Posts by Eclectic Man

Smart homes may be a bright idea, just not for the dim bulbs who live in 'em

It is probably my own fault

Yes, I bought a Dyson air purifier - basically a Dyson fan with an air filter around the base air intake (the first generation Hot and Cold one). And there is an app that allows me to control the fan and the temperature and see what it thinks of the air quality in the room.

Or rather there was. Until there was an electrical storm which fried my BT 'Home Hub', so I needed a new one with a new WiFi password. Woe is me! I cannot for the life of me get the app to connect to the fan and tell it the new WiFi network name and password. "Simple!" I hear you cry, "download the latest app version from the Apple Store and you'll be fine." Oh, but I have an old iPhone 7 Plus which cannot use the latest app as it runs on a later iOS than available for my phone.

Like I said, probably my own fault (although I totally deny any and all responsibility for the electrical storm).

Schools bombarded by nation-state attacks, ransomware gangs, and everyone in between

Attackers

"For cyber attackers, it can be easier to first compromise somebody in the education sector who has ties to the defense sector and then use that access to more convincingly phish a higher value target."

Or, you could get some 'students' to help from the inside, by giving your own nationals grants to study overseas and provide information on the IT system and faculty staff.

AI godfather-turned-doomer shares Nobel with neural network pioneer

Pantomime season

"Companies like OpenAI can't just put safety research on the back burner."

Oh yes they can!

Just like in large corporations "Security is everyone's responsibility", until something goes wrong when it was exclusively the Data Custodian's responsibility (for personal data breaches), the System Administrator's responsibility (for hacking, DDOS attacks and Ransomware attacks), or the person who clicked on a link in an unsolicited phishing email, but definitely not, never the direct responsibility of any member of the Board of Directors.

Safety research does not generate dollar revenue or get the attention of C-Suite executives like some new ability to predict the weather (or whatever).

I'll get my coat (it's behind you).

Missing Thunderbirds footage found in British garden shed

Re: Pedant Alert

Well, 'Anything can happen in the next half-hour'.

It seems that Stingray's Troy Tempest was based on the actor James Garner (and I strongly suspect that Fred Flintstone was a cartoon version of Walter Matthau).

Ahh, those happy innocent childhood days ...

Cops love facial recognition, and withholding info on its use from the courts

False positives

Coincidentally I am reading David Speigelhalter's new book 'They Art of Uncertainty' (ISBN 978-0-241-65862-8)* where he considers a hypothetical facial recognition system with a 0.1% false positive rate (pp 197 - 200). The [problem is that so many faces are scanned, and the so few people are on the database of 'wanted criminals' that false positives are often more numerous than correctly identified suspects. I doubt that enough Police Officers are trained appropriately to understand, that although the system has identified someone with 99.9% certainty, the fact that it shifted through images of 20,000 people at the 'scene' means that it is more likely they have arrested an innocent person that a guilty one.

*Very interesting, but takes a bit of concentration to understand the mathematics.

Harvard duo hacks Meta Ray-Bans to dox strangers on sight in seconds

Re: As a good American...

Ahem, indeed:

https://www.historic-newspapers.co.uk/original-newspapers/?cvg_source=google&cvg_adid=599949758560&cvg_cid=57526659&gad_source=1&gbraid=0AAAAADx3983RA6cmMbv6oCo00gzoHiTcx&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIga6ZrPP5iAMVJZdQBh0suwdkEAAYASAAEgK1UvD_BwE

"With over 3 million titles available, spanning from the early 1900’s right up to yesterday, we’re confident that you’ll be able to find an original newspaper from a date of your choice with ease. You can then add one of our special presentation options to ensure you have the perfect original newspapers for birthdays, anniversaries or any other milestone commemorative occasion."

Creepy

I mean, this is sooo creepy. Yes it is a 'warning' but I had thought the 'action man' hero films where the 'hero' photographs someone and then finds out all about them was Sci Fi, not reality.

I guess the 'powers that be' reckon that 'you have nothing to fear if you have nothing to hide'. (Except, of course, mistakes, unaccountable people being corrupt*, incorrect data in databases or looking uncannily like a 'person of interest', or just a police officer being so pissed off that he shoots you** or are just plain racist***.)

