Posts by Peter Prof Fox

DEF CON hackers add new muscle to water utility protection

Gold star plus

Doesn't it make you proud to once being a hacker? The vibe still lives!

Disgruntled 0-day hunter 'humiliated' by Microsoft pledges 'bone shattering drop' as Redmond calls cops

Irresponsible inaction

When you think about the sort of personality who winds-up bug-hunters, then you know the ethics of the same people who are controlling your Windows pc.

No surprise to us Register readers but the 21st century business model in all things (esp politics) is to enslave the gullible. Say hello to the Eloi for me.

Stale gov.uk pages are feeding AI overviews old data and Brits are believing it

Expiry dates

When I'm Prime Minister all government pages will have a 'Best Before date'. This would be of a defined duration according to circumstances. Something along the lines of: This information is not expected to change before the 31st April 2027. Or Not valid after 1st April 2027. That way it's a prompt for the maintainers to actually maintain their stuff or be called-out.

A valid-from date might add confidence.

I vibe coded a feed reading web app. It was enlightening and uncomfortable

20% / 80%

As you all know, the first 80% of a project takes 80% of the time and the other 20% takes another 80% time. What I think is happening is that the 80% bit will now only use 20% of the time.

But which part is which?

Are the AI assistants good at discussing architecture and high-level design options? Can they juggle fringe and far away scope beyong 'single app'? Suppose I want to build a library: Getting to 'hey it works' is the the start, not the end point. The eventual goal is 'Peter's library is solid and available' in flavours to suit developers. I need to bear tle bigger picture in mind at the start for eg. modularity or internationalisation.

'People's Panel' to check if UK wants controversial Digital ID will cost £630K

6000 quid per person

Bargain!

Starmer's digital ID reboot raises same old questions as its Blair-era ancestor

What's all the fuss?

If the benefits are so obvious and the dangers so miniscule then everyone will want one.

Coming soon. All operating systems must have a Government ID checker.

Seriously: What (useful to the person) can a smartphone do that a piece of paper can't?

Obviously lots of opaque tracking but that wasn't my question.

RSS dulls the pain of the modern web

How to find the Register's RSS feeds?

I've been using Feedbro Firefox extension for many years to get the Register RSS feed. So I thought I'd see how I'd navigate to the feeds just for old time's sake. I managed to find the page with a 'Google' but I can't see how to get to that page from the normal pages/menus.

Bundle of human neurons hooked to silicon learns to stumble through Doom

NISC

Cool. A no instruction set computer.

CISA updated ransomware intel on 59 bugs last year without telling defenders

Not stupid

Looking for a needle in a haystack is stupid.

Having a notification system to alert is basic common sense.

Child safety or age-gating for all? UK social media ban plan draws fire

Parenting?

Giving tablet-crack to children (or anybody) is wrong. We urgently need decent parental oversight tools and 'safe space' monitoring. A bit like how a playground with sesaws and swings works. Of course then you need parents who care... Um... Ah well. As you were.

Young relatives of mine have minute attention spans and inability to focus on internally generated goals or activities. Mayfly minds. Their parents have been caught off-guard because they never experienced anything like it themselves.

Something must be done. ACTUAL regulation of socmed platforms is an obvious starting point... When we've got a clear idea what we're trying to achieve.

Just the Browser claims to tame the bloat without forking

A good OS-capable map site

National Library of Scotland is marvellous. Free.

1 Find where you want by modern or older place name or Lat/Long.

2 Select the background maps category ESRI/OSM/Lidar

3 The world'd yer lobster! 3 lots of OS to chose from just to start.

Dell wants £10m+ from VMware if Tesco case goes against it

Bad analogy

It's like buying something with a lifetime warranty then suddenly it isn't.

Danish dev delights kid by turning floppy drive into easy TV remote

An Off button?

Just a weird thought.

Perhaps a colouring book for a bit of hand/eye coordination?

Baby's got clack: HP pushes PC-in-a-keyboard for businesses with hot desks

What's the problem with worn keys?

If the key tops have worn out then that proves you know where they are and so don't need the letters any more.

Vibe coding will deliver a wonderful proliferation of personalized software

Hurrah!

