* Posts by Dave 126

10622 publicly visible posts • joined 21 Jul 2010

Sorry, Siri: Apple may be eyeing Google Gemini for future iPhones

Dave 126

Re: Generative AI

> brave new world.

Fahrenheit 451 perhaps contains a clearer depiction of what you describe, not to detract from your point.

Dave 126

Apparently this Gemeni thing works on Galaxy S24 phones which have 8GB RAM. Some people are guessing that the difference between the two Pixel phones might be memory bandwidth.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/03/google-says-the-ai-focused-pixel-8-cant-run-its-latest-smartphone-ai-models/

Rancher faces prison for trying to breed absolute unit of a sheep

Dave 126

Real sportsmanship:

One Man and his Dog

https://youtu.be/ikYEftuuA3c?si=bCoKcknGz4VxCmIs

Dave 126

Re: Ovine Park

> I'm looking forward to the film inspired by this.

Then you should check out:

Black Sheep (2006)

"An experiment in genetic engineering turns harmless sheep into bloodthirsty killers that terrorize a sprawling New Zealand farm."

It's good fun, like an early Peter Jackson (Bad Taste, Brain Dead, pre Lord of the Rings) film.

Dave 126

Re: "captive hunting operations – aka shooting sheep in a barrel"

Jeremy Paxman, in a book about the institution of monarchy, notes a European king who had pigs and game animals launched from a catapult so he and his mates could shoot them 'on the wing'.

Dave 126

He's lost the trust of his sheep.

That's punishment enough for a farmer who deals primarily.....with sheep.

Apple's had it with Epic's app store shenanigans, terminates dev account

Dave 126

Re: Android has a 70% global market share.

> If your app is good enough, people will buy a phone to use it.

Err, that might be true if every person only used one app. But they don't. You would have to make a notably special and valuable app to make someone switch platform, to abandon their ways of working, existing apps and peripheral hardware. Where we do see app exclusivity today it tends to be on the iOS side, which has been better supported by developers because:

- iOS users spend more on apps than Android users

- There are fewer iteration of iPhone models to test and support

- The early generations of Android device were not suitable for some tasks (i.e, the latency was too big for music creation apps)

We see this with peripheral hardware as well, where devices for Point of Sale, laser surveying, photography, and music production being released first for iOS/iPadOS and only later, if at all, for Android. And even Google is confused about apps for Android tablets - what is the replacement this month, still ChromeOS or is it Fuschia yet?

( I'm very happy with my Galaxy S10 E, other than it's no longer receiving updates. Grr. I bought it refurbushed a couple of years back, paid £200... My mate has just spent twice that on an iPhone 13, but it'll last a few more years... He got years out of his iPhone SE, but his aging eyesight and a business case for a better camera made him spend the money. Our respective cost of ownership are roughly on a par. )

Ruggedized phone group takes the Bullitt, calls in PWC as administrative receiver

Dave 126

Re: Generally no AR-Core

The approaches to AR include photogrammetry, twin cameras, and laser Time of Flight sensors. The latter, which is capable of accurate distance measurements, is only found on higher end Samsung Galaxy S 20 Plus and Ultra phones (Samsung dropped the feature on subsequent models) and higher end iPhones. Photogrammetry, using software to infer a 3D space from a series of 2D photographs, is compute expensive so is usually done on the cloud. It benefits from good photographs and ideally knowledge of the lens. Samsung Galaxy S are the best selling high end Androids, so are a larger target for developers in this area.

The other approach for scanning rooms involves dedicated hardware from the likes of Leica tethered to an iOS device.

Don't use a phone to show clients drawings on site, that's what tablets are for.

The Who’s Who of AI just chipped in to fund humanoid robot startup Figure

Dave 126

Re: Honestly 16% of human speed is not a problem

> With current or projected foreseeable battery technology it will be impossible to build a self contained humaniform robot that'll be able to run for more than an hour or so between recharges,

That's not an insurmountable problem in a warehouse situation - use swappable batteries.

Uncle Sam explores satellites that can create propellant out of thin air

Dave 126

To be fair to the OP, the article at one point confused air, the propellant, with fuel.

But yeah, a propulsion device requires energy from somewhere - chemical, nuclear or solar harvested - and some reaction mass.

Boffins caution against allowing robots to run on AI models

Dave 126

Re: Erm . . .

Vehicles running on LLM-based object recognition - have you any examples?

Dave 126

The man...

...whose robot mistook his wife for a hat.

Underwater cables in Red Sea damaged months after Houthis 'threatened' to do just that

Dave 126

Re: Why do they need a submarine?

