Posts by simonb_london

NASA keeps ancient Voyager 1 spacecraft alive with Hail Mary thruster fix

Remember, the best protection from small explosions is...

Distance. Lots and lots of distance.

India ready to greenlight Starlink – as long as it lets New Delhi censor, snoop

We should rename "governments" to "inflictments" because that's what they do.

Apple hallucinated Siri's future AI features, lawsuit claims

Back to the apple orchards

Back to the days of fasting on apples, listening to Bob Dylan and dropping acid until Apple can hallucinate harder then.

Guide for the perplexed – Google is no longer the best search engine

Finally! A search engine I can argue with

I just tried it and asked it a question for which I knew I would get a biased response where all the bad examples it came out with were unrealistically directed at just one political party. Then asked it what percentage of complaints were against one party vs the other and for some reason it wasn't able to tell me. I said that this should be possible to assess and it agreed. Eventually it conceded that it was probably primed with false information.

You have issues with 'Issues' always being called 'Issues' in Jira, so Atlassian now allows them to be called ‘Tasks’

Every time I see anything to do with Jira the Click-Up advert about Jira springs to mind.

Bitcoin creator suspect says he is not Bitcoin creator suspect

I was too until I got debunked and now I feel much better.

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

If it stops me getting totally lost on Hamstead Heath because the satnav guesses I'm walking along another path to the one I'm actually on then I'm in!

Torvalds weighs in on 'nasty' Rust vs C for Linux debate

Zig for the kernel and Nano as an editor!

Just thought I'd throw those into the mix and then watch the fireworks.....

Speed limiters arrive for all new cars in the European Union

All speedos read about 10% high. Unfortunately the speedo gives a political, rather than a scientific, reading. The most important measurement instrument the car is defective. By design.

Re: Good

And the reason we have to watch the speedo so much in 20 mph limit zones is because the road has a design speed of 30 mph (sometimes it used to be 40 mph) and it is feels unnatural and unnecessary to be driving so slow. On a 30 mph limit road I don't need to look at the speedo so much because I know if I drive based on the road type, location and hazard perception then I'll likely be within the speed limit. Speed limits used to be based on safety necessity now they seem to be based on politics.

Breaking the rules is in Big Tech's blood – now it's time to break the habit

Re: killing music...

Only music in the "charts" has gone South. And that is probably not due to piracy. In fact a pirate warbling in a croaky Somerset accent would probably sound better than most of the current chart music.

I have never before in my life had so much access to fantastic music that I do like. It's just not in the pop charts anymore, that's all.

EU attempt to sneak through new encryption-eroding law slammed by Signal, politicians

Re: Signal

There's always the TOX network. Unfortunately there is no longer an IOS client for it but desktop OSes and Android are fine.

UK Labour Party promises end to datacenter planning 'barriers'

No, it's contaminated with a strange brain-altering virus that causes motorists to lose all sense of lane discipline.

America's War on Drugs and Crime will be AI powered, says Homeland Security boss

And which side of the "War on drugs" is this AI on? I've seen some if the videos generated by AI to lyrics and it looks like the AI was tripping pretty hard.

Hubble Space Telescope has gyro problems again

So Hubble's getting on a bit and is experiencing dizziness. Time to try the Epley Maneuver.

China orders its telcos to rip and replace US chips with homegrown silicon by 2027

Ask IBM/Redhat!

That Asian meal you eat on holidays could launder money for North Korea

Driving at 22 mph in a 20 mph zone could make money for the local council. And they are even worse than North Korea.

Microsoft confirms Russian spies stole source code, accessed internal systems

If they try and use any of that Microsoft source code in their weapon systems then we have absolutely nothing to worry about. No point having hypersonic missiles if they take four hours to finish installing updates before responding to anything.

Veeam researching support for VMware alternative Proxmox as backup buyers fret about Broadcom

Re: Proxmox has "native" backup

How long does a "restore" operation take though? It has a live restore facility now but that is not always what is required.

Ban on Apple watches with blood oxygen sensors confirmed after failed appeal

What? Half-inched trade secrets!?

The scoundrels! It's enough to make your blood boil. Or at least become deficient in oxygen just thinking about it.

Programmable or 'purpose-bound' money is coming, probably as a feature in central bank digital currencies

Give me freedom of give me death! OK, death it is then...

Zuckerberg hunkers down in Hawaii to wait out apocalypse

Re: Got news for them

Psychopathy is, after all, a "disorder".

Damn, even the Pope thinks AI and autonomous weapons need reining in

The only one's really worried about AI are the ones with the most to lose if a high intelligence can suss them out.

UK government woefully unprepared for 'catastrophic' ransomware attack

Well they certainly managed to squeeze in a politically charged statement about priorities, the boats etc. If the subject is about IT, keep it about IT.

UK government denies China/Russia nuke plant hack claim

I'm so relieved that the Chinese or Russians are controlling our nuclear reactor. For a moment I thought our own government was controlling it. Now that would be scary.

Boffins find asking ChatGPT to repeat key words can expose its training data

Was the the guy who wrote the "echo" command code?

