Posts by TheElder

Nest security camera captures landlord's romp on tenants' bed

Ancient technology

Just install an inside door chain with a padlock. Need to open the door from outside the door? Unlock it, reach in and unlock it. Nice alarms also exist.

Researchers take the piss with pee-powered liquid energy project

Re: It's no good stating a wattage without the period.

Exactly. I had this same problem recently when describing how much power the brain consumes. 20 watt hours is the average. Somebody said "Did you really mean that?" and got four upvotes too. If we could do a full hour of thinking in just one nanosecond it would be 72,000,000,000,000 watts per hour. That is very similar to fusion power, period.

Clear August 21 in your diary: It's a total solar eclipse for the smart

Flat Earther

Guess who is a flat Earther.

2 dimensional brain

The ultimate full English breakfast – have your SAY

Re: No Gluten... Hell???

Hell can be a nice place for some people. I spend much of my time laughing. Just yesterday I saw a news item about La Machine on the streets in Ottawa. There was a woman operator on the Horse Dragon. Not long after that I was talking to a friend of mine who is in his 20s, recently married. He hadn't seen the news yet and I told him what I had seen. In particular I was imagining what a dragon woman might look like and how she would see herself as a dragon operator.

I told him to look up Dragon Woman on Google images. It is mostly work safe... Ѡ

La Machine news item

No Gluten

I have gluten enteropathy, the real thing.

I have a gluten free muffin sliced in halves with a heavy coating of real butter. On top of that is some raspberry jam and then two soft fried eggs. I like a lot of salt since I have low blood pressure and I need to keep it up a bit. For an after meal snack half an avocado with olive oil mayo goes down very nicely.

I should mention that I am 6"2" at age 67 and I still weigh 150 lbs, same as when I was 20. I have put on 150 klics on my bicycle this month. I put on muscle very quickly since my testosterone is 803, same as when I was 20.

As for tea, I don't drink anything but water. I also use a bit of coke. (the type that ends in cola) It goes down nicely with ice cream. No coffee, can't drink beer. No wine or anything else.

Seagate laying off 2,217 employees

WD spinners

Agree on the WD quality. I have one with zero reallocated sectors and 31,457 Power On Hours. That was to replace a couple of failed Seagates, IIRC. Also, they were not ones with the stolen Japanese capacitor formula.

Hackers can turn web-connected car washes into horrible death traps

Re: Re Stupid Password

Nope. It was Xerox. I worked on the computer side of things back when Jobs was stealing all he could from PARC. I was even offered a west coast management position but I don't like managing. I now do brain mapping. Turned out to be a good decision.

Re Stupid Password

"1-2-3-4-5? That's the stupidest combination I've ever heard of in my life!

Many years ago I was employed by a multinational corp. I was in an office with a bunch of text only terminals connected to a very early nationwide network. I was waiting for somebody to give me my new 4 digit employee number. While waiting I decided to see if I could do a little hacking. I sat at one of the terminals and typed 9999. Full admin privileges!

Sysadmin jeered in staff cafeteria as he climbed ladder to fix PC

Re: Once upon a time... and possibly sticky

I found a nice character to go along with testicular rhythm music. Ѡ

(I guess I must be one...)

Character synonym: Uprightness

Re: 95 and MSDOS

"Win 95 was still sat atop DOS, it's just packaged different."

Precisely. You beat me to it. Although what was that little piece of shit between 98 and XP? I would rather run Windows 2.0 than that crap.

Once upon a time... and possibly sticky

I was stetting up some new items in a machine in a government office. There was a very attractive young woman that normally used the machine. After a little while she was leaning over my shoulder rather closely to watch me working. This became a bit distracting so I took a little break to have a bit of a chat with her.

She informed me that she would soon be returning to school. Really? I asked. What will you be studying? Her reply was "Human anatomy". ♫

Big Cable falls into wormhole to alternate universe, sends back blog post about USA's amazing broadband

Gaming

With a well designed game latency shouldn't be an issue. I used to play over a satellite connection. Then you just hide and shoot from where they least expect you to be. I also found some nice little bugs in certain games that made it possible to be invisible in just the right places. Bug hunting is a lot of fun. As long as you don't squish the bug you can squish the enemies.

I don't game anymore though. Too much real work to do. I have been considering it right now since the University is on semester break. No clue what games are the best for strategic thinking.

One of my favourite games was Dungeon Master on the Amiga.

Strong and stable, my arse. UK wobbles when coping with ransomware

Never mind a CEO

One must think at the average user level. How many people know what a file extension is never mind ever seeing one? EXE? APP? BAT? BIN? and so on...

