Posts by harmjschoonhoven

When LLMs get personal info they are more persuasive debaters than humans

Re: Surprising

The participants were paid less than half of what the researchers would have to pay had they used slave labor students from Lausanne.

Plan to keep advanced chips from China with tracking tech gains support in Congress

Re: The new El Clásico - Politicians v. Reality.

Wasn't the US the country where legislators proposed to make Pi=4 by law?

Nip chip smugglers by building trackers into GPUs, US Senator suggests

This will fail anyway

US blacklist on China is riddled with errors, outdated details

https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/boards-policy-regulation/us-blacklist-china-is-riddled-with-errors-outdated-details-2025-05-02/

Teens maintained a mainframe and it went about as well as you'd imagine

Office supplies

At uni we had in the basement a box with pens. Students and staff alike took one as needed. If the box was as good as empty a few dozen new ones were provided by our institute's secretary - no questions asked.

I once plotted the number of pens in the box as a function of time and got a perfect exponential fit.

Trump wants to fire quarter of NASA budget into black hole – and not in a good way

Re: Is Trump just not capable of grasping the concept of knowledge?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=psOYyXPijd8

Elderly abuse is a felony.

FBI steps in amid rash of politically charged swattings

no swatting but

The rumour goes that in Switserland the police will come to your home to ask if all is well, when the neigbours notice that you did not use the vacuum cleaner for two weeks.

Musk's DOGE muzzled on X over tape storage baloney

Re: Minor correction

Optical storage is only reliable due to Hamming's correction code.

Mine is the one with the Orange Book in the pocket.

DOGE dilettantes 'didn't test' Social Security fraud detection tool at appropriate scale

Re: Let’s just say it:

The Nazis (the real ones) were quite handy with IBM's punchcards (Edwin Black, IBM and the Holocaust 2001).

Datacenters near Heathrow seemingly stay up as substation fire closes airport

data centers going off grid

https://www.reuters.com/technology/big-techs-data-center-boom-poses-new-risk-us-grid-operators-2025-03-19/ gives an interesting insight into this issue.

AI models hallucinate, and doctors are OK with that

medical software

should run for at least 30 seconds before giving a diagnosis, if necessary by a call to sleep(), because otherwise the doctor will not trust the result.

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

Albert Einstein gave up his German citizenship in 1901 to become a Swiss national. His main motive was to avoid conscription in the German military.

Got a telescope? Bid farewell to ESA's retiring Milky Way mapper

Re: Well done!

All Gaia data releases are in the public domain. Download a few GByte, unzip the data and see what you 've got. It is fun without need for a telescope and clear skies :-).

See https://www.esa.int/esearch?q=data+release+3 for animations and other predigested information.

Eutelsat OneWeb blames 366th day for 48-hour date disaster

Re: Laugh or cry?

The west had it easy. Have pity with the Ottoman Empire: Tax revenues were linked to the harvest, so the solar calendar. The soldiers and the bureaucrats were paid according to the Islamitic calendar linked to the phases of the Moon.

From time to time this discrepancy led to an empty treasury.

Former NSA cyberspy's not-so-secret hobby: Hacking Christmas lights

EMP

@ComicalEngineer

Use a Marx generator - I have experience and bad memories.

Million GPU clusters, gigawatts of power – the scale of AI defies logic

A million GPUs

With a 999999 GPU cluster we will finally know how many angels can sit on the point of a needle.

Gang of monkeys escape South Carolina biomedical research facility

Re: Another news source on this

Why, oh why, does the Earth spin in the wrong direction in https://youtu.be/dsknNtrwsms (again)?

Nolanverse Batmobile leaps barrier between film and reality – but it'll cost you

Re: I want the Puma, errr, Warthog

Not to be confused with the Warthog https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairchild_Republic_A-10_Thunderbolt_II.

Re: Sorry – it's not jet powered, or armed with real guns, obviously

Try this one https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dyXSGbTAqOk. It is definitely cheaper than the fancy batmobile and faster too.

The hunt is on for the scum who stole Britain's largest inflatable planetarium

Re: Largest...

As you can see in https://www.astronomie.nl/mobiel-planetarium-20 Dutch inflatable planetariums are well defended by the kids. Moreover the van of the NOVA planetarium is clearly marked as such.

