Posts by bernmeister

Matrix is quietly becoming the chat layer for governments chasing digital sovereignty

Re: I keep reading that...

Criminals are also using their brains to plan crimes. Rerhaps brain function should be restricted.

Marching orders delayed: Veterans' Digital ID off to a slow start

Tried it, didnt work.

This digital ID thing is a bit flakey at the least. I tried to renew my driving licence recently and having gone through all the hoops and hurdles of the GOV.UK One Login app used to get to the DVLA section something stalled with the response "inadequte security information". I tried a few times, sent a message off to the right people and was told that the "inadequte security information".was at their end. I have had bank accounts, building society accounts, NHS, tax etc for decades but for some reason that was not enough. They sent me a link for the old DVLA online application form. This link was not visible on the new site. The link worked, the old form worked and a new licence arrived by post on time. I suspect this may happen with other GOV.UK One Logins.

I complained and the response was that security checking was done by a third party and GOV.UK is not responsible for it.

iProov performs the "liveness" check (ensuring you are a real person) and "likeness" check (matching your selfie to your ID document).

iProov uses subcontractors Veriff and Inverid to assist with these checks.

Ther is probably more to it than that.

Cop cops it after Copilot cops out: West Midlands police chief quits over AI hallucination

I asked Google AI

I asked Google AI to prove that it was not jusr a glorified index. It boasted that it was distinct from an index because it could fill in missing information (hallucinate)

Nothing to declare at border control except a Windows 7 certificate error

Be Sensible

If a machine is not connected to the internet and has no Wi-Fi connection there are few security concerns. If it works well dont replace it. I have seen stand alone point of sale (POS) systems running Windows 7 and they work well. They were very expensive new and very expensive to replace. Even upgrading the OS would be pointless. Most of the POS peripherals dont even have drivers for W10.

UK's long-delayed Emergency Services Network eyes satellites for help

Obsolete

Some components for the Airwave Tetra system became obsolete by the time it was installed. Keeping it going was a major effort. Will any replacement system fare better?

AI faces closing time at the cash buffet

Re: Pointless

Customer service chatbots at the least save the bother of reading product descriptions, instruction manuals and terms and conditions. Is that convenience really worth it?

GOV.UK to unleash AI chatbot on confused citizens

The response to that question will be "Sorry, I dont have information on that subject".

Throttled

A sensible way to limit the chatbots hallucinations is to ensure that it only quotes from the published gov information. Basically just an automated index. Any other interpretation is just hallucination.

The future of long-term data storage is clear and will last 14 billion years

Re: "I gave it 120%"

The statement "allowing data to be encoded in five dimensional space" has me puzzled. I dont beleive it exists.

Space-power startup claims it can beam energy to solar farms

Why?

Now here is a thought. Rather than place systems in orbit to catch the sunlight at night why not place a set of interconnected solar farms at intervals around the surface.of the globe? Cost and politics may be a factor but it would need no special technology.

Electric cars no more likely to flatten you than the noisy ones, study finds

The question of what is the effect of extra weight is easily calculated. I used Google AI to do the calculation. The results are surprising and tie up with the statistics.

How much energy is transferred to a 100kg mass when struck by a 2000kg mass traveling at 30km/h? The amount of energy transferred to the 100 kg mass, assuming a perfectly elastic collision, is approximately 12,598 J (Joules).

How much energy is transferred to a 100kg mass when struck by a 1000kg mass traveling at 30km/h?Assuming the 100kg mass is initially at rest and the collision is perfectly elastic, approximately 11478.42 J (or 11.5 kJ) of energy is transferred to the 100kg mass.

Even being by a ten ton truck is only a bit worse. The energy transferred to the 100kg mass is approximately 13615.22 J.

An elastic collision is one in which the objects after impact become stuck together and move with a common velocity. Thats a bad pedestrian crash. In all three cases the collision is probably fatal. Crumple zones help reduce the damage.

My apologies for using Google AI for every calculation.

Lawyer's 6-year-old son uses AI to build copyright infringement generator

Its no big deal

You dont need AI to infringe copyright. Anybody with just pencil and paper can do this. Publish and you are damned. Just paint the golden arches on your store front and see what happens.

Digital ID is now less about illegal working, more about rummaging through drawers

Re: It’s about tax

I needed to replace a driving licence online. The multiple "prove your ID" loops were endless. I contacted GOV.UK One describing the problem and was told there was insufficient information held to confirm my ID. I have held many UK passports. Five in row. I have current bank accounts dating back decades but the explanation was that the ID verification was done by a third party who did not have enough data. I was eventually given a link to the old DVLA online lycence form, that worked OK. I have a very bad feeling about these new online services.

