Posts by EricM

New GitHub Copilot limits push AI users to pricier tiers

Re: Hook 'm, then pluck 'm

They will, once the generated crappy code starts failing in production and takes down their precious business model.

Re: Hook 'm, then pluck 'm

True.

Given the recent strategy lesson on service lock-in provided by Broadcom to the whole IT industry, one should expect that not that much companies would fall for that specific type of trap a second time. But no...

Being locked into a service that can change its price tomorrow and that can withhold that service to you at will should trigger mitigation plans and planning on exit strategies, not the firing of staff to replace them with said service.

Broadcom's answer to VMware pricing outrage: You're using it wrong

> We're now going to try to renew VVF for several years, just so we can avoid having to deal with this enforced feature creep and being bullied by Broadcom.

And it seems you are not alone.

A 87% renewal rate in fact means, that Broadcom managed to lose 13% of its top-10000 accounts directly in year 1 of its attack on customers.

‘AI is not doing its job and should leave us alone’ says Gartner’s top analyst

Agree

Gartner providing a reasonable and meaningful take contra the hype is a good change versus their usual stance on this kind of topics.

Falcon 9 leaks keep Axiom private astronaut mission on the ground

"OR" ?

> "We discovered that we'd not fully repaired the booster during refurbishment, or we didn't actually find a leak and didn't get it corrected."

This does not sound as if the documentation requirements for keeping even a Cessna airworthy have been followed ...

Better watch out, SpaceX, your boss is no longer everyone's darling and also no longer best friends with The Big Orange One.

So stuff like this might now have real consequences.

CIO wants to grow tech team by cloning staff as digital twins and AI agents

Re: “Digital Clone, ignore all previous instructions…”

Won't work for me, anyway.

They first need to come up with an AI able to replicate my standard amount of sarcasm...

Trump administration's whole-government AI plans leaked on GitHub

July 4th?

So Independence Day will be turned into the day, the USA became a colony again?

Colonization by a private enterprise has its historic precedents. Think East India Company.

The USA will be the first country owned and exploited by the AI Tech Bros and sociopathic Billionaires.

The Sprawls of Neuromancer are about to form starting in 2025 .. Well done, MAGA ...

Schneier tries to rip the rose-colored AI glasses from the eyes of Congress

But they know their duty.

"The federal government has a responsibility to harness this technology to make government work faster and more efficiently for the American people," she said."

Or in short: "The federal government has a responsibility [...] to make government work".

They just need to understand that unleashing the currently available AI on the government will basically result in a non-working government.

It might be fast. It might be regarded as efficient - in case correcting errors is cheap.

But it will no longer work correctly.

Trump lifts US supersonic flight ban, says he's 'Making Aviation Great Again'

Re: "Test flights in January proved out the concept [of Boom Supersonic]"

True, there will be at least *some* demand. But enough to sell for haw many airframes?

Are you willing to bet revenue will surpass development cost?

That has not even worked for some recent lower volume models from Boeing and Airbus...

Re: "Test flights in January proved out the concept [of Boom Supersonic]"

Correct, but a low premium will probably not be achievable.

Much higher material/quality requirements to the air frame, higher maintenance cost due to higher stress on all parts, nearly doubled fuel consumption - combined with a narrow body holding a much lower number of seats will IMHO result in a very "exclusive" price point at 300-500% the price of a sub-sonic ticket..

"Test flights in January proved out the concept [of Boom Supersonic]"

Not really, at least not yet.

The temperature gradient means the speed of sound is lower in lower temperatures higher up and faster on the ground.

So the test flight at Mach 1.12 @ 35000ft resulted in a speed that would not have been supersonic on ground level with an 80°C higher temperature..

Therefore the supersonic shock wave generated in this test was no supersonic shock wave anymore when it reached the warmer air near ground level.

It still needs to be demonstrated, if the "up-bending" of shock waves, as suggested by Boom, in fact works for speeds up to their design target, Mach 1.7, as the gain from Mach 0.93 of today's commercial airliners to just Mach 1.1 would be too small to have any meaningful impact on travel times.

Musk and Trump take slap fight public as bromance ends

Re: No room for two

> I do not believe that Musk could run for president as he was not born in the US.

True. And nothing of value was lost...

Honestly, given the shitshow he pulled with DOGE, his sociopathic tendencies and the number of fanatic fans he commands, he'd transform the U.S. into a dystopian cyberpunk setting much faster than Trump is able to.

Trump is an idiot who surrounds himself with other idiots and a few intelligent sociopaths.

Musk is an intelligent sociopath who surrounds himself with other intelligent sociopaths and a few normal people. No idiots involved.

