Posts by JimmyPage

Trump gives state AI regulation the presidential middle finger

Ruling by royal decree

always ends well.

Porsche panic in Russia as pricey status symbols forget how to car

"It wasn't a hack"

Mandy Rice Davies applies.

Death to one-time text codes: Passkeys are the new hotness in MFA

Don't let perfection be the enemy of progress

I'd rather be 95% covered by a best we can get process than 10% covered whilst the boffins argue over 100%.

As long as I keep my online security better than any number of outfits who manage to get themselves hacked, I am fairly relaxed.

The time to worry is when there aren't a weekly list of breaches at companies valued at billions of dollars.

Pension portal launch fail sends Capita running to Microsoft for help

Did I read it right ?

They need 500 hundred (five fucking hundred) full time employees (and the use of "FTE" seems a weasel way to smuggle another 1,000 part time employees under the radar).

500 FTEs to do what, pray tell ?

I could reduce that by 90%, by simply using email and dealing with queries properly, rather than the WHAT THE FUCK ARE WE DOING IN 2025 insistence on a phone number with an inbuilt 30 minute wait time.

I'm no great fan of the "UK is dead and doesn't know it" school of politics as espoused by that cunt Farage and his suspiciously foreign cronies. However, it's hard not to think there is some truth in it when I read shit like this.

OpenAI turns the screws on chatbots to get them to confess mischief

Missing the point (again)

In the absence of a single universally accepted definition of "intelligence", I maintain my position that in order for something to be called "intelligent" it has to encompass the ability do supply misinformation as part of it's operation.

And it it can't, it is not intelligent.

This is not a value judgement. It is a simple empirical fact that as part of a *living* organisms drive to survive, the ability to misdirect is essential.

If you make an "AI" lash up that cannot tell a lie, you do not get an electronic George Washington. You get a complex machine that isn't intelligent.

I've been saying this since (checks) 1985, when I spent a term doing the non-IT bit of my degree. Grey Walter tortoises and all that.

Lawyer's 6-year-old son uses AI to build copyright infringement generator

Meanwhile, ChatGPT

has started refusing to answer questions about gardening because (it's words) "My programming does not allow me to assist in activities that may be harmful".

When I entered the obvious "WTF are you on about", it replied that "Certain plants have been shown to be harmful and I cannot advise on their cultivation",

Which is all very well, but it was a question about what plants are best for borders.

Samsung reveals its first tri-fold phone – and its desktop mode

Not a single mention of any "AI" ...

Does this mean there is none ? Or that it's now assumed.

What a great article.

Another open source project dies of neglect, leaving thousands scrambling

Re: WTF?

Add to that yesterdays doozy that not many Regtards would understand how radiation can zap memory, and you get the feeling it's the readers who should do the writing, and the writers who need to read up.

Swiss government says give M365, and all SaaS, a miss as it lacks end-to-end encryption

It would stil be Someone Elses Encryption

Which is as good as having none, if you are really serious. Otherwise it's all posturing.

Or, to put it another way (for the less bright).

Whose E2E encryption would *you* trust ?

Aviation delays ease as airlines complete Airbus software rollback

Left unexplained, for now, is exactly how intense solar radiation corrupts data.

This isn't the BBC. We know how.

Dorset Council ditching customized SAP for £14M Oracle overhaul

What the fuck are UK local authorities doing

that every single one seems to "need" a bespoke custom solution (a tautology, but it's what the sales droids say).

Brit telco Brsk confirms breach as bidding begins for 230K+ customer records

Surely it's a data

Brch ?

Windows keeps obsolete strings forever to avoid breaking translations

Of all the ways you cloud have done it

dedicated resource DLLs are probably the worst.

OBR drags in cyber bigwig after Budget leak blunder

Thank goodness they had a made for purpose CRM system

and not some cheap and nasty FOSS solution that has been tried and tested for decades.

I feel safe and secure knowing how the UK government is so competent in things I am an expert in.

Canadian data order risks blowing a hole in EU sovereignty

With all of this pantomime

Why are firms not encrypting the data themselves ?

Yes, it may need some work. But if it's beyond the wit of people reading this then frankly what is the point of IT ?

Any legal issues are secondary

to financial ones.

VMware isn’t budging in its pursuit of Siemens for alleged unpaid licenses

EU and UK

Er, just the EU. as far as I can tell (purely based on reporting) the UK is just the 51st state when it comes to US companies and their law.

Apple’s lousy AI didn’t stop it beating Samsung’s smartphone sales for the first time since 2011

Re: Alternative headline:

Well I find my A7 (which I took from a previous job) does everything I need.

An "AI" less iPhone ?

I really could be tempted/

Dell says Windows 11 transition is far slower than Win 10 shift as PC sales stall

Don't knock AI - it could be the future.

Has anyone seen the video where a dedicated hacker has used the AI chips in his new PC to keep his coffee warm, and toast a muffin ?

NASA pares back Boeing's Starliner deal after 2024 calamity

You can start to understand

How later generations looked at the pyramids and could only conclude they were built by aliens.

Microsoft's fix for slow File Explorer: load it before you need it

All I ever wanted

Was a graphical file manager.

