Posts by xeroks

Hey, Woz. You've got $150m. You're kicking back in Australia. What's on your mind? Killer AI

AI & market forces

Woz's comment about AIs running companies is the way I see things panning out:

1. AI is used by company to help make decisions - maybe analysing masses of data.

2. AI is improved, eventually replacing humans for most tasks. This is cheaper as, until anti-slavery laws are updated, AIs are not recompensed. Company shareholders are happy, as they initially have more money coming in the door. This is not a leap. Shareholders are rarely concerned about the people who actually make the money for them.

3. AIs making directorial decisions within companies is not total fantasy. Currently, as companies get larger, they become dumber. The cleverness of individuals is lost as office politics and committee decisions become more influential. Cutting out the middlemen, a single AI might outcompete a company run on hierarchical principles.

4. there are fewer opportunities available to humans to earn money. Only things left are niches where they are more efficient or cheaper than AIs. Whether the average quality of life goes up or down for humans is moot.

Pretty easy to see that within our lives a company could exist with few or no human employees.

Also easy to see that most companies would have to exist with a fraction of their current employees, or be beaten.

I don't think the AI overlords would need to decide to make us all redundant or even kill us off. It would just happen.

Vodafone: Can't make calls on our network? Use Wi-Fi

Three

I tried using three's app recently because my flat has zero signal.

The app is ok in a pinch, but doesn't seem reliable enough as a permanent solution. I am forever getting messages saying that "wifi is not working", and my phone's battery seems to have a hole in it now.

Call quality was surprisingly poor - though I'm not sure whether the app, phone or feeble broadband connection is at fault here.

Quantum computers have failed. So now for the science

analog analogies

Metaphors, while being a useful way for help people conceptualise new ideas and mechanisms, have limitations.

For instance the whole "is light a wave or a particle" debate was only ever useful to a point. because light is neither particle, nor wave, nor both. It is its own thing which may or may not have parallels in other physical phenomena.

So, while light may act similarly to waves on the surface of a liquid, there is no direct correlation.

Similarly, if someone finds a physical model which mimics many of the facets of quantum mechanics, that doesn't mean that it can be used to predict or prove how things work in the quantum world.

What it does do, however, is give people new avenues to explore in their heads, helping them dream up new ways of joining together old ideas.

(enjoyed the article, by the way. It was dumbed down enough for me to understand what was going on, while allowing for further reading. Maybe needed more pictures?)

SpaceX makes nice with U.S. Air Force, gets shot at black ops launches

Interesting name,

Especially given its relationship to the name chosen for the sistership, "Of Course I Still Love You".

I'm going to have to look out "Player of Games" not read it for ages.

Wizard of Oz OFFICIALLY 'most significant movie' EVER, says PNAS

Re: Wizard of Oz most significant?

>Inconceivable!

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

IDC: iPad sales crash incoming ... Win 8 killing 2-in-1 typoslabs

Big ipad coming

I reckon the delay on the much-vaunted 12" iPad is the OS. I'd put money on it being available running OS X.

With that, and a couple of bluetooth toys, you'd have something capable of doing useful stuff.

Of course,you still wouldn't get to have unrestricted use of that SD adaptor in the camera kit...

Amazon bags control of .book and .pay domains – but NOT .cloud

or prevent the opposition from using them.

e.g. waterstones.book

The last PC replacement cycle is about to start turning

Operating systems

reckon apple will release a tablet running OS X any time soon?

Certainly the iphone and ipad have the grunt for most tasks, but does the OS have all the features required for the mobile space?

This is why MS are where they are now, they've tried to deal with this convergence. Just didn't work first time round. However, you can develop code on full fat visual studio using a Surface. Not going to be able to do anything like that on an iPad for a while.

Ex-NSA lawyer warns Google, Apple: IMPENETRABLE RIM ruined BlackBerry

is there a tinfoil hat icon somewhere?

to me this is just in line with the other recent pronouncements from security heidjins.

They want the bad guys to think that the encryption techniques used by these companies is so impenetrable that aforesaid security organisations can no long snoop on them.

Does anyone here believe GCHQ and NSA are unable to crack Apple or Google security?