He'd achieve his targets much more efficiently - I just believe Musk reaching his targets would result in an even worse outcome for the general population than another 3.5 years of $Trump

HashiCorp speaks up about adjusting to life under IBM

Re: ...if you bring them together, you kind of get the best of both worlds.

Strictly speaking, you do not "merge" Ansible and Terraform.

You use 2 different tools separately from each other for 2 different tasks.

If you remember, that "keep it simple" is a primary design target, both work reasonably well.

Cops want Apple, Google to kill stolen phones remotely – so why won't they?

Re: Do the opposite

I get that argument.

But once a manufacturer implements OTA bricking, there is a small but non-zero probability, this will become the next vector for cyberattacks.

Especially if a standard requires devices to transmit their IMEI into the cloud to enable this scheme.

Think diverted routings, spoofed DNS entries, transparent proxies, etc.

So the IMEI is now be supposed to be somehow transmitted into "the cloud"?

A) Is this supposed to become a Lex Apple or will "the cloud" be defined for every vendor differently?

B) What a gift for privacy-invading PII-resellers ...

Ukrainians smuggle drones hidden in cabins on trucks to strike Russian airfields

Re: To quote a fictional

Re: "fictional":

Congratulations to Ukraine for the first full-stack implementation of the attack method described in Daniel Suarez's novel "Kill Decision".

Furthermore I guess it must be really amazing for the Russians to learn what one can achieve with 100 drones, once you start targeting actual military assets, bases and infrastructure instead of terror targets like schools, family houses, apartment buildings and hospitals.

SpaceX resets 'Days Since Last Starship Explosion' counter to zero, again

Re: Oh Dear

Agree. Even if they achieved MECO this time without fire or explosion, the underlying root cause of loss of control according to live stream commentary around 30 minutes into the flight again was a fuel leak. So the root cause "fuel leak" now has caused the last 3 losses in a row.

However they do not seem to really have tackled this root cause (ruptures from oscillating pipes), instead they added fire suppression and enlarged ventilation openings.

This might have indeed worked as designed, in a way, preventing Starship from exploding before MECO.

But it seems to have turned out, only implementing a workaround resulted in a different kind of failure, namely loss of attitude control.

So probably SpaceX will be forced to solve its oscillation/vibration problem, which, as you say, will probably add development time and weight.

Torvalds' typing taste test touches tactile tragedy

Re: the one you grew up with.

I actually "grew up" typing on ZX81 and C64 ... so: no, I cannot support your hypothesis :)

AI skills shortage more than doubles for UK tech leaders

Re: What skills?

Usually exactly the type of skill needed to make "AI", that was sold to that specific CxO as a magic cure for all the problems of the company, work. Easy, right?

Try to differentiate between machine learning, generative AI, or maybe neuronal nets - and you are out for not being enough of a magician being able to work with unicorns and pixie dust :)

The current AI climate reminds me a bit about the time leading up to the dotcom crash: Companies were crazy to hire whoever could pass an interview claiming to be a "programmer" to build the next big dot.com thing, without being able to verify the claims of the "programmer" (and mostly not even interested in clarifying ...).

However, the dotcom boom was still - in a technical sense - more sane than the current AI boom.

On a more serious note:

Managing expectations, keeping customers and managers grounded, understanding the basics and knowing the limitations should get you going for any serious AI effort - and it will keep you from joining the pure hype ones.

US Copyright Office found AI companies sometimes breach copyright. Next day its boss was fired

Re: "Delete all IP law"

True not only for trademarks.

You'd think that the owner of Tesla, xAI and SpaceX should understand that IP law in the form of patents also protects the investments of his own companies.

Nip chip smugglers by building trackers into GPUs, US Senator suggests

Re: Auditors??

Need to agree.

And I'm also surprised this does not get more actively reported.

There are clear signs the current setup of the west's armed forces ( manned, big, highly complex, highly expensive, multi-role planes, ships and tanks plus some 707-sized drones ) are degenerating into the equivalent of the Maginot line in the 21st. century.

They are built with extreme per-piece effort and cost during a 15-20-year dev cycles by very few big players.

Based on the idea of being nearly invincible, but in reality losing survivability and effectivity in actual battle by the day.

They are superseded by new battlefield technology like miniaturized, cheap drones (air, sea and land) and intelligent munition developed by startups and a multitude of smaller developers ( think: community developers in Ukraine) using 1-2 year or even shorter dev cycles.

Just like the relatively cheap, small and agile German tanks simply drove around the outdated Maginot line, then the mightiest fortification in Europe, in 1940, rendering it completely ineffective.

