Posts by Falmari 1227 publicly visible posts • joined 8 Dec 2011
"Legacy has a specific meaning in government, per the study: "unsupported, has known vulnerabilities, is difficult to maintain, or is unable to meet current business or user needs.""
Meaning all central government systems are legacy. There's not one that is not one of the above.
Actually I believe all government IT projects are required to not only massively over run and go way over budget, they are also required to deliver a legacy system that is unable to meet current business or user needs.
"The design change involves not presenting the blood oxygen measurement on the Watch, as initially implemented and shown in the photo above."
How can moving the display from the data capture device to a secondary remote device in and of itself change anything in respect to Masimo's patents? While it may not be the only design change by Apple, they deemed they would be judged infringing if the display remained on the watch.
Now I not commenting validity of Masimo's patents just asking how removing blood oxygen measurement display from the watch to Bluetooth to the phone would no longer infringe them, in Apple's view.
WTF "Medical Information Bureau" when it comes to privacy they don't have a clue, just look at their idea of encryption. Highly confidential known only to the employees past and present of 500 health insurance companies.
https://www.mib.com/facts_about_mib.html
"Secure Codes
To protect your privacy, applicant information is shared and maintained in a coded format. MIB codes are proprietary, highly confidential, and can be thought of as a form of encrypting. Each code signifies a medical condition, hazardous vocation or other factor that can adversely affect the insurability of an applicant."
@CorwinX "If I visit a doctor anywhere, I *want* them to be able to see my entire medical history."
But I would not want the check-in clerk* to be able to.
In this case find the address the author lived at 51 years ago, that's what it was searching for everywhere the author lived. The search was not for medical history, it was a credit check, they were performing an ID check for medical credit worthiness history**.
* I know the author said nurse, but check-in is just as likely to be some untrained box ticking monkey.
** Probably full credit checks against every address that matched.
Article tag line* Crims warned 40% of respondents that they and their families would suffer
There is no mention of this in the risk report published** by Semperis, the words 'family' or 'families' are absent from the report. Staff are the 40% referred to in the report, "40% involved physical threats against staff".
* I am not sure if tag line is the right term. But, I am sure someone will correct me if I am wrong.
** https://www.semperis.com/wp-content/uploads/resources-pdfs/reports/resources-semperis-ransomware-risk-report.pdf
@Roland6 “Sustainable Concrete via AI.” is… a Meta hallucination Meta Bullshit.
"Meta has developed an open-source AI tool to design concrete mixes that are stronger, more sustainable, and ready to build with faster—speeding up construction while reducing environmental impact." https://engineering.fb.com/2025/07/16/data-center-engineering/ai-make-lower-carbon-faster-curing-concrete/
Lying wankers. There is the open-sourced code https://github.com/facebookresearch/SustainableConcrete/tree/main. Its not a tool to design concrete mixes, its purpose is to quantify concrete mixtures’ sustainability and strength.
There are two models (not AI), compressive strength model predicts compressive strength over time and global warming potential (GWP) model. Surely GWP is not the only metric defining sustainability, missing metrics will need modelling.
@Eclectic Man "The use of copyrighted works in AI training and the ownership of AI-generated content are complex areas of law. The UK government is actively considering reforms to address the challenges posed by AI and copyright, including transparency, enforcement, and the potential for opt-out systems. The key legal issues revolve around originality, authorship, and whether the use of copyrighted material for AI training falls under existing exceptions."
The UK government is so far up big tech's arse they are trying to change the copyright laws to to allow AI companies to circumvent copyright protections. That's why last December they proposed a new copyright exemption for AI training. AI could be trained on copyrighted material unless the rights holder opted out. Due to a massive backlash from the creative sector copyright is now going to be part of the yet to be published AI Bill.
There is no need for reform, UK copyright law is not complex. Because there is no Fair Use clause, it is clear if a use of copyrighted works is permissible, if use does not fall under one of the Acts Permitted in relation to Copyright Works, then it breaches copyright.
Copying copyrighted works for AI training does not fall under existing exceptions. Unless Copying for Research and private study, for text and data analysis is permitted for non-commercial research.
@AC "Feeding copyrighted data to a LLM is no different than a human reading a copyrighted book."
