Posts by Ball boy

Amazon Web Services’ US-EAST-1 region in trouble again, with EC2 and container services impacted

Lesson unlearnt?

Back in the day, we convinced the beancounters to pay for UPS's because we found out if the power tripped, we'd get in a mess.

When we bought a new server, we kept the old one on a shelf - because it could be pressed back into service if one of the newer ones fell over. Beancounters generally approved.

Now we put everything in the cloud and, for some reason, the bean-people can't be convinced that we really need to have a fall-back because we're now entirely reliant on a dystopian collection of software and services, all provided by external businesses we have absolutely no control over.

Are we genuinely regressing here or simply unable to learn from the past?

Playing ball games in the datacenter was obviously stupid, but we had to win the league

Green marks everywhere

Back in the day, I worked in an engineering firm who had a team of draghtsman - yes, they were all men at the time. The pens used a permanent ink. An error was removed by using a hard, gritty rubber stick, green in colour and about half an inch long. One of these was usually loaded into a handheld drill-like device which did the 'rubbing' for you.

Big bottles of Carbon Tetrachloride were also present - it's banned now as a carcinogenic - and used to degrease the acetate drawing sheets. One of the draghtsmen discovered that an eraser dropped into Carbon Tet. swelled up after several days and took on a very bouncy quality - perfect for throwing around the office, at people and things. Each 'hit' left a large, wet, smudge of green and I gather to took some explaining to justify why the analogue switchboard, staffed by a the very put-upon-but-game Vanessa, needed quite so many service visits to remove some kind of rubbery deposit which kept getting into the switch wafers, preventing several extensions from working. The games were stopped shortly after the business invested a huge sum in their first CAD workstation and found the keyboard kept failing...

Windows starts asking for admin rights where it shouldn't after security fix

Let's not forget

DOS was single user. Early Windows ran on DOS and they bolted-on some modicum of user-awareness when WfW became a 'thing' but the core OS didn't see life that way at all. Since then, security has been gradually added into more and more of the way the system works. By the time they got to 32 bit OS's, the damage was baked in and there was such an established way of dealing with all this that I suspect no one thought rebuilding from the core upwards was either a good idea or - quite possibly - that such a serious undertaking simply wasn't required.

So what we have now are patches to updates that try to plug holes in the cludge that was quickly cobbled together to bend a single user OS into being dimly aware that someone might want to share a printer with a few people!

Sainsbury's eyes up shoplifters with live facial recognition

You seem a man of the world^*. Umm, asking for a friend: do you know of cheap printer that copes well with sticky labels?

^*Other sexes are available.

How's this going to help?

They can't be scanning people on the street before they come into the shop (err...can they? Even in the UK they Shirley can't get away with that!) so they only detect a bad 'un once they're already over the threshold. What happens? The lax security guard ejects said person? That might not end well, especially if the ID was faulty. I suppose they could follow them around the store to pressure them into not nicking anything...but that'd just mean the rest of the store is completely unguarded, allowing half a dozen 'unknown' people nick all the soap.

Frostbyte10 bugs put thousands of refrigerators at major grocery chains at risk

Re: Public internet

I agree - but don't forget the ONEDAY user and their easy-to-remember rolling password existed because, apparently, the clients wanted to make it easy for the engineers to login. You can well imagine the potential for chaos if the service guys were given VPN rights into client networks with easy-to-remember-or-predict login credentials.

HP bottom line fattens up on a diet of AI PCs and Windows 11

AI PC sales up?

It's probably because many PC's shipped these days have labels on them saying 'AI ready' - and if you were an average Joe looking to refresh a few desktop machines, you'd be way more likely to opt for the machine that had that sticker on it than the one next to it that didn't: the huge hype in the media around all this nonsense it means it's probably the only differentiator most folk will be aware of.

I'd wager most simply use the new box for whatever they did with the old one - but another sale helps promote this latest buzz ('almost all our sales are of our AI-ready machines' et al) and, before long, it becomes self-perpetuating.

Doesn't mean people are actually using the tech though. I'd wager that the majority that are 'AI users' interact with models that run on backend systems anyway.

One long sentence is all it takes to make LLMs misbehave

In fairness, it happens with people as well

Send me a long, rambling message that doesn't appear to have a specific question or is structured so poorly I can't fathom what the hell I'm being asked and there's more than a good chance I'll...err...'drop my guardrails'!

