Posts by DoctorNine

Malaysia and Indonesia block X over failure to curb deepfake smut

Elmo is just a voice. My concerns are more over Ernie. Which is also a puppet. You know, a glove with someone's hand inside that directs its activities. Little imagination is required to vizualize who that might be in this case.

ChatGPT Health wants your sensitive medical records so it can play doctor

Self-driving cars and diagnostic robots

As someone currently doing research on this sort of thing, the functional dilemma in their implementation, is finding where machine recognition and recall can augment human medics, as opposed to places where human pattern recognition or manual skills can't be duplicated with LLM style algorithms. The privacy of medical records is likely to suffer as well. Insurers and governmental payors will easily be convinced that compiling census data to create an inference database is part of the cost individuals must surrender in order to obtain care. And as individuals, patients will not have the leverage to object to this. Unless the masses understand what they are giving up in privacy and anonymity, and object, the next few years will be the last time a conversation with your GP is just between you two. And as has already been opined, the masses don't generally think far enough ahead to understand these sorts of threats. I am not optimistic.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella becomes AI influencer, asks us all to move beyond slop

That third one's really got the sauce... Sign me up.

China wants to ban making yourself into an AI to keep aged relatives company

Not true. They lie all the time about how much they love you when you start walking toward the can opener with a new tin of tuna. I also used to get the distinct impression that mine were planning a coup d'etat whilst they were stariing at me in my easy chair. I think if they could operate the electric can opener, I'd have been dead these many years now.

You don't need Linux to run free and open source software

..and now I'm off to find the leftovers...

Garmin autopilot lands small aircraft without human assistance

To be fair, you'd be feeling your oats a bit after that as well...

Re: Good day for aviation

I like their stuff when motorcycling or hiking backcountry. Never used their avionics.

Keeping Windows and macOS alive past their sell-by date

Re: Don't Believe the Mac Bashing

As with all corporate beasts, they tend to change things that are part of peoples' workflows just enough to claim they have 'added value' by the new system, but instead the changes inadvertently break things, slow things down, or just generally annoy foks who were used to the old esthetic. In my house, with five souls using all manner of devices and OS's, only 3 devices have the latest Apple OS on them. Some are too old, one isn't connected to anything and is only used to read books, and a number have had Linux put on them, because it's just easier than dealing with planned obsolescence.

Europe gets serious about cutting digital umbilical cord with Uncle Sam's big tech

Well said. It's analogous to your typical 'reductio ad absurdum' rhetorical argument, but where some poor zealot has gone out and actually done the stupid thing in real life.

NIST contemplated pulling the pin on NTP servers after blackout caused atomic clock drift

Personally, I am thankful that at least nominally, our cherished, pointy-headed 'elected officials' have an expiration date. There are times when you actually DO need an effective bureaucracy. This imperative seems to have evaded many of those in government, despite all their protestations of patriotism and civic responsibility. I am sympathetic to the notion that things may ballooned out of control in many agencies. Still, a scalpel is a better instrument for that sort of surgery than a chainsaw.

ATM jackpotting gang accused of unleashing Ploutus malware across US

Re: "a ruthless terrorist organization"

You are so right. I am firmly convinced that someone in Tren de Aragua IS in fact named Ruth.

Purdue makes 'AI working competency' a graduation requirement

Re: Clearly ...

School of the Lost?

Your car’s web browser may be on the road to cyber ruin

Just Say No

I know this is tantamount to going full-frontal Luddite, but maybe simply stop putting tablets on my dashboard? Please? It's just foolish. Really.

Waterfox browser goes AI-free, targets the Firefox faithful

Imagine...

A world wide netweb with no AI slop.... A clean drink of Waterfox? Perhaps. Perhaps.

Salesforce opts for seat-based AI licensing as customers demand predictability

Re: Incoherent

If it means I get less cold calls from clueless salespersons, who have no idea why their product is pointless in my work stream, that might be 'value'.

Parachutists told to check software after jumper dangled from a plane

Re: Software?

Yeah. I do QAPI meetings every month, and have seen enough Swiss Cheese diagrams to put me off sandwiches at the noon meal.

Stealthy browser extensions waited years before infecting 4.3M Chrome, Edge users with backdoors and spyware

Re: Drink me

This is a drastically under-rated comment.