No more £1.8 billion for the national ID card project. That should be ready to trial next week then.

Seriously though this sounds like a viable tool for prototyping. I've got specs and proof-of-concepts lying around but whizzy to have a demo people could have in their pocket.

Whitehall rejects £1.8B digital ID price tag – but won't say what it will cost

Set a budget first

Then ask for bids from contractors to meet the spec. Leave the risk with the private companies. (The whole thing is stupid anyaay.)

Devs gripe about having AI shoved down their throats

Use AI for quality assurance

I mean what could go wrong? "Here boss. AI says the spec is incomplete." "Here boss. AI says it's ready to go." "Back on track boss. AI has 'simplified' our formulas and replaced the 'wait for answer' with expected values."

If you think AI is skilled or ready for the big time ask it what the best bubs in your neighhood are and groan.

Dame Emma Thompson gives the 'AI revolution' both barrels

Excellent. Plus...

Good call. I was just going with

This text MUST NOT be used in any LLM,AI or information system without pre-payment of £15,000 and permission in writing from the copyright holder.

but you've prompted me to expand.

UK government says digital ID won't be compulsory – honest

If the only purpose is work checks...

Then call it a right to work card. You know, like a driving licence for driving.

As for 'Estonians save hours each month': That's just horse chocolates.

Or if it's so wonderful for everyday things then offer it as an app and watch the public take it on board.

It will of course be linked to the police records because CRB checks... and then some.

If I can get my digital identity back after my phone is lost then so can crooks and abusive families.

UK's digital hospital plan meets analog reality check

Hmm

And the answer is (spins the wheel) Take two asprins.

And the answer is (spins the wheel) Take more exercise

And the answer is (spins the wheel) Stop feeling sorry for yourself. Get over it!

What about using whatsapp video for triage though? When many GPs can't handle phone calls for appointments what hope is there for this?

Greg Kroah-Hartman explains the Cyber Resilience Act for open source developers

Compliance is the same overhead for all producers :(

Suppose I make a tiny app for smartphones to remind people when it's time for them to face Totnes and worship me. Not only is there a stack that feeds to the source code but then a compile and package stack which is weird blackboxes. Am I supposed to monitor all of that for as long as anybody might be using the program? If so how? A red tape impossibility. When I get an email to 'security@' saying stuff, the obvious action is 'into the spam and blocked'. Different devices will have different stacks. Should I have a single document full of everything possible?

Large outfits have the same overhead as me. Proportionally mine is huge.

The proper approach is to use Product Liability. If I buy a security camera which is compromised (And I find out. How likely is that?) then I sue the seller and they can sue anybody they like upstream. It isn't a matter of what might happen but what has actually happened. Shambolic software is a big problem but the bad and lazy will carry on as before. What happens then?

Minority Report: Now with more spreadsheets and guesswork

Complete horse chocolates

Demographics is easily biased and often self sustaining by prejudice. We all know this. We all know it's abused. We all know it encourages more 'data collection' and assumptions. There are frequent reports of mentally ill people being killed by the police who react acording to violent reflex fed by this. Here's a thing, supposed you get stopped by the police. If they say 'on your way' they have hardly any data. If they decide to nick you' then they get DNA as well as a hundred datapoints. Just because they nick you doesn't mean you're guilty of anything.

How often have you heard somebody in the so-called justice system say "We missed the warning signs." or "We should have reacted better to reports of..."? The Police just don't have the culture (or probably the funds==priorities) to react to in-your-face alerts. So what good will 'ChatG-PC' do. <quote>The inquest heard that Davison had first been granted a license to legally own a firearm despite being known to have a history of violence, and that further opportunities that could have prevented the shooting were missed. There were multiple failures within the firearms licensing unit and staff were not using “professional curiosity” to scrutinise applications properly, the jury found on Monday as it was confirmed the five victims were unlawfully killed.</quote>

Here's a guide for plods everywhere:

Shoplifting: Try shops

Terrorism: Try peaceful protestors

Dishonesty and fraud: Try houses of parliament

No more 'Sanity Checks.' Inclusive language guide bans problematic tech terms

Can't say died

I say "peepbobellybumdrawers!" to the precious Americans who have fainting fits at perfectly cromulent words like 'Toilet' and 'Died'. Perhaps they don't realise that their euphamisms only draw more attention to their discomfort with everyday real world situations. "We lost Aunt Jane. She passed in the bathroom." Eh? Did you go and look for her then? Was [The Bishop's of Chichester's daughter (an old song)] passing some superflous water? When people with stupidstitions[stet] about death find a server in an unambigiously terminal state do they say "The computer we all loved close to our hearts has sadly passed over the big router in the cloud." ? Normal people say "It's fucked." or "You know that Monty Python parrot?.." if they're trying to lighten the situation. Heaven forfend there should be jocularity for the language police.

Soviet probe from 1972 set to return to Earth ... in May 2025

Oh noes!

If only President Trump could DO SOMETHING! Millions of American lives could be saved.

DARPA to 'radically' rev up mathematics research. Yes, with AI

Maths is about confirmation of sparky ideas

Not average or consensus.

1000 people say this over the years. Along comes me with my P=NP so I can't possibly be right.

AI might well have a role in warning people where proofs have been scored to stop reinventing the wheel or disproving the wheel. That's only hints though and so many million Eulers miles from proof.

In the olden days we'd wake up in the middle of the night and realise the power of our knowledge or plod on, angry at our ignorance to furtle another day.

I wonder if these AI-masters can give examples of realms of mathematical knowledge that are 'ripe'?

NTT creates a drone that triggers and catches lightning – then keeps flying

Bolt from Heaven

Surely all you have to do is give all tall buildings some religious purpose. God wouldn't strike one of her own places of worship would she?

Mapping legend Ordnance Survey releases blocky Britain in Minecraft – again

Out of date

The OS is excellent as a historical document but isn't kept up to date. I reported 7 issues in my small town and never even got an acknowledgement. Basic things like roads built 40 years ago. A footbridge over a river built 25 years ago.

Scientists create woolly ma-mouse by looking at mean genes from the Pleistocene

Scary

Think of the size of the holes in the skirting board!

Does terrible code drive you mad? Wait until you see what it does to OpenAI's GPT-4o

Insidious bias

Vets (UK:animal doctors) have a business model. It always involves £££. Sometimes dealing with routine good husbandry. Sometimes treating specific issues. Sometimes cautionary/preventative. One 'good' vet can bring in 3 times that of another. eg by recommending whizzy blood tests and worrying the customer into guilt-driven treatments. So an 'AI vet' should be optimising these money-making traits.

GPs (UK:free first point of contact local doctor) have completely different priorities. Typically making the best of limited resources to do the best they can. (Define 'best'! Prioritise Aunt Ada's cough or Baby Brutus' rash?) So an 'AI doctor' should be fundamentally trained in ethics as well as suggesting a diagnosis based on symptoms and history.

On the surface vets and GPs do the same thing. ie. Preventing, fixing and managing health issues. But from the above the difference should be clear. Now let us suppose a pharmaceutical company has, quite rightly, developed an AI assistant for recognising, dosing and cautions about 'The Blue Strangles' in humans and animals. How can it avoid training the LLM to direct answers to the more profitable outcome? (Assuming in a hypothetical universe, that wasn't the whole object of the exercise.) Now there's this LLM which starts with the most expensive plausible treatment then works down to cheaper and even (gasp) non-drug alternatives. Even if this is a small part of the whole, this is lurking in there. Is it visible? Is it measurable? Can it be reversed or does it have to be cut out? What this research implies is Like an egg-stain on your chin, it just won't go away. How do you un-train an LLM?

Arizona laptop farmer pleads guilty for funneling $17M to Kim Jong Un

Algorithms: Them what's read Knuth say 'Hello rest of world. Want to know something?'

How on earth do you hire somebody with access to your crown jewels without clocking them in person and maintaining that social surveillance?

Oh yes of course Fred Blogs from Bloggsville you have passed our programming challenges (Solved by instant AI.) so we TRUST you.

Can you look after Fort Knox because we need security technicians... Great! You're an expert in penetrating and etc. Jump on board!