I'm just wondering... What's the chance of accidently damaging a cable from thousands of boats everyday using their anchors, versus the chance of damaging a cable deliberately from a few malintentioned boats?

I don't know the makeup of the sea bed, but could a would-be saboteur tell the difference between tugging at cable and tugging at a rock, of which there might be many? All that National Geographic-style remote imaging equipment looks expensive.

Starting over: Rebooting the OS stack for fun and profit

Dave 126

Re: Do not want!

If I'm reading the author correctly, the idea is that you could restart your OS in an eyeblink. Every program is within its own virtualised OS, spun up from ROM media if needs be. Under the control of a very small hypervisor, which would have fewer attack surfaces than a bigger OS. Additionally, application states can be paused and resumed, backed up or even baked onto Read Only media. So you have a known-good untampered-with reference.

On today's computers, its only software that is stopping nasties in RAM from corrupting what's on SSD. A program in RAM with admin privileges can do what it wants to a disk, the disk isn't safe just because it is separate physical device to the RAM.

Lenovo debuts AI PCs that have specs a lot like vanilla PCs with this year's accelerated CPUs

Dave 126

Re: Transparent display on laptops

The transparent screen... Even if you had a compelling application (and accurate eye tracking) for having virtual overlays over what you were doing with your hands - say you're holding a miniature model and you want to try virtual paint jobs - your eyes would be focused too close (because the screen is situated at some point between your eyes hands). The eyes have to change focus more between 0.3m (screen) and 0.6m (hands) than they do between say 2m and 4. By contrast, virtual reality headsets, by use of optics between the display and your eyes, present an image that is 2m away from the eyes, since that is where the eyes are most relaxed.

Rice isn't nice for drying your iPhone, according to Apple

Dave 126

From the article:

> Because it sure ain't turning on again while waterlogged.

Bullshit. That's actually incorrect. Modern iPhones - and Samsung and Sonys - are waterproof.

Presuming of course you didn't buy the cheap landfill model.

Dave 126

RTFM

The phone is waterproof... though sea water and chorinated swimming pool water (and soup, and beer) are not good for it.

So, just do as Apple's documentation says: Rinse and leave to dry. Use wireless charging in the meantime. Don't clog up its ports and speakers by placing it in a dusty, starchy material (rice).

Same goes for Samsung, Sony and any other civilised phone vender with waterproof handsets.

Dave 126

Re: Miaow

All cat litter is not created equal.

We're assuming you mean the silica gel variety. A mix up between inorganic and organic cat litter led to a fire in an US nuclear waste facility, costing millions of dollars.

Neuralink patient masters mind-mouse maneuvers – if Musk is to be believed

Dave 126

It should be noted that the source article is likely from TheConversation.com, in which two contradictory concerns are simultaneously expressed:

What if the company is profit lead?! and

What if the company goes out of business?!

Um... okay.

https://theconversation.com/several-companies-are-testing-brain-implants-why-is-there-so-much-attention-swirling-around-neuralink-two-professors-unpack-the-ethical-issues-222556

Articles in the Conversation often follow a format in which a specific news event is used to get a professor or two to speak generally about the field. The length of articles is such that they don't have space to concede points, and thus appear less nuanced than perhaps intended.

Dave 126

Re: Details about the patient are scarce...

Exactly. There is nothing to suggest that the medical team who have been treating the patient before he volunteered have received anything but transparency from Neuralink.

If they broke their Hippocratic oath by not studying the pertinent data (from Neuralink s animal studies and medical literature regarding other implants) then something has gone wrong with the wider medical system.

It is not in Neurolink's interests to take shortcuts and endure the rightful backlash for being negligent.

Euro shoppers popping more and more premium phones in the basket

Dave 126

Re: Unscientific anecdotal sample

The iPhones enjoy a lengthy period of software support. Android vendors are finally getting better, but aren't on a par yet.

Regardless of whether you spend £150 or £800, you'll still pay £30 - £60 (DIY or official) every couple of years for a new battery.

The pricier handsets tend to be more robust and waterproof than the cheap ones. I'm ignoring Samsung's novelty folding phones here.

Just as with manufacturing, there are economies of scale with end of life disassembly and recycling... a model sold in the quantities of an iPhone or Samsung A or S series will have a better chance of being recycled economically than some obscure Chinese thing.

Refurbished iPhones appear to fill the same market segment as brand new budget Androids do.