King Charles III signs off on UK Online Safety Act, with unenforceable spying clause

Correction:

"This landmark law sends a clear message to OTHER criminals...

What's unconstitutional about Google keyword search warrants? Nothing, says Colorado Supreme Court

Privacy vs safety

It it was possible to monitor every thought, word, movement of every person then think of all the crime that would be prevented. Or any undesirable behaviour or point of view. Or anything at all we don't like.

UK judge rates ChatGPT as 'jolly useful' after using it to help write a decision

AI enables judges to hallucinate judgements with complete certainty.

UK admits 'spy clause' can't be used for scanning encrypted chat – it's not 'feasible'

Just checked a DM article about this subject from April and it would appear that both the article and the reader comments after it express the view that intercepting private communications is a bad idea. Just like the rest of us, really.

Microsoft admits slim staff and broken automation contributed to Azure outage

What? It was an outage? I thought it was just the response time.

Meta reckons China's troll farms could learn proper OpSec from Russia's fake news crews

Well I'm glad that it is only the Russians that would ever do any propaganda, bots or fake news.

UN cybercrime treaty risks becoming a 'global surveillance pact'

Countering?

When governments talk of "countering" cyber-crime, money laundering, terrorism etc I've learned that they simply want to establish a monopoly for themselves in the same.

Say hello to Downfall, another data-leaking security hole in several years of Intel chips

Downfall

Affects sound devices and GPUs to overdub German with unrelated English subtitles on any video resembling a WWII bunker.

Scientists strangely unable to follow recipe for holy grail room-temp superconductor

Re: And that, my friends, is how you do science

Naah. That's not how its done! You brand them "superconductor cryo-deniers", strip them of their qualifications, cancel them from any public engagement, de-bank them and stick the boot in their Wikipedia pages.

Big Tech's going to love India's new personal data protection bill

Re: Big Brother has gone digital.

In India, there is a way around any law. More draconian laws are just an expression of frustration that this is the case.

If AI drives humans to extinction, it'll be our fault

Evil or enlightened

What would be the result of highly intelligent self awareness? Psychopaths aren't exactly known for being the brightest bulbs in the box in terms of having a fully functional brain with no parts suppressed and shut down. Why would a super-intelligent AI want to emulate such a disability?

Airline puts international passengers on the scales pre-flight

Perfect excuse

"I'm a bumble bee. I defy the laws of physics. I can still fly!"

Biden proposes 30% tax on cryptominers' power bills

AI

If extreme data centre use is a problem then I wonder how long it will be before AI becomes a tax target?

Brit politicians, Big Tech grumble about India tech laws

'government-run "fact checking" unit'

Years ago, when I first started seeing "fact checks" I actually thought they were a neat idea. I would now like to go back in time and slap myself around the face with a trout. Its pretty obvious what this whole concept of "fact checking" is turning into.

Beijing lists the stuff it wants generative AI to censor

So basically they want Artificial Intelligence to not have any intelligence.

US police have run nearly 1M Clearview AI searches, says founder

Symmetric surveillance

Public officials that want to watch our every move should be prepared to wear body-cams 24 hours a day so that we can keep an eye on them too. I'm sure a lot of crimes would be solved if we could see everything they say and do while they are pretending to serve us.

Twitter 2.0 signal boosts Taliban 2.0 through Blue subscriptions

Re: What?

Nothing to do with left/right/liberals, or my own political views, or what you think my political views may be.

From the Taliban's point of view, who are the ones making the claim, it makes no difference which political party is in power. Foreign policy towards the Taliban will be the same regardless and the BBC viewpoint will reflect that policy. Therefore, as far as the Taliban are concerned the "state" in the UK is constant and the BBC are part of it.

What?

'The BBC is funded by British households to the tune of £159 ($194) a year and strives "to act in the public interest, serving all audiences through the provision of impartial, high-quality and distinctive output and services which inform, educate and entertain." The "state" does not have a hand in its coverage.'

The state has no hand in the BBC's coverage??? This has to be some kind of joke, right? Also I would love a chance to offer the Taliban some anger management training should they be bold enough to post something that shows up in my Twitter feed. Bring it on!

2002 video streaming patent holder sues Amazon and Twitch

Expired

I did a quick search and apparently it has already expired. So does that mean that patent cases can apply to infringement retrospectively?

https://patents.google.com/patent/US6389473B1/en

Microsoft’s Nadella: Tech is in for a rough two years

Strangulation

Is the picture indicative of what he intends to do to tech in the next two years?

Spooky entanglement revealed between quantum AI and the BBC

Potentially dangerous

An AI that has been trained on every episode of East Enders that ever was would be an immediate threat to humanity. It would be drunk, argumentative and a perpetual source of drama.

China is likely stockpiling and deploying vulnerabilities, says Microsoft

False alarm!

"Stockpiling and deploying vulnerabilities" is just Microsoft's way of saying "writing and selling software".

Sizewell C nuclear plant up for review as UK faces financial black hole

Re: Out of date?

If the BBC are claiming then the government has denied it then that obviously just confirms it.