*When Sir Robert Mark took a high level position in the London Metropolitan Police he described the plainclothes division as "the most corrupt organisation in London".

**https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/oct/02/chris-kaba-shooting-trial-met-police-martyn-blake-streatham-london

*** https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-67148208. (OK I don't know the police were racist, but what do you think?)

Re: As a good American...

One of my previous employers had a photographer do a portrait of me, which was then published in 'The Times' (yes, that one), without my knowledge. I have changed a bit since then, but it was a bit of a shock, and so my visage is in 'the pin;lic domain'. Not much I can do about that.

AI agent promotes itself to sysadmin, trashes boot sequence

Re: Reminds me of the time...

OK, I reckon we need an award for the longest an IT scammer has been kept on the phone. My personal record is about 5 minutes, so not even an 'also ran' compared to MrBanana.

Any advance on 'just under an hour'?

(Winner gets an upvote from me and a pint emoji :o) )

Re: Reminds me of the time...

OH. I was telephoned a while ago by someone claiming that my PC had performed an illegal act and offering, well demanding actually, to fix it, if only I'd let them into my computer. Sadly I was just a bit too busy at the time to oblige (and anyway my iMac was turned off) ...

Earth's new mini-moon swings by, then ghosts us by late November

re: perturbation

"I am not perturbed by this."

You may not be, but it is.

One thing about the animation is that it seems to pass quite close to the Moon (the BIG one we can see in the sky) at about eccentricity 1.3, but its trajectory does not evidence any change, so I was wondering whether the animation was based purely on the Earth's gravitational field, and omitted the (BIG) Moon's?

https://x.com/tony873004/status/1833588006353310110

El Reg astro-boffins please advise.

Re: Geocentric energy - Aside

There was a manager in my old company about whom it was noted that he had a very large egoshpere. (First time I ever heard that word.)

Wen he left' there was no announcement at all, in fact I only discovered his absence accidentally some months after the event. Other managers of a similar level who departed were thanked for their contributions and wished well in their future careers (messing up* pubic utilities or health care trusts or some other such 'beneficial' activity).

*Matter of opinion, I suppose, but considering the state of the UK's infrastructure, and the fact that several senior managers went into the public utilities / NHS management, I'm going to put my foot down with a firm hand and say that they were not all as competent as they thought they were. So there!

How do you know it is not the Grebulons?

https://hitchhikers.fandom.com/wiki/Grebulons

Geocentric energy

its "geocentric energy will remain negative for 56.6 days due to a temporarily captured flyby."

I know how it feels, my own geocentric energy has been negative for years.

AI code helpers just can't stop inventing package names

Re: AI code helpers : the Eric Morecambe of programming

The classic (full) sketch:

https://www.facebook.com/legendarymusicians2020/videos/morecambe-and-wise-andre-previn-the-full-sketch/575707570019833/

US Army orders next-gen robot mule to haul a literal ton of gear

Hasn't someone got a Pat(ent) Pending on that?

As IBM pushes for more automation, its AI simply not up to the job of replacing staff

Re: Eat your own cooking

It seems that the London Evening Standard has tried this with deceased art critic Brian Sewell, and come a cropper (according to the Guardian):

"Who knew the late art critic Brian Sewell was such a tediously cliched writer? Especially since some of the dead verbiage in the London Standard’s AI version of Sewell reviewing Van Gogh at the National Gallery has become common currency only since his death at 84 in 2015.

Give him credit, he had a voice. And it was a posh voice. Evidently the chatbot used by the Standard needs to be fed a lot more novels by Evelyn Waugh and Anthony Powell, some Latin perhaps, and a mouthful of plums before it can begin to resemble the public school-educated, Courtauld-trained Sewell, who started his career as the protege of the upper-class art historian and Soviet spy Anthony Blunt.

I stopped watching The Crown when Sam West as Blunt, the traitorous surveyor of the queen’s pictures, talked about “early modern art”. No way would this snooty connoisseur have used that social historian’s terminology.