What it _does_ do is obscure any encrypted communication in amongst our own inane, innocent communications. It was easy before to find the interesting stuff by ignoring the mass of unencrypted messages.

Clara goes to the dark side, with dark secrets revealed in Dark Water

Fav moment

Was when the doors slid together to receal what the symbol meant. I'm sure the sound of several things clicking was audible.

Prehistoric swingbelly KANGAROOS were TOO FAT to jump – scientists

The Sthenurine Contingency

They sound like one of Dr. Who's crappier foes.

Hey, non-US websites – FBI don't have to show you any stinkin' warrant

Entirely off topic

Anyone happen to know when the phrase "have your cake and eat it" came into common usage?

US Attorney Gen latest to roast Apple, Google mobe encryption

Re: Think about this

They don't need to. A four number code would be cracked in under a second with the right hardware. And they are likely to have the right hardware.

As you say this statement is just an attempt to reassure the less astute bad guys that they can go back to their iphones.

Hiss-hiss! GIGANTIC SOLAR FILAMENT snakes around Sun

Interesting use of the word 'filament'

I've always associated it with long, thin things. Where 'thin' is on a human scale, not a solar scale.

Doctor Who becomes an illogical, unscientific, silly soap opera in Kill The Moon

Re: The worst thing

I suppose it's possible, being an avid consumer of space science fiction and fact at the time, I may have read about the paper, then forgotten. Depends on how well publicised it was.

The worst thing

When I was 10 or so, I had the idea that the moon could have been a giant alien spaceship which went into orbit millions of years ago.

Now, it looks like that plot line has been ruled out. Unless the universe gets another reboot, and what are the chances of that?

Re: There's something wrong with the gravity

Points are accepted re. lunar gravity vs budget, however, when they first appeared on the shuttle, it was not on the moon's surface. It was in free fall. In a vacuum.

If there was anything keeping their feet on the deck, it could only have been caused by the shuttle's own thrusters.

So the Doc was a wee bit premature jumping up and down complaining about the gravity.

There's something wrong with the gravity

Too right.

Why can't writers get the whole concept of vehicles in free fall? It's really not complicated.

And don't even mention the intro of that 3rd star wars film.

Having said that, the character conflict was good, and I have an addition to my list of characters I'd like to return in future episodes....

CONSUMERISM IS PAST ITS SELL-BY DATE: Die now, pay later

I'm sold on this idea

And aim to be an non-consumer.

I don't suppose there's time to get a new iPad first?

Payment security vastly improved when you DON'T ENTER your BANK DETAILS

sure I've seen this before

I'm sure I had a credit card that did something like this years ago - when you used it in online transactions, you could generate a unique number, start and end date.

Seemed a good idea, but then websites stopped accepting it.

BT claims almost-gigabit connections over COPPER WIRE

That's all very nice

What's the chances of them trialling it on my cabinet - it must be one of the few left still on copper.

OK, they've promised it'll be upgraded in the near future, but they've been saying that for 2 years now.

THUD! WD plonks down SIX TERABYTE 'consumer NAS' fatboy

Re: Reg unit acronym

Or perhaps give the unit a name that celebrates a significant point in the series (without giving anything away of course)

1GoT = 1MoD = 0.345 RW

There are other obvious choices, say around the 0.9GoT mark, or the 3.2GoT point, but the names would be serious spoilers.

Reg reader fires up Pi-powered anti-cat garden sprinkler system

water pistol

I'd envisaged something more sophisticated involving a water pistol and targeting computer. But the only off-the-shelf targeting computers I could find were only keyed to hit womp rats. :(

This is great use of home brew tech though - simple but working does the trick every time.

iWatch watch: Apple tags sales bod from luxury Swiss watch firm

Isn't it a bit late in the day for this bloke - no matter how good he is - to have any impact on the design of the thing?

Virgin Media struck dumb by NATIONWIDE DNS outage

google dns

You do remember that GCHQ can legally (according to them) track all calls to overseas servers, like facebook, twitter and ... google.

I don't think they mentioned any exclusions for DNS servers.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-27887639

and, of course, the NSA are able to collect that data legally too.

YouTube in shock indie music nuke: We all feel a little less worthy today

Original Sin?

