Posts by staringatclouds 126 publicly visible posts • joined 13 Jan 2016
"Screw politeness, these are some of the largest companies on the planet yet have yet to make a profit, and the sheer amount of absolute bullshit they are peddling is astronomical."
Their aim is not to make a profit
Their aim is to put everyone who actually knows what they're doing out of business
Then when they have the field to themselves, THEN they'll make a profit
"Clarke said that Dell continues to see an increase in the number of enterprise customers buying AI solutions each quarter, which he flagged as a significant opportunity, as many are still in the early stages of AI adoption"
The increase can be accounted for by the inability of customers to purchase a new enterprise pc/laptop that doesn't have an AI chip built in & Co-Pilot enabled on the desktop whether they want it or not
Don't want your company to use recall ?
Don't talk to the boss about hackers getting in & stealing data
Talk to the boss about everything they ever typed, everything they ever looked at, everything anyone else using their machine ever typed or looked at
Even if they cleaned it all up & deleted it
Talk to them about that being marked as "Exhibit A" in any & every future court case
Talk to them about someone turning up with a warrant & walking off with everything they've ever done on that machine on a thumb drive
All it takes is one disgruntled client, one employee with a grudge, one embittered spouse & their entire life will be on line for everyone to see
See if they still want recall rolled out to the company
I believe they've got a new CEO
So this is a combination of them "Making their mark" by pushing AI into everything because everyone they talk to on LinkedIn is pushing AI into everything despite none of them knowing anything about it
And "New broom sweeps clean" by laying off a chunk of the workforce, it immediately reduces the wage bill, makes the profit margin look better, rouses the remaining workforce who now fear layoffs & is a traditional action taken by many CEO's who step in to an established organisation
I suspect many of the remaining staff are polishing their CV's & putting out feelers as you read this, it's what I'd be doing
Firefox has begun the process of enshittification, I suggest looking for alternatives, Waterfox is a Firefox fork & available for android, i've no idea if it's any good though as I've not tried it yet
I have a 5yo HP color laserjet on my home network
A bit of an overkill for two users, but it's convenient
To avoid problems like automatic firmware updates bricking the printer or stopping me from using 3rd party cartridges I manually set the IP address outside the range the router hands out with DHCP & I don't set the router address, I suppose a random unassigned address outside the DHCP range would work too
That way the printer can't call home
Seems to work OK
I had a similar problem, woke up one day no internet connection, checked the landline - no phone either, fired up my mobile as a hotspot, no reported errors on my line, auto testing showed no problem
It took 3 days, including promising t̵o̵ ̵s̵a̵c̵r̵i̵f̵i̵c̵e̵ ̵m̵y̵ ̵f̵i̵r̵s̵t̵b̵o̵r̵n̵ pay for an engineers time if the problem was inside the house, to get an engineer to visit
He was very nice but obviously had a brief that he needed to find a fault in the house
The problem was an engineer for a company that shared the green box had unplugged our line at the box for some reason
Eventually, after about half an hour of checking wires & taking connectors apart, he gave up trying to find the fault at my end & wandered down to the green box & voila within 2 minutes we had a phone & internet again
And he still gave me side eye like I'd somehow done this
I believe the bill criminalises any content OFCOM can't read
So the bad guys will go old school, the time & date of messages will be the message, innocuous phrases will be the message, it'll all be readable but no one but the bad guys will understand what's being said
Of course that'll just be bad guys within the UK
Those that live elsewhere or visit the UK from countries that allow encryption or happen to be UK MP's will blithely continue to use encryption OFCOM can't read
Meanwhile the Government will be able to see our banking transactions
A possibly unpopular opinion
From what I've seen of ChatGPT interactions I am of the opinion that it isn't 'intelligent', has no 'understanding' & very definitely isn't sentient
Unfortunately some people are treating it as if it is
They see it as some sort of oracle, that gives human language answers to human language questions, they don't realise that at least some of those answers are complete BS
What seems to be happening is you give it a search term like "Write me a couple of paragraphs about the band Pink Floyd", it consults it's database built from the internet for articles about "the band Pink Floyd" that are at least 2 or 3 paragraphs long, builds a template from the results & then generates a reply from that template
So it can't help but look like human language as that's what it was generated from
It's probably nothing like that in practice, but that would fit the examples so far
The problem comes from the search terms, it also seems to find results for Pink & Floyd & Band & The
So it could generate a paragraph about how Pink Floyd went down with the Titanic as "The Band" played on or about how they all wear Pink or literally any old toss it found on the internet whether it's right or wrong
Because it has no intelligence, it doesn't understand the words, it's just digesting and regurgitating our own words back to us, which sadly some people are taking as a sign of sentience, even more sadly a lot of those people are in positions of authority
There's the journalist on here who asked about himself and it said he was dead (https://www.theregister.com/2023/03/02/chatgpt_considered_harmful/), there would be lots of obituaries of people with his first name and lots with his last name, so it generated a paragraph saying he was dead, some of them were in the Guardian so it generated a fake link that looked like all the others it had seen
It's just a free associating bot spewing mashed up data taken from other sources
ChatGPT should go straight on the bonfire before some idiot puts it in place of actual people and it starts being asked questions where the answers affect peoples lives
I waited nearly a year for my Pro 1, after 11 months it developed a charging fault & was returned for an in warranty repair, 9 months later my partner tracked down one of the directors on LinkedIn & basically we threatened them with legal action, a month after that I got a phone back, it wasn't the one I originally had though, someone had dropped this one & the screen had been replaced but there's still a chip in the keyboard, I'm buggered if I'm dealing with them again to get it fixed, the phone works so I'm going to use it until it falls apart
Re point 2
I used to be a moderator & later on as admin on a UK based forum for about 10 years
It was drilled into us on day one that the forum was a publication & governed by the same laws that govern newspapers, it was nothing like a chat between people in a pub
Plus the forum was responsible for all content published, so while the police might go after the OP of some actionable post they made, they'd also be coming for us for allowing it
Remember Clippy the animated assistant that the first thing everyone ever asked it was "How do I turn the office assistant off ... permanently?"
