Posts by Francis Boyle

Top sci-fi convention gets an earful from authors after using AI to screen panelists

Trouble is

"actual harm" is too low a bar. Musk thinks it's "evil" to harm him by not buying his cars and by urging others to follow suit. Most sane people would think that's batshit crazy but he is indeed being harmed not just offended. In a robust democracy we actually have to tolerate actions that harm others. Otherwise no change could ever be possible.

What the **** did you put in that code? The client thinks it's a cyberattack

Well

I am not a lawyer but they were probably worried about being sued.

Bad trip coming for AI hype as humanity tools up to fight back

At the risk

of pushing the analogy too far it's more like you broke into my house, stole my gold bars, and then your gold-selling business went kaput because you were caught selling gold-painted bricks. No liability there because my duty of care is unlikely to extend to your business interests.

US Space Force warns Chinese satellites are 'dogfighting' in space

Bags of garbage mostly.

I think Kubrick

still has copyright on "In-orbit "ballet".

AI models hallucinate, and doctors are OK with that

Re: "Do no harm"...

FTFY: All humans are confidently wrong sometimes. Its part and parcel of being human. See also Dunning Kruger.

ESA cuts the ribbon on 34,000-core Space HPC center tailored for space workloads

Nice oone

but I seriously doubt that 'data' (in the modern sense) counts as medieval English.

The biggest microcode attack in our history is underway

Except that, yes, most of these components have been carefully designed by experts in the relevant fields to solve specific identified problems. The fact that there is no overall plan and that the components themselves are frequently hamstrung by political compromise is an entirely different matter. I suspect the failure to understand that distinction is why so many people just cannot see why there is a problem with Trump.

Trump hits undo on Biden AI safety order, EV mandate, emissions standards, and more

Not wanting to live

in the Terminator timeline is now a radical left aspiration. Gee, thanks for clearing that up for us Donny.

Raspberry Pi hands out prizes to all in the RP2350 Hacking Challenge

Real Hackers

don't keep ion beams and lasers in their big box, they just "gain access" to the LHC.

Boffins ponder paltry brain data rate of 10 bits per second

So what's the data rate of poetry?

I'm also guessing there might be a bit of a data difference between a "Cat sat on the mat" sort of sentence and say a line from a Shakespearean sonnet.

Tech support warrior left cosplay battle and Trekked to the office

Re: What's the weirdest outfit you've worn to a tech support job?

"coming off their bikes at speed clad in only T-shirt and jeans"

Try nylons (as in pantyhose). I didn't see it personally, thankfully but I was told the plastic was heat-welded into the skin.

SpaceX will try satellite deployment on next Starship test

It was

an awareness maximising program i.e. (free) advertising.

Adélie Linux 1.0 – small, fast, but not quite grown up

Assuming

your road is several miles long and parking is forbidden that makes perfect sense. I think people here have confused "only" with "unique". I am enough of a pedant to "very unique" and it's ilk grating.

Coder wrote a bug so bad security guards wanted a word when he arrived at work

Re: Tounge in cheek?

I've no dog in this race, but out of interest, and for the information of others what is the problem with the Tesla system? I don't think LiFePO4 was generally available when Tesla got into the business so it's a bit of a first mover problem for them but these things usually balance out for the consumer. I know that if I were in the market (which I'm not) I'd care more about price, service and reliability than long term considerations. (In even ten years the situation will likely have changed beyond recognition so there's little point in putting too much effort into second-guessing it now).

Doctor Who theme added to national sound archive to honor innovation, longevity

Have to agree M'lud

Lush orchestration never manages to improve on the stark beauty of the original.

'Best job at JPL': What it's like to be an engineer on the Voyager project

Re: The Farthest

Dammit. I'm in Australia and I can't watch it because it's been blocked by "myABC' (as they used to like to call themselves).

Temporary printable tattoos could be the future of EEGs

Are we talking about

superconducting quantum interference devices? Because I don't fancy having a cephalopod on my head and while they are smart creatures I don't they can be trained for this kind of work. And good luck getting it past an ethics board.

Folks: please define your acronyms!

Arianespace's Vega C delayed after gantry throws a tantrum

Gantry throws a tanty

FTFY

Ten years under Dr Su: How AMD went from budget Intel alternative to x86 contender

Lisa Su

is an engineer. This is what happens when you put engineers in charge.

Abandoned US Army 'city under the ice' imaged in serendipitous NASA find

Surely that should be

humans.

Unbreakable Voyager space probes close in on a 50 year mission

But you get

an unlimited supply of shuttles. . . or maybe just novelty USB sticks.

Japan's wooden cube-shaped satellite rockets to space

And really big ones

out of bamboo scaffolding.

