Posts by Zack Mollusc

Boeing union workers in US reject contract: 96% vote to strike

Easy fix

This is just a problem of perception. If boeing just edited the job titles of all their staff to contain the words "executive officer" , then it would be possible to pay them all seven figures with bonuses and other perks.

Angry admins share the CrowdStrike outage experience

Re: Beyond me

When you finally leave school and look at any decision made by any company ever, you will realise what a stupid remark that was.

CrowdStrike file update bricks Windows machines around the world

Re: Related?

You can bet your bottom dollar that, should Crowdstrike survive this episode, they will cut staff numbers to release funds to pay bonuses to C-suite and hope they can continue to extract as much money as possible for as long as possible.

Breaking the rules is in Big Tech's blood – now it's time to break the habit

Re: Free Microsoft software, anyone

Even if this were possible,

A) the software would still be microsoft code, full of bugs and bottlenecks and spyware.

B) giving away the software for free would not stop companies from paying $millions to microsoft for the same or inferior versions. If there is no money involved, how do you skim any of it off for yourself and who will bribe you to sign the contract?

Peloton faces lawsuit over claims it pedaled past privacy

So..

.. they were peddling the data?

Windows: Insecure by design

Re: I'm hard pressed to imagine what practical use it would be for anyone.

What do you mean 'this week'? We are at war with Easasia. We have always been at war with Eastasia.

Stability AI stabilized by investment from Silicon Valley royalty, new executive team

AFAIUI

The third step is profit.

Humanity's satellite habit could end up choking Earth's ozone layer

Re: Plenty of better reasons to prosecute Musk

Hmmm... Starship is not close to being a functional system in the same way as the shitty Wright Flyer completely failed to carry any passengers at all and the pile of crap that Lindberg threw together never got anywhere near crossing the Atlantic to England.

Well

I would assume aluminium is used in satellite construction because it is light. If the vast Muskrocket performs as is hoped, you could make the aluminium parts from something heavier but less damaging.

Pack of GM Cruise robo-taxis freeze, snarl up Friday night traffic amid festival crowds

Re: Johnny Cab

Accidental downvote. Sorry.

Self-driving cars safer in sunlight, twilight another story

Re: From the paper in question

Ideally the signalling would be in an 'open-source' kind of format so that it is easily recognised by all. If the signals were in a form that humans could detect, that would be even better. Maybe a bright purple light positioned so that it shone towards the following traffic and was triggered by the decelleration of the vehicle it was mounted on.

That is my suggestion: an AI system continuously monitoring the vehicle's velocity via gps, lidar, cameras, gyroscopes ,magnetometers and ouiji boards so that it can detect when the brakes are applied and light up a bright purple light or lights on the rear of the vehicle to inform other road users, robotic and human, of the braking manouver. Simple but effective.

From RAGs to riches: A practical guide to making your local AI chatbot smarter

Hallucination problem solved

Well, that has cleared that up. AI has no intelligence or reasoning powers, so it will be fine to have it refer to a business's internal processes, procedures, and support docs because they are comprehensive, correct and free from any ambiguity.

We need a volunteer to literally crawl over broken glass to fix this network

Re: "This being 20 years ago now"

I am baffled by sales/marketing. Is there any evidence that this influence affects everyone, or are there certain sub-groups whom it affects?

Microsoft's Recall should be celebrated as the savior of SMEs and scourge of CEOs

Re: What happened to ask the user?

Yes, and below that speed, such as a trials bike at near standstill, you steer the front wheel in the direction you want to go.

Re: with every keypress and mouse click – they're automating their way out of their jobs

Jesus, has anyone here ever been employed in business?

If someone employs you to do something, be it create a workflow from an existing process or whatever, nobody is interested in that goal being accomplished. The only thing that matters is that it looks like you are doing it and you have some result which looks like what was expected.

If an LLM hallucinates its way to a plausible outcome, that is mission accomplished. Perception is reality.

Re: What happened to ask the user?

Even a trials bike at near-standstill?

Re: What happened to ask the user?

Anyone in a senior position did not spend much time on the shop floor, how are they expected to understand what they are looking at?

