Posts by a_yank_lurker

Court tosses Microsoft's appeal in pre-owned software licenses battle

Good So Far

Could the courts levy a massive enough fine on MicroSlop/MicroShit to cripple that criminal enterprise? That would be justice.

Even banks and hyperscalers are now sounding the alarm about the AI bubble

That was a helluva nap

Artificial Incompetence is an solution in search of a problem. What the AI bros aka con artists claim it can do is not what it actually does. Areas they claim it does well are very narrow and in most cases have automation tools available for many years.

OpenAI could go from AI pioneer to AI's BlackBerry, says Forrester

WeWork not Blackberry

WeWork is a better example for OpenAI than Blackberry. Blackberries were a profitable product before the iPhone. Sam the Scam's fraud is a money loser right now and probably will never turn a profit. Much like WeWork was basically a scam that imploded when its IPO hit. In fact, none of the AI frauds are profitable and probably will never turn a profit.

Everyone hates frontier AI labs, says Palantir boss

Pot meet Kettle

AI bros have earned the hate because they are arrogant assholes whose demise would improve the human race. Karp is the same but from different angle. I wouldn't want to do business with any of them.

England's exam watchdog frets over smart specs turning GCSEs into Google searches

Re: what is the point of exams?

The point of a well designed exam is to test students' understanding of the material. True, the real world is more like an open book exam with as many 'books' as necessary. If you have a good grasp of something like thermodynamics you have a good idea of where and what to look for. The point of learning a field is to gain enough competence to know how to properly dig deeper when necessary.

'Resistance is futile,' says Qualcomm CEO. AI agents will be become invisible, inescapable, follow you across devices

What is He Smoking?

AI has many issues with cost that make many of these fantasies irrelevant.

Angry devs vow to flee GitHub Copilot as metered billing takes hold

MicroSlop going to MicroSlop

So one of the most vicious and predatory (criminal) organizations still acts like the criminal organization they are, I shocked I tell you, Shocked I tell you like Captain Louis Renault in Casablanca.

California passes bill declaring death-by-algorithm to 3D-printed ghost guns

Materials of Construction

There is one part of the gun that sees very high pressures when it's fired. This part most be able to withstand the pressures without bursting. The question then is whether the materials this part most be made out of are: 1 readily available; 2 suitable for 3-D printing; 3 need to be heat treated after manufacture; 4 need other treatments before use. Not an expect on these issues but I do have some background in materials to know using the wrong material can lead to deadly results for the user. Also, some of the equipment that may be needed is not something you go to Home Depot and buy.

AIs don't like religion – particularly Jehovah's Witnesses, study claims

Real Question

Since almost all of the 'AI bros' have absolutely no idea what ethics and morals are why would any LLM have any relevance in those areas. Two of the domains of religion are ethics and morals and how to live an ethical and moral life.

AI hiring algorithms reject Black, Asian job seekers at higher rates

I suspect the AI is using other data such as applicant's address or education credentials to infer the most likely race/ethnic group the person is in. While not 100% perfect, people tend to live in neighborhoods were most of the people are similar in background to them. It would not be difficult to tweak the algorithm to favor (or be biased against) specific groups by adjusting the ratings for someone from up/down as desired. Done subtly, the hiring manager may be oblivious to this unless they are constantly hiring and happened to notice a pattern.

SaaS outfit ClickUp promises seven-figure salaries for survivors of 22 percent staff purge

Re: "way to operate at the highest level of productivity is changing… to win the future"

Some of us in the States call MBA speak 'baffle gab' or 'buzzword bingo'. MBA is the certificate that says you are incompetent and qualify for a position in manglement.

Enough with the AI FOMO, go slow-mo, says Domo CDO

Quiet Hatred

Most people who have dealt with Artificial Incompetency despise it with a passion. The real problem is manglement thinks it can eliminate staff with minimal cost. But the real costs are subsidized currently to get users onto the system. Once the real costs hit, CFOs will have blood in their eyes and will be looking to execute the idiots who destroyed the corporate balanced sheets.