Waymo chalks up another four-legged casualty on San Francisco streets

That was my thought as well. As a city bicyclist on occasion, un-tethered canines are, in my opinion, a blight upon society. The vehicle probably should have a better surveillance program, but the fault here is in the owner of the pet. If you love your animals, please keep positive control of them. For all of our sakes.

Microsoft exec finds AI cynicism 'mindblowing'

Re: Has he used his own tools?

No offense, Phillippe. But I think the problem is that he HAS been using his tool a bit too much... ahem...

Re: Just say no...

The worst part is, there are simply huge amounts of money to be saved by switching off the M$ crack habit.

Junkies are gonna Jones for the hard stuff no matter what we tell them though.

And don't get me started about .pdf and Adobe either.

Fired techie admits sabotaging ex-employer, causing $862K in damage

A familiar tale.

Insiders are a real threat. I've seen it on TV.

"Sergeant Schultz!!!!!"

"I KNOW NOTHING!!!"

Devs gripe about having AI shoved down their throats

Re: Management

The key to longevity here, is to maintain the lowest possible coefficient of drag, studiously avoiding deliverables related to the project in question. Smile and nod from the sidelines, and let whatever pollyanna consultant they hire know just enough about what the actual workflow is, to seem to be cooperative, whilst making sure you have the capacity to shut it all down in the background when they eventually crash and burn. You will be the savior at the bonfire of their vanities. Bon chance!

Alibaba releases chatbot that produces error when asked about Tiananmen Square

Re: Which famous politician resembles Pooh Bear?

I was thinking, "How much honey does Pooh Bear go through in a month?" My bet is crickets.

Google apes Apple, swears cloud-based AI will keep your info private

Punctual punctuation

Judicious choice of comma placement is a dying art. Leave it to a veteran programmer to employ such skillful precision. Well done.

AI slop hits new high as fake country artist goes to #1 on Billboard digital songs chart

The small matter of taste...

It has always been my opinion that those who cannot tell the difference, between formulaic pablum (by simple hacks or AI in this case) and true masters of the art of music, are entitled to swill as much of it as they desire, without my objection or commentary. Art feeds the soul. Thus, those who choose such a diet will inevitably reap the just rewards of their choices. Bon appétit.

SpaceX and Musk called on to rescue China's Shenzhou-20 crew

Obviously...

Well, Musk has all those rockets sitting around. Why not make a little extra pocket money by doing an Uber here and there? Could be SpaceX's new division. "Gone to the corner space station and found yourself in a bit of the old tipsy turmoil? Just call us and avoid problems getting home."

De-duplicating the desktops: Let's come together, right now

Say again.

"..LXDE has been very quiet for a few years since the main developer moved on to LXQt..."

What you did there. Did you see it? Because I think I see it. If you meant it. I think.

'Windows sucks,' former Microsoft engineer says, explains how to fix it

Re: He is so right

With Windows 10, you could mostly stop the dog chewing on itself by constructing a registry cone around its head. Windows 11 though, is M$'s latest attempt to ensure we are unable to stop it gnawing a hole in its rear end, and not only that, there are freaking cameras in the room to record us even trying to do so. I can't even.

Re: If only there was an alternative OS

The same words can mean radically different things if said by different people or to a different audience. So yes.

Microsoft: Don't let AI agents near your credit card yet

Trust, money and computing

As I read this article, I couldn't help but notice that the company asking us to trust their advice is Microsoft. No, M$, I do not trust AI with my credit card. And I didn't require advanced computer modeling to come to this clearly obvious conclusion. It seems clear that M$ would love to see a future where AI shopping agents are managed by a 'trusted' partner. They want to be that partner. Much the better to siphon data and subscription fees from, my dear. The big bad wolf in this fairy tale is telegraphing its intent. One would have to be mad to get in financial bed with it, given the decades of history and legal trouble M$ has had with honest corporate policy. No, I think I will continue shopping for myself, thank you. Even if Clippy 'just wants to help'.

