* Posts by Claverhouse

1752 publicly visible posts • joined 15 Jun 2012

YouTube creators must now 'fess up to using AI in vids

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Angel

Artificial Voices

I rarely go to Youtube; but I was just downloading some Light classical, and on one of them one of those obnoxious adverts --- this was for a medical thing so doubly obnoxious --- a male testifier was reading out a spiel, and the rendition was imperfect; as if each sentence was a thing of beauty in itself, and with unwarranted gaps.

So I'm only guessing, but am assuming they saved money by not paying an actual actor, and rather fed the dopey script into an artificial voice generator. No doubt this is the future we were promised.

Attacks on UK fiber networks mount: Operators beg govt to step in

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Re: Hostile state action ?

Is Bubba mentally ill ?

'Chemical cat' on the loose in Japanese city

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Unhappy

Vile

God be with the cat.

Ruggedized phone group takes the Bullitt, calls in PWC as administrative receiver

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Unhappy

I miss the Razr. The old long one.

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Happy

Re: The final death of phone design in the Thames Valley

When it comes to Microsoft, I generally assume the same likelihood of probable guilt as with Jonathan Wild Thief-Taker General.

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( Born in Wolverhampton, incidentally. )

German defense chat overheard by Russian eavesdroppers on Cisco's WebEx

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Happy

Fast Response

Asked about developments in the investigation, the Bundeswehr told The Register it had nothing further to add, but pointed to defense minister Boris Pistorius's comments.

Unlike, say, Apple...

Micron New York mega fab faces an environmental exam

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Go

Environmental Considerations

Good they're taking these seriously.

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And I propose a Frog icon.

Sandvine put on America's export no-fly list after Egypt used network tech for spying

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Angel

Go For Broke

The Americans, private citizens as well, should all rip out any and all computing/networking gear straight out of all governing entities including the Pentagon, and all state governments, and homes, schools, and businesses, that was manufactured even in part in the PRC.

Underwater cables in Red Sea damaged months after Houthis 'threatened' to do just that

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Mushroom

Biden: “...then there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it.”

No doubt the Houthis can be blamed for the Nord Stream Gas explosions.

Crowning glory of GOV.UK websites updated, sparking frontend upgrades

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Meh

Minor

For websites, wouldn't it simply mean uploading a new png to the path of the old png ?

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Anyway this is small change compared to the ludicrous Gordon Brown's brief phase of changing the names of agencies etc. to the Soviet-inspired prefix of 'The People's'; as in The People's Post Office.

Now that was embarrassing...

Biden asks Coast Guard to create an infosec port in a stormy sea of cyber threats

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Meh

Origins

"[Chinese] manufactured ship to shore cranes make up the largest share of the global market and account for nearly 80 percent of cranes at US ports. By design, these cranes may be controlled, serviced and programmed from remote locations,"

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Perhaps they should have bought American cranes.

The odious Jefferson had an Embargo Act to prevent trade with foreigners; and since 1920, the 'Jones Act requires goods shipped between U.S. ports to be transported on ships that are built, owned, and operated by United States citizens or permanent residents' so it's not like they don't have form in protective legislation.

London's famous BT Tower will become a hotel after £275M sale

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Pirate

They Will Sell Any Heritage For A Mess Of Pattage

And back in 2016 the handsome old War Office, the baroque building, was sold to an Indian firm as an hotel + apartments, for a £350 million lease.

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Office

Southern Water cyberattack expected to hit hundreds of thousands of customers

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Re: National insurance numbers?

Exactly.

Mozilla CEO quits, pushes pivot to data privacy champion... but what about Firefox?

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One of my few caveats about Gwenview, is that by default, it has no menu bar. As with some other applications it can be restored by hitting CTRL+M; but people new to these apps won't even know what is missing on the vanilla experience.

Plus removing such things is so needless. Like Fat Slab design, it seems merely implemented to change the usual in order to change the user. No more stuffy old WIMP !

Same with Fx's move to Australis. People weren't hankering for such inelegance or pining for minimalism, and for those who were it could have been incorporated into several Fx themes; but no, designers' desire to make their mark generally means removing useful tradition --- and if possible prevent any restoral of things liked just for sweet fascism's sake.

Making sense of Microsoft's 'confusing' Copilot functionality carnival

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That's adorable.

Republican senators try to outlaw rules that restrict Wall Street’s use of AI

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Pirate

Bought and Paid

As is the norm.

Whether to move off Oracle is the $100M+ question for Europe's largest public body

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If he thinks fast --- and thinks about it at all: after all Oracle's already got the money --- he might think to blame the Elbonian users.

Tech billionaires ask Californians to give new utopian city their blessing

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Happy

A New Beginning

I always approve any proposal that concentrates these sort of people in one place.

Working from home never looked better: Leopard stalks around Infosys and TCS campuses

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Meh

The Other Party

I hope the leopard will be OK.

Microsoft suggests command line fiddling to get faulty Windows 10 update installed

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Meh

Nearly 2 Decades with Linux

I've had things go wrong; mainly hardware issues: generally sorted in a few hours. I've never once seen an Error Code.