Dissatisfied: Three-fourths of AI customer service rollouts are a letdown

Fake It Until You Lose

The greatest salvation to the human race is the AI hype is doing a good job of destroying AI. Unfortunately it will do a lot damage before it's over.

Microsoft researchers find AI models and agents can't handle long-running tasks

A Person Can Do - AI Can't

I'm shocked I tell you, I'm shocked, a person is better at long tasks than AI!!! Who could have guessed? Apparently not the 'AI Bros'.

California ghost-gun bill wants 3D printers to play cop, EFF says

Material Properties

As noted about, the gun develops considerable pressure when a round is fired. The issue to me is, what materials are used in a 3D printer that can either handle the pressure immediately after creation or after the appropriate heat treatment/aging process to get suitable mechanical properties? Otherwise, you make a 'gun' that is potentially more dangerous to the shooter than the target.

It's a legitimate question as I don't know enough about the capabilities of a 3D printers to know what materials they can use.

Microsoft tells crusty old kernel drivers to get with the Windows Hardware Compatibility Program

BaaD

Bloatware as a Disservice from the Rejects of Redmond aka MicroSlop is trying to force users of 'antique' hardware that still is functional to trash functional hardware because of the Reject's idiocy and incompetence. Nothing new, it's like saying 'water is wet'.

Enterprise PCs are unreliable, unpatched, and unloved compared to Macs

Real difference?

My assumption about Mac/iOS vs Windows/Android serviceability is Apple makes hardware, basic software and OS for their devices. Thus, they have more control and, importantly, knowledge of both the underlying hardware and software. Windows/Android are generally installed on 3rd party hardware. This division means that hardware configurations are often more diverse and thus more difficult to account for. Now, it does help that the Rejects from Redmond send out slop and don't care about their user base which makes updates/upgrades more difficult risky for everyone.

Oracle: AI agents can reason, decide and act - liability question remains

Re: Floating

On the liability issue, it's more complex than user entered bad data into Excel and got a bad result. It's what the seller said the tool to do and what a 'reasonable' non technical person would understand that to mean. AI is tooted as being able to do fairly complex tasks accurately without (or with minimal) supervision by a person. Excel is not marketed with this expectation. Excel is marketed as a tool to do a variety of calculations and analysis after the data and formulas are entered (hopefully correctly) by the user. In the case of AI the legal issue is at best murky while in the case of Excel it is almost always going to be on the user for any errors.

Meta’s latest AI improves its terrible content moderation, just a little

AI?

Automated tools often can determine there is something fishy going on, they have been around for years. Calling them 'AI' is just buzzword bingo by manglement to inflate there minimal egos.

Gartner suggests Friday afternoon Copilot ban because tired users may be too lazy to check its mistakes

GIGO

Garbage in = garbage out should be the mantra of anyone using Artificial Incompetence.

SETI admits its search for alien life may be too narrowly focussed

Do we know what to search for?

One problem with SETI is what should we be looking for. We are limited by our technology to things we can detect not what ET is actually using. Assuming FTL drives are possible, would we know what type of emissions they would presumably produce? And could we even detect them?

We are assuming ET is using technology similar enough to ours that we can detect signals from them.

Microsoft Azure CTO set Claude on his 1986 Apple II code, says it found vulns

News Flash - Water is Wet

Security issues with micro controller, PLCs, etc. have been noted for at least 25 years now. Looking at 40+ year old code and finding vulnerabilities isn't really news and really doesn't prove anything that isn't know or unexpected. If the system has been retired for decades now, this is purely an academic exercise that fundamentally proves nothing.

Microsoft Copilot to hijack your browser... for your own convenience

Dear MicroSlop

The more MicroSlop (or MicroShitter) embeds artificial idiocy into Bloatware as a Disservice, etc. the more this user is happy with his decision to avoid MicroShitter at all costs.