Not really one to voice any real support or enthusiasm for LLM's ('AI' is a misnomer because there's no 'I' in the process) but on this occasion I find myself sympathising with their somewhat off-kilter reply.

'Limited' data leak at Aussie telco turns out to be 280K customer details

'limited' damage?

I might have the answer: the Board looked at the problem and quickly established that none of them were mentioned in the data export. Therefore the leak was indeed limited - limited to just customer security data. Big sighs of relief all round.

End well, this won't: UK commissioner suggests govt stops kids from using VPNs

Re: Who could possibly have predicted this?

Today: all users should age-verify to use a VPN (think of the children!). Legitimate businesses the length of Britain will have to comply if this became law and will certainly have to spend yet more money on red tape that gives them no discernable advantage in the marketplace.

Tomorrow: gubbermint realise proxy use goes up. By Friday, there'll be calls to age-verify all proxy use. By next Friday, they'll want to age-verify anyone wanting to connect to a VPC. Then someone figures out that pron and other dangerous things - say, ideas about injecting yourself with bleach - can be sent as email and ideas about age-verifying that will then get banded about.

Next up someone will say "Hold on: Think of the children^TM: We really should age-verify every user who does anything on the internet" - and there we go. Welcome to the brave new world.

Facial recognition works better in the lab than on the street, researchers show

Re: works better in the lab

In other news, the same research team will shortly announce that bears do indeed defecate in the woods and the Pope is often seen with a hat.

/sarcasm

Teen interns brute-forced a disk install, with predictable results

Some things have to be learnt the hard way

Me and a pal were stripping a motorcycle in my kitchen as part of a frame-up rebuild. Kitchen? Well, we were students, it had a back door and it was damn cold outside, okay?

When it came to removing the swing arm bolt (the bar that allows the whole rear end to pivot on its suspension) the Haynes manual mentioned that the bearings are a press fit. As any Haynes reader will know, this usually translates to 'you'll start thinking it's been welded in place'. Our biggest hammer was used to pound on the end. On this bike, it turns out things weren't as bad as all that and I now suspect the first couple of thumps freed the bar sufficiently for removal by hand with a bit of wriggling. The next one imparted enough energy to fire this seven inch long, three quarter inch diameter steel projectile out of the frame and into the kitchen oven. The glass in the oven door stood no chance against this enthusiastic escapee.

Lesson: before you employ excessive force to something to make it part company with another thing, make sure to setup soft landing zones.

Voice, vision, pen: Oh dear. Windows boss says Microsoft is again reshaping OS

Maybe some Microsoft execs have spent far too long watching things like Minority Report where people gesticulate at video walls to interact with 'the mainframe' and truly believe the shows where the protagonist can zoom in on a satellite image until they can sex a gnat on the lead actor's thigh.

Whoever it was who discovered the chemical makeup of coca leaves has a LOT to answer for... ;-)

Hyundai: Want cyber-secure car locks? That'll be £49, please

Re: Why is it so insecure?

Question: Why does any key that's not moving respond to requests? Even if it's in the owners pocket, it's 'moving' as they approach the car. If it's happily sitting on a table in the hallway or wherever, it really shouldn't respond to any requests to handshake.

I'd argue that, unless manufacturers can demonstrate a clear need for a static key to be able to chat with the car, they should be made to stump up for a replacement vehicle if one is nicked when the key was not moving.

Behold the wood-block wonder of the Kilopixel display

Yeah but can it play....

You all know what comes next.

Be a *very* slow game of deathmatch but the resolution's about right to bring back some memories ;-)

/mine's the one with the BFG in the pocket

Faced with £40B budget hole, UK public sector commits £9B to Microsoft

A move to FOSS

It could be done. First, though, there'd be a short term increase in costs because you can't simply switch over on a Monday morning: there'd be some retraining required, costs for getting some code ported over and almost certainly a period of dual-running. None are insurmountable of course - and the long term savings once the move was made would be substantial.

Now put yourself in the position of the elected official, usually a government role. You have finite time before the next elections/your overlords review your performance. Suggesting you spend MORE now in order to save in the very long term generally doesn't go down well with those above you (or with the electorate) and the opposition would make huge political capital out of your 'overspend'. To make matters worse, if the project goes to plan and starts to make significant savings in license costs, there's a very high chance the people who'll benefit from the healthier balance sheet and be shouting from the rooftops about how much less they're spending compared to the last lot...will be your opposition. You'd be making a rod for your own back.

