* Posts by Denarius

2099 publicly visible posts • joined 20 Jun 2009

Germany's wild boars still too radioactive to eat largely due to Cold War nuke tests

Denarius

nah, just another plan to stop Obelix and friends visiting the original Goths

Microsoft ain't happy with Russia-led UN cybercrime treaty

Denarius
Meh

Re: UK government will love this

also Oz with their "Anti " Misinformation law going thru the collection of bought and stupids that make up majority of Oz manglement layers

UK air traffic woes caused by 'invalid flight plan data'

Denarius

Re: Expertise

I had a clued end user manager with a newbie staff member testing some client software. They found bugs no-one else could.

Denarius

Re: Expertise

sounds like a problem in my late career. Mainframe process stopped processing input. The data, supposed to be vanilla EBCDIC looked OK in its ASCII incarnation on way thru Windows and unix middleware boxes. Then I ran od -c on input streams and found embedded ^Z chars from one company's emails. Who uses VAX end of file markers in 2010 from DOS computers? Easily fixed by using tr to filter all incoming messages but still a WTF moment encouraging a rigorous input cleaning attitude.

Moscow makes a mess on the Moon as Luna 25 probe misses orbit, lands with a thud

Denarius
Trollface

Re: "Luna 25, by contrast, tried to make the trip in nine days"

"t must be exhausting to live in a country where everything you do must not only be a success, but also something the higher-ups always need to be able to brag about."

you mea its just like a Merkin outsourcery company ?

South Korea's biggest mobile telco says 5G has failed to deliver on its promise

Denarius

Re: Wait, what?

and in the Antipodes, Oz to be precise, the rollout of 5G is accompanied by a drop in 4G signal in rural areas in my bitter experience. The main Oz telco has responded to 5G rollout by increasing costs, again, as usual. I suspect 6G will acheive the ultimate goal of absolute no communications. But then, the Ministry of Truth being shovelled thru the Oz excuse for a parliament will make all communications potentially expensive

Microsoft wants to stick adverts in Bing chat responses

Denarius
Flame

you also missed

the blather about curated news. Whatever that BS might be. Whenever I am forced to use an unsecured browser the utterly irrelevant twaddle that pollutes the screen is irritating. Who the Niflelheim would want to know what some nonentity droid on twatter of worse, MSN , thinks about armadillo poo or something even more odious like some foreign failed states politicians. Needless to say, the only bing I hear or use is a toaster signaling food is ready for bacon. The manglement groups really do despise we proles.

Time to abolish M$, Google et al as dangerous to sanity and disassemble Zuck during an investigation into artificial "lifeforms".

As it is, sneakernet might be the new Next Big Thing because its harder for the b\*st\*s to sneak adds in without serious physical proximity damage in case of nefarious intent.

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

Denarius

Re: Make it fast?

Really ? On 486 I could get Win3.1 up in seconds. On pentiums Win95-98 up in tens of seconds. Win2000 not to bad, under a minute.

XP and suckseccors (sic) culminating in the CPU sucking RAM ripping Win10 that can make an i7 with 8 Gb RAM wheeze like Win3.x on a 386 with 2 MB of RAM. To be fair, Linux is approaching the same nadir. The BSDs I will have to try again and if the BEOs resurrection projects succeed, I will try them if the Outlook and Ofice equivalents works..

Even then OfficeLibre is looking like the vile Ribbon has attached itself. Getting hard to do anything in scalc as it also has become a desktop publisher or juvenile Presentation maker..

Cant all of them just leave what works alone!!

To get work done, am seriously thinking of setting up Linux 3.x , Win98 or XP in a standalone machine with old OfficeLibre, Kingsoft or Office and move files via USB to network connected machine for distribution. The corporate support and coding done in FOSS is making software more like the bloated code from M$ we love to hate.

Xi, Putin declare intent to rule the world of AI, infosec

Denarius

so when will they start warring with each other ?

Usually how autocrats wind up. Ask Stalin and Schickelgruber (sp?) about it at a local seance

Denarius
Childcatcher

innocents abroad, again

Other countries will fall over themselves to implement NewIP by another name if the behavior of 5 Eyes is an example. The rest of any protestations about democracy are mere words. Think of the children, while allowing Facebi??h et al unrestricted snoopage. Also have a look at the links of a government web page. In Oz the trackers are endemic.

