Posts by Dave 126

Vernor Vinge, first author to describe cyberspace and 'The Singularity,' dies at 79

> I'm not seeing you define Intelligence.

You should have been able to infer I go by the dictionary definition

. Clearly you don't, but you refuse to say how.

I do believe it's your turn.

> I'm not seeing you define Intelligence.

I wasn't the one making a definitive statement though, was I? I invited you to define the terms of your statement for clarity, not to play games.

I wouldn't claim to be knowledgeable - indeed, studying information theory only reminds us that there are limits on what can be known, measured, calculated or trusted.

Asimov's robots are presented to his readers as being roughly human-level in their problem solving skills, what they gain from patience is often offset by inhibitions created by the eponymous 3 Laws - at least in the likes of Daneel and Giskard... The Susan Calvin robots err usually a bit simpler. To avoid confusion, this would be referred to as AGI today. I appreciate Asimov's input, but I see no reason to see a biochemist and history scholar as being the final authority on what Intelligence is.

Re: "He wasn't out by many years on the AI prediction"

Would you kindly define AI? The A part is fairly easy, so really I'm asking you to define Intelligence.

Dictionaries give a few definitions at varying levels of specificity.

Escher Bach and Godel might be of help in formulating your answer, in addition to your Oxford, Webster's or Collin's.

Cheers!

I've only just discovered him. And so naturally I wasted no time in reading his Zones of Thought series (A Fire, a Deepness), his Ungoverned series, and his short stories with interesting introductions by the author. Upon running out of his novels I got The Snow Queen and then The Summer Queen* by his former wife Joan D Vinge, and was listening to it yesterday when I read the sad news of his passing.

Vernor stated that he created the premise of his Zones of Thought series as a way of him having some good ol' Space Opera fun without contradicting his reasoned belief in the Singularity and its implications. A workaround, if you will. I like to think that Iain M Bank's Consider Phlebas (1987) reminded Vinge that Space Opera is fun, just as Banks often played with ideas originally fleshed out by Vinge in return. That's just my conjecture. But Vinge does give an explicit salute to Terry Pratchett in Rainbow's End: If pervasive AR gives students the ability to create their own shared realities, a good chunk of them will choose to live in the Discworld. Yep!

Vernor's Marooned in Realtime is also a great read, a follow on from the Peace Wars which examines Libertarian ideas, though of course you should read all the Robert Heinlein if your interested in the history of that sort of thing.

RIP

*It's reminding me of Frank Herbert so far. Good stuff.

One rack. 120kW of compute. Taking a closer look at Nvidia's DGX GB200 NVL72 beast

Re: A mind-expanding voodoo explosion

> desperately needs the expertise of a visually explosive voodoo tribal arts plastician to fully exploit the aesthetique potential of their new hardware

Er yeah, I prefer the appearence of the Cray-1 too, especially when sat on white tiles.

UN: E-waste is growing 5x faster than it can be recycled

Re: Recycling not that easy

> A service that offers secure destruction of old phones/tablets would be very useful.

I offer such a service!

Just send them to:

Other People's Confidential Data For Sale

PO Box 123

Basingstoke

Right to repair is a tiny sticking plaster.

It's becoming a green-washing lifestyle choice that allows its practitioners to feel good about themselves.

Tut tut The Reg for just bolting on some self-appointed RTR spokesfolk - yet again! - onto an article about a UN report. If you're not clarifying the situation then you are muddying it. If you don't know what you're writing about then ask - there is some experience and wisdom in amongst the commentards. Use critical thinking - distinguish yourself from an LLM search assistant.

(Sent from a refurbished phone. My laptop is ten years old, my desktop and monitor second hand. I bought for £15 from a charity shop a 50" Sony Bravia TV with weird artifacts - ie not an obvious issue with the panel - and fixed it by replacing the TCon PCB). I reserve my money for good beer, shoes and underwear, which I buy new.

DARPA tasks Northrop Grumman with drafting lunar train blueprints

Rail or road

There is a concept to use mirrors and sunlight to sinter loose regolith into roads and other structures.

A slight tangent, I know, but may be of interest.

https://interestingengineering.com/innovation/sustainable-building-lunar-roads-melting-regolith

Re: Railways? Nasty Commie idea.

It isn't the terminal ballistics that scare me. It's the lithobraking.

Re: Railways? Nasty Commie idea.

I was going to suggest the Japanese. Given their track record (oh dear) of building Mag-lev railways they at first glance appear to have more relevant experience than a defense contractor such as Northrup Grumman... but then I thought, what's the difference between a Mag-lev railway and a rail gun *really*?

Re: silicate-rich particles are sharp enough to destroy

Terrestrial plants form relationships with the soil fungi they have co-evolved with... The fungi have an impressive chemical toolkit for breaking down inorganic substrates and accessing nutrients. Consider how fine the mycelia are compared to even the thinnest of plant roots; their surface area is immense.