Eben Upton on Sinclair, Acorn, and the Raspberry Pi

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Happy

Eben Upton on Sinclair, Acorn, and the Raspberry Pi

A Sinclair Upton ?

Facebook, Instagram now mine web links you visit to fuel targeted ads

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Re: Nothing more annoying

Does it bother me that some computer in a far away country stores information about me? No! If it did, I wouldn't use the services its owner provides.

Well, it bothers me.

Claverhouse Silver badge
Angel

More Yank Sentencing

Facing eight counts, the Nigerian could do up to 20 years for each of five wire fraud charges, five years for unauthorized access to a protected computer, and two years each for two counts of identity theft

So, 109 years in chokey. Obviously there may be parole after 80 years. And before people point it out, these are maximums etc. etc., yet why do these buffoons have such ludicrous sentencing ?

Crypto-crook Sam Bankman-Fried spared a second trial

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This is one of the main reasons the initial reaction to his alleged frauds was fairly muted.

One side of great influence, possibly located mostly on the Upper East Side who could afford to lose most any amount, felt that he was a nice boy, extremely intelligent, who had helped put Mr. Biden in and saved us all from Trumpy the Demon of the Catskills.

Another side, of less influence, being libertarian Cybercoin loonies who half expected to lose their investment anyway, that being the sport of the game, accepting of the risks: knowing that had they got profits instead, some others would be the losers.

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I have little interest in the Fried Affaire one way or another; and think him rather hard done by, considering this was all non-violent [ admittedly I equally have no sympathy for Crypto maniacs ], but I think many convicts would be jealous of trials being quashed for expediency's sake.

How do you teach a robot dog new tricks? Throw it a string of hex, a crayon, and a canvas

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Happy

Very Cute

And the 'dog' as well.

Programmable or 'purpose-bound' money is coming, probably as a feature in central bank digital currencies

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Re: Permanent status quo

Well, that would be handy for governments of a certain persuasion to identify rootless cosmopolitans.

Artificial intelligence is a liability

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Thumb Up

As You Were

It seems unlikely that Arena Group's claim that its AI platform can reduce the time required to create articles for publications like Sports Illustrated by 80-90 percent will improve reader satisfaction, brand loyalty, or content quality.

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So long as the models are fit, the text can be Lorem Ipsum.

Study uncovers presence of CSAM in popular AI training dataset

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Stop

The Illustration of this Article

When dealing with even potential child abuse it would be nicer, not to mention safer, not to show pretty little girls as illustration.

Hacktivists boast: We shut down Iran's gas pumps today

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Imagination

Isn't this the sort of thing Biden's mob and western affiliates are always claiming Putin's mob are wickedly planning to do to The Free World America ?

Kraft Heinz suggests we simmer down about Snatch ransomware attack claims

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Re: Cheez Whiz!

To be fair, a number of their customers find eating cheese the old-fashioned way really hard.

Two years on, 1 in 4 apps still vulnerable to Log4Shell

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Unhappy

Too Simple

The larger issue at play isn't just the failure to apply patches. According to Sonatype, the number of Log4j downloads containing vulnerable versions just in the last seven days stands at 26 percent of a total 3.7 million.

Wouldn't it be simplest to block and remove all vulnerable versions on download sites in the first place ?

Scribbling limits in free version of Evernote set to test users' patience

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Re: $130 per year?

Yeah, but, if you don't use Evernote, you will miss out on their new exciting plans for next year.

Firefox slow to load YouTube? Just another front in Google's war on ad blockers

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Go

A More Insidious Method

I don't watch a lot of Youtubes anyway; nor bother with adblockers, though I heartily approve of them all: Steven Black's Hosts file --- the vanilla one; his selections for his extensions, such as porn, gambling, fake news etc, are idiosyncratic... and I can avoid these foolish things by not going to such sites, I am not 12 --- blocks most adverts.

However if I see a youtube on say another site that might be interesting instead of going there, ( clicking on the screen generally shows something like Copy url at current time ) I download it with Youtube Downloader Plus ( on Linux ), then watch it.

There are rather too many Video Quality options / formats --- just use the highest quality on offer ffs --- for my taste; but using it is simple beyond words: one has already copied the url, and pasting it reveals the options panel. Then click download.

I emphasize this since downloaders are becoming wicked rare.

Poloniex crypto-exchange offers 5% cut to thieves if they return that $120M they nicked

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WTF?

Simplify, Simplify...

"We are offering a five percent white hat bounty to the Poloniex hacker," Sun wrote. "Please return the funds to the following ETH/TRX/BTC wallets.

To claim this lucky prize, wouldn't they simply return 95% of the loot ?

Mac daddy Woz hospitalized in Mexico over mystery malady

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Odd

Mexico City is one of the highest-elevation cities in the world, sitting at 7,349 feet

If altitude was part of the problem, wouldn't it be better for him to be transferred to a hospital lower than that ?

Good luck to him.

Google mulled offering paid-for no-logging private Search subscription

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Holmes

Google Gimmes

I like the idea of getting people to pay for what should be the default. Most ingenious. Auto salesmen could have buckets of muddy water poised over their exits as satisfied car buyers leave and offer not to drench the new car for a modest fee.

