Posts by Jaybus

AI caramba, those neural networks are power-hungry: Counting the environmental cost of artificial intelligence

Re: "we're not doing enough to make AI more energy efficient"

"I is probably written in an abstracted high level language"

Worse. They are mostly written in Python.

Re: A language processing model might be able to understand

To be safe, perhaps we should just vote with paper ballots.

Re: Human alternative

Let's be more generous than that. Dogs are among the most intelligent beings on the planet. I'd be willing to call it AI if it approached the intelligence of a frog, regardless of power consumption. Consider, though, if it were possible to dedicate 100% of the processing power of a frog brain to a single task. I feel certain it would be capable of, say, driving a Tesla.

It's really just a multi-dimensional linear equation, right? xM = y, where x is an input vector and y is the output vector. M is an unknown matrix. Training involves presenting a set of x for which y is known, and it is repeated until xM, for some set of x, is within a defined error margin of the corresponding set of y. The training is statistical, but not the end use. Once trained, that is the coefficients in M are calculated, it could certainly be deployed on a Raspberry Pi as well.

Re: machines and entropy

Oh, no. beast machines continue to be optimized by natural selection. Also, the beast machines are optimized by trial and error, just like the silicon ones. And if one considers the millions of years it takes to optimize beast machines, I'm not sure how energy efficient the process is.

Amazon says Elon Musk's wicked, wicked ways mean SpaceX's Starlink 2.0 should not be allowed to fly

The Chinese state-owned company GW is also putting up a mega-constellation. So it isn't just a US orbit-grab, if that makes you feel better.

Australia rules Facebook page operators are legally liable for user comments under posts

Re: Out of curiosity ...

And that straightforward precedent is based on the common-law principle stated in the article:

"...that every intentional participant in a process directed to making matter available for comprehension by a third party is a 'publisher' of the matter upon the matter becoming available to be comprehended by the third party."

So, why did it stop with the page admin? Certainly Facebook is itself an intentional participant in that process by providing the media on which the matter is made available, and so Facebook, too, is a 'publisher'.

This case could be a huge issue for Facebook in the US (which also has a common-law legal system). If ruled a publisher, they would lose their 'platform' status exemption under the Communications Decency Act and be treated like every other publisher. In other words, they could be sued based on content, including third-party content.

Personally, I think that perhaps this was the only decision the High Court could make, given the Australian laws, but it is a horrible decision for free speech. It will effectively force page admins to simply stop allowing comments in order to protect themselves.

Why we abandoned open source: LiveCode CEO on retreat despite successful kickstarter

Well, there has to be, doesn't there? Even in human written languages punctuation is a necessary thing. We need to delimit individual thoughts/concepts. For example,

It's time to eat George would you set the table

Is that:

It's time to eat George. Would you set the table?

or is it:

It's time to eat. George, would you set the table?

We could define rules for writing it without the commas, by say requiring a EOL instead of a period and EOL + indentation for a comma.

It's time to eat

George

would you set the table

But it is just trading character codes. How does that make it less error prone? And wouldn't this just be a more COBOL-like version of BASIC?

Can we talk about Kevin McCarthy promising revenge if Big Tech aids probe into January insurrection?

Re: Not really.

"when only white men who owned property could vote"

That would be the early 19th century. It wasn't until the Third Reform Act in 1870 that all male house owners were eligible to vote in the UK. The US had comparatively liberal voting laws for the early 19th century.

US boffins: We're close to fusion ignition in the lab – as seen in stars and thermonuclear weapons

Re: Self sustaining

Ignition and breakeven are two very different concepts. In the ignition experiment, they are concerned with simulating the radiation driven inertial implosion that occurs in a thermonuclear weapon. So they are really only concerned with the energy output as compared to the x-ray radiation generated. Ignition is the point at which sufficient heat is generated and briefly confined that, were there more fusion fuel, it would result in a runaway reaction, or in other words, it would "ignite" a thermonuclear explosion.

By contrast, the National Spherical Torus Experiment (NSTX) is a US magnetic confinement experiment and is similar to the Mega Ampre Spherical Tokamak (MAST) experiment being conducted in Oxfordshire, although both of those are a bit behind the Joint European Torus (JET) experiment. These are energy production experiments, so are more concerned with the breakeven concept, or the ability to generate a net energy gain in a controlled manner.

