office gossips beware – chitchat could choke your career chances

fajensen
Pint

People will always say the appropriate thing on surveys. The interesting information I think, are the dosage and the content, "How Much Gossip is Damaging?", "What Kind of Topics are Toxic/Good?"

We all know, or we should damn well know by now, that "being social", to be somebody that people wants to be around and talk to, roundly beats any business and technical skills (which beginners think matters) in the career game. Therefore, if one never chats at the water cooler, never engage in chit-chat outside of Work Related Discussions, one is seen as boring, not very social, and since nobody wants to be around "work" all day, one is simply not going anywhere beyond Project Manager - which is another kind of oily-rag techie (aka: not magement material)!

I.O.W. It's the "hard" skills that gets one hired, It's the social skills that gets one fired or mired!

Microsoft kills off Windows app installation from the web, again

fajensen

Re: M$ always leaves barn door open for "business"

From Microsofts perspective, it doesn't affect anyone important at all. The developers just picked the most cost efficient way to implement an important feature (and created a selling point for "bigger" licenses :). We got to remember that the 2-3 corporates who probably asked for this feature, and were big enough to get it, they are also very likely to have their policies tuned up and bummed into perfection. So, it works for them.

fajensen
Pint

Re: How Come Microsoft Can’t Get It To Work?

They can. It's just Market Segmentation Rulez making it appear that they can't. Most people will run some "consumer thrash" Windows, where nothing of the good stuff really works.

Enforcing known repositories, signed applications and keeping a curated set of "Bad Boys" out, is being sold as a premium Windows feature, reserved for "enterprise" licenses.

One can install "Applocker" on any windows >= 10 and hack the configuration locally, but, it really needs quite a bit of Windows Server infrastructure to manage it in practice). Another possibility is using "Windows Defender", which seems to be more geared towards Windows 365 (To keep things balkanised as they should be :). It is not an easy job, these tools are not for the eyes of average PC-users, but they do work.

I initially researched this while trying to find a proper way to keep "snap.do" off my teenagers computers.

Microchip nabs $162M to keep chips for washing machines – and missiles – flowing

fajensen
Pint

Re: Bullshit!

A German colleague said something like this about decision making in Siemens: There is a pile of dog-shit on the pavement. Everyone sees it, everyone knows what should be done. However, nothing can be done until somebody falls with their nose in it.

Pretty universal, I think.

Here's who thinks AI chatbots will eventually be smart enough to be your coworker

fajensen
Pint

Re: I have a question:

Why do we use our technological prowess to automate away the pointless rituals we invented to busy ourselves, instead of doing away with the rituals, and use the compute powering our AIs to do something more productive?

Because, the point is, that the rituals must be performed. Indeed, any large organisation can be said to exist primarily to provide the funding and set the schene for the performance of the rituals.

The problem we have with people is that they can manifest things. Humans, left all on their own, they will manifest distracting, maybe dangerous, even terrible things. Like the Golden Jesus* running for President and then Righfully slaying all the Impure and Improper starting with the gays. So, a network of distractions is created, keeping the human mind busy with insignificant trivia and white noise so Bad Things does not happen too much.

This network of distractions we call "Real Life (tm)" or "A Career". It got damaged during Covid 19 and we lost containment somewhat, allowing lots of people too much freedom to manifest their inner nuttines - and set their creations lose on the world. This is obviously not good so ... everything will be wound back and tightened down harder, with better distractions and more elaborate rituals to perform. AI will be a critical part of that work.

I.O.W. We will have less free time, more distractions, and more performances in the future!

*) I just see a fat-ass fuckhead loser, but, the phenomen no different from the happenings in Project Blue Book, where a bunch of people see a flying saucer with 3 beings in it waving at them, while the radar sensors and the Air Force sees a rocket stage de-orbiting.

fajensen

Re: Clippy on steroids

Well, would we be any worse off than now? Internet companies like Google, LinkedIn one cannot really contact at all, most others are using some call center somewhere with zero authority serving canned responses in poor English to not solve your problem.

Having an AI giving us the run-around would be the expected base-level denial of service, but, that AI could have a sexy voice, adapted to the user, which would be a vast improvement.

DARPA's air-steered X-65 jet heads into production with goal of flying by 2025

fajensen
Facepalm

Re: What could go wrong...