The Standard’s latest work is even more nonsensical. The neutral classless tones of AI don’t have the waspishness and hauteur of Sewell at all."

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2024/sep/26/london-standards-ai-imitation-of-brian-sewell-proves-art-critics-cannot-be-easily-replaced

SO, humans can still do some things better (or more annoyingly) than computers. I'll drink to that!

Re: Eat your own cooking

The philosopher Michael Sandel recently did a radio programme on BBC Radio 4 about whether people would accept an AI version of themselves, that is, trained on their life experiences writings etc. as their 'legacy' when they died. It was a shame that he did not go to the logical conclusion and ask himself whether he would accept an LLM trained on his books, articles, media appearances etc. as his legacy.

It would be nice to try an experiment where an AI / LLM is trained on a writer's complete oeuvre, and the writer and the LLM are independently asked to produce some written statements on the writer's area of expertise such as an article for publication, a response to a question, a letter to the press, or an extended essay, and the results compared. My expectation is that the human writer's output would be more enlightening and sensible that the AI / LLM's effort, as the human has lots of inputs, experiences and thoughts of which the computer system will have no conception. My own written output (posts here, a few letters in 'the press' and three whole academic papers) is a bit 'thin'. I have a possibly identifiable style and point of view, but do not necessarily agree with what I have written in the past - how would an AI / LLM deal with that?

Similarly for a computer programmer (I excuse myself from this as my code is for my purposes only and definitely not up to commercial standards, the test is for genuine experts). I expect that the AI / LLM would be excellent at following certain rules (such as commenting, layout etc.) but less than perfect at tricky, efficient or elegant coding. Anyone tried this themselves?

Scientists demonstrate X-rays as a way to zap asteroids out of Earth's path

'Nuke them all'*

According to The Guardian it was a simulation of the effect a nuclear detonation would have on an asteroid:

"Physicists at Sandia National Laboratories, whose primary mission is to ensure the safety and security of the US nuclear arsenal, recorded in nanosecond detail how an immense pulse of radiation unleashed by a nuclear blast could vaporise the side of a nearby asteroid."

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2024/sep/23/nuclear-blast-could-save-earth-from-large-asteroid

So, no shark mounted X-Ray Space laser required.

I'm guessing that the reference to the Earth being poorly prepared for a potential extinction level asteroid impact is an assessment of current technological capabilities and the absence of any coherent actual ability to, well, 'nuke an asteroid'.

*Sorry, couldn't resist the reference to 'Apocalypse Now', or the nuclear bomb explosion icon.

Cards Against Humanity deals SpaceX a $15M lawsuit over Texas turf tangle

Re: Seize it...

I don't know about the USA, but here in the UK there is a distinction between civil and criminal law. In the UK trespass is a civil offence, and oddly, it is not a criminal offence to dump 'stuff' on someone else's land (a lady once had to pay thousands of funds to get rubbish removed form her property's driveway after some fly tippers literally blocked it. But, holding on to someone else's property may constitute 'intent to permanently deprive', which is theft, a criminal offence. The law is often complicated and obscure and provides a comfortable living for many, many lawyers. CAH probably could get a court order banning any person trespassing on their property until the matter is resolved. That would firstly prevent anyone using the materials, and secondly, breach of the order would be contempt of court, which can get you into a lot of trouble.

The only certain thing is that the lawyers will make money out of this.

Treat others etc.etc.

I reckon that if someone else had used SpaceX property to store their materials, Elon (or his lawyers) would want payment for that use, trespass and so forth.

Good luck to CAH, I suspect they will need it.

Musk dreams of launching five Starships to Mars in two years

Re: First

Judging by the expected amount of damage to the human body caused by cosmic rays and other radiation during a passage to Mars, there won't be anyone left alive enough to return.

https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2024/jun/would-astronauts-kidneys-survive-roundtrip-mars#:~:text=The%20structure%20and%20function%20of,led%20by%20researchers%20from%20UCL.

Re: I'm pleased to hear this!

Is that before or after we get sustainable energy from nuclear fusion?

Sorry, I'll get my coat with the 'flying car brochure' in the pocket, because, well, it will all happen in 'the next 20 years', won't it?