In return the plants supply sugars to the fungi. Usually. Some plants are parasitic, just as some fungi are.

Re: "figure out what would be necessary for a railroad network on the Moon"

The vacuum would help reduce heat transfer. This is an area of interest for mooted projects for transferring electrical power by superconducting cable from a fission power plant to a moon base.

That's ambiguous because US military contractors have been known to do this:

" The year is now 1951: My first engineering job is at Boeing. I’m designing parts for their new B-52A bomber. I use my own drafting instruments as I work at a huge drawing board. But the company provides me with a special ruler. .... Its inches are divided into tenths. And each tenth is subdivided into tiny slices, two one-hundredths of an inch wide. You see, Boeing conceived the airplane itself in one-inch sections. The B-52’s body was – is – one thousand, nine hundred, and twelve inches long.

" Boeing had created its own decimal system within the company. Just think how much labor they cut when we didn’t have to keep multiplying and dividing by 12! How much more time did we save when we didn’t have fractions like three-eighths of an inch? ... "

https://engines.egr.uh.edu/episode/3292

Re: "figure out what would be necessary for a railroad network on the Moon"

> We'll continue when you've solved that.

A brush.

Starship did have a successful launch...

... just not a successful re-entry. It achieved orbital velocity, and the only reason it didn't actually orbit was because it was never intended to.

The engineers that gave us Falcon 9, a reusable rocket that has met its stated goal of making spaceflight seem as boring as civil aviation, appear to know what they are doing.

Britain enters period of mourning as Greggs unable to process payments

Re: It was CMOT Dibbler

How much extra do you charge for ketchup?

Re: Meanwhile over at twitch.tv...

To be fair, I remember a 1980s video game called Paperboy, simulating a step before supermarket assistant on many people's career path.

After a period as a delinquent brawler (Streets of Rage) I held the post of town planner (Sim City) before rising to the post of Emperor of the world (Civilization), which is about as high as I can rise without going full Molyneux.

Brits blissfully unbothered by snail-paced mobile network speeds

Re: Makes sense

> Mobile experiences have been pretty optimized for slower network speeds.

You'd hope so, wouldn't you? However, I saw this today, and it confirms my anecdotal prejudices:*

"Modern Web Bloat Means Some Pages Load 21MB of Data [Quora and most social media sites amongst the worst offenders]"

https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/modern-web-bloat-means-some-entry-level-phones-cant-run-simple-web-pages-and-load-times-are-high-for-pcs-some-sites-run-worse-than-pubg

*My social site of choice is called a public house. Sadly, I sometimes need to check on a pub's FB page to see if there is a band playing. This seems common, even if if a pub has it own website. Pub's open website loads near instantly, Facebook page takes twenty seconds.

Virgin Media sets up 'smart poles' next to cabinets to boost mobile network capacity

Re: NIMBY

I dunno, as a child I balanced atop a green BT junction box in a country lane to reach sloes from a blackthorn bush (I guess our mothers thought sending us out to forage gin ingredients was a constructive way of getting us out of the house). I remember thinking at the time that the slope of the thing's lid wasn't ideal for my purpose.

Those Vodafone things are ugly though. Last month I was waiting at a bus stop in France and admiring the industrial design of a utility cabinet with vertical flutings.

Re: "digital electricity" technology

The link you posted vindicates your assumption. If the power sending module doesn't get confirmation from the power receiving module that resistance etc are nominal, it cuts power immediately. This check happens 500 times per second. Therefore even at 350V the most energy that is sent into a fault is one joule.

Clever.

Re: "digital electricity" technology

Thank you @blackcat for supplying the powerelectronicsnews.com link. It explains clearly how how 350V AC has been made 'touch safe":

“We have developed what we call a packet energy transfer,” said Luke Getto, director of product management at VoltServer. “To make it very simple to understand, think about a square wave with a 75% duty cycle. For three-quarters of the packet, we are sending power, while for one-quarter of the same packet, we are doing what we call our safety check. The safety check allows us to know if the packet has been properly sent and received.”

"During the safety check, the system can determine if there has been a short-circuit, a resistive fault, an open circuit, and things like that. As long as no fault is detected, the system keeps sending the energy packets, while as soon an error is detected, transmission is stopped immediately. Packets are sent at a very high rate — roughly 500 packets per second. However, each single packet counts for a small quantity of energy. If a fault has been detected, the sending of packets is stopped, and the resulting energy dissipated into a fault is only about one joule. This allows VoltServer to use a much higher voltage that reduces the current and allows for small conductors (18–16 AWG) to be used"

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

Re: Generative AI

> brave new world.

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

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

Real sportsmanship:

One Man and his Dog

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

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.

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'.

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

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

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

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

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

Re: Erm . . .

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

The man...

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

> 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?

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

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.

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.

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.

> 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.