It wont work well for some.

This digital ID is linked with GOV.UK One Login. Have a go at setting up your ID and using it on a GOV.UK site. I needed to replace a driving licence online. The multiple "prove your ID" loops were endless. I contacted GOV.UK describing the problem and was told there was insufficient information held to confirm my ID. I have held many UK passports. Five in row. Had bank accounts dating back decades but the explanation was that the ID verification was done by a third party who did not have enough data. I was eventually given a link to the old DVLA online lycence form,

We're all going to be paying AI's Godzilla-sized power bills

Re: Cheer up.

Meanwhile, let them eat cake.

Britain jumps into bed with Palantir in £1.5B defense pact

Everybody (most) are off topic.

I have read many comments and dont see much to do with "The UK has struck a defense deal with US spy-tech biz Palantir".

No suds for you! Asahi brewery attack leaves Japanese drinkers dry

There is a pattern here

Attacks on the NHS, car manufacturers, supermarkets, brewers etc suggest that these attacks are becomong more focused. What next? Critical government systems, defence systems all are vulnerable. I have this dream of a hack that deposits millions into the bank accounts of every person in the world. Wont happen, hackers are not that nice.

Windows Security Update turns smooth NDI streams into jittery messes

Streaming stuttering

Can they make it worse? I used to get perfect streaming on W8 but have never worked why W10 gives ptoble,

Dwarf planet Ceres may have been habitable - for microbes - a couple of billion years back

Nutrients

Despite having nutrients Ceres may be as sterile as an unopened tin of beens.

Re: "LGMs – little green microbes"

A complex situation. Who will do the FenchFries?

Re: "LGMs – little green microbes"

Your right there. Apparently sterilzed sealed comtainers full of sterilized nutrients can be left for a very long time without showing any signs of life. Nicolas Appert's and Louis Pasteur foumd this out a long time ago. If the planet Earth was completly sterilized it would stay like until seeded by life from outside.

Nuclear reactors smaller than a semi truck to be tested in Idaho

You should have how how bad the other bloke did.

I have seen those videos. The train was completely demolished but the waste container was unscathed with just a few scratches(big ones).

Microsoft admits it 'cannot guarantee' data sovereignty

Re: Encryption

Perhaps Morse code would be OK. -.. --- -. - / -... --- - .... . .-. / .. -. - . .-. -.-. . .--. - .. -. --. / -- .

Encryption

Perhaps people should dig out their Enigma or Lorenz software. If you are really worried about data interception put some effort into making it secure.

Quantum code breaking? You'd get further with an 8-bit computer, an abacus, and a dog

Re: Quantum computing and Fusion is twenty years away...

The same for many other things, sometimes the time scales are even shorter. Li-ion battery performance increases are a good example. The optimism of some researchers seems to be boundless. I cant even spell "optimism" without using a spell checker.

Puzzled

I have searched for the purpose of the abacus and dog but could not find it. I understand the VIC-20 bit and have used it myself for simple code cracking.

Financial 'stretch' for UK to join Europe's Starlink rival, says minister

Why?

Why would the UK need an EU version of Starlink or even Starlink itself? Openreach and Virgin Media provision of fibre internet and others 5G internet is good . Am I missing something?

Cold without the compressor: Boffins build better ice box

Re: Room temperature?

Summer time temperatures at, Laurel, Maryland location can reach 27C all day during the summer. Perhaps their lab has no air conditioning or is a Portacabin in the grounds. Poor guys, they must sweat a lot during the summer, hence their preoccupation with cooling devices.

Brit space sector struggles to compete with £90K graduate banking salaries

Choice

Anybody who chooses banking over maths, physics, and engineering is showing a disinterest in the subject. People working in the sciences do so out of interest not financial gain.

Researchers claim spoof-proof random number generator breakthrough

Re: Why is this better?

The randomness you are describing is impressive but is well known. In order to publish, novel ways of doing things need to be found. People will carry on inventing new ways of generating random numbers. I was going to say forever or until the cows come home but could not find a suitable epithet.

Re: Jury selection

That approach works in other areas as well. On an Air India flight I was offered a free upgrade to business class because I was so well dressed.

Peep show: 40K IoT cameras worldwide stream secrets to anyone with a browser

Re: No Mention Of.....

