Posts by Old Handle

AI does a better job of ripping off the style of famous authors than MFA students do

Were the humans also trained on copyrighted works?

Congress tries to outlaw AI that jacks up prices based on what it knows about you

Re: Secrecy

But if you take away the AI part, isn't this done all freaking time? Okay, maybe not so much in the consumer world, but in business to business kind of industries. Like anything where you see "request a quote" instead of a price list. Having worked in that kind of field a little bit, I don't for a minute believe the price quote you get depends solely on material and labor costs.

Ex-White House CIO tells The Reg: TikTok ban may be diplomatic disaster

Re: Mind your footing

Yep. That's my concern. It's a bit hard to keep track because at least two different bills have been called "the tiktok ban", but even the less bad of the two (which I think it the one we're talking about) contains some worryingly vague language about when and why the government could order a service blocked.

Doom developer John Carmack thinks artificial general intelligence is doable by 2030

Re: Not bigger... not monolithic.

That might not be too far from what Richard Sutton believes. He wrote The Bitter Lesson, where he argued that history shows AI advances always come more from computing power than human ingenuity.

Lawsuit claims Google Maps led dad of two over collapsed bridge to his death

Interesting one. My first thought was "just another dumb driver blindly trusts GPS" story... but after reading the whole story, most importantly the fact that the condition had existed for years, I'm inclined to think Google does deserve some portion of the blame in this case.

FTC urged to freeze OpenAI's 'biased, deceptive' GPT-4

Re: Eh? Everyone (except Google) knows this

It would be very bad for Google if Bing actually focused on being an AI-powered search engine. Fortunately Microsoft apparently sees mainly it as a gimmick to get people using their shitty browser.

Re: I wish

Like a doctor who 10% of the time makes a total mis-diagnosis

So, like a doctor in other words?

Rust dust-up as entire moderation team resigns. Why? They won't really say

Re: A shame...

Not anymore, they quit.

Un-carrier? Definitely Unsecure: T-Mobile US admits 48m customers' details stolen after downplaying reports

Re: customer

My dad got a text about it, I didn't. Possibly because I've only ever had a pre-paid plan, where as he's had both kinds over the years. Remains to be seen though I guess.

COVID-19 cases surge as do sales of fake vaccination cards – around $100 for something you could get free

Re: A long way still to go

So the bulk of the world's population is still maximally exposed.

Not necessarily. Because you know, immune systems were a thing before vaccines were invented. A large proportion of people (often more than half, and certainly more than got the vaccine in many places) have by now already been exposed to Covid-19 and developed immunity naturally. Why is this constantly ignored in these discussions?

Firefox 91 introduces cookie clearing, clutter-free printing, Microsoft single sign-on... so where are all the users?

I disagree. Put it back how it was.

The sideloader weeps tonight: Unsealed court docs claim Google said 'install friction' would ‘drastically limit' Epic's reach

Normal adults maybe. But Fortnite is mainly played by kids and teens, who I think are much less likely to feel intimidated by technology, especially when access to a game is at stake.

Someone tried to poison a Florida city by hijacking its water treatment plant via TeamViewer, says sheriff

Re: Eh?

Could be a "work from home because Covid" deal. I'm almost surprised I haven't heard more stories of companies getting compromised because they implemented something stupid and insecure in their rush to quickly deploy a system to let people work from home.

I mean it's not really an excuse, but if that's what happened it doesn't surprise me at all.

This Free software ain't free to make, pal, it's expensive: Mozilla to bankroll Firefox with paid-for premium extras

It's tragic really

Firefox used to be the savvy user's browser. And it was darn good at being that. It was also good enough that let's say "non-geeks" started to see the value too. But then Chrome got big, and I swear someone at Mozilla must have said "See boys, that's what we need to be." But they can't out-Google Google, so that was never going to work. Instead they just made a browser that doesn't really have a target audience anymore. The old users mostly hate the changes, and I can't see any reason for users to pick it up when almost all the changes are to make it more like Chrome, the browser they're probably already using.

Swedish court declines to detain Belmarsh prison resident Julian Assange

Anyone Surprised?

Presumably this is the first step in winding down this bogus case now that it finally achieved it's real objective.

LLVM contributor hits breakpoint, quits citing inclusivity intolerance

You guys are missing the point. The word in question is not Latin, but Latin@. Which I assume is pronounced la-TEE-nat, but I'm not sure.

There is no perceived IT generation gap: Young people really are thick

I know what it means in the UK, but despite living in the US, here I have no idea what means here. I thought it was just a nickname.

Tech bribes: What's the WORST one you've ever been offered?

