Posts by jfm

How the famed USENIX Security conf is managing a flood of papers in the AI era

Re: Show your work.

There are companies that provide grammar-and-phrasing cleanup for authors whose first language isn't English. I was a mechanical Turk for one of them for a while, during which they introduced a first-round AI edit. I dealt with several papers where the AI had changed, and in many cases completely reversed, the meaning of sentences and whole paragraphs and my first job was to restore the original meaning before phrasing it in more natural academic English (to the extent that there's anything natural about academic English).

Lessons from the VMwars – nothing virtual about the Broadcom vs Tesco slugfest

It depends on the settlement offer. Unless things have changed, if you're offered a settlement, decline it, and the court awards less than the settlement amount, you become liable for both sides' costs. I suspect Broadcom will run up a lot of costs and offer a lot of money, in which case Tesco might have to do some hard thinking.

Rights groups brand Home Office's AI age guesser for asylum-seekers as biased and inaccurate

Re: "the age-gated Interwebs"

He certainly /should/ change his name. Someone ought to check Keir Hardie's grave for spinning noises.

A modest proposal: Reformat everything to make documents more palatable to AI

Re: How about No

So you want documents to become RFC3514-compatible?

Google Cloud suspended major customer Railway.com without cause, causing outage

Re: Google took out Unisuper infrastructure in 2024

Once heard someone being pulled up for something similar and replying, "I have a degree in English — that means I'm allowed to change the language", to which the reply was, "Really? Wow. That makes my Physics degree way more useful than I thought".

Google gives Android users a way to install unverified apps if they prove they really, really want to

Do it once…

It's a one-off process. I for one don't intend to wait 24 hours the first time I want to install something. This workaround is going to be released weeks before the restrictions are enforced, so I shall plan ahead,, set the option, wait 24 hours, and confirm it knowing that when I do install software it'll Just Work.

Not sure why the comments are such a muppet show

Systemd daddy quits Microsoft to prove Linux can be trusted

This commit, titled "Drop code for FreeBSD support", would appear to suggest there's some truth in the statement.

ATM maintenance tech broke the bank by forgetting to return a key

Re: My wife was a keyholder at a bank branch

Blue lights also aren't a free pass (in UK) unless the rules have changed since I emigrated — they indicate to other road users that you're an emergency vehicle and might be breaking the rules, but there've been several instances of fire engines being ticketed by Plod for running red lights with their blues and twos going.

Techie turned the tables on office bullies with remote access rumble

Re: Funniest thing I remember seeing

> All I remember afterwards is the techs telling everyone how they wouldn't be doing that again

Presumably in slightly quavering voices, with the facial expressions of hostages reading a prepared statement about how well their captives are treating them…

Senators propose to let users sue tech giants for harmful algos

<q>The deal is companies publish user content with NO editing or changes or control and Section 230 protects them.</q>

Not true. §230(c) says

(1) Treatment of publisher or speaker

No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.

and §230(c)(2), which is a bit wordier, confirms that moderation of posts still doesn't create civil liability.

It was passed in response to Stratton Oakmont v Prodigy, in which a court found Prodigy, who ran a bulletin board, were liable for third-party content because they moderated posts, and Cubby v CompuServe, in which CompuServe were found not liable for third-party content because they made no attempt to moderate.

Without it the Internet would be very different; if it were revoked or weakened, anyone who currently allows comments, from X to the smallest website, would have two options: shut down their comments section, or leave everything up with no attempt to moderate comments.

AI gone rogue: Models may try to stop people from shutting them down, Google warns

Re: The Axe

A few tons of plastic explosive? The extreme prejudice won't be to the hardware — more like the grid square.

Court cancels FTC click-to-cancel rule on a technicality

Re: 'oversight, regulation & protection' ... what do you need those for ? ... said NO-ONE !!!

'Multiple exclamation marks,' he went on, shaking his head, 'are a sure sign of a diseased mind.'

Techie exposed giant tax grab, maybe made government change the rules

Re: Sleuthing [1]

I learned to play rugby (at the tender age of 9) from a Welshman who acknowledged two sporting codes: "football" (short for rugby football), and "association".

