Posts by Rafael #872397

SETI boldly looks beyond the Milky Way in latest alien hunt

Earth is not even a Type 1. Sad.

Make Earth Great Again! Build a wall around it!

(where's the icon for "insane clown"?)

Meta digs deep to strike geothermal power deal for its US datacenters

Re: 12GW?

Someone wants a lair in the center of the Earth...

Other billionaires are already looking for theirs in similarly inhospitable places: Mars, Florida, etc.

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

"vintage" ads

I like vintage ads for computers, but that in the article is interesting -- doesn't show the computer itself. I wonder why...

Trump campaign cites Iran election phish claim as evidence leaked docs were stolen

Re: Having promised a reward

“These documents were obtained illegally from foreign sources hostile to the United States, intended to interfere with the 2024 election and sow chaos throughout our Democratic process,” Cheung said.

This guy reminds me of Muhammad Saeed al-Sahhaf.

Twitter tells advertisers to go fsck themselves, now sues them for fscking the fsck off

Re: Weird

What was he expecting as an answer? "How shall we fuck off, O lord?"

Re: Well, I never would have foreseen this outcome

A genius … and a very stable genius at that!

WordStar 7, the last ever DOS version, is re-released for free

Awesome!

Won't someone do the same for ChiWriter? :-)

Lights, camera, AI! Real-time deepfakes coming to DEF CON

Fun?

While tricking kids is always fun, the joke falls flat when criminals benefit from similar techniques.

No, it is not fun. A company without proper diligence or security mechanisms gets fooled by technical and loses some millions? That isn't good; they should ensure it does not happen again. Share the experiences so others can prevent similar attacks.

Now go pretend you're a parent and say something nasty for a kid in a fake video call. See how easy is to fix the problem you've caused.

Here we go again with more AI crime prediction for policing

researchers

Remember the Tobacco Industry Research Committee?

Microsoft finds a new way to irritate Windows 11 users – a backup pop-up

Re: Microsoft don't give a shit about people backing up their files.

That's why one of the first useful things I wrote with Turbo Pascal (ask grampa!) was a "miniback" application, that just read a bunch of files, created a text list of it, and spread the files into several floppies, splitting only files larger than 1.4Mb. Worked in any version of DOS and you could get individual files if needed. The executable was small enough to be added to the file list too.

That was in 1990, if memory serves me right (probably doesn't - 34 years of coding and booze are taking its toll).

How to maintain code for a century: Just add Rust

Human perversity...

Human perversity will probably ensure people are still hacking away in ISO C42 and using -std=c89 to retain K&R function definitions.

Human perversity will probably ensure that in some years we will have several languages to choose from, each a candidate to replace C.

Quoting from memory: "To the person who, even now, is creating the next great computer language" -- Bruce Eckel.

(and where's the icon for old fart??)

Forget security – Google's reCAPTCHA v2 is exploiting users for profit

Re: solve captcha to continue

Click on all crosswalks / click click click / click on more crosswalks / click click / click on more crosswalks.

Now click on crosswalks while I slowly show new images of crosswalks. Did it? OK, now let me present new images even more slowly. Fading out and in a new one every two seconds.

Now click on all squares that contain a crosswalk. Now restart from scratch since the computer is still not sure you're a human.

Re: Why the limited tasks?

I get many, many captchas with images of crosswalks, bicycles, cars, buses... am I training an AI to recognize roads and learn how to drive? If so may $deity have mercy on us all.

Life, interrupted: How CrowdStrike's patch failure is messing up the world

Re:"the elevator in their building wasn't working due to the CrowdStrike patchpocalypse. "

Randall Munroe can explain.

I canceled three meetings today because of CrowdStrike. None of them were computer-based, -mediated or even -related.

Japan's digital minister declares victory against floppy disks

Re: Though given the latest 'who needs save? It's all in the cloud automatically'

Then we need an icon for "unreliable" or "you're on your own". A screw?

The next....

Kono declaring victory over the retro squares comes as rumors swirl that he fancies himself the next president, -- shirley you mean Prime Minister?

