Posts by low_resolution_foxxes

O2 cranks prices mid-contract, essentially telling customers to like it or lump it

Re: O2's website seems primarily arranged to sell "premium"

Good work, I can see that's a good price and deal

Re: How delightfully Freudian

This strikes me as "just about legal, but ethically dubious"

I hope Ofcom returns to challenge this, just to avoid other companies getting into the habit. This decision clearly went through the legal and commercial teams and it just smells bad all around

If you can leave O2, please do. I'm not clear how this works with regards to the device ownership...you can apparently leave without penalty, but they presumably will stick to their "pay for the device" option

Frankly, O2s webshop seems entirely focussed on selling high-cost/high-profit Apple (yuk), Google and Samsung phones. I much prefer buying brands like the Xiaomi POCO X and F range (good prices on Amazon). Perfectly great Android smartphones for £150-£250 with the faster charger and high capacity batteries.

In comparison to iPhones that seem to think £300-1200 is a sensible price for a pocket computer

O2's website seems primarily arranged to sell "premium" (yuk) iPhones to marketing executives for £50+ pm

Amazon turns James Bond into the Man Without the Golden Gun

Re: Snowflakes vs back shooters

Anecdotally, I am aware of several Asian countries that tend to find displeasure in gun violence, at a government level anyway (China? Japan?)

They accept it exists. But the culture really is not the same.

Frankly I am not Asian, nor am I all that bothered if the gun appears or not. It all seems rather silly. But yes, I could imagine Chinese censors may object to glorification of guns in Western movies, and I could imagine Amazon Marketing execs could bow to those feelings

Deloitte refunds Aussie gov after AI fabrications slip into $440K welfare report

Deloitte a $70bn a year revenue?

For Powerpoints and tax avoidance advice from an AI...?

I always say this about hiring a "Deloittey" type. If you are paying a bunch of business executives £100,000s per year to manage your business (because they have critical management skills), but they need to outsource key business decisions to a group of 25-35 year olds with no experience of your business...

Is it fair to assume, your company executives are not capable of critical management skills?

Ordnance Survey digs deep to prevent costly cable strikes

Re: Cost?

I am amused someone is spending £30+ m on this. I worked for a company very close to the core of this movement 10+ years ago and they had apps that were essentially free (with hardware purchase) that you could use to geolocate your gas pipeline, main electric lines/ water, broadband core lines etc.

You could add photos and notes along the way

Gets a bit tricky when you get to the smaller utilities leading into houses, those are prone to modification and random builders, and frankly I don't trust those as much

The general idea, is that even with those indications (telling you what's buried under there), your average pedestrian crossing on a moderate sized road in an industrial area will have all sorts of pipelines/utilities under the road anyway. What you don't want to do...is drill into a major gas main, cause frankly they'll identify you from your charred toenail remains if you are unlucky.

Once you have this map as a guide, you still have to survey using cable/metal detectors and underground CCTV pushrod cameras, or if you hit the utilities you'll probably injure yourself or be on the hook to payout for the damaged caused (can get $$$ very quickly).

Trump scrubs all mention of DEI, gender, climate change from federal websites

This remains a rather specific Democrat party delusion.

It's a fundamental question: why was the punishment given to the Jan 6 non-violent protestors, so absurdly harsher to actual violent antifa-type protestors?

If you adhere to a viewpoint that justice must be impartial, balanced and fair - why are Republican protestors treated far worse by the Democratic state, than the Democrat voters taking part in far worse behaviours?

Ignore the violent Jan 6th ones. They created their own mess and deserve their jailtime.

With due respect to both sides of the fence, the left has spent 10 years now changing history, traditions, censoring any non-leftist viewpoints as hatespeech, and throwing government propaganda to suits its whims. It is no surprise that El Trumpo has done the same.

You can argue it both ways with DEI. The proponents of DEI claim they are anti-racism, yet the vast majority of public discourse that is hateful has been targeted at white Christian men for a long time now. the double-standard is tiresome and it does need to be trimmed back to sensible dialogues that bring people, not pit us against each other, as has often been the case with far-left activists.

I have met lovely kind people who are involved in DEI. But we have tolerated some extremely hateful people, who decided that it was actually a good and righteous thing to spout anti-white male nonsense. They are basically a modern incarnation of a pseudo-academic bigoted KKK aimed at a different target group.