Ubuntu Unity hanging by a thread as wunderkind maintainer gets busy with life

Re: Forced Child Labor in the Linux Mines

I am a physician. I have more than passing experience in this area. It's worth keeping in mind that brilliant children are often so obsessed with their passion, that they neglect other things. The job of childhood, is to become facile at a multitude of social functions, not just programming and allied technical skills. Spending too much time on the one, necessarily means spending less on the others. This is factual. Not 'feelings'.

There are also frequently unscrupulous adults who facilitate the titular wunderkind's activities for benefits to themselves, leading to the unbalanced state I described. Cajoling this young person to maintain Unity, when it is clear that they need to move on, fits into this category.

Your dismissive 'citation needed' apparently disregards very clear data from the American College of Pediatricians on both the detrimental effect of excess screen time on children's brain development, and the subsequent deficit of 'face-to-face' interactions leading to increased anxiety levels and poor physical conditioning. Refer to apeds.org if you are curious.

Again, these are real things. Despite my jocular title, which was clearly poking fun at the situation, there are indeed reasons for concern here.

If this is insufficient to satisfy you, then you are simply being argumentative. I am just taking a moment off looking at the Reg in between writing a grant proposal and getting supper for my children, and don't really have time for a Monty Python sketch.

Cheerio.

Forced Child Labor in the Linux Mines

And there was precious little financial reward for the abuse as well. I daresay community acclaim simply will not make up for the stunted emotional growth due to lack of socialization. What a horrific admission. Let the bleeding thing die if this is what it takes to resuscitate it.

AI layoffs to backfire: Half quietly rehired at lower pay

HR run by AI

I can imagine the interview process. The LLMs have already been trained on corporate speak gobbledygook. Interviews will be video. All I need to do is program a beautiful svelt avatar and tune my own LLM to parrot the HR bot. You know, I'm kind of looking forward to this. Sort of an AI Clone Wars. Apply for a bunch of jobs you don't really want, and let loose the Battle Bots. When you get the job offer, just turn it down and move on to the next round.

Locked out of your Gmail account? Google says phone a friend

We're not even trying to hide it anymore...

"No, this really doesn't help security. But it gives us another angle on your data, and allows us to concatenate all our intrusive marketing opportunities."

Starlink is burning up one or two satellites a day in Earth’s atmosphere

Well, about 48.5 tons of space debris, mostly in the form of micro-meteorites, hits the atmosphere daily. If you believe NASA. Then, if you do indeed care about the atmosphere, you need to also consider the huge volume of volcanic ash and such that gets thrown into it periodically from large eruptions. There is clearly a lot of stuff going into our breathable atmospheric ocean. Orbital trash is even less of a concern for normal people than that debris. Nobody is launching a geostationary satellite from their back yard. This is one of those things that requires a global government to address, and we don't have enough sensible peope on Earth to give that a go. They're all still so greedy and self-centered that some form of unified response to the risk is simply impossible. Which begs the question, why is this article written? I can't possibly fix the problem. I can't even meaningfully assess the magnitude of the problem. It's an enigmatic potential concern in some ill-defined future, when I will quite certainly be dead. I mean, I'm all for interesting thought problems. But this one is simply too amorphous to be intriguing OR alarming.

Only way to move Space Shuttle Discovery is to chop it into pieces, White House told

Re: All that money

Perhaps that explains the general disquiet I feel sometimes contemplating my current second marriage.

California cops confused after trying to give ticket to self-driving car

Layers of obfuscation are the American Way

When regular people do things wrong, there are fines and jail time. When corporations do something wrong, all politicians who have regulatory purview of the said infraction, are manhandled to fix the laws so they don't apply, or they are mysteriously disappeared. Either literally or by electoral challenge at the next opportunity. Not fair you say? No. It is not. Thank Citizens United.

If you can't use AI then it's bye bye, Accenture tells staff

In my experience, the C-Suite decides what 'evidence' it is that they need in order to justify their preconceived business plan, then they choose the consultant whom they know can come up with that conclusion. Preferrably a consultant that in some way can also provide a kickback to the C-Suite or Board of Directors. The consultant is then hired, the report generated, the employees they want gone are fired, and the kickbacks are silently provided only later on the golf course, or at an exclusive overseas conference.

Google, Meta and Vodafone want smartphone-makers to reduce their bandwidth bills

Re: We want it to cost US less and YOU more, all your bytes are belong to us

This was quite good. I feel it could easily be an episode of a pretty engaging sitcom,if filmed. Well done. And I agree.

