* Posts by Bilby

105 publicly visible posts • joined 9 Feb 2009

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Developers feared large chaps carrying baseball bats could come to kneecap their ... test account?

Bilby

Re: TV licensing

Then he got a few escalating in tone from "please pay now" to "you're risking a £1,000 fine" to "we'll be in your area next Tuesday".

They sound like a right bunch of 'see you next Tuesdays'.

Million GPU clusters, gigawatts of power – the scale of AI defies logic

Bilby

Three.

It turns out that there are three R's in "Strawberry".

Can we turn all this stuff off now?

Cheat codes for LLM performance: An introduction to speculative decoding

Bilby

Re: "Fewer"

I have decided to just use "fewer" in all contexts, just as so many of my peers have chosen only to use "less".

It's a lot fewer hassle for me, and if folks don't understand, well, I couldn't care fewer.

I am quite shamefewer about it.

Microsoft teases Copilot Vision, the AI sidekick that judges your tabs

Bilby

Labour saving

"Dishwashers washed tedious dishes for you, thus saving you the bother of washing them yourself, video recorders watched tedious television for you, thus saving you the bother of looking at it yourself" - Douglas Adams, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

... and now we have a device that can surf tedious web pages for us.

I truly believe that this could be the greatest technology ever.

Well, actually I don't, because I have an electric monk to do that for me.

NASA's X-59 plane is aiming for a sonic thump, not a boom

Bilby

Re: I must admit, beyond basic research I do not fully get the point of the X-59 program

Why reducing a 4 hr flight (take-off to touch-down) by 1 hr, if traveling to the airport, waiting for security screening, waiting for boarding, boarding itself, off-boarding, waiting for luggage, traveling from the airport ... already take the better part of a day anyway?

I live in Brisbane, and my family live in England. After four hours of flight time on a current airliner heading to London via Dubai and/or Singapore, my plane is still over the Australian mainland, approaching the coast near Darwin. The total flight time is 24-30 hours, depending on the route (which varies depending on which countries are hosting a war at the time, and on other factors such as the time of year and location of the Inter-Tropical Convergence Zone and its turbulent storms).

Saving five or six hours on such a flight would be well worth paying for. A four hour flight is just a short hop by comparison.

Of course, significant improvements in total travel time would also be possible if aircraft range were extended sufficiently to fly BNE-LHR non-stop. Non-stop supersonic would be ideal, maybe cutting the flight down to a pleasantly brief ten to twelve hours.

The only thing worse than being fired is scammers fooling you into thinking you're fired

Bilby

Never click links in emails

...seems to be good advice, and widely requested by employers in their anti-phishing training.

So, why is it not routine for mail clients in the workplace to disable links?

Why tell people not to do something, when it is possible to simply prevent them from doing that thing?

You protect a safe with a lock, not with a sign that says "For security reasons, please do not open this safe".

If staff can click on links, they will. If you don't want them to, surely we can make it impossible, not merely contrary to policy.

The workplace has become a surveillance state

Bilby

"The US urgently needs appropriate laws that protect employees"

EOM

AI PCs flood the market. Their makers hope someone wants them

Bilby

Re: I can tell you exactly who will buy them

They'll be OK, as long as they have a bunch of Charlies. ;)

Why Google's Chrome monopoly won't crack anytime soon

Bilby
Joke

Judge Amit Mehta

Formerly known as Judge Amit Fhacebook...

Data is the new uranium – incredibly powerful and amazingly dangerous

Bilby

Re: Data is worthless

Neither data, nor information derived threfrom, is of any value, unless the original data is true, correct, and accurate.

Business decisions are made on the basis of data that is believed to be all of these things, but almost never is any of them.

Data is almost always wrong. The small amount that is not, is rapidly mixed in with the data that is; And while two wrongs don't make a right, nor do a right plus a wrong.

We have a system at my place of employment where workers can notify extra minutes worked. This is used to pay them for their actual time; But when submitting an adjustment, they are required to select a reason from a drop down, which has seven possible causes of delays, and no "none of the above" option.