Re: Chocolate

"Thank you for the demonstration, but as we were able to be brute force your security quite easily, I don't think we will be pursuing your products further."

What the @#$%&!? Microsoft bans nudity, swearing in Skype, emails, Office 365 docs

Wait what?

So if I post a nude picture online (I have, not necessarily of myself), and Bing finds it (they did, I just checked), does that count as using the services to share objectionable content?

Bing is only good for porn anyway, I can't see them shutting that off.

Tumblr troll-ban follows February indictments

Tumblr already lost all respect I may have ever held for them with their earlier censorship sprees, but this Russian infiltrator thing is just absurd. There were only 84 accounts, a ridiculously tiny fraction of their userbase. But they claim I interacted with 2 of them. And this is a seldom used, non politics oriented blog! It doesn't even make sense.

Whois? More like WHOWAS: Domain database on verge of collapse over EU privacy

Why wait for the EU?

This is something they should have addressed decades ago.

WHOIS strikes me as a holdover from the early Internet, when it was all universities and large companies. Now that many (perhaps even most?) domain names are owned by private individuals, it makes no sense to have all their personal contact information, published by default.

Use of HTTPS among top sites is growing, but weirdly so is deprecated HTTP public key pinning

I loathe gratuitous HTTPS

All it does is cause problems. You try to connect from an old device? Boom "no cypher overlap". They forget to renew their cert? Now everybody's locked out because browser makers are too stupid to realize this isn't even a serious problem.

And almost invariably this nonsense happens on sites that don't even have a legitimate need for security. Knock it off, people.

Tor pedo's torpedo torpedoed: FBI spyware crossed the line but was in good faith, say judges

Re: Then what is the point of Tor?

There's no such thing as perfect security. Tor does a pretty good job, but it's not perfect, and more importantly it's only part of a solution. This attack was probably against the browser it comes with and/or the OS it was running on (Windows) not Tor itself. If you want to be completely untraceable A) tough luck, see first sentence and B) you're gonna have to do more than just downloading the Tor Browser bundle to get close.

Voice assistants are always listening. So why won't they call police if they hear a crime?

What a silly article

How exactly is Alexa supposed to know whether something is a crime? Do you really want it analyzing everything it hears to that extent?

Firefox to warn users who visit p0wned sites

Maybe not terrible

This doesn't have to be done in a privacy-violating way. It could just query a server for a list of recently compromised sites each time you start it/daily or whatever and then alert you if you visit one on the list, rather than checking each site you visit individually. Checking each site separately would be bad from a speed standpoint too, and Firefox is all about speed now...

'There has never been a right to absolute privacy' – US Deputy AG slams 'warrant-proof' crypto

Indeed. The Bill of Rights does not work like that, as explicitly stated in the 9th Amendment.

Congress battles Silicon Valley over upcoming US sex trafficking law

It's very disheartening that the sex trafficking myth has been allowed to get so big as to threaten the entire internet. Even The Register seems to buy into it by shirking their journalistic duty and reporting the delusions of this dead girl's estranged family as fact. It's almost certain that she was never kidnapped or "bought". She ran away from home and stayed with her grandparents for a while, that much is known for sure. Then something tragic happened and she was murdered.

But that story doesn't sell books and laws, "sex trafficking" does. Why let truth get in the way of a good opportunity to sew fear in the public and reap financial and political gain?

No of course it's not a real thing!

Here's what really happened. A teenager ran away from home, stayed with her grandparents for a while, and somewhere along the line decided to make some money as a prostitute. Possibly with help from others, she posted an ad on Backpage. Tragically one of her customers proved unstable and murdered her.

There was zero people-purchasing involved.

DRM now a formal Web recommendation after protest vote fails

Good by W3, you're now officially irrelevant.

Old Firefox add-ons get 'dead man walking' call

Make sure you turn off updates before that happens.

Don't panic, but your Bitcoins may just vanish into the ether next month

I say go ahead, just insist your victims pay with both forks.

Teen texted boyfriend to kill himself. It worked. Will the law change to deal with digital reality?

Re: Is american law stupid?

So that's a "yes' then.

The open source community is nasty and that's just the docs

Re: Here we go again..

Orv may be referring to a previous article here, but if so that's a misstatement of the what the study actually showed. They found that that contributions from accounts which were easily identifiable as belonging to a woman were accepted less often. Interestingly, they also found that that contributions from accounts which were easily identifiable as belonging to a man were accepted less often (though this was smaller effect). So perhaps "keep your private life private" really is the best advice.

In any case it did not get into the issue of women using male pseudonyms, as such. Perhaps Orv is basing that claim on something else though, I don't know.

Re: "may therefore not find documentation written by native English speakers easy."