Beige Against the Machine: The IBM PC turns 40

Re: Memory

The 8088 had 16-bit address registers and a 20-bit address bus. So apps had to utilize memory in 64k blocks of a 1 MB address space. Actually, IBM reserved 384k of the upper 1024k address space for BIOS and I/O, so apps had to use the bottom 640k of "conventional memory". EMM and such were kludges to expand beyond the 1 MB address space by taking advantage of the segmentation. As an ISA card, they occupied a range of addresses in that 384k of reserved space. The cards mapped their onboard RAM to one or more 64k blocks of the card's assigned address space in that reserved area so that the 8088 could address it..

Re: "What a piece of crap"

I worked with CompuPro S-100 systems in an analytical chemistry lab as a comp sci student in 1981-1984. They had a Tektronix 4010 graphics terminal and I was working on a couple of projects with chemistry grad students who fought over the 4010. Prof. Ridgeway managed to get us a IBM PC with the CGA card. His idea was for one group to use that and the other the S-100 and Tektronix terminal, but all of their work thus far had been written for Microsoft's FORTRAN compiler and Z80 assembler. He instructed me to "get them up on the IBM as quickly as possible". He had in mind to translate the code from to something that would run on the PC. But I took him at his word and wrote a Tektronix 4010 terminal emulator in a mix of Microsoft Basic and MASM, the only two compilers we hod for the PC at the time. He was angry when he found me out, but fortunately I had it mostly working by then. Funny thing is, the PC made for a faster graphics terminal than the actual 4010 and then they fought over who got stuck with the 4010. So, my first experience with the PC was to use it as a terminal connected to a "real" computer. After all, it did have the best keyboard I've ever used.

Google staff who work from home might see pay cut under corporate policy – reports

Re: WTF?!

So Google wants to make more by reducing costs. Of course they do, and that is reasonable. What is not reasonable is denying their employees that same profitability. Google is claiming that since the commuting and other non-reimbursed employee expenses are reduced, Google is entitled to those savings too, in addition to the savings they will enjoy from smaller or less office space. WTF, indeed!

Ch-ch-ch-Chia! HDD sales soar to record levels as latest crypto craze sweeps Europe

Re: Too late

Yes, but rest assured Mr. Cohen has the lion's share of it. Same as any other crypto currency....a digital Ponzi scheme.

Right to repair shouldn't exist – not because it's wrong but because it's so obviously right

Re: re. companies don't publish schematics is that you cannot copyright the wiring of components

Not really. Chip manufacturers always publish reference designs. When designers with different companies use the same reference design as a guide in their product design, there is likely to be similarities and overlap. There are only so many ways to connect the chip. Nevertheless, that doesn't stop lawyers from using that overlap in trying to claim infringement. It's not self-incrimination so much as self-defense in a litigious World that would make a corp not want to publish.

The more likely scenario is that at some point company A decided that hardly anyone looked at the schematic and it cost too much to publish it. The others decided that if company A didn't have to, then neither did they. And no corporate conspiracy theory is required to explain it.

Re: Spot-on analysis

For some odd reason, there are those who don't appreciate being told to limit their energy usage by people who use ten or a hundred times more energy than they do. It's the governmental micro-management that doesn't sit well. If you are about making things fair, then wouldn't it be better to limit household energy usage? No doubt many deeming themselves green, but living in a mansion would balk at that. But just limit the household usage and if people want to use their allotment playing games, then I say.....have fun!

The UK is running on empty when it comes to electric vehicle charging points

Re: Hmm....

And don't forget that more than half of that electricity is coming from burning fuels, mostly natural gas. Yes, yes, only 38% is from gas and 1% from oil/coal, so some have claimed that renewables have for the first time overtaken fossil fuels. I suppose that is technically true, however 12% of the total is from biomass, and renewable though it may be, it is nonetheless another carbon-based fuel that is burned.

Not saying that EVs aren't a good thing, just that powering them is nowhere near zero emission. A bigger question is where is the needed additional electricity going to come from?

Europe mulls anonymous crypto-wallet ban, rules to make transfers more traceable

Re: Being in the wrong

Criminals follow the money. For example, Mexican drug cartels have moved heavily into human smuggling, (and human trafficking), particularly smuggling people into the USA. This is primarily due to the pandemic making it harder to get supplies from China needed to make methamphetamine and fentanyl, but also due to lockdowns. Idle hands and all that. The blood money has to be laundered too, you know!