In the Netherlands several of these inflatable planetariums are crossing the country. Do not mention Brexit.

If you're excited by that $1.5B Michigan nuke plant revival, bear in mind it's definitely a fixer-upper

"First and foremost, we must acknowledge that accidents will continue to happen. If more and more plants come online, more and more accidents are inevitable. The danger of new accidents emanates more from the economics of the industry and the broadly defined 'human factor' than from technology itself. As the pressure to cut costs increases, safety will suffer. The workforce will shrink, leaving fewer people available to identify problems. The maintenance of existing equipment will become more sporadic as activities are deferred to save money."

Gregory Jaczko, Confessions of a Rogue Nuclear Regulator (2019), as cited in Serhii Plokhy, Atoms and Ashes.

US Army orders next-gen robot mule to haul a literal ton of gear

Re: Seems unnecessarily complex and expensive

I prefer the ZIL-2906

Enjoy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=afJ18eJeNgU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YvFKzgF5t94

Altman reportedly asks Biden to back a slew of multi-gigawatt-scale AI datacenters

25 Watt

Would US national security not be better served by investing in human brains?

Lebanon: At least nine dead, thousands hurt after Hezbollah pagers explode

Re: Technology question

The AP-900 Apollo pagers use standard AAA alkaline batteries (https://www.trtworld.com/middle-east/ap-900-this-what-we-know-about-one-of-the-pagers-that-exploded-in-lebanon-18209359). So all posts about li-ion batteries go out of the window.

May be the explosives where hidden in a 'special' batch of AAA batteries. Leaves the question how the explosion was triggered.

'Error' causes Alexa to endorse Kamala Harris, refuse to discuss Trump

A specific political candidate?

Alexa, tell me more about American clowns.

Juice probe scores epic fuel save after snapping selfies with Earth and Moon

Gravity?

See the animation on https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/Juice/Where_is_Juice_now.

The acceleration is not due to the gravitation of the Moon, Earth and Venus, but due to their orbital velocity.

Stargazing with the Beaverlab Finder TW2

How to observe the Sun

The saying goes that you can observe the Sun through a telescope twice, once with your left eye and once with your right eye.

The safe way is to project the image of the Sun on a white surface held some distance behind a small (20 mm diameter) binocular. At the moment the Sun is quite active and you will see several sunspots and be able to observe the Sun's rotation.

DoD spins up supercomputer to accelerate biothreat defense

Still a good read

Seymour M. Hersch, Chemical and biological warfare, The Hidden Arsenal (© 1968).

https://archive.org/details/chemicalbiologic00hers

Say 'ahhhh' – AI robots are now gunning for your gums

Something went wrong

The dental AI robot hallucunated that you have a horseface.

'A moose hit me' and other ways people damage their gizmos

Re: Um

All you need is a good catcher https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0gJ6BuVwH8.

Life, interrupted: How CrowdStrike's patch failure is messing up the world

But, but,

How many of the 8.5 million+ borked devices were open to the internet while that was avoidable?

And how many needed connectivity only because a stable stand-alone Windows® OS is an oxymoron?

Time Lords decree: No leap second needed in 2024

Re: The negative leap second

Y2K38 refers to Jan 19 03:14:08 2038. It is NOT short for 2038.

The Reg builds official Lego Artemis and Milky Way sets

Re: Not interested

I find LEGO useful. Solved in aceton it makes excellent glue. Meccano was my toy, augmented by special parts from my fathers machineshop. My mother sometimes threatened to hoover it all up, although she never even tried. Moreover at the time she had no Nilfisk GAD.

404 Day celebrates the internet's most infamous no-show

Lost documents

A recent research article by Martin Paul Eve shows that of a sample of 7438037 DOI-links 2056492 works could not be found.

The journal Nature (14 March 2024) cites Eve: "After you have been dead for 100 years, are people going to be able to get access to the things you've worked on?"

https://www.iastatedigitalpress.com/jlsc/article/id/16288/

Labor watchdog wants SpaceX's gag clauses to disintegrate like its exploding rockets

It is worse

Reuters documented at least 600 previously unreported workplace injuries at Musk's rocket company: crushed limbs, amputations, electrocutions, head and eye wounds and one death. SpaceX employees say they're paying the price for the billionaire's push to colonize space at breakneck speed.

https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/spacex-musk-safety/

International effort to disrupt cybercrime moves into operational phase

Re: Stop using certain products then

@Headley_Grange, OK old data, but data any way: Inside Cyber Warfare by Jeffrey Carr, page 193.