User demanded a 'wireless' computer and was outraged when its battery died

Why do they do this? I'm in South Africa and at least two of my children (I have 5 teenagers — blended family) refer to a USB cable as a phone charger. I'm still trying to establish what they think the box it plugs into at the wall end is called.

How do you explain what magnetic fields do to monitors to people wearing bowling shoes?

Re: I'll never forget this one

Some time during the mid- to late-nineties I suggested to a group of women who were concerned about radon emissions from granite (I can only assume there'd been an article on the matter in the Grauniad) that they might find an answer on the Web.

"Oh," said one of them. "Do you have an Internet?"

I don't have to save my work, it's in The Cloud. But Microsoft really must fix this files issue

Also known as PICNIC (Problem In Chair, Not In Computer), or for network stuff, a Layer 8 problem.

GNOME 48 beta is another nail in X11's coffin

Re: No Thanks

Seen more years ago than I care to remember, in alt. folklore.computers (credited to gregm):

Please feel free to draw and quarter Emacs disciples, while the chosen of Emacs drench the streets with the blood of vi users.

Devs sent into security panic by 'feature that was helpful … until it wasn't'

Re: I remember the time...

I thought this was established years ago (by Simon Slavin, I believe):

Microsoft is a cross between The Borg and the Ferengi. Unfortunately they use Borg to do their marketing and Ferengi to do their programming.

Tech support world record? 8.5 seconds from seeing to fixing

I'm sure it's been said many times before but in South Africa we make it harder for people to abuse sockets.

Our standard plug socket is three pins in a triangle, not unlike the British plugs but with round pins (very old British 15-amp standard).

Plugs for protected circuits have a red casing, and the top of the earth pin cut away to give a flat horizontal surface on top. Red sockets have the earth socket shaped to match, so white plugs simply don't fit.

Re: Doh..

I was in a workshop yesterday (having my car's aircon regassed). The woman in the next bay was attempting to have her aircon repaired, and the mechanic was having some trouble getting to the compressor, for which he had to remove the bumper.

This proved impossible, because after a recent accident, her insurers' approved mechanic had done, and billed the insurance for, a full repair. They'd increased their profit a bit by not replacing the clips and mountings that held the bumper on, instead gluing it to the wing.

Techie took five minutes to fix problem Adobe and Microsoft couldn't solve in two weeks

TWIAVBP. I have switched sockets everywhere in my house (compliant with national standards) and I'm 12,000km from the UK.

Hudson Rock yanks report fingering Snowflake employee creds snafu for mega-leak

It's a dreadful headline. This is ElReg, not Variety: too-clever headlines, too many nouns in a row, too many ambiguities. Who are these Hudson Rock yanks, and why are they fingering people and then reporting it?

I told Halle Berry where to go during a programming gig in LA

Re: I can commiserate with Matty.

I had a similar experience. I (then sysadmin) was travelling with my Windows support guy, Q, to our offices in Johannesburg and Pretoria. Halfway between was a very nice hotel whose executive chef was a friend of Q's. The hotel was empty (it was the off season) so we were comped our rooms for the night, and ate well with the chef and staff.

It made up for a previous trip where the office had booked my travel and accommodation. I caught the first flight out of Durban, picked up a hire car in Pretoria and drove straight to the office. After a hard day's work I found my hotel, checked in, and asked where to find the bar. "This is an Islamic hotel, sir".

Now picture the traditional hotel breakfast buffet but entirely untroubled by pig… My breakfast before a drive to Johannesburg was toast, an egg, fishfingers, and chicken curry.

Some scientists can't stop using AI to write research papers

Re: Creation or translation?

Which is why there are English-improving services (generally using suitably-qualified piecework editors). Some of these do an initial (pre-human eyes) edit to try and tidy up the English; some editors (I hear) find that their own first pass involves correcting it, including places where the pre-edit has entirely changed the meaning. (I'm being a little cagey because this part of the academic publishing process is often done on the quiet even though it's entirely respectable).

Windows 95 support chap skipped a step and sent user into Micro-hell

Re: Bogus

Bit late to this but ln(1) exists to create hard links (by default, or symlinks with the -s flag) on UNIX-like systems, so unless I'm misunderstanding you, "no OS" is a bit sweeping.

