Posts by FF22

If the Linux Foundation was a software company, it'd be the biggest in the world

Wrong

If the Linux Foundation was a company, it wouldn't even exist, because nobody would buy their "product", and it wouldn't be used anywhere. Well, at least not in more places than other obscure commercial OSes, like QNX.

The only reason Linux is so popular is because it's free, not because it's technically superior. Actually, it was already obsolete by the time it was created, and it has only gotten worse ever since.

(Of course Linux fanbois will downvote this, because the truth is hard to swallow.)

OpenAI could be valued up to $90 billion if deal to sell employee shares closes

Re: Just wait

For one, copyright violation IS a criminal issue. But the more important thing is, that there are so many parties independently suing already OpenAI (rightly so, because they essentially used everyone's stuff on the internet, and beyond, that they were able to get their hands on), that they will not be able to settle with all of them.

Just wait

... until they lose the first few lawsuits over using unlicenced content, which will force them to dispose of their current models, and will be left with no product!

Google on trial: Feds challenge deals that set your web search defaults

The end of Firefox

If search engine presets in browsers will be illegal, that will be the end of Mozilla and Firefox, as >99% of all revenues fo the former is from Google - or whatever search engine pays it for being the default. Now,

Mozilla could still earn some money through what's in essence search referral royalties (unless that's also plain out outlawed), but once it can not charge search engines directly for being the default, and the choice will lay with the user, the searches themselves will be worth a lot less, and Mozilla will only earn a fraction of what it does now.

Also, of course "the end" only means "as we know it", and that Mozilla will most likely change its business model, and will most likely become itself a kind of "ads dealer" or "ads marketplace", and will sell the ads it shows in the browser directly.

Soft-reboot in systemd 254 sounds a lot like Windows' Fast Startup

Type

"shuts down all the user's processors" => "shuts down all the user's processes"

Google's browser security plan slammed as dangerous, terrible, DRM for websites

Re: Scraping

"I don't think prohibiting web scraping through Terms of Service is legal or enforceable since it's public information that can be obtained by anyone."

That's like arguing that anyone should be able to legally drive your car, because when parked on the road it can be approached by anyone. Or that people should be allowed legally to post private pictures of you when you're in the house, since they can see you through the windows. Etc.

What you mean is not that something is "public information", but that it's "publicly available" (ie. not behind closed doors), which however doesn't mean that people can do it whatever they want. Just like you can't publish a book written and published by someone else as your own, just because anyone could obtain a copy of the book.

Artificial General Intelligence remains a distant dream despite LLM boom

Oh, the irony

"If you don't agree that AGI is coming soon, you need to explain why your views are more informed than expert AI researchers."

^ This "argument" surely was contructed by ChatGPT, not a human, and surely not by an expert on AI. Because what intelligent person would commit two logical fallacies (trying to shift the burden of proof and argument from authority) in one sentence?

Ex-FBI employee jailed for taking classified material home

Orange man...

.. belongs in orange suit.

Missing Titan sub likely destroyed in implosion, no survivors

"These men were true explorers "

Weird eupheism for "rich guys who had nothing better to do than waste obscene amounts of money on dangerous vanity trips, with no exploration value whatsoever". Not for mankind anyway.

Google denies Bard trained using OpenAI ChatGPT responses

They're wrong, even if not lying

It's virtually impossible that Bard has not been trained by ChatGPT responses, even if it has not been done deliberately so. That's because answers and content generated by ChatGPT has been all over the web for years now, and since Google was and is unable to differentiate between AI and human generated content (even in cases obvious to humans), the text base Bard was trained on has had to include several examples of ChatGPT-generated content.

That's the real problem with AI, which will be more and more a problem in the months and years to come: they all will feed more and more on each other's output, even if not deliberately done so, inflating and aggregating (literally) each others' flaws and misconceptions, and will gravitate to the same subpar average, as do humans, unfortunately, since content publication has been "democratized". Their answers will become as stupid and unreliable as that of the average facebook commentard's.

