Posts by Trigonoceps occipitalis

Microsoft teases Copilot Vision, the AI sidekick that judges your tabs

It'll suggest or highlight things it THINKS WILL EARN MS MOST MONEY irrespective of what you want to know about.

FTFY

Another 'major cyber incident' at a UK hospital, outpatients asked to stay away

No, Put in the boot now.

AI hiring bias? Men with Anglo-Saxon names score lower in tech interviews

Re: You can't add arbitrary data to remove bias.

What about the battery and the staple?

T-Mobile US drags New Jersey borough to court over school cell tower permit denial

Re: TMobile is correct, but...

“Reasoning will never make a man correct an ill opinion, which by reasoning he never acquired.”

Jonathan Swift

“Our knowledge can only be finite, while our ignorance must necessarily be infinite.”

Karl Popper

"A total pig-headed unwillingness to look facts in the face will see us through."

Melchet (Stephen Fry) Black Adder IV

Microsoft sued by ParTec in Texas over AI supercomputer patents

Re: Two can play at this game!

I'll get round that with my patent for a "method for extracting monitory resources from other entities by registering overly broad patents that describe the most basic of computer functions and filing infringement suits there-of on a smart phone."

Ex-Space Shuttle boss corrects the record on Hubble upgrade mission

Re: We came that close to not knowing about O-rings.

You could always push them off their perch with a pike.

How to improve Chinese TV? Better censorship, says top tellie-maker

Re: Man I hate Autocorrect...

I fear that AI taking over my phone will make me wish for the return of Clippy.

Kia crashes CES with modular electric vehicle concept

"Quality, price and styling"

You got that in the wrong order - price, styling and quality.

Biggest Linux kernel release ever welcomes bcachefs file system, jettisons Itanium

It's a real teat to spot the puns.

New York Times sues OpenAI, Microsoft over 'millions of articles' used to train ChatGPT

Re: If it's free on the Internet

I was searching the dark web transplant organ sites. I'm getting a bit forgetful and think I need a new brain. I found that El Reg commentard brains were notably expensive.

I asked the supplier why, expecting a pitch based on how intelligent etc the previous owner had been. No, "Never been used mate."

30 years and still sunbathing: SOHO probe continues work as a space weatherman

The greatest test of an engineer is not his technical ingenuity but his ability to persuade those in power who do not want to be persuaded and convince those for whom the evidence of their own eyes is anything but convincing.

Extract from "Plain Words" in The Engineer 2nd October 1959

Right-to-repair fight going national as FTC asked to lay down the law

Re: " they have a clear incentive to keep iPhones working"

@ DS999

Belief, I’m afraid, is the shore on which the waves of reason break and die.

Jeremy Clarkson (The Times 31 Jan 21)

Adobe sells fake AI-generated Israel-Hamas war images – then the news ran them as real

Re: Metadata... yea, that'll solve the problem

I keep my metadata at the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying beware of the leopard.

From Apollo to Space Shuttle, Thomas K Mattingly's stellar journey ends at 87

Obligatory

https://xkcd.com/893/

Edit: Uncle Slacky beat me by two minutes. :-(

Judge bins AI copyright lawsuit against DeviantArt, Midjourney – Stability still in the mix

Re: I do feel sorry for them

What was the result of the Lotus "Look and Feel" law suit?

Tesla swerves liability in Autopilot death lawsuit

Self Drive

About a Year ago I collected my new car. It had several "driver assist" enhancements.

The lane keeping warning is just that, a warning (steering wheel shakes and becomes stiff to turn). It will keep the car in the lane if it is a very gentle curve but I have not tested it too rigorously: one I am chicken; two it throws a hissy fit if I don't use the steering.

The "automatic cruise control" will maintain speed, up to the cars idea of the speed limit*, and react to the speed of the car in front. This system is more "self driving" but I have never, for the reason stated first above, given it full control when I think the closing speed could be too great.

The crucial thing is that there is no claim made about self driving in any way. You know the thing, BIG BOLD WRITING IN RED etc.

Rarely is the self driving aspect of use because I don't trust it. It has convinced me that I was always right to be sceptical of Teslar's Autopilot.