Sure, all those aerospace engineers with decades of experience in high performace programmes were stunned to learn about these hitherto unknown GOTCHA's blocking all progress!

Swedish Tesla strike goes international as Norwegian and Danish unions join in

fajensen

Re: Who is being reasonable in the conflict?

In other news Tesla Sweden apparently owes a local vendor more than 4 million SEK. Tesla has refused to pay the invoice which has been sent to a collection agency.

Tesla will discover that the Swedish legal system prefers the swift and summary way of dealing with dead-beats. The Swedes like their auctions, its a culture thing for the community to go to the bankrupt neighbours place on a sunday and strip it of anything of value, while having coffee and cakes :).

And, to emphasise the vindictiveness and attention to details: When something goes to collection, "Kronofogden" will shamelessly sell everything, even your most pathetic tupperware collection! Just look at it: https://auktion.kronofogden.se/auk/w.ObjectList?inC=KFM&inA=WEB

Boffins devise 'universal backdoor' for image models to cause AI hallucinations

fajensen
Coat

Re: The Big Pot of Gold

No we'll just let them because widely used, then act all surprised when someone does this on a mass scale

That is the only way know to humanity to get the budget to sort it.

Tesla sues Swedish government after worker rebellion cripples car biz

fajensen
Pint

Re: Postal Service

Gammon on the lose, and it's not even Friday

fajensen

Re: Postal Service

Instead of making shit up, you could explain where where it says that in the law?

fajensen

Re: Postal Service

Is it so inconceiveable that government employees actually do their job and deliver the plates themselves?

Their job is to manufacture and deliver the plates to Postnord, who has been awarded the contract for distribution of the plates. Which, they are doing.

So, you don't know, but have "ideas"?!

fajensen
Pint

I can't help feeling that might just backfire.

Oh, It will. When a Swedish bureaucracy is pushed, a circle of monkeys will form, each pointing at the next one to be "doing something". Nothing will be moving, and nobody will be responsible because everyone are just following the rules. This configuration will stay up until man-baby Musk decides to do it the Swedish Way. Then everything suddenly runs like a clockwork and nobody understands what the problem was.

In this case: The transport agency will respond to the court that this is not the process that they have been instructed to follow (by law), probably adding that deviating for the sake of Tesla is discriminating against other manufacturers, concluding that if they have to do something different, the government has to issue new laws / instructions. The government will do its very best to stay the hell out if the thing. Unions are the core of the Swedish "system" and the "Swedish Public Management Tradition" is to leave the Civil Service alone to do their duties as they see them. It will eventually go to a higher court and then get thrown out.

Inside Denmark’s hell week as critical infrastructure orgs faced cyberattacks

fajensen

Re: Firewall updates

Danish IT projects are renowned for failing spectacularly, nobody would dare install anything and in any case they couldn't afford it :).

Russia's Sandworm – not just missile strikes – to blame for Ukrainian power blackouts

fajensen
Black Helicopters

Re: Why were their SCADA units on the Internet?

Well, It seems like Russia successfully infested Deutsche Bank, it is maybe not beyound the possible to get some operators into the software supply chains with Siemens?

Infosys co-founder calls for youth to work 70-hour weeks

fajensen
Flame

Re: It does

I'm better and faster at what I'm doing than if I were working only these 40h a week. Maybe you should try and test it.

Sure, you do bub, suure you do. But, only because you follow the UK "way of working": Do the absolute minimim possible for the first 40 hours, then proceed to work normally once the overtime pay is approved! On average you are just wasting your own time and other peoples money.

I have seen that particular song & dance for 10 years in contruction. Whenever overtime is possible, nothing happens onsite until conditions for overtime is reached! One might as well cut the performative crap and start there, except, its a sacred tradition.

Three dozen plaintiffs join Apple AirTag tracking lawsuit in amended complaint

fajensen

Re: Punish criminals not manufacturers.

Ah, but, one solid takeaway from "What we learned from Covid-19"-class is that about 50% of the population experiences reality as "something that happens or is done to them". Definitely not something they could have any control over whatsoever. The mere suggestion that they can change some outcome or that some degree of responsibility might land on their heads will kick off screeching tantrums.

There is "A Market", and a buck to be made, in pandering to that demographic, so lawsuits like this will keep happening.

Millions of smart meters will brick it when 2G and 3G turns off

fajensen

Re: No corruption here.