OpenAI CEO warns that GPT-4 could be misused for nefarious purposes

Modus operandi

The "use for nefarious purposes" is not what it could be used for, but what it WILL be used for, in the majority of situations.

That's because its result are not reliable and it's not actually intelligent, therefore it can not be used in any situation where quality and reliability matters. It's only good for entertainment purposes and where it's the sheer amount of stuff is generated that's matters, and quality, verifiability, etc. is not.

It will be used for stuff like overloading people and generally the web with false information or just low quality content, filling up a ticketing system with false reports, clogging up any system that needs some kind of human intervention to validate the entries posted on it. Coupled with other AIs it will be able to emulate real people's voice and face reliably, and thus make anything but personal meetings unreliable when it comes to identity of the persons involved, and security.

That's what it will be used for primarily, and the public internet will be an even worse place than it already is.

FBI boss says COVID-19 'most likely' escaped from lab

Nope

"It's been a popular theory among armchair commentators since the beginning. The outbreak started in Wuhan, China. There's a Wuhan Institute of Virology. QED."

Nope. That was never the argument of most, but the dumbest "armchair commentators". There were a lot more circumstances known, and all of them coming together would have to be a very strange coincident IF it was not a lab leak, but would be straightly following and consistent IF it was a lab leak.

The real smoking gun in the situation, however, is the fact that China tried everything to hide facts and hinder investigations at every point they could, which is NOT what someone innocent would do.

"An argument against that conspiracy theory"

Is your argument, that if there's a counterargument against something, then it's a conspiracy theory? Because by that definition the argument contradicting your argument also makes your argument a conspiracy theory.

The funniest thing about this article is that it still labels the lab leak theory a conspiracy theory, right after multiple credible agencies have confirmed that - based on known facts and evidence - it seems the most likely one.

Then again some people just can't even comprehend that "lab leak" != "intentionally released into the wild".

Google now won't black-hole all AI-made pages as spam

Google BS

For one, Google had this policy for at least a year if not two now. Also, they have this policy, because they're unable to tell AI generated content from human-authored content - so, they don't even try to bother.

That being said, Gogole also can't judge quality of content either, and they have been ranking low-quality AI-generated, machine translated content above high-quality human generated for years now. Any human looking at just the search result list could tell most AI generated content just by looking at the nonsensical domain names they're using or by the excerpt they're showing - yet Google itself is unable to do even basic filtering on these.

Unfortunately all this will (continue) lead to original, human content creators to stop generating content, and everything you will find through Google will regurgitated content re-written over and over by an AI, that will feed more and more on other BS content generated by other AIs.

AI will be the demise of Google, but not because ChatGPT will kill classic search, but because search itself (be it the classic form or that through ChatGPT) will become pointless and only serve up low-quality and unreliable content.

Now, the obvious solution would be to rank pages based on competence and such - but that would require an actual human understanding and evaluating the content, which, however, is something that's Google is terribly afraid of, because it costs actual money and would mean that they also have to invest, not only reap the benefits of content created by millions of others.

ChatGPT talks its way through Wharton MBA, medical exams

Fire the CEOs

Sounds like it's about time to fire all those useless CEOs, like Tim Cook or Elon Musk, with their multi ten and hundred million dollar per year compensation packages, as AI has arrived at a point where it's perfectly capable of replacing them, for the cost of a PC and the electricity it consumes.

Then again, these people seem not to be there to make actual business decisions anyway, but to act as circus clowns for their respective companies and to generate attention to those. And there's no news of ChatGPT having mastered also the circus clown exam, yet.... so....

Russian meddling in 2016 US presidential election was weak sauce

Except

Except this was an ongoing campaign for years even in 2016, so, only considering the direct changes right before the election totally misses the point and the magnitude of harm these troll/propaganda farms are doing (and have been doing already even by 2016) to democracies and societies in general.