* Mostly correct but sometimes a dangerous thing - dropping from 70 to 30 mph for no apparent reason. You get shouted at by other drivers.

Trademark fight: Brit biz Threads has a teeny tiny problem with Meta's Threads

Threads

So old hat, "Threadz" - now that is a good name.

NASA and Boeing try to chase the contrail clouds away

Re: Pollution

Stuff C3PO - Private James Frazer

$350B DoD nuke makeover efforts lack oversight, say inspectors

Re: I just love it when careerists are in charge of life and death.

Mutually assured destruction (MAD)

A Fairy Swordfish carrying a couple of (well separated) sub critical lumps of Uranium is not "assured". Spend the money, or at least most of it, on a credible programme and convince the "other team" it will not be worth kicking off. Money well spent, money necessarily spent.

King Charles III signs off on UK Online Safety Act, with unenforceable spying clause

Re: Safe

@MyffyW

" ... I would prefer to avoid hyperbole and stick to the facts."

You're not from around here, are you?

Largest local government body in Europe goes under amid Oracle disaster

Equal Pay

I think this court action has been bumbling along for somewhere in the region of a decade. Why no mitigating savings?

Answering my own question, I suppose it is more sensible for the council to suddenly say we're broke and stick it to the Tories.

Was it Birmingham ten years ago or is my memory wrong?

Attackers accessed UK military data through high-security fencing firm's Windows 7 rig

"We do not believe that any classified documents were stored ... "

Back in the day, when I was responsible for classified information, there was the concept of bulk data. Just because an individual item of data was in itself unclassified did not mean that a complete table of the information was also unclassified.

and a CTO with the bare minimum of knowledge of IT

and a CTO with any knowledge of IT and unwilling to spend the money in any case.

FTFY

ArcaOS 5.1 gives vintage OS/2 a UEFI facelift for the 21st century

Re: Use case?

I won a copy of OS/2 in a mag competition in 1996. I had to upgrade to 4 MB RAM. Cost me £120 (now £240), about five times the cost of the software as I remember. The real killer was having to buy all the applications again.

I am older and wiser and now know that FOSS rules!

Northern Irish cops release 2 men after Terrorism Act arrests linked to data breach

Re: PSNI overly optimistic

The French are responsible for everyone's' problems since forever.

FTFY

The information was released in error. According to the UK papers someone downloaded it, printed it and stuck it to an outside, public wall. An error is an error and not necessarily criminal - perm any one of sacking, retraining or learning lessons. It is the actions of others after the event that is potentially criminal.

IANAL, but mens rea may not be required for a crime to be committed in cases of terrorism or misuse of data.

So you want to save energy? Ditch web apps and go native, boffins say

Re: Privacy

If The Register had a web ap it would have to be The Best. The commentariat would be all over it and 30 seconds after it was released there would be the first report "El Reg Slurper" if that is the case. Know your user!

When a South American country launched a radio ham satellite there was a theory that it was cover for some sort of spy satellite. I can think of nothing more likely to be blown than hookey radiation purporting to be for the benefit of amateur radio enthusiasts.

Out with Tech Services 3 and in with Tech Services 4 – UK govt's £12B shopping spree

Usual Suspects

I don't think it is beyond the wit of El Reg readers to make out a list of many of the "winners" of the tender. Has any member of the great comentariat out there anything good to say about these usual suspects. There must be some successes (other than making loads of undeserved profit) if they keep winning?

Serious question. It is quite depressing.

2023 World Solar Challenge entrant welcomes clouds – not the fluffy white ones

Copy of Previous Post - Nine upvote last time.

If you want to go to the Australian Outback drive a Land Rover - if you want to come back drive a Toyota!

Apple opens annual applications for free hackable iPhones

specially-built hardware variant of iPhone 14 Pro

"software variant" surely?

No, you are not being called "Shirley".

Samsung teases 1TB DDR5 modules with launch of 32Gb die

Re: ERNIE

In the good old says (now?) ERNIE generated winning numbers. The numbers were then passed to another machine to check that there were valid premium bonds with a winning number. Thus many ERNIE numbers were discarded as non-winning because the bonds never existed, didn't qualify by time or had been encashed.