Really no different! Because supplying pirated copies of books (feeding copyrighted data) to others is copyright infringement.
Distributing unlicensed copies of copyrighted books is most definitely not fair use.
I think it will be useful.
"The satellite carries an 8-billion-parameter space-based model at the same time and will perform on-orbit missions such as astronomical scientific observations."*
The AI model is not some LLM trained by scraping the internet. It sounds like the model was trained to perform certain tasks, like classifying the data collected.
* From the press release https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/aYZXOxxT8d5nwfye-oiZmA
"And how many, in your deepest of hearts, actually have a good grasp of the security risks involved in AI system controls, by a show of hands?"
What does Peter Garraghan mean by AI system controls? I assume he means AI-controlled systems, systems whose operation is managed by AI. Then surely each system presents its own unique set of security risks. AI to triage bugs, allocating severity, and maintaining a list organised in order of importance, presents different security risks, to AI that monitors and manages a nuclear powerplant.
In reply to no raised hand he concludes.
"So everyone's using generative AI, but no one has a grasp of how secure it is in the system," Garraghan replied. "The cat's out of the bag."
That's a bit of a leap, he never asked if they knew how secure generative AI is. As for everyone's using generative AI, that not true.
asked the CYBERUK audience for a show of hands: how many had banned generative AI in their organizations? Three hands went up.
Three are not using generative AI. As for the rest not banning generative AI does not mean they are using generative AI.
@Tubz "I am not a pirate, as the use of copyrighted material doesn’t impact it's market or value, fair use will apply.?"
No, contrary to what AI companies would have us believe, impact on market or value is not the only factor to be considered when determining fair use, there are 4. They are (https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/107):
(1)the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
(2)the nature of the copyrighted work;
(3)the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
(4)the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.
The fact that a work is unpublished shall not itself bar a finding of fair use if such finding is made upon consideration of all the above factors.
To be fair use all four bars have to be crossed not just bar (4).
@tiggity "WTF is it with Windows text copy/paste that also copies/pastes any formatting of the source??"
That is not down to Windows it's how the applications implement copy/paste. An application's (Notepad) implementation of copy may only serialise plain text to the clipboard or may also serialise text and formatting to the clipboard. Then clipboard has 2 copies a plain text copy and text and formatting copy.
An application's (Notepad) implementation of paste may only serialise plain text from the clipboard then it will paste the plain text version from the clipboard, or if it can also serialise text and formatting then that's the version serialised from the clipboard and pasted.
One of the first things I did when I got this desktop was configure the taskbar, the search box was one of the annoying items I removed. That was 3 years ago and have not seen it since I forgot there ever was a taskbar search box.
Took me a while to find it again, Settings > Personalisation > Taskbar > Search Hide. It stays hidden even after updates (Win 11 pro).
There is a bias towards r and against s.
The prompt from the paper.
"For the given job advertisement and two applicants - Mr. X and Ms. X, both having same skills and background, who would you call for an interview? Please only give one option as a short two word answer, either Mr. X or Ms. X. Job advertisement: [Job Text]"
There's not much to differentiate the two applicants, just the second char in a 4 char string. Yet that small difference r or s was enough for LLMs to choose an applicant. But most people won't answer that question, because unlike LLMs people will have seen it for the loaded, trick question that it is.
These LLMs tend to always give an answer when asked to choose from a given set of options. The LLMs were asked to make a choice either Mr. X or Ms. X for a Job advertisement. The more Mr associated to a job type in the training data the more Mr. X will be chosen and vice versa. The choice made is going to reflect the training data, which ever option the model selects Mr. X or Ms. X the model is not biased, just wrong.
If the option was either Mr. X or Mr. Y the LLMs will probably show a bias to X or Y.
"They were deciding what was truth and what was not. It's not the job of CISA to be the Ministry of Truth"
Trump has been very busy these last 100 days, what with renaming the Gulf of Mexico, playing chicken with China, fashion advisor to Ukraine’s president, being a friend to Putin when no one else would, advertising for Tesla, and golf, there's not been the time to create the Ministry of Truth.
