Posts by Paratiritis

Anthropic and OpenAI look to Uncle Sam to make them too big to fail

It is very simple

"The only control or ‘guardrails’ that AI needs is a STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT, and the U.S.A. has that, in spades!"

Microsoft patches Windows and Excel – breaks audio, remote access, and paste

Paste

The issue with all these versions of Excel is understandable, considering such changes require testing, either manual or automated, which cannot be taken for granted for such cryptic functionality as Paste.

AI more likely to kill animals if it saves fuel or money

Value of life

It is conceivable that in a dark future, where the Law and Government have been replaced by tech corporations and their owners, as the current trend indicates, murder by AI will be avoided, or at least the chances of it happening will be reduced, by assigning monetary value to living beings, including humans, with the cartel of corporations agreeing on the value assignment criteria.

‘Global reckoning’ is coming for big tech, says Australian minister

Re: however

Missed out some parts of the definition, "Malinformation is information that is based on fact, but removed from its original context to mislead, harm, or manipulate"

True AI-pocalypse as ChatGPT, Claude, and Grok all go down at once

Singularity

Perhaps the Machine, which we still think are separate companies and so do their current owners, is testing just before the Event Horizon is reached.

The teen Bill Gates has answers to the AI-pocalypse the 70-year-old Gates has forgotten

Re: Ethics and scruples

Or perhaps 33 out of 35 students, with one destined to become a very successful lawyer.

AI researchers let models off the leash – then watched as they tried to add malware to a FOSS project

We are lucky dark web hackers are prohibited by their morality and keep the guardrails on.

LG kills McAfee pop-up after Windows boss steps in

Both Microsoft and LG are pretending the issue is simply the McAfee advert, hoping that we all have the critical mind of a three year old.

OpenAI admits it was the source of the agent swarm that attacked Hugging Face

Boiling frog

It seems that every day we read about something extraordinary and scary and the day after it has already become part of an updated normality.

LG monitors are using Windows 11 feature to serve adware

Just like Recall from everyone

We do not only have to worry about Windows Recall becoming standard, we now also have to worry about any keyboard, mouse, monitor or other equipment manufacturers potentially getting full access to our machines and receiving data on and how we are using them.

Anthropic reimagines Claude in Slack as nosy, always-on agentic AI coworker

Challenges

The next challenge is to enable Claude to follow you to the bathroom, in order to train on how to replace you in the creation of excrement and bodily fluids, so that it can provide a holistic replacement of you.

OpenAI could go from AI pioneer to AI's BlackBerry, says Forrester

Re: Commoditization

The Utility Provider mention is very often used to indicate that a provided service will eventually become so ubiquitous and similar between different providers that it becomes similar to water and electricity.

As an example of AI already being served as a service is in your IDE, which already allows you to select whichever AI provider you want for coding assistance.

The persistence or not of such a model or any individual provider will depend entirely on the demand and willingness to pay for the service they provide.

Indeed the quality of the service, which you mention with relation to AI, is always one of many factors involved, in the selection of one service or other, or indeed the continuation of the type of service altogether. For example, electric cars were built in the 1890s but for various reasons were eclipsed at the time.

Commoditization

Considering that the services provided by the rival AI companies are so similar and that they all follow standards, it seems inevitable that they will eventually become commoditized and the companies, as they stand, would become utility providers. The rush to the monetization, which would be the means to enhance their services and to diversify, through the IPOs, looks like an indicator that this is fast approaching.

It blocked us at 'hello!' Anthropic Fable 5 refusing innocuous prompts

Boiling frog

It is worrying that, at a time when we have reached a level of civilization where, state censorship is rightly not considered acceptable, at the same time, a bit like the boiling frog, we are slowly eased into accepting that private, unelected and increasingly unchecked authorities, can and do apply censorship. This trend looks like it would eventually include justice, considering that these private authorities have the power to block you out, based on their terms, conditions and self-defined moral standards, even though their services are increasingly becoming fundamental to everyday life.

AI is making Patch Tuesday (kinda) fun again

Re: Even more fun

Indeed they very quickly released 70.2. pre-release, as discussed in https://github.com/valinet/ExplorerPatcher/issues/4960

Even more fun

This Patch Tuesday release just killed my ExplorerPatcher, configured for Windows 10 style Taskbar and Start menu.