Lebanon: At least nine dead, thousands hurt after Hezbollah pagers explode

Re: Nice work

See the Ig Nobel prize awards:

"The Peace Prize was awarded to the so-called Pigeon Project—a 1940s investigation by psychologist and inventor BF Skinner that tested the feasibility of putting live pigeons inside missiles to guide the weapons’ path."

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/anus-breathing-animals-and-pigeon-guided-missiles-ig-nobel-prizes-reward-unusual-but-valuable-science-180985090/#:~:text=The%20Peace%20Prize%20was%20awarded,to%20guide%20the%20weapons'%20path.

We really are an ingenious species.

Re: Conspiracy

Yes, but there are two issues here:

1: How did the explosives, detonators and 'kill' command get into the pagers for the Hezbollah?

2: Did the attackers prevent the booby-trapped pagers getting to anyone else (and if so, how)?

I suspect that everyone with a pager from that company is now keeping is at a distance and awaiting the arrival of the Bomb Disposal Squad.

Also, can the explosive ones be detected using standard equipment / dogs?

Re: Technology question

It is not just the explosive, you also need a detonator. (It should be easy to determine from the debris where the explosives were located in the devices.) Plastic explosives are really quite stable (I believe, no personal experience, el Reg's resident chemists, please advise) without a proper detonator, some could even be set alight without exploding. I believe that anti-personnel mines designed to look like toys typically carry very small amounts of high explosive in order to maim or injure rather than kill as a wounded person takes up more resources to save, treat and rehabilitate than a corpse (the obscene accountancy of war).

I must admit that the absence of a denial from the Israelis, or even a 'cannot confirm or deny' statement does suggest to me that they are the instigators. Who else would have either the technical capability or the political will. The indifference to the collateral damage affecting bystanders is disgusting. (DISCLOSURE - I have some Jewish heritage, my father's family escaping from NAZI Germany in April 1939. So I am not anti-Israel, I just wish they would all stop trying to kill one another.)

Supply chain attacks are in the news elsewhere: https://www.theregister.com/2024/09/18/afp_operation_kraken_ghost_crimeware_app/ although in that case a software chain, not physical one.

Chinese spies spent months inside aerospace engineering firm's network via legacy IT

"John Dwyer said the cyber snoops first compromised one of the victim's three unmanaged AIX servers"

It doesn't help that the servers were "unmanaged"

Australian Police conducted supply chain attack on criminal collaborationware

Re: Expensive hacked devices

"Earlier this year the AFP warned it had already infiltrated Ghost, and yesterday revealed it had conducted a successful supply chain attack on the app."

See https://www.theregister.com/2024/09/17/hezbollah_lebanon_explosive_pagers/, I am concerned about the explosions of several thousand small devices without, it seems, any consideration of 'collateral damage' caused to people who just happened to be standing next to the intended victim at the time. According to the BBC website, two children were killed (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/cwyl9048gx8t ). If 'western' security services share intelligence, and also how to mange supply chain attacks, then the are some serious issues as to which counties contributed to the success of tai operation with intelligence, technical expertise or advice.

FULL DISCLOSURE: I have some Jewish heritage, my father's family having fled NAZI Germany in April 1939, I am appalled at the attack on Israel on 7th October, and also the destruction in Gaza. The IDF has accepted that its soldiers killed men waving a white flag who turned out to be Israeli hostages who had been freed (or at least abandoned). American health workers in Gaza report that every day they treat Palestinian children with gunshot wounds to the head. This is a very dirty war. I do not know if there is any solution that would satisfy even 51% of those involved, but they really do need to stop killing each other, and accept each others' humanity or this will go on forever.

Using AI in your tech stack? Accuracy and reliability a worry for most

Re: ChatGPT, what are the limitations of current A.Is ?

"However, the report makes some salient points as companies rush to adopt AI technologies in the hope of realizing promised productivity gains."

Productivity gains are irrelevant if you cannot maintain appropriate quality of output. The pages of the Register articles are awash with warnings of badly implemented 'AI', prejudice embedded in AI due to biassed 'training' data, AI 'inventing' things like legal case references. Yet here we are, the 'C-Suite' seems overwhelmed with the 'opportunities' afforded by 'AI' without any sense that this could all go horribly wrong.