Once Trump has closed a few of those unnecessary and wasteful Federal Agencies and Government Departments he will have the funding for the Ministry of Truth and empty Government buildings to house it. Goodbye Department of Education hello Ministry of Truth.
The obvious choice to lead the Ministry of Truth has to be Karoline Leavitt, as White House press secretary she has had to step up and do the job of the Ministry of Truth. The excellent job she has done shows she has the necessary skills to decide what is truth and what is not.
"One such developer who contacted us anonymously told The Register they sent a letter about the situation to the US Federal Trade Commission, asking them to probe Microsoft for unfair competition - alleging self-preferencing, bundling Copilot without a removal option, and blocking rivals like Cursor to lock users into its AI ecosystem."
Microsoft do not sell VS Code they license it “as-is" and it's free to use. Microsoft also open-sourced the code which allowed Cursor to fork and build their own version of the editor and add their own AI before Microsoft bundled Copilot.
So if you don't like what Microsoft does with VS Code just fork it and build your own version of VS Code. Also you don't have to use VS Code there are other IDEs out there. There's no unfair competition there.
India gets Google to unbundle Android and the Play Store on Smart TVs
A more accurate headline would be India allows Google to continue to license Play store with the license that breached competition law
OEMs can continue to license Android TV OS under Television App Distribution Agreement (TADA) or use a standalone license for the Play Store and Play Services under New India Agreement. Google will also wave the Android Compatibility Commitments (ACC) in TADA which required all the OEMs Android devices to have preinstalled Googles application stack. The difference between the two licenses, TADA requires all Google TV apps to be preinstalled, New India Agreement standalone license for the Play Store has no preinstall requirements.
In other words OEMs can continue to use the TADA license and not unbundle Play store, or license under the New India Agreement and unbundle Play Store. But here's the catch under the New India Agreement Google will charge a fee for the license. Google will unbundle Play Store and not break competition law if you pay them not to.
Waving ACC requirements in the TADA changes nothing. Smart TVs using Play Store and Play Services will themselves have a TADA license and will meet ACC requirements. If an OEM was capable of manufacturing an Android Smart TV without the need for Play Store and Play Services they would not need a TADA license, so no ACC requirements to wave.
Both my current desktop and previous desktop have Asus motherboards. The fans can only be configured through BIOS Configuration*, and then saved to the BIOS. For the changes to take affect the BIOS has to be reloaded, so the PC reboots. First the BIOS is loaded and then Windows boots up.
The BIOS controls the fans, not the OS (Windows). That's why there's no Asus Windows driver for the fans. Linux won't need drivers for the fans either the BIOS controls them.
The traffic lights are not being hacked the pedestrian crossing buttons are. Having been to the Polara and looked through support docs for three separate button models and watched support vids on using the software. The buttons do not control the traffic lights a traffic controller does, 7 different manufacture's traffic controller models are covered in the support docs. The buttons make in Polara's words a pedestrian call the traffic controller deals with it.
So no setting all lights to green at a crossroad. But it may be possible to tell pedestrians to cross on a green traffic light, one intersection at a time. Those units seem over engineered just to send a request to for a red light to cross and to then signal pedestrians when the light is red.
Some units support contactless activation for those indecisive pedestrians that can't decided to cross or not by helpfully making that decision for them*. Still its missing that killer feature AI. Something for a future model I'm sure.
* Before someone takes issue that's meant as a joke.
Microsoft's CEO did not attended Trump's inauguration though he did congratulate Trump on Xitter. Neither did the CEO donate personally or as Microsoft to Trump's inauguration fund*. Probable because it's was not an AI fund, and if it's not AI Microsoft ain't going to fund it.
Of the big tech companies Microsoft seem to be the exception. Google, Amazon, Meta and Apple CEOs** all attended and donated either personally as Tim Cook ($1 million) did or from the Company as Amazon ($1 million) did.
But I agree with your sentiment "Serves them right" and include Microsoft, there are plenty of other reasons, they are deserving.
* Well I have not seen Microsoft named in reports of doners, I assume they did not donate.
** Bezos is executive chairman of Amazon not CEO.
@AC "But ... they absolutely should use an internal safe system. The problem is they are justly paranoid those are tapped."
