Posts by simonb_london

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.

Apple perfects vendor lock-in with home security kit

Company won't stop until you need a NEW Phone to operate every facet of your life

Corrected. I believe this is how the headline should have read.

India to lead drive for global crypto regulations to bust money laundering

Only governments and banks are allowed to launder money. And they hate competition.

India’s Supreme Court demands government detail internet shutdown rules

Then I got to the comments...

I don't normally comment on the other comments I've seen so far, but there seems to be a consensus that Internet shutdowns on a whim are justifiable and desirable because there are exam cheats in existence. I certainly wouldn't want someone monkeying with Internet availability where I live/work! Not for any reason.

Its up to the exam venues to police the students within their own boundaries.

Indian tech minister picks a fight with Wikipedia over cricketer's dropped catch

Re: Definitely a CTO-type

But wouldn't he fall foul of the "conflict of interest" guidelines on Wikipedia?

Digital Ocean dumps Mailchimp after attack leaked customer email addresses

So those Career Builder dot com adverts were true

They really do base their business on buying lottery tickets!

Iran cheerfully admits using cryptocurrency to pay for imports

I can see where this is going... "We must ban non-state-owned crypto and all sacrifice any notion of privacy and anonymity so that countries like Iran don't have any either".

Copper shortage keeps green energy, tech ventures grounded

Net zero?

Wouldn't it be better to aim for a healthy planet and healthy life on it? Obsessing over one of the most abundant elements on the planet is probably going to cause more problems than it solves apart from being a massive distraction.

Japan makes online insults a crime that can earn a year in jail

When I was at school...

I remember everyone was quite liberal with hurling insults at each other face to face. Being sensitive was not really an option.

Rising above the insults and developing self-confidence is part of growing up.

Its a bit like the highway code being changed to give pedestrians who don't look, and are therefore "vulnerable", priority over vehicles because teaching them to look before crossing at junctions is too much effort, apparently.

Acer's TravelMate laptops arrive – complete with Microsoft Pluton chips

"But what is that threat landscape?" That's easy. Its Microsoft.

Biden tours Samsung fab, talks chip cooperation with South Korea

Re: "The embarassment" should just stay home (and stop 'doing things')

How can you say that? He got enough votes to be the most popular president in history in the most "fortified" election in history!

Microsoft-backed robovans to deliver grub in London

Every automated car will become a police car

If you have loads of delivery vans everywhere, driving automatically, covered in cameras and sensors and connected to a network.... the ultimate totalitarian temptation!

Re: Parking like a human

Simple. Just identify the most appropriate and ideal parking position and do a logical NOT on it.

Apple to bin apps that go three years without updates

Benign?

"Apple argues the monopoly is benign..." - Enough ROFL to cause a whole herd of wildebeest to collapse in hysterics.

British motorists will be allowed to watch TV in self-driving vehicles

Who will the AI serve

Will the AI serve us, the government or the manufacturer? Looking at the recent trends to control everything we say and do recently I'm not sure I would want a car that decided where I could or couldn't drive to on the basis of "saving the environment" or, as the more often the case these days, for no clearly explained reason.

AWS makes auto-recovery the default for EC2 instances

About time

Why did this take so long? Of course I don't want a VM to randomly die one day because of something I forgot to do, or hadn't yet learned I needed to do.

Linux Snap package tool fixes make-me-root bugs

Easy on developers. Tough on users.

What are real organisations doing with zero trust?

I saw the title and assumed it was about the government.

Machine needs more Learning: Google Drive dings single-character files for copyright infringement

Not a big fan of more legislation myself but this issue of companies clobbering users with zero explanation, chance to appeal, human being to talk about it with is getting out of hand. That coupled with deflection-mode call centres and websites that just send frustrated customers round in circles to the same inadequate FAQs. It looks like companies now need to be legally bound to be accountable as to how they treat their users.

MPs charged with analysing Online Safety Bill say end-to-end encryption should be called out as 'specific risk factor'

Re: end-to-end encryption

And how are we going to see if they are conspiring against us? I bet they will still want to keep their secrets. I wonder if what they propose will be asymmetric or symmetric in terms of who it apples to.

Indian government committee slams 'gross misuse' of internet shutdowns – even in Kashmir

"Numerous comms blackouts were imposed on events protesting India's agricultural reform laws"

So they are being used to squelch democratic rights, then.

Ubuntu desktop team teases 'proof of concept' systemd on Windows Subsystem for Linux

Re: "2 users though have frequently requested systemd support"

....and the systemd cancer will spread to the Windows kernel itself....taking over all the services, logs and even user directories.....making Windows incompatible with itself!

Samsung boss Lee Jae-Yong convicted and fined for drug abuse

Re: Choice

Exactly. General anaesthetics should be mandated as a condition of employment.

Theranos blood-test machine demos for VIPs rigged to hide any failures, court told

Re: Arrogance of investors?

Reminds me of when Peter Jones was duped into thinking that a TV takes tens of watts of power in standby and this power-saving gizmo was required to save the planet. They were doing the demo with an obsolete plasma TV that would keep the grid warm in standby for a fast start-up time. No TV still did that by the time of the pitch.

Re: sub-header

Still too noisy. Make that &>/dev/null. I'm trying to sleep here.

Google to bake COVID-19 vaccine passport support into Android with Passes API update

Just what we always wanted. Not.

We're not saying this is how SolarWinds was backdoored, but its FTP password 'leaked on GitHub in plaintext'

"The Washington Post reports that unnamed sources believe..."

Hold the press! We've found some guy who "believes" it was the Russians!