All this could be avoided if we (UK PLC) took a far longer-term view of public services and spending but we generally don't because it'd be political suicide.

MX Linux 25 loses systemd toggling power as Debian 13 looms

Unfortunate

Liam nailed it: big advantage of MXLinux is that it keeps compatibility with packages that, for whatever reason, insist on finding systemd. I guess once the shim isn't available, we will lose the ability to install those packages and that'll make MX a far poorer choice for many.

Had systemd stayed as just an init system, personally I'd have lived with it: easier or harder to configure than alternatives wouldn't have been that big of a deal because, once a system is configured for boot, it generally stays that way for ages. My issue is the scope creep of this damn thing into userland and, well, just about everywhere else means that it suddenly becomes a nightmare of dystopian proportions if something goes wrong - and the more things a lump of software interacts with then the greater the chances of something going wrong.

Given the way things are heading, one of the BSD's might well take the mantle of being THE stable and robust OS of choice for the majority of uses.

Python-powered malware snags hundreds of credit cards, 200K passwords, and 4M cookies

It's less a matter of Python's speed. If anything, the slowness is in people's general awareness that they shouldn't be launching attachments from emails - especially ones that appear to claim the reader has infringed on something or other, failed to renew their Netflix subs. or what-have-you.

Not helped by particular operating systems & common mail packages making sideloading of nefarious executable code way, way too easy.

Banning VPNs to protect kids? Good luck with that

Something had to be done...this is something

There's a bandwagon out there that suits politicians to jump on because it has popular support - it's a vote winner (or maybe just not a vote looser) and extra kudos if you can imply that anyone not agreeing with the general principle that children must be kept safe is clearly a danger to the public if they got into office. There's no need for elected people to worry unduly about exactly how the rules will work - or even if they do work - because they can say something has been done and take the credit for being on the side wot dun it.

Want to genuinely protect children both online and in real life? Here's an idea: start with parents and potential parents. They have a responsibility to teach their kids that the real world has real dangers and it's their job to educate them so they go into life suitably equipped. You'll end up with a more rounded, capable and mindful population as a result. Mind you, there's no votes in that and it'll take a generation or two - so, politically, it's pretty much a non-starter. At the moment, when little Johnny turns out to be a wrong 'un and drowns the neighbours cat, too many people blame the state for failing him rather than give any thought to his parents being irresponsible fuckwits.

Legislating against technology on the other hand is always going to be, at best, whack-a-mole: kind of by definition, technology has a habit of finding new and innovative ways to solve challenges.

Oracle VirtualBox licensing tweak lies in wait for the unwary

Re: All because

@VoiceOfTruth: I think you're missing the point. This isn't in the news because people object to paying for software they use in production, it's about the three-month trial version being charged-for.

If I represented a company that was prepared to commit engineering time, hardware resources and so on in order to explore if VirtualBox would serve us well by consolidating hardware, I certainly wouldn't expect the software vendor to charge me for the test license. I suppose there's possibly a grey area when it comes to full-load testing: It might need to be put into a 'safe' production environment in order to evaluate it under stress conditions - but by the time I'd got that far, I'd know I was serious, they'd know I was serious and I'm sure a reasonable company would be happy to allow finite testing under suitable terms.

By making an evaluation license chargeable, Oracle's conduct is...questionable...the OP is simply offering a summary view!

Wonder how long 'till Oracle charge a client access license fee for VirtualBox.

"I see you are hosting a web-facing service on VirtualBox. Let me see, that makes about 9 billion potential users.' Kerching! One new Larry-yacht paid-for.

Intern did exactly what he was told and turned off the wrong server

Yanking the power out?

Assuming a decent choice of OS, it's a rare thing to be forced into performing a 'Redmond Reboot' on a server - but clear and accurate labels front AND back reduce the stress...

First release candidate of systemd 258 is here

Boot process, loader AND user managment?

The next release might as well contain a kernel and call itself an OS.

So much for 'do one thing and do it well': this continual scope creep of systemd should have us all on edge. It's the modern twist on the time-honoured dependency issue xkcd covered so very well.

