* Posts by Fonant

353 publicly visible posts • joined 20 Mar 2014

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Navigating the truth maze in a world of clever machines and cleverer marketers

Fonant
Holmes

Truth is a function of time

^ One of my favourite concepts.

My personal guess is that AI is a fad that will pass. "Hey, we've made computers really good at pattern matching to generate plausible output" is all it really is. A fun toy, but not useful for serious stuff that matters.

Revival of Medley/Interlisp: Elegant weapon for a more civilized age sharpened up again

Fonant
Thumb Up

ICAD

My proper commercial software career started with ICAD, a 3D geometrical engineering using a macro language based on Common Lisp. Great fun, programmatic CAD including solid modelling using Parasolid. Pity the development environment and even runtime environment were so expensive.

OpenAI meltdown: How could Microsoft have let this happen after betting so many billions?

Fonant

Boostrap problem?

Doesn't it require a massive global intelligence to decide how to train Artificial Intelligence? Otherwise AI learns as much that is factually false as it learns true facts.

As far as I can tell, AI is just a way to generate stuff that looks plausible to humans who don't know better. Is that really useful, or just the latest useless craze?

UK signals legal changes to self-driving vehicle liabilities

Fonant

The problem is one of defining "safe enough", as the article points out.

We probably want self-driving cars to be safer, if not A LOT safer, than human drivers. Autonomous vehicles killing thousands of people a year is not going to be acceptable, even if we accept that death toll from fallible human drivers.

How many UK deaths per year caused by self-driving cars is acceptable? If zero, then self-driving cars are going to have to be VERY slow and cautious out on the roads, especially when mixing with human-driven traffic.

Cruise parks entire US fleet over safety fears

Fonant

Re: The only way to make autonomous cars safe

E-scooters were not on my list: they're nothing like as safe or efficient as bicycles or velomobiles.

But yes, the UK's cities are horrible for transport, in general. Car-infested sewers for streets. Go to a European city to see how urban transport should work. Integrated buses, trams, underground, with simple ticketing, and plenty of proper cycleways specifically designed for people riding bicycles.

Fonant

Re: How to detect there's someone underneath? Listen for screaming!

To be honest: "There are too many edge cases for cars and lorries to be safe in the real world.".

By which I mean, mixing 1 tonne cars doing 20mph or more with people on foot is never going to be safe, whoever, or whatever, is driving.

Fonant

Re: The only way to make autonomous cars safe

Or make the vehicles lightweight, so collisions are rarely fatal. Electric bicycles and velomobiles are the future. Less energy usage, less danger, happier people!

Bad eIDAS: Europe ready to intercept, spy on your encrypted HTTPS connections

Fonant

Re: Never understood certs

Yes, but in the first situation your connection to the website is plain text. Including the sending of your password, and login cookies. Anyone can listen in, without you knowing.

In the second situation your connection is encrypted, and only readable by that specific website. No way for anyone else to listen in. There's a different certificate for each hostname, and if the certificate chain leads to a trusted root certificate, you can trust the certificate is genuine, and not one served by a man-in-the-middle listening in to your communications.

CompSci academic thought tech support was useless – until he needed it

Fonant

Re: It just seems that way.

"The more you know, the more you know you don't know." The fundamental problem with science.

Down and out: Barclays Bank takes unplanned digital detox, customers not invited

Fonant

Starling

Switched from Barclays to Starling. Best thing I ever did.

Scared of flying? Good news! Software glitches keep aircraft on the ground

Fonant

Re: Hmmm...

I heard somewhere that this particular plane's planned route was most unusual. So triggered the problem when all well-worn commercial flight routes would not have one.

ICAO are also trying to eliminate waypoints with duplicate names, but since this needs international agreement, it's taking some time...

What does Twitter's new logo really represent?

Fonant

Re: X... 15 Overlapping Circles...?

A few circles of infinite radius would be a lot easier than lots of little ones.

Twitter name and blue bird logo to be 'blowtorched' off company branding

Fonant

Just when almost everyone knew what Twitter was...

How many online services get to be as well-known as Twitter? It's a well-known brand name, and Musk is deleting it?

Is this guy supposed to be clever? Has the power completely corrupted him? Sad.

Man who nearly killed physical media returns with $60,000 vinyl turntable

Fonant

Re: The best vinyl playback performance Linn has ever achieved

I like to think of it as "using the Grid as power storage".