How about instead Google pays searchers for rifling through their data ?

Hardware hacker: Walling off China from RISC-V ain't such a great idea, Mr President

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WTF?

Dementia

"While the benefits of open-source collaboration on RISC-V promise to be significant for advancement and development of the US semiconductor industry, it can only be realized when contributors are working with the sole aim of improving the technology, and not aiding the technological goals and geopolitical interests of the PRC," the group of 18 Congressfolk wrote in their letter [PDF] to Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo last week.

Even the dimmest of politicians realises that the two propositions, however unwelcome, are not antithetical.

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One of Huang's biggest fears is that the risk of violating US export controls [PDF], which includes civil penalties of up to $250,000 and criminal penalties of 20 years in prison, and a maximum $1 million fine, could have a chilling effect on contributions to RISC-V development.

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Yeah, sure, the American vision is focused on endless punishment; but [i]20 years[/i] ?

Anyway, last time I saw such over-reaching penalties was Mrs. Clinton's proposed [B]Flag Protection Act[/b], which had for flag-burning or disrespect to Old Glory [i]...called for a punishment of no more than one year in prison and a fine of no more than $100,000; unless that flag was property of the United States Government, in which case the penalty would be a fine of not more than $250,000, not more than two years in prison, or both.[/i]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_Protection_Act_of_2005

Uncle Sam snooping on US folks? Not without a warrant, lawmakers agree

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Really ? Surprised the most hardcore Law & Order, Death Penalty Doubling, War on Drugs Warrior, Cold War Warrior, who built most of the last few decade's American Prison policy, statesman wouldn't object to any legal tool to lock people up ?

Theora video codec to be coded out from Chrome and Firefox

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Devil

Their Master's Voice

What Chrome does today, Firefox will do tomorrow.

World checks it's not April 1 as Apple signals support for full US right-to-repair rule

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Devil

Out of Warranty

a limit to devices manufactured prior to 2021,

To be fair, Apple may feel that any customer using a device that old should just have buckled down and bought a new one.

AWS says it wants in on the European sovereign cloud game

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Flame

Good Start

Nice. Pity it's Amazon, but well done.

UK to crack down on imported Chinese optical fiber cables

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... to benefit greatly from the EU's ban on Huawei kit.

We banned Huawei before they ! [ Obeying our American masters. ]

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Devil

You Can't Buy Something Not Available

Re: Poor Take-Up:

OK, I live in semi-rural Suffolk and have Vodafone to the Cabinet ( around 50 MB £25 per month ).

I would love faster broadband, and would be willing to pay more ( up to a point, Lord Copper ) [ so disposing of the usual libertarian claptrap of claiming:

A/ People don't pay enough for the things they get and need to pay the market price ---- since everyone has unlimited income.

B/ Things may be theoretically available, like potatoes at £500 a stone, but unaffordable; so it's no use saying the opportunity is there for all. ]

However in my singular case unlike Dahut of Ys, BT hasn't opened the floodgates to Fibre to the home, so none of the companies who tantalise such an upgrade can actually install.

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So it doesn't matter who's to blame, millions of Britons ( and no doubt inhabitants of other countries ) simply can't, rather than won't.

GNOME Foundation's new executive director sparks witch hunt

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Happy

Congratulations on your marriage

That is all.

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Gnome can go and die in a ditch.

Winklevoss twins back in hot water after NY AG sues over $1B cryptocurrency fraud

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Meh

What Becomes of the Broken-Hearted ?

The complaint cites several victims, including a 73-year-old grandmother who, along with her husband, lost $199,000 invested in Gemini Earn that she had hoped to use to pay for the education of her grandchildren.

And this only touches the surface. Billions of OAPs in Britain and Europe and All the Russias must have invested their odd $200k's in cryptocurrency naturally trusting in eBrochures.

Nvidia boss tells Israeli staff Mellanox founder's daughter was killed in festival massacre

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I'm pretty sure it is already a hell hole, and has been for many decades.

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And would you advise that Palestinians instead voluntarily choose not to have babies, effectually removing their nation from the planet ?

Can open source be saved from the EU's Cyber Resilience Act?

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Re: EC <> European Council in this context

What does the USA innovate ?

Casino giant Caesars tells thousands: Yup, ransomware crooks stole your data

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WTF?

Pirate Scum

...how many thousands of customers were caught in the ransomware crew's web

The word 'crew' occurs repeatedly, I think it would be prudent not to romanticize criminals with daring nomenclature; or as with the old Provos, adopt their own preferred ranks, 'Lieutenant-General Dannie O'Tooole, Armourer-in-Chief, Southern Command'.

They are just thugs.

California's Governor Newsom signs laws on right to repair and data deletion

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Go

Good For Them

"This is not just legislation; it's a seismic shift in how we relate to our gadgets and who gets to fix them," said The Repair Association - a consortium of repairs businesses - in a statement on Tuesday. "This law marks a turning point, resembling a digital emancipation proclamation."

I kinda doubt all that.