Well it's coming to search engines
I wonder how many search queries will be "How do I turn the AI assistant off ?"
Or just switch to DuckDuckGo
"The idea that the internet is evil & that freedom to say or read or interact with others is dangerous seems to have taken root amongst ruling elites"
It is, to them
The internet allows us to communicate, find kindred spirits & unite
This takes away "divide & conquer" which has been our rulers preferred method of ruling since they became rulers
And people who use their real names on social media can have their lives ruined
Like Mike Stuchbery who was doorstepped & harassed by Tommy Robinson (Stephen Yaxley-Lennon) & his sycophants
A: Because he made the mistake of calling out TR on social media for posting misinformation, something TR admits to
&
B: Because he posted using his real name, which is quite distinctive, which allowed TR to track down his address & doorstep MS while livestreaming this to his followers, who now all knew where MS lived & started a campaign of harassment, eventually hounding MS out of the country
See https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/tommy-robinson-hounded-me-out-of-my-home-and-country_uk_5dfd0e41e4b0b2520d0aae59
So, solve that problem before demanding people post using real names or calling them cowards, we can't all afford to change countries because some wingnut decides to camp on our doorstep over some remark we made on social media
My partner is an accountant & currently is dealing with the auditors
Over the weekend she put in an extra 18 hours to ensure the work that should have been done, but wasn't because of auditor interruptions, was done
Good luck getting that sort of work, if she has to go in to an office to do it
Try The Dark Mod
The emphasis is on stealth rather than combat, it's based on the Doom 3 engine & runs on PC's under Windows & Linux
99.9% of the mission content is fan generated so missions can be a bit variable, but it has quite a few missions that rival AAA games
Oh & it's free just google "The Dark Mod" for the website & downloads
"Y2K was caused by programmers saving space by storing years as two digits"
No it wasn't, if it were a software problem a patch would have solved it
It was caused by the hardware storing dates as 2 digits & because it was the hardware this meant replacing the clock chips which usually meant replacing the entire device
Y2K was primarily a hardware problem, which is why it was such a mare to deal with
andu 103 : "In the same way if you banned all drivers from driving for 1 month, you can bet that month would have the lowest number of road accidents! See previous point about you can't do that forever."
The problem with that analogy is
Covid will die out in the population if it's not given a chance to spread for about a month
Whereas drivers won't become safer drivers, and therefore less likely to have accidents, after a month off
And the reason Covid didn't die out with previous lockdowns is they weren't coordinated globally, sometimes they weren't coordinated nationally, and there were always selfish tossers who didn't think the rules apply to them, so there was always a new virus load spreading somewhere
Bring on the downvotes
It would be just as interesting to see the form that parents filled in to give consent for their child to use facial scanning
I suspect the question was phrased in such a way that there was no choice
Something like "We are installing this system, it uses facial recognition, if you don't consent your child will need to make alternative arrangements"
Children cannot give informed consent & their parents cannot consent because they're giving away the right to something they themselves do not possess
For example compare this with sex
Children cannot give informed consent to sex, not can their parents give consent for their children to have sex
Now facial recognition won't get anyone pregnant, but it's using personal information which is potentially damaging and can have an effect that lasts their entire life
Now they do, when DAB first came out you couldn't get a receiver for less than £100 & the smallest were the size of suitcases
Well at least the ones I could find were, finding a small, portable, cheap DAB receiver back in ye olde dayes was an exercise in frustration, especially when you could get an FM receiver that could practically fit on a keyring
Reminds me of the time we upgraded our SPARC box with an extra processor
Then after we'd forgotten all about it the auditors turn up and we had a conversation along the lines of
A: "SPARC Processor, part number blablabla, could I see it please ?"
Me: "You do know that's a PROCESSOR not an actual computer don't you"
A: "Yes, it says so on the ticket here SPARC Processor, can I see it?"
Me: "You see that cream coloured biscuit tin shaped box sitting on top of the other cream coloured biscuit tin shaped boxes over there?"
A: "Yes"
Me: "That's the companies main financial database server, it's in that, I'd have to turn it off & disassemble it a bit, do you still want to see it?"
A: "Yes please"
Me: "OK I'll have to send out an email to tell the people in the UK, US, Australia & Switzerland that we're going to shut down the finance server for a hardware audit, it may take them a while to get back to me, would you like a cup of tea while we wait?"
A: "... erm .... can I make a phone call?"
I know we really needed a redundant system for such a vital function, but no bugger would pay for it, this was back in Windows 95 days, possibly early NT days, a while ago anyway
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