Quite why we have had a throwaway generation of meters and three different and incompatible networks escapes me.

Because of the "Regulation is Evil"-crowd being in power for far too long?!

Excel recruitment time bomb makes top trainee doctors 'unappointable'

fajensen
Pint

Re: Excel for dodgy databases

Hahahaha - The way these jobs actually goes is that "Management" and different "stakeholder" comitees will prove their importance by interfering every 1-2 weeks so The Project never finishes until the budget runs out. The skilled developer will be delivering 3 months of incomplete work, in about 14 months of project time, then "Management" and "stakeholder" comittees will agree that, "that guy was not very good at all", and then they will give the job to Boss's nephew who can do something in Excel.

I am just wrapping up a job like that!

fajensen
Angel

Re: Excel for dodgy databases

I'm sure it's a pipe dream, but just once, I'd like to work at a place where they actually did the SAP setup correctly.

The Gulfs have seen your light and they have created a Path for your acension, IOW: You would do a lot better, financially and emotionally, by joining the opposition and start working as a SAP consultant :p

fajensen

Re: Excel for dodgy databases

It is a long time since I used ACCESS, but, I think it has a similar behaviour to Excel: It doesn't care much about what kind of data actually gets stored in which row. One can have things that presents as numbers but they are chars, bytes or even nulls, depending on the context and how the tables were once defined.

Want a clean energy transition? Better start putting cash into electrical grid

fajensen

Re: "Where did the last ice age go"

there is a lot of money to be made on the green gravy train.

Not as a scientist, which you would know if you were ever near science.

First Brexit, now X-it: Musk 'considering' pulling platform from EU over probe

fajensen

Re: a bit rich?

I hope they get him out of Tesla and SpaceX

That's what they did by letting him have Twitter :).

EU threatens X with DSA penalties over spread of Israel-Hamas disinformation

fajensen

Re: Free Speech

The way to deal with misinformation ... it is to teach people to be discerning

Any idea, concept, technology, or ideology that relies on the availablity of improved people in order for it to work, will fail!

Windows 10's latest update issue isn't a bug but a feature – to test your patience

fajensen
Pint

Re: One wonders ...

Money is really not that important to the people with money. They like to pretend it that it is, but, that is just their way of moving the discussion to a prepared battlefield where they have the upper hand.

IOW, this means nothing, they will continue to license Windows because Bill has such a nice barbeque for top-tier clients - or whatever it is they actually value.

Go ahead, let the unknowable security risks of Windows Copilot onto your PC fleet

fajensen
Pint

Well, I am sure this initiative, lets frame it as "Clippy/Tay with real powers", will fail in unforeseen and interesting ways, but, most importantly: It will be fun!

It is an opportunity. Windows needs new bugs for us to bitch and moan about, to make a decent enough living on untangling, new "batteries" to power our excuses for not turning in the homework. The old classics, like files being locked by forces unknown, or anything "printing", they are getting boring & dull.

I am happy.

Why can't datacenter operators stop thinking about atomic power?

fajensen

Re: Buy a full nuclear PWR then.

build a 1200 MW server farm and slap a power plant right next to it, in a Country that doesn't mind nuclear power.

You can do that right now in France. So, you gotta wonder why nobody does and instead are waiting for magical technology to be developed.

fajensen
Mushroom

"Atomic power"? What is this, the 1950s?

Yes it is. It is the 1950's all over again, only without the skilled nuclear- engineers and -scientists (which also couldn't get SMR's and molten salt whatever hokum and of course the magick thorium reactor off the ground).The difference is that they understood why, whereas the present genereation thinks that enough money will somhow bend physics and make it happen :).

Microsoft to kill off third-party printer drivers in Windows

fajensen

The printing system in Linux is so incomprehensible that even someone like Poettering has not been able to step up and implement something worse :).

Microsoft calls time on ancient TLS in Windows, breaking own stuff in the process

fajensen
Coffee/keyboard

Re: protocols were disabled by default

I would hope, but don't expect, that enterprise systems

May they never change and I hope can keep doubling my normal salary just by being on-call and fixing stupid stuff that should never happen.

... But still does, because the stakes are so high that nobody can accumulate the authority to do anything about any of it, which is by design. The whole decision making process is like in the old USSR: All 5-year plans, done by 500-people commitees, and you will still get shot for doing anything or nohing at all, depending on the mood of the CEO.