The whole thrust of the move seems odd, given that Google beat its contemporary search engines to profitability by targeting small advertisers.

Or is this tack a replication of previous success? That is: provide the small guy the ability to advertise, but give the big boys big discounts?

Anyone able to state what rates big advertisers have compared to "indie" Adsense users?

Boffins build billion-synapse, three-watt 'brain'

Re: “you have to know how the brain works to program one of these”.

presumably they actually mean

“you have to know how WE THINK the brain works to program one of these”.

EVE Online erects mashed-up memorial to biggest space fight in history

perspective?

By my calculations $330,000 divided by 7548 players comes out at an average $43.72 per person. Come on guys, call that warfare?

Anyone know how much the missed payment was for? In real dollars?

Let's face it, it's exactly the kind of thing people have been spending all that time building BFO spaceships for.

Ten classic electronic calculators from the 1970s and 1980s

fx7000 fail

I splashed out £50 (a load of money for me at the time) on an fx7000a, at the start of my first open university course. It'll be worth it, I thought, as I'll make a lot of use of it over next 6 years.

It was really good, and quite fun to play with too. I knew someone - a non-programmer - who wrote a game on it.

However, when I started my next course I discovered that I couldn't take it into any further OU exams because it was programmable. Thanks for that.

I ended up buying the cheapest scientific calculator I could find, for about £3. It did me fine, and was also far cheaper for batteries than the 7000.

'Disruptive, irritating' in-flight cellphone call ban mulled by US Senate

additional suggestion..

If they're going to allow emailing or smsing, I strongly suggest that keybeeps should be banned. Some people just don't realise how annoying their constant keypresses are to other folks.

BBC's 3D blunder BLASTED OUR BRAINS – Doctor Who fans

Logo OG

Watched the 3d version on iplayer, complete with one-eyed logo.

It WAS a bit annoying, but I was able to tune it out after a while. More annoying was the flicker - there was a lot more than I'm used to with blu-rays. Don't know if the refresh rate was lower or something.

I struggled to actually watch the thing in 3D, despite having all the required tech. I was out at the weekend. I eventually found an obscure blog posted on the Friday suggesting how to record from Sky using the red button channel. Not useful to me as was away by then.

For some reason my (not as smart as they'd like to think) TV wasn't able to work out that it's own built in iPlayer app was trying to display some 3D content. Luckily my Blu-ray player also can talk to the internet, and I'd got iPlayer fired up on that I was able to get properly cross-eyed.

Perhaps all these things might suggest why few people have been watching BBC in 3D?

Oh yes, and the whole helicopter over London sequence. That was a bit pointless. I've since watched the episode in 2D, and can confirm that the helicopter shots looked better in 3D. But it didn't add anything to the plot, and wasn't really all that funny.

The paintings worked much better in 3D than 2D, and they were intrinsic to the plot, so thumbs up for them. As did the battle scenes, despite the non-movie-budget FX.

Three Men in a Tardis

wonderful derogatory term

"Morlock-botherer".

all we need are some real time travellers to use it on in a disparaging manner.

Ten top stories from New Who

Midnight

should really be on this list.

A wee cracker it was, especially if you ever had a younger sibling realise how annoying it is to repeat everything you say.

Signing out of a broken Britain: The final Quatermass serial

Huffety Puffety

Yes, I can remember the Ringstone Round song, even now.

I'll need to see if I can find this series on some internet thing...

Amazon's profit-eating machine revs into overdrive

bit of a coincidence really

I find it amazing that with that HUGE revenue, their expenditures match to within a couple of percent. It could have gone a billion either way... I guess it must be pure luck.

re:They're avoiding double taxation

Except no company pays VAT - it's always the customer.

Star bosses name asteroid to honor author Iain Banks

Entirely appropriate memorial

Beats the hell out of a wee blue plaque.

Seems the asteroid is probably big enough too. I'm not sure you could hide a GCU in there. Maybe some ROUs.

I propose the next steps are:

2. send robot spacecraft

3. hollow out a nice big cylinder

4. get it spinning to simulate gravity

5. err did I miss out the bit about inventing a way of sourcing free energy from the vacuum?

