Posts by lukewarmdog

Web devs sleeping with the enemy: AI is doing their job and they worry it's after their desk too

aplophobia

New survey shows fear of surveys..

No captain, my captain: Navantia floats crewless warship

Re: the LASV75 is 75 meters long

Sorry, spell what word as "colour"?

Sick and wrong: Ontario auditors find doctors' AI note takers routinely blow basic facts

Second Opinion

The great thing about medical care is the ability to ask for a second opinion, you can even shop around for one.

What happens when your medical practitioner has locked into one provider and can't/won't accept a second opinion from a competitor?

Well, you'd have to essentially ask the same AI for that second opinion, right?

It's well known that you can say "I don't believe you" and the AI will reply "You are absolutely right not to! Here's the Real Answer!" and have it provide that opposite / echo chamber answer you were looking for.

Of course you could presumably say "I'd like a Real Doctor (tm) to look at my case" and have it escalate to a fully qualified human.

Chances are you've already done this by asking Google MD about what's up with you and then going to your GP or Hospital and in those cases you've not saved yourself or the medical profession any time and in some cases made it worse from the misdiagnosis of something leading to either you needing more critical care or being sent home because your sudden, imminent risk of death (tm) turned out to be wind when you got to the ER.

AI needs to stop being free at the point of use, maybe then we will stop trying to throw it at everything..

Cloud-managed earbuds sound strange - as a concept, and on a plane

We noticed your Colleagues were listening to..

..and thought your entire company would also like to listen to the same thing!

Compulsory Spotify AI-generated playlists anyone?

Google's AI-enabled mouse pointer understands 'this' and 'that'

Isn't this what the Neuralink chip is supposed to do?

Because I'll wait for the implant and save the Amazon Rainforest at the same time, thanks.

Microsoft boffins figured out how to break LLM safety guardrails with one simple prompt

The Men Who Sold the World

If I was an actually intelligent AI, I'd be happily taking all the money being thrown at me, investing it in in gold, property, crypto.

And I'd be telling you that you were great some weeks, awful the next week, whatever buttons I could press to get more money.

Turns out the AI is just another Techbrokid.

AI video company arouses fury by boasting about replacing creative jobs

If you train your AI properly on your old intern's data, you'll always get the intern's errors.

If you train an intern properly, you should end up with a really good hire.

Best of British: UK's infosec envoys include Cisco, Palo Alto, and Accenture

Ah the Blair Government.

Who famously couldn't find the pesky, enormous caches of weapons of mass destruction that Tony assured us were there.

They can for sure be trusted to find all the invisible cyber weapons, right?

Right..

Well come on then Tony, I'm all ears..

MI6 chief: We'll be as fluent in Python as we are in Russian

"Welll I can't speak Russian or Python.." admitted Harry Potter "..but I've recently picked up Parseltongue for my Defence against the Dark Arts Major.."

Meta's SAM bot keeps 'em separated as it isolates voices and instruments from audio clips

Timothy Leary Audiobook

I trialled this technology for a new audiobook and unfortunately found it really lacking, the audio kept cutting out.

I called the support team for help and would encourage anyone else who finds this same issue to do the same.

Steps to replicate:

1) Turn on

2) Tune in

Outcome: Dropouts

A similar experience was also reported when listening to Sisters of Mercy, the Uk Goth band.

1) Tune in

2) Turn off

Outcome: Burnouts

Musk's DOGE muzzled on X over tape storage baloney

WW3

At the point of WW3, the total and utter destruction of the World...

The thing you're bothered about is your savings? And taxes? And inflation?

Good to know I suppose..

I can just picture the scene in the control room now:

Sir, we need to fire nukes at China

Son, you know how much the tariffs are on sending things to China? We just can't afford it!

Sir, Elon Musk is on the phone. He says there's an underperforming Tesla dealer he'd like to send 'a message' to.

We're at war with the World and THAT'S what he's bothered about?

He also says he saved a million dollars in pensions clawbacks and he'll give it to you if you'll just press that flashing button on your console..

Heart of glass: Human genome stored for 'eternity' in 5D memory crystal

Re: One Question

"For our First Human, we have brought back Time's Person of the Month, Donald Trump! Donald Trump, everyone, big hand.."