OpenAI's ChatGPT has a left wing bias – at times

fajensen

There is now a theory that it wasn't ageing that made people shift rightwards but wealth accumulation.

Well, I think considering the antics of the current bunch, that must be enough evidence to ínvestigate early onset frontal lobe dementia

fajensen
Flame

Re: Conflict

True. Being "Right Wing" has evolved into straight-up Insanity these days, and the stockholders would probably object to the people responsible for their dividends being openly crazy, stupid, angry about Everything, and perpetually bragging about it on the Iternet - instead of working?

Will Flatpak and Snap replace desktop Linux native apps?

fajensen

Re: Performance isn't free...

The delays are irritating but in the long run it's probably better to fix the apps that don't shut down cleanly.

I dislike this idea of an "app", this being a defective and poorly crafted app (!) to boot, telling "§SYSTEM" how to run things!

The Unix way is that we shoot it in the head.

Time running out for crew of missing Titanic tourist submarine

fajensen

Re: Transponder

you'd think he would know if the craft was dodgy.

CEO's have this filter where everything "bad" or "inconvenient" that is standing in their way is minimised and dismissed.

That trait is in addition to being installed at the top of a low-pass filter where every level in the organisation massages the information "on the way up" so only "Move the KPI News", Good News and Superb News ever reaches the excecutive floor.

fajensen
Pint

There is no reasonable excuse for not having a similar number on this thing.

We don't wanna harm business and limit innovation by regulation? Usually works!

AI is going to eat itself: Experiment shows people training bots are using bots

fajensen

SmartKeyboard coming right up!

There's always the chance that someone uses a chatbot and then manually types in the output – but that's unlikely, we suppose.

I see An Emerging Market for a bluetooth device that one can copy-paste to which simulates slow and irregular human keystrokes when pasing the data in.

Multi-tasking blunder leaves UK tax digitization plans 3 years late, 5 times over budget

fajensen

Re: The civil service went to a brewery but left thirsty and sober despite wanting to party

The "government" has a certain ... nostalgia ... for the 1930's.

Whistleblower claims Uncle Sam is sitting on hoard of alien vehicles and tech

fajensen

I sometimes like to watch people do stupid stuff on the internet. Maybe a more advanced species like to watch civilisations do the same?

Microsoft injects ChatGPT into 'secure' US government Azure cloud

fajensen

Re: Hm.... could be useful, would automate publicity

Yup. Keeping an AI running is cheaper than keeping, say, Oliver North or Mike Pompeo around.

Google wants to target you – yes, YOU – with AI-generated ads

fajensen
Pint

Re: Algorithms selling to algorithms

And Why not?

Personally, after 2x Corona, I am extra fatiqued by choice and being presented for endless options and possibilites that I then have to specify Exactly to (maybe) get what I wanted.

For example: What I want is a nice barbecue with some friends, a few of which are vegetarian, with some drinks of varying yield and not ruinously expensive. For that, I would love to have a Star-trek interface, where the AI presents me with a long exposition and I can declare "Make it so".

Rich people employ valets and butlers to avoid all this stress and inconvenience, less rich people have PA's, and poor people can now have AI.

fajensen

Yeah, whatever, where is my AI generated pr0n?

fajensen
Trollface

Re: Bring it

- Maybe AWS knows something you don't?

Man sues OpenAI claiming ChatGPT 'hallucination' said he embezzled money

fajensen

OpenAI shouldn't put out "AI" that consistently spews complete bullshit, and thus, they're justly being sued for it.

It does say "generative" right on the AI-tin, a pretty hard to miss qualifier, IMO.

Besides, bullshit is what the world wants and expects in many day-to-day situations, like wrtiting speeches, stock analysis, sports journalism, opinion pieces, job applications, references for job applications ...

Anyways, here is a really good article about how ChatGPT and its kind work: https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2023/02/what-is-chatgpt-doing-and-why-does-it-work/

Healthcare org with over 100 clinics uses OpenAI's GPT-4 to write medical records

fajensen
Pint

... That now they are in our system we have to charge you for the treatment of them.

AI, extinction, nuclear war, pandemics ... That's expert open letter bingo

fajensen

Re: Not all AI is bad, but bad could be really bad

No AI starts out born bad.

Does if I build it!

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