Hegseth signs flying memo to expand military use of cheap drones in oddball video

Doesn't make sense

So on one hand, we have the POTUS telling the world that he's bringing manufacturing back to the US (forcing the issue with tariffs and even holding a car sales event on the lawn of the White House with his ex-bestie) - and here's Hegseth actively rescinding existing legislation designed to protect the US from importing stuff that might contain less-than-desirable systems, presumably because someone told him they don't have a hope in hell of making anything like the right kind of kit on US soil in the near future.

And the presentation! Good #deity almighty. It has been said that US politics has dumbed down significantly of late. The case for the prosecution can now rest.

Yes, I wrote a very expensive bug. In my defense I was only seven years old at the time

7 year olds: often dangerous things near computers!

When my lad was 7 his class were assigned 'health' as a project and encouraged to work on a drawing or graphic at home that they could show the class later on. Firing up Google and typing in 'fit man' produced results that were...well...not quite what he expected. Safe searching was enabled on the home PC's just as soon as I'd stopped having fits of the giggles!

Folks aren’t buying the PCs that US vendors stockpiled to dodge tariffs

Upgrade? Why?

Generally, the more things you do in the cloud, the less the platform you use matters. In a way, Redmond have made a rod for their own back: by encouraging more use of online resources, they've reduced the need to keep upgrading the local platform.

Unlike the moves from 16 to 32 bit or from 32 to 64, I also suspect there's far less pressure from software vendors to run the latest OS - unless those vendors that are looking to bolt AI into their apps. Even so, most will probably want to make it a subscription service with a backend running under their control (more vendor lock-in and, actually, it probably offers better results because they can use a half decent model) - no pressing need for Win11 on the client in that case.

All told, I imagine there will be a very long tail to Win10 usage in the home market.

Your browser has ad tech's fingerprints all over it, but there's a clean-up squad in town

Re: "not something your grandma would glom onto"

The Happy Hookers?

You, Sir, absolutely win the Internet today :-)

Frozen foods supermarket chain deploys facial recognition tech

Re: Organized and targeted retail crime is out of control.

Oh yeah, happens all the time: bunch of masked geezers rock up in a stolen Transit and force a cashier to fill their cool-bags with Iceland's discount own-brand ice lollies....

/s

Re: Hmm

@Hawkeye:

You say "Let's be clear, this is primarily about anti-shoplifting. Not about anti-violence. It can't possibly stop someone hitting a shopworker although it might help catch and prosecute such a person after the event." but, according to the article, the system doesn't store images if there's no match - so a 'new face' could rob Iceland of absolutely everything in the store, help themselves to the tills and clear off - and the system won't be any use at all in helping to identify the perp.

As I understand it, the system can only flag up someone as matching once they're in the store and then alert staff to the fact. What action the staff take is debatable though: if the suspect is known for being violent, it can't be shop policy to confront them. If someone is known to shoplift but generally does it discreetly and peacefully then I suppose staff can make it obvious that they're being watched. So yes, it's all about discouraging opportunistic shoplifting, which is probably a far bigger problem for Iceland than 'violent crime' will ever be.

Same problem blights all the retailers so I expect other supermarkets will watch how this is accepted by the public and then roll out the same tech as soon as they feel they can get away with it.

SpaceX's Starship explodes again ... while still on the ground

Re: “Starships might land on Mars in 2026”

In fairness, the bang was big enough to have sent some bits in the right direction for a touchdown on Mars. D'ya think he'll count that as a partial win?

/s

Do you trust Xi with your 'private' browsing data? Apple, Google stores still offer China-based VPNs, report says

Shirley they have their uses

If I wanted to blow the whistle on corruption involving senior-level ministers anywhere in the west, then going via a Chinese VPN might be a good choice - less chance of anyone over there willingly handing over logs to any US/UK/EU security services. Sadly, I imagine they're favoured by a number of less salubrious users who want another layer of isolation: drug or arms dealers, for example. Again, as long as the deals stay well clear of the middle kingdom's territory or interests and they can't be accused of knowingly aiding, etc. then I doubt they'd have any real motivation to spill the beans.

On the flip side, if I wanted to send details of my latest chip fab, world-beating car, corporate investment strategy or whatever, I would probably be well advised to select a VPN whose integrity I'm more likely to be able to hold to account.*

*for reasonable values of 'account'

Half of businesses rethink ditching humans for customer service bots

Just checking

Is this latest report by the same Gartner that, a couple of years ago, was waxing lyrical to CTO's about how AI was going to replace the workforce - or was that another, entirely different, Gartner?