In the '80s, satellite comms showed promise – soon it'll be a viable means to punt internet services at anyone anywhere

That's not entirely accurate. The US is 11th in fixed broadband, 25th in wireless...on par with France and Switzerland. The difference is that in the US bandwidth is extremely disparate. Populous cities have very fast internet and rural areas have....well, none, or almost none. Rural areas have 5G and 4G only along major highways, otherwise some have grandfathered DSL The USA is abandoning copper too and new installs are generally not available. The LEOs should be a huge success in rural America.

Wanted: State-backed bandits planning cyberattacks on US infrastructure. Reward: $10m

Re: I would have thought..

Perhaps in NYC and other large cities where the majority already walk or use public transit, but in the area affected by the pipeline shutdown, the more typical 20 minute commute by driving turns into a 4 hour or so walk. All good for who?

Boffins boast of 'slidetronics' breakthrough enabling binary switch just two atoms thick

Re: I have to wonder....

Umm, they didn't say just two atoms. They said two atoms thick. The two sheets together make a single switch. The switch requires far fewer than the million or so atoms required to make a transistor, but still several thousand atoms, most likely.

Treaty of Roam finally in ashes: O2 cracks, joins rivals, adds data roaming charges for heavy users in EU

Re: If it's not on the side of a bus...

Well, I believe that we've missed it.

John McAfee dead: Antivirus tycoon killed himself in prison after court OK'd extradition, says lawyer

Re: Why was he in a Spanish prison?

A US citizen still has to pay the taxes where they live. The taxes paid to other countries are deducted from what they would owe to the US (known as Foreign Tax Credit). If they live in a country with lower taxes than the US, then they will owe the US the difference. If in a country with higher taxes than the US, then they won't owe anything, but are still required to file a return form. Most end up in wealthier countries with similar or higher taxes, so it really is not that onerous.

Three things that have vanished: $3.6bn in Bitcoin, a crypto investment biz, and the two brothers who ran it

Re: BCCI

I suspect in both cases the criminals who were laundering money, errr I mean principle investors, there were fleeced by the criminals who were doing the laundering. If they were/are ever found, we still will not hear from them ever again.

Say helloSystem: Mac-like FreeBSD project emits 0.5 release

Re: The UI

Oh yes! The Jackintosh. So named because it seemed it would be a cheaper knock-off of the Macintosh, Atari being lead at the time by Jack Tramiel, who headed Commodore through the Pet, Vic-20, and Commodore 64 years and was famous for ultra low cost consoles.

Re: The UI

Isn't that how a written language works? We have been using the symbol 'A' as the first letter of the English language for centuries. A red traffic light means stop. Are you saying that its been red for so long and now that we have LEDs we should think about changing it to a shade of purple. The floppy icon for save has only been used for a few decades. It's not old. It's practically brand new.

Wyoming powers ahead with Bill Gates-backed sodium-cooled nuclear generation plant

Re: Go for it

Really? Because the US just allocated $1.5 billion for nuclear energy research, including $280 million for the Advanced Reactors Demonstration Program. ARDP is focusing on high temperature gas modular reactors and X-energy's TRISO-X fuel pellets. The fuel pellets are uranium, carbon, and oxygen fuel particles encapsulated in a carbon and ceramic-based coating that prevents the release of fission products. This tech would by no means provide bomb making material. Perhaps they just saw high temperature gas modular reactors as a better choice than thorium reactors. Granted, there is also a mobile version of this reactor that would be highly useful for military purposes, such as powering laser-based anti-missile, anti-aircraft, and weapon systems.

Who'd have thought the US senator who fist pumped Jan 6 insurrectionists would propose totally unworkable anti-Big Tech law?

Re: Disagree

...and none of those examples of voter suppression by individuals and groups has anything to do with a voter suppression law.

Australian police suggests app to record consent to sexual activity

Re: Is there a "magic word"?

If I'm gonna get my balls blown off for a word, my word is "poontang".

-- Full Metal Jacket (1987)

NASA sends nuclear tank 293 million miles to Mars, misses landing spot by just five metres. Now watch its video

Re: it's difficult to top the footage from Cassini-Huygens

Agreed. This is perhaps best ever in terms of video quality, certainly from Mars. But I am old and remember the Apollo 11 videos as the best ever.