I think it's mostly that writing docs is boring. If you're the type of person to get involved in an open source project, you're probably either enthusiastic about the product itself or enjoy the problem-solving aspect of coding.

So which would you rather do, work on that exciting new feature or write a detailed explanation of the existing product?

Lexmark patent racket busted by Supremes

Re: Epson extortion

Recently Epson has (at least supposedly) puled a heel-face turn and started selling some printers with refillable ink tanks. Don't know how good a deal they are ultimately, but it's nice to see companies at least considering the possibility that pissing off their customers isn't necessarily the best business model.

Came too late to win me over though, I've already switched to laser. Toner may well be a ripoff too, but at least it doesn't evaporate when you're not using it.

BA CEO blames messaging and networks for grounding

There are no redundancies [...] taking place around this particular hardware

Well there's your problem. A system that big needs redundancy.

8 out of 10 cats fear statistics – AI doesn't have this problem

Anyone else notice a problem with the probabilities on the image match?

The article itself points out the car is not really vintage, but that's OK, that was only 88% confidence. That's not the problem. The problem is 99% car, 97% land vehicle. Since all cars are land vehicles*, it cannot by any reasonable definition be "more likely", a car than a land vehicle. I'm sure there are perfectly good reasons for these numbers, but it's another example of why "trust the tools, don't worry about how it works" might not be good advice.

_{*It's 2017, where's my damn flying car?}

Go ahead, stage a hackathon. But pray it doesn't work too well

I'm not the only who thinks this article is kind of bizarre without any examples, right? Just something simple like "We all remember when Foocorp released Barbot which became sentient and tried to assassinate the president of Bazistan, but you may not have known... Yep that was a hackathon project."

I mean... there has been a real example of what the author is talking about, right?

US Coast Guard: We're rather chuffed with our new Boeing spy drone

Re: Is that a catapult?

Looks more like a ballista to me.

Don't panic, Florida Man, but a judge just said you have to give phone passcodes to the cops

Re: Remote wipe.....

Hmm... Don't iPhones already have a wipe after X failed attempts feature? (Though it may be optional) So what if she just gives them X wrong pins one after the other?

Deeming Facebook a 'publisher' of users' posts won't tackle paedo or terrorist content

Re: Maybe it's because Facebook's moderators simply refuse to look.

Interesting hypothesis. If true that means the thing to do is misreport ISIS videos as breastfeeding.

Three indicted over sex trafficking operation run on Backpage.com

It's a carefully engineered moral panic

Human trafficking is a completely invented problem pushed by politicians and fake do-gooders who stand to gain by stirring people up. It's a great issue for them because it has appeal across party lines. Leftists hate because those poor womens. Conservatives like because that nasty evil sex. Who cares if it doesn't really exist? It's a great excuse for draconian laws, right up there with terrorism and a lovely gravy train for "charities".

Case in point: This attack on Back Page was initiated by California's Attorney General in an effort to look good while she was running for senate. Back Page has been around for years, yet in what would be an example of deplorable laxity if it were a real problem, she saved it until election season just to get her name out there.

Y'know CSS was to kill off HTML table layout? Well, second time's a charm: Meet CSS Grid

Re: By hipsters for hipster

I don't think that's really true. That illustration in the article was just an example comparing grid to flexbox. After reading up on grid a bit (I must admit I never heard of it before) I have to say it actually looks very handy. It can easily solve classic layout needs like header/content/sidebar/footer that web designers might otherwise be tempted to use a table for.

Here's the article I read. Looks like it was originally written some time ago so I can't be sure it's up to date and complete.

Re: Finally!

I was curious if this is true, did a quick source peek at a few random web pages. Only Wikipedia used them. And to an extent at least, alot of their content really is table-like.

Google pulls Hezbollah YouTube channel after we told them about the drone ads

Re: The commenter needs to do some thinking

Oh fuck off. We have enough censors in the world without the register doing it too.

It's happening! It's happening! W3C erects DRM as web standard

Nah, they've jumped the shark. Just ignore them.

Force employees to take DNA tests for bosses? We've got a new law to make that happen, beam House Republicans

To be fair, an employer is not a state.

_{Except when they are, of course...}

Sir Tim Berners-Lee refuses to be King Canute, approves DRM as Web standard

Wondering if there's any legitimate use for EME

Where legitimate = helpful to the user, not harmful.

About all I can think of would be streaming illegal content (whether pirated or more illegal than that) and making sure no trace is left on your computer. Has anyone made an EME module for facilitate this? Maybe it would change the industry's tune.

Palmtop nostalgia is tinny music to my elephantine ears

Oh man, you fell for one of his stories? Sorry to hear that.