Posts by spold

CERN boffins turn lead into gold for about a microsecond at unimaginable cost

>>> weighed less than a fart in a vacuum

I assume as expressed in trumpagrams? (BTW what you do with your hoover is your own business).

People find amazing ways to break computers. Cats are even more creative

Re: We had an issue with a rabbit

Putting them in a pot with some red wine and herbs is usually quite effective as well.

Re: Cats and keyboards

To avoid all this you have to remember to press that key marked CatsLock

Soviet probe from 1972 set to return to Earth ... in May 2025

Keeping in mind...

That for any statistical estimate there is a 90% chance it is wrong.

Altman's eyeball-scanning biometric blockchain orbs officially come to America

A large database based on iris scans - what could possibly go wrong?

There is probably a "use" for it in the US dystopian future... just not a good one.

Zuck ghosts metaverse as Meta chases AI goldrush

Re: Lessons not learned....

..oh.. p.s. the prime IBM interest was in the experience authoring system for developers... powered by a couple of cards stuffed in an IBM PS/2 - each card had a couple of IBM RS/6000 processors acting as GPUs. The number developed must have been under 100 (likely much less) so not a big finance success (nothing changed there either). The VR hardware (head mounted display, EM source, and pressure grip and spatial hand attachment (better than what I have seen on the market today) were produced by Virtuality. Graphics were crap compared to today but that isn't surprising. They had 6D tracking (x,y,z, yaw, pitch, roll) which was nice.

p.s. Newcastle United purchased one for the executive lounge mostly to play games (it was compatible with Virtuality's game systems) - mostly a failure as they had literally carpeted the walls of the lounge - the amount of static generated completely buggered up the electro-magnetic position sensing systems.

p.p.s. in my original post Glassholes refers to the original Google Glasses owners, the device recorded video of whoever you were talking to - hence "avoid that Glasshole!".

Lessons not learned....

1. VR hardware is expensive - you better have something compelling for people to purchase it at scale or you lose money fast due to development and production costs.

2. Get a grip on the engineers! They will have produced version 21 of the hardware before you have even recouped the design costs of version 20 - the more you sell the more money you lose.

3. Trad flatscreen experience coders/authors are usually poor at 3D immersive environments - they don't get that if you were looking the wrong way it didn't happen.

4. Complete lack of standards meaning experience authoring costs are high across platforms.

5. Headsets that look like a diving mask, glasses that make you look like Joe 90 or the Borg.

6. Lack of compelling experiences beyond games and gimmicks - your audience is also not in the high earning category.

7. Major - Legal - Little Jimmy spends all his time in VR worlds, now he needs glasses (he would have done anyway) - class action lawsuits!

8. Completeness of vision - you really need to have VR, AR, telepresence, and teledildonics.

9. Privacy - what happens in VR worlds is subject to what legislation? AR and video recording... remember Glassholes?

AR has a much more compelling business case than VR if you can avoid creepy glasses and implement Privacy by Design: This is Fred, at the last meeting he spoke about carrots and you agreed to speak to the rabbits. This is Jane, you met at the conference last year, she drinks gin and tonics and has a pony. This is your son David, don't worry you have had a few memory problems and are in hospital, everything is OK.

(For context I used to be product manager for immersive virtual reality systems at IBM (Project Elysium in conjunction with the UK company Virtuality)... in 1995. What goes around comes around, sometimes people have not learned the lessons).

Trump admin freaks out over mere suggestion Amazon was going to show tariff impact on prices

Apparently you have to stick to the "alternative facts" ... again.

Signalgate lessons learned: If creating a culture of security is the goal, America is screwed

One can't help thinking that JD's sofa is bugged... or is that buggered? Probably needs a new one that has been confirmed clean.

Techie diagnosed hardware fault by checking customer's coffee

Re: dirty power

In a previous century when I worked for a company with Incredibly Borked Management we had an in-store sales system deployed in a popular high-street electrics retailer chain that is now defunct. Seemingly randomly the store server would go tits-up and would collapse in a e-pile of springs and cogs. No-one could work out what was going on... eventually a customer engineer was assigned the rewarding task of sitting there and watching things all day to see if something environmental was going on such as gross stupidity. It turned out it was the rear electric roll-up delivery door to the store, every time another fridge or whatnot was delivered and they opened their back door the motor sent spikes of death through the mains and the server stopped being one... fixed with some power conditioning.