John Deere signs right to repair agreement with US ag lobbyists

Preemptive

This is obviously just an attempt to preempt or avoid the right to repair getting legalized by the force of law. Because if that happens, everything is lost for companies like John Deere. However, until it happens,

1. they can dictate the terms they want and strongarm consumers into accepting their terms,

2. even if they will break their own terms, if will be not breach of (consumer protection) law just breach of contract, which, again, means that consumers will have to sue JD themselves and pay their own lawyers, make it pretty hard to win against JD.

Claims of AI sentience branded 'pure clickbait'

Re: Definition

"Another important factor is understanding, an "AI" can spew out reams of conversations but it does not have any underlying understanding of the subject, it's just following (admittedly complex) rules."

That's true for most humans. You still won't claim that they are not sentient, will you?

Re: Definition

"Sentience means having the capacity to experience feelings and emotions. Consciousness is an awareness of internal and external existence. Something can be considered conscious and sentient when it has an awareness of itself in relation to external factors, and when it can experience feelings and emotions.The definition isn't difficult. "

Those are not objective definitions, because they rely on words that aren't well defined either. That's the exact problem I talked about, and shifting it will not solve it, just shift it.

Definition

Until we have a universally accepted definition of what is "consciousness" / "sentience" and when can be something considered "conscious" / "sentient", this discussion is purely academic, and neither position (on whether this particular chatbot is conscious/sentient) can be objectively confirmed to be correct or incorrect.

Also interesting choice of wording: "_tricks_ humans into thinking".

The many derivatives of the CP/M operating system

Yeah, no

DOS was not a derivative of CP/M. It did not copy neither source code, nor on-disk structure from it. And mostly everything that CP/M and DOS had in common was also copied by CP/M from other operating systems that "inspired" it, like the TOPS-10, and included things like filename.extension thing, the naming of most built-in command line utilities, or even the concept of an API.

It was merely Gary Kildall who kept insisting that DOS (and really any OS that came after CP/M and wasn't absurdly distinctive in its concept) merely copied CP/M, which was in many ways similar to how Steve Jobs also always accused other OSes having copied the Mac OS - while in reality the Mac OS was also just a blatant copycat of the Xerox Alto (and not Apple's or especially Jobs' invention by any means), just like CP/M was copying the OSes that came before it.

Landmark case recognizes Bored Ape NFT as an asset

Monopoly money

What's next? An injunction to stop sale of monopoly game money, recognizing the latter as an asset?

Elon Musk says Twitter buy 'cannot move forward' until spam stats spat settled

Hopefully the guy will end up in jail for this

For all the stock price manipulation he's already done, this should be the last drop

Microsoft points at Linux and shouts: Look, look! Privilege-escalation flaws here, too!

Cry me a river

Linux fanboy's feeling hurt, because Microsoft did what for ex. Google did a million times over in the opposite direction (like publicize a Windows vulnerability, quite often even prior to public patch being released to fix it), and because his pet operating system has been exposed as "not even a tiny bit more secure" than the one he despises (and that not even just now, but every single month, for 25 years now). News at 11.

Ad-blocker blocking websites face legal peril at hands of privacy bods

Re: Hrrrmm.. this feels like a stretch....

Funny how right I was with this consent wall stuff, half a decade ago. Nowadays every site greets you with the consent wall prompt, and you can't actually access the content until you click through it. If I would not be completely sure that he had virtually no influence on it because of his insignificance, I'd congratulate Alexander on bringing this plague upon all of us, for nothing.

China: Attacks from US IP addresses hit us, moved on to Russia and Ukraine

China was attacked from US IP addresses

And the radio station in Gleiwitz was attacked by Polish terrorists

Cyberwarfare looms as Russia shells, invades Ukraine

Re: Just disconnect them

"I commented on that in the comment to which you replied. I pointed out that, if you could block literally every packet, you could cause them a temporary problem but that they would find an alternative (E.G. put some people in a different country and relay instructions through a different connection such as phone, satellite, etc."