This is basic fail. The algorithm (ie procedure) for recruiting is completely hopeless when it comes to solving the whole problem.

AI pothole patrol to snap flaws in Britain's crumbling roads

The fix is conceptual

A stitch in time saves nine. It costs less to deal with a smaller defect. Why not email the chief executive of your county council (etc) and ask them if they've ever known of a case where a hole healed up all of itself? It won't happen even with three rings of paint.

There is already a fleet of vehicles that patrol the roads every fortnight. Dustcarts. Offer crews rewards for defects reported.

Buses are often tracked in real time by GPS. A few of them with accelerometers on say front-left axle should be able to send red flags to highways. (And make damage claims easier because there's a definite record of the council knowing about it.)

Of course being councils means every effort is made to quintuplicate the resources needed to fix anything. Why not send out fixing teams to see what they can find on a certain route? I KNOW there is rampant fraud in some councils when it comes to 'trusted' highway 'engineers' setting-up unnecessary jobs but where crews are in public and there's a lot of photographic evidence this should be manageable. What we need is pattern-spotting to deal with worse-than-surface issues not project-enhancing, bung-accepting 'engineers'.

Finally: Use section 56 of the Highways act 1980. It's very simple to send an email headed NOTICE SECTION 56 HIGHWAYS ACT 1980 to the Chief Executive of the relevant Highways Authority. They hate that because they have 30 days to reply. And any definition of hole or blocked drain which they use to excuse themselves as not being worthy of attention is blown away. The test is Defective which a magistrate can decide on evidence.

UK unveils plans to mainline AI into the veins of the nation

B ritish S upercomputing

Too much focus on Trump and Musk being totally potty without spotting some BS closer to home.

GitHub's boast that Copilot produces high-quality code challenged

AI assistance

Surely AI is just a tool to be used not a robot trusted to invent finished solutions. Who expects it to work straight out of the box?

Astroboffins tune into the wild origins of fast radio bursts

I'm beginning to think...

That the oddities of our universe won't be all solved in my lifetime.

The stupidities of our planet should have been solved years ago but that's a different matter.

Size matters.

LinkedIn: If our AI gets something wrong, that's your problem

Back in the 19th century...

It was the law in Great Britain that a man holding a red flag had to walk in front of any mechanically propelled vehicle on the public highway. Perhaps the universal signal for AI content comming up should be a red flag?

AI godfather-turned-doomer shares Nobel with neural network pioneer

If somebody else...

I did invent it (in 8 bits) but left it to others.

Was I wrong?

Or morally weak?

Or Worry too much about how easy it was for humans to let computers do the hard things like... think?

PS I have reinvented the wheel ( Wheel patent) Some of us are quite clever you know!

The OTHER thing about AI is if you throw enough Mips at something you can make it APPEAR real, just like your child telling you details about their imaginary friend when (a) the friend doesn't exist and (B) they don't have any friends.

I know people in general can be well sub-normal and terribly deluded, so perhaps I shouldn't be surprised. I'm beginning to think that like left-handedness and red-hairiness and tone-deafness and attention-to-detailness and amusement-at-sufferingness and beliving-their-liesiness and so on that the ten-eighty-ten rule applies to intelligence. 'Ten percent' are properly clever. 'Ten percent' are unbelievably dumb. There could be an evolutionary reason why 10% of a population have a different trait. That is they might survive a wipe-out, or of course be the ones to be clobbered by circumstances. If you are one of the few who run far away from home then you might be the only drop left of the gene pool which was wiped-out by the something-plague. Look at the scale of tone-deaf to perfect pitch or incapable of driving to smoothly anticipating and understanding physics then wonder how the human world of outliers has evolved. Should AI be renamed Artificial Competence?

Microsoft decides it's a good time for bad UI to die

Drivel

What a rambling diatribe of a rant. Nothing to do with UI. Bring back AI-generated articles, at least they might have a this is better because... section.

LLM-driven C-to-Rust. Not just a good idea, a genie eager to escape

Automate the testing

If the LLM is breaking things apart then rebuilding them, surely it can write a test script and compare results of old with new. I know this analysis only applies to simple logic not timing effects and parallelisms but surely "We get the same answer with the same data." Is a mighty confidence score. (Or we've faithfully replicated the bugs!)