Nobody does DR tests to survive lightning striking twice

Fonant

Yes, I watch a video where they used a pulse of extremely high energy laser to pre-ionise the air to "steer" a lightning strike. Exciting research, if in very short bursts of activity!

Meta's data-hungry Threads skips over EU but lands in Britain

Fonant
Big Brother

Re: These people are idiots.

Scraping all of this personal data is absolutely no benefit for the targeting of ads.

But Facebook is also used for influencing elections. Remember Cambridge Analytica? For that purpose, which commands very high fees, the personal and financial information is extremely valuable.

UK smart meter rollout years late and less than two thirds complete

Fonant

Re: Still resisting the blandishments

We have a pretty standard 4.5kWp PV installation here. Family of four with teenagers, we use around 12kWh per day, averaged over a whole year. We generate 13kWh per day, averaged over a whole year.

Now if we had a 90% efficient storage system that could store 2,000 kWh for six months, we'd be self-sufficient in electricity.

Parts of UK booted offline as Virgin Media suffers massive broadband outage

Fonant

Zen FTW

Very happy to have switched from Virgin to back to Zen last year, ditching the coax "fibre" from Virgin for proper optical fibre from Zen/Openreach. 1,000 Mb/s internet connection now, as fast as the internal network!

A faster service is nice, but Support people who know what they're talking about is so much nicer!

Requiem for Google Reader, dead for a decade but not forgotten

Fonant

Re: Article written by an idiot

RSS is still a Good Thing.

Fonant
Happy

Re: RSS

I came from the RSS feed reader in Vivaldi.

RSS is an very useful general-purpose subscription system, that works for all sorts of internet things.

British industry calls for regulation of autonomous vehicles

Fonant

The secret to getting started on the first task is to make preparations to start the first task.

Fonant

Re: Regulations is in the hand of the makers

Actually the regulations are in the hand of governments.

The makers have the question "how safe does our thing have to be?", and that can only be answered by society, or by government as a proxy.

The questions almost always boil down to moral ones. Would we accept autonomous vehicles killing people are roughly the same rate as human-driven cars do? Or half that rate? Or a tenth?

The UK's bad encryption law can't withstand global contempt

Fonant

they can't all be so abysmally stupid as to not realise the problems and inherent futility

Have you seen who is currently in the Tory Cabinet?

Fonant

Re: The UK's bad encryption law can't withstand global contempt

No problem hiding encrypted communication: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steganography

Fonant

Except that we already know that:

  • Secure encryption that has a backdoor is mathematically impossible.
  • Encryption techniques can't be "un-invented".
  • Well-encrypted data is indistinguishable from random noise.
Making strong encryption illegal hurts people doing online banking, and makes criminal gangs laugh!

Fonant
Facepalm

Re: making it a crime to use strong encryption

Encryption = Maths + Computing.

Looking forward to the Tories trying to make mathematics, and/or writing software, illegal :)

Fonant

Re: If they cared about children...

Which is Good, no? We wouldn't want to admit fake refugees to the country, and we wouldn't want to deport genuine ones. Well, not apart from the Tories, who want to make "being in need of help" illegal for refugees and UK citizens alike.

Fonant

Re: One rule for them, another for the rest of us.

Lib Dems, and Greens?

US officials probe Tesla's incredible detaching steering wheel

Fonant

With a trim system for long curved roads.

Wannabe space 'superpower' UK tosses £1.6M at eight research projects

Fonant

And they have to also cope with high-g acceleration, once.

My God, it's full of tabs: Vivaldi's coolest new features shine on phones and cars

Fonant
Thumb Up

Re: Ad blocker

Ditto for Spotify.

Microsoft begs you not to ditch Edge on Google's own Chrome download page

Fonant

Re: To me the worrying thing is ...

A web browser has access to a lot of information about their customers. Powerful product promotion possibilities.

Fonant
Happy

I'm safer still!

Vivaldi on Fedora, FTW!

Sure, Microsoft, let's put ChatGPT in control of robots

Fonant

Surely you simply ask ChatGPT "design a new robot that can defeat these ones"?

Unplug that Anker battery pack now: House blaze sparks recall

Fonant

Re: Are we the problem

Looking at the same point from the other direction: there are billions of lithium batteries charged in all sorts of places, and yet the very rare occasion one catches fire (in this case, not being charged) the story is newsworthy.

