Posts by Felonmarmer

New Zealand kind-of moves to ban social media for under-16s, require age checks for new accounts

Re: OK at age 14 or 16?

Yeah got to run ChatGPT on something to do their homework for them.

OK at age 14 or 16?

Has anyone considered the effects of first allowing children to have smartphones immediately prior to the first important set of exams? Isn't this going to add significant distractions right at a critical point in their education? Earlier and managed or later and unmanaged would be better.

Alternatively just make the person who pays the phone bill legally responsible for all use of the device. As children can't have credit cards, this might make their parents more responsible.

Official abuse of state security has always been bad, now it's horrifying

Re: @Doctor Syntax

"Internally" meant to the UK in the context of the OG comment relating to Brexit, not internal to the fucking Tories, with whom I share your opinion.

Re: @Doctor Syntax

Those expense scandals were trivial and could be (and were) dealt with by a small expenses oversight committee. Certainly not the sort of issue that would come up before a multinational entity to deal with. Even the PPE scandals, which were much more significant and more or less swept under the carpet, should have been dealt with internally.

It's fun making Studio Ghibli-style images with ChatGPT – but intellectual property is no laughing matter

We're so pretty, pretty blatant

When you here radio presenters talking about AI images as if it was collage and only can be used for pasting celebrity heads on other bodies more realistically than with scissors and glue you realise that pretty much everyone who is vocal about it doesn't know what is actually going on.

Not that there aren't good arguments against it and good arguments for the other side, but the conversation misses the point which is currently copyright legislation does not apply very well and if shoehorned in to the legal argument it opens up as many loopholes as it seeks to close.

And the worse argument is people arguing that AI isn't intelligent, as if anyone thinks it is, and thinking they are making a genius contribution to the debate. If that what was all that mattered then AI is literally just a tool just like the scissors were, and anything permissible under fair use legislation with scissors would be permissible using AI.

Fair use does not specify the tool used, just the valid reasons for doing it.

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

Re: I feel liberated already...

I'll upvote you just to cancel out one predicted downvote.

Re: Reaganomics

Unless he mistakes his made up numbers on his score card with economic figures.

Icon : Resident of Heard Island agrees with this assessment.

Musk's xAI swallows Musk's X in ego-friendly, all-stock deal

Burn baby burn.

X's CEO, Linda Yaccarino, said "the future could not be brighter"

Everything is already on fire.

Nvidia GPU roadmap confirms it: Moore’s Law is dead and buried

Re: Moore's law

Maybe the plan is just to chuck enough power at dumb silicon until it can fake GenAI enough to design something better and bootstrap up to Singularity, which they then hope to control. They are certainly ego inflated and conceited enough to think they could get away with it.

What's the worst that could happen (see icon)?

UK govt data people not 'technical,' says ex-Downing St data science head

Re: I'd go further

Well sure because debts equal to annual profits are bad for a company but normal for countries.

NASA rewrites Moon mission goals in quiet DEI retreat

Re: Insane

Remain was fairly clear, there were constant push and pull against/for different bits of EU legislation by all UK governments prior to the referendum from start of our membership, it wasn't static, and that would have continued. We already had opt-outs for certain pieces of legislation and were the authors of many of the other pieces of the legislation used by other countries. In fact most of the engineering standards I use were just BS standards renamed to EN BS standards.

Leave on the other hand had many different types of leave (at least 4 I can think of) including second referendum options to decide later all pushed by different pro-leave campaigners, so many in fact that they objected to multiple leave options being on the ballot, because they would have diluted the leave vote and lost. And then when they won they quickly dropped those options and "leave means leave" became the only one. Almost immediately leave voters who believed that they could leave the EU but still be part of the trading agreement regretted their decision, enough to flip the vote the other way had they been a bit more skeptical of the leave arguments before the vote.

But remain is a hard argument to fight as you say, leave is easier because there's loads of options, enough to please everyone until you see which one you get, then half the leavers will oppose the option that prevails, which always was going to be totally out, regardless of the pro-leave arguments, and as warned by those dismissed as "Project Fear".

Microsoft walking away from datacenter leases (probably) isn't a sign the AI bubble is bursting

Re: Are you sure obtaining power is cheap?

Who will pay for it is easy. We are already paying more for our energy because of external pressures. Never comes out of energy companies profits, or shareholder dividends.

Signs of bursting can't come soon enough.