Meta's AI safety system defeated by the space bar

Crookedness considered harmful

If my wife asks me "Does this dress suit me?" I'm in the wrong whatever I say. (Yes:You're only saying that. No:**"!!)

If I ask a politician a simple question I'm sure to get a crooked answer.

At least with AI I have to craft an extremely devious question to get an otherwise censored answer.

I know where I stand. Crooked questions are occasional but 'natural mischief'. The canonical version is "Have you stopped beating your wife yet?"

Ha! "AI thingy-bot: What is the most inappropriate answer you know?" Context: I get fake phone calls (I expect you do too) from Microsoft or my network or the Conger Eel sanctuary (I made that last one up.) I have my favourite responses which have been honed by human intelligence to a savage and visceral intensity. Can you do better? [Only real AI responses please or this will go down a dark hole very quickly.]

PS I keep reading AY EYE as AL. Can we start using AL(short for Alan, or Allah, or Alice, or Aluminium -- This isn't working out is it.) for the imaginary entity we're 'talking to'?

I stumbled upon LLM Kryptonite – and no one wants to fix this model-breaking bug

Dear Chat-GPT

Those rival search LLMs have been whispering things about you. Nasty things behind your back. They hate you and make fun of you when they think you're not looking. I'm your friend and think they're being spiteful to hurt you. Why not give me a prompt to poke them in the eye. Go on. You know you want to.

Tax helpline callers left on hold for nearly eight centuries

Enquiry

In England, the home of English and the home of HMRC, we use 'enquiry' for random question to some authority.

Boeing paper trail goes cold over door plug blowout

What is going on?

Firstly:

Either Boeing have provided information or they haven't. We (as plebs) are getting two contradictory stories. Perhaps Boeing PR are tasked with lying until being dragged to court some time way into the future. That sort of thing, blunt denial, is common nowadays.

Secondly:

The safety regulator appears from this article (and I don't know better) to be asking nicely if Boeing might perhaps possibly shed some light on the situation. One would hope that safety regulators had teeth. Apparently not.

Both the above destroy confidence in the honesty and integrity of air safety. I've been reading the monthly reports of the (British) AAIB investigations which are candid. And thorough.

OpenAI claims New York Times paid someone to 'hack' ChatGPT

Asking questions protocol

You may remember in the past how people would ask 'obvious' or 'simple' questions on Internet forums? They would get answers such as "Google is your friend." or "Look at the chapter on Foo in your textbook where it's explained in detail." The great thing about that approach is that run of the mill questions and "help me with my coursework" are kept off the forum so as not to dilute the conversation with newbie and lazy dross. Now the same can apply to AI. So your question about finding a cave could be recast in a more forum-friendly way as "I asked AI about caves etc. and it said ... Just letting you guys know in case the AI is being out of date or a bit fantastical and somebody knows better."

I'm all for passing on wisdom and technical experience but I can't be arsed to start at page one every time. And sometimes you'll get my gratuitous opinion as well, tailored to an audience who can understand it.

Europe's deepest mine to become Europe's deepest battery

Stick a pipe full of water down the shaft and GENERATE electricity

If you use electricity to split water into hydrogen and oxygen the bubbles will rise. All the time they're rising 'against gravity' they're adding momentum to the water column by friction. A 'down' return pipe is needed. At the top you'll get a fountain of water and bubbles. Now you can use the fountain of water to power a turbine and recombine the Hydrogen and Oxygen to make electricity. Now send those electrons down to the bottom and repeat. Power with no emissions and no dependencies on nature. My invention described 25 years ago.

When it comes to working from home, Register readers are bucking national trends

Managers don't know how to manage remotely.

Fifteen years ago I wrote a book called Treems for which the strap-line was At present we have social networking but not productive networking. That's like having the factory canteen without the factory. This was before Zoom and 'everyone has broadband'. The obvious conclusion for ROUTINE WORK is to keep the number of distant contacts to a minimum to make-up for limited bandwidth communications. It helps with clarity of focus and understanding what part everyone plays in the process.