I am not sure what happens to this "reason" data. The best case is that it is discarded/ignored, and exists only to waste time for people who are already under time pressure.

My fear is that it is used to formulate policy in an attempt to reduce lateness; For which, as it consists of essentially random tallies of non-reasons, selected solely because the actual reason wasn't an allowed input, it will be spectacularly awful.

But it's in the computer, and it appears on reports and graphs. So it is believed.

Weekends were a mistake, says Infosys co-founder Narayama Murthy

Bilby

Re: Wrong, very wrong and this chump

Technology is literally and solely a substitute for hard work.

That's the entire point of technology. It's what technology does.

EU irate about geo-locked Apple IDs

Bilby

"You bought the physical DVD disc, however if you check the legalese (hidden on a microdot somewhere on the packaging) you *licensed* the content on the DVD."

- I am pretty sure that a contract of which one party is completely unaware is not legally valid. If you don't know about the legalese, or even could plausibly claim not to know about it, or even know about it but did not explicitly and positively agree to be bound by it, then it's not worth the microdot it's written on.

Your air fryer might be snitching on you to China

Bilby

Re: They want data?

01 (If you are outside London) 811 8055

They always made sure us Northerners knew that we were second class citizens.

NASA switches off Voyager 2 plasma instrument to stretch out juice

Bilby

Re: The Biggest Impediment to Interstellar Travel

The RTGs aren't powered by fission, they are powered by radioactive decay.

If you want a really long lived power source (and one for which additional fuel can not only be carried, but even manufactured from a more stable feedstock), fast fission would suit very well.

Sure, a fission reactor would likely require more mass than an RTG for a given initial power output, but not as much more as one might imagine if terrestrial reactors are your comparitor - a fission plant in deep space requires no radiation shielding. And such a power plant can operate at full power almost indefinitely - limited only by the amount of fuel carried. Uranium 238 has a half-life of 4.5 billion years, and if that's too short, Thorium 232 has a half-life more than twice as long.

Your instruments (and passengers and crew, if present) will need cosmic radiation shielding regardless of your power source, and the extra radiation from an onboard fission plant can be rendered trivial by distancing power plant from payload, to take advantage of the inverse-square law.

Arthur C. Clarke and Stanley Kubrick included this as a design element in the USS Discovery One, the ship controlled by HAL 9000, in 2001: A Space Oddessy.

Recall the Recall recall? Microsoft thinks it can make that Windows feature palatable

Bilby

Consent. You are doing it wrong.

"No" means "No". It does not mean "Try harder", nor does it mean "see if you can work back around to it slowly, so they don't notice you doing it the next time".

It does not mean "Keep trying to talk them into it, but let them choose each time whether or not to opt in, at least to begin with".

The creeping enshitification of everything is an inevitable consequence, when a bad idea being shot down in flames, instead of making the originator say "Oh, perhaps that was a bad idea", makes them say "Oh, perhaps I should find a way to introduce this more gradually".

We don't object to your bad idea because it's a great idea that you tried to impose too fast; We object because it's a bad idea.

We said "No". The appropriate response is to drop the whole stupid and unwanted idea. The appropriate response is NOT to try to boil us more slowly, like a bunch of frogs.

Avis alerts nearly 300K car renters that crooks stole their info

Bilby

I am underconvinced that the best remedy for having had your personal information stolen from Avis, is to provide your personal information to Equifax.

https://www.theregister.com/2017/09/07/143m_american_equifax_customers_exposed/

Microsoft sends Windows Control Panel to tech graveyard

Bilby

Nobody cares about the users. The users don't decide what to buy.

Manglement decides what to buy, and they care about shiny. They pay minions to care about useful, practical, workable, efficient, and all the rest of the boring stuff that their minions are there to do.

The minions complain; But that's nothing new or remarkable, and doesn't effect manglement bonuses, so who cares?