Supposedly big-brained execs are outsourcing decisionmaking to AI

Improvement?

From what I have seen of manglement using Artificial Incompetence might lead to sounder decisions than manglement is capable of. Just think, we might have group to replace and fire immediately

NIMBY pushback begins to bite US datacenter buildout

Frauds

What really bothers about the AI fraud is the need for energy to power these datacenters. This means more electricity generation, thus more pollution and heat dumped into the environment. All of this very basic engineering and thermodynamics. Yet the frauds behind AI were complaining about climate change recently. Now climate change is not important. So what gives?

AI doctor's assistant is easily swayed to change prescriptions, give bad medical advice

Who pays

Who pays for the wrongful death lawsuit that will inevitably happen? Just asking for a friend.

CIOs say AI adoption is moving faster than they can manage

Artificial Idiocy

AI, at best, is a tool that might relieve some of the drudgery for certain tasks. But what Scam Altman and his fellow frauds say is it can do things that it can't and will never do competently. In all areas, 'the devil is in the details'. What will cause failure is 'AI' is fundamentally incompetent and must be babysat to be marginally useful.

Accenture tells staffers: If you want a promotion, use AI at work

Re: Same Shit, Different Century

Managlement are lemmings following the latest manglement fad. They have to do what everyone else does whether it makes any sense.

True Insultants

Insultants are idiots and this batch is just drinking their kool-aid.

DEF CON bans three Epstein-linked men from future events

What the Epstein Files Show

While I have no doubt some of the people named in the Epstein files are actually guilty of crimes with him (see Randy Andy and his recent problems); there are a lot of people who had social and professional contact but never had any involvement with Epstein's crimes. What we are seeing is how many incestuous our elites are in that they seem to know each other and often hang out together.

Don't believe the hyperscalers! AI can't cure the climate crisis

Who Are the Frauds

It seems like when something like AI that is very energy intensive is critical to the latest bubble (investment fraud) climate change suddenly isn't important. Either you live by the need to lower energy usage and use less fossil fuels or you are a fraud that is exploiting climate change for your own political agenda. It seems that many of the AI shills are frauds because climate change is inconvenient if it presents them from defrauding investors.

Copilot spills the beans, summarizing emails it's not supposed to read

Who goes to prison?

As I understand privacy laws, there is an implicit assumption the data breach was caused by the ill intent of a person(s). But with Artificial Incompetence, the real perp are goons like Sam Altman. I would hate to go prison for the criminal acts of Altman, etc.

Re: GDPR breach in 3, 2, 1 ….

Or other relevant laws, I work under US HIPPA and related laws which also restrict access to personal (patient) information to a 'need to know' basis. AI (artificial idiocy) bros will not be charged with the crimes they made innocent users commit.

Google digs deep to power AI expansion with 150 MW geothermal deal

Neighbors? Jane Jacobs may be smiling from the other side

With the proliferation of AI slopcenters and relatively limited places they can be built, the slopmeisters will run into NIMBY type resistance in many areas. Also, I am dubious that the slopmeisters will have a positive ROI from their slopcenters (or slopshitters).

6,000 execs struggle to find the AI productivity boom

Another overhyped Slop

A major problem with AI is not reflective. You give a set of instructions and out pops something that may be useful or more likely slop. Many real world problems require reflection and asking questions before developing an answer. So there might be a couple of rounds of questions and answers before actually finishing the project.

AI should be good at giving sort of correct answers for easily defined issues that have what are effectively 'Yes/No' answers.

Developer writes script to throw AI out of Windows

Other name

Instead of MicroSlop how about MicroShit

Dangerous sandwiches delayed hardware installation

Incompetence

It's nice to know Blighty plods are just as incompetent as those on this side of the pond, I would have thought the story actually happened someplace like Philadelphia or some US city whose plods have a maximum IQ that might reach single positive digits.