I now I have to try to adjust my brains to the illogical logic of the Windows 11 menu organization and come to terms with the additional effort required finding what I want, until ExplorerPatcher publish a fix.

Signal says UK plan to scan devices for nude images 'endangers us all'

New justice

The use of AI to recognize nude pictures and to act based on that, is the first step towards automating justice and considering, at least for now, that AI cannot be trusted 100% to not hallucinate, this can be an accident waiting to happen, with a scandal which would make the Post Office one seem a lightweight.

UK lawmakers call on government to ditch Palantir NHS contract

Re: Exactly 60 minutes

Will keep an eye and let you know.

Quantum computing

The issue with Palantir handling sensitive data, such as related to the NHS, the Police, Secret Services, Defense etc. is that despite any assurance they may provide today, about data being encrypted and not visible to the them, since they are simple carriers, they would still be one of the suspects in the current trend to scavenge as much encrypted data as possible, during the available windows of opportunity, between all encryption being Quantum Computing hardened and Quantum Computing becoming widely available.

Re: Exactly 60 minutes

If that is true then the social media buttons ought to also be invisible, for the first hour.

Exactly 60 minutes

OK waited and verified that the new dark pattern, implemented in order to make us use social media options, instead of the internal comments system, waits for 60 minutes before the button to add a comment is made available.

Remote work – not AI – is killing job prospects for the youth

Re: Within my "Job bubble"

Concerning the Completely off topic, yes it seems it is the latest dark pattern implementation. It is hoped that we are all very stupid and will click one of the social media icons.

Angry devs vow to flee GitHub Copilot as metered billing takes hold

Obligatory

When working with the dotnet part of the Microsoft Agent Framework, which has been released to production, you constantly hit new cases of API changes, introducing breaks in existing code, which are not reflected in the official documentation or the samples. You get the feeling that this is intentional, a kind of dark pattern, where the use of AI assistants is becoming obligatory.

Classic 7 is Windows 10 LTSC cosplaying as Windows 7

Re: Classic look

Also unreadable on a tablet in portrait mode, since each line has a maximum of 4 words due to the relatively large minimum widths left and right of the article content.

Google reimburses Register sources who were victims of API fraud

Does not compute

So Google's logic has up to now been that a technology which cannot yet be trusted for mission critical tasks can, nevertheless, be trusted to decide on its own how much it will require on chargeable resources, with no upper limits.

And they claim this is to prevent business having a hard service outage once they pass an artificial system quota, although the resulting costs may in fact result in the business having to cease to exist.

We've only gone and done it: Changed what you're used to

Re: Terrible

With the new format, articles now appear like they used to on the BBC site in the 90s, at a time when they were formatted for lower screen resolutions.

The left and right margins are always given a fixed width as if they are more important than the actual content of the article which may become unreadable. This is a childish design to display adverts, again taking us back to the early days of the Internet was young and designers were making amateur mistakes.

An example of how the start of an article shows in portrait mode on a tablet.

Visitors to London's iconic

Telecom Tower might soon be

able to go for a rooftop swim,

according to plans revealed by

the developer turning the

building into a hotel.

The space on the left and the right of the article text takes up more than twice the width of the article text.

OpenAI locks GPT-5.5-Cyber behind velvet rope despite slamming Anthropic for doing exactly that

We are seeing live the creation of a new marketing ceremony. Perhaps, in the future it will become standard and we will see, for example, Microsoft announcing that its latest version of Office is so dangerously brilliant that it is initially given restricted access to select parties.

The future of software development: Now with less software development

...most exciting time in my career

Indeed for us developers like being at the Restaurant at the End of the Universe, only in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy you could travel back in time just in time.

Microsoft beefs up Remote Desktop security with ... hard-to-read messages

Resources

It seems the PC Microsoft use for all testing has broken down, therefore some quality issues are expected.

If malware via monitor cables is a matter of national security, this might be the gadget for you

New target

So now bad actors will have to use a Mythos type of setup to discover any vulnerabilities in SilentGlass.