Tinfoil hat wearers can thank AI for declassification of JFK docs

Re: never a good idea to outsource your smarts

Very true. It amazes me that any gubbermint - of whatever persuasion - thinks it's clever to put national security information into the hands of third parties.

However, the biggest risk remains the people rather than the tech. Witness various strike plans being shared in a Signal group. I don't wish to name an individual but Pete Hegseth will know who I'm talking about. In-house ultra-secured systems, double-tripple encrypted cloud with bells on or simply stuffed down the back of a toilet in someone's washroom: all count for nothing when you have someone who goes around shooting their mouth off.

Field support chap got married – which took down a mainframe

Back in my uni days we had a lecturer who'd spent time working with mech. engineers on ships. It didn't take much to get him to go off topic and recount some past adventures. I can vividly remember him, completely unaware he was doing it, automatically feeding his tie between two shirt buttons to keep it out of trouble. Muscle memory.

Trump lifts US supersonic flight ban, says he's 'Making Aviation Great Again'

There's an obvious cure for that: he could hire an assistant and get all the way to twenty by counting their digits.

I am sure he is well aware that some models are willing to use their hands or fingers for monetary gain. Doubtless he can come to some arrangement.

/s

What will UK government workers do with an extra 26 minutes a day?

26 mins per person, per day?

For #deity's sake, don't let Farage know. He'll only use that as cast-iron proof that public departments are over staffed!

Personally, I think they need to measure productivity not time-per-task. As pointed out above, there's actually money wasted if a task has to be redone if the 'help' turns out to have provided woefully inaccurate/wrong data.

Tesla FSD ignores school bus lights and hits 'child' dummy in staged demo

Re: Theoretical Liability vs True Liability

Umm... do all schoolchildren live on the same side of the road where you come from? 'round here, there appears to be a fairly even distribution of them on both sides which means some *have* to cross the road (unless the bus makes two passes down every street - which seems a little excessive but I don't live in murica and may well be making an assumption).

And on crossing the road, the safest option is obviously waiting until the bus has buggered off so you have the clearest view but if you have to go early, I'd suggest passing in front of the bus for one very good reason: it puts several tons of metal between you and the inattentive driver who's about to rear-end the bus. There's also a chance the bus driver - who's just let you off so they KNOW you're there - will use their mirrors and so give you a second set of eyes on approaching traffic. But, hey, if Darwin tells you to do it differently, you crack on ;)

Re: Statistics

When I was studying for a private pilot license, reading up on human performance and limitations was very much a thing. I recall a paper that reported that, in repeated testing, it generally took around 6 seconds for aircrew to fully appraise themselves of the situation if an autopilot was disengaged without giving them prior warning.

Car drivers are less frequently trained in dealing with emergencies (hell, they're mostly very poorly trained in general - and I include myself in that cohort) and, although they only have to worry about two dimensions - unless things have gone very pear-shaped - I very much doubt the average car-driver could take over control from a FSD system quickly enough to safely deal with a situation the software has been unable resolve in good time.

Barclays Bank signs 100k license Copilot deal with Microsoft

Effective marketing all those years ago

When I was starting my first year of uni and needed a bank account there was a protest against Barclays for their continued support for Apartheid. 'Boerclays' was the moniker used and I guess it really stuck in my mind: I've never used them for personal banking, nor have any of the businesses I've had a hand in. And they're investing in some kind of AI, hu? Call me cynical but I doubt it'll improve things.

Get a custom paint job for earbuds at a nail salon, type on a baguette, then build a fountain for your PC

Re: Earbud decoration

The market is probably wider than you might think. Around here, there's a dog-groomers who found there's very healthy business in not only shampooing and cutting the fur of someone's lap-dog but going so far as to dye the damn thing. They also do a very tidy line in painting the dog's nails to match the owner's car, outfit or whatever.

It's all about making a fashion statement - and I invite you to look at Vuitton handbags as an example of how far people will go in that regard.

Some English hospitals doubt Palantir's utility: We'd 'lose functionality rather than gain it'

Re: Looking at this from the correct perspective

Given the apparently leader-sanctioned power and data grabs that seems to be going in the US right now, I think it'd be a dereliction of duty for UK PLC not to review matters and ask if it's appropriate for an American corporation to have unfettered access to the health records of the entire nation.