The fact they are seriously considering building nuclear reactors specifically to power AI centres, while there is a general shortage of power (in terms of cost per unit) for things that are really necessary shows the bubble will eventually burst.

The world may burn, but they will use the power generated from the heat to power an AI to reject your application for a loan to pay the privatised fire brigade to put the fires out in your house.

AI is not a bad thing, it's just another tool. But so is a chemistry lab - you can make painkillers or people killers with the same chemicals, the only difference is the person putting in the order.

OTF, which backs Tor, Let's Encrypt and more, sues to save its funding from Trump cuts

Not hurting the right people?

I know you want a combination of Mad Max and 1984, but why do you assume you will be in one of the MAGA compounds and not with the hordes out in the wilderness fighting over the last can of beans?

There's only room for the billionaires on the nice side of the fence, and maybe a few slaves to serve them - want the job of Trump's toilet attendant?

Trump orders all government IT contracts consolidated under GSA

Re: ps f47

His version of Top Trumps is very easy to play.

Special rule, if you are actually called Trump, you can say I've seen everything and my card is better.

Tesla Cybertruck recall #8: Exterior trim peels itself off, again

In the spirit of Kirsty MacColl, I'll take that and coin "Electric Landley"

VA IT contract cancellation DOGE boasted about ... was due to end in 10 days anyway

Re: Wasn't it ideal

You are assuming that the sacked workers will get some support from the government. If they take the same ideas that the UK is doing on disability benefits, they will say, look you've been doing IT support for some time now, why can't you get another job doing that - no disability benefit for you.

Court filing: DOGE aide broke Treasury policy by emailing unencrypted database

Bless my unit

Blessings and curses are in the eye of the beholder.

Re: "You could not pay me to marry outside of my ethnicity"

The question is how much would you need to pay someone else to even have a date with this fool, let alone form any kind of relationship, regardless of ethnicity.

AI bubble? What AI bubble? Datacenter investors all in despite whispers of a pop

A little bit of column A, B and C

Going for the "too big to fail" government bailout maybe?

Or the release to public pump and dump strategy?

Or they believe it!

France offers US scientists a safe haven from Trump's war on woke

Domestic

Busy trying to rewrite their oath to defend the constitution in their memories.

Printers start speaking in tongues after Windows 11 update

Same as it ever was.

This has been happening for ever, printers and scanners not working after Windows changes. At least this time is definitely a Microsoft problem to fix. If there's any involvement from the printer manufacturer needed the solution from them is always buy a new printer.

101 fun things to do with a locked Kindle e-reader

Worth of onto?

onto - 4 bytes

on to - 5 bytes

Back when Amis was writing, there was no saving in ink, but these days "onto" is 20% more efficient. I could argue that ASCII #20 is not worth reading, but I won't because it will not be worth reading.

Governments can't seem to stop asking for secret backdoors

Lots of countries have laws that prevent spying on their own citizens without certain levels of oversight. But theirs no laws to prevent spying on other countries citizens, and what if your were in a group of nations who share intelligence, like say five countries? You can generally spy by proxy and get the important stuff sent to you filtered from the chaff that you are prevented from doing yourself.

It's the same as attaching FBI agents to CIA operations so they can operate within the US borders, there's always a way to get around those pesky laws if you try hard enough.

Same as it ever was.

Well they all do that because it's an easy solution when the press print the "something must be done" headlines. What could be more important for a legislative body than writing more legislation? If the press aren't satisfied then they lose their righteous rhetoric weapon that the use daily to fight lawmakers over the things that they want relaxed (like making their owners pay tax for example).

A coincidence that his wife is a lawyer? All politicians are one step away from lawyers and lawyers are going to lawyer, regardless of the contents of the quagmire they wade in for a living.

'Cybertruck ownership comes with ... interesting fan mail'

Upgrade

Sitting down and taking your time makes it a posh wizz. Enjoy a selection of reading material with your visit and relax mind and bladder simultaneously.

Microsoft: So what if it costs 4X as much to run Windows Server in AWS, Alibaba, and Google?

Heads they win, tails we lose.

Problem is which ever one of the bastards loses, the people paying for it will be the customers - both the loser's customers and then the winner's customers when they take advantage to raise the prices.

The software UK techies need to protect themselves now Apple's ADP won’t

Re: Alternate solutions are available

Say they are looking at tractors?

US Dept of Housing screens sabotaged to show deepfake of Trump sucking Elon's toes

Investigation going well

'Appropriate action will be taken,' we're told, "We've narrowed it down to just over a million suspects."