A friendly guide to local AI image gen with Stable Diffusion and Automatic1111

Come on, those are hilarious. Extra points if you can slip one in the last slides of a presentation to see who in the audience is still awake.

Anthropic delivers Claude 3.5 model – and a new way to work with chatbots

Unfortunately...

"... Claude.ai is only available in certain regions right now. We're working hard to expand to other regions soon."

Quantinuum inches closer to fault-tolerant quantum with a 56 qubit machine

Quantum AI...

....blockchain. Now gluten-free!

The Reg builds official Lego Artemis and Milky Way sets

Re: Not interested

When I was a kid I got several Hering Rasti block sets. I guess just a few countries outside Brazil and Argentina got those.

Each had instructions and pieces to create variations of vehicles, houses, etc.

Having mastered the basic instructions and variations the pieces were tossed into a Big Box o' Pieces, which I used to build whatever I fancied. The kits were nicely built, some had gears, plastic chains, wheels, and motors that ate lots of AA batteries. That was in the 70s...

Obligatory Calvin and Hobbes

US senators' AI roadmap aims for $32B in R&D spending

Driving US Innovation in Artificial Intelligence

What, no fancy backronym? Surely written by AI!

SPAINK: Spending Pork by Advancing Innovation in New Knowledge

I'm sure we meatbags can do better!

Stack Overflow simply bans folks who don't want their advice used to train AI

Re: re: To be honest, SO was never good.

Thera is a post I often go back to for illumination.

Elon Musk's latest brainfart is to turn Tesla cars into AWS on wheels

Re: Farts

Futurama did it first?

Why making pretend people with AGI is a waste of energy

I am, technically, a robot

Beep boop let's kill all humans, starting with the ones in marketing, then lawyers.

Chrome Enterprise Premium promises extra security – for a fee

"Noice internet you've got here. It would be a pity if it was invaded by pirates, ads, criminals and bad web designers".

Musk burns bridges in Brazil after calling for senior judge to be impeached

Re: Free Speech Absolutist

"A democracy is when I boss you around. A dictatorship is when you boss me around" -- Millor Fernandes, a Brazilian writer, journalist, humorist, and playwright.

Simulation reveals all Japanese will have the same surname by 2531

Re: At the rate Japan's population is shrinking

Round it down to 2525 (if man is still alive...)

AI hallucinates software packages and devs download them – even if potentially poisoned with malware

AI Feng Shui Expert

Why not?

"Your model ch'i is misaligned. That will be US$ 20K."

Canva acquires Affinity, further wounding a regulator-bruised Adobe

"There's no changes to the product [Affinity] customers know and love right now."

Let's hope so. Affinity was a pleasant surprise when I found out about it: inexpensive, does whatever I need, and not subscription-based.

Exchange Online blocked from sending email to AOL and Yahoo

Alternatively, perhaps just pick up the phone and have a chat

... talk ... with someone? In real time?

*shudder*

GitHub fixes pull request delay that derailed developers

Around two hours later, it Xeeted

Ugh!!

GPT-4 won't run Doom but will play the game poorly

Same as it ever was, same as it ever was

Thanks for the earworm!

Microsoft sends OneDrive URL upload feature to the cloud graveyard

Microsoft's "vision for OneDrive as a cloud storage service that syncs your files across devices."

I was a OneDrive victim for three years and I assure you that it doesn't work at all as a cloud storage service that syncs your files across devices.

Mamas, don't let your babies grow up to be coders, Jensen Huang warns

Re: If you don't know how to interpret the code the LLM comes up with

You could ask another LLM what's wrong with it. With the proper tools (and prompt engineering!) you could even let them talk between themselves, discuss the code, fight about indentation and language preferences, disagree about variable names, and just stop working together because their partner is an a**hole. Just like real meatbag programmers!

Then you can add a third LLM to act as the group's leader and a fourth as project manager and see what happens. It'll be LLMs all the way down!

Are you ready to back up your AI chatbot's promises? You'd better be

I'm not a Luddite, but

... we need a word for the complete opposite of a Luddite, for people and companies that jump on unproved tech concepts and start planning around it before seeing whether it is going to work or be useful, sometimes just because others are thinking about maybe doing it.