Relocation is a complete success – right up until the last minute

C'mon

I'm sure they were just grey text on an almost but not entirely identical grey background.

Sorry, but the ROI on enterprise AI is abysmal

Offer the customer more

shit.

From here on it's enshitification all the way down and at an exponentially increasing rate.

DARPA pays $6M to see fully autonomous Black Hawk helicopters

You've gotta

admire their commitment to a bit (if not their consistency) in using "400 units of real and simulated blood."

UK ponders USB-C as common charging standard

Re: I have one problem with USB C

No, it a wrapper around standard USB-C. It's actually pretty well designed. The plug has an unusually large body but is still standard USB-C. The receptacle being large enough to accept the body of the plug will take commonly sized plugs. (It might be a bit fiddly but in a pinch it's possible). Frankly, I think it should be an official standard because what will not be compatible is different implementations of the same idea.

Well,

it can be both an act and the truth. See Johnson, Boris.

The man's

a thoroughly modern Victorian gent. I'm convinced he excited about the possibilities of gas lighting.

If

people were in the habit of buying a new house every 18 months your argument might have some validity. As it is the standardisation of fixed electrical infrastructure is not a solvable problem in any reasonable timeframe. There are places in the US that still use two phase power FFS.

Missing Thunderbirds footage found in British garden shed

I have only

re-watched one episode of UFO and it was pretty dire (the sexism is pretty dire among other things) but I regularly watch the opening titles. They could really do titles in those days!

OS/2 expert channeled a higher power to dispel digital doom vortex

Understandable

I assume you're talking about Adobe Type Manager.

Muppet broke the datacenter every day, in its own weighty way

Indiana Jones' worst nightmare

SCSI. Why does it always have to be SCSI?

Homing pigeon missiles, dead trout swimming, butt breathing honored with Ig Nobel Prize

Re: Pidgeon guided missiles?

But would just be a laser guided missile with an unnecessary middle-cat.

Blood boffins build billions of nanobots to battle brain aneurysms without surgery

Surely

if you can somehow get your enemy into a magnetic manipulator there would be easier ways to kill them? And if your magnetic manipulator can reach across the battlefield you've probably won already.

Magnetic personalities at Tokamak Energy form separate division

Magnets

h̶o̶w̶ d̶o̶ t̶h̶e̶y̶ w̶o̶r̶k̶ what can't they do?

EV sales hit speed bump as drivers unplug from the electric dream

Yeah

It's such a pain having to pay USD5000 for a PC!

Atlassian CEO's idea to build 4,000-kilometer extension cord plugged in

Non!

ce n'est pas.

Tech support chap solved knotty disk failure problem by staring at the floor

I womder if

they were shown the door.

Disney claims agreeing to Disney+ terms waives man's right to sue over wife's death

Re: A lot of the media in the US is very anti Disney

"Every single media outlet on the right wing has been hating on Disney for the last few years."

With no good reason. The sort of sentimental fantasy that Disney has been purveying for decades isn't so far from fantasy world view that trump constantly appeals to.

Re: Eternal T&Cs? - Ahem

I will happily sell my soul to His Satanic Majesty. The average mega-corporation not so much.

Intel's annus horribilis continues as AMD gains ground

That

or you're just lacking in imagination.

Uber and China's BYD agree deal to roll out 100,000 EV fleet

Re: Burn Your Driveway

Probably so but it seems like everyone who drives an MG4 finds the driver assist tech insufferably annoying and intrusive.

“It takes twenty years to become an overnight success.” – Eddie Cantor

BYD was founded in 2003.

Yes, I am being intolerably smug – because I ignored you and saved the project

Well I don't think

anyone competent English would say something like "you need to drink fewer alcohol". Otherwise I can't disagree.

It is 60 years since a US spacecraft first took a close-up of the Moon

My first thought was

"sixty years, but that was when Apollo was happening, there must be some mistake". It's hard to imagine now the blistering pace of spaceflight development back in the Sixties.

EU's renewable hydrogen plan needs a 'reality check'

Re: In what way?

"To heat furnaces, possibly"

No, that's done electrically. The role of the hydrogen is to bind to oxygen thus converting the oxide into metallic iron. That's traditionally done with carbon (coke) but you know what that produces.

ESA starts work on planetary defence mission, because Bruce Willis is retired

But what's its mass

in skateboarding rhinos?

Outback shocker left Aussie techie with a secret not worth sharing

Alas,

the only thing I ever learned from the Lockpicking Lawyer was never to buy a Masterlock unless I want to fool my friends into believing I can pick locks.

I remembered it too

Gold balls melted into flesh is kinda hard to forget.