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

No it isn't. Many people assume the autistic spectrum is from high-functioning to low-functioning, but that would be a continuum —shades of grey.

there are many areas in which people can diverge from neurotypical: think of each one as a colour of the rainbow, and of each person with autism as having their own colour palette. THAT'S the spectrum.

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

Re: Perhaps Ofcom will take inspiration from the Home Office

> one wonders how there's any time left for effective governance…

There clearly isn't any, based on the performance of this government.

Owner of 'magic spreadsheet' tried to stay in the Lotus position until forced to Excel

> phrases involving piss-ups and breweries don't fully convey how useless this guy was.

Perhaps you want the rather cruder Army version: Couldn't organise a fuck-up in a brothel.

Uptime guarantees don't apply when you turn a machine off, then on again, to 'fix' it

Re: Got to love 5x9's uptime

I've always found that more useful in the form "pi megaseconds is a millicentury" (31.4 Ms in a year, which is within 5% of the actual value), and for quick estimations, 30 megaseconds—and knock off as many zeros as there are 9s in the reliability.

Errors logged as 'nut loose on the keyboard' were – ahem – not a hardware problem

Re: Aaaaargh!

I used to see that in recruiter spam on technical mailing lists when I first moved to South Africa (may still happen, I don't know):

"Hi. I'm looking for a resource with the following skills…"

Sick of smudges on your car's enormo touchscreen? GM patents potential cure

I'm convinced Google's voice recognition (and indeed Assistant) are an elaborate but not especially funny practical joke. I'm a British migrant to South Africa, living in Cape Town. In recent weeks I've asked my phone to navigate to a place about ten minutes' drive away. Imagine my surprise when the response was "the fastest route is via the Trans-Saharan Highway. Your journey will take approximately 7 days and 14 hours" (it wanted to take me to somewhere in Britain).

A few days later, I said "Call Jeannie" (my ex-wife, in my Contacts so that I can discuss childcare arrangements). Without any attempt to check whether it had guessed right before dialling, or even give me a list of possible matches , it out me through to La Trini, a restaurant in Barcelona, Spain (I have never visited the restaurant, the city, or indeed the country). This would indeed have involved a six and a half day journey including a section of the Trans-Sahara Highway, but a two-week round trip drive for dinner seemed a bit excessive…

It's been 230 years since British pirates robbed the US of the metric system

Re: Missed opportunity

This is why recipes in some of my older cookbooks have two sets of measurements, metric and imperial, and you're warned not to mix them, because the conversion involves both rounding and adjusting to make the recipe easier to use either way. For example the recommended dry-weight conversions in one book are 1 oz : 25 g; 2 oz : 50 g; 4 oz : 100 g; 8 oz : 225 g; 12 oz : 350 g; 1 lb : 450 g.

Red Cross seeks digital equivalent of its emblems to mark some tech as off-limits in war

Red Cross protection of tech assets

So, a mechanism similar to RFC 3514, but with the opposite intent? It could be called the do-no-evil bit.

Linus Torvalds admits to 'self-inflicted damage' with -Werror as Linux 5.15 rc1 debuts

Again: it's an unsigned integer. The test (i >= 0) is always true. In fact I'd expect the compiler to optimise it away; and I can see why it would also warn that it doesn't make sense.

Surely subtracting 1 from an unsigned integer with value zero results in a number well in excess of the upper bound—or am I missing something obvious?

FBI deletes web shells from hundreds of compromised Microsoft Exchange servers before alerting admins

Re: Fore!

The US Attorney for South Texas—the senior lawyer for the federal government in the South Texas federal court district. Acting in that role, granted, but hardly a random South Texas lawyer.

Oh sure, we'll just make a tiny little change in every source file without letting anyone know. What could go wrong?

Re: Reply all

I've always liked the response by the Cleveland Browns' lawyer to a silly complaint:

Dear Mr. Cox:

Attached is a letter that we received on November 19, 1974. I feel that you should be aware that some asshole is signing your name to stupid letters.

Very truly yours,

CLEVELAND STADIUM CORP.

