Posts by cyberdemon

Blackstone invests £10B to build Europe's 'biggest AI datacenter' in UK

I think it'll be a similar case to the previous owner of the site: Trouser the bungs and run

Capita wins £135M extension on much-delayed UK smart meter rollout

Re: Italian Job

> It would be far, far, far, far more dangerous, for example, to have traffic lights that can accept remote commands to make them green. And I bet you we already have that too.

No, we most certainly do not.

Traffic controllers have a secondary monitoring chip (usually m68k micro, sometimes a GAL chip) that is programmable only locally. It has independent voltage sensors to detect if conflicting 'phases' (ie approaches to a junction) are green simultaneously, and will cut the power immediately if violated.

The main controller does not usually have direct network access either, it only sees a pattern of 16 bits with dedicated functions, for synchronising traffic lights across an urban network. And a bit can only 'request' a state transition, the controller will never violate min/max timings between lights.

I worked on these as my first job out of uni.

Also, I think it's pretty unlikely that someone could set up a radio transmitter big enough to drown out Droitwich, without being noticed pretty damn quick by the MoD..

As for "hacking" Droitwich, it's pretty low tech and i'd have thought fairly high security. Crapita would be a far easier target IMO

Re: A solution to a problem that didn't exist

Well, what I meant by 'a new kind of load shedding' is doing it in advance before frequency response is required, so that frequency response should not be required.

Also, doing it to "decarbonise the grid" by switching off customers who haven't paid the protection money"green levy", and thus avoid calling on gas plants when the wind stops blowing. Switching off a few old pensioners sat in front of their electric fires may be cheaper / longer duration than batteries..

By refusing a Smart Meter, I am opting out of all that malarkey and hopefully delaying its implementation.

Re: £5 a month saving

Basically John, what i'd like you, Crapita, Ofgem, and/or NGESO to demonstrate is:

That it is not technically feasible for a bad actor (and I don't mean Tom Cruise) who has already compromised Crapita's IT systems, to issue a command to a large number (say 10 million) Smart Meters and get them to "simultaneously" disconnect (i.e. within the same half-hour interval).

If such a hack is feasible, then I believe it could cause a high-frequency event big enough to cause cascade failures such as high-frequency generator disconnection, interconnector trips, etc. leading to a nationwide blackout and "black start" procedures.

It beggars belief for me that the Smart Metering spec mandated remote disconnect (for ALL, not just prepay customers) in the first place. It makes the meters more expensive, less reliable, and there is bugger all good reason to need to use the functionality. So why is it in the spec? (para. 5.5.3.9 Disable Supply)

Re: A solution to a problem that didn't exist

It will be a new type of load shedding that looks a lot like racketeering:

disconnect anyone who hasn't paid the premium to be kept online

I guarantee this will start happening as soon as we reach 99% smart meter adoption

Re: £5 a month saving

It's against the law to force people onto prepayment meters if they have never missed a payment.

Yet smart meters have remote disconnect capability built into their hardware, software and comms specs. So they are able to get everyone onto remote controlled meters by the back door.

Also prepayment meters didn't need a data connection..

Smart meters are just a national cyberattack waiting to happen.. And they are controlled by Crapita! Are you so confident in Crapita's IT security?

Re: £5 a month saving

No they are not just half hourly meters

They are half-hourly meters with a remote controlled disconnect switch

That's the single biggest reason why i'm not having one

OpenAI to reveal secret training data in copyright case – for lawyers' eyes only

Re: Wait a second...

And IF it is searchable, will it even be possible for the lawyers to tell that system apart from a LLM?

Re: Another reason for such secrecy

> They'll likely soon find out that they are presented something equivalent to a full warehouse of endless piles of unsorted printed paper with the companies la[w]yers saying with a big grin on their face "it's all in there and you are free to see and search it all, just don't take any copies or papers with you".

And any compensation will be paid in $1 bills, of which at least some will be counterfeit

Google files first ever complaint with European Commission against Microsoft

A pox on both their houses

Something about a Pot and a Kettle ...

With Granite Rapids, Intel is back to trading blows with AMD

You mean like this for example?

NIST: New smoke alarms are better at detecting fires, but still go off for bacon

Re: Learn to cook?

> It's not really hard...

> Keep in mind the differential equation for heat transfer.

It really is Grim up North London ...

Re: Not in kitchen >you need sprinklers!

These are called high pressure water mist sprinklers. They don't use enough water to cause a chip pan fire to erupt, but they cool the air very effectively

A huge week for satnav as both China and Europe make generational launches

Re: Radio doesn't go through water well

Not sure how you could do triangulation with a single antenna?

I am as skeptical as you on the practicality of getting anything to deep ocean though - it may just be scare tactics to panic military generals worried about underwater nuke drones

Starlink's new satellites emit 30x more radio interference than before, drowning cosmic signals

Re: Just for curious...

Starlink only becomes "useful" briefly at the fleeting moments of Armageddon, when warring states start chopping comms cables all over the oceans.

Musk is both predicting and accelerating this apocalypse, and stands to make a pointless profit while the world goes to Hell.

No way? Big Tech's 'lucrative surveillance' of everyone is terrible for privacy, freedom

The post is required, and must contain letters.

But in this case the icon suffices

Lebanon now hit with deadly walkie-talkie blasts as Israel declares ‘new phase’ of war

> Without any Customs systems detecting the odor of PETN,

Maybe they forgot to load the PETN "substance detection card" into their divination-based bomb detectors

Re: end Game

Er, can I take option 1?

LinkedIn started harvesting people's posts for training AI without asking for opt-in

LinkedIn

• A platform for scams, in the form of fake employment offers
• A platform for malware distribution, in the form of fake interview questions
• A platform for blacklisting whistleblowers
• A platform for stalking
• A platform for surveillance and data collection
• A data mine with which to train AI to replace future workers

What else is it good for?

Lebanon: At least nine dead, thousands hurt after Hezbollah pagers explode

Re: Technology question

> May be the explosives where hidden in a 'special' batch of AAA batteries.

I suppose this could explain why 'walkie-talkies' also started exploding recently..

But as AC pointed out above, reports indicate they were rechargeable via a USB-C port.

Re: Technology question

Plausible - but for me the most plausible explanation is that the boobytrapped batteries were designed to explode (with a dedicated explosive charge) when short-circuited. e.g. an electric fuse (such as those used by professional fireworks) placed in series with the battery, perhaps with a diode across it to stop it exploding when charging. Normal operation wouldn't draw enough current to set it off, but if the pager suddenly started drawing a lot of current, it would ignite the fuse.

Re: Technology question

Only if combined with a thermally-triggered explosive.

The explosion itself could NOT have been caused by a normal lithium battery, it was far too "sharp". Lithium batteries just don't explode that way. Smoke, yes. Flames, yes. Percussive shock, no.

Re: we're not going to be able to travel with any battery powered equipment

Let's hope that the enhanced scanners at airports (the ones that can tell a bottle of liquid explosive from a bottle of gin) are reliably able to pick up these boobytrapped batteries then, otherwise it's just another excuse to limit everyone's freedom of travel, ahead of WWIII..

Re: Cigarettes?

Please do. Also with Vapes, it's even easier to do an evil indiscriminate supply-chain attack.. Apparently Uranium has been found in the fake flavour-infused nicotine. What next? Polonium?

Re: Cigarettes?

It doesn't do PD. It charges at 5V 0.5A according to my PinePower.

The uC is ostensibly for driving a single RGB LED, for which it has three extra transistors on the board.

It doesn't enumerate on USB, but I wonder if it might, if you spoke in chinese and told it that you are the secret police and you want it to divulge conversation logs of its former user..

Re: Conspiracy

The only difference, so far as I can see, is that a petrol tank aka "gas tank" can be more easily inspected. Battery packs are sealed at the manufacturer (usually a different manufacturer to the car) and are fairly difficult to dismantle, and doing so would usually be destructive / void the warranty, so batteries are a more ideal place to hide explosives. But that doesn't mean this sort of thing can't be done with any other product.

This has nothing to do with batteries per se, more to do with blindly trusting imported black-box tech.

Cigarettes?

Unlikely, but I am going to be a lot more suspicious about vapes in future!

I noticed recently that some disposables have a suspiciously large amount of electronics i.e. what looks a microcontroller (qfn24 package, no part number, natch, but identical package to many esp32 chips), soic8 (flash chip?), digital microphone (well, they use microphones as a vacuum sensor, but no reason why this one couldn't listen if it has a microcontroller) as well as what looks suspiciously like a PCB antenna. This is in addition to the usual charge control ic and transistors.

The vape in question is an "IVG Air 2400" if anyone else would like to take a look!

Battery looks normal but it is far bigger than it needs to be!

Makes me feel like a paranoid nutjob that I even bothered to look, but this recent news from Lebanon is.. Worrying.

Ellison declares Oracle all-in on AI mass surveillance, says it'll keep everyone in line

Re: Citizens will be on their best behavior because we're constantly recording and reporting

Except of course, that they have the keys to erase the records of whatever the AI flagged up about themselves...

Microsoft confirms IE bug squashed in Patch Tuesday was exploited zero-day

File extension hiding..?

IE needs to die, but "making a file extension appear harmless" doesn't sound like it should be a CVSS 8.8?

The real problem is that Windows itself hides file extensions by default, and at the same time relies on file extensions to decide whether a file is executable or not, and if not, which executable to pass it to, and which icon to display it with.

An executable file pretending to be a .DOC file will have executable headers, so should never be presented as a "Word Document" file by any OS that gives a toss about security..

Elon Musk's assassination 'joke' bombs, internet calls for his deportation

Re: Hypothetically

Er yes, it was obviously, er, a "terrorist command post" ...

To Mars!

Maybe we should deport him to Mars on one of his own rockets?

The natives may be unimpressed though

Telcos scolded for unwanted erection of utility poles in race to wire up Britain

Re: I remember when it was all fields around here...

Indeed, and such a headline would oft have been written by one Alistair Dabbs... Probably part of the reason why the cretinous merkins who are now in charge got rid of him.

Feds pull plug on domains linked to import of Chinese gun conversion devices

Re: Shutting down the web sites is not the answer

Isn't that called "entrapment" ?

At the end of the day, it's just a bit of plastic, that people can and do make with a 3D printer. It should not be this thing which is the illegal thing..

Google bets on carbon capture tech to clean up its mess – in the 2030s

Re: Carbon removal credits

There are billions-per-year in bungs available, so of course they are going to at least pretend they are doing something, to collect said bungs..

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/sep/12/fossil-fuel-companies-environment-greenwashing

But no, DAC is not "promising", it's a waste of time, money, and energy.

Great if you're a greenwashing startup who can collect free money based on nothing more than marketing bilge and a few screenshots from "Train Simulator" though! (https://www.co2rail.com/)

The future everyone wanted – in-car ads tailored to your journey and passengers

Re: Another strong argument...

So, buy the patent and then sue the pants off anyone who tries to do any of this

Russia's top-secret military unit reportedly plots undersea cable 'sabotage'

Not sure why I got 15 downvotes and zero replies for that one.. /shrug

Resilience is important, especially when you are under attack. We have traded resilience for (short-term/transient) profit..

But, you are entitled to your votes :D

Replacing resilient and dispatchable power generation with renewables and subsea interconnectors is even more daft.. Yet the UK is doing exactly this despite Russian belligerence.. Even onshore transmission lines i.e. pylons are being replaced by undersea HVDC cables thanks to idiots like Priti Patel.. Sometimes I think she and her Brexit chums are working for the Russians..

Feds urge 3D printing industry to end DIY machine guns

Re: Tax / Restrict Ammo?

> ...uh...no. That would be a pipe bomb. Try it and see

Well, a 3D printed gun is also known as a small bomb that explodes in the user's face and injures them ..

Re: Tax / Restrict Ammo?

I suspect you would be better off with a catapult..

Re: Tax / Restrict Ammo?

And I bet all of that (plus your time) would make a 500% tax look cheap

And the only people who might bother doing that are already on terror watch lists, because anyone who can do all that could alternatively make a bomb..

Tax / Restrict Ammo?

Surely that is the sensible solution?

Any idiot can make a "gun" (ultimately it's just a short piece of pipe...), but it's far more difficult to make ammunition. So instead of "going ballistic" about 3D printed gun parts, why not instead make ammo both very expensive and hard to get hold of?

At that point, 3D printed auto-sears would become pointless, if each bullet costs 20 dollars and most of them miss

Datacenters to emit 3x more carbon dioxide because of generative AI

Re: CCUS..

> Trees ...

Yes, absolutely. But not if you chop them down, dry them into pellets and burn them in a "negative emissions" BECCS plant like Drax is hoping to claim Billions in annual UK subsidies for!

CCUS..

Only one little problem: It doesn't work.

At least not on anywhere near the scale needed.

OpenAI co-founder's Safe Superintelligence startup inhales $1B in funding

> Could I be a "Non-linear neural network layer expert"?

Let me step in for Mr Badger for a second and say:

At VapourAI, we have an Equal Opportunities Hiring Policy: We'll literally hire Anyone, until the day we run out of investor's cash.

You're Hired

Etc etc, insert yet more marketing bilge to make gormless investors drool......

Don't forget to offer free cocaine and whisky at the funding pitch

Competition watchdog accuses Google of abusing ad dominance

News just in: The Pope accuses Satan of being 'Evil'

The devil defends his position, claiming that he dropped his "Don't be Evil" policy aeons ago..

AI's thirst for water is alarming, but may solve itself

Re: Rain

these motile fungoids?

Defense AI models 'a risk to life' alleges spurned tech firm

"Simply put, US DoD algorithmic warfare models are not fit for purpose and pose a risk to life,"

Surely all "algorithmic warfare models" pose a risk to life

Pat Gelsinger's grand plan to reinvent Intel is in jeopardy

Sadly, I think Intel have long forgotten how to design CPUs. All they do is incrementally improve (or worsen) existing designs, and have done for decades.

I have known a handful of ex-Intel refugees, and they all independently told me that the company is a cult - anyone who dares have a new idea is marginalised.