My galaxy S10 E needs a new battery... now, just where have those tiny screwdrivers and plectrums I bought last time wandered off to? :)

Chunks of deorbiting ESA satellite are expected to reach the ground

Dave 126

Re: If you'd asked me ten minutes ago...

Ahhhhh, thank you @thatoneinthecorner... Yeah, I enjoyed Northern Exposure back in nineties, prior to my first viewing of Spinal Tap. That's where I got the idea from. You've eased my itchy brain.

They had some good funerals on Northern Exposure, I enjoyed the one with the trebuchet launching the coffin into the lake.

The internet tells me that as of last month it is a available to stream for the first time, after some longstanding issues around rights have been resolved.

Dave 126

If you'd asked me ten minutes ago...

... I would have sworn that a drummer from Spinal Tap was killed by a re-entering satellite. However, I can't find any reference to this event.

It is possible that my source was the commentary track from the 1998 DVD, but is looking more likely that just imagined it.

https://zeroenthusiasm.tumblr.com/post/47032679583/list-of-spinal-tap-drummers-all-deceased

Remember kids, don't sell your dialysis machine to buy drugs.

Google debuts first Android 15 developer preview without a single mention of AI

Dave 126

> we don't even know how natural intellitgence works.

Nor is there a single definition of 'intelligence'... the broader are along the lines of 'the ability to solve a problem.' While we don't know how natural intelligence works, we do know something about the processes that created it... billions of generations of selection.

However, regardless of how it's done or what people call them, there exist today computer technologies that can do things - pharmaceutical discovery, image recognition, winning at Go - that computers just couldn't a few years ago. Tellingly, criminals are finding these technologies useful for creating fake IDs and other nefarious activities - ie. they've actually using the techniques to make money, and not just using the concept to secure VC funding.

I don't care what it's called. I've sideloaded Googles GCam camera app onto my Samsung and it's excellent for creating low light pictures, if slow. If it's shown that Google's custom silicon on their Pixel phone makes the GCam app faster, then good. If Google calls said silicon an AI accelerator or Neural Processor or whatever, I don't care - as long as it is useful. I'm not going to confuse it for HAL 9000.

Superapp Gojek fine-tunes each new error message for a week. What? Why?

Dave 126

On The Simpsons, the fictional TV news channel had a stand-in 'Technical Difficulties' image of a cute puppy with a power cord in its mouth, sat next to an empty plug socket.

Apple Vision Pro units returned as folks just can't see themselves using it

Dave 126

Re: So, even Apple can't get it right

Similarly, I remember the consensus of Reg commentards regarding the iPad upon its release. The majority of them have since been been shown to have been wrong.

I will have respect for any who can confess up to it.

Dave 126

The devs will base their business models on hard data, their own experience, and first principles reasoning. The perception created by some vocal YouTubers is only relevant to the hard of thinking.

Dave 126

Re: re: Overall, once you've had the Watch, it becomes very difficult to live without it.

> I've got a stop and alarm watch right here on my wrist

That's the point - many of us use our phones as stop watches or calculators. As a consequence, a disused dedicated calculator can hide itself without us noticing.

I too like the honest functionality of a Casio watch, timer set to 0:4:30, but timers are quicker to set on a phone. I don't use a smart speaker, but some friends find them useful in the kitchen for setting timers when their hands are covered in food.

Dave 126

> Am I correct in assuming that it doesn’t even work as a regular VR kit, ie allow me to play Elite Dangerous that I have on my PC?

Correct. Nor can you even use game controllers with the AVP. That is deliberate.

>If it can’t do regular VR then IMO it will lose a lot of interest from people who actually already use VR headsets.

Again, you are correct, and again that's intentional. Apple don't want the gamer market. The gamer market will eventually choose cheaper commodity hardware anyway, and in the meantime the presence of gamers would muddy Apple's messaging that Mixed Reality can be used for productivity and collaboration.

Apple don't mind you playing Candy Crush on an iPhone, Civ VI on an iPad or Death Stranding on a MacBook, but Apple never marketed those devices as being primarily for games.

Dave 126

Especially since the most attention-craving YouTubers can get themselves some attention by wearing one, and then get more attention by vocally returning it. In other news, bears...

People will see the AVP, observe it's limitations, make predictions about what the MK III or IV product will be like, knowing that the price will drop by then. The primary functions of this MK I AVP is to communicate a road map and to show Apple's commitment, whilst giving 3rd party devs something to play with.

Dave 126

Re: re: Overall, once you've had the Watch, it becomes very difficult to live without it.

I challenge you @sabroni to lay your hands on a calculator in the next five minutes.