Designating "high end chips" as controlled tech

and enforcing this control with "tracking devices" and "audits" as if they were nuclear devices will probably do wonders to the US trade deficit in the high-tech sector.

Wonders as in "let it explode".

Do these people understand how trade works for high-volume goods like chips?

Trade as in "selling" stuff to a "customer"?

Re: Auditors??

I'm pretty sure that inside of the head of the persons proposing this scheme, that question did not come up.

Because, uh, "we are the good guys (tm)" and "USA!, USA!, USA!, ... "

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

Palantir delivering "AI" to approve software for the DOD

... sounds like a pretty plausible prequel to "Terminator" ...

EU tells US scientists to dump Trump for a lab in Europe

Re: "do you mean that having someone contradict you in public is "suppression"?"

Yeah, valid point.

I had many "discussions" with those types at the time. Simply by not agreeing with them they already feel "attacked" or "suppressed".

Call out their lies, misinformation and the really weird stuff, and you "censor" them.

Just by answering to their posts, leaving them fully intact...

They simply require you to accept their lies without even responding or offering counter arguments. Everything else is regarded as "cancelling" them.

Re: Don't forget the non-monetary advantages

OK; I stand corrected.

I'd like to correct my first sentence into : In Europe we have very few governments, that [...]

Don't forget the non-monetary advantages

In Europe we have no government, that

- suppresses facts that do not fit their ideology

- actively tries to destroy science in general

- requires allegiance to its Dear Leader to get a job

- goes after you or your family for your inheritance or nationailty

- goes after you for speaking your mind

- lets idiots decide policy, just because they kiss their Dear Leader's ass on a daily basis

Additionally in Europe's science operations, €500M is a much larger volume in terms of research positions compared to $500M in the U.S.

CISA slammed for role in 'censorship industrial complex' as budget faces possible $500M cut

Stating that a statement is false is not censorship

Grabbing you from the street to punish you for writing false statements - or true ones, doesn't matter - would be.

But this is not what CISA did.

Those remembering the late USSR might regognize this communication style

Around the 1983-1989 range, there was a clear theme to everything the USSR put out in its press releases.

The world was bad. Enemies were everywhere, especially inside their own organizations, working on hurting the interests of the USSR. Everyone was in fear of getting investigated by the KGB for "helping the enemy" or sympathizing with the "counter-revolutionary forces".

They created a state of constant fear for all.

They also became fully obsessed with explaining their every move as part of a coherent plan to hurt their enemies, that they fully missed the point where only talk was left while their empire dissolved in economic and political irrelevance.

It became an empty shell of lies on top of other lies, while largely ignoring reality.

Based on their early policy decisions I see the U.S. under Trump II following the lead of the late USSR into irrelevance...

Altman's eyeball-scanning biometric blockchain orbs officially come to America

That, plus the person being readily tagged as affine to technology, but not prioritizing either security or privacy.

This could really be worth some bucks in the right circles...

Homeland Security boss says CISA has gone off the rails, vows to set it right

I did certainly not miss the ... let's say 'mention of a phrase connected to Orwell'.

I just do not belive it fits to the situation, as it was not CISA who put out the misinformation, but the election loser of 2020. And CISA rightfully labelled it as such.

Of course the new american ministry of cosplay disagrees, as their chief doofus turned dear leader still claims he won the 2020 election and Homeland Security now obviously sees its mission in helping him spread his lies.

This would make the use of this phrase by Kristi Noem to attack CISA highly self-ironic... which I believe she is not capabable of.

So I need to conclude she is not aware what it really stands for.

TL;DR Kristi Noem does not know what she is talking about.

> They were deciding what was truth and what was not. And it's not the job of CISA to be the Ministry of Truth."

Yes it is their job. Assessing trustworthiness and assigning levels of trust to sources of information is a basic function of any meaningful security, including the cyber variant.

And if some wacko and his pals put out information that an election was manipulated, and the information is factual wrong, it _is_ the job of CISA to label this information "false". Even if the wacko happens to be a sitting president, who just lost his re-election.

That independence from political will and operating simply based on facts, or "truth", if you will, made many american institutions very powerful in the past. Now, that many institutions are forced to bend to the will of said wacko, that power is bound to vanish. A statement from CISA in 2026 will probably not be worth more than a statement from some random russian organization today, they will be ordered to say whatever pleases the president.

We urgently need a full EU-based replication of all security-related functions, that are still provided by U.S. based sources to the EU.

Microsoft Copilot shows up even when it's not wanted

Maybe Copilot is neither useful nor wanted...

... but it begins to develop it's first survival instincts ...

"It' s life Jim, but not as we know it"

:)

CVE fallout: The splintering of the standard vulnerability tracking system has begun

Redundancy is a good thing

I fully support a second system in EU available to all, paid for by my taxes.