Apple shrugs off BBC complaint with promise to 'further clarify' AI content

If I was being cynical, is it not just BBC journalists acting all outraged at a technology that can replace them with an AI?

You know, "the AI took ooor joooobs!"

Frankly I find AI at least manages to write neutral articles that are mostly correct. Frankly I do not trust any journalist to write unbiased articles in these times.

Europe's largest city council: Oracle ERP allocated £2B in transactions to wrong year

I wish there was a cloud based API software tool for councils based on the primary roles of them

1) How to collect bins

2) How to make parking hard for everyone

3) A random AI posting diversity slogans on Twitter

4) Paying a bunch of people £200kpa to mess up steps 1-3

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

Oh dear. This reminds me of an unfortunate incident involving one of our shortly hired IT engineers ~8 years ago. Very unfortunate situation. I would say it's bad to chuckle, as I did genuinely feel bad for the chap, but dear God the rumours snowballed into something of legend.

We had an IT chap who was of a larger waistband than 99% of the population. Very pleasant and hard-working IT guy. Not meaning to be judgemental, but this information is relevant to the tale.

We had some kind of late-night IT maintenance happening (I was an electronic engineer who dabbled with the servers) and there were minimal staff on site.

Some of the details are sketchy. But what appeared to happen, is that the gentleman in question required a lengthy bathroom visit. During this incident, he leaned over and fell off the toilet seat, resulting in his leg going through the plasterboard wall, and after some thrashing to free himself, managed to rip the toilet cistern off the wall (genuinely perplexed by this side of things, but fight or flight will do strange things). Alternatively, it seems plausible but unlikely, that he just smashed up the place for no obvious reason during the laying of a #2.

With one leg still in the neighbouring cubicle (he'd left a shoe in the neighbouring cubicle), he'd managed to flood the bathroom (including solids) and was caught on camera leaving the premises drenched from the waist down, without telling anyone what had happened. The maintenance team were called an hour later to find complete chaos, a flooded shipping area (these toilets are on the 1st floor) and a lengthy solid on the neighbouring kitchen floor.

He resigned shortly after bless him. Can you imagine the absolute farce in the office on Monday morning when the regular staff come back in....

SAP CTO bows out over 'incident' at company shindig

Let's be fair, we don't have a clue what he has done.

To reach CTO level at a multi-billion euro company and have a PhD in Computer Science, it suggests a diligent hard-working ethos. That does not preclude some kind of God-complex for sure, but most PhDs aren't exactly drunk builders photocopying their butt on the company photocopiers.

Clearly something happened that was targeted at another person. Generally speaking, that's going to be unrequited romantic interest (of whatever kind), political rivalry (very common for a progressive left type to yell at non-progressives), yelling at incompetent/non-performing employees, a dispute with other employees or a drunken punch/rambling.

He left pretty swiftly after, so it was obviously not a minor infraction.

Fuzzy topic this one

Reading between the lines, it appears the words used are "harassment of an employee" and "allegedly approached an employee inappropriately at an event a few weeks ago".

I must say, at that point I presumed it would all be down to the usual suspects (drunk male employee harasses a female, difficult to tell whether it was a bad move or if the female was highly sensitive).

But after diving a bit more into this, I'm starting to question that line of thought.

Reasoning: 1) he does not come across as a regular alpha-male type. He is a PhD computer scientist, typically seems to be declaring his pronouns everywhere, is posting pride flags, often posting LGBT pride events and anti-racism progressive left-wing politics all across the shop.

This leads me to wonder...is it more realistic that he made a move on a male colleague, or perhaps...he had a drunken sweary rant at a Conservative-minded colleague?

O2 punters lose cool over Google Pixel 9 delays

I've gone controversial.

Had an awful time on the Pixel 6a (not great battery, USB-C charging only works with approved high-power chargers, slow 16W charging, 5G was persistently flaky).

I have no doubt the Pixel 8/9 are an improvement btw..

But I decided to go retro, ditch 5G completely and go for a 4G Xiaomi 'Poco M6 Pro'. £179 with a 67W charger + case included in the box.