How can it take MS 30 years to not deliver one, whilst Linux has ..... well you count them .....

Trump wants to turn it on again with 'Genesis Mission' for AI in science

While at the same time having RFK demolishing science ?

Make your mind up, Mr. Trump. Some people might begin to think you aren't all that clever.

Lifeboat docks with Tiangong after cracked capsule triggers emergency rendezvous

Real science

and engineering ... top marks

Praise Amazon for raising this service from the dead

Will they pay for that wasted effort ?

So not that sorry then.

Britain plots atomic reboot as datacenter demand surges

Hardly makes us meatbags feel better ...

Energy crisis - people will freeze ? Oh dear, how sad.

Energy crisis - techbros may lose out ? Let's upend 40 years of nuclear scepticism immediately.

(Actually it's refreshingly honest)

Microsoft exec finds AI cynicism 'mindblowing'

Cynic ? Or realist ?

"AI" as peddled by "AI" vendors is unremittingly shit.

It's TEE time for Brave's AI assistant Leo

Oh, fuck.

Can anyone recommend a browser without this shite ?

Anyone ?

Linux admin hated downtime so much he schlepped a live UPS during office move

So what was his plan had something gone wrong ?

I have a nagging feeling there wasn't one.

Magician forgets password to his own hand after RFID chip implant

If this happened to me ....

I'd keep *very* quiet about it.

Outdated Samsung handset linked to fatal emergency call failure in Australia

Re: you're half right

That's not as bad as it may seem if you have limited resources.

I guess it's a form of triage.

And that's what insurance is for.

Surely a mobile phone has Just One Job

you'd have thought

Rust on the Moon? Far-side dirt says yes, actually

Re:Are China sending a rocket to Jupiter

Please, please, please tell me someone got the reference ?

This may well be my last day on earth ....

I think we know the truth ?

Are China sending a rocket to Jupiter ?

Cloudflare coughs, half the internet catches a cold

I wonder how many people

who have been blagging it as an "expert" will have been uncovered by this, with ChatGPT down for an hour ?

Let me guess ... DNS

So no surprise there.

Brits believe the bots even though study finds they're often talking nonsense

Re: Social media was invented so that 'someone else can do the thinking for you' !!!

Religion was doing that millennia ago.

Re: Social Darwinism in any guise is a step up to genocide

Which sounds fine. However, how do you apply it in cases where the terminally thick actively oppose any effort to keep them safe from themselves ?

I'd never push anyone into a gas chamber. However I am damned if I am going to let them drag me in as I try to stop them. Fuck 'em.

Maybe I could be persuaded about "AI"

If it serves to remove the terminally dim from life.

I mean if you lick a plug socket because Gemini (other really shit LLM models are available by the lorry load) told you to, then your passing is no loss to society.

Networking students need an explanation of the internet that can fit in their heads

PDNTSPA

'nuff said.

AI slop hits new high as fake country artist goes to #1 on Billboard digital songs chart

On the plus side

no need to feel bad about pirating this crap.

Which I wouldn't

If it was any good.

EU's reforms of GDPR, AI slated by privacy activists for 'playing into Big Tech’s hands'

GDPR ? Who gives a shit ?

Sorry, but has anyone actually got a penny for a GDPR breach ?

The rules at my local swimming baths are better enforced.

Cyber insurers paid out over twice as much for UK ransomware attacks last year

I thought insurance was against something which *may* happen

otherwise it's assurance.

Also, if I don't lock my front door or secure my windows, my insurer won't pay out. What evidence have these insurers (who are after all paying out with MY money) obtained that the insured did everything possible to prevent the attack ?

It's hard to avoid the feeling that (as ever) big business is getting better treatment at the expense of the little person.

UK's Ajax fighting vehicle arrives – years late and still sending crew to hospital

So the UKs answer to "The Pentagon Wars" then

They should call it the Bradley Walsh fighting vehicle.

UK military looking for tactical comms, systems suppliers in deal worth up to £9.6B

Re: Project Cassandra

Some of us remember Nimrod,

AI benchmarks are a bad joke – and LLM makers are the ones laughing

The Turing Test

remains the gold standard/

When your shitty LLM can pass *my* Turing test, I will quite happily accord it the status of intelligence.

Until then it remains - at best "intelligence" and most definitely it's own version of that.

FBI prevails over convicted fraudster in $345M destroyed Bitcoin dispute

I wonder if they will end up

in a Welsh landfill ?

You'll never guess what the most common passwords are. Oh, wait, yes you will

what about the MFA aspect ?

It's less of an issue about your password it your systems use additional mechanisms to authenticate you.

Plus a lot of systems *should* ring fence really sensitive commands with a repeated prompt for an MFA token.

Yes it does add a bit to the clunkiness. However you have to decide how far you are willing to sacrifice security for simplicity.

How many systems allow unlimited login attempts ?

Which would mitigate a lot of risk.

Come to that how many systems are there that don't implement the ISO standard for authentication ?

Microsoft: Don't let AI agents near your credit card yet

The next 10 years

Will be a steady growing list of things you *can't* use "AI" for.