Oh you've found one? Then well done you. However, the point stands: Things we don't use very often tend to hide in the back of drawers.

Dave 126

Re: Killer App & Price

Most of @deadlockvictim's example use-cases have nothing to do with LLMs.

It is a bit surprising that Apple have been weak on the software front... I was expecting a more radical 'Spatial Desktop Replacement' to make the case for organising documents and ideas spatially, like mathematicians do on a giant blackboard. A little bit Minority Report, a little of Tony Stark's workshop, but mostly like a low tech pin board of interconnected photos and notes.

I was also expecting a few more 3td party apps to be highlighted at the AVP's launch.

However, it is likely Apple see this Mk I product as being most useful in the hands of developers to create compelling applications for the MK II.

AI won't take our jobs and it might even save the middle class

Dave 126

Re: Take A Deep Breath................

There's been a new book published about the Luddites... If I understand Tim Hartford's presentation of it correctly (on his Cautionary Tales podcast), the new textiles technology DID create more new new jobs than it displaced, BUT the new jobs came decades too late to benefit the skilled workers who were displaced by the new machines.

Dave 126

> Sooo, the idea would be that someone who's not a doctor could make doctor-level decisions, provided they have a LLM helping them?

That is *not* the idea, that is your misreading of the article. The article does not mention LLMs (large language models) at all.

Dave 126

Re: Who gets to train the AI?

> We know what it's trained on. Everything that can be scraped uncritically from the internet and the contents of every account on cloud services

Er, no. The article wasn't talking about Large Language Models trained on scraped text from the internet. The systems under discussion would be trained on data pertinent to the task at hand. An ML system for reducing the search space for new pharmaceuticals would be trained on a data set of existing pharmaceuticals, for example. ML for spotting cancer cells would be trained on medical scans, etc.

Moving to Windows 11 is so easy! You just need to buy a PC that supports it!

Dave 126

I remember NT 4 fondly, I found it very snappy and stable. But then I wasn't using it to connect to the internet, play games or use USB hardware. I wasn't using it for much more than Photoshop and a student edition of I-Deas, but it did these things very well. Perhaps some of this feeling is rose tinted spectacles, perhaps it is because RAM limitations nudged me to just use one application at a time. Perhaps it was the focus that not having a browser window open engendered. Perhaps my brain was sharper back then.

I would like an OS with the feel of NT 4 today, but I won't claim to know enough about how to achieve it technically.

Oh, I've just realised that I did have one game, John Romero's Daiktana, because it ran under OpenGL and thus NT 4... thankfully it wasn't a great distraction!

It's time we add friction to digital experiences and slow them down

Dave 126

Re: THIS!!!

Cmon guys, let's not nitpick what @StewertWhite said... we can all think of games, simulations and other tasks that do tangibly benefit from faster CPUs, but we should also acknowledge his broader point that beyond certain thresholds a faster CPU doesn't matter for a lot of users.

A nice responsive user interface benefits lots of users - and thankfulky the threshold of clicking an icon and getting a near instantaneous response have been passed some time ago for most of us. At that point, the user experience might be better served by spending the money on a better trackpad, a bigger battery or a higher resolution screen, or whatever else makes the system as a whole (including the user) work better.

It is a little bit odd that he choose Bang and Olufsen as a counter example though... most of their stuff was not sold on sound quality alone, but on 'system as a whole' considerations, such as multi-room audio functionality, ease of use, and, yes, visual aesthetics. You could get kit that sounded as good for much less money if you didn't mind having some bulky black boxes and more cables in your house.

Dave 126

Re: THIS!!!

Actually people tend to buy Bang and Olufsen because whilst they can't see what's wrong with with British-made large oblong speakers, their partner keeps protesting that they are a bloody eyesore and that the room decor would be less disturbed by some something more svelte and Scandinavian. If the first partner is then foolish enough to retort they also would also prefer something more svelte and Scandinavian around the house, they are liable to have something thrown at them. Hopefully not a Bang and Olufsen remote-control unit, which tend to be heavy and made of metal.

Upstart retrofits an Nvidia GH200 server into a €47,500 workstation

Dave 126

So, am I right in thinking that the only advantage to stuffing all this into a workstation case compared to keeping it in a rack cabinet is that it takes up less physical space in your office?

If so, then it would appear that it is of more interest to people with small offices, perhaps constrained by high property prices in, say, a city centre.

Or am I missing something?

Apple and Samsung tussle over whose gizmos are hardest to fix

Dave 126

Reliability

There was not a single mention of reliability in this article, or from this Right to Repair coalition.