I also filter out quite a few countries on my server along with a rather long list of personally selected key words. Things like how to have three legs instead of just two...

Ex-FBI man spills on why hackers are winning the security game

RULE 1

If the system isn't in a solid copper box (or silver) with no Windows it can be hacked. Even then the user in that box must have a full body and brain cavity search on the way in and out.

Virgin Media's profanity warning triggered by chief exec's name

Names

I know a very nice woman who married a guy with the last name Outhouse. She even uses it too. The name I mean... Well, maybe both when traveling around here...

Marketing giant Marketo forgets to renew domain name. Hilarity ensues

pack animal

Apparently many still are. That is very obvious in the USA even if the top hot dog drools a lot.

Some of us are a lone wolf though. That is why I own the domain crazywolf.com

Better one (TITSUP)

Tosticated

Inessive

Technolithic

Synodical

Uakari

Pangamy

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befuddled inner stone like (type of monkey) mating

Network Solutions starts notifying me at least two months before the renewal must happen. My e-mail is not on the same domain. I have e-mail on five domains elsewhere. Also, if one plans to stay in business one can pay for something like ten years in advance. The one I have on NS has been there for 20 years and has made over half a million dollars.

Sounds like a real incomprehensible screwup.

SK Telecom makes light of random numbers for IoT applications

Random numbers?

Quantum Random Number Generators can be very cheap and anyone can build one.

Geiger counter particle detector.

An 'AI' that can diagnose schizophrenia from a brain scan – here's how it works (or doesn't)

However and as usual, being paranoid may be because they really are after you.

Nonsense

"One benefit of using code as opposed to a psychiatrist is that its results should be consistent across all patients"

One little problem. Patients are not consistent across all patients. A good friend of mine is a forensic shrink. He deals with serial killers and similar. The only consistent thing there is that they are very good actors.

The human brain follows chaos theory, same as the weather. One can predict the weather with 75% accuracy by saying it will be the same as today.

Amazing new algorithm makes fusion power slightly less incredibly inefficient

Still not working...Sigh...

Must count.. Yes. When I was 14 I was working on fusion with my father at the Berkeley Rad Lab . We were using a neon filled axial fusion simulator with end mirrors. At the same time I was attending physics lectures and helping with the Standard Model by visually scanning the bubble chamber photos. It quickly became obvious that one cannot balance a repelling permanent magnet on top of another (not spinning).

Most of my work was taking pictures of the very high quality oscilloscopes and keeping accurate notes . Other than that it was very cool to see a 50 foot violet bar of ionized air from a beam dump on the Bevatron as well as watching the walking bubble chamber. Cooking a doughnut in the waveguide in 2 milliseconds was fun. Plenty of LN2 to play with.

I really wonder if this will ever work here on Earth? Gravity is the best container.

Google goes home to Cali to overturn Canada's worldwide search result ban

So much for the AI concept

Quote: Google had argued that its search engine machines were dumb and passive beasts.

Microsoft hits new low: Threatens to axe classic Paint from Windows 10

Re: The end

Download PaintShop Pro version 7 somewhere. It should be free. I helped to develop versions 7, 8 and 9. 8 has multiple bugs and 9 also has some but 7 is rock solid. Once Corel took over it all sucks. PSP 7 does not require any type of registration. It will ask but you may say no. Corel did not pay for version 7 and JASC retired. (Just Another Software Company)

I still use PSP 7 since it is super easy, quick and simple on the surface. But a bit deeper it can do many very nice things. I use 9 sometimes since it runs Python.

Creepy tech tycoons Zuck and Musk clash over AI doomsday

Re: Safer cars. Is it possible to make a low light optical sensor better than my eyes?

Low light optical sensors are the same as any digital camera. The larger the lens the narrower the field of view, just like my telescope. Multiple sensors such as a fly eye cannot see in the dark. Flies do not fly in the dark. Time exposures will work if the car travels at 0.00001 meters per second.

Re: Safer cars?

At any rate arguing here will solve nothing. I would like to see a bit of trial and error testing and would very much like to see a video of the errors.

Shoot! One cannot shoot pictures of Vanta darkness.

Re: Safer cars?

It is invisible to radar and so are nearly all plastics. Now you have something that is invisible to everything. Not exactly a good thing. As for sonar, it is not good for an Autocar at speed. That is why they aren't using it. They are using electromagnetic waves, not ocean waves.

(Autocar == garbage)

"very unlikely it would absorb 100% of say those high powered green lasers idiots point at airplanes."