No reliable way to detect AI-generated text, boffins sigh

Denarius

too late

the HR droids and manglement classes have generated so much BS text in last 30 years the ChatGPT models are merely catching up Only the naive or technophilic will be taken in. The rest of us will continue to assume, usually correctly, that whatever "information" incoming is BS as we have become accustomed to

Software-controlled food tech: 3D printed pipe-dream, or fatal stack instability?

Denarius

Blech

thats what yanks call cheese cake ? Yuk, gag etc

Putin to staffers: Throw out your iPhones, or 'give it to the kids'

Denarius

trust ? What makes you think it matters? Mutual interests of the current time only. China will be wanting back the territory it lost to the Czar a century or two back. Possibly more as Russian control of its far east lands is relatively recent.

Vessels claiming to be Chinese warships are messing with passenger planes

Denarius

Re: Good Old Propaganda

Not quite. Pilot believed one instrument only because their training and Airbus attitude is the computers are right, pilot is wrong company. It was a known issue with pitot icing. Senior pilot arrived in cockpit too late to change results. The switch to change control authority seems to have been forgotten in the crisis. Same root cause issues happened to Qantas flights whose pilots are trained to look at all instruments, flying by attitude. Airspeed high, BUT, angle of attack normal, engines at cruise for this altitude, therefore airspeed indicator malfunction. This is why you never heard of incidents, Nothing newsworthy happened.

As for the article, messing with aircraft instruments is a serious issue, not matter how many workarounds. Effectively, it seems some group has decided they override international agreements. That cant end well if history is any indication. As for the economics of US/China trade, what the manglement classes do versus what the plebs are told have no correlation and never has. Last leader I can think off who said its going to be hard, painful and bloody was Churchill.

BTW, dont assume all commercial pilots can fly manually now. That was found out post AirFrance crash and scared a few airline operations managers. One hopes something done to ensure all pilots of heavies can handle a Cessna or equivalent, but we all know how manglement behave usually. Fortunately many commercial pilots fly privately for recreational purposes and are highly competent.

China sought control of submarine cables to spy, says Micronesia

Denarius

words again

Define colonialism ? Is asset confiscation the same as colonisation ? Especially if the local power structures are bought also ?

Denarius

Re: David Panuelo

yes, a laughing stock the some "leaders" in EU are still trying to appease by telling Ukraine to get over losing half the country.

Bit like Oz pollies insisting certain large countries to north are no threat while they inflict economic damage. The merkins merely bleed us with free trade and military agreements implemented by their pupets

Here's how Microsoft hopes to inject ChatGPT into all your apps and bots via Azure

Denarius

every time

I think M$ has hit a nadir, I'm wrong. Who is giving them lessons on user hostility ? I foresee another Windows 8.0 debacle

Why ChatGPT should be considered a malevolent AI – and be destroyed

Denarius
Meh

Re: Brazil

Indeed. Very much like a process droid aka bureaucrat and ideologue. Even when shown to be wrong they sometimes adjust data to match erroneous conclusion. Like many a journalist. Not looking at you ElReg, though I do wonder sometimes. As the local state is coming up for an election, I hear much text generated that resembles various machine generated verbiage, although with the rise of CorpSpeak in the 1980s the difference between some human and machine words is blurred.

What is clear that the movers and shakers smell profit, and consumer concerns will be ignored, as usual

OpenAI CEO heralds AGI no one in their right mind wants

Denarius

Re: History has shown

dont work for Musk, do you ? Or for that matter, any yank IT company. I suspect the rest are also the same, wanting total control and insane working hours as if the citizen has no value except as a production machine

Denarius

Re: Moral issue

Monism ? There was I thinking Penrose used maths. Whatever he demonstrated, it seems to be that whatever human reasoning can be, it is not necessarily a Von Neuman machine approach. The AI hype is VN machines. ergo, assumption still dubious

Denarius

Re: Moral issue

John,

evidence for your assumptions ? Is there even a workable general definition of intelligence, let along self awareness ? I suggest Roger Penrose books, Emperors New Mind and Shadows of the Mind as good reads

Denarius

Re: History has shown

only in western Europe

Ford seeks patent for cars that ditch you if payments missed

Denarius

explanation

so thats why ten year old vehicles are rising in value. Repairable, made of metal so they fall apart in 15 years, enough smart engine management but no stupids like built in leeching of wallet

Denarius

Re: Ah.