When I spend money on a phone or laptop I want it to last as long as possible. Knowing how repairable an item is is meaningless without also knowing how reliable and durable it is. Every time the popular tech press recycle what iFixit et al put out, it's like looking at an equation with a variable missing. Ow, my brain.

IFixit sell parts. Their interests are not completely aligned with devices being durable. The tech press should bring a bit more critical thinking and context to this issue.

(And obviously, buy a waterproof phone and stick it in a case and use a toughed glass screen protector. Don't let the battery run down low too often, and keep it away from car dashboards in the sun. Buy a phone with a wireless charging so that it remains usable in case of damage to the USB port. )

Apple Vision Pro has densest display iFixit's ever seen, and almost-OK repairability

Dave 126

Re: "If face goggles really are the future of computing..."

> , self-important, don't-you-fucking-talk-to-me facial tool

A lot of men used to use a broadsheet newspaper (and optionally, Radio 4) for the same purpose of isolating themselves from others.

But for sure, I'll have to check out that Ted Talk... It reminds me of the folk who got the MS Kinect working with a PC with two days of it's release. We've seen similar with smart whiteboards.

I just don't see being sat (or even being stood) at a desk as being that last word in human / machine interfacing, especially if the computer in question is being used to assist tasks in the physical world.

Interesting stuff, I await to see what 3td party developers do.

Dave 126

Re: BTL

>Apple, take your enslavement devices and piss off! Whenever I see VR goggles all I can think of is "Red Dwarf : Better Than Life

To be fair to Apple, they've never really pushed gaming as a primary use for any of their platforms... though of course a good many iPhones (and the iPod Touch - a cheaper non-phone iPhone for teenagers) have been used for casual gaming, to Apple's App Store profit.

Whilst we can only speculate as to their reasons, it seems likely that a, they haven't wanted the stigma of being associated with gamers (buy your lil Johnny a Mac, it's educational!), and b, gaming hardware becomes a commodity, judged only by its performance.

Dave 126

Re: Surprised the PPD is that low

60ppd is going some!

Varjo only claim 51 pp on their XR-4 headset, that's from two 3840 x3744 displays at 120° horizontal.

The AVR was measured by ifixit as 3660×3200 at an *estimated* 100° horizontal.

Though as Mr Guttag notes, that's an average and he suspects lens distortion increases the ppd in the centre of the AVP display.

Dave 126

Re: Anything but ...

ObligXKCD

We lost a Mars probe over this crap

Apple Vision Pro is creating a new generation of glassholes

Dave 126

It's a bit unfair to judge an entire generation for the acts of a few idiots on social media.

It's a bit like judging all the Reg writers for the often moronic output of their headline author.

Dave 126

Re: Apple could address this

IANAL

Apple might be liable if they implemented such a feature and it failed (maybe the car has an unorthodox steering wheel). They might be on firmer legal ground if they just assert that it up to the user to use it responsibly.

Also, maybe someone might want to use it at home sat behind the wheel of their home racing simulator.

Think tank funded by Big Tech argues AI’s climate impact is nothing to worry about

Dave 126

So, in an article that is primarily about the difficulty of comparing the positive and negative impacts of X, you declare the problem is definitely Z?

(Mining doesn't destroy as much wild habit as agriculture does, some manufactured products allow us to reduce our environmental impact, a new shiny shiny is likely far less damaging than a big vroom vroom. Stuff is complex)

Dave 126

Re: False equivalence

The value of the output text would matter if it's poetry, literature or quality journalism... but I'd wager a significant fraction of text written by humans today isn't that. If, for example, you care about the quality of journalism, then you'd do better to look at the economic factors that negatively impacted the funding of local newspapers.

You perceived an an agenda to 'replace the entire American' but had you read even the abstract of the study you'd know that wasn't their position.

What good do human-written words do if other human don't read them?

AI models just love escalating conflict to all-out nuclear war

Dave 126

Re: Looking Glass, Submarines, Riding Out Attack

A lot of war gaming and simulations suggest that the damage to command and control systems means that no nuclear war can be guaranteed to stay limited. Escalation happens.

Dave 126

Re: FOX to blame?

Good point, a lot of language uses physical metaphors, often physical to the point of violent:

You don't have to ram that point down my throat.

It was a landslide victory.

I will declare thermonuclear war on Android.

We thrashed them three - nil.

He needs a kick up the arse.

Don't beat around the bush.

They took a hammering.

He's shot himself in the foot.

He stabbed me in the back.