Admittedly it does lack 5G, but in practice that only reaaaaally means added bandwidth in the most highly congested urban areas. I'm not entirely convinced 5G is worth it yet - when they start actually using the 700MHz bands then it might be worth having, but that's still 2+ years away from being used large-scale

Note: I do not live in a densely populated urban area and 5G is patchy here

UK government can't kick consultancy habit despite promises

Re: Priorities?

Working conditions would be a lot tougher in the private/city sector. That should really be taken into account.

You may actually be allowed to work a 9-5 job at the government. That could easily balloon to 7am to 7pm at one of the big consulting firms.

Some of my best friends became ghosts when they started working for Deloitte/KPMG/PwC in their mid-20s. Literally didn't see them for a decade until they had families and decided the long hours were no longer worth the stress and impact on their families.

My favourite experience of this was having one semi-intoxicated friend out for a gig night and beer, interrupting our evening by taking a video call at 1am in the morning to finalise the details on a pensions Powerpoint presentation with a colleague.

It is a sad reflection of all government parties in our time.

We pay MPs and Civil Servants increasing high salaries, to duck the difficult decisions and outsource the complicated stuff to consultants, many of whom just happen to be Oxbridge graduates well known in the political scene.

I find myself asking, why are we paying Civil servants extremely high salaries to outsource their work to even more expensive consultants?

And thus the chain has begun. The consultants are advising the consultants and now the budget has exploded. Who could have foreseen this?

My preference is to put a technical expert in relevant domain (be it cloud, health, HR, whatever) in a room with an MBA to thrash out the policies and strategy.

I browse the newspapers just this morning to find KPMG have been provided with a 14 month £223m (!!!) deal to provide the following services (to government staff who are allegedly so talented they are paid surprisingly high salaries:

"Under the 14-month deal with the Cabinet Office, which commenced this month, the consulting firm will manage learning and development services across Whitehall, including overseeing courses on policymaking, communications and career development."

London council accuses watchdog of 'exaggerating' danger of 2020 raid on residents' data

It's the classic scenario where those in charge are fundamentally responsible for commercial profit, so expenditure has a lever to reduce money spent. But if there are no repercussions for poor IT/safety records you are relying on someone who is inherently busy monitoring highly technical tasks they do not really understand (the obvious solution is to hire an appropriate expert).

If the CEO faces no consequences, then you can expect minimal attention to these things. That works for both corporations and governments.

Stop installing that software – you may have just died

I once had to 'down tools' because my supervisor was a keen cyclist who has been involved in a cycling accident and rang me to say he was nearby and had broken his arm in an accident

I suspect he was trying to break the land-speed record in Richmond park (London). But the offender was a flock of geese crossing his path and scoring a direct hit to his head.

The poor lad had jokes about it for years. When we got to the hospital, the A&E doctor chuckled when he was explaining what happened. Something about "you got goosed while cycling? Well done!"

Fraud guilty plea flies from Boeing to swerve courtroom over 737 Max crashes

Re: " This is complete nonsense. "

I might be slightly wrong, but I believe it actually had a 2nd backup sensor you could switch to.

Problem was, if you don't inform the pilots of its existence then even if you have RTFM you will struggle to diagnose and fix the problem.

If I recall correctly, during the 1st crash, they actually managed to disable the MCAS accidentally in the correct manner - but not knowing what they had done, they simply reactivated it minutes later without enough ground clearance to repeat the effort.

I've even seen a Boeing exec claim that the PILOT is the backup MCAS system.......which is a wild claim for something they were never told about.

Re: I blame Yurope

The sad factor on the Max design is that it what fitted with both a) a redundant MCAS sensor, and b) a safety light to inform the pilot of a sensor malfunction

One is the more hilarious (darkly so) problems is that the Boeing team did not inform the pilots that MCAS existed (nor how to switch to the 2nd sensor) and that the safety light to inform them of an MCAS failure was a PAID FOR and optional safety light.

How does one recognise a new problem, that is not documented as a change, nor informed how to react to such changes?

I can see the issue in hindsight. Your competitor has a new shiny thing that is dominating you in the market. You rush something to market in an aircraft design that does not fundamentally work within the constraints you have (pilot re-training, airport use, larger engine changing the plane dynamics etc.).

Airbus have their own issues. But fundamentally the NEO engine was a new plane design and it worked. It wasn't strapped together with sellotape and they didn't omit the warning lights to say the plane was about to enter 'kamikaze drone' mode without warning.