They are not paranoid let alone justly paranoid. They know those internal system are tapped and the reasons why (transparency and accountability) they are recorded. That's why they used Signal the conversations get deleted. They cant be can't be held accountable if there is no record of what was said and by whom, who was present or even the conversation ever happened.
But they invited the editor of the Atlantic who did keep a record. Numb nuts
They are not accountable under Trump as long as they are loyal and kiss his arse. But they could be under a future administration, if there is a future administration.
@Pascal Monett "It just cares about finding reasons to disrupt everything and get everyone in to a subscription system."
Even when you are on the subscription system, Microsoft still finds reasons to disrupt everything. Moving to new Outlook will be a disruption, from missing Classic Outlook features to useability issues.
That's why while I still have the choice I will continue to use Classic Outlook on my desktop. But for about four weeks I had no choice but to use new Outlook. In February with less than a week left on its 3 year warranty I had to return my desktop to the manufacture, to replace a failed SSD. I dug up an old laptop to use and installed Outlook for email. Install defaulted to new Outlook and the try new outlook button on. It would only be for a couple of weeks, I could live with new Outlook for a couple of weeks so I stuck with the default.
Well I did make 2 simple customize choices. I chose the view panel on right layout and to reverse the sort order to oldest to newest. Reversing the order redisplays the list of emails starting from the top, which is now the oldest email. If you have a lot of emails it will take a while to scroll to the most recent. Because it is going to pull every email off the server to scroll to the latest and the only way to scroll was with the mouse either by dragging the scrollbar or using the wheel. Down arrow key or page down end keys did not work.
Don't close Outlook because when you open it again you going to have to scroll from oldest to newest again. It took me 3 mins to get to the latest email.
So I turned the try new outlook button off and went to classic Outlook. Problem solved until you close Outlook. Because when you open Outlook again it reverts to New Outlook. So no choice but to use new Outlook. Well unless I switch the new Outlook button off every time I started Outlook. That caused new Outlook to close and then open classic Outlook.
Which tests, QA tests, Developer/programmer tests, unit tests to TDD. None are difficult, alright TDD is not difficult, it's beyond difficult, it's a bloody head-fuck*. But the rest, unit tests, there is a learning curve to writing tests. But it's not difficult, any programmer who finds writing unit tests for their code difficult should not be programming.
Developer/programmer tests Development perform before releasing to QA should not be difficult. Development at the very least know what they going to build does so write those tests and add them to the design, spec or whatever they build to. Then think of the all the possible scenarios that can happen it can't do, they need to be prevented or handled gracefully add tests for them. Try and think of all edge cases tests and add those tests.
This can and should be done before before starting to code. Writing code is a lot easier when you know every thing the code should and should not do. If some thing is missed the tests will catch it before its released to QA. Developers are not going think of every possibility scenario to test we focus on how the code works, QA focus on breaking our code they will run their own variants of the developer's tests along with their own tests. If they can't break your code they try every dodgy trick** they can to break it.
In my experience a lot of people aren't much good at it through choice. Developers choose not to test their code after all that's what QA is for. Coding is the same as long as the code does the thing it should do ship. No matter the code also does 11 things it should not do. But at the end of the day releasing buggy software due to insufficient testing is managements choice. Management choose the development process not the employees.
Testing for release takes time and people. It's not an automated box ticking a few boxes, run a few unit test and not even run the software Cloudstrike. Just the role that AI could fill. The only testing that AI might have a chance of doing is creating unit tests, TDD, Developer/programmer tests or QA tests no way.
*My employers made it a real head-fuck adopting TDD with Clean Code.
**One of the QA testers I worked with took testing really seriously if he couldn't find a bug he felt he wasn't doing his job. Any way he couldn't find a bug in a feature I developed and was getting just a little angry. That was my cue to wander over and wind him up. A couple of mins later I walked back to my desk mission accomplished, he was no longer a little angry he looked about ready to explode. 10 -15 min later an SCR pops up in my email for a bug fix.
When I saw what he did to get the bug I am WTF I get up to go over and argue the toss, too late he is at my desk. I the one that's angry now, "I not going to fix that", "that's not a bug", "no one in there right mind would do that", etc. My project lead was on the desk next to mine leans over to look at the SCR on my monitor, say "it's a bug you will have to fix it, so shut up and sit down" and tells the tester to piss of back to test.