And your (invalid) point has been already addressed in the original comment, which explained, that even though the block couldn't be perfect, because Russia could circumvent it by phone or satellite, but it would still heavily restrict their bandwidth available to carry out and control such attacks, which in turn would severely hamper their abilities to do so. More importantly: it would make Russian people turn against their own government, because they would now be also paying the price directly and in many many way for Putin's ruthless actions.

Just disconnect them

Just block all traffic coming from Russia. This will also block 99% of cyberattacks originating from them. Obviously there will be ways for them to get around this, but with the bandwidth available to them restricted to possibly 1/1.000.000th of what they had originally, will also mean that their capabilities to attack will also be dramatically decreased.

Saved by the Bill: What if... Microsoft had killed Windows 95?

Re: Windows 95 was more masterful marketing

Windows 95 was actually more a technical marvel than was NT (which was probably the most advanced general purpose operating system of its time when it was released and for decades to come), because it provided virtually full backwards compatibility with DOS and with 16-bit Windows drivers and applications, while also employing a fully 32-bit kernel with virtual machines and everything.

NT had it relatively easy, because it had a clean architecture and could drop compatibility with virtually anything, but Windows 95 had to be compatible with three different architectures, and it did do that to a degree that today's operating systems can't even provide between their own major versions.

Of course people not in the know will always moan about the remaining few percentages where the compatibility was not perfect, or about the unavoidable results of the trade-offs that had to be made to make this extraordinary feat possible in the first place, but this won't change the fact, that whoever at MS designed and implemented Windows 95 were geniuses of their time, more so than the designers of NT.

Turns out there is something everyone may agree on in Congress: Let netizens use mostly algorithm-lite apps

Algorithms

You could at least put the word "algorithm" or "algorithm-lite" in quotes, because that word obviously doesn't mean what all these clueless senators and representatives understand it to be, and which is similarly stupid as 'understanding' the internet to be "a series of tubes".

And this isn't just pedantry, because not understanding what some words and concepts actually mean is part of the problem, and is a major hindrance in reaching a solution. For ex. if we'd call those "algorithms" what they actually are, ie. "filtering and prioritizing content in a way to optimize and maximize engagement, ignoring the societal and mental cost of this", then it would be more obvious what the solution would be or how to word a law that bans such behavior by social media companies.

But if we (well, they) will just keep calling them "algorithms", the solution will also elude us, because you obviously can't ban "algorithms" per se, and that's the last thing you really want to ban anyway.

Report: Apple short of 10 million iPhone 13s this year due to ongoing chip shortage

Chip shortage is the new "the dog ate my homework"

Your self-driving tech is crashing left and right and can be trusted with anything?

Say that you only cancel it because of chip shortage!

You want to get even richer than you already are, even though you are already the world's richest?

Say that you only need to raise the price of your already pricey electric car because of chip shortage!

People are not interested in buying your iPhones anymore?

Say that you will only make less of them because of chip shortage!

Tachyum's Prodigy emulator achieves first boot, runs Linux and says 'hello, world'

Transmeta

Anyone remember Transmeta? ...... Exactly.

Apple responds to critics of CSAM scan plan with FAQs, says it'd block governments subverting its system

Re: One big flaw with your plan

If the system is really using SHA or similar hashes on exact byte streams, then you're right about the practical impossibility of generating colliding hashes, but then the system is also utterly useless in what it's designed for, because a simple recoding of the pictures into another format, slight changes to gamma or aspect ratio, or even saving with a different compression, etc. will all change the bytes of the image, and thus allow evade detection.

However, it's more likely that when Apple is referring to "hashes", they actually just mean some kind of fingerprinting technology, that's not working on explicit byte streams, but analyzes the contents and composition of the image (and Apple is only using the term "hashes" because "fingerprinting" would cause confusion and associations Apple doesn't want to foster). In this case recoding or distorting the picture will not hinder detection, so the system is generally fit for the purpose it's supposedly intended for, but the hash-collision considerations don't apply anymore either, and it will be a lot easier to find or even possibly generate images that will be falsely identified as matches by the system.

