Posts by jpo234

Google launches first datacenter satellite and research that finds orbiting bit barns can work

Re: $200/kg

Those $150/kg you are offering need to include electricity to power the kit for around 5 years.

OpenAI GPT-6 Astra really good at supply chain attacks, UK gov warns

It's kind of scary to think that open models will have the same capabilities in the not too distant future. Any wannabee hacker or rogue state will have unfettered access to this. That's going to be really interesting...

US actors are still on strike – and yup, it's about those looming AI clones

Re: AI good enough

Anything made of bits and bytes that has not a trustworthy digital signature has to be seen as a potential fake. This will cause havoc in the judiciary system. Your home survilance video that shows the home intruder: You have to provide proof that it's not generated.

How many years until you can feed a movie script into a generative AI, press the "Generate" button and get a semi-finished movie? Pick your characters from a ready made library, do some interactive polishing and your blockbuster is ready for YouTube. 10 years? Spending $300mln to make a movie will be seen as one of the quaint things they did back then...

Taiwan looks into claims local companies helped Huawei advance China chipmaking

nurtures its technological edge

This is a joke, right?

Authors Guild sues OpenAI for using Game of Thrones and other novels to train ChatGPT

> All problems in computer science can be solved by another level of indirection

Don't use the Internet directly. Use a dictionary of validated training data from the Internet.

> The outrage here is that the machines are no longer coming for the jobs of the working class who toil and sweat and use their hands.

Funnily enough, these jobs now look safer than a lot of so called "knowledge worker" jobs. Why pay for a photographer when you can have glamour shots from a short prompt and a crappy selfie?

I think this is a loosing fight. What today requires a data center will be in reach of individual users in few year's time. Then we will see self hosted LLMs.

EU lawmakers fear general purpose AI like ChatGPT has already outsmarted regulators

What I was thinking was more along generative AI that you can tell: Make me a new episode of Seinfeld where Jerry get's his jokes from ChatGTP 10. Or generating outlawed content. A significant part of the creative content industry (film, music, gaming, books) as we know it today might well be gone 10 years from now.

We already see fashion photography being replaced by generated images. I don't think anybody predicted this as one of the first trades to be taken over by AI.

‘Those who can, do; those who can’t, legislate.’

There simply is no way to keep this genie in the bottle. Hardware powerful enough for individuals to train LLMs will eventually be available.

Europe just might make it easier for people to sue for damage caused by AI tech

> We want the AI technologies to thrive in the EU

That was a smashing success so far, right? Those who can, do; those who can’t, regulate.

Mozilla drags Microsoft, Google, Apple for obliterating any form of browser choice

That doesn't explain Chrome's dominance on the Desktop. There it's mostly not the default browser...

Russia's new space chief confirms it will leave ISS after 2024

"after 2024" is a long time and includes 2030, the year the US plans to decommision the ISS.

Google uses deep learning to design faster, smaller AI chips

Re: Singularity

It's supposed to be a positive feedback loop: AI used to build improved AI...

This even has a name "positive Singularity Feedback Loop". Right now this would be the slow, initial phase, of course.

Quote from MIT Review:

> Most visions of this singularity focus on the creation of machines intelligent enough to devise machines even more intelligent than themselves, and so forth recursively, thus launching a positive feedback loop of intelligence amplification.

AI used to improve the performance of AI is what the Singularity is supposed to be about...

IPv6 is built to be better, but that's not the route to success

Did anyone actually look at the numbers?

https://www.google.com/intl/en/ipv6/statistics.html

https://www.akamai.com/visualizations/state-of-the-internet-report/ipv6-adoption-visualization

European silicon output shrinking, metal smelters closing as electricity prices quadruple, trade body warns

Reality is a bitch and should be outlawed.

Tesla driver charged with vehicular manslaughter after deadly Autopilot crash

That's FSD which wasn't even available in 2019.

Open source, closed wallets, big profits – nobody wins the OSS rock, paper, scissors game

Re: Governments

It's not just Governments. If money and contracts get involved, things get complicated everywhere. This adds so much friction, that it suddenly might not be worth it.

In public organizations that would usually trigger requirements to issue an open tender. These requirements are there for a good reason, but they don't fit the open source model.

The decision to use a certain Open Source component is usually up to individual developers who usually don't have budget authority. They just do it. If there was some kind of contract with payments involved, things would slow down to a crawl: That would require an aqucisition process that might not even be suitable for most projects (a Patreon account doesn't fit).

Tech bro CEOs claim their crowns because they fix problems. Why shirk the biggest one?

Re: I wish...

I'll bite and I'll argue that it is capitalist efficiency that gives us a fighting chance against climate change. It's easy to forget how awfully wasteful the alternatives were and still are. Just look at Venezuela, the socialism of the 21st century. Capitalism isn't fair, but at least it creates the ressources we will need to meet the climate challenge. The alternatives create less out of even worse environmental damages.

Your argument reminds me of AOC arguing against the billions of "subsidies" for Amazon HQ2 in NY. She suggested that the money should be spent to improve poor communities instead. The problem: The subsidies were mostly tax incentives. No HQ2, no revenue to tax, no subsidies but even less money for social projects.

Re: But it's up to us

My 2017 mid ranger is still doing fine. While you don't have guarantee, it's very much possible to use one for at least 4 years.

Re: I wish...