Supermicro spy chips, the sequel: It really, really happened, and with bad BIOS and more, insists Bloomberg

Maybe, but #5 is a good guess too.

Drag Autonomy founder's 'fraudulent guns' and 'grasping claws' to the US for a criminal trial, thunders barrister

Re: OOoooooK

But doing a poor job of due diligence is not a crime. Falsifying financials for the purpose of fraudulently inflating revenues and stock price is a crime. Garbage in, garbage out. While HP leadership is/was incompetent for not being skeptical, their incompetence is not a crime and certainly does not excuse Lynch's criminal behavior. If someone leaves their keys in their car and it is stolen, we say they were foolish, but the thief is still a thief.

Re: OOoooooK

How did you conclude that HP skipped the due diligence? The HP board can hardly be held responsible for Autonomy's fraud and other crimes. Crimes are alleged to have been committed in both nations, btw.

It's not so hard to see how stockholders were harmed. If Autonomy falsified financials, then they fraudulently inflated their stock price. Any stockholders who bought shares at the inflated price were harmed, whatever their nationality. Perhaps if the Serious Fraud Office were even slightly interested in doing their job the US wouldn't be asking for extradition.

Vote machine biz Smartmatic sues Fox News and Trump chums for $2.7bn over bogus claims of rigged 2020 election

Quite a markup

Smartmatic USA Corp has annual revenue of $4.58 million. So the suit is for a little over 598 years worth of their revenues. Their sense of self-worth may just be more overinflated than Trumps. It's a fantastic voting machine...much better than any other...the best that has ever been or ever will be...

Nearly 70 years after America made einsteinium in its first full-scale thermo-nuke experiment, mystery element yields secrets of its chemistry

Re: “It was discovered by accident in the debris in the first hydrogen bomb”

Napalm was invented by Harvard organic chemist Julius Fieser in 1942. It was used in the US M2 flamethrower, the M-69 incendiary, and the E-46 cluster bomb (which consisted of 38 M-69s). It was used in the firebombing of more than 60 Japanese cities between March and August 1945.

Google, Apple sued for failing to give Telegram chat app the Parler put-down treatment

Re: @ecofeco @Overunder Am I bad for not...

"Should Mark Zuckerberg take down 'Jews for Jesus' from FB because he's Jewish and finds their site to be distasteful?"

And that is the problem in a nutshell. On the one hand, it is a private company. The 1st Amendment applies to FB and its users not being censored by government, not to FB users being censored by Zuckerberg. On the other hand, the 1st Amendment freedom of speech applies to everyone. In fact, the SCOTUS has repeatedly ruled that what is generally held to be hate speech (a term that is not legally defined in the US) is in fact protected speech under the 1st Amendment, the most recent case being Mataal v. Tam (2017) in a unanimous ruling. In other words, Congress cannot pass a law to prevent hate speech, as it would be unconstitutional, The Communications Decency Act of 1996 was an attempt to ban, or at least protect children from, pornography by making it illegal to publish "indecent" or "obscene" content that might potentially be seen or heard by children. The "indecent" provision, the part that could possibly be used to refer to hate speech, was ruled unconstitutional by the SCOTUS in Reno v. ACLU (1997).

So actually, Zuckerberg has no liability for anything said on FB, and neither does he have any legal obligation to ban any sort of hate speech on FB. At the same time, Section 230 of the CDA protects him from liability for banning hate speech.

Ditto for Google and Apple. They don't have to ban hate speech, but they can choose to do so. However, if they choose to do so, then they must do so uniformly. They cannot discriminate because of race, religion, age, political views, etc. The banning of Parler has given them exposure that they didn't have before, in that CSW now has a case related to treating Telegram Messenger differently than the Parler app.

Judge denies Parler an injunction to force AWS to host the antisocial network for internet outcasts

Re: Free speech often is unpleasant and offensive

Certainly! But do we want Amazon to be "the authorities"? Neither Parler nor anyone working for them has been indicted.

Re: Censorship by Private Companies

Not really. A 1st Amendment argument would make them a publisher and remove their exemption under Section 230 of the CDA, which exempts service providers, not publishers. They will continue to use a Section 230 argument, even if it means they lose the case.

Re: Censorship by Private Companies

Not surprising at all. The First Amendment only prevents government (at any level) from censoring and doesn't effect private business.