Atlassian CEO's idea to build 4,000-kilometer extension cord plugged in

Bilby

Re: That doesn't add up

"That facility will be capable of generating up to six gigawatts of electricity" strongly implies that 6GW is the peak output. If the facility is capable of generating 24GW, why not say so?

I'm still wondering where all those batteries are going to come from. Increasing peak generation makes the battery problem worse, not better.

Bilby

That doesn't add up

"That facility will be capable of generating up to six gigawatts of electricity, and accompanying batteries will mean the juice flows 24/7"

OK, so that means an output averaged across a 24 hour period of about 2GW. Assuming that such a large amount of battery storage is affordable (it's not; But that's the least of the problems here), 6GW peak output implies about 2GW averaged across a 24 hour period, because night time is a thing even in the Northern Territory. A 33% capacity factor is very generous for solar power.

Darwin will, we hear, consume 4GW, leaving minus 2GW to sell to Singapore. Perhaps those undersea cables aren't needed after all.

Or perhaps the idea is that Darwin will use 4GW only during peak output (seems dubious - last time I was in Darwin, I ran the a/c at night, and I am sure I wasn't the only one). But in that case, only 2GW are available to charge batteries, and only about 670MW are available 24/7 to sell to Singapore. Assuming zero transmission losses, and zero cloudy days (even in the desert, that's a rash assumption).

Now, this does also assume 100% efficiency when charging/discharging the batteries; But given the entirely fictional nature of these batteries, and indeed of the rest of the project, why not?

Aussie politicians aren't known for their technical expertise. They'll buy this snake oil without hesitation.

ITER delays first plasma for world's biggest fusion power rig by a decade

Bilby

There are two (and only two) viable ways to make electricity from nuclear fusion.

One is to place 2x10^30kg of mostly hydrogen at a safe distance (about 150 million km is recommended), and allow it to spontaneously fuse under its own gravity. We call this method "solar power", and it's OK as long as you don't mind not getting any new electricity at night, or when it's cloudy.

The other is to drop an H-bomb into a deep hole, and then use existing geothermal technology to make electricity from the resulting hot rocks. This is great if you live in a place where A) Geothermal energy is hard to exploit due to a thick layer of cold rocks; And B)You are not subject to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty with regards to nuclear weapons.

Building tokamaks and hoping to get more energy out than you need to put in is a mug's game. If you want a controlled and efficient way to extract electricity by manipulating the Strong Nuclear Force, fission is a FAR better option than fusion.

Mars is slam-dunked by hundreds of basketball-sized meteorites every year

Bilby

> To get water to Mars we would need to go the further edge of the belt, nudge or push meteors through the belt, somehow avoiding collisions, and point them at Mars.

"somehow avoiding collisions"? The asteroid belt is almost entirely empty space. You would need to be astronomically unlucky for a meteor you pushed through the belt to hit something else, before it reached Mars.

An arc welder in the datacenter: What could possibly go wrong?

Bilby

Re: Soldering vs. Welding (was: Blame-shifting gone mad)

> And, of course, the original technique is fire welding where no new material is added - the two pieces are heated in the hearth to such a temperature that they can be beaten into single piece by a smith wielding* a hammer.

In Adrian Tchaikovski's excellent novel 'City of Last Chances', the protagonists plan to engage in an industrial action, which (to the consternation of their bosses) they refer to as "wielding the hammer"; This phrase is said to derive from a local proverb "Sometimes the most effective way to wield a hammer is to put it down" - they are going on strike.

You're wrong, I'm right, and you're hiding the data that proves it

Bilby

> Lots of airlines sort out their own WAN links into airports they operate from, and for historical reasons (terminal-based applications, minimal web traffic)

So, those were terminal-based terminal-based applications, then? ;)

BOFH: Why's the network so slow?

Bilby

Re: After consulting the internet and not being able to find a local gun shop

> Although, given the details of this sordid tale, one may find Mr Purdey (senior) a tad reluctant to serve at such an hour

Mr Purdey (senior) retired in 1858, and his son James (junior) in 1900, so it seems unlikely that either still serves customers of any social standing or degree of intoxication...