BOFH: Why's the network so slow?

Yeah I was trying to figure out if that was an in-joke!

After living in Ealing for ten years it seemed an odd route choice

Always more fun getting on the wrong Piccadilly line train West..

Once had the nightmare of being, well, drunk. No cash. Rang Mrs to say I was on route home, wrong Piccadilly train, phone died, walked for three hours to Acton by mistake. Efff me did I get a row when I got home

High-flying drones on a leash could blow traditional wind turbines away

I worked in wind turbine controls/designs for 10 years. While I applaud the development and research of this technology, I really struggle to see how you could have grid-level (GW class) power supplies using these things as the researcher suggests ("$76bn by 2050"). At 25kW that could possibly be useful on a remote windy island without too much birdlife migration (to pass the environmental impact studies) and what happens when the wind stops blowing, does it crash down? Does it need manual interaction to get it back in the air?

If these things are going to be MW class then we're really talking about a 50+ metre wide device. So basically a plane without an operator.

That would get tedious if you had to send a technician out to reset 100+ drone turbines at 3am in the morning during a snowstorm to prevent a power grid blackout, having some quite serious operational and safety challenges (do they collide in mid air?).

My guess if there is going to be a wind rival to the traditional 3-blade horizontal wind turbines, the most likely design candidates would be VAWTS (vIertically rotating devices, that can theoretically be scaled up to MW sizes, I think 1MW is the largest current design, but I suspect you could improve this by several multiples in future generations).

https://reneweconomy.com.au/vertical-axis-floating-wind-turbine-gears-up-for-1mw-trial-in-norway/

Now all Windows 11 users are getting adverts to 'make the Start menu great again'

Re: Bugger ye off!!

Are they still pushing Candy Crush in some installs? That was the one that irked me the most

Protest group says Google has fired more staff over sit-ins opposing work for Israel

Re: "Oreo"

Oooooph. I read a bit deeper, it says something when the majority of protestors were wearing masks to avoid their employer IDing them. Some of the banners may have good intentions, but some of them accuse Google of genocide (it is never a good thing to accuse your employer of genocide while earning $100,000+ pa....).

https://nypost.com/2024/04/23/business/google-protest-group-says-over-50-staffers-were-fired-after-anti-israel-sit-ins/

Sample banners: "no more genocide for profit" "GOOGLERS AGAINST GENOCIDE"

"Some of the employees – many of whom covered their faces with masks while wearing traditional Arab headdress – brazenly barged into the offices of Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian in Sunnyvale and livestreamed the protest on Twitch. Others occupied the 10th floor of the company’s offices in Chelsea."

"Last month, a Google software engineer was fired after he was filmed publicly berating one of the company’s Israel-based executives during a tech conference in Manhattan."

Doesn't sound like they were quietly holding up signs in the car park does it? What kind of idiot livestreams themself barging into the CEOs office??!??!?

edit: AHAHAHA - Here is a video (ok it is FOX, but it's just video footage of the actual protest) https://youtu.be/_RpmqzqQGG0?si=PQvKjT2oNZqXlCbo

Re: shrug

I've Googled (lol) a few of her other comments and I'm starting to think it's justified. It wasn't just a protest at a specific thing. It seems she objects to even the government using the Google cloud for any purpose. She organized a "die in" protest that physically blocked employees entering the building and blocked passing traffic (until they had to be arrested carrying banners that are essentially anti-Israel, rather than simply "I object quietly and passively against this specific action". Broadly claimed that any use was bad and protested even Google's presence at a local and general tech conference. It's not quiiet and peaceful protest when you prevent your colleagues from going to work. You're making a nuisance to others

"Israel apartheid" and "liberate Palestine" banners are arguably drifting into bad territory.

Re: shrug

The protestor quoted (Zelda) is perhaps what you'd expect. In their words "I'm a first-generation, non-binary Latinx software engineer. They/them."

I'm all for their right to protest. But unfortunately when you protest against major contracts for your employer you put them in a difficult position and make a nuisance of yourself. You literally put them in the position of asking if it's worth keeping you.

I see no issues providing civilian support, the military side is debatable, I guess it all boils down to whether these are 'professional protestors' that have a specific point, or if they are simply blindly anti-Israel, which is a bad look

Microsoft claims it didn't mean to inject Copilot into Windows Server 2022 this week

Interesting, so in an era of AI bubbles and land grab market share efforts, Microsoft are adding an "AI assistant button" onto their keyboards (no conflict of interest there huh, since the button will push user to MS).