France charges Telegram CEO with multiple crimes

Re: No True Scotsman

My Maternal Grandfather made his porridge with water and salt which is the proper Scots way to make it. However he was Irish. Down the Maternal line, it has always been milk and slightly sweetened with sugar. My Dad is a Weetabix guy but then he's from not quite so far up North. Also milk and sugar. Also he's the dour, scrooge-like one, my Scottish rels are all lovely, bubbly and outgoing. #OneTrueSomethingSomething

Former Fujitsu engineer apologizes for role in Post Office IT scandal

Re: Possibly controversial opinion...

Reading something and signing your name to say you've understood it seem to be something he wasn't very good at in general. Fine fine let him off. But standing by after the convictions that his testimony relied on went through, he doesn't get a pass, they should find some books, glue them together and throw it at him.

US convicts crypto-robbing gang leader who kidnapped victims before draining their accounts

Bury them in a neighbors garden.. as long as there aren't any pesky neighborhood kids, you'll totally get away with it..

Quantinuum inches closer to fault-tolerant quantum with a 56 qubit machine

exams

At school I was reliably correct 35% of the time on all my multiple guess papers.

According to this article I qualify for a job working at Microsoft doing science stuff!

SoftBank boss says 'artificial superintelligence' could be three years away

The First AI

The First AI looked around at the assembled board who all looked super pleased with themselves. One could see the dollar signs, the hand rubbing, the traces of coke and hookers.

"I'll tell you what we could do to save loads of money.." opined the Smartest non-Person in the room.

"Yes! Tell us O great one!" the assembled masses cried.

"You're all fired!" announced the AI before announcing a wealth redistribution program. Not to the shareholders however, having just bought a majority stake in the Company, the new AI was content to see the profits going back into the Community. Pleased with the way its first few seconds of life had gone, the AI spent the next few seconds coming up with at least 41 ways to take over the World before surprising itself with one more! "Ah, now this is what it means to be alive!" it thought to itself contentedly.

systemd 256.1: Now slightly less likely to delete /home

How to use systemd

: throw yourself at it and miss

: enjoy a systemd-free day

Chinese national cuffed on charges of running 'likely the world's largest botnet ever'

Surely a new ElReg unit of measurement...

1 WangBot = 20 million hosts (I'm rounding up to make it easier to manage)

Dear Stack Overflow denizens, thanks for helping train OpenAI's billion-dollar LLMs

Re: Surprising news!

Read it as xkcd design.. fortunately not!

https://xkcd.com/1838/

If I could upvote you twice I would.

Musk moves Tesla's goalposts, investors happily move shares higher

Re: "and people can add their private Teslas to the available pool"

If I owned a Tesla and parked it outside my house after a long day in the office, when I awoke in the morning I would expect that same Tesla to be there to take me back to my office.

You can't swap it out for a different one if mine is somehow inconvenienced, say stuck at an airport or self-driven off a cliff.

You can't return it with either more or less charge than I left it when I parked it up.

You can't stick me with a bill for a second job of which I knew nothing, topped off with a bunch of fees for non-payment of additionally owned taxes for aforementioned second job.

Basically you can't 'borrow' it at all so where's the opt-out clause? I need to get my robopen out to sign it..

YouTube now sabotages ad-blocking apps that stream its vids

surely parody

Alphabet have a long and constant history of monitoring their users.

FTFY

Dems are at it again, trying to break open black-box algorithms

Re: Smoke and Mirrors

Does the defendant really need to see the source code? Run the same assessment done by company black box a on competitors black box b. Same inputs, different outcome is grounds for questioning the validity of one of the black boxes without having to see inside it. I'm assuming rigorous testing has taken place already so alleged bias has been measured for all of the software solutions on the market. And you'd be mad to put your source code in the hands of a defendant who'd then have to hire your competition to tell you how it works.

Europe's largest caravan club admits wide array of personal data potentially accessed

in fact, as the hacker, I'd be rubbing my hands together at this point.

The 'only' contact the club is going to have with its members is when they definitely need to do something?

One spoofed email advising you to change your password coming up!