The latter will also mean that no defense lawyer and court will allow anyone to be prosecuted just because a matching "hash" was found on their iPhones, and cops will have to somehow retrieve the actual images in order to prosecute someone, which however will clash with precedents set Apple prior to this and their refusal to unlock devices of suspected criminals.

Either way it looks like this whole child protection initiative from Apple is either is an umbrella/cover operation for something more sinister and is designed to enable scans/searches way beyond just child abuse images to begin with (which would make a lot of sense), or Apple has been again proved to be incompetent at addressing some technical problem, and shoot itself in the foot when they failed to assess the backlash this was actually generating.

Ad tech ruined the web – and PDF files are here to save it, allegedly

Dunning-Kruger

Firtman is right. This guy is so ignorant, that he's incapable of recognizing how stupid his idea is, for a multitudes of reasons also ADDITIONAL to not fulfilling the goal he supposedly set out for it.

11-year-old graduate announces plans to achieve immortality by 'replacing body parts with mechanical parts'

Not right in the head

A 11 year old that's already obsessed with immortality is definitely a case for some serious psychotherapy. Also the fact that he doesn't realize that even if he'd be successfully able to replace his body parts with mechanical ones wouldn't allow him to reach any kind of actual immortality (and at our current technological level would actually shorten his lifespan dramatically) makes it clear that he's not as smart as some try to make that out.

DARPA nails cash to project 'FENCE' — a smart camera that only sends pics when pixels change

Differential compression....

.. is the term DARPA doesn't seem to know, and want to reinvent, despite being like half a century old.

I myself have written remote control software for slow modems (1200-9600 bauds) that used it and only sent those regions of the screen over the cable that have actually changed, reducing typical bandwidth usage by >95%.

Ah, you know what? Keep your crappy space station, we're gonna try to make our own, Russia tells world

Don't believe it for a second!

Russia simply can not afford to build a space station of its own, and it wouldn't make any sense either. This is just one of Putin's empty promises whose only purpose is to stop the further tanking of his popularity. It's his version of building a wall at the Mexican border.

Google sees signs of success in its campaign to water down Australian pay-for-news plan

Wishful thinking

"the company is not entirely opposed to paying publishers but opposes the arbitration model. "

Google definitely does not oppose an arbitration model. But it opposes a model in which it's not them who's the arbiter that can force his arbitrary pricing, conditions and and decisions on others.

Also the paragraph at the end about ACCC makes it obvious that there's not substantial change planned to the model of the law, despite of what Google's saying. Which is a good thing.

Google and all other companies which make their living off taking other people's stuff and not paying anything in return needs to be stopped, and this is the first step. And the arbiters of prices should definitely not be these companies, but those who actually own the stuff that's used by them.

If Google or Facebook think they're providing actual value "in return" to content creators with their "services", then they are free to put a price on that, too, and let creators decide whether they really think it's worth that and are ready to pay that. But one has nothing to do with the other, and Google and Facebook shouldn't be allowed dictate terms on both.

Australian regulator slams Google ‘misinformation’ in pay-for-news-fight

Nope

" doing so hurts publishers because the ads and search giant sends so much traffic their way. "

Nope. Google merely redistributes the existing traffic. People will still get their news somewhere - it will just not be through Google News or through sites that rank high in Google News, but some other way and possibly at other outlets.

And that's exactly the point here. News sites, as a whole, owe Google nothing, and do not depend on Google (again, as a whole, not a few particular site who got good at gaming Google's system or are ranked high for some other reasons). It's Google who's using news sites' content to make a profit off that and to extend its control over web publishers. And that's the reason why it should pay up.

Apple faces further iPhone 12 supply chain woes, per famed analyst Ming-Chi Kuo

Analyst

So, tell me again, why is someone with an insider leaking info to him called an "analyst"?

