Posts by the Jim bloke

Gmail celebrates 22 years by finally letting users change their addresses

Re: gmail names not unique

Enlightenment strikes

Musk has a random password generator... and is attempting to attach bodies to its output..

gmail names not unique

I occasionally get emails intended for someone in the UK, and more frequently for someone in the US, with the same Gmail account name (full stops not being considered)

Getting an early email address let me get a simple name, which is too short for by modern standards

Also a lot of spam triggered from these addresses.

I expect this change will make things worse - because thats just how the world works.

To BSOD or not to BSOD? Only Microsoft knows the answer

Re: Given the Windows' BSOD is rather familar

If the users found a way to bring up a picture of a kitten on screen - they would do it all the time. Dont reward failure.

That said, if I found a software/OS vendors stall at a show, with dodgy links accessible, damn straight i would hit those links.

Folk are getting dangerously attached to AI that always tells them they're right

Re: More than one use for AI

The Israelis and Americans are using AI to 'identify' targets in Iran, Lebanon and probably elsewhere

The Israelis and Americans are using AI to identify 'targets' in Iran, Lebanon and probably elsewhere

FTFY

Israels exploding pagers and various other precision assassinations, along with the US operations in previous years, would have had human-led intelligence..

The more recent strikes on journalists and aid workers in Gaza.... are also probably human led.. but the most recent ones seem to be more weighted towards "What CAN we hit?", rather than "What SHOULD we hit?".

Re: Waiting for the AI induced crime headlines

AI misbehaving making the headlines - would require the media empires to not be invested in the AI hype industry.

There is so much information out there about how bad or incompetent (actually 'incompetent' is 'anthropomorphing' whatever, the real term would be 'unfit for purpose' ) AI is, that the media not following up is damning in itself.

BOFH: Are you ready to raise our expense account limits now?

It is the most widespread example of Affirmative Action anywhere everywhere? in the world, Technology users are being required to provide employment - or even give up their own jobs for - completely retarded, incompetent, non functional slop generators.

AI is already disabled.

But we are forced to have it anyway.

Trump remembers to appoint science panel, fills it mostly with tech bros

Re: "Drain the Swamp"

Trump, as someone who fabricated his fortune out of real estate scams, believes a car park has more value than a swamp.

Ultimately, if Trump cant claim credit for something, it has no value to him - thus his attitude to all of the USA s prior alliances and trade deals.

Water company wasted $200k on bad answers from an AI model – so built its own slop filtering system

the journey of a thousand miles...

The first step in dealing with a problem is recognising you have a problem,

and the LLM vendors are actively shouting down anyevery one who points out the problem..

These guys are saying that they realise the output is a bucket of shit, and are trying to implement quality and reality checks.

if 94.5% of produced output can be failed, then by actually performing some quality control -you know, like meat intelligences are trained to do in the process of growing up- you can deliver a better "AI" product.

Some kind of error checking should have been part of the AI structure from the start, but idiots wanted a chatbot...

Nanny state discovers Linux, demands it check kids' IDs before booting

Re: Wow that's a wrong title

..GINAOS ???

The Australian preferential voting system effectively lets you vote against who you like least.

That, combined with compulsory voting, has mostly kept the crazies out of power until recently, but the rise of social media is sucking us towards the American style cult of personality politics.

Punishing the users for the sins of the providers

It is a measure of the absurdity of our modern culture that this is even suggested.

Because it is somehow too hard to stop the social media giants from hosting this crap, yet totally reasonable to persecute the general public for looking at it...

Gartner suggests Friday afternoon Copilot ban because tired users may be too lazy to check its mistakes

Stretching the bounds of credibility

While nobody outside the marketing distortion field finds it surprising that copilot can produce offensive output, making the claim it may produce 'factually correct'... well, you're going to have to back that one up somehow.

There are many 'factually correct' points of data which contradict the chosen narrative of our information vendors, and AI has been a useful tool to obfuscate these. You can see how letting real information out to the public would be considered a failure by the PTB

Those who 'circle back' and 'synergize' also tend to be crap at their jobs

Just curious..

... but where did they manage to find any genuine corporate statements, to compare against ?

BOFH: What physics defines as impossible, sales calls a challenge

Re: Lucky

access exit all areas..

Palantir’s lethal AI weaponry deployed to find chairs for US government staff

Corporate America

Has never been confused as to who the real enemy is..

While to us lesser souls, it may seem to be a predator/prey, or parasite/host relationship, where maintaining a ~ healthy ~ host population is actually in their best interest, doctrine appears to be destructive harvesting.

UK copper fired after faking keyboard taps using photo frame

False or misleading statement from the prosecutors

this deliberate and deceitful way by abusing the trust placed in her, by making it appear she was working when she was not.

No trust was placed in her, for her to abuse.

if you treat your employees like criminals - its probably something to do with the management..