Is this important? Only for historical reasons. One machine, two machines, three dice, all I want is the BIG prize!

Right to repair advocates have a new opponent: Scientologists

Re: Expose

“You don't get rich writing science fiction. If you want to get rich, you start a religion.”

L Ron Hubbard

NASA mistakenly severs communication to Voyager 2

Re: Variation

String! You were lucky. I had to hunt and kill 10 eland and tie their sinews together. Still I did have a can at both ends.

NASA's DART kicked up swarm of 37 boulders after Dimorphos asteroid crash

Re: Meanwhile

to go boulderly!

Japan's ubiquitous convenience stores now serving up privacy breaches

Re: Something something pun about Horizon

"If courts are unable to determine sworn bullshit from sworn fact, you cannot have a fair trial."

That is the job of the jury. It is the job of the barristers, expert witnesses and the judge to make this as easy as possible for them. Of course, the expert witness lying like a broken watch is not necessarily an aid to the process.

Boffins claim to create the world's first wooden transistor

I don't beleaf it!

US military spends weekend shooting down Useless Floating Objects

Re: Where did they launch it from?

Was the small suspended car sized object a Lotus 7?

Chinese surveillance balloon over US causes fearful gasbagging

Re: Why not shoot it down ?

When Garry Powers was shot down the USA learned a lot about the USSR's air defence capabilities (perhaps not the primary mission). The balloon may have been a lure to draw out the high level capabilities of the USA missile system.

Hi, Pakistan? You do know anyone can edit Wikipedia, right? You don't have to ask

Re: >>convince other editors<<

Many years ago a computer magazine (PC Pro?) experimented with editing Wikipedia. They made three edits. The first was the equivalent of changing Trump to the Democrat Party, this was corrected within minutes. The second change, not so current or divisive a subject, lasted a day or two. The final change was to Buzz Aldrin's page. His date of birth was left unchanged but the day was changed from Wednesday to Thursday (or a similar slip) and this was still published several months on.

The result was not altogether surprising. There was less access and the Internet was still a frontier in a good way - motives were assumed to be good and the Aldrin change was quite subtle.

Bankruptcy probe: Celsius cheated investors 'from the start'

Re: I'm Shocked!

My timbers are shivering as I type.

200MP smartphone and first premium PC spearhead Samsung's pro push

Re: "a 16-inch 2880 x 1880 screen"

I'll stick with my imp and Iconograph.

Bringing cakes into the office is killing your colleagues, says UK food watchdog boss

Re: What a load of cobblers - Whiskey Cobbler

Ingredients

3 ounces whiskey

1/2 to 1 ounce simple syrup, to taste

1 to 2 ounces club soda, to taste

Orange slice, lemon slice, or seasonal fruits, for garnish

Cherry, for garnish

What's not to like?

Midjourney, DeviantArt face lawsuit over AI-made art

Re: I hope they have a case

As I understand the law (IANAL etc.) the photographing of an out of copyright painting is controlled by the premises. The photograph has its own copyright but who holds it depends upon the agreement made. I don't know the legal position of a surreptitiously taken photograph. There is a copyright but it may have been ceded to the gallery under the general conditions of entry.

Re: I hope they have a case

Sun Flowers may be out of copyright but was the photograph that was scraped also in the public domain?

Chinese researchers' claimed quantum encryption crack looks unlikely

Chinese make a claim; Americans say they're full of it.

Colour me shocked while the American government trows away their five dollar wrench and drugs.

FTFY

Oh, no: The electric cars at CES are getting all emotional

Re: "buttons replaced with touchscreens"

In terms of road safety this is a retrograde step. It is compounded by the sheer incompetence of the touch screen user interface. The tenth circle of hell is too good for the "engineers" who design these abominations.

Adobe Says:

The UI design principals are:

Place users in control of the interface

Make it comfortable to interact with a product

Reduce cognitive load

Make user interfaces consistent

AI conference and NYC's educators ban papers done by ChatGPT

MS Got There First

"It look like you are writing a conference paper.

Would you like help?"

RIP Clippy, please, forever, eternity.