CrowdStrike file update bricks Windows machines around the world

Ouch

Ouch, I have seen notifications this worldwide fiasco, good job. Might have a quiet day at work today lol

'Return to Office' declared dead

Some Companies

My employer had most professional staff who could work a hybrid schedule before CoVid. We all went permanent WFH since. Management decided to reduce the amount of space rented, keeping only enough space for onsite operations that could not be done from home. So the WFH staff couldn't return to a cube because there is none for us to return to.

Missing Titan sub likely destroyed in implosion, no survivors

4 murdered with their murdered

The at best half-assed design was going to murder people sooner or later. The comments highlight the reasons for this. Four innocent people were murdered because Rush was too arrogant to listen to those who know something about submersibles and submarines.

He was an aerospace engineer from an engineering program that was locally regarded as pathetic, I was told this by a couple of engineering managers who I knew as a kid, I grew up in the area.

Re: Titanium and compression cycles

Steel is rather crystalline, in fact steel is a body-centered cubic crystal, aluminum and many titanium alloys are face-centered cubic crystals. That accounts for their different fatigue and ductile-brittle transition vs temperature behavior.

So you want to replace workers with AI? Watch out for retraining fees, they're a killer

AI

AI should be called 'Artificial Incompetence'.

Too little, too late: Intel's legacy is eroding

Got fat and dumb

The underlying problem for Chipzilla is the got fat, dumb, and happy many years ago and were slow to realize the dangers from various competitors. They got lazy.

Intel tried selling software before. Will it succeed this time?

My Doubts

Chipzilla makes specific hardware they sell to system builders. They do not understand how the system will be used by the end user. They do not directly deal with the end user. Chipzilla only has a handful of major customers they need to pay attention.

Software slingers usually sell to the nominal end user and thus have a much better of their needs. Also, software slingers have many more customers than a handful OEMs.

The markets are very different and require very different approaches.

COO of failed bio-biz Theranos found guilty on all twelve fraud counts

Holmes was not baited by a honey trap by vulture crapitalists. She committed fraud. Also, looking at the investors I am struck by how none of the major ones had a biotech background. It seems the major biotech vultures did not like the taste of the carcass; must have been pretty bad tasting. Holmes was chasing after whales who had no business investing in biotech startup.

Microsoft rolls back default macro blocks in Office without telling anyone

Re: Typical Borkzilla

Manglement has an attention span that is much shorter than a goldfish, much, much shorter. Their collective IQ is < 0.

My main beef with manglement is the tendency to be credential happy and not pay attention to details like a willingness to learn and grow professionally.

China rallies support for Kylin Linux in war on Windows

Real Issue

Kylin suffers from the same issue every other Linux distro suffers from (I am a die hard Linux user) is office and business software that is perceived to be just as good or better as that for BaaD. Also, sys admins might need some tools like Active Directory (not a sys admin). In many categories there are very few choices.

As far as usability, mainstream, desktop Linux distros are just as easy to use a Windows or MacOS.

Bipolar transistors made from organic materials for the first time

Re: Gatekeeping

To make chips at scale and at a reasonable price is not cheap nor technically easy. Also, some of the chemicals used are fairly dangerous. One noted that HF is used which has an interesting habit of penetrating skin and attacking bone (I am originally a chemist); a rather nasty and hard to treat injury. I am fairly certain there are many more issues that prevent most from even attempting to make chips in their garden; I certainly would not bother to try.

PC shipments sink amid steady waves of supply chain, war disruptions

Expected

Even with supply chain woes, I would expect PC sales to stagnate and drop back down now that we are the backend of Covid. A lot of gear got upgraded during the pandemic that will last for several years now.

Amazon not happy with antitrust law targeting Amazon

It was Wally World now its Amazon

Congress critters seem to always moan about the current retail behemoth. I can remember when Wally World was a favorite target, today its Amazon. From the way the bill is written I have my doubts the courts will let it stand anyway. There are antitrust laws on the books and I wonder way they could not be used; but then it would DOJ that would get the credit not America's Native Criminal Class.