ESA and Neuraspace ink 2-year deal for Space Traffic wrangling

Re: Who moves first?

Then there is the issue of dodging one satellite only to be on course to encounter another. The objective should be to minimise the requirements for course corrections in the future for all satellites, or they could be falling like dominoes.

The Europa Clipper stretches its wings as launch nears

Re: Transistors control the flow of electricity

Depends on our 'leaders' avoiding a nuclear armageddon in the meantime (see, for example, world news on any outlet).

Re: Transistors control the flow of electricity

'Most shielded part' of the spacecraft is probably where everyone wants their sensitive (but not sensor) equipment to be located*, so is a bit tricky.

I suspect that one of the reasons Voyager and other craft have lasted so long is that no one wanted their part of the mission to be the crucial bit that failed first leaving the craft a mere asteroid. These boffins** think of everything and, I have to admit, probably do a far, far better job of it than I would.

Looking forward very much to hearing about the results in a while (fingers crossed for the launch).

* A bit like when you are playing D&D and everyone says their character is 'in the middle of the group' as you explore a new dungeon. Or when designing a warship, everyone wants their radar, IR detector, etc. to be 'at the top of the mast'.

** Gender neutral term, 'coz, well, its the intellect that counts.

Homing pigeon missiles, dead trout swimming, butt breathing honored with Ig Nobel Prize

Re: Dead trout swimming...

In turbulent water there are eddies in which a fish can remain stationary with minimal effort, rather than having to swim against the current in the main channel.

Win 11 refreshes delayed, say PC makers – and here's why

Re: Five year old PCs need replacing :o

"Many of these PCs were bought during COVID and now we are four [or] five years after they were bought and they will have to be replaced."

I cannot help feeling that replacing IT equipment on such a scale every four or five years is not good for the environment. How much of the equipment can genuinely be recycled? How much energy is used to recycle the components. I hate to sound like a 'soggy, tree-hugging (British) liberal, knit your own muesli, whinger'*, but, we do all live in 'the environment'.

*I probably am one, but just don't want to sound like one.

NASA engineers play space surgeon in bid to unclog Voyager 1's arteries

Re: Stunning engineering....

I too have a Dualit toaster and kettle. The toaster is still in use, but I replaced the kettle with a KitchenAid artisan kettle - double skinned with a temperature control.

Re: Nothing but respect

OR, the Earth will get prosecuted for littering, and have to pay a $50 fine* and pick it up ...

*It just depends on whether 'they' find the other ones we've sent into the great black yonder and charge us for those as well. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_artificial_objects_leaving_the_Solar_System)

see did, kind of leave our name, and address on some of these probes.

Long term space missions

If we are ever to visit another solar system we need to learn everything we can from keeping Voyager 'alive' and functioning. All the tricks tag work, and making sure that there are as many tricks available as possible. Banning technical incompatibilities (and yes, space-suits and retiring to Earth from the ISS spring to mind), and careful design for longevity, rather than minimising financial cost.

They sure don't build them like Voyager any more, I really do wonder how much longer they can keep it running though.

Major ISP bungles settings, causing Microsoft 365, Azure outage

Hopefully in the near future ...

... it will feature in the Register's ongoing 'Who, Me?' series.

Not for laughs, you understand, but so that we can all understand and learn from someone else's 'experience'.

So you paid a ransom demand … and now the decryptor doesn't work

Re: Backups!

One of my former customers did the same, backup tapes left on top the the server, in a room that got hot over the weekends when the air-conditioning was turned of (I don't know why, but that's customers for you).

I did persuade them to use one of the their secure cabinets outside the server room for storage.

Backups!

Not sexy, not macho, but backups are the way forward. (Or, in a sense 'backwards' to a working system and happy / satisfied customers.)

Yes, they are tedious, and you hope that you will never need them, and you have to manage them, and administer them, and they cost money, but hey NOT HAVING A BUSINESS is even more expensive.

