Posts by steviebuk

Tech CEO nixes AI lawyer stunt after being threatened with jail time

Google

"Google builds music-making AI, but won't release it due to copyright

Researchers at Google have trained a new AI model, MusicLM, that can create audio samples based on text descriptions, according to a research paper on arXiv.

The first sample, for example, is generated with the prompt: "The main soundtrack of an arcade game. It is fast-paced and upbeat, with a catchy electric guitar riff. The music is repetitive and easy to remember, but with unexpected sounds, like cymbal crashes or drum rolls." You can listen to it here."

And because if they released it, YouTube would then probably flag everyone's song ever made as Googles AI copyright. That's how broken the detection system is on YouTube. For years my Disneyland Paris parade footage was being flagged by some Chinese account claiming copyright on the Disney sound tracks. Only recently have all those claims been removed.

It is possible to extract copies of images used to train generative AI models

This is why

The Aussie satire magazine (can't remember its name) has stuck itself behind a paywall now as it no longer wants these AI models like ChatGPT from sucking up and exploiting their free info.

Unfortunately the likes on Microsoft and Google will buy into this so the little people that have their images robbed will be able to do nothing about it, but the big corps will continue to profit off everyone elses work.

Wow, turns out cloud sales can slow down – eh, Amazon, Google?

Re: Growth Sustainability

Exactly, but unfortunately so many hedge funds are tied to the companies, like the knob that owns lots of Google shares so told them they needed to fire more people. Doesn't matter that he's already making a shit ton off them, he just wants to make more. And that is the issue, the investors.

China unveils massive blockchain cluster running homebrew tech

Re: Now we're talking

"Finally a service based on Blockchain tech that is a) serious and b) not a scam."

Are you having a laugh? It will be used by the CCP to monitor and suppress the people of China, nothing more. So yes, it will be a scam.

Former Facebooker alleges Meta drained users' batteries to test apps

Re: contract requires him to take the case to arbitration

It appears going to work for Meta is like signing up to the Country Club in Invitation To Hell.

BT in tests to beam down 5G coverage from the stratosphere

Re: Possibly a sensible solution

"5G has the potential to make fixed lines redundant for many Internet users."

It was marketed as that but never happened because its hyped bollocks.

Google institutional investor calls for wider cuts: 30k jobs

Re: Arsehole

But they aren't loosing money. Take YouTube for example, they make a massive killing over the adverts, it doesn't matter that quite a large amount of adverts are scam adverts now, it appears Google gives no shits as long as those adverts are being paid for and making them money.

Arsehole

"The billionaire hedge fund manager who runs a major Google investor isn't satisfied with the record 12,000 redundancies the US tech giant is making, and wants to see thousands more forced out of the organization."

"I'm a billionaire and want more money. Fuck the little people, they can get jobs elsewhere even though there is a recession".

Knob.

So you want to replace workers with AI? Watch out for retraining fees, they're a killer

Re: Who?

Self service, although I now use them and find them useful when in a rush, are also annoying because they are designed to make the company more money but the customer gets no discount for essentially doing the companies job for them. Not to mention the "You are a thief unless you can prove you're not" cameras that record you as you use the machine. We all should be sending in Right to be Forgotten requests for those machines and those recordings. They can try and claim they are entitled to keep them due to "security" but if no theft has happened, they have no right and I've never seen any GDPR warning for them in any store.

ChatGPT, although good does give out wrong answers and knows it. I asked it a powershell question the other day and it gave me the code. Which I tried, the commandlet didn't work. I told ChatGPT it didn't work as the commandlet didn't exist. It then confirmed "You're right, the commandlet was discontinued on blah blah blah", I gave up asking it after that as it gave another command that it knew was no longer valid. (I've already forgotten what the commands were, stupid brain).

What is Google doing with its open source teams?

Re: On the upside

Or Google will be arseholes like a lot of the big companies and claim "That idea you're trying to run with after we fired you. That's our property. You had that "thought" when you were on Google campus, we know this because you told Dave during your lunch break in the Google cafe. So, technically, its now our IP. Give it us or will sue you until you cave."

Lockheed Martin demos 50kW anti-aircraft frickin' laser beam

Don't

shine it at the cats.

I'll get my coat.

What's called Grogu but isn't that cute? Google's leaked answer to Apple AirTags

Exactly. Although problem is I see the use case now. One guy tracked his luggage when he took a flight and watched the airline loose the luggage and make up shit about where it was.

But then you have the other side. Found an Apple Airtag recently on floor in Sainsbury's car park. I've checked it and not been reported lost. Waited a bit with the battery out and still no report. So as far as I'm concerned, that was clearly stuck to someones car to track them so they're not going to want to flag it as lost.