LEDS ? Odd, around here in the boonies of Oz the new LED equipped cars have more light failures than the old tungsten globes. As for user hostile vehicles, I cant go past new mercedes commercial vehicles

Semiconductor industry: To Hell with the environment, start building fabs already

Denarius
Trollface

Re: Burdensome Reviews

Indeed. If the pollution and other fears de jeur like CO2 are not produced locally, whats problem? After all, certain manufacturing countries are cranking up their polution production to make windmills and solar panels and this is just fine with the buyers.

Seeing as GPT-3 is great at faking info, you should lean into that, says Microsoft

Denarius

A long time ago and not far away

I worked in a big project installing big data handling project for Big Gov. It was tested using sanitised data. Needless to say, it crashed on first exposure to real data. Alternatively, at a small statutory authority, software was built using test data, but final prerelease test was on yesterdays live data. Yes, all offline with no PHB easy dialin or unsecured network connection. I never heard of a problem in a production go live there. So the thought of using fake test data in M$ products should make even java coders look competent.

<offtopic> Maybe it is age, but the screaming rage induced by so much current software is beginning to look like a deliberate policy to kill off older people in fits of apoplexy </offtopic>.

Germany to court Indian IT talent – starting with easier visa application processes

Denarius
Trollface

so what happened ?

Germany was supposed to have very good universities producing many skilled engineers. Has everything been outsourced to China, India and bits of Eastern Europe leaving western Europe a mere producer of wokes ?

Infosys founder slams working from home, side hustles, as slowing India's growth

Denarius
Unhappy

CEOS and other forms of near life

so the top end of what passes for politics and business these days can be a board member at multiple companies concurrently and thats fine ? Not to mention a few pollies in Oz and Not So Great Britain doing same. As for Oz ideas, same old, same old. When in doubt, appoint another bunch of clueless clerks to tell others how to run their business. A simple approach would be to modify company law as well as PHB class contracts. Any human caused IT stuffup is their personal liability. Remove the incentive for the stockholders to pay for cleanup and recovery. Instead have a strong incentive for manglement to really ensure beancounters and bonuses are not top of mind when planning cost minimisation. Abolishing the bribes bonuses so a top managers just salary like everyone else may help too.

Global finance wonks worry financial services too invested in outsourcers, Big Tech

Denarius
Meh

bureaucrats are waking up

to the results predicted by the coal face techies when outsourcery became instant bonus scheme de jeur for the PHB classes. The cynic may note the outsourcerers were so efficient there was a cannibal feast with one left standing, sort of. Not an ideal demonstration of competence

Conversational AI tells us what we want to hear – a fib that the Web is reliable and friendly

Denarius

Last paragraph error ?

You mean the not young masses have not learned that antiSocial Media is a bulls**t generator ?. Adding AI is just another layer of echo chamber and BS.

Microsoft’s mixed reality dream meets harsh reality of job cuts

Denarius

To my surprise

M$ decision seems rational. I can see enhanced Reality being useful in a few work environments. ie there is a problem to be solved. As for consumers, one can get motion sick and queasy watching amy recent ads or arty movies

Microsoft can't stop itself blowing billions on OpenAI

Denarius
Trollface

That explains something

So these AI chat systems are also supposed to help write code. That explains UI Windows 8.x to Win 10 and subsequent patch disasters.

Jaguar Land Rover courts coders caught in big tech layoffs

Denarius

Re: Need more than coders

was true. In 1970s NT pubs one could start a brawl over Toyota vs LandRover. Now most vehicles are Toyota Hilux or landcruisers with Isuzu catching up fast. Western NSW has a mix of Isuzu, Colorados and Toyotas precisely because you can get parts easily, they just work and are OK on fuel burn. Other 4WDs are usually grey nomads or posers positing a perish along some muddy closed back track. LandRovers are for city dwellers.

Offtopic: I note an increasing number of collectors or enthusiasts acquiring vehicles of 1970s, 1990s to early 2000 vehicles because they can be repaired. A small industry of replacement parts makers seems to have sprung up around the world because it is easy to have a world wide market. Nationally a small market but the international size allows economies of scale. Yes, 1980s vehicles are ignored due to long memories of crap carbies unless unusual vehicles.

Too big to live, too loved to die: Big Tech's billion dollar curse of the free

Denarius
Unhappy

Re: GMail ensures users are logged into their Google account when they access the web

Have you tried to cold install Win10 lately ? Same thing. Name address, phone number. Only thing missing from demands is Identity Card, which, no doubt, is coming. Not found any way to have only local account, unlike initial installs.