Harvard boffins finally crack the mystery of squeaky sneakers

Re: Applications?

the better you are at hanging, the less strangling noises are emitted

Re: I'm sure Nike or Adidas...

it will be the cries for help from their underage workers...

Trump orders purge of 'woke' Anthropic from government

Re: Grok replaces Anthropic

PH] Umm, OK, design me a Trump class battleship

[Grok] Here you go

[PH] Err, that's another Tesla Cybertruck ...

[G] Yes, they float too and it has Full Self Driving (coming in 2027)

I thought cybertrucks were even less water tolerant than the wicked witch of the west?

oh well, spend all the money that was previously going to science, anyway..

Re: Kathy Burke said it best...

so....

apparently, from Karl Popper..

for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols

..points at Trump, enough said.

Burger King turns to AI to flame broil employees who aren't friendly enough

There are 4 use-cases for chatbot style AI

1. Students cheating on their homework.

2. Major consultancy companies cheating on their government contracts.

3. Businesses demonstrating how much they value both their customers, and their employees.

4. Writing country music.

They had one job....

Why AI writing is so generic, boring, and dangerous: Semantic ablation

Re: where are we headed to?

Welcome to the new normal

Infosec exec sold eight zero-day exploit kits to Russia, says DoJ

Re: Ru-who?

China is not trying to topple the west (currently, actively)

they were fairly aggressive a decade ago, but now, they can just sit back, act like adults, and the rest of the world is just falling into their laps.

When your opponent is doing something stupid, dont interrupt them

It was probably some American that made the comment, but it is advice to live by.

Re: Is this even a crime under this administration?

the 'free' golf club membership does require ongoing investment in certain businesses, plus some trivial campaign donations.. a million here, a few there..

but you get total immunity to any criminal prosecution, and freedom from any tax obligation..

Trump's Genesis Mission gets its first set of 26 sure-to-succeed objectives

Re: If anyone can do it...

Thank you, Mr. President.

..

...

you can go now.

..

yes.

now.

..

please.

If a real estate conman can become president of the United States

then surely controlled fusion, a cure for cancer, world peace, and wealth for all is achievable...

or was that controlled wealth, a cure for world peace, and cancer for all...

Enforcing piracy policy earned helpdesk worker death threats

Re: Why wasn't the violent idiot fired immediately and the cops called?

If you yelled "Fire!" in a theatre screening Melania, would anyone hear?

not actually joking,

also, not actually much caring

just musing,,

$8K laundry bot knows when to hold ’em, knows when to fold ’em, and knows it has help standing by

Prior art - not that any robotics/AI vendor will acknowledge it..

Pretty sure Kryten from Red Dwarf really enjoyed folding clothes... and possibly had a steam socket for ironing too...

Euro firms must ditch Uncle Sam's clouds and go EU-native

I would have trusted them to recognise their own self interest... That the world was actually set up in the favour of USA interests already, and there was no need to rock the boat..

Trumps MAGA brownshirts are all about publicity and spectacle, overt bullying and ego gratification - along with a probably unhealthy dose of outright extortion and corruption.

Re: It is unfortunate, but true

I assumed Venezuela, Greenland, and Iran were attempts to distract the media from Epstein.

This has been noted by those paying attention

Trumps acts of international diplomatic vandalism have a tendency to occur at the same time as some domestic scandal he doesnt want on the front pages at that time...

So Ukraine gets a peace deal which is essentially total capitulation to Putin, to distract his home voter base from some news story about a hooker or something..

Venezuela, Iran, Gaza, Greenland, all being used as a distraction, because his local politics cannot stand scrutiny.

Re: Not a Trump thing.

Thats OK,

We'll wait..

Re: Not a Trump thing.

NOTE TO SELF: Stop trying to correct all the people who are wrong on the internet.

... But thats what Trump is trying to FIX!!!

(with scope creep extending to people who are the wrong ethnicity, and disagreeing with his rendition of history)

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Artists actually expecting to be paid is the underlying problem

Advertising and media manipulators have manufactured this fantasy that art is a sustainable occupation.

If you believe that exposing your self indulgent fantasies expression is adequate grounds for other people to give up the fruits of their effort, you can live the life of a starving artist..

To succeed, provide a product that someone with disposable wealth is interested in, and have the technical expertise to do it better than any competitors.

Boffins probe commercial AI models, find an entire Harry Potter book

Re: Can it improve the Harry Potter books?

Growing up, it was probably Andre Nortons books that got me into sci-fi / fantasy... (She played both kinds of music, Country AND Western..), before getting into the serious Sci fi authors.. Asimov, Silverberg, Heinlein, Anderson etc, etc, and eventually Tolkien and Pratchett.

I picked up some of her works on Kindle, for nostalgia value, and found them almost unreadable now. Values and expectations change, both as a culture and as an individual.