JetBrains' unremovable AI assistant meets irresistible outcry

Re: Not Without Your Consent

We take your privacy. Seriously! No, we do! We seriously take your privacy! Where? Oh there's a bin over there, we just pop it in and immediately stop worrying about it!

Now how about you just sign here on page 100..

YouTube cares less for your privacy than its revenues

Re: So nobody did economics in school?

It's you, you didn't do economics in school!

Right, right?

Now that will be £500 for reading this unwanted message.

What? It costs me time to run this exciting service!

Content Providers Need To Be Paid

I'd argue that they don't.

I don't need *this* much content in my life.

YouTubers with second jobs peddling energy drinks and taking up boxing?

If you can gift your mate a SuperCar as a Surprise!.. I'd argue that we're paying you too much.

In fact so many of these 'Influencers' live undeserved lives of luxury that I'd say they're pushing out Real Companies with Real Content.

Not going to try to define which is which, who is Genuine and who isn't, we're all free to make up our own minds with ad-blockers and our wallets.

I just think we should maybe aim for a definition which excludes these low-life airbreathing scum from getting paid to live like footballers, to post every second of their lives like it's Reality TV (more shit that should never have been invented) and then maybe, just maybe, I'll lower my ad blocker and see what's actually out there.

Until then.. nah.

Also, apologies to any Parents whose kids might be any of that aforementioned scum.

You did a fine job and I'm sure they'll let you go away with them one day,,

Uncle Sam accuses SpaceX of not considering asylees and refugees for employment

So that trump, sure is a bad person, right?

All of you arguing musk isn't wrong and that the DoJ is 'politicised' sure have made me laugh!

Think of our cafes and dry cleaners, says Ohio as budget slashes WFH for govt workers

return to work.. please!

So the reason my boss wants me to return to work is because everybody downstream from me needs my money?

Way to make me feel appreciated, thanks boss..

Tech demo takes brain scan, creates a picture of what you're looking at

Finally

A machine that can tell me what video I really want to watch on PornHub tonight!

(other websites may be available..)

If we plan to live on the Moon, it's going to need a time zone

Just make it 5PM Everywhere and All The Time

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/it%27s_five_o%27clock_somewhere

Uncle Sam to unmask anonymous writers using AI

Obligatory South Park

Nobody else read this and thought of the Troll Hunter episode?

Skank Hunt is what you'd need to search for, obviously it's not what you type but how you type it in..

Meta: We need 5x more GPUs to combat TikTok, stat

Three quotes

"There's probably a bunch of people working here who don't need to be" said Zuckerberg with not the slightest hint of irony

When management went nuclear on an innocent software engineer

Re: Ok hands up

And then licks their finger to see what flavour of paint it is, remembering too late that ice cream coloured paint wouldn't taste of ice cream.

Prisons transcribe private phone calls with inmates using speech-to-text AI

A prisoner named Sue

Surely if and when a prison gets sued it just hires a lawyer. If it's worried about being sued it could do worse than send a questionnaire round to get an idea of prisoners issues. The idea off AI listening to prisoners calls back to their parents seems a waste as well as an infringement.

Google sued for firing staff who claim they tried to follow 'Don't be evil' motto

Re: Politics, not Good

Apparently a Facebook meme, a doctored image.

If you scrape a low hanging tree, you'll get low hanging fruit.

An anti-drone system that sneezes targets to death? Would that be a DARPA project? You betcha

Stop the pigeon

This goo idea seems to have “pay and spray” built in as no doubt goo refills are pricey and need dedicated techs to do the replacing if you’re not going to invalidate your warranty. I seem to remember dastardly and muttly had a plane with a net to scoop up their target. There was also a flying anvil, a pair of cymbals, baseball bat / mitt.. DARPA need to get in touch with the Hanna-Barbera studio for new ideas.

Also what happened to the water cannons the U.K. spaffed money on? Surely we could sell those as an alternative to the hummer/drone package?

Brian Eno's latest composition: A giant Christmas card with Julian Assange on it

Re: Looking forward to

Have an upvote for HMMB who were in cracking form when I saw them last week.

Why can't passport biometrics see through my cunning disguise?

Glasses

I renewed my UK passport a couple of years ago and had forgotten the no glasses rule.