Congress wants to know if Nvidia superchips slipped through Singapore to DeepSeek

Third party resellers have always been an issue...

From China there are plenty of 3rd party resellers that will gladly stuff your shipping container with locally priced devices (and more importantly in this direction with locally configured devices intended for the Chinese market that may have more liberal security policies embedded) and you can then ship them to the west and sell them under local retail rates for a healthy profit. I'm sure the same thing exists in the other direction, that there will resellers very willing to fill a container with stuff addressed to Singapore (crossed out with Shenzhen written in in crayon - could be Macao but that would be more of a gamble).

Appeals court revives lawsuit alleging IBM bilked pensioners

I've Been Murdered

Whistleblower describes DOGE IT dept rampage at America's labor watchdog

They will get them when they are old enough to grow bum fluff.

Re: Incompetent vs Nefarious

Occam's Razor

IBM orders US sales to locate near customers or offices

Austin....

I'm sure the number of chairs in the proposed new IBM Austin location is classified as IBM Confidential Restricted.

No rest for the rocketry as NASA's Easter weekend heats up

Yay - new supplies

It's cabbage time! Hmmm....

Nvidia paid $1M for Mar-a-Lago meal, US later scrapped AI chip export crackdown

Re: Updated Speech

Lovely little runners, belonged to a little old lady who only took them out to lunch on Sundays...

Trump thinks we can make iPhones in the US just like China. Yeah, right

Arriving soon...

A new take on Apple Pay.

UK's answer to DARPA sprouts new ideas, like programmable plants

Finally....

King Charles will be able to talk to trees and they will talk back! AI plants - a Royal Warrant of Appointment is pending.

(You probably need to be of a certain age to get this one).

p.s. watch out for the triffid.

UK officials insist 'murder prediction tool' algorithms purely abstract

You are already guilty...

The Thought Police have decided. For your thoughtcrime you will be vapourised.

As CISA braces for more cuts, threat intel sharing takes a hit

Re: :disbelief:

Kompromat, and narcissistic personality disorder (search that term along with the Mayo clinic for symptoms). Apply Occam's Razor.

Asian tech players react to US tariffs with delays, doubts, deal-making

That's the problem with them there penguins.... happy feet one day, unhappy feet next day.

NASA doubles odds of Moon hitting near-Earth asteroid

Re: surely

I told you - don't call me Shirley (yes obligatory reply someone had to).

Bill Gates unearths Microsoft's ancient code like a proud nerd dad

Since Friday is pedantic day....

The PDP-10 (&11) were usually termed mini-computers not mainframes (limited address space). It still looked like a blue commercial freezer. I show my age by having actually programmed one. I know someone who hollowed out the gubbins of one and used it as a clothes cupboard (nerd award).

Americans set to pay more on all imports: Trump activates blanket tariffs

Re: I feel liberated already...

Indeed - explain it to the polar bears - in person....

One of the last of Bletchley Park's quiet heroes, Betty Webb, dies at 101

Also read...

I agree all involved including Betty are absolute heroes.

For reading matter don't forget "The Hut Six Story: Breaking the Enigma Codes" by Gordon Welchman. Gordon does "toot his own horn" a bit but it does provide a broader picture to the code-breaking operation at Bletchley, and is more technical than other narratives. I think he is a bit neglected in favour of Turing (and I say that as a Manchester U Computer Science Alumni). He worked with the US post WW2 and sadly the NSA withdrew his security clearance as a result of him publishing this book.

US Army’s laser obsession continues with yet another drone-zapper deal

No drones were bowled over

Rain stopped ray

Samsung co-CEO Han Jong-hee dies of heart attack at 63

co-CEO

Interesting that they split the role, Huawei also had (has?) a model of three rotating CEOs (not so much whirling dervishes) but they recognise the CEO role is incredibly taxing so they take it in turns to lead while other two do other senior roles in between. Not only does is lead to less burn-out and consistent energy, but in unfortunate circumstances such as these there is a natural succession plan. I guess if someone decides that one of them is total pants then it is much easier to take them 'round the back and put them up against the wall. Perhaps something to learn from this model.

Feds charge three over Molotov attacks on Tesla sites in multiple states

...fitted with what is called a "silencer" in the UK.