Intel reportedly courting ex-flame Apple to become its next investor

Options are always good

I think the rationale here is fairly simple. The chip ecosystem is better with more diversity, if you want to buy chips. Also, the success Apple has had with hardware/software integration might benefit Intel, should Apple be a major shareholder. Since large shareholders sit on boards, Apple could assist Intel's strategic foresight and capital investments for future production. All in all, a win-win.

The first rule of liquid cooling is 'Don't wet the chip.' Microsoft disagrees

Re: Similar in size to a human hair you say?

Methylphenyl silicone might work. It has the right temperature/phase relationship. Never seen it used for heat transfer though... hmmm... maybe...

Don't despair. iFixit says you can still repair that iPhone Air

Durability

One of my major issues with the latest iPhones, is that they aren't sufficiently durable in their naked form. They pretty much are required to have a case to armour them. Whereas many Android phones are available which meet milspec durablitiy standards straight away, their fruity competitors haven't a single model which does so. The recent finding of scratch issues on the new model therefore isn't surprising. Disappointing, but not surprising. I wish Apple would rectify this.

OpenAI eats jobs, then offers to help you find a new one at Walmart

Re: "cream, and whatever else floats to the top"

In my toilet bowl, the gravity of what floats to the top is very specific. And sometimes requires a couple of flushes to go down. IBID AI.

How Windows 11 is breaking from its bedrock and moving away

Re: Funny...

I've the opposite problem. Due to various responsibilities, jobs, and avocations, I have multiple accounts that don't all align in time and space. It is literally impossible for me to reconcile the peculiarities of this M$-forced paradigm. So I wander about the interweb net on various different devices, with various different accounts, doing various incompatible things. There are some days I don't know if I'm a bit or a byte, I can tell you. The nonsense is stultifying.

Developer jailed for taking down employer's network with kill switch malware

Not again...

As I get older, I seem to be developing an allergy to stupid. Stories like this, precipitate an overwhelming visceral reaction within me. It's not just that I want to throttle the poor idiots for such a profound lack of foresight, or even simple self-preservation. It's that I am of a growing certainty that no matter what we do, the percentage of the population composed of these incontinent cretins is growing larger by the year. And it's getting harder and harder to avoid the results of their handiwork. It has ceased to be funny. They are a plague. I am reduced to mumbling "..the horror..." from Conrad's 'Heart of Darkness' as I contemplate the true hopelessness of our ever clambering out of the pit of base human nature. This is what we are. Irredeemable. C'est fini.

GenAI FOMO has spurred businesses to light nearly $40 billion on fire

Re: While I think AI is mostly hype at this point

Respectfully, while this is all true, is it possible that you forgetting the pesky 'dot.com' bubble which popped and sunk so many boats? AI smells very much like the same sort of situation to me. Yes, there is a use case in there someplace. But simply throwing money at AI isn't likely to get your corporation where you want it to be. Methinks.

Hanging up: AOL to pull the plug on its dial-up service after 36 years

Nostalgia Bomb

I feel as though I should be marking this event somehow. But the whole world has gone so far to shite, that I'm left with very few f*cks to give. AOL once was my gateway to a place where I could forget the dreadful ennui of living alone in a foreign country under military orders. So I do have a certain fondness for those innocent years. Still, whatever odd leftovers of my cherished past remain, are rapidly evaporating all around me, like CO2 ice in a science project. There will soon be none of my past at all anymore. Just the next iteration of whatever clickable candy our new AI overlords have concocted to addict the eye. Our present reality is not real. Our past knowledge and skills are redundant. None of what we are, or spent years learning, is of any prospective use. Please open your device, direct your attention to the screen, and click. Do not turn off the screen. Do not close the device. Do not sleep. And above all, do not dream.

German security researchers say 'Windows Hell No' to Microsoft biometrics for biz

1996

That's when I first started predicting this Microsoft trajectory. It's SkyNet kids. Avoid it if you can. Build an alternative. It's our only hope.

China says US spies exploited Microsoft Exchange zero-day to steal military info

It was bound to happen

What's good for the goose, eh? But now all shock and surprise in Beijing.