Posts by spold

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

Not too difficult to generate....

"My dog died, my cousin left me....."

52-year-old data tape could contain only known copy of UNIX V4

Turns out...

...It's just a bad recording of the Bay City Rollers.

Google's Gemini Deep Research can now read your Gmail and rummage through Google Drive

The privacy notice...

..is at least 16 pages and that is before expanding the next level content... I have read and understood... Perhaps I can get Gemini to summarise it....

Foxconn hires humanoid robots to make servers at Nvidia's Texas factory

And the orange dictator....

...will take credit for all these jobs being created in the USA (being done by robots from Taiwan). In response they will need H1-B visas.....

---

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lnZVDQoMJbw

China uses Mars orbiter to snap interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS

C'mon

I could make an image like that using some black paper, a lamp, and some pins....

Tesla board wants to grant Musk $1T in stock, Norway wealth fund says nope

In response...

Musk will buy Norway

Robotic lawnmower uses AI to dodge cats, toys

Cats...

...all it has is speaker on the front going "woof! woof! woof!

High-stakes poker scam used rigged card shufflers, X-ray tables, and special glasses

Being honest...

Old fruit machines used to have "guaranteed 70% payout" (or similar) in small letters, somewhere unlikely to leap out at you on them. That meant over time you were destined to lose 30%. The only somewhat unlikely way to win was to watch someone else stuff it full of coins and not win anything, then you might play and take advantage of the guarantee.

How do you solve a problem like Discovery?

Make it somebody else's problem...

Put a large box around it and call you favourite courier

Mind the gap – in mobile coverage: UK train signal to stay patchy till 2030

Transport for Wales has solved this

You just need to use the nearest station as the default wireless password. I believe Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch has an underused but excellent connection.

Big money is nervous about AI hype, but not ready to call it a bubble

Re: just makes the pop bigger

Well with the Toyota analogy we can expect it to crash, the wheels will fall off, and while it will try to clutch it will be wipered off the market, and booted out. I think there are strong indicators for that.

Nice try, sinners: Pope nixes idea of AI pontiff blessing netizens

Chat Generative Pope trained Transformer (ChatGPT) - has a tendency for hallucinations - spawn of satan

Flu jab email mishap exposes hundreds of students' personal data

Atishoo, Atishoo we all fall down....

After nearly half a century in deep space, every ping from Voyager 1 is a bonus

Voyager 2 that swung past Uranus

Funny. I never noticed....

SpaceX Dragon gives International Space Station a kick up the orbit

Dad's Army....

As Corporal Jones would say - They don't like it up 'em!

Microsoft open-sources the 6502 BASIC coded by Bill Gates himself

A little shortcut...

In the Commodore PET version you could write program commands just using the first letter of them followed by Shift+Second letter.

Tesla Model Ys recalled Down Under for overly enthusiastic electric windows

There is no escape - mwahaha

Frostbyte10 bugs put thousands of refrigerators at major grocery chains at risk

Re: If Russia had exploited this ...

Chilling

DHS says it needs $100M worth of counter-drone tech to protect America

It's all relative really...

I'm guessing in the overall scheme of the spending $100M is likely small potatoes.

p.s. I can't wait for the navy to join in as well with Counter Unmanned Nautical Technology Systems....

Junk is the new punk: Why we're falling back in love with retro tech

Re: Cassettes???

"Chrome" tapes were a step up, "Metal" tapes took it much higher - I still have an old player gathering moths that had a button for metal tapes (no idea what it did other than satisfy you had forked out more for the cassette) - actually I believe it was supposed to increase the recordable frequency range

Generative AI isn't just a matter of life and death. It's far more important than that

You can always complain....

Use your privacy-ouja board to log a complaint with the privacy commissioner.

On another note there is always the Musk-rat and Neuralink - it starts of well meaning by supplementing the functionality of disabled people, but then it will move on to supplementing brain function by moving chunks of it into the "cloud", then it will get into where the machine ends and the human begins.... maybe when you get to the end of your lifespan you upload yourself. Then it will come down to who pays the electric bill... your money or your life, internet highway robbery.

NASA won't name the Shuttle picked to move to Texas

Re: won't name ?

I suspect "Billy Bob" - payload doors open and a pickup in the bay, fueled up with Texas hooch.

Tech support team won pay rise for teaching customers how to RTFM

Back then...

IBM often authored documents in STML - Simple Text Markup Language (OK then printed them out) - who knew where that would go....

(also GTML - General Text Markup Language - I think that had more options).

p.s. after I have installed some household appliance and explained the basics to my wife, then if she asks some obscure question about it, I often reply "RTFM" - I taught that one to her :-) and it is now common in our extended family!

