* Posts by pomegranate

39 publicly visible posts • joined 20 Sep 2013

Pentagon kills off HR IT project after 780% budget overrun, years of delays

pomegranate

Re: Requirements specification??

I looked back at the Defense Civilian Human Resources Management System (DCHRMS) “savings.”

On first reading, it seemed like we are saving $280 million.

But we’re really just saying we’re going to do better in the future.

Signalgate storm intensifies as journalist releases full secret Houthi airstrike chat

pomegranate

Re: Hysterical - sorry, Historical

Historically, a lot of us supported King George. A lot of us committed crimes against Native Americans. A lot of us supported the Mexican American War, the Confederacy, various interventions, etc.

We’re a democracy, and lots of us are wrong lots of times.

Reclassification is making US tech job losses look worse than they are

pomegranate

Waiting for AI

..to make programmers obsolete.

..or “white collar” workers.

Ransomware attack at New York blood services provider – donors turned away during shortage crisis

pomegranate

Re: The question to be asked of all

Thanks for the back-and forth. The idea of writing down all the info mentioned on a piece of paper seems doable, with some thought and practice runs.

I wonder if blood banks have become measurably safer, or have laid off many workers, as a result of computer integration, or whether it’s just a matter of mandates?

Only a manager who’s tried preparing a random ware backup plan could know.

Academic papers yanked after authors found to have used unlicensed software

pomegranate

Source of prestige.

It does make sense to have a hierarchy of prestige, where a trusted company controls prestigious, academic journals, and the peer review process.

Kind of like the hierarchy of certificate authorities.

It is, however, a single point of failure.

I wonder how reproduction, or better yet, failure to reproduce, feeds into this system.

https://xkcd.com/583/

US indicts duo over alleged Swatting spree that targeted elected officials

pomegranate

Re: Given the list of victims...

Jen Easterly is a Biden appointee, according to her Wikipedia page.

Iran hunts down double agents with fake recruiting sites, Mandiant reckons

pomegranate

Re: Hunting down double agents

Yes.

North Korea likely behind takedown of Indian crypto exchange WazirX

pomegranate

A conveyor belt

..from libertarians to authoritarians.

With an infinite P/E ratio.

LA County Superior Court closes doors to reboot justice after ransomware attack

pomegranate

Ideas

Maybe they should rotate their passwords and never click on links or open pdfs.

Problem solved.

Brace for new complications in big tech takedowns after Supreme Court upended regulatory rules

pomegranate

Re: It's actually good.

The legislature makes traffic laws. The stoplight interprets those laws to decide when to turn red and green. Laws should are written to guide, but not micromanage, bureaus.

Reserving those decisions to a judge changes the meaning of laws post hoc.

Open source versus Microsoft: The new rebellion begins

pomegranate

Which sovereign..

..Controls your digital existence? Do you live in a liberal democracy, I hope?

I’m just saying, merging control of your online existence and of your physical existence in one body poses a systemic risk, if you don’t.

Nevertheless, this could put a lot of tax money into open source development. Great idea.

Oracle Cerner system implementation risks future patient deaths, coroner warns

pomegranate

Remember the phrase “AI-Complete”?

The Coroner, Dr.Sutton, accepted that an electronic medical record diagnosed or predicted a pulmonary embolism but didn’t push the notification to the senior clinician.

That’s different from determining that the red-amber-green system is net positive.

Imagine adding a system to a self-driving car which flashes a light and beeps when the driver needs to take control.

How bad does the self-driving system need to be to make the wake-up call system necessary?

How good does the call system need to be to give it your trust?

Space nukes: The unbelievably bad idea that's exactly that ... unbelievable

pomegranate

Re: That was my thought, too.

Is a conspiracy between the “media, UN, and WEF ” obvious to everyone?

pomegranate

Re: Russian diplomacy:

And vote.

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

pomegranate

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

That’s a strong accusation.

Boffins reckon Mars colony could survive with fewer than two dozen people

pomegranate

Great Pyramids

Optimistic futurism based on extrapolation of improvements in preservation science and assumption of permanent maintenance and security.

And a blithe attitude towards ROI or P/E.

Tesla's purported hands-free 'Elon mode' raises regulator's blood pressure

pomegranate

Re: I for one can't wait till this works

That seems hard. Maybe harder than getting legal protection from liability. Courts matter.

pomegranate

Re: I for one can't wait till this works

In my 30+ years in a pediatric intensive care unit, I only saw one person killed by a motorcycle. That being said, they are a lot more dangerous for the rider, especially the first 500 miles.

Those e-skateboards, razor scooters, and unicycles look ridiculously dangerous, but are 5% the cost.

Musk's latest X-periments: No more headlines, old posts vanish, block gets banned

pomegranate

Re: All this money and bother, for what?

Worse yet, think how many 2x4s could have been made with all the Canadian trees we lost this season.

Biden to bolster boondocks broadband with a billion bonus bucks (barely)

pomegranate

Re: WTF? This here TF

Fresno County is far from the California of legend. Hot, dry, poor, and sunny. Better transportation and communication might level the economic opportunities.

Biden delivers for the red counties, too.

NASA still serious about astronauts living it up on Moon space station in 2028

pomegranate

Because we vote.