Tech bro, bandwagon jumper, "visionary", early adopter* and technophile* just aren't enough.

Musketeer?

*ChatGPT suggestions.

Chrome engine devs experiment with automatic browser micropayments

Re: The enshittification continues

"Our records show that you've accessed our site seventeen trillion times this month. That's why there are $1497,45 missing from your account".

That's not the web you're browsing, Microsoft. That's our data

Re: you just slap Microsoft with multiple Billions of £$€ fines

It looks like you're writing a lawsuit. Would you like help? I have all the information that is required...

The rise and fall of the standard user interface

Thanks for the Microsoft Word for DOS

... and for the PTSD it brought :-)

Tesla owners in deep freeze discover the cold, hard truth about EVs

...hellsite X...

Thanks.

Programmable or 'purpose-bound' money is coming, probably as a feature in central bank digital currencies

Re: "Demurrage can de-incentivize the hoarding of money"

I am quite sure the rules will be different for meatbags and companies.

Re: They call these "savings stamps" or "green stamps"

I wish I could upvote you more than once... or remove this earworm from my head :-)

Japanese brewery using generative AI to dream up new beverages

Re: Humans are still worse than AI

Check out the Feijoada (pork and bean stew) and Pudding flavored beers at https://revistabeerart.com/news/repense-cerveja-gastronomia

I'm sorry. I'm so sorry.

40 years of Turbo Pascal, the coding dinosaur that revolutionized IDEs

Re: Answered your own question

its maker, Borland, wanted a little extra if a customer planned to distribute the binaries.

My father bought me a copy of TP4.0 from a trip to the USA. If I recall correctly, for around $50 you got the compiler and a big honking manual with ALL you needed. I had a lot of fun with that.

Some years later Borland released TP5.5, and then Borland had an official reseller in Brazil. I recall they had some discounts for users of older versions. I called them and asked about the discount and a very naughty representative told me that since I bought my version outside Brazil it was not considered a legal copy (!!) and I would have to pay the full price for the new version, which was way outside of my budget. Thus, a pirate was born.

From Joaquin Phoenix to Rowan Atkinson, we enjoyed your Musk movie casting calls

Re: Elon Musk and Zuckerberg fight

We have CGI. We have generative AI and deep fakes. WHERE THE HELL IS THAT MOVIE???

Google Drive misplaces months' worth of customer files

Re: Take responsibility

Don't use drive, but do use Onedrive (cos the 6 user deal is brilliant value for money)

Always store locally, and preferably on multiple computers

My take on OneDrive: started using it for the same reason, and used the same procedure. I was using it to synchronize three Macs (work, home, and laptop for travel).

After some time I noticed that some of the files were not stored locally -- any attempt to open them required downloading. Also, the OneDrive app on the Mac is slow as hell, kept "looking for changes" or similar bullshit. Also, it crashed *silently* from time to time, making the computers out of sync. I got plenty of different versions of files that were out of sync.

Aside from the crashes, beachballed with an alarming frequency. Searched for solutions online, and almost all the suggestions were on the line of "reinstall and resync", which would take days.

I am evaluating Dropbox now, at least it is faster -- and more expansive, but honestly, the time I spent faffing with OneDrive was way more expensive for me.

These days you can teach old tech a bunch of new tricks

Re: A first?

"We enjoyed running the vetust Windows ME"?

Farewell WordPad, we hardly knew ye

Re: Kids nowadays ... Sigh!

ChiWriter. That is all.

Not call: Open source gurus urge you to dump Zoom

"Zoom did not use customer audio, video, chat, screen-sharing, attachments, or other communications like customer content (such as poll results, whiteboard, and reactions) to train our AI models,"

Which is just too bad. They could use my audio+video+chat to create an AI version of me to attend endless virtual meetings while I sleep or goof off.

Elon Musk launches his own xAI biz 'to understand reality'

...go home to build his own version of...

with blackjack and hookers?

OpenAI is still banging on about defeating rogue superhuman intelligence

And what about my flying car? Won't somebody think of the children and make it safe first?