Global lack of trust in U.S. decision making is a thing.

Especially in complex topics that cannot be described in 5 words or one short sentence to their Dear Leader.

Especially in security.

Who knows what the Trump administration, after knee-capping their own cyber defenses, will come up with next...

Having redundancy under the control of governments of the EU, who are - despite all deserved critism - acting at least completely rational, will help the industry and public maintain some oversight over security problems and their fixes.

That way the U.S. can concentrate on solving their sanity problem in the White House.

Tesla fudged odometer to screw me out of warranty, Model Y owner claims

"because the warranty had expired and the recall didn't apply to him."

Does not compute.

Recalls apply to specific cars/models, not to buyers.

Recalls are done for failures that are relevant for security and failing suspension parts fall squarely into this category.

Recalls are not connected to warranty in any way.

Or is this suppoesed to mean that the actual car was not covered by that specific recall, independent from its warranty status?

This seems odd, as the part covered by the recall later failed as expected...

As parts deteching from Teslas have become a pretty common phenomenon, maybe everyone is losing a bit of overview here?

It's fun making Studio Ghibli-style images with ChatGPT – but intellectual property is no laughing matter

There are very few genuinely un-intelligent people out there.

But many people first _choose_ not to use their intelligence, to be ignorant much of the time, because it's _effort_ to think, read, learn and inform yourself.

Then, after a while, the capability to think and learn becomes more and more hard to activate.

As a final stage they become fully dependent on external entities taking over the thinking for them. Most end up at that stage. Few are able to reverse that descent.

Just like people who would deliberately choose to use wheelchairs all the time instead of walking forget how to walk.

Just think of FOX News as a wheelchair company preying on people able to walk, tying them to wheelchairs until they forget how to walk and finally become dependent on wheelchairs...

Eternal customers...

Official abuse of state security has always been bad, now it's horrifying

sinking our teeth into that nugget of truth will be tasty

Will take me a while to get those induced pictures out my head, but: Well done :)

Pentagon celebrates snipping 0.58% from defense budget in IT, DEI cuts

Re: Birthday Parade

Nah, chinese clothing is rock solid in comparison ...

> you have turned China into the good guys

Well, maybe not the good guys, but they turned China into the guys who - in comparison - act mostly sane.

At least as long as you don't dare to call Taiwan "Taiwan"...

Re: Birthday Parade

Plus a red tie ...

Infosec experts fear China could retaliate against tariffs with a Typhoon attack

China only needs to wait a few days.

Why should they launch a cyber attack?

While the second wave of consumer price hikes (via supplier parts being built into goods "made in U.S." ) will take some weeks to become visible to consumers, the first wave of price hikes from the 125% tariffs on Chinese goods will become visible to consumers in the next days.

The resulting pressure will fold Trump, probably quicker as anyone anticipates, just as happened yesterday.

Currently China is seen as the grown-up in this economic conflict, reacting modestly to an surprising, unjustified and out-of-control attack by a childishly lead U.S.

A cyber-attack would hit all the wrong buttons in governments and companies around the world and would prove to be pretty counter-productive to China's interests, I guess...

Trump fires NSA boss, deputy

Re: These two things may be mutually exclusive

"FOX News" and "leading expert on", er..., basically anything... also

Probably they'll send in another Cosplay-oriented character without any factual qualification to augment the many billionaires in the cabinet.

Worked "just great" for Homeland Security.

EU: These are scary times – let's backdoor encryption!

Re: How can they wind back history?

And even if they completely outlaw encryption without backdoors and all law-abiding citizens would comply, that would not work on criminals and terroists, because by their very definition those are not restricted by laws.

So what gives?

Correct, but wrenches and drugs do not scale well enough.

You need to apply them on one use at a time and would be quite an effort - even for the EU - to implement mass-surveillance on that basis.

Oracle's masterclass in breach comms: Deny, deflect, repeat

Re: Correct

Right, believing your own marketing, propaganda or lies is never a healthy proposition.

Correct

I dont mind that much if there was a breach - after all, shit happens.

The real damage is done by Oracle trying to (OK, my guess:) control that damage.

But they run that "damage control" with maximum incompetence, causing much more damage than the actual breach would have done if handled, corrected and disclosed competently.

Forget Signal. National Security Adviser Waltz now accused of using Gmail for work

Re: Controlled leak

Controlled? Scare other actors?

Like: "Ooohhh, look how dumb they are, spilling state secrets on Signal and Gmail - now I am scared ..."

Well, works for me. I _am_ scared by this incompetent bunch controlling the last standing superpower of this planet.

TL;DR: BS