Lithium batteries, as used in mobile phones and the like, couldn't really be much safer.

Thunderbird email client is Go for new plumage in July

Fonant
Thumb Up

Good to see competition in email clients back!

I'm currently enjoying the "M3" email client in Vivaldi. A worthy successor to the excellent M2 client in Opera. Still needs work, but Vivaldi are working on it. Competition from Thunderbird can only be a Good Thing.

UK prepares to go it alone on post-Brexit science plan

Fonant
Facepalm

Re: Not quite

The EU, and Northern Ireland, are pretty happy with the Northern Ireland Protocol. It's a good deal for both of them.

The UK Brexiteers, who came up with the protocol, are the ones who are now complaining.

(They're not "completely unrelated issues", they're both solidly linked to the UK leaving the EU and the Withdrawal Agreement.)

Fonant

Re: “My Lifetime as a Lettuce”. The memoirs of Liz Truss

I think you'll find that the EU have implemented their side of the deal. The sticking point is Johnson's "over ready deal" and the Northern Ireland Protocol. Which the UK are now complaining about, even though it was entirely Johnson's idea.

Bank of England won't call it Britcoin but says digital pound 'likely to be needed in future'

Fonant

Re: But why is this necessary?

To a certain point: as soon as bartering is better than using money, the CBDCs start to lose control again. Worse, they lose visibility of transactions, making taxation very difficult.

I can't think of a way to stop people swapping goods as an alternative to using money. Or to stop unofficial alternative currencies or systems (e.g. swapping a certain number of hours' work for goods) taking over from using money.

Fonant
Big Brother

AIUI, that's why the Big Stores have "loyalty card" schemes like Nectar. Then they do get to see exactly what you've bought. They'll please you by sending targeted discount vouchers, but mostly it's for their benefit. Nectar particularly interesting as it is a system shared by several Big Stores.

Trust, not tech, is holding back a safer internet

Fonant

Re: Trust the government / security services / police?

One person's "terrorist" is another person's "freedom fighter".

Sometimes the same person changes their mind: Mandela switched from being a terrorist to being a freedom fighter in the UK, for example.

Aviation overhaul bill passes US House... for the third time

Fonant

Re: Phew - scapegoats found !!

I spotted that. Those people are worth keeping on, as they now know which files can't be deleted!

For password protection, dump LastPass for open source Bitwarden

Fonant

The most popular authenticator apps, such as Google and Microsoft's, are tied at the hip to major companies.

I use Authy, which does the job nicely, cross-platform. https://authy.com (website under maintenance at time of posting).

Move over, Kraftwerk: These musical instruments really are the robots

Fonant

Re: Nice but...

I think the project is more about finding engineering solutions to model human actions. Such as playing a guitar or drums. The process of creating solutions is the "creativity" part of the project. The robotic music is merely a side-effect.

Five British companies fined for making half a million nuisance calls

Fonant

Far too easy to set up a Limited Company in the UK, scam people, and then shut it down again.

Being a "Ltd" is no longer a sign of trustworthiness, sadly. Companies House needs to completely re-think how it controls limited companies and the people creating them.

This is the best pay offer you'll get without more strikes, union tells BT workers

Fonant

Actually that's more capitalist than communist - the same percentage rise means the top brass get LOADS more money, while those on minimum wage get the smallest increase.

Fonant

That's a Good Thing, as it's always the lower-paid staff that do the most actually-necessary work. They're the ones that companies need to keep on!

Rackspace customers rage as email outage continues and migrations create migraines

Fonant

Agree. Sounds like management who are waaaaay too far out of touch with technical issues.

Fonant

Re: "Fanatical Support" Died 2-3 Years Ago

Even back a decade ago the "fanatical support" took a long time to arrive. Remember well a server being supplied that had the wrong OS installed on it. Took a day to get that fixed. Then database troubles that UK support couldn't sort, so we had to wait for the US support team to wake up.

All felt like a company that was too big for it's own organisational abilities.

You really find out what a service supplier is like when something goes wrong.

Programming error created billion-dollar mistake that made the coder ... a hero?

Fonant

Re: Worst code I ever saw...

Agree. Comments in code shouldn't cover the "how" as much as the "why". The code should, usually, show "how", but the "why" is often much more complicated.

Good variable naming helps a Great Deal, too. I find myself refactoring variable and method names all the time.

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