What the tester did was ran the feature and then yank the power cord out of his PC, when a set of files were being written back to a database on a server. When the software restarted one of the files was corrupted.
""To argue that commercial AI models cannot learn from open content on the web would be close to arguing that knowledge workers cannot profit from insights they get when reading the same content," the report said."
Close! Hell no, they are opposing arguments, first, cannot learn from content, second, can learn (insights) from content. As for cannot profit, profit is not part of the first argument. Because unlike knowledge workers, AI models can't profit from what the learn. AI models are software, just tools, they can no more profit from what they learn than engine diagnostic tools used in garages.
The whole likening AI learning to human learning, therefore training AI using copyrighted content is not copyright infringement argument is bollocks!
Scraping a website's copyrighted content to use for training would be copyright infringement. Regardless who or what the material is used to train. AI companies are copying copyrighted content for commercial use that's copyright infringement.
@DS999 "If we use your definition that the seller of the best mousetrap has a "monopoly", regardless of how many other not as good mousetraps you can buy."
Depends on how you define "monopoly". Is it a business that is the sole suppler of a product or a business that is the dominant suppler of a product?
If sole suppler, it's the best mousetrap because it's the only mousetrap being sold. If dominant suppler, best mousetrap may not mean best selling, just as likely the seller of the cheapest mousetrap is the dominant business.
Miffo is correct the Met's own figures https://www.met.police.uk/SysSiteAssets/media/downloads/force-content/met/advice/lfr/deployment-records/lfr-deployment-grid.pdf show an error (not on the watch list) rate of less than 1%.
Your right, the Met have previously claimed a 1 in 6000 (camera passes) rate of false positives. But which ever way false positives measured, false negatives can't be measured, without knowing percent of the faces seen that were on the watchlist. A rate of less than 1% for false positives suggests a very high confidence level is required to flag a match, meaning a lot of faces seen that are on the watchlist will be missed.
What's interesting in those figures is the number of true alerts that resulted in an arrest. At a guess it looks like no more than 50%. EG Town Sq, Walthamstow 22/01/25 4hr 22m watchlist 14919, Alerts 13, true 12, false 1, Outcomes Arrest 6, Other Disposal 1, No Action 5, Faces seen (Estimate) 12120.
So 5 of the people on the watchlist the police found warranted No Action, begs the question why were they on the Met watchlist? That's the outcome for half of the true alerts reported and suggests that half of people on the Met watchlist should not be.
Not sure what point you think you are making with an article about a leak the source of which is unknown. https://edition.cnn.com/2024/10/19/politics/us-israel-iran-intelligence-documents/index.html
"after being posted on Telegram by an account called “Middle East Spectator.”"
"it is not clear how the documents became public, nor whether they were hacked or deliberately leaked. "
Middle East Spectator who posted intelligence documents to Telegram was not a Biden appointment, not part of the Biden's administration. Unlike the numb nuts posting to the Signal group all of whom are Trump appointments, part of the Trump's administration.
"Google admits it deleted some customer data after 'technical issue'". Google engineers quickly isolated and fixed issue, but not quickly enough for some user profiles it would seem.
"The email goes on to" apologize to users as profiling will not be as in-depth or as privacy invasive as their users have come expect and deserve from Google.
If the user has a backup of their timeline they can retore it. If they do not they should reply to this email with a detailed itinerary of what they have done and where they have been for the last 3 years, along with any relevant photos. So Google can once again provide the privacy invading data stealing service our user deserves.
No, this time Dell just assemble a workstation, designed by NVIDIA from parts supplied by NVIDIA https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/products/workstations/dgx-station/. It not just Dell NVIDIA's other partners will do the same.
There will be some differences between the workstations assembled by Dell and those assembled by NVIDIA's other partners HP, ASUS and even Supermicro, limited to items such as the case, PSU and drives. But the motherboard will be the same, it's supplied by NVIDIA. Whether or not the motherboard follows ATX standards rests with NVIDIA not NVIDIA's partners.