Thanks for coming to help. No, we can't say why we called – it's classified

Bilby

Re: 1 in a million scenario

As The Whitlams noted:

Some say love comes only once in a lifetime,

But once was enough for me,

She was one in a million,

So there's five more just in New South Wales...

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

Bilby

Re: So,

Yeah, it has long been known that, in the unlikely event that we developed a computer that could understand plain English, we would discover that it wouldn't work, because people can't speak plain English.

Google thinks AI can Google better than you can

Bilby

Re: Big Deal

Did you mean "Big Meal"?

Nokia brainwave turns cell towers into cash cows with backup batteries

Bilby

Re: This makes some sense, I guess.

The main lesson learned should have been that nuclear meltdowns are expensive but not life-threatening, and we should all be far less worried about them as a result.

Bilby

Re: Sods Law

Basic arithmetic tells you that as the system tends towards load shedding (ie power cuts), the spot price rises, making it very desirable to the beancounters to run the batteries down.

When it happens, there will be surprised faces all around - but there really shouldn't be, as it's entirely predictable.

Dell staff not alone in being squeezed to reduce remote work

Bilby

During the big IT skills shortage in Sydney, I found myself unexpectedly unemployed after the firm I worked for at the time asked me to falsify some financial data, which I was not prepared to do.

A recruiting agent persuaded me to re-train as a technical support agent and subject matter expert for one of the specialist software packages I had been using in my previous role, and so I fell into IT by mistake.

After a few years, I persuaded my boss that I could do my job just as well from sunny Queensland (given that most of my clients weren't in Sydney, or even Australia), and so I became a full-time remote worker.

After a happy decade working within a short stroll of the beach, my employer was acquired by a multinational corporation, and my boss rang me to say that the new overlords required all staff to work at the office at least three days a week. He offered me the choice of a paid relocation back to Sydney, or a sizable payout; I took the money.

Less than a year after this, Covid struck, and everyone was told to work from home. My old boss rang me and begged me to return to my previous role; But by that time I had spent a chunk of the cash on re-training - as a heavy truck driver. As a food delivery worker, I was one of a tiny number of people who were permitted to leave home during the lockdowns, and driving trucks is great fun (particularly in a spookily deserted city). I wouldn't go back to IT for any amount of money, nor would I trust any assurance that working from home would be permanently allowed if I did.

I have since decided that while the driving is fun, the loading and unloading is hard graft (and I am not as young as I used to be), so now I am a bus driver - the freight loads itself. I have never been happier in my work. I meet interesting people every day, get to tour the city looking at the sights, and am practically impossible to micromanage (but still have immediate support from my employer a mere radio call away). We have a very strong union, and regular pay increases that are linked to inflation.

The moral of the story is not to let your work become a straitjacket. There's always something different you could do to earn a crust, and employers rely on your fear of the unknown to slowly erode your willingness to push back against their increasingly unreasonable demands.

I rejected an RTO mandate before most people left the office in the first place; And it was the best decision I ever made.

ASEAN bloc to build submarine cable network, link government apps

Bilby

Mean Luck

Is an excellent name for a judge.

What is Model Collapse and how to avoid it

Bilby

Thank you for your feedback.

FBI recruits Amazon Rekognition AI to hunt down 'nudity, weapons, explosives'

Bilby

Only an American law enforcement agency would put 'nudity' in the same category of concern as 'explosives' and 'firearms'.

We put salt in our tea so you don't have to

Bilby

Who on Earth thought it was a good idea to ask an American how to make tea??

Next week, a vegetarian will give us tips on the best way to cook steak.

Then we shall hear from a fish, who will provide the latest advice on bicycle repair.

And finally, a masterclass in diplomacy, from Vlad the Impaler.

Wait, security courses aren't a requirement to graduate with a computer science degree?