Reg hack prepares to live off wondergloop Soylent

" As Rob himself says, I may enjoy beer, but I don't want to drink it twenty-one times a week"

between this and the untested frying status of this gloop, it's clear their research team need to come to Scotland for a couple of months.

BBC boffins ponder abstruse Ikea-style way of transmitting telly

audio mixing

Really like the idea of being able to set levels of music, fx and dialogue. The standard mix is not suitable for all circumstances. For instance turning the volume down so neighbours are not awoken by explosions can mean that dialog is inaudible.

But having seen how surprisingly complicated it is to mix surround sound properly, it may not be as easy as turning the fx down a bit.

browser compatiblity

Vaguely interesting idea, but we've seen from the world of web development the difficulties involved in getting of content to work across multiple browser - especially where high quality presentation is expected.

Graphene QUILT: A good trampoline for elephants in stiletto heels

What's the problem? Simply use the previously tried and tested method.

Here's the development process:

1. Take a normal graphite pencil, and a roll of sellotape.

2. Apply the sellotape to the pencil "lead".

3. Remove the sellotape.

Voila! A perfect sheet of graphene.

4. scale up the above process to pachydermic scales, and repeat.

NB

This methodology may result in the devastation of the worlds remaining Sequoia forests as we attempt to make pencils large enough. It may be prudent to decide up-front whether this is a wise thing to do.

Quantum boffins send data ACROSS TIME AND SPACE

look ma, no hidden variables

I never totally understood why these spooky action at a distance interactions couldn't be explained by simple hidden variables. I've always just gone with the flow on it. If Einstein couldn't prove it was wrong, what chance have I got.

However, this experiment does show - without possibility of confusion - that something weird is going on, and that time is not a one way-trip.

It also gives me a few ideas... now where's my "Hong Kong Book of Patent Applications for Things I Know Nothing About?"

Ex-Microsoft man plans brand of consumer marijuana 'fine cigars'

Theraputic purposes

I'm sure one of the many-cited reasons for using cannabis was that it eases the symptoms of M.S.

I'm sure I can get a strangulated witticism out of that if I really try hard. Hang on a couple of minutes...

Ten serious sci-fi films for the sentient fan

re Veering off topic a bit

I have the same thing re SF/SciFi.

It was probably a foreword by someone like Harlan Ellison to a book of (SF!) short stories that did it.

Probably the one that's missing from the list for me (and hasn't been mentioned) is "Never Let Me Go." And not a special effect in sight.

BT broadband goes TITSUP - cripples Scots, Geordies, Northern Irish

Maintenance scheduled for this morning

Don't know if it's related or not, but Plusnet were "performing some software upgrades on one of our RADIUS authentication servers." this morning, according to their customer service site. It was expected to be a 5 minute task.

Given that other ISPs were affected, I'd guess it's unlikely to have been the cause of today's problem.

They post warnings about future work like this all the time, and rarely are there any probs.

Plusnet are owned by BT?

@ac

I've been with Plusnet long before they were bought over. I have been surprised - and pleased - that their customer service has remained as good as it always was.

Also their product still has all the stuff BT users don't care about, like fixed IP addresses, php webspace etc.

Having said that, my wife is at home without no internets this morning.

Valve chief confirms Steam-centric console-killing PC

Steamy Windows?

nah, that wouldn't get past the TM police.

Why do Smart TV UIs suck?

Re: “Click here for additional assets”

What about some simplification : "Click for more"

LucasArts' Dark Forces

Re: It was a great game

Boba was one of the bosses, I don't think you could avoid him.

He was the flying one who attacked you with rockets, like the mark 2 robots but without a plasma gun.

I'm sure you kill him, which since the story takes place before TESB is a bit wrong. But it's possible he was just having a kip or something..

Imperial Officer

Being unable to save games mid level really upped the ante on this game.

The last one was particularly nasty, as you'd expect.. The adrenalin was really pumping as you got locked in the hangar with a bucketload of robo death and only a couple of lives left. You knew if you died, you'd have to go all the way back to the start, to face all those rocket-wielding, plasma-blasting goons again.

The very end was a bit of a revelation - never thought I'd feel sorry for an inattentive imperial officer, but there you go.