AI has colonized our world – so it's time to learn the language of our new overlords

Praising and warning

A friend of mine, a professional chemist, reckons that ChatGPT is very good at summarising things. On several occasions he has requested an explanation of the chemistry of certain chemicals, and he claims he received an excellent response each time.

The problem is that if they were really crap all the time, no one would use them, it is that they are really very good a lot of the time, which means we do use them, and spotting when they are biassed, wrong, incomplete or otherwise unsatisfactory will become more and more difficult.

Re: I suspect...

See George Orwell's essay "Politics and the English Language" where he discusses appropriate language to 'get your message across'. The problem with 'Delvish' is that we'll end up speaking it to other people, and the result will be 'New speak' as in Orwell's '1984'.

Is it time to bow down and welcome our new overlords, or is there still hope for us?

Re: "Best to just suck it up and master Delvish"

I thought the threat of going to a computer's major data banks "with a very large axe" and giving it "a reprogramming you will never forget" was usually sufficient.

Zaphod Beeblebrox, HHGTTG, Magrethea episode.

Datacenters to emit 3x more carbon dioxide because of generative AI

Ahh, more monoculture fast growing pine trees that acidify the streams and lakes instead of slow-growing native mixed broadleaf deciduous trees that are superb for supporting a large range of wildlife including insects, their avian predators, squirrels, their avian and mammalian predators, voles etc.

Lovely.

(I am a cynical old git, aren't I?)

What if ...

... someone asked ChatGPT how to reduce Carbon Emissions from generative AI processing?

"Morgan Stanley forecasts that global CO2 emissions from bit barn construction will rise from about 200 million tonnes this year to about 600 million tonnes by 2030, a figure it claims comes out three times higher when compared to a scenario in which no construction due to extra demand from GenAI happens."

Troll icon, 'coz even I know that is a silly question.

Global powers sign AI pact promising to preserve human rights, democracy

Re: Great!

When they can make money from it.

After the 2 downvotes I did a bit of a check for references and found:

Liquid Crystal Displays: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid-crystal_display#:~:text=George%20H.%20Heilmeier%20was%20inducted,work%20is%20an%20IEEE%20Milestone.&text=In%20the%20late%201960s%2C%20pioneering,Radar%20Establishment%20at%20Malvern%2C%20England.

"In the late 1960s, pioneering work on liquid crystals was undertaken by the UK's Royal Radar Establishment at Malvern, England. The team at RRE supported ongoing work by George William Gray and his team at the University of Hull who ultimately discovered the cyanobiphenyl liquid crystals, which had correct stability and temperature properties for application in LCDs"

Cavity Magnetron: https://engineersatwar.ww2.imeche.org/research-and-development/radar-and-the-development-of-the-cavity-magnetron/

"Many different types of magnetron, a vacuum tube which uses powerful magnets and resonant cavities to produce oscillating radio waves, had been developed in Germany, the US and USSR in the 1930s. In 1940, Randall and Boot made significant improvements in the design and produced very high power at wavelengths of 9.8 cm. Their magnetron design was then further improved by Dr E C S Megaw and his team at the GEC Laboratories, Wembley, who transformed the magnetron from a laboratory device needing vacuum pumps and a large electromagnet to a robust, workable, lightweight prototype."

I specifically said "developed", rather than "invented", so maybe the anonymous downvoters would care to explain them?

Well, LCDs and Microwave ovens* were developed by UK government civil service scientists, and they seem to have become rather popular, it is just that the UK industry did not exactly recognise and exploit the potential of those inventions.

*One of the researchers into 10cm RADAR used the cavity magnetron to cook his sausages for lunch during WW2, but I suppose as it was a wartime initiative the technology would have been TOP SECRET.

Ex-senior New York State staffer charged in cash-for-favors scandal with China

Re: I heard a story ...

One of my friends is a nice person, but drives a van for a company delivering boxes. His mother is rich and has married a rich bloke, she has given him a credit card, which she pays off ever month. he doesn't like to spend too much on it.

Age discrimination layoff case against X granted class-action status

Re: Age discrimination and confusion

OH SH1T!!! I hadn't thought of that!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aObZJN9zDtA