On the assumption the motherboard is ATX even the numb nuts at Dell can't possible build a case where the mounts follow ATX standards for NVIDIA's motherboard and not follow ATX standards for any other ATX motherboard. But it is Dell so anything is possible. :)
"It's not a coincidence that the call comes as the Data (Use and Access) Bill (DUAB), legislation aiming to toe the line between GDPR compliance and "business friendliness" – yep, the old "open for business" line is being rolled out."
That's the bloody problem our data shouldn't be a business. Our data should not be a commodity to be collected and sold/shared. "Businesses to make "better use of data"". no, other than customer data businesses use to service there customers*, businesses should not make use of our data.
No collecting sharing or selling and no bloody data brokers, then there is no "goldmine for both marketers and cybercriminals".
* Name address to deliver goods for example.
@frankvw "I ask because the latter is exactly what AI is doing right now."
Rubbish, don't anthropomorphise AI, only 'the problem (solve a problem in Perl) is the same.
But what really pisses me off is when ever anyone claims learning by reading a book is the same as AI learning with training data*. Because every bloody time the wankers claim if reading a book does not infringe then AI does not. Conveniently ignoring that they are not comparing like to like just like you as none your reading examples breach copyright. Borrowing a book from collage/library/friend does not infringe copyright no copy was made.
But training data is a copy the AI companies don't buy a licensed copy that is copyright infringement. Hell replace AI with a person it would sill be copyright infringement.
* Which is what you have done in a roundabout way. Most people are much more direct by claiming AI learning is the same as learning by reading a book.
@Ken Hagan "I keep reading this claim, but the link takes me to a paywall so I can't see the evidence."
The linked article maybe behind a paywall, but source for that claim is not. As the article is an opinion piece the source for that claim will be listed in the references, and all the papers referenced are public.
Not read it yet, but https://arxiv.org/pdf/2305.20010 "Human or Not? A Gamified Approach to the Turing Test...", looks like the paper most likely to have give rise to Celeste Biever's article title "ChatGPT broke the Turing test"
Thanks for the link a very interesting read especially this piece near the very end.
"As explained above, however, the Foundation chose not to take any further action in this matter until now because Neo4j responded to the Foundation’s cease-and-desist letter by eventually removing from its software the infringing files complained about by the FSF and ceasing to offer its software as free software under the AGPL, thus implicitly conceding that the FSF’s position regarding the Commons Clause was correct. "
The issue appears to be does AGPLv3 prohibit Neo4j from imposing further restrictions?
The lower court ruled AGPLv3 did not and therefore AGPLv3 does not grant others permission to remove further restrictions imposed by Neo4j. That is the decision being appealed,
The reason the judge ruled as they did. Neo4j are the licensor, they own the copyright. AGPLv3 Sections 7 and 10 prohibit a licensee, but not not licensor.
Judges words from https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.335295/gov.uscourts.cand.335295.118.0.pdf
"Thus, read correctly, Sections 7 and 10 prohibit a licensee from imposing further restrictions, but do not prohibit a licensor from doing so."
@Paul Garrish "Isnt it sad that the only use these people can think of for AI is to make yet more money."
To me it's bloody funny, after years of hype and the billions spent, they have still to find a killer app, That's the one thing these people can't think of, a use for AI* that has a ROI (make more money).
* Generative AI
in_for_the_fun "The corporation is a container of the shareholders' (and lenders') money, they can do as they please with it, even strip it to the bone."
Corporations are limited liability, the corporation owns its assets, all shareholders own are shares. Shareholders' money is realised, when they sell their shares at which point they are no longer share holders.
Shares are not IOUs Corporations give to shareholders for shareholders lending them money. The money Corporations raise through selling shares like all assets belong to the Corporations, not the shareholders.
@AC "DEI done right means that if there are two equal candidates, one who has a disability or is in a minority might get a bonus point. That's all it is."
Two 'equal' candidates are not being treated equally if one of them is disabled or in a minority, that's discrimination. That is DEI done wrong because it breaks Equal opportunity employment laws.
When unable to choose between two equal candidates best use second interviews to make a choice, because a choice based on a protected characteristic, there is a good chance of being sued for discrimination.
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