James N. Bailey,

General Counsel

You know Facebook has an image problem when major nonprofits start turning down donations over political lies

Re: I must express my opposition to this

It may be reluctant, because he's probably saying "I do not want to lose the company's protected status with respect to liability"

Are you misunderstanding §230 of the CDA? It was passed specifically to protect information services from liability in general for external content, AND to allow them to edit or censor some content without creating such liability for all content. Short of the law being changed, nothing Facebook do or don't do can create liability or remove the protection. (Obviously there are exceptions, eg for illegal content.)

Now you've done it: Cyber attack targeted Australian brewery 'n' dairy biz Lion

Re: Also deals in milk as well as alcohol

Dunno, but it's not a feel-good story…

Britain has no idea how close it came to ATMs flooding the streets with free money thanks to some crap code, 1970s style

Re: The past is another counttry.

SU bars were usually cheaper, yes—but not at Edinburgh in the '80s. The Students' Association (non-NUS-affiliated) had a policy of selling beer at pub prices and using the proceeds to subsidise cheap hot meals, so when you'd gone through your grant cheque ("What's green and takes 3 hours to drink?"), you could eat for next to nothing at the Student Centre.

Baby, I swear it's déjà vu: TalkTalk customers unable to opt out of ISP's ad-jacking DNS – just like six years ago

Re: Switch provider, and refuse payment

Agreed re driving tests. I recently (for reasons of emigration and bureaucracy) had to sit a local driving test. I walked into the driving school, said "I've been driving for 30 years but I need to learn to pass the test", and did exactly what I was told until I did pass. (The instructor said I was a much easier student than the younger learner-drivers, who don't listen.)

Sure, check through my background records… but why are you looking at my record collection?

"Some 49 per cent are checking whether you've tested for drug and alcohol abuse."

Saw this years ago on Usenet:

"First time I've gotten a programming job that required a drug test. I was worried they were going to say "you don't have enough LSD in your system to do Unix programming". -- Paul Tomblin in a.s.r

As pressure builds over .org sell-off, internet governance bodies fall back into familiar pattern: Silence

Re: Oh really?

I'm in South Africa and paying in ZAR for a .org I've owned for going on 15 years. I can assure you that any large increase will be extremely painful.

20% of UK businesses would rather axe their contractors than deal with IR35 – survey

Re: Dangers of moving from outside to inside IR35

Yes, I remember as a university sysadmin we were talking to a security vendor and having to explain patiently that at a university with several thousand inquisitive students, most of the threats to our network were internal.

Well, well, well. Fancy that. UK.gov shelves planned pr0n block

Re: Yay!

There's also The World's Shortest Political Quiz (arranged as a diamond rather than a square).

Linux Journal runs shutdown -h now for a second time: Mag editor fires parting shot at proprietary software

Just how many editors, desktops, filesystems, etc. do you really want/need?

One (of each) — but not necessarily the one you chose.

IBM torches Big Tech's get-out-of-jail-free card, says websites should be held responsible for netizen-posted content

Re: how about stick to the original intent of 230

As I replied to someone else who claimed this a few months ago:

This is nonsense. Stratton Oakmont v Prodigy, decided in May 1995, was the court case that found that editorial control by a service provider changed them from a distributor of information, without liability, into a publisher with liability. Within months (Feb '96) section 230 of the Communications Decency Act was passed to /prevent/ service providers from becoming liable if they screened or moderated content, and indeed encourage them to do so.

In other words, you've got section 230 exactly backwards.

When customers see red, sometimes the obvious solution will only fan the flames

Re: Dolt

I'm assuming the Gold status is for quantity, not quality.

Exclusive: Windows for Workgroups terror the Tartan Bandit confesses all to The Register

Re: Changing Wallpaper can have career enhancing effects

Inverting the sense of mouse movements isn't nearly as bad as rotating by 90° — mouse up moves cursor left &c.

Amazon agrees to stop selling toxic jewelry, school supplies to kids, coughs up some couch change ($700,000)

Re: "I've been a customer of theirs since 1999 when they only sold books"

However, Chinese companies have already been found guilty of putting lead into almost everything under sun, including milk formula.

I hadn't heard about lead but I do know about melamine being added to formula and petfood because it was detected as additional protein by protein-content testing. (I believe the tests now used can tell the difference).