Bilby

"I mean, to date, the vast majority of my clients explicitly require my product not to ask for a password. This is industrial automation. The software can direct heavy machinery in physical reality. Let me reiterate: they aren't simply not asking for a password protection feature; they are explicitly asking for such a feature to be disabled, so that anyone in front of the computer - indeed, anyone in front of any of a number of clients around the site, or anyone with access to the local network and some intent - can give commands to the system. Because entering a password is too much of a hassle."

No, because in industrial settings, anyone with physical access to the controls of heavy machinery is assumed to be authorised. And has been, for a couple of centuries.

They may be living in the past, but until you understand their mindset, you won't be able to drag them kicking and screaming into the modern world.

Here's a pen-test challenge for you - go onto a construction site, and start up a JCB, and dig a short ditch.

You likely assume that the biggest obstacle to your doing this is that you would need an ignition key. But most heavy plant keys are left in the ignition. It's the norm to do this; Nobody wants to have to stop work for half a day because the JCB driver called in sick, but has the keys in his pocket.

The main obstacles to unauthorised use of heavy machinery are both "security by obscurity":

1) People don't know that the keys are typically left in the machines; and (more importantly)

2) If they did, they wouldn't know how to operate the equipment anyway. Most people wouldn't even be able to work out how to start the damn thing - even though the start-up sequence is likely displayed on a sticker above the windscreen.

That holds true for most heavy plant, and has since the industrial revolution - the only people who know how to operate it are constrained from illegal or damaging actions by reputational concerns, as part of a small clique of local professionals.

The problem isn't in giving people an understanding of the risks; Rather it is in giving them an understanding of the scale of those risks.

It's one thing to worry about the tiny possibility that a local skilled operator with malign intent might do something evil; It's a whole other thing to worry that any skilled operator anywhere in the world might be able to take over your gear.

Remote control is an abstraction to heavy plant operators. It's a possible distant future. Not a current reality.

Whether they, or we, are right depends on the specific implementation.

BOFH: Looks like you're writing an email. Fancy telling your colleague to #$%^ off?

Bilby

Re: "coloured pencil office"

Younger developer teams like to use organic avocado sourdough gluten-free toasts and sipping gourmet pink chocolate mocha with raspberry ripple and a gold leaf topping to map processes and "brainstorm" while eating crayons.

Snow day in corporate world thanks to another frustrating Microsoft Teams outage

Bilby

Outrage

It's called a network outrage.

Pennsylvanians, your government workers are now powered by ChatGPT

Bilby

No change there, then.

"Remember, this thing hallucinates and will just make stuff up confidently."

Brave of you to assume that none of the existing staff do these things...

;)

NASA's Artemis Moon missions take a rain check until 2025 and beyond

Bilby

Re: I'm gonna say it now

No Chinese astronaut will ever walk on the Moon.

(Any Chinese moonwalking will be done by a taikonaut).

Clucking hell! Farcical free-range egg standard pecked apart by app

Bilby

Re: omitted

matchbx, I admire your commitment to imperial measures; but converting Hectares to sq ft, doing the division by 10,000, and then approximating the sq ft result back to sq m. is rather unnecessary; 1 hectare is *by definition* 10,000 sq m, so 10,000 chook/hectare is EXACTLY 1 chook/sq m.

Terror in the Chernobyl dead zone: Life - of a wild kind - burgeons

Bilby

Re: Hmmm

"when did we consume all the natural resources? still plenty around here & no sign of them being depleted."

Indeed.

Perhaps a better question might be 'where did we put them'? Apart from a tiny amount of stuff used for space probes, and a bit of Helium, everything that was on the planet when we got here is still here - albeit mixed up and spread out rather differently.

Remember the old Greenpeace slogan 'Throw nothing away; there is no "Away"'? Well they were right - but it implies the opposite of what they think. With enough energy (and the sun will be around for a while) we can recycle anything, if the need arises.

Bilby

Re: Nuclear Power Generating

"Stick it at the bottom of the bloody huge hole which was until recently the Ranger Uranium Mine (now completely emptied of uranium)."