Windows: 501515 Backdoors, Hacktools, Exploits & Rootkits; 40188 Viruses and Worms; 1232798 Trojans.

FreeBSD: 33 Backdoors, Hacktools, Exploits & Rootkits; 10 Viruses and Worms; 0 Trojans.

COVID-19 infection surge detected in wastewater, signals potential new wave

Re: Why did everyone get vaccinated?

It is called evolution of viruses by means of natural selection.

NASA Juno probe to produce 'firehose of data' during close flyby of Jupiter moon

Re: What's this miles and kilometers nonsense?

According to that famous book, the Holy Bible, pi equals 4.

So an approximation to the speed of light seems justified.

Re: What's this miles and kilometers nonsense?

The speed of light is 1 foot per nanosecond. Our GodGoddess evidently does not like the metric system, a French invention.

This could still wing its way to you, if you have the dosh: One Concorde engine seeks new home

Re: Asking for a Friend....

Your friend should be more humble ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHEHMFbEH8I ) or more daring ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rdwbp6R2qM8 , https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pR0d6s-28MA ).

Royal Navy flies first mega Mojave drone from aircraft carrier

Re: Interesting...

In 1947 the UK SOLD Rolls-Royce Derwent and Nene engines to the Soviets. Soon afterwards MiG-15 and La-15 jet fighters with similar engines rolled from their assembly lines.

Stalin reportedly said "What kind of fool would be willing to sell his secrets!". Stalin and the Bomb, page 235.

Never mind SETI and NASA, if your Ring somehow snaps ET, Amazon might give you $1M

Knock, knock

A meteorite knocking at your door, does that count?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXEKh14-c5Y

Beneath Microsoft's Surface event, AI spreads everywhere

Glad

to read all about Copilot on ElReg, so I can avoid it as hell.

Microsoft hiring a nuclear power program manager, because AI needs lots of 'leccy

Re: What could possibly go wrong...

As Paul Odgren once said (AAAS Member Community Digest February 12, 2020):

"Well, you have to mine and purify highly carcinogenic material, transport it over the highway and rail systems, refine it to the point where it can be condensed to nearly unstable concentrations, again transport it in its new, more dangerous form, constantly keep it from a catastrophic overheating disaster, protect it from enemies, then run the movie backwards to unload and decommission, then store everything perfectly safely for over twice as long as the pyramids have been in Egypt."

Official science: People do less, make more mistakes on Friday afternoons

I remember

Fridays as the day projects were finished, not tested ....

NASA, DARPA enlist Lockheed to build nuclear-powered spacecraft

Nuclear propulsion

That has been tried before https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLK9hYXWZw4.

RAM-ramming Rowhammer is back – to uniquely fingerprint devices

Re: Scientists: Lovely people.

The Oppenheimer Award was named after the late playwright and Newsday drama critic George Oppenheimer. It was awarded annually to the best New York debut production by an American playwright for a non-musical play

Techie wasn't being paid, until he taught HR a lesson

Doppelgänger

As a student I had a Doppelgänger, as I found out when I was approached by his rather attractive girlfriend.

Beams from brightest gamma ray burst ever seen were pointed directly at Earth

Re: Don't worry

The event was so long and intense that it caused sudden Earth global ionospheric disturbances (both day and night) - a result of the increased ionization by X- and gamma-ray emission (Hayes and Gallagher, 2022; Pal et al., 2023) from the VLF/LF sub-ionospheric signals dynamics in the D-region of Earth's ionosphere (~60-100 km).

Since when did my SSD need water cooling?

Speak louder, I could not hear you

What? No spinning rust?

Astronomers spot Earth-sized exoplanet probably 'carpeted' by volcanoes

Re: Any architects care to comment?

Its sun is an M6 Dwarf with a temperature of 3100K, slightly higher than an incandescent lamp. No fancy sunscreen required.