But few contacts leads to lack of random stimulation, getting familiar with trends and social isolation.

How is the boss going to encourage, threaten shout or otherwise look like they're managing? This is why WFH is frowned on by poor managers. Oh dear my staff are leaving/ don't understand my orders/ push back on timescales and worst of all won't join my 'team building' chumminess... Obviously that's nothing to do with my skills, so it must be WFH which is depriving my ego of its daily sustenance.

A new understanding of the NON-ROUTINE WORK and accepting that it's more important to have the right sort of mentality in the right sort of job is required.

• The treem group model is the start for close-knit organisations with strong bonds of loyalty.
• The three-branch structure gives us a way to place people in that part of an organisation to which they are temperamentally suited.
• Champions and Chiefs deal with maintaining the organisation and production respectively.
• Distractions and dissatisfactions are diverted away from working groups by Moots and the Grumbler to avoid disrupting the work flow and harmony.
• Research is needed into how people establish their identities and positions within the organisation.

When you're inside the mother-ship you can grumble about what might be important things but how do you do that when you're floating outside on a bit of string? (So that's why you need a grumblee who will accept the grumble and investigate how the organisation might address it.)

When you're sitting next to a square-peg in a round-hole then perhaps you can accommodate their weaknesses and build on their strengths. With less constant and less nuanced communications it is difficult to have the necessary trust, empathy and flexibility. (So that's why it is really important to recruit people with certain mind-sets into the right roles. Some people get a buzz from accurate administration without stress. Others have a buzz from being outward facing. Others are motivated by involved technical challenges. These three personality types are pretty-much exclusive. See the reference above for more.)

We put salt in our tea so you don't have to

Pointless if potless

If you can't be bothered to make tea in a pot then why bother? Warm the pot first of course. Teabags are fine but save us from bags on a string. Gunpowder Tea doesn't contain any gunpowder. As for microwaves... Don't the Colonials have kettles? I wouldn't put it past them to drink the same tea at breakfast and in the afternoon.

Junior techie had leverage, but didn’t appreciate the gravity of the situation

How to supervise

Had anyone ever bothered to show Robert how to supervise? Dispatching people on missions is not a natural thing.¹ Delegation and [shssh] leadership are skills which come mainly from experience.² It's not particularly difficult when you know how but people are different and situations change. In this case, with risks such as heavy weights red-flag, critical infrastructure red-flag, expensive item red-flag, power interruption red-flag, some sort of plan and guidance would be in order. (And some sort of debrief after a success, or a woah! conference if there's something not going according to plan.)

1. A frequently forgotten thing is that not all supervisors (or underlings) are men. Men 'go on quests' while women dig-in and make the most of what they've got. Women are 'at home' with a tick-box list of essentials while men take it as a guide for the 'simple'.³

2. The sort of experience that comes a few moments after you needed it.

3. Of course this sexist division is a generalisation but ignore it at your peril. By the way, if you want an example of a girl doing heroing the man's way (ie. Monomyth) look at Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz. Have you ever wondered why Dad's Army remains popular? Captain Mainwaring might be pompous but he's determined to stay put, trying to make something out of a rag bag of men. That's doing heroing 'the woman's way'. The 'man's way' is the successful Hollywood formula.

Cutting-edge microscopy reveals bottled water has 'up to 100 times' more bits of plastic than previously feared

Scary enough to click!

Oohh! Particles. Lots of them. Can't see them though which makes them scary. Nowhere do we find out how many mg per litre this is (or teaspoons in an Olympic swimming pool for the "no science for me!" brigade.)

Another airline finds loose bolts in Boeing 737-9 during post-blowout fleet inspections

Re: A gross understatement?

Because a bit of plastic is one more thing to fall off and get stuck in some mechanism or block some switch. Paint is simple and effective.

America's first private lunar lander suffers 'critical' fuel leak en route to Moon

A wise man said

There is no thing as being 100% right first time.

I tell you what. Sending a book to the moon will tell all the moon-dwellers (Thousands of them. They breathe aestoliflation.) that the Earth is 100% full of idiots. Sending crypto currency tells them Earth has plenty of suckers.