Pirate Bay financier and far-right activist Carl Lundström dies in plane crash

Pirate Bay....

Well if the plane had a cockpit voice recorder I best the last bit of it was "Arrrrrrrrrrrrrr!".

And at the end of the day he did shiver some timbers.

Microsoft wouldn't look at a bug report without a video. Researcher maliciously complied

I would have used a garage metal track. Nothing like some pain. I have one on my laptop so when I get marketing or malicious calls I ask them to please hold and then play it... (going for a coffee meantime).

Apple's alleged UK encryption battle sparks political and privacy backlash

Becomes rather moot in physical possession of a device

There are various digital forensics tools out there commonly used by law enforcement that can read out your locked Apple iThingy in an hour or two (e.g. Exterro FTK as a popular example). Lose physical possession of your device and your information is pretty much toast without secondary encryption. Store your darkest secrets on a separate storage device with strong encryption using an open source encryption tool with a good master passphrase (unfortunately that is what any bad person who isn't thick as a brick will probably do anyway).

iRobot may be iDead in iYear

Re: Question

Classic "Carry On" movie: "Carry On up the Khyber". Tiffin is used as a synonym for naughty sexy time throughout the movie... having a break in the day for some participation in Tiffin.

Roomba one minute, Doomba next minute..

OpenAI asks Uncle Sam to let it scrape everything, stop other countries complaining

Well same as you would do....

...if you are submitting a CV for a job, when it is going to be screened electronically, you cut and paste all the requirements into it in small type white on white (so the screening software scores it but it is invisible) - so similarly, lots of sites who have content that could be scraped should have similar content that is not visible and is maliciously evil garbage to bugger up AI training.... just sayin'.

GCC 15 is close: COBOL and Itanium are in, but ALGOL is out

Algol;

Algol 60;

On an ICL 1902 mainframe;

And the program on paper tape;

Those were the days!

****ERROR Missing semicolon at line 4****

You lot don't know what you are missing! Whippersnappers.

I were programming when you were but knee-high to a grasshopper.

Now CESIL - there was a language.... hey let's have Visual-CESIL++

Is it Friday yet? I think I need a lie down.

;-)

Earth's atmosphere is shrinking and thinning, which is bad news for Starlink and other LEO Sats

Re: Middle age bloat

Adélie? Ross Sea? - I must have misread things based on the authors.... I thought we were talking methane emissions from anthropogenic farty penguins in the canals around the Brummie Poly? I could be mistaken any road up.

Toronto Zoo ransomware crooks snatch decades of visitor data

I expect there will be class action pawsuits

The Register gets its claws on Huawei’s bonkers tri-fold phone

So shortly we will have an AI phone that can fold itself into a dagger - what could possibly go wrong?

One stupid keystroke exposed sysadmin to inappropriate information he could not unsee

That was Seaman Stains

Master Bates

Hisense QLED TVs are just LED TVs, lawsuit claims

Re: I wonder

I found one of them there quantum dot thingies on my screen, I wiped it off, but then I dropped it and didn't.

100-plus spies fired after NSA internal chat board used for kinky sex talk

Re: So, hang on a second...

>>>varied and possibly kinky sex

In the world of spycraft, I would have thought that would come under "training"?

IBM Consulting workers told management wants to 'more closely align pay, performance'

Re: Low profit margin

The standard consulting model equation is 1.5x compensation plus expenses (benefits etc.). Fall below that you are in the crapper area. For sales it can be more simplistic - every quarter fire the bottom 10% and hire another 10%.... repeat. If you are a Partner in consulting it is a little more complex... you are expected to manage the pyramid underneath you (repeat up the chain except more golf skills and when to lose are involved). All Partners are not equal, in one of the big 5 there are 7 levels of partner, if your pyramid (everyone that reports to you) is lagging in revenue you may be on the gently out list. Other more basic factors come into play.... bugger another Partner's admin without permission is definitely a no-no. (I know a Partner who got the HR Partner's admin pregnant while having an affair...sudden death).

How nice that state-of-the-art LLMs reveal their reasoning ... for miscreants to exploit

Re: Soundness

>>>exposed "chain of thought"

...should have read Monty Python's "How not to be seen"

Los Alamos boffins slap blinkers on satellites so we know who to blame in a crash

Re: An interesting detail

...well you just need them to have AI as well, AI satellites with laser beams - run!