Re: Nope

If you don't have it in stock, take the order and payment, claim to have shipped it and direct shipping enquires to a call centre/chatbot who can stall until the customer gets bored/dies.

This is on like day two of business school.

Windows 11 24H2 might call time on that old NAS under the stairs

Well...

My computer regularly connects to malicious servers in order to steal my data, I put up with this behaviour because inertia. If, in addition to this behaviour, the latest version of this spyware will also make my NAS unreachable then it may force me to overcome my inertia and go over to a different OS.

Will Windows drive a PC refresh? Everyone's talking about AI

Re: The end of the PC

An AI will save you half an hour by delivering the answer much faster. It will be the wrong answer, but it will be much faster and often plausible.

UK law gives green light to self-driving cars from 2026

Re: @ravenviz

Easier, too. No need for sensors to detect other road users, traffic lights or one-way systems, no need for precision gps to keep to the correct side of the road and off the pavement/grass etc. No requirement for lights or indicators.

Just make sure that it is painted black and the person on it is wearing dark clothes at night.

An attorney says she saw her library reading habits reflected in mobile ads. That's not supposed to happen

Re: Can the game access the tablet's microphone?

Would you be the type of person who looks at a computing device with microphones, cameras, gps, internet access and an operating system and applications provided by companies who can make money selling your information and say "Whelp, can't possibly be that spying on me, must be psychics to blame."?

Cops developing Ghostbusters-esque weapon to take out e-bike thugs

Re: Because you don't want to accidentally brick a Tesla

Just to address the driving without number plates issue, it depends where you are. Bradford, UK no longer enforces number plates for Audis, BMWs, VWs, quad bikes or motorcycles.

Microsoft claims it didn't mean to inject Copilot into Windows Server 2022 this week

Re: Misnomer

..but can you trust the provider of the tool you use to check what is running?

China 'the most competitive market in the world' for the iPhone says Tim Cook

It is obvious

The current range of iphones is far too thick to appeal to consumers. Apple need to reduce the thickness by another 0.1mm,

Tough luck, bosses, AI is coming for your job, too

Interesting..

The best part will be the research into what management actually does, and what they base their decisions upon.

Maybe we can save enough energy and resources to halt climate change by replacing all management on the planet by a single, faulty, 4004?

CEO of UK's National Grid warns of datacenters' thirst for power

Re: off peak power

Surely this is an opportunity for Taylor Swift to produce nudes of Taylor Swift cheaper and faster than building and powering a data centre?

Windows 10 failing to patch properly? You are most definitely not alone

Re: non-optional updates

Accidental downvote due to fumblefingers. Sorry.

Copilot pane as annoying as Clippy may pop up in Windows 11

Wow!

Hadn't thought about iTunes for years.

I remember having to download it to use an iPod that I had been given and the first thing it did was rename some music files without asking for permission.

There was apparently some switch in the settings for 'do not make changes to user files without asking' , but I didn't know that at the time .

Anyhoo, it became obvious that Apple had spent a great deal of time and effort to make it as difficult as possible to copy data to and from a storage device so I threw it in the bin and deleted iTunes.

Ah, memories.

World-plus-dog booted out of Facebook, Instagram, Threads

They have a point...

1.0 is a very unusual family name. It is not all that surprising that they thought you were a bot.

Why login to Meta?

Why is it necessary to log in to Meta? I thought they were surveillancey capitalisming everybody? Surely they know who is accessing their systems?

Hold up world, HP's all-in-one print subscription's about to land, and don't forget AI PCs

Hehe, I was going to ask the same thing.

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

extra layer?

Is this proposed kill switch a replacement for, or in addition to, the preset kill limit that killbots have?

It's time we add friction to digital experiences and slow them down

Re: THIS!!!

The trillions spent on AI would indicate that returning erroneous results is not a problem.

just use website technology

Use of industry standard website coding techniques would stop these attacks.

Pretty hard to download someone's bitcoin wallet when every request is intercepted and redirected and requires the execution of 3Gb of javascript, solving of 12 Captchas, consenting to tracking and watching 20 minutes of advertising before timing out and making you start again.

Tesla's Cybertruck may not be so stainless after all

Re: Cybertruck - the gift that keeps on giving...

Oh, bravo! Made my day.