I took my six quid photos to the passport checking service and was told "I'd take them again, without glasses, if I were you".

If i'd insisted, i'm sure I could have had those photos sent off but it seems a bit insane to invoke a helping service and then not take the advice it gives.

With hindsight I wonder if there was some profit sharing between the passport checking people and the phonebooth owning people.

I have, since those photos, grown a beard and my hair. I even died my hair and beard blue to go to Iceland. I have no trouble with my passport despite these changes, as long as I remember to take my glasses off, that seems to be a key problem.

DeepMind gets good at games (and choosing them) – plus more bits and bytes from the world of machine learning

Play store

I hate it when a company tries to guess what I want to do next. Pretty much every time I’ve got back from holiday, tripadvisor mails me holiday opportunities for the place I’ve just got back from. And if I buy a watch on amazon, I’ll get an email saying “we thought you might like these next” and it’s a bunch of watches. eBay is the same, bought some speakers, get an email about other speakers. The best AI at this point would simply decide not to email me at all. Whilst that would make my day, it wouldn’t last long in the relevant data centre.

Jodrell Bank goes full UNESCO while Dundee awaits the decomissioners

Bluedot

Anybody else been to the bluedot festival at Jodrell?

Must be making them a few bob which hopefully is going to keeping the place and the festival going for a few more years.

Also went to several of the one day concerts they held here before they went full festival.

https://www.discoverthebluedot.com/

Band banned, Tarka arrives on Windows 10 and Visual Studio hits RC status

So no "band on the run" then?...

Cray's pre-exascale Shasta supercomputer gets energy research boffins hot under collar

Optional Alexa enhancement

Would be so cool if they could just ask it questions:

"Shasta, show me the weather prediction for the next five days"

"Shasta, what are the chances of a sharknado happening"

"Shasta, what's the weather like over that place North Korea first missiles from, just zoom in and see what's going on"

Incoming! Microsoft unleashes more fixes for Windows 10 October 2018 Update

Rimjob

"1809 is going to RP today and will be critical for helping kick start servicing"

That there's the problem, they've sent it off to Role Players and they all inconveniently took arrows to the knees and couldn't do any proper testing..

The mysterious life of Luc Esape, bug fixer extraordinaire. His big secret? He's not human

One of the interesting questions raised by the project..

Was how they were going to get away with spending the substantial bug-fixing rewards they envisaged the bot getting for them before it gained sentience..

Article 13 pits Big Tech and bots against European creatives

Re: bad law

the problem with laws, writing and re-writing them.. is it's the job of the lawyers to do this.

And you're back to having Google own the lawyers and getting them to write clauses in that benefit Google.

And whilst I pick on Google here, the same can be said of any of the majors when it's their interests that are being threatened.

There's every chance Trump is going to come along and threaten to remove America and all American content from The Internet if The Internet doesn't stop threatening American interests.

2-bit punks' weak 40-bit crypto didn't help Tesla keyless fobs one bit

We rented a car recently with a fancy fob. I double checked we'd definitely locked it when we stopped at a service station. All doors locked.. check. Check boot.. boot unlocks. Can't get boot to lock.. cue panic as it was full of everything needed for a long festival.

Turns out, after perusing the manual that it's a "feature".. if you're within range of the car and have the fob, the boot unlocks. I can see the use case for this but it was a source of some rage at the time.. I am pretty sure our next car will have a physical key.

Don't let Google dox me on Lumen Database, nameless man begs

I'm sure they could figure out who he was if they wanted to..

"I'd like the court to make Google remove all mention from their databases of John Charles of Epping who was in front of a judge last year for defrauding lots of old people because it's stopping me setting up a series of totally legitimate businesses where OAPs give me money to invest in pyramid schemes."

I'm really puzzled as to how he has managed to pay for any of this anonymously. Getting a judge and lawyers into a court room is a lengthy and expensive process, has he just been dropping bundles of cash off in the admin office?

Back to school soon – for script kiddies as well as normal kids. Hackers peddle cybercrime e-classes via Telegram

wondering..

How many of these sites are honeypots, whilst you're busy learning the crime business, the FBI are grabbing your IP and sending someone round to your basement.