> Working out how to stop burning carbon fuels - boring. Working out how to fly to Mars - exciting.

That seems to be aimed at Musk. The vast majority of his wealth comes from Tesla, which is exactly working on "how to stop burning carbon fuels".

Re: But it's up to us

Or: Buy a normal midrange phone for €/$200, donate €/$100 to a tree planting project and keep the remaining €/$250 for yourself.

Overall, that would do more good than the virtue signalling hipster phone. But of course it's not as hip.

Re: But it's up to us

> to think about the profit-destroying requirements of saving the planet

Profits and saving the planet aren't mutually exclusive. Green technologies are big business now (think wind, solar, EVs,...). In fact, I'd argue that economic incentives (e.g. profits) are the most promising way to tackle the climate crisis. Only if dirty technologies are out competed by clean solutions will we have a durable solution. Otherwise somebody will try to cheat.

Marine transportation accounts for a whopping 1.7% of global emissions. That's far, far down the priority list.

The thing that needs to be cleaned up first is coal.

Who is Borkzilla? Microsoft?

WinXP reigned from 2001 until 2008, it's effective successor, Win7 from 2009 until 2020 (end of support) and Win10 from 2015 until 2025. That's closer to 10 years...

Exactly: It's like public transportation.

And a PC that only gets used at less than 1% of its capacity is better?

Cloud computing is the equivalent to public transportation: They are like trains or buses instead of cars. An individual bus is much less efficient than a car, but it is shared among a lot of riders.

Same for cloud computing resources: instead of being 99% idle, they actually get used (I just checked: my laptop currently uses 1% of its CPU).

Re: But it's up to us

I have Windows 10 running on a laptop that originally came with Vista (Upgraded the RAM from 4 to 8GB and replaced the HDD with a SDD). Perfectly usable. Win 10 will be supported until 2025. That means the laptop should be usable until 2030 or over 20 years.

I never said or implied that they should be shut down. But if you want to actually decarbonize the economy, this is where to look. Blaming big tech because that seems to be fashionable right now won't actually solve the problem.

Looking at the emissions per sector (https://ourworldindata.org/emissions-by-sector#energy-electricity-heat-and-transport-73-2), big tech doesn't pop up on the radar...

It's old industries that are the real offenders.

Teen turned away from roller rink after AI wrongly identifies her as banned troublemaker

I'm pretty sure there are more people mistakenly turned away every single day by humans than by computers. I get it: This sucks. But it's something that happened since the first bouncer stood outside the first tavern.

Facial-recognition technology gets a smack in the chops from civil rights campaigners

And once again: Is it worse than what has basically always been there? Are human biases in human brains better than in artificial neural networks?

Humans are notoriously bad witnesses. It does not take a lot for AI to do better.

Is facial recognition worse than an old fashioned lineup or a eye witness?

Not for children: Audacity fans drop the f-bomb after privacy agreement changes

Re: Strike three

> developers' interests

As I understand it, it was the developers who sold it, whatever that even means with GPL licensed software. A fork that doesn't attract the main contributors is bound to fail.

Cross-discipline boffin dream team issues social media warning: FIX IT NOW!

So: Do it like China?

Ireland warned it could face 'rolling blackouts' if it doesn't address data centres' demand for electricity

Re: Lucky Ireland

I don't think taxes have anything to do with this. Wind farms are generally financed through private investment.

Google says its artificial intelligence is faster and better than humans at laying out chips for artificial intelligence

> Get ready for more neural networks designing hardware to make neural networks more powerful.

First phase of the Singularity...

Google employee helped UK government switch from disastrous COVID-19 strategy, according to Dominic Cummings

Fog of war. Is this really "explosive"?

UK Court of Appeal rules Tiny Computers' legal remains can sue Micron and Infineon over 2002 DRAM price-fixing cartel

Infineon's DRAM business was spun off in 2006 to become Qimonda. Qimonda became bankrupt in 2009. It's still around to market its patent portfolio.

Starlink's latent China crisis could spark a whole new world of warcraft

This is covered by ITU regulations and is called "landing rights". Starlink will not go rogue and violate international treaties.

What happens when cancel culture meets Adolf Hitler pareidolia? Amazon decides it needs a new app icon

I see a mohawk.

AI brain drain to Google and pals threatens public sector's ability to moderate machine-learning bias

‘Those who can, do; those who can’t, teach.’

Welcome to the splinternet – where freedom of expression is suppressed and repressed, and Big Brother is watching

You know that the backbone of the Internet are huge telcos that are often state owned?

Re: Starlink?

Nope. StarLink requires "landing rights" in each nation. StarLink in China will either go through the Great Firewall or not be available. Same is true everywhere else: Play by the local rules or don't play at all.

Example: https://spacewatch.global/2020/01/uks-oneweb-awarded-satellite-communications-landing-rights-in-nigeria/

Linux Foundation, IBM, Cisco and others back ‘Inclusive Naming Initiative’ to change nasty tech terms

Newspeak is coming.

Five Eyes nations plus Japan, India call for Big Tech to bake backdoors into everything

Re: A thought

That was never claimed. The US just refuses to give up jurisdiction.

'Robbery, economic plunder, victim of larcenous cronyism and a heist'

That's rich coming from a country that blocks foreign companies (Google/Facebook/...), requires car makers to give up their know how in joint ventures and used to steal intellectual property left and right. I'm not a fan of the TikTok saga, but China had it coming.