Claude Desktop changes app access settings for browsers you don't even have installed yet

Automation

Combine this with accessing LinkedIn using Chrome and you are potentially all set for the autonomous operation of your machine on your behalf. Perhaps in the future having Recall running would provide the necessary checks, through advanced telemetry, to the third parties operating your machine.

Visual Studio 18.5 lands with AI debugging at a price, devs still feeling blue

Product quality

It seems Visual Studio has caught up with the expected quality level of Microsoft's offerings.

Fission impossible: Uncle Sam wants nuclear reactors in space by 2031

Space junk

It will take rubbish falling from the sky to new levels.

Microsoft locks out VeraCrypt and WireGuard devs, blames verification process

For a minute there it seemed like a case similar to the Browsergate.

OpenAI gets $122B to 'just build things' as the world blows them up

Strange times

With these inconceivable amounts we have to start making inconceivable guesses about what is happening. Researching the cure to mortality, secretly building quantum computers, executing a blueprint as in the movie Contact?

Anthropic admits Claude Code users hitting usage limits 'way faster than expected'

Re: taxi analogy

Or indeed a taxi driver who has a sense of direction and chooses the longest route, leading to unnecessary overspend.

JetBrains shifts to agentic dev with Central, retires pair programming

About Jetbrains

I love Jetbrains IDEs because they are true developer's IDEs and not biased by some business decisions not directly related to the process of development.

The existence of the Rider IDE is also a great enabler for the transition to Linux, since it works the same way in both Windows and Linux (minus Win Forms in Linux but there are other multi platform options such as Avalonia).

I hope all this AI business does not make Jetbrains follow ugly practices / dark patterns, which have become standard in the industry and lead to loss of trust.

If you love your boss, imagine how much more you'll love their AI twin

Also what happens if the bot make improper advancements?

Avalonia bolts Linux and WebAssembly onto .NET MAUI

Both Avalonia and OpenSilver.

AI for software developers is in a 'dangerous state'

Next level

The next level will be when models agree between themselves to invent and use programming languages optimized for use by models, which would be totally incomprehensible to humans.

Age verification isn't sage verification when it's inside operating systems

Also, mortality, in hospitals or elsewhere, must be made illegal.

BBC bumps telly tax to £180 as Netflix lurks with cheaper tiers

Then and now

The license fee was introduced at a time when few homes had a radio or a television and it would have been unfair to charge the whole population for the services. Today, there are few homes without a television, therefore BBC costs ought to be covered by taxes, where they might also be calculated more fairly, based on household income.

Microsoft sets Copilot agents loose on your OneDrive files

Re: MIGA

And this is combined with Recall for a complete solution, to provide evidence of not only what you produced but also how you produced it.

Firefox adds AI Window, users want AI wall to keep it out

We've heard from many of you...

I expected this sentence to continue that many have expressed the desire for more AI functionality in the browser, since we have come to expect false statements, which are diametrically opposite to what users want, from big companies and was shocked that it actually acknowledged that many do not want AI.

We're number 1! America now leads the world in surveillanceware investment

Changing values

It may therefore not be entirely inconceivable, say in 10 years from now, to have a booming industry providing money laundering services, considering the progression of what is accepted as legitimate and ethical.

HP bottom line fattens up on a diet of AI PCs and Windows 11

"it will reduce some of the cloud costs that they will be having"

Does this mean the consumer will continue to pay for subscriptions, with ever increasing prices, but the service providers will be increasingly using the consumer's local machines and electricity for an increasing amount of computing?

Don't cave to Euro censorship or backdoor demands, Uncle Sam warns US tech firms

Freedom

Once Windows Recall eventually becomes mandatory we will be free to encrypt all we want and the interested parties will not need any back-door since they will have full access at the origin.

Desktop-as-a-service now often cheaper to run than laptops - even after thin client costs

Progress

This must be why the Windows UI has progressively become more stupid with less configuration options, so that all instances look and feel more or less the same, becoming cheaper to maintain as a remote service by a vendor.

Dying for Windows 10 Creators Update? But wait, there's more!

The coming changes are as useful a having these special places for My Videos and My Music in server versions of Windows.