Posts by xanadu42 148 publicly visible posts • joined 24 Jan 2013
... that the "AI shopping agent" will select a product that provides the highest kickback to the author of said "AI shopping agent"?
Why waste your time searching for the "best price" for a product when your magical "AI shopping agent" can magically do it for you?
Are people that gullible?
Just like "architecting" (a Gerund of Architect) being applied to computer coding or other expertise not related to what an Architect is/does... (ie design "buildings" ,and maybe oversee building of same)
Why not say "designing" or "developing" when being applied to computer coding?
"Vibe Coding" is going to go nowhere because it cannot generate anything new - all it can do is re-hash existing code based on whatever "black-box AI" process executed at the time complete with all of the "worst" (or is that best) of examples of security fails...
Without an understanding of what is "vibed" the "vibe coder" will not learn...
Late last year and early this year a small number (5-10?) of my clients (here in Australia) showed me the Microsoft email regarding the fee changes...
I DEFINITELY remember that there was NO REFERENCE to a "Classic" version "without price-increase" being mentioned...
I DO NOT remember if the emails were in regard to "Personal" or "Family"
Microsoft's "Apology" seems to me to be an attempt to reduce potential fines of:
a) $50 million
b) three times the total benefits that have been obtained and are reasonably attributable, or
c) if the total value of the benefits cannot be determined, 30 per cent of the corporation’s adjusted turnover during the breach turnover period.
[ref: https://www.accc.gov.au/media-release/microsoft-in-court-for-allegedly-misleading-millions-of-australians-over-microsoft-365-subscriptions ]
The article states that "... other rendering engines, Firefox (Gecko engine) and Safari (WebKit engine), and both were immune to the attack ..."
Your example of a vulnerability across two different "engines" suggests to me that the Javascipt/ECMAScript Specification may be the issue and that the two different "engines" correctly reproduced the fault in the Specification...
And which "Phoenix" web browser are you referring to? The 2002 browser that became Firefox or some other, later, web browser using the same name?
I would be more impressed with an example of a Firefox-Only vulnerability with the same severity as this!
The problem is with the email that was sent to the person paying the subscription for MS 365...
This email, which I first saw about six months ago, mentioned nothing about the current version of MS 365 being available without CoPilot AND without a fee increase. Anyone reading this email would have no idea that they could keep their current subscription unchanged (AND for the same fee) and would likely assume that they have to live with the increased fee...
The fact that you could ONLY find out about using MS 365 without CoPilot when you elected to cancel the subscription is a problem... Especially for the average user of MS 365 (Personal and Family) who (based on my clients so affected) had no idea they they could even "manage" their subscription...
According to these articles which were published earlier this year:
https://reporter.anu.edu.au/all-stories/is-working-from-home-better-than-being-at-the-office
https://theconversation.com/more-than-two-thirds-of-organisations-have-a-formal-work-from-home-policy-heres-how-the-benefits-stack-up-251598
A "tailored approach" is required that allows an employee to work from home or in the office as works "best" for the employee...
"... there was no notable difference in productivity between employees working from home versus in the office."
"32% of Australian employees would prefer to exclusively work from home, 41% prefer a hybrid option, while 27% prefer to work exclusively from the office."
So we have:
HAL from "2001, A Space Odyssey"
WOPR from "War Games"
Skynet from "The Terminator"
All are fictional accounts of AI that became malicious but only Skynet approaches the stupidity we are seeing today...
I just wonder who will be the hero that saves us?
See following link for clarification of exclusions
https://www.esafety.gov.au/about-us/industry-regulation/social-media-age-restrictions/faqs#c-accordion--13725-content
Legislative rules excluding certain types of online services were made by the Minister for Communications following advice from the eSafety Commissioner and consultation with youth groups, parents, carers, the digital industry and civil society groups, as well as experts in child development, mental health and law.
The exclusions apply to:
services that have the sole or primary purpose of messaging, email, voice calling or video calling
services that have the sole or primary purpose of enabling users to play online games with other users
services that have the sole or primary purpose of enabling users to share information about products or services
services that have the sole or primary purpose of enabling users to engage in professional networking or professional development
services that have the sole or primary purpose of supporting the education of users
services that have the sole or primary purpose of supporting the health of users
services that have the sole or significant purpose of facilitating communication between educational institutions and students or student families
services that have the significant purpose of facilitating communication between health care providers and people using those services.
I've known about this issue for at least a decade: plants interfere with radio waves...
After a few minutes of "re-search" I found this 2003 article: https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2002RS002758
There are probably articles of similar nature that pre-date this but I couldn't be bothered wasting more than a few minutes...
Granted the above article is over 20 years old, the vegetation of concern is trees, the aerials are much larger and transmit powers much higher than WiFi, but one of the investigated radio frequencies is near WiFi's 2.4GHz...
So, IMHO, Broadband Genie's "news" is not new... (And why didn't El Reg pick this up?)
In this world of "AI regenerated stories" I have to wonder if this "news" may have been generated from "AI research"?
"Microsoft is aiming the tool at administrators who deal with resetting or migrating devices (assuming users are running apps from the Microsoft Store) ..."
Surely ANY SysAdmin would deny use of "Microsoft Store" apps for storing of important data!!??
Seems more like a disaster creator than a "solution"
Isn't the lack of regulation of SkyNet what lead to Terminator?
Once the Genie is out of it's bottle it is very difficult to put it back in...