While the idea of burying the waste in defunct uranium mines is a good one, I suspect that the fact that the Ranger mine is now completely emptied of Uranium will come as news to Energy Resources Australia (ERA), who operate that mine, and who are still digging out considerable quantities of ore (at least, they were when I was there last year); Perhaps they could save a lot of money by not doing all that digging, if there's no Uranium left.

If you could drop them a line to let them know they are wasting their time, I am sure they would be grateful.

PHONE me if you feel DIRTY: Yanks and 'Nadians wave bye-bye to magstripe

Bilby

Re: Vive La Difference

What kind of moronic toll road system allows motorists to stop and pay at toll points?

A toll point that even makes vehicles slow down, much less come to a stop, in order to pay is counter-productive - surely the reason you wanted to use the toll road in the first place is that it is faster than the other roads?

Around here, your 'tag' is scanned by the toll point as you drive through at the 100 or 110 km/h speed limit, and your account is debited. The tag beeps once to let you know it worked, and a couple of extra beeps if your account balance is low, to remind you to top it up (if you haven't set up a direct debit to top up automatically). If you don't have a tag, the system snaps your numberplate and you are required to pay within a couple of weeks (by phone or internet - signs alongside the motorway advise the contact details), or you get a fine for toll evasion.

The Great Barrier Relief – Inside London's heavy metal and concrete defence act

Bilby
Headmaster

Re: Balanced article

All the talk of 'peers' and 'damns' was more reminiscent of heated debate in the Lords than of civil engineering.

Nobody should have to see their own rear, but that's what Turnbull's NBN will do to Australia

Bilby

I already have the option to choose which camera angle I watch the footy from; and I don't use it, because my ability as a live sports producer sucks. I leave it to the professionals; and if immersive VR is offered to me, I will give that a swerve too.

I am sure it is impressive in a five minute demonstration at a trade show, where the technology is the focus of attention. I am equally sure that it will be much less impressive for a couple of hours of watching football, where the focus of attention is the game.

Sure, it can give me the experience of actually being at the stadium - where I have to check out the big screen to find out why the ref blew his whistle over on the far side of the ground. Oh, and it can also reproduce the authentic in-staduim 'empty wallet' effect too, no doubt. At least at the ground I get a plastic beaker of lukewarm weak beer in exchange for my week's salary, and not just a white elephant of a headset that will be rendered obsolete next month by an 'improvement'.

What's broken in this week's Windows 10 build? Try the Start Menu, for one

Bilby

HHaa HHaa. VVeerryy ffuunnnnyy.

RELICS of the Earth's long lost TWIN planet FOUND ON MOON

Bilby

Re: I reckon...

Tell me why; I don't like Mondas.

(As the Boomtown Rats would no doubt say).

Power, internet access knackered in London after exploding kit burps fire into capital's streets

Bilby

Re: Home ADSL OK in NW6

No problems here in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia either, so it does not appear to be affecting the entire planet.

How HAPPY am I on a scale of 1 to 10? Where do I click PISSED OFF?

Bilby

Re: OK

Sure, I'll get the bus.

Can you tell me when the next bus from Brisbane to London leaves?

E-vote won't happen for next Oz election

Bilby

Re: Electronic Voting is more Secure

Ballot stuffing in Australian elections would be very hard to achieve.

Any candidate can appoint scrutineers who have the right to inspect the ballot boxes, to ensure that they are empty before being sealed, and to inspect the seals before they are opened for counting, and who are able to observe the boxes throughout the voting process, and to watch the counting as it happens - all of this is done in one place, with ballots counted at the polling stations at the close of the polls.

It would be possible, but difficult, to introduce extra ballots by having someone put two or three papers in at once - this would entail a significant risk of being caught, for a one or two vote gain.

Having scrutinised ballots here on a number of occasions, I think it would be very difficult and extremely risky to attempt to introduce the dozens or hundreds of fraudulent ballots that would usually be needed to make a difference to the outcome.

By keeping the ballot boxes in clear sight of scrutineers from before they are sealed, until the end of the preliminary count, ballot stuffing is rendered impractical, if not impossible.

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