When the chips are down, thank goodness for software engineers: AI algorithms 'outpace Moore's law'

Nonsense

Moore's law is not about AI, and because it can not be outpaced by AI development. It's also not like AI's are getting more effective at using raw computing power.

Ever wondered what Microsoft really thought about the iPad? Ex-Windows boss spills beans

Ultimate failure

And, yet, 10 years later, after the tablet fad is mostly gone, iPad is nothing more than the ultimate technological failure. A solution still looking for a problem, even more so than it did when it was first introduced. There's nothing a tablet is good at that other kinds of devices would be better at. Then again, isn't this the very definition of virtually every Apple device ever?

Whoa, whoa... Tesla slams brakes on allegations of 'unintended acceleration' bug: 'Completely false and was brought by a short-seller'

Culprit denies having done anything wrong

Isn't that what virtually all of them are doing when faced with the consequences of their actions and the prospect of a punishment?

Microsoft plays chicken with Extended Support for Exchange 2010 end date and swerves first

Makes no sense

It makes no sense for Microsoft to prolong the support of the Exchange server, but not that of the Windows Server it runs on. So, I'm pretty sure that they will announce shortly that they have also extended the free support end for Windows Server 2008. They just don't want to make the announcement too early, because that would stop a lot of people from migrating to a newer version of Windows Server already now.

Microsoft, you should look away now: Google's cloud second only to AWS in dev survey

Clueless coders

I bet most developers don't even realize they're actually using Microsoft's cloud platform on a daily basis, because, well, GitHub is owned by Microsoft, and is hosted obviously on Azure. So, in reality most likely the majority of developers are actually using Microsoft's cloud platform, and more than they realize. But even if they wouldn't, it's mostly irrelevant what cloud platform developers are using, because they're an irrelevant minority amongst cloud users. And JetBrains' survey is not representative of the developer community anyway.

Have I Been S0ld? Troy Hunt's security website is up for acquisition

Business?

" He believes it is time to put the business up for acquisition"

What business? This is not a business, and it will ever only be a business if the future owner will abuse the data it can collect through the site.

US: We'll pull security co-operation if you lot buy from Huawei

Bully

World bully tries to bully the world again to have everything his way and to this benefit. Time to kick him off the school.

The curious case of a WordPress plugin, a rival site spammed with traffic, a war of words, and legal threats

Smart. Not.

So, they first admit that they and their plugin are capable of all what they were accused of, but then go on to say that the statements were untrue and they will sue because of that.

Lovely website you got there. Would be a shame if we, er, someone were to sink it: Google warns EU link tax will magnify media monetary misery

Re: Ah, capitalism at its best

"If this law goes through, you won't have another search engine to go to. Did you think this will only apply to Google?"

Do you really think Google will actually abandon the whole EU? It will not. Google's just using empty threats here to avoid having to pay. But if they will not be able to avoid it, they will very well pay up. And rightly so.

Re: Ah, capitalism at its best

"In what world is anyone forced to supply something to someone because they demand it and want to charge them for it?"

Exactly. What you don't get is, however, that in this case the publishers are the ones who are expected and even forced (by strongarming them and by abuse of market power) by Google to supply content into its services, just so Google can slap and ads on them and sell that as a product, while not paying anything back to the original producers.

"If the EU is saying what Google are doing is wrong "

No, the EU absolutely does not say that. All it says is that you must pay the original creators of content, not just take their stuff for free and use it to generate money without paying anything back.

"So are the EU/Media companies saying you mustn't link to us or that you must link to us. "

No. Articles 11 is not about linking, and not about any kind of prohibition to link to anywhere. It's just Google trying to mislead the public about what this is really about so they will sympathize with their agenda. Just another reason not to give in to Google, if for nothing else, then because of this shameless lying and manipulation of public opinion.

Google makes money through News. If they wouldn't make money with it, they wouldn't keep it alive, but would shut it down, like they do with any operation and experiment that doesn't make them money. Simple as that.