Majority of CEOs report zero payoff from AI splurge

report cautions that "clearly, we're in the early stages of the AI era."

And the vivisectionists, and doctors refusing to wash their hands between performing autopsies and birth deliveries were at the early stage of modern medicine...

Just because something seems new and shiny, doesnt mean that 5, 10, 20 years down the track it wont have turned out to be hideously stupid.

Re: GOOD

When the purpose of the exercise is to downsize your army - sending them towards someone elses machine guns is an effective method..

And that is how the AIs and MBAs will be learning from history.

S Twatter: When text-to-speech goes down the drain

Re: Was't Twatter…

Previously Twitter, popular with twits,

Now Xitter (pronunciation as President Xi), because its absolute Xit.

Meta retreats from metaverse after virtual reality check

Meat I..

although the errors and hallucinations that can result from that have been documented for millennia, it is only recently being depreciated as politically and economically inconvenient.

Engineer used welding shop air hose to 'clean' PCs – hilarity did not ensue

Re: BS

Back in my workshop days, part of the procedure on starting the compressor, was opening a bleed valve and letting the condensate spray out until it was no longer a visible jet.

Modern safety requirements have probably taken all the fun out of that..

Without that step, your air mix will be wet for a while longer.

On the other hand, there is only a limited amount of condensate present, as it is the dissolved atmospheric moisture squeezed out by the pressure, so by the time the guy had destroyed the first few PCs, the flow would be mostly dry

AI may be everywhere, but it's nowhere in recent productivity statistics

When IT was in its infancy

The focus was on its abilities to perform complex calculations, manipulate large amounts of data, and precisely control equipment.

Later on the emphasis was on facilitating communication and supposedly improving collaboration - or enabling a massive intrusive surveillance apparatus..

Now it is in its dotage, and it is just making up stories

ICE-tracking app developer sues Trump admin after Apple spikes the software

Re: Criminal culpability and the ICE-tracking app

You must have a lot of gun manufacturers in jail, by that logic..

on another tangent, just how many ICE agents have been killed so far?

Not a number I have seen in the news - but I dont follow rightwing conspiracy media, so I am fundamentally ignorant of all these 'facts'

(icon : ICE Terminated ?)

Microsoft 365 boosts prices in 2026 … to pay for more AI and security

writing country music, apparently we dont have enough already.

bundling shit you dont want with shit you do use

Separate out the AI and put it behind a paywall...

And let it starve to death alone in the dark..

instead of forcing all the mug users to carry its dysfunctional carcass every where they go.

amongst the myriad articles regarding AI just here on el Reg, someone pointed out that if it actually did enhance productivity - people would actually use it. hasnt happened.

There are real applications for AI, but chatbots are only good for kids cheating on their homework, and consultancy companies cheating on their government contracts..

Crims using social media images, videos in 'virtual kidnapping' scams

Re: Please send help

Like a government dealing with a national disaster, I want you to know our hopes and prayers are going out to you..

..

apart from that, nothing..

Microsoft exec finds AI cynicism 'mindblowing'

Re: Reality is an illusion ...

.. feeding the troll..

Your entire arguement is based on the pervasive fallacy - or outright marketing lie, that AI has some kind of understanding of what it is 'talking' about.

there is no reason for an AI to call someone a wanker - or a meatsack - or use any kind of offensive address at all - unless it has been trained to do so. the offensiveness is even more artificial than the intelligence. At best the equivalent of desktop wallpaper to 'enhance' the user experience, but more likely someone emulating children using rude words to provoke a reaction.

The fakeness is offensive

the hysterical marketing hype is offensive

The constant intrusion of USE OUR AI NOW!!!! pop ups when I am trying to get stuff done is offensive.

But the chatbots using rude words.. thats just pathetic.

Researchers get inside the mind of bots, find out what texts they trained on

Re: Really?

The original issue with all copyright - however far the modern usage has roamed - is someone else collecting money for your work..

So, as all the marketing drones tell us, AI is a fountain of unlimited wealth... and said AI has been developed with some tangential connection to something you once said or did... you have a claim on the fountain of unlimited wealth.

Magician forgets password to his own hand after RFID chip implant

obvious solution missed

He should have tattooed the password on the back of his eyelids...

Self-destructing thumb drive can brick itself and wipe your secret files away

another product for the gangsta oligarchs

along with the gold Iphone clone and bulletproof Lamborghini's

something for the person who has everything, except taste, self esteem, a clean police record or a legal income..

this is so far from real data security its not even funny.

and if you are going for physical destruction, intense thermal would probably work quite well at the scale of a USB stick - except that would conflict with commercial air travel, and the target customers for this actually dont all own private jets...

AI slop hits new high as fake country artist goes to #1 on Billboard digital songs chart

Thank you for that,

only one upvote to give.