I think it most likely would suck up such a laser. I have one but I use it to point at stars.

Re: Not because of AI - but because of AS. Artificial Stupidity.

I think we need a new acronym.

Artifically Induced Nonsense and Unusual Stupidity

AINUS

(with some anthropomorphic BS mixed in)

We have built systems that are inimical to human interests and extremely difficult to dismantle

Totally agree. Everything from fast food obesity and stupidity as well as smartphone ADHD we are on a steep downhill water slide. Then there is the idea of shooting things automatically with no finger on the trigger. They say Life goes on but it also ends.

Re: Safer cars?

I even like to wear black, especially when I was riding a Vincent 750.

Re: That would be like hiring a Nobel Prize winner to mop your floor.

You mean like this man?

Re: Safer cars?

VamtaBlack absorbs everything, even lasers.

In fact, Vantablack absorbs more than just visible light, and is equally-effective across a whole range of the spectrum that is invisible to the human eye. It is used in applications ranging from space-borne scientific instrumentation to luxury goods, and its ability to deceive the eye opens-up a whole range of possibilities in design.

VantaBlack spectrum

It isn't about painting the car. It is about painting things that must be detected and that requires visible light during the daytime. It is also why it can be blinded by a little laser. That is reported on this site.

What would happen if a person wore VantaBlack?

Safer cars?

Let's see... Can be blinded by little lasers. Cannot detect anything spray painted with VantaBlack.

I wonder what happens when one of those cars tries to back up over parking lot tire rippers painted with VantaBlack? Maybe just paint a STOP sign or a few road markings. A little bit of vandalism could be very interesting.

Kid found a way to travel for free in Budapest. He filed a bug report. And was promptly arrested

Re:if you find a weakness best let the service owner generate their own evidence

Precisely. I have quite a collection of certain things I shall not mention. Notification only is the way to go. However there was a time very early in the game when I used one of those certain things to shut down someone on their own territory. I exchanged pleasantries and it worked very well. I wear a white hat but is a bit stained with time.

What sort of silicon brain do you need for artificial intelligence?

Very many years ago I was studying the neural anatomy of a flatworm. It has about 22 neurons. It is able to detect light and turn left or right to follow the light. It seems that is close to the level we are finally approaching.

What the new generations do not understand is that when it comes to AI speed means nothing. Some animals think slowly but still exhibit intelligence. A true AI might take a thousand years to have a new idea but it is still a new idea.

More on Squirrels...

I wonder if it can detect Ninja Squirrels?

Kill something, then hire cleaners to mop up the blood if you want to build a digital business

Very bad plan.

Xerox tried the services concept many years ago. In 1998 they almost died. They were 60 days away from closure.

Virgin Mobile has in-continent data roaming problems – peeved customers

Look up you say?

Smartphone Syndrome

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/news/11532428/Why-smartphones-are-making-you-ill.html

Find your happy place: Fedora 26 has landed

Love the picture

Du kannst mich am Arsch lecken!

Boffins back bubbles for better bonding with beautiful belongings

Bright light

Xenon flash tubes should work.

DeepMind says it's given AI an imagination. Let's take a closer look at that

Another name for same thing

Analytical evaluation.

We use intuition. The greater the standard deviation from the bell curve mean the better it works. It is all about seeing patterns and not just graphical patterns. This is in large part why computers have so much difficulty recognizing images.

It is trivial to beat face recognition yet humans can still recognize the face. Political cartoons are a perfect example.

Re: Hype, Fools and their money are soon parted

Drunk online gambling.

Why you'll never make really big money as an AI dev

Re: AI does not exist

Look up watt hours.

AI does not exist

Re: Having programmed primitive AI's I still believe that I am not in any real danger of seeing a truly intelligent AI in my lifetime.

True.

Quote: "I learned that social scientists have known this for decades and have experimentally shown that people will claim a factor was important in their decision despite only being told it after they’d made the choice."

I am doing Brain Mapping at the local University. I have a fair bit of medical knowledge as well as experience in medical engineering. I can tell you the various lobes of the brain plus why and what they do as far as we know at this time. The work I do is all about how we make decisions. The professor I work with gives a nice little talk titled "Why we do the Dumb Things we do." It is all about how we so often make mistakes that are highly influenced by our own internal biases. What we so often think is right is frequently dead wrong.