FAA wants pilots to be less dependent on computer autopilots

Denarius

late again, as usual

sources inside industry told me after Air France event that airlines were running their pilots thru circuits in fully manually flown planes and discovering some of them were so dependent on computers they could not fly an ordinary plane. OTOH, some commercial pilots do the ultimate in handrolic flying, aerobatics.

Twitter engineer calls out Elon Musk for technical BS in unusual career move

Denarius

and of course

send the newbie to get a metric shifter (spanner)

Denarius

Re: Bit klunky, but...

Martin,

that might be your experience in startups, but in mature IT companies I have survived in, the top PHBs like their BS hot, served with chilled champers and a side of snark and caviar. Telling them anything they dont want to know is a career terminating mood. Mind you, I was told before my last severance that I was protected a bit by middle manglement because as a mild aspie, I asked the obvious questions that no-one dared ask, being impervious to social not niceties. However in this incident, it does sound like the techies are telling their employer that he is mis-informed. I did think better of Musk until now. Being a SpaceX star is bad for his stability methinks

Australia to 'stand up and punch back' against cyber crims

Denarius

Re: It’s all a joke

not only that but somewhere, somehow, _any_ network retribution is probably illegal under some agreement not well publicised and completely ignored by most nations. Needless to say, our supine pollies will then pretend to be powerless and do nothing, as usual.

Denarius

Re: In other words

mere side benefits. I await the Oz version of the poms "give all our health data to Palantir" . Oh wait, they already tried it. Now I wonder when the data auction is happening. To get best return on assets, naturally. Security is handled by those contractual terms with no penalty attached. See any Gov outsourcery contract for examples

Denarius

Re: It’s all a joke

what, and possibly interrupt the donations needed to fund the BS ? The sooner the Trade Practices Act on truth in advertising applies to politicians, NGOs, charities, pressure groups and religions, naturalist and super-naturalist the better. Also unlikely, as you were.

Denarius

isn't that poetic justice ? Perhaps if it is focused on the TLA bosses and the political droids they advise

Denarius

In other words

plonkers will demand/commit lawfare to ensure citizens must use snoopware authorised software defences when using electronic devices. In mean time, to allow checking your identity and ensuring proper passwords, record all passwords, user Ids stored in text format for for rapid searching on your MyGov website account.

If you think 5G is overhyped, wait till you meet 5.5G

Denarius
Unhappy

And in Oz

when the 3G is shutdown 2024 or earlier, outside of the 10 biggest cities, all phones will stop working. Every time I get an SMS from the ruins of national telco about 5G upgrades, signal strength drops, more connections drop halfway thru dialing and so on.

Bring on his Muskiness satellite phone and Starlink. As for the other two wannabes, they are immune mostly because they dont have coverage out side big cities in my experience

As Russia wages disinfo war, Ukraine's cyber chief calls for global anti-fake news fight

Denarius

Re: Lost battle

All opinions are equally valid only if it fits one thing most people can't see. The culture they live in. Real dissent is mocked as it always has been. < Irony tag here. > IMHO, The growth of conspiracy theorists is a reflection of general disbelief of any statement.</Irony> They have always existed due to the hunger some have for allegedly "secret knowledge".

On a practical note, the consequences are threatening for any cohesive political system that does not involve lawfare and oppression. If a political entity cannot reasonably trust, it can only disintegrate. All spin doctors are doctors of cultural death.

Denarius
Trollface

Re: Lost battle

nonsense. It's always Open Season on creationists by everyone. They actually believe in a real reality, unaffected by opinions of observer. It's one subject authorities and wannbe experts agree on. Perhaps this indicates something about disinformation campaigns run over centuries ?

Denarius

Re: Softly, softly, catchee monkeys

weird alright. The AI AmanfromMars1 is beginning to sound saner and precise than some commentards

Boffins shatter data transmission speed record

Denarius
Trollface

finally

nearly enough capacity for the interwebs to carry all the POS insecure IOT, spammers, snoops and of course, javascript. Browsers will be unable to be used for information as all the snoopware code, logging, monitoring, malvertising, advertising code runs and reports. A few pointless, rehashed, badly acted, sermonising repeats of some 60 year old cartoon or movie will add to the toxic mess. Sort of makes me wish the snoopers demanding backdoors get their wish. Petabytes of watchers watching each other, badly. And DOS storms, Buy spinning rust purveyors shares, I see a new internet gold rush coming.

Team Interpol: Metaverse Police

Denarius

WHAAAT???

A virtual person gets murdered. This is a crime ? So every FPS becomes a crime scene ? Someone has been drinking FB/digital utopian KoolAid aka BS