Draft animals, steam, electricity, and now electronics have been making humans redundant for a long time, and yet, here we are.

Moscow makes a mess on the Moon as Luna 25 probe misses orbit, lands with a thud

pomegranate

Re: "Luna 25, by contrast, tried to make the trip in nine days"

We’re about half-and-half. There’s a lot of room for improvement.

pomegranate

As a Sci-Fi fan

This gives me no joy.

Always read the comments: Beijing requires oversight of all reader-generated chat

pomegranate

Extremism in the defense of moderation..

.. sort of depends on whether the moderator is the speaker himself, the publication, or the ruler.

Couple admit they laundered $4B in stolen Bitcoins after Bitfinex super-heist

pomegranate

Bitcoin is money?

I thought it was just a secret number. Information. Not “Fiat” or “legal tender.” I’m thinking of a number right now. Do I own it? Should it be subject to copyright?

US adds Euro spyware makers to export naughty list

pomegranate

Conflict of interest..

..statement: American.

The comments here are consistent with all of us sharing a respect for human rights. Plus or minus strong privacy.

Whistleblower claims Uncle Sam is sitting on hoard of alien vehicles and tech

pomegranate

Useful for pilots

..especially pilots tasked with visually scouting for threats. You want to respond differently to Martians, angels, weather balloons, reflections, hypersonic drones and the residual unexplained phenomena. I think knowledge informs vision, so more is better.

Another redesign on the cards for iPhone as EU rules call for removable batteries

pomegranate

Localization

Wingnuts and neoprene gaskets were good enough for Henry Ford. You could fix your jalopy with a hammer, flathead screwdriver, and pliers. If we want sovereign-based mandated privacy, content moderation and engineering. Oxford commas belong in merry, old England, for instance.

Oracle vs Google: No, the Supreme Court did not say APIs aren't copyright – and that's a good thing

pomegranate

Declaring declaring code code

Both the majority and the Thomas-Alito dissent make use of the neologism “declaring code.” I “Bing-ed” that phrase, and it seems to beg the question. I declare a function called “decimal division”, taking a decimal divisor and dividend, and returning a quotient and remainder. I guess you can call that “code.”

Get ready for Team America: AI Police

pomegranate

Responsibility

Yesterday’s Register article “Healthcare org with over 100 clinics uses OpenAI's GPT-4 to write medical records”, said the doctors’ notes would be written by software (ie. AI), but “validated” by the doctor, who would now have a 30% increase in patient load.

So we have a working model for separating computer programs from responsibility.

What do you think? Do we have consensus yet?

'Set it and forget it' attitude to open-source software has become a major security problem, says Veracode

pomegranate

Special to open source?

From the article and my reading of Apple security news, I would say it's software in general. I'm prompted to update my Apple software for security reasons pretty regularly. I know people (won't say whom) who seldom or never update, on the theory that, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."

However, I don't know specifically whether programmers often use closed-source dependencies without regular updates. Which updates, of course, have their own attack surface.

As UK breaks away from Europe, Facebook tells Brits: You'll all be Californians soon

pomegranate

Re: services

My reading of the above is that every datum should have a reference to the identities and current GDP locations of any related persons, and the current location of any office which has offered a good or service to that identity. Might as well update a pointer to the geographical location of the CPU and RAM chip running the current process.

Vietnam bans posting fake news online

pomegranate

Request for information

If the Government of Vietnam could please maintain a list of fake news items, it would be of use to social media platforms here, as well.

Why worry about cost of banning certain Chinese comms providers? Fire Huawei, says analyst

pomegranate

Re: Huh ?

I wonder what failure modes we’re considering here? What British secrets the US or Chinese governments might be after? Troop movements? Military planning? Business or industrial information? Communications of dissidents? Consumer demographics and advertising targeting?

US regulators push back against White House plan to police social media censorship

pomegranate

Re: Except ...

Chicken nuggets dipped in high fructose sweet and sour sauce. Come on. It’s just food.

Seriously, though, you might make better trade deals as part of the EU than alone.

Up to you.

pomegranate

Re: Except ...

The interpreters or the enforcers of the constitution, or the potential editors, might claim to “eclipse” it. Not only that, but we have someone who claims immunity from the law, and is called “the commander in chief.” Thus they would be legal by definition, just as others are supposed to be illegal as a class property.

I share your ideal of a clean and clear system of laws.

Russian spies used Kaspersky AV to hack NSA staffer, swipe exploit code – new claim

pomegranate

Who leaked the leak?

The Wall Street Journal chose to publish information about the NSA's knowledge of the FSA's acquisition of specific secrets, and of the method they used.

Whether or not the anonymous people who leaked this are telling the truth, the Wall Street Journal editors are responsible for the consequences.

Not only that, but the anonymous leakers who gave this info to the press have chosen to undermine the NSA secrecy. To harm the NSA? To retroactively the security efforts of the Obama administration? To punish Kaspersky?

Whatever the reason, it's insufficient justification. We seem to be engaged in a tail-recursive divide-and-conquer strategy.

Apple’s facial recognition: Well, it is more secure for the, er, sleeping user

pomegranate

I wonder how it recognizes a face reliably without being trained with any wrong faces.

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? Is it ... Win Phone 8? No, it's APPLE'S iOS 7

pomegranate

Re: ipad review?

Link?