OpenAI's GPT-5 is here with up to 80% fewer hallucinations

So the military version is just...

"routed to a small, efficient version of the model that can respond quickly without "thinking" " .... and says "fire!" - quite intelligent without thinking - purrhaps purrhaps (It's international cat day)

Meta putting wood in bit barns in bid to get greener

but maybe a bit more buggy....

Carpenter Ants, Termites, etc. Oh and woodpeckers anyone? Perhaps the idea will go up in flames.

Rampant emoji use suggests crypto-stealing NPM package was written by AI

Cunning stunts

...get used to them

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

We have those pictures of you - pay the price, or else....

China warns citizens to beware backdoored devices, on land and under the sea

My LIG port is bigger than your LIG port... <chuckle> <chuckle>

(Lawful Intercept Gateway)

Coldplay kiss-cam flap proves we’re already our own surveillance state

Strangely....

The CEO gets fired, but as far as I know the HR Director doesn't... (OK probably not that strange when HR is involved).

Perhaps rename it as...

The Schadenfreude cam?

A software-defined radio can derail a US train by slamming the brakes on remotely

Just a general FYI for right-pondians

...these freight trains are often of the order of 100 freight cars, quite aways away front to back which has technology implications - a little bigger than your typical right-pondian ones which are often less than 10 (I have lived on both sides of the pond, currently in Canada, the left-pondian ones are a real bugger if you have to stop at a train crossing).

Re: FRED only

... it has to be tuned to the right station

German team warns ChatGPT is changing how you talk

As Basil Fawlty would say...

Don't mention the war

Former and current Microsofties react to the latest round of layoffs

Re: MS is the new IBM

...as in went titsup in a flash?

Kawasaki and Foxconn build robot nursing assistant to tackle hospital scutwork

When it goes wrong....

I bet a defibrillator would permanently fix it.

Norwegian lotto mistakenly told thousands they were filthy rich after math error

Probably...

...repurposed an old government system written in Cobol 60 - so difficult to get people with advanced programming skills that can update those things these days... (probably changed an INT4 to Floating Point or something).

Anthropic chucks chump change at studies on job-killing tech

Hopefully the academics just use an AI to write the study report.

Breaking the nerd internet: Three overlapping generations of tech history – in one selfie

OK where is the punchline?

Three nerds walk into a bar (ouch, ouch, ouch)....

Eutelsat seeks €1.35B to boost LEO network and take the fight to Starlink

Come along let's get real....

There are about 7,600 Starlink tin-thingies/ orbiting junk hazard things up there and they are lofting another 25+ish like clockwork and without things going unusually bang every few days. In the unlikely event this was ever to become a vaguely serious competitor SpaceX would just buy them, end of story.

American coders are most likely to use AI

So given that the US adopted (Webster's) "Simplified English"

I wonder if the coding is all in Basic.

;-)

Glazed and confused: Hole lotta highly sensitive data nicked from Krispy Kreme

So do they put the red light on...

when your data is being exfiltrated?

(they used to put a red light on when there was a fresh batch of doughnuts)

SpaceX's Starship explodes again ... while still on the ground

Re: “Starships might land on Mars in 2026”

Who wants to go to MARS (Mainly A Real Shithole) anyway? It would be cheaper for them to blow things up on earth... oh wait...

Eat or be eaten by AI, Amazon CEO warns staff

Amazon Basics AI - cheap and cheerful? Perhaps not the latter.

Single passenger reportedly survives Air India Boeing 787 crash

Dreamliner one day, Nightmareliner next day.

You are all going to die one day... it's just that we sell tickets.... <sigh>. Sadly, add it to the Boeing list of things you were not meant to fly on. I guess with the incredible shot of a tail sticking out of a building they will likely be able to recover the black boxes from it...

Meta sues 'nudify' app-maker that it claims ran 87k+ Facebook, Instagram ads

Caught with their pants down then....?

Behold! Humanity has captured our first look at the Sun's South Pole

"The Sun is our nearest star"

...good to have someone that knows their stuff!

M&S online ordering system operational 46 days after cyber shutdown

Our service has been upgraded....

...from non-existent to fairly crappy. Please don't get your knickers in a twist - particularly in N. Ireland as we can't send you new ones....

Floppy disks and paper strips lurk behind US air traffic control

When I were but knee high to a grasshopper....

...we had to glue the holes in the paper tape together with horsey stuff - darn whiney Gen W or something..... no wonder floppy user satisfaction went down in the move from 5 1/4 to 3 inches.

Trump lifts US supersonic flight ban, says he's 'Making Aviation Great Again'

Making America Gormless Again