The human brain is not a binary computer. It is a massively parallel neurochemical analogue computer. It does exhibit spikes when the various proaxonal inputs finally add up high enough to cause a very sudden phase transition. When that happens the entire neural structure of the brain can suddenly synchronize from anterior to posterior in less than 2 milliseconds. This includes the frontal superior cortex all the way back to the posterior Parietal and Occipital lobes. That is a decision made.

The idea that it is somehow binary is nonsense. There are over 1400 neuro chemicals and proteins that may affect just one synapse. That does not include things like slight differences in genetic structure that everyone has. Just the ability to talk and listen depends on Brocca's Area as well as Wernicke's Area along with a dense network of axonal fibres. They often fire randomly and that creates a lot of background noise. Just blinking or moving eyes can create values that are a thousand times stronger.

There is a lot more I could say but it can be very complicated. The one thing I can say is that the amount of actual electrical power required to simulate a full brain using current technology would be megawatts if it was only one nanowatt per synapse. The brain only uses about 20 watts per hour.

But how does our ransomware make you feel?

Is it possible to disable or totally uninstall bitlocker

Sure. Go into services.msc and disable "Bitlocker Drive Encryption Service" This will work on Win 7 Pro, 8 and 10 Pro. You can also disable "Encrypting File System". I currently have about 50 services disabled. If I need something I turn it on when I need it.

That won't help with most current encryptors as they are using their own code to do the encryption most of the time now. It does give a bit more security.

Burglary, robbery, kidnapping and a shoot-out over… a domain name?!

Re: Stand Your Ground in Florida

Some new changes in that respect:

JUNE 9, 2017

"Florida's self-defense law was initially passed in 2005, and inspired similar laws in other states. It removes the legal responsibility to retreat from a dangerous situation and allows the use of deadly force when a person feels greatly threatened."

In other words, shoot to kill when you feel like it.

On the subject of domains I have a couple for sale. I won't advertise them here but I really wonder how to find a good appraisal. I have a very old dot com name that is super easy to remember and spell. I also have a three letter domain name in a dot ca. The dot com name has earned about 3/4 million dollars for the web site that lives on it. I also have another one that I would sell but only if offered a lot of money. It is directly related to a five star hotel in Greece as well as Latin and Hebrew. It is also a very pretty flower and some other cool things. Just five letters.

Q. What's today's top language? A. Python... no, wait, Java... no, C

quote: use lots of absolute jumps (GOTO) and globals with hardcoded addresses just to piss off the modular/reusable crowd.(because such programs run much faster since they don't have waste cpu cycles pushing and popping stuff onto/off the stack and moving data)

Heh. Exactly what I am doing. Ruby has crappy garbage collection. Unwrapping some of the loops can also work well.

Coding 54 years

Started when 13 on a Bendix G-15. A machine with little glass tubes filled with nothing. Writing code that resembles BrainFuck. Grew up spitting distance from the Valley. Moved on to Fortran at UC Berkeley and also studied psychology since I wanted to get into AI. AI still doesn't exist.

Moved on to BASIC but quickly dropped into machine code for the speed. Then figured out how to overclock everything. Designed and built bit mapped video cards before the concept existed. Rewrote the BASIC interpreter. Wrote a little program called DamBusters for the PET as well as some others. Published in Transactor. Worked on the computer side of Xerox and also met with Gates and others at the first Computer Fair in San Francisco. Most likely was watching Jobs helping himself to everything he could at PARC.

Since then have worked with various languages but am mostly interested in anything to do with graphics. Python works well in that respect. Have helped to develop the AutoCAD 3D turbulence modeling. C is OK but don't need the speed for what I am now doing. Have figured out how to do brain mapping using Ruby along with some cool sonification using Sonic-Pi.

The thing that gripes me the most is the FLAT everything. If it is a button it should look like a button. It is all about users. Thinking like a user isn't easy. I have been teaching users for many years. I developed the very first computer science course for Thompson River University back in the early 80's.

We're all saved. From the killer AI. We can live. Thanks to the IEEE

Re: Autonomous cars and The Dark Side

I wonder what might happen if various things were spray painted with something that reflects nothing at all, not even lasers?

https://news.artnet.com/art-world/new-photos-vantablack-906158

A lot of people like to drive very black automobiles. I can think of all sorts of possibilities...

Breathless F-35 pilots to get oxygen boost via algorithm tweak

Re: I'd have to ask...

Many years ago I took my Cessna 140 to a bit over 10,000 feet since I needed that altitude as a safe gliding distance between the mainland and an island. I didn't notice any real difference other than the controls being rather sloppy. I guess it helps that I have somewhat larger than average lung capacity. Also do not smoke cigarettes and never have.