2,718,424 cameras are currently visible on Shodan. Username and password were needed for the ones I saw. Some will have backdoors known only by a select few.

Wanted: IT manager for UK government agency – £60k

Dont forget to add supplements

Dont forget to add South East weighting of £6,000 ps and relocation allowance. There may be a few others I have not mentioned. I used to work for the civil service and the allowances I received were generous

The UK wants you to sign up for £1B cyber defense force

The wrong trousers Grommet

They are going to recruit the wrong people. I did a GCHQ recruitment interveiw and the test revolved around scheduling a bus timetable. My ability to code and decode had no impact. I went all the way to Cheltenham and back paid by the government and felt that I was not the one that lost out.

Boffins warn that AI paper mills are swamping science with garbage studies

Garbage everywhere.

AI is not just swamping science with garbage studies but it is filling the internet with with rubbish articles. Lots of repetition and no solid information are surely the hallmark of AI articles.

Pentagon declares war on 'outdated' software buying, opens fire on open source

Re: There are three urgent priorities here.

Its back to the Magic Sate then. An all American invention. I am sure Trump would approve of it.

Boeing 787 radio software safety fix didn't work, says Qatar

Re: software in a radio ?

My thoughts as well. But these days the fad is that everything has to be done with software. No doubt the VHF receiver is based on SDR and the only traditional part of it is the final audio to the pilots ears. Am I being cynical? Perhaps others have more precise build information.

What to do once your Surface Hub v1 becomes an 84-inch, $22K paperweight

its not at the end of life.

Users can "disable the Surface Hub’s internal PC and use an external computer with their 84” or 55” Surface Hub". Thats from Microsoft. There are probably many ways of using this beast for serious applications.

European Gaia mapping satellite is retired but proves very tough to kill

Re: -.. --- -. .----. - / .--. .- -. .. -.-.

Dont forget to transmit the station ID, -.. . --. .- .. .-

The passive aggression of connecting USB to PS/2

RS232

Those were the days. If the mouse worked your RS232 port was OK. I kept an RS232 mouse handy just to test the port.

Governments can't seem to stop asking for secret backdoors

ignoranuses

The spelling may well have been deliberate. Think about it.

Dark mode might be burning more juice than you think

Re: My pet peve

Name them and shame them. Tried for ages to get Photoshop Elements 10 out of dark mode. It turned that was all it did.

How much is saved.

I have yet to see any analysis of the power saved by running dark screen with an OLED display. Interestingly, with dark screens text can easier to read by people with vision defects such as partial cataracts.

ESA's Integral gamma-ray gazer gasps its last

Long Life

Space craft exceeding their design life seems to be a thing. Voyager 1, OSCAR-7 to name a few.

Payday from hell as several British banks report major outages

Random

There are a lot of high street shops out of action today due to power outages, but next door is operating. Is this some hack into the power distrubution system. "Lets disable a phase and see what happens".

If you dip your toes into immersion cooling, watch out for dielectric liquid sharks

Brilliant Idea.

Dielectric cooling in its simplest form is just dumping all your heat producing electronics in a bath of dielectric fluid and circulating the boiled off vapour through a heat exchanger and returning it to the system.Thats where the simple bit stops. Amazingly many electronic components remain undamaged when immersed in hot dielectric fluid and function well. Its usually obvious what wont survive but you get the odd surprise. Modifying stuff to remove fans and heatsink paste is obvious but every now and then a component will crop up with a non-compatible encapsulation. Mainly capacitors. Helium filled sealed hard drives are OK but older types are a no go.

The red color of Mars might have an earlier, wetter origin

Earlier work

There is little new here. Previous studies have come up with similar ideas. https://doi.org/10.1002/2016JE005222. However, being subject to near vacuum for billions of years Martian Ferrihydrite (If any really exists on Mars),willl contain much less H2O than terrestrial Ferrihydrite.

UK government insiders say AI datacenters may be a pricey white elephant

Three Wrongs

"fusion can power our AI ambitions," the government said at the time." Three wrongs dont make a right. I am not a techno-skeptic but I dont think government, AI and fusion should all be in the same sentence.

US datacenters in for shock as Canada mulls cutting the juice over Trump tariffs

Not connected.

"The electrical power grid that powers Northern America is not a single grid, but is instead divided into multiple wide area synchronous grids."[Wikipedia) So they can do flexible things with their energy supplies. Is that good or bad?

Sri Lanka goes bananas after monkey unplugs nation

Fix it

Inthe UK we call them trainees.