250 million-plus reserved IPv4 addresses could be released – but the internet isn’t built to use them

Odd.

I find it strange that IPV4 has been running out of addresses for twenty years, has run out of addresses ten years ago, and now bitter infighting on a global scale for this scarce resource which is vital for commerce has pushed the price up to an eye-watering $30.

Really?

$30 when streaming companies want $5 for a one-time viewing of a heavily compressed SD resolution version of a fifty year old B movie that is in the dvd bargain bucket at the supermarket?

Attempts to demolish guardrails in AI image generators blamed for lewd Taylor Swift deepfakes

why is nobody...

..discussing the horrifying work being done by geneticists? I recently saw a documentary about a gigantic deformed mouse which had escaped from the lab and was driving a steamboat whilst whistling. I have not been able to sleep since.

An established AI player is in nasty trouble – in this market? What? Why?

Re: Ask Dr Theopolis

On the catwalk?

On the catwalk?

Hotel Wi-Fi not only hideously expensive – it's horribly insecure

Re: All of IT security is a a Sticking Plaster...

I disagree. We should not throw away the intarwebz and replace them with a more secure system, we should throw away all the things that are using the intarwebz for purposes which require security and re-implement them on some other, secure, platform.

Is critical infrastructure prepared for OT ransomware?

Needs better phrasing

"If this is critical infrastructure, protect it like it's critical infrastructure,"

Useless advice when all infrastructure, critical or otherwise has any maintenance, security or redundancy removed by accountants in the name of efficiency.

It took Taylor Swift deepfake nudes to focus Uncle Sam, Microsoft on AI safety

I don't get it

We know not to trust plain text such as "Nobody needs to pay their taxes this year - Official Statement From IRS", because any random idiot can type it (and did, just now).

We know not to trust audio because that also can be faked.

We know not to trust photographs because photoshop.

CGI and deepfakes are just another reason to distrust images/video.

What is the problem?

What is Model Collapse and how to avoid it

My favourite part

is the way he thinks big companies will have an advantage because they can pay for humans to create better training data.

He is technically correct, but big companies also can pay humans to do better quality control, can pay for safer and less polluting processes, can pay for equipment repair, living wages, research etc.

A training set that is massively flawed, but a dollar cheaper to produce than a "pure" data set, will be the one that is used.

Boeing goes boing: 757 loses a wheel while taxiing down the runway

Obvious cause

Boeing's quality problems are clearly due to the top echelons of management being woefully underpaid. If the C-suite had their pay tripled or quadrupled, they would then have sufficient incentive to run the company properly.

The rise and fall of the standard user interface

Re: Motif?

That is not actially an objective, it is just the by-product of each new Microsoft Windows version being coded by programmers who have never seen previous versions of Windows. Or, indeed, any operating systems.

Post Office boss unable to say when biz knew Horizon could be remotely altered

I wonder...

.. if the Horizon software had been flawed in the other direction, ie the postmasters had seen a surplus of thousands of pounds, if it would have taken 20 years to discover and remedy?

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

Re: Wing-Warping

Ailerons precede wing warping. They were patented in 1868. Is this (and the late-1700s aerodynamic research by Caley) the early european lead to which you refer?

Windows 12: Savior of PC makers, or just an apology for Windows 11?

The AI 'killer app' is voice recognition

When the ordinary non-technical moron wants a computer to do something for them, they cannot use a CLI because that would involve knowing anything and they cannot use a GUI because even that would involve some level of understanding of the problem to be solved.

The solution is an AI voice recognition system. The user can say "How can I, like, make my company more profitable and stuff while putting and end to war and hunger and all the bad things and also have bikini models find me attractive? The AI will then confidently respond with whatever its sponsors are pushing that day.

Danish techies claim they can predict your next move (and your last)

Re: Lyngby's herringbone chokerooni!

I heard that they are calling for rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertaincy.

Debian preps ground to drop 32-bit x86 as separate edition

New Shiny

As a young TokTik influencer, I have no idea who Debian is or what a 32-bit x86 might be, but I applaud its dropping (or 'release for sale', as the old fogies might call it).

I am hoping it is a new kind of tattoo, piercing or gender.