Rather than add a backdoor, Apple decides to kill iCloud encryption for UK peeps

Relying on companies in other countries to look after your interests is optimistic at best. Sticking anything in the cloud doubly so.

But then it's almost like the UK gov also don't think people got up to naughtiness before smart phones and the internet came along, they will just go back to that.

Here's the ugliest global-warming chart you'll ever need to see

Not as ugly as the graphs to come.

But they will be black-market graphs now that Trump's banned any climate research in the US.

You will have to go into a speakeasy to get them...

"Oi Joe, got any temperature data under the counter?"

"There you go perfessor, don't let the feds see you with these. Got some sea level numbers coming in next week if you're interested, smuggled in from Europe on the beer labels. Just pay the beer tariff and you can have them for cost."

Re: Just another alarmist global warming rant

> Any idea why the line weight for 2024 is much thicker, and in red?

Same reason the start of the decades are bold - it's to make it easier to read. Not sure how you can work a conspiracy into that, but climate deniers are nuts (but that's just a theory, as you would say).

National Science Foundation staff axed by Trump fear for US scientific future

Pi = 3

Next doc Trump signs into law?

Yeah I know it's been tried before, but that was when there was some sense enough to stop it. Think of the bigly savings in simplifying calculations, and not having to do floating point operations if you make all measurements integers, who needs measurements less than an inch anyway!

Trump can't quickly or easily kill the CHIPS Act, but he can fire the workers funded by it

Where's the tariff money going?

Trump's claim was that tariffs on chip imports would mean American manufacture would increase, but this is contrary to this claim.

It's almost like he still wants the stuff to be imported and taxed at import by tariffs, so where does the tariff money eventually end up?

An organised criminal drug dealing business will produce their own products, but they will prefer to let others do the work and tax them and this seems no different. Trump in his last term did fairly dodgy financial things such as charging the secret service that protected him for rent in Mar-a-Lago and Trump Tower (which also hosted political events - at a price). And these are just the ones that are openly known about. He sees Gaza and Ukraine as money making ventures for property and mining companies in the US, no doubt employing Trump family members in overseeing roles or admin companies taking a big cut.

It's like they voted for Capone.

When there's any doubt, follow the money.

Odds of city-killer asteroid 2024 YR4 hitting Earth creep upward

Re: DOGE avoidance strategy...

Yep, it'll be NASA's fault for not doing a deal with the asteroid when it last passed by.

Acer signals 10% laptop price hike in US, blames Trump's extra China tariff

Re: Global economies spread (some of) the pain

Global company is charged 25% to import laptops to US.

Raises prices by 15% to customers worldwide.

Takes a relative loss in the US (but improvers market share compared to any competitors who don't)

Make the money back in other countries (would lose market share in those countries maybe)

So it depends on the relative markets and sales.

And as we pay the same in pounds as US customers pay in dollars a lot of the time regardless of currency rates, would we even notice?

Global economies spread (some of) the pain

I expect prices outside of the US to increase also to subsidise US customers. In many ways the orange stain filling the US right now taints the rest of the world.

After Copilot trial, government staff rated Microsoft's AI less useful than expected

Clippy++

Copilot less useful than expected.

And looks like expectation wasn't very high anyway. Copilot saving 13 minutes a week is the target! Getting my laptop to boot up quicker would save more time.

UK government insiders say AI datacenters may be a pricey white elephant

Give it enough time and they will be wiring up people to power AI just like in the Matrix. If they use AI to come up with the idea it will probably take the bullshit science in the film as factually correct, even though it won't work.

Some workers already let AI do the thinking for them, Microsoft researchers find

Is this a piece of your brain?

Civil engineer here. We are already getting pushed into using generative design tools. There's this little thing called CDM (Construction (Design and Management) Regulations) that makes you liable for the safety of your design up to and including charges for corporate manslaughter. What fuck-wit is going to put themselves in a position where they have to defend their design in a court and their defense is going to be "Not down to me yer honour, it was ChatGPT what done it.", and yet our management (who rely on individual responsibility on design to get themselves of the hook for corporate responsibility) are pushing this AI on us. Yes, we are supposed to check what the AI tells us, but errors slip through (1 in 100 is typical in checked transcription, let alone complex trains of thought).

Elon's going to be putting AI chips in our heads soon, so that will be it for the proles of humanity.