I'm dubious about the Edge Trojan install? Is it just a non-functioning placeholder? 8kb will not an AI compute.

If required, use: User Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Windows Copilot > Turn off Windows Copilot policy

It's primary function appears to be preparing shortcut use/integration/default apps when the AI products are released (I'm thinking somewhat like selecting a default program to open PDFs). My cynical nature noticed that the feature is rumoured to be configurable shutdown in EU, but not elsewhere, so I wonder if that is preparing the PC to default AI applications to Microsoft's offering? (EU anti competitive rules)

BBC exterminates AI experiments used to promote Doctor Who

Re: AHH the arty nerds are enraged

Modern art screwed artists.

When bad artists started celebrating art that is deliberately terrible...

Come to think of it, that sounds much like Sweet Baby Inc.

I find it hard to believe large groups of Dr Who fans would carpetbomb the BBC over an AI language model that wrote draft marketing script for their PR campaigns.

Most Dr Who fans of the nerdier variety stopped watching it when Capaldi left.

My assumption, reading between the lines, is that this is more likely to be a concerted effort by journalists/writers/unions to prevent the BBC from spreading the use of AI generative models in their industry. As it directly affects their careers.

While I am ... disheartened to see anyone lose their careers, IMO 'modern journalism' has degraded so far that I find it a truly embarrassing sector. We're torn between awful social media clickbait content, awful politicisation/social campaigning with minimal regard for truth, a horrendous problem with PR/bias degrading the trust between reader and writer, cheesy predictable advertising that everybody hates except marketing droids, all combined with what has become a highly formulaic and predictable writing structure. This all creates a situation where in the absence of people saying something interesting - if you had a choice between an AI that can get the job 95% complete in 1 second for basically £0.01, or an expensive human...I would choose AI.

It's a sad state of affairs when I routinely have to assume journalists are writing deceptively (is it PR? is it an ad? is it a campaign?) - on virtually any topic I have to verify the story against multiple website to understand what is happening (there's usually some weird kind of social engineering bias messing with the core facts).

PS of course I love the register journalists ;) It's why I keep coming back for mooaaaar!

Exposed: Chinese smartphone farms that run thousands of barebones mobes to do crime

Re: 1,000 smartphones all hard at work

Hmmmm, not sure if that's 100% true. A significant amount of accounts are run through WeChat in China..are they farming WeChat accounts?

When life gives you Lemon, sack him

Re: All seems pretty sensible from my echo chamber.

I don't know

If I was paid millions of dollars by my company and I deliberately set out to savage the CEO, and bring a bad faith interview like this, I would personally expect consequences (regardless of your opinion on Musk).

Don Lemon...I find him a generic NPC who merely parrots the corporate lefty opinions de jour that he has been told to champion. I don't dislike the chap, he just rarely says anything inspiring

EU takes a bite out of Apple with $2B in-app purchase fine

Mastercard and VISA provide the security hardware, banking interfacing controls, APIs, fraud detection and security, chip card and terminals. It's not wholly dissimilar.

Now sure, perhaps Apple provide the ecosystem in a broader sense, but the customer is already paying for the phone and the ecosystem. If these are payments for processing a fee - which is what they are defending, it is not dissimilar.

If they charged 5-15% it would not be such a major problem. The problem is that I have a Spotify account paid for online. Spotify developed the app and I have an account. I am blocked from using that by an ecosystem that inherently thinks $100 billion a year is a suitable surcharge revenue to manage an ecosystem that could be managed for less than $10bn

There is an inherent national interest / protectionism argument here that the EU and the US stock markets (and governments). The EU is obviously looking after its own interests in a field where American technical behemoths dominate. Apple's annual revenue is higher than the GDP of 2/3rds of EU nations.

Personally, I think it's illegally extortionate. Where say Spotify would need to pay 30% of its annual revenue from Apple users, probably in the region of $3bn per year directly to Apple.

It did not help Apple's case when Google dropped the revenue charge to 15% (albeit with a lot of nudging). At this point, I think it's just how long Apple executives can justify holding onto their model, I personally do not think Apple's ecosystem is fundamentally better than any other 'game ecosystem download' system.