Hell, even on a good day, that question should have been asked - but I guess the right people got invites to the right sporting events or whatever and they 'forgot' to check.

Scammers are deepfaking voices of senior US government officials, warns FBI

The irony

Didn't the White House recently issue an image of The Great Leader dressed as the Pope? Clearly they endorse the use of such fakery.

I can hear the words of my dear old mum echoing back to me: If it all goes wrong, you'll only have yourself to blame

Go ahead and ignore Patch Tuesday – it might improve your security

Patch? Yes - but maybe the greatest threat lies elsewhere

I'd suggest patching - for all the rather good reason JimmyPage offers: if you don't patch and you get compromised, your underwriters will almost certainly walk away from any claim. However, as Redmond prove pretty much every time, being an early adopter of patches might put you at significant risk of falling over.

Despite this the greatest threat of compromise appears to come from social engineered attacks so, while patches are required and should be applied in good time (testing on non-live, etc notwithstanding), most companies would see a greater increase in security by better educating their user base.

Linus Torvalds goes back to a mechanical keyboard after making too many typos

Re: Slow news day?

Given Cherry keyboards feature, I'd say the article is the very definition of clickbait ;)

I'll see myself out

Microsoft moved the goalposts once. Will Windows 12 bring another shift?

I think they're pretty much there already: Office 362 (note to self: check I got that name right!) is subscription but so too are all the cloudy bits from pretty much everyone. It's only a small mindset change to incorporate the client-side OS as part of one big corporate deal. Plus there's arguably an advantage in renting if you're looking to polish the company accounts: operational expenses - 'running costs' if you prefer - look way better on the balance sheet than sinking a pot-load of cash in buying stuff that depreciates.

Rent to businesses for income, pretty much give it away to education to assure future income (people brought up on a crap diet rarely change their habits) and the home market? Now mobiles do so much, I'd be surprised if the 'home user, full fat desktop' market generates anything like the revenue it did 10-15 years ago.

So your [expletive] test failed. So [obscene participle] what?

Re: Didn't see it myself

Not being a particularly skilled coder, when I was trying to write some browser/server routines, I'd often return a 'hello:' and append a string containing references to whatever.

I learnt to always, always do a global search for 'hello' before releasing the code. It's surprising how often one or two showed up, no matter how carefully I thought I'd been working!

People find amazing ways to break computers. Cats are even more creative

Labs can be daft

Growing up, we had a Lab that recognised the sound of the 3kW fan heater my parents used to try to warm the dining room and would lie in front of it. So close you'd get whiffs of burnt fur. Bruce didn't seem to notice this - being double-coated fur, I doubt he suffered any ill effects. However, the fan heater couldn't 'breathe' properly and its internal thermostat would trip. One pissed-off Lab would then drag himself off to the settee or other warmish spot...then dutifully plonk himself down in front of the fan heater as soon as the thermostat clicked back out and the thing started making a noise again. He could keep this cycle going for hours, apparently.

Fujitsu and its no public sector bids promises... what happened to them?

And the Postmasters?

It's worth pointing out that, to date, Fujitsu have paid out exactly £0 to the Postmasters affected by the Horizon debacle.

Fortunately, over the same time period Fujitsu shareholders have been lucky enough to get much, much better returns so that's all okay.

/sarcasm

The one interview question that will protect you from North Korean fake workers

What?

Employing people unseen and without sufficient background checking is asking for trouble. In the example given, it'd be easy enough to check: there'll be a Polish support group within reach who would almost certainly welcome a few corporate bucks in exchange for a quick chat in their native tongue with this 'valuable candidate'. Let's see how quickly a North Korean can pick up that particular lingo!

I'm assuming the glorious C-suites that fell foul of this 'hijacking' are the very same people who discover they have rich relatives in Nigeria who inexplicably die in car wrecks. Perhaps El Reg would be kind enough to list them: I've got a couple of bridges that I need to get rid of...

AI training license will allow LLM builders to pay for content they consume

I don't see it working for one simple reason

The folk who want copyrights to be protected are diverse and distributed the world over.

The LLM's are generally owned by monied people who, it seems, bankrolled those in power.

How do *you* think this will end?