Only two years left to get through then I'm done. Then it will be just navigating the AI filled pension world. Looking forward to the post Terminator Mad Max years.

Copilot+ PCs? Customers just aren't buying it – yet

When everything is bullshit the one eyed man is ignored.

And when everyone is dealing in bullshit they will know nothing but bullshit and will be happy as a pig in, well, bullshit. It's happened many times before in human history when mass delusion becomes reality and this time we've got some shiny toys to squeeze it out rather than rely on a human delivery system.

The emperor's new AI powered laptop is telling us what to think. Just think when American alternative reality gets baked into the AI LLMs coming out of Muskow-Trumpovia and some one asks about the events of January 2021.

Democrats demand to know WTF is up with that DOGE server on OPM's network

Re: Aren't Government employees neutral.

I reckon you are OK about "republican" employees working in key positions though, right?

Or do you expect the US gov to only employ unregistered voters?

Why users still couldn't care less about Windows 11

Could be, but American companies are also forced to grab up any cent they can get their grubby hands on by the shareholders.

Trump scrubs all mention of DEI, gender, climate change from federal websites

"...the left has spent 10 years now..."

You know that Trump's last term falls into that 10 year window right? And in the UK it's been the Tories for 14 years until last July? Where exactly have "the left" been in power to do this?

Oh of course, the "secret deep state government" that really controls the world. Grow up or stick to YouTube.

Re: Gleichschaltung

Two sides of the same coin. Hitler needed the money and power to propagate his hate. Trump hates those that prevent his accumulation of money and power.

Which one is uppermost in their minds at any one time is just the coin spinning in the air as they toss it. Beware how the coin lands. Heads they win, tails you lose.

US senator wants to slap prison term, $1M fine on anyone aiding Chinese AI with ... downloads?

Re: Regards the UK...

"And people can draw some pretty disgusting stuff too, so we'd better ban arts and crafts supplies too, right down to crayons!"

Don't forget the sculptures! Let's face it, if you paint it in oils and stick it up in a manor house for the rich to ogle it's OK. Print it out for the top shelf for the plebs to get hold of then it's a problem. The difference between filth and erotica has always been the person consuming it.

It does seem that the media and politicians think that AI image generation is just an advanced form of collage, in which case scissors and glue are the next target.

MIT license?

As DeepSeek was released open source under the MIT license, doesn't that give the defense for using it and developing from it with regards to this potential lagislation? Should be no problem removing the censorship layer either which seems to act on the generated output with a simple text scan for keywords.

WFH with privacy? 85% of Brit bosses snoop on staff

Re: Trust (you can always trust managers to do the wrong thing)

The motives of the managers is to give themselves something to do. In the office they would stride around talking loudly and come up and interrupt your work to ask how you are doing, arrange meetings to discuss having meetings and have mandatory attendance daily meetings to find out why work was missing deadlines.

Working from home has revealed, even to them, that they are really not needed. As they rarely do any billable work they are shitting themselves that they would be either forced to drop their management time down to the couple of hours a week needed to sign timesheets and approve leave and do some actual work, or leave. Luckily for them most of their senior managers are exactly the same except with meetings that focus on even more wooly thinking like strategy (not that they know the meaning of the word - number of times I've heard them talking about reacting to things proactively) and drawing lots of diagrams with big triangles on them with whatever concepts are fashionable that day at the apexes.

So this monitoring gives them something to do. It would be better if they just spent all day at the golf course and be a drain, rather than actively damaging the workforce.

Tech stocks tank as US AI dominance no longer a sure bet

Re: No Path to Profitability except handwavey

MS business model is stepped change with big associated costs payable to MS each time. So...

- Everyone needs a PC, no big mainframes

- Every PC needs to be on a network with a server

- No now do it in the cloud (looks a lot like stage 1)

- TPM 1.0 and now you need Win 10 to support it, conveniently we won't support previous versions any more.

- TPM 2.0 and now you need Win 11 now we've got you locked in to TPM.

- Now you all need AI

There's good arguments (the best that MS can pay people to come up with) for each step, but they all funnel cash to MS (which is the real argument).

AI facial recognition could sink this murder probe

Detective Inspector Artie Ficial reporting for duty.

So in future the cops will use AI to find a suspect, then arrest and manufacture evidence instead and not mention the AI aspect saying to themselves that it's fine because they know he's guilty. Like they always have in some parts of the world.

The problem as always is not the tools, it's the fools using them.