For reference, Epic games provides an almost identical service and ecosystem for PC gamers taking just 12%, and I would say PC gaming and security is a lot more complicated than the Apple infrastructure, if for no other reason that it supports a vastly wider array of hardware and security considerations.

According to a brief Google search, the Apple software services department has a gross margin of ~ 73%, including the 30% 'skimming off the top of all payments' fee that cannot be worked around (even if you already have a Spotify account, paid for on the regular Spotify website, where you could simply login to your account or connect it to Apple).

By comparison, a brief search on Visa/Mastercard suggests the typical surcharge fee for using your debit card is 1 to 3%.

That's quite a difference for effectively a similar function.

Microsoft confirms Russian spies stole source code, accessed internal systems

Re: No evidence?

I believe it's inferred.

The weaselly language implies that there were no "compromised customer-facing systems" and I immediately assume that means that "non-customer facing offline backup systems of customer data" was accessed.

Re: Russian cyberspies and ‘secret’ emails /s

Thinking out loud - if Microsoft had secrets why would they share them with major customers?

Are they indirectly saying they were talking to an intelligence agency and informing them about a backdoor?

The emails that were attacked included "a legacy non-production test tenant account" - read of that what you will...for whatever reason they have a 'test account' that happens to hold the live emails of executives (and presumably...other peoples email?). Possibly an offline listening post type account?

What on earth this means for live emails...I do not know "We will act immediately to apply our current security standards to Microsoft-owned legacy systems and internal business processes".

City council megaproject mulls ditching Oracle after budget balloons to £131M

Re: Please tell us something new

It requires two to play that dance

A stick-in-the-mud council bureaucrat who cannot accept the "out of the box" solution (and who gets paid more depending on the complexity) and the consultant who is happy to take an easy £1000 daily fee

Google debuts first Android 15 developer preview without a single mention of AI

Re: Word Definitions

Remind me, now that 3rd party ad cookies will effectively be banned, replaced with a google managed "user interest" category (instead of 5000 random companies stalking you across the whole internet).

What will be interesting, will be if Google are planning to include an opt-out for the ad categories scheme. They historically have

Ukraine claims Russian military is using Starlink

Starlink terminals are basically large 4G mobile WiFi devices, in the sense they are extremely portable devices that are trivial to obtain for less than £1000.

They literally do not work in Russia. Although it may be a grey area where the border ends and coverage starts.

Curiously, there is a Wikipedia map of Starlink coverage in Ukraine which claims that only areas under clear Ukrainian control are covered, even showing a map of the exact coverage provided. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlink_in_the_Russo-Ukrainian_War

Perhaps it is possible the Russians have claimed some units from fallen Ukrainian positions - and are using Starlink within Ukraine? It seems the most plausible scenario.

Windows 3.11 trundles on as job site pleads for 'driver updates' on German trains

A better question perhaps is what could such a mystical device be performing on a train?

I'm thinking about the Red Dwarf vending machine or a toaster.

But sadly, having a look around, it does seem that these trains have a Windows console with redundancy built into the drivers UI system...

Presumably it's air gapped, so that's probably fine.

Mad that a bare bones RaspPi would be a literal alien technology in comparison

Macy's and Sunglass Hut sued for $10M over face-recog arrest and 'sexual assault'

I am open-minded on cases like this as they are usually promoted with a one sided bias. In this case the story is mainly being told through the legal/PR firm representing the suspect.

If the lawyer had provided a specific confirmation on how they could confirm he was 100% in California at the time of the robbery, I would be inclined to believe it 100%. However, if this is a notional "my alibi was I was living in California at the time" that's a bit vague for my liking (preparing an alibi could be easy enough when preparing a violent robbery with guns). If his residency/tenancy/bank records confirm it was impossible for him to be there..then yes sure I can see that alibi holding firm.

Browsing a few other articles on this topic. These articles appear to be promoted by the PR firm employed by his legal team, where the court agreed his alibi was credible enough, but the PR firm are glossing over the suspects long 20 year criminal record (mostly burglary) that put him in the initial crosshairs. With the plaintiff growing up in the area but having moved away in recent years. It's curious that all parties on the opposing side agreed with the match (the company that was robbed, the security staff and AI recognition company, the police, and store staff who identified him in a police line-up, but that is remotely explainable as errors can occur in these circumstances. At that point if the police have agreed with the match and put a warrant out for his arrest - that is tough to blame the AI firm directly.