This is going to be a very concerning case, nonetheless. It actually involves exemptions given to service providers by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996. This is the basis of Amazon's defense. The problem is, the exemption specifically applies to providers of "interactive computer services" and Congress defined the term in subsection (f) to mean "any information service, system, or access software provider that provides or enables computer access by multiple users to a computer server, including specifically a service or system that provides access to the Internet and such systems operated or services offered by libraries or educational institutions."

So the question is, did AWS provide an interactive computer service to multiple users or did they provide an infrastructure service to a single user? If the former, then Section 230 effectively applies only to big tech cloud providers and a few like Facebook that operate their own server farms. Essentially, it strips Section 230 protections from, for example, El Reg-like sites that use cloud services and offer a comments section.

United States Congress stormed by violent followers of defeated president, Biden win confirmation halted

Re: ...and where exactly do you live in the US?

Hmm. Check ourworldindata.org stats. As of 7 Jan the top three in COVID-19 deaths per million are:

#1 UK 10.54

#2 DE 8.86

#3 US 8.35

The current 1.325 deaths per day in the UK is actually the highest in the world! So I certainly hope that the lockdown helps.

Trump's overhaul of Section 230 stalls, Biden may just throw the web legal shield on the bonfire anyway

Re: Sect. 230, Devin, Tucker C, Donald, the lame duck and Ijit Pai

"Presidential Medal of Freedom circa 2020 will like *never* be seen at auction as it will have a negative value."

Wrong.

“If you nail two things together that have never been nailed together before, some schmuck will buy it from you.” – George Carlin

Re: And...

Exactly. The liability shield is most definitely needed. It doesn't need to be excepted for certain companies, as Trump would have, or eliminated altogether as Biden has proposed. Note that Facebook is not responsible for what a user says, however that user is most definitely responsible and can be sued (or charged if it is a criminal act). Seems logical to me.

SolarWinds: Hey, only as many as 18,000 customers installed backdoored software linked to US govt hacks

Re: 36 days left

The Iran-backed attack on the US embassy in Baghdad on 31 Dec 2019 was also an act of war under international law. Your point?

And why is your list of usual suspects based on no actual evidence any more believable?

Re: 36 days left

No. It was a very limited retaliation for the attack on the US Embassy in Baghdad carried out by Iran-ibacked militia.

Up yours, Europe! Our 100% prime British broadband is cheaper than yours... but also slower and a bit of a rip-off

Re: Speed is not the whole story

Most of the broadband technologies will never make it to rural areas. The FCC still regards DSL as broadband in many areas where it exists for grandfathered customers but is not actually available. The only technology that might make a difference in rural areas is LEO satellite such as the Starlink service that is now in public beta in the Northern US and Canada. They are launching 120 satellites per month, even during COVID.

No providers actually still support DSL, or even copper POTS. Ancient, failing copper lines are too expensive to maintain. They only still have them because state and federal laws make it part of their licensing requirements (for 911 service, etc.). In fact, in most states they are petitioning the government to be allowed to abandon their copper, arguing that they can meet the state's requirements with LTE or 5G. So far, I don't think any states have believed them.

Re: Speed is not the whole story

There are a few that do have caps in the US, AT&T and Xfinity (Comcast), but their cap is 1 TB and they also have unlimited plans that cost more. But most do not. I have Spectrum cable at 400 Mbps for $70 / month and it is unlimited.

The internet divide is very real here. In most (all?) cities 1 Gbps is available and 100 Mbps is the cheap level, usually around $50 and discounted to $30 or so if getting TV and landline with it. If you live in a rural area your options are severely limited, slow, and very expensive or even non-existent. The mean for the US is down around 70 Mbps due to the slow speeds in rural areas where only satellite service is available.

US Treasury, Dept of Commerce hacks linked to SolarWinds IT monitoring software supply-chain attack

Yes, but the infiltration may well have been old school, by getting a job there as a developer.

CentOS project changes focus, no more rebuild of Red Hat Enterprise Linux – you'll have to flow with the Stream

Even though I too feared this would happen, I never made the change and held out hope. Turns out my fears were correct and all will be assimilated. Oh well. On to the replacement distro search, likely Ubuntu LTS.

A tale of two nations: See China blast off from the Moon as drone shows America's Arecibo telescope falling apart

Re: Amy Coney Barrett

Hmmm. I don't think Agudath Israel, one of the institutions bringing the case to court, did so in the name of Jesus.