Microsoft axes 10,000, already breaking bad news to staff

Sat Nav

"In an interview earlier this month, CEO Satya Nadella said the next two years are going to be tough for the tech industry, and that companies would need to look inside themselves and ask if they are as efficient as they need to be competitive."

Maybe, maybe stop being fucking greedy. Tell your investors "I'm keeping the price of license as they are, they don't need to be increased, we can take the small hit, more people will then buy as we'll be cheaper. Also, we need to do more testing instead of just pushing stuff out and we also need to STOP forcing Windows 11 (that is shit) on people".

But he won't.

China may have to reassess chip strategy in face of US sanctions

And in Xi's China, there was no 5000 years, unless he finds a map that says "China owned this once". He was picked because "He seems alright". Now they've all realised he's another Mao but can't get rid of him.

Re: Capitalisim ≠ competition

Two wumaos in a row.

Re: Typical western arrogance

Hello wumao.

Re: Hermit Kingdom

You're right it will become a hermit, like North Korea but with a bit more money. But they really need the West for their economy. Currently their economy relies massively on their housing market. But their housing market is a massive scam. You have all the ghost cities and buildings that don't last a year. One person will be convinced to buy a flat in a new build. The new build will be half built then the contractor will knock it down and tell you "We're starting again, the new, new build will be even better, but you have to give us a bit more money". Rinse and repeat.

Re: US semiconductor industry???

China for sure has enough know-how to design chips (see Huawei before it was killed by Trump)

No they don't. There are smart people in China, its just a shame Winnie the fucking Pooh is in charge so you're not allowed any of your own thoughts, you must follow and read "Xi Jingping Thought". Trump didn't kill Huawei, as much as I really dislike Trump it was actually the only sensible move that happened. Huawei has been stealing tech for years. Just do a quick search online and you'll find all sorts. And look at how the CCP runs, look at what they did to Jack Ma because he criticised the little man child Xi. Then look at how they reacted when the Meng Wanzhou came home, she got a heros welcome, all because Huawei is clearly state controlled.

UK Online Safety law threatens Big Tech bosses with jail

Still making me mad

The fact David Carrick got away with what he did for years and still got promoted. And now the police watchdog "Won't be doing any internal investigation" in case it reveals the MASSIVE failings of the police. Means this bill is even more of a joke.

Look up the Shana Grice case. She was being stalked by her ex for months and reported to the police several times. They eventually fined her for "Wasting police time" at which point the ex finally murdered her. Goes to show, Sussex police have always been useless cunts, just look up the case of Dominic O'Brien now in prison

https://www.theargus.co.uk/news/18208133.sussex-police-inspector-spared-jail-attempting-publish-obscene-material/

This online bill is a complete joke.

What a loud of shit

Do the UK think they are the world police like the US?

Try this on Microsoft, Google, Twitter, Amazon, Facebook they'll all tell you to "Go fuck a duck, we're based in the US, you're laws don't apply to us. If you want them to, we'll move all our data centres out of the UK and Ireland. You'll now have to move all your tenants to the US servers if you wish to continue to use them. Then we can suck up all your data with our Patriot Act."

Its as stupid and Starmer wanted to make shotgun ownership more difficult now. Doesn't matter that the guns crooks use are fucking illegally acquired, just make it more difficult for law abiding citizens. Much like my knife I use for work I'd like to always carry. Its useful, is 3" all legal but because it has the safety locking feature, I can't fucking carry it. Doesn't matter that knifes used in crime are fucking kitchen knifes as they are cheap and disposable.

The law has been created by fucking idiots that don't understand how the Internet works. They are the ones screaming on the IT Crowd when Jen showed them the black box Internet. VPNs will avoid most of this shit. It will affect local bloggers and independent journalists. Hosting companies may decide they can't risk hosting UK sites anymore and so on and so on. Tories are fucking tits.

Oh, is that classed as hate speech? The Register best get ready then.

Oh and will Nadine Dorries be pulled up? Most of her Tweets wouldn't pass this shitty bill.

Its all done to silence those against the Tories. Much like the new shitty ID required to vote. I tried signing up to test it. The government do no checks the photo is the person who is signing up. It goes to the location elections department. They can't possibly check the photo is the person they say they are. We also have the fact photos have to specifically be a certain fucking size. Our old friend doesn't even have a smart phone, how's he gonna sign up for that? This also stops homeless people voting, how are they going to get access to a PC to do the upload and take a passport style photo? We also have Muslim voters, who are