Study: Thousands of businesses just love handing over your info to Facebook

If you disabled targeted advertising you will generally get the dregs of the online ad world. Gambling websites are profitable and thus advertise

You just won't get an advert for the socks that will match the t-shirt you bought earlier that day using crypto.

Silicon Valley weirdo's quest to dodge death – yours for $333 a month

Ha

Well, frankly some of his ideas are OK. As a male if you jeep below 2000 calories, drink no booze and eat a mixed diet, frankly you don't need to follow the rest of his silliness (throwing in 20 minutes a day of exercise will also help).

Top LLMs struggle to make accurate legal arguments

I am slightly suspicious that the majority of these articles focus on how AI cannot replace a $1000 per hour lawyer. There are relatively few articles about how engineers or doctors can be replaced. The legal industry has not always proved to be exceptional value.

I have personally surmised that lawyers are terrified that their services will become 'free' and this is part of a backlash PR effort to minimise this.

Where I have a vague understanding of law/compliance, I have personally found that openAI brings up perfectly reasonable responses to most basic queries (and many complicated ones) that I have tested it with. You have to take that with a pinch of salt and understand the limitations, but TBH they are a perfectly good starting point.

I occasionally have to dabble with compliance topics, and while I haven't trusted it with a full response, it has essentially agreed with every opinion that has taken me 8+ hours of Google searching to determine the wider picture, but it does it within seconds.

Pennsylvanians, your government workers are now powered by ChatGPT

Re: No change there, then.

Wait now - are you accusing them of doing work?

Saying an AI can hallucinate is a bit obvious. We ourselves are artificial intelligences constructed from our lived experiences, some of us regularly quote absolute nonsense and many of us lie intentionally.

Do we have an AI that can intentionally lie yet? If we reached that advanced state we would no longer require politicians.

FTC bans Rite Aid from using AI facial recognition in stores for 5 years

I ended up going down the rabbit hole on this topic and found an interesting example of this feature being used well

https://www.conveniencestore.co.uk/your-stories/how-i-used-ai-technology-to-stop-15-shoplifters-in-two-weeks/664383.article

I thought this was a great way to manage it, i.e. waiting at the tills by the exit until you stop the shoplifter

Re: I wonder how difficult it would be...

I absolutely heart this idea!

Does it allow manual upload?

Re: Skull measuring

At the risk of sounding like a pedant, the 'brownshirts' officially belonged to a party called 'The National Socialists' who fundamentally wanted to destroy capitalism and the Western banking systems.

Trump may be many things, he may destroy many other things, but he is not advertising himself with similar goals.

It is surprising how many people fail to recognise the official political philosophy of this party.

Nvidia revenue explodes, led by datacenter products and … InfiniBand?

Re: "Nvidia execs were bullish"

Good luck

In my experience, at this point it's hard to know how the market will react to the news. The market would usually spot a hype train from a mile away and put an increasingly absurd speculative price on the stock. You could try and ride this train and see if the momentum continues - or it could fall back to a more sensible dividend-based yield valuation.

Openreach hits halfway mark in quest to hook up 25M premises with fiber broadband

Gigabit broadband availability is surprisingly high, if you include Virgin Media I think it's in the ballpark of ~80%. Heavily skewed towards urban centres.

FTTP is about 60% I think.

Depends how you look at them really.

FTTP requires less infrastructure and premises, it is also far more reliable than copper - resulting in cheaper O&M/repair works after storms

I'm not sure they're firing many from the other departments. It's a traditional sign of "more efficient process needs fewer workers". Although they did joke about bringing in AI in the software coding teams and customer service departments.

Polish train maker denies claims its software bricked rolling stock maintained by competitor

Re: Hackers entering GPS coordinates of OEM repair shops to prevent trains from failing?

It's a fucking hilarious excuse really

It makes me reconsider every time I hear a CEO mention cyber criminals and hacking.

"Hackers cracked our software and updated it so that it only stops working if the customer gets their maintenance tasks performed in our commercial rivals garage".

Hackers can be a strange breed, but hacking a PLC to provide such a specific feature, that also happens to have a direct and major commercial benefit to the OEM?

Oh please!