I prefer the EU approach of "It's better to be safe than sorry" over the US approach of "move fast and break things" especially considering all the harm that the current "AI" is already creating...
"No web designer is building on Firefox first any more."
There is at least one - me :)
I use Firefox first BECAUSE it seems to have a 'standards-compliant browser engine' based on what I think should occur based on the (not so well defined) 'Standards' (which Google now has too much control over - another story)...
After that I check with the 'other' web-browsers and fix any 'anomalies' (which are minor).
When I first started web design (15+ years ago) I built against Google Chrome but the 'non-chrome' web-browsers at that time had too many (minor, but annoying) issues that took way too much time to fix...
"Mozilla should be a nonprofit, working to fund the one independent, non-vendor-driven, standards-compliant browser engine"
Agreed - Mozilla should be a 'REAL' non-profit (is that a thing in the US of A?)
The C-Suites have taken (and are taking) too much money out of the 'Mozilla Foundation'
The C-Suites have taken (and are taking) too much control of the 'Mozilla Foundation'
Sack ALL of the C-Suites
At seven years of age I didn't even know what a computer was - it wasn't until ten years later I saw my first one! That computer was an A4 size printed circuit board with (I think) a Z80 CPU, four 7-segment LED's, 256 bytes of RAM and was programmed by a bank of 10? toggle switches...
About all you could do with it was make the LED's flash in pretty patterns...
I you liken "AI" to an elephant and security measures as cotton balls (as padding) then the security currently being applied to "AI" is like a half-dozen cotton balls being applied across the skin of the elephant..
The elephant can obviously still cause a lot of damage (like the proverbial "bull in a china shop") as the security is ineffective.
What is really needed is enough cotton balls to cover the elephant to a thickness that you can no longer recognise it as an elephant.
The elephant can still do damage but all the padding will lessen it a little...
So...Gartner is saying the "cloud client" is at fault when in fact it is the "cloud provider" for:
1) misrepresenting the simplicity if the migration;
2) providing useless support;
3) providing useless documentation (if any at all);
4) providing "out of the box" systems that are poorly configured and inherently insecure, and
5) providing overly complicated controls.
All of which the client "discovers" after signing their data away and thee "'tech teams" valiantly trying the get the "cloud" to work like their on-premises systems did...
Seems that no matter what Micro$oft product you are using you WILL be forced to use their "AI" enshittification :(
Micro$oft's belief in Nuclear Fusion and Majorana quantum computing being available in the next couple of years seem to be their driving force...
Pity that viable Nuclear Fusion is still decades away and Majorana quantum computing seems to be a well-developed hoax - based on my readings
"I always knew the Americans were nuts but this is getting to be well beyond what I thought was possible"
Not ALL Americans...
According to https://www.cfr.org/article/2024-election-numbers:
"... voter turnout nationally in [the] 2024 [Presidential elections] was 63.9 percent"
"More than 155 million Americans voted in 2024: 156,302,318 to be exact."
(Pulls out Calculator) Based on the above numbers there are around 244,604,566 voters in America and around 88,302,248 eligible voters didn't vote...
"Trump won 77,284,118 votes, or 49.8 percent of the votes cast for president."
"Kamala Harris won 74,999,166 votes or 48.3 percent of the votes cast.
Which means around 4,019,034 who DID vote DIDN'T vote for Trump or Harris as President...
Which means that, of eligible voters who actually voted, 79,018,200 (or 50.5%) DID NOT vote for Trump as President
Add in the 36.1% of eligible voters who didn't vote and it means that 68.4% of eligible voters DID NOT vote for Trump as President
So NOT ALL Americans...
(Bet that many who didn't vote now wish they had!)
A few years ago I bought an HP OfficeJet Pro 8740 for around $AUD450 (an ink-jet printer) because it was the only available Printer/Scanner with two paper tray and document feeder
Recently bought complete new set of cartridges - cheapest I could find was $AUD390
Two downsides:
1) cost of cartridges
2) claimed scanner resolution doesn't seem accurate when comparing same DPI scan between the HP and a Canon scanner over 10 years older (the Canon creates a clearer scan)
Based on this my next Printer/Scanner with same requirements WILL NOT BE an HP
Good Investment HP, NOT!
... but as a "seasoned developer" I have to wonder about the age of the (group of) developer(s) who created the code that enabled this exploit AND the "average" age of the people who reviewed the code and allowed it to be released...
According to
https://www.thedailyvpn.com/what-is-the-average-age-of-a-coder/
the age ranges of Developers are:
<18: 2.5%
18-24: 23.6%
25-34: 49.2%
35-44: 17.8%
45-54: 5.1%
55-64: 1.5%
>65: 0.3%
My age puts me in the "top" 1.8% (only just) :(
So when I say "seasoned developer" it means that I have been developing software (across various platforms, in various languages, that covers hardware control, virus detection, data forensics and website development - to name a few) for longer than the age of 75% of current Developers
Fuck - reading this article has made me feel REALLY OLD!
My servers were similarly hammered late last year by Facebook- and ByteDance- related IP's and/or UserAgents with absolutely no respect for robots.txt which clearly states "User-agent: *" and "Crawl-delay: 10"
Based on the hammering I assume that their bots assumed "Crawl-delay: 10" meant a delay of 10ms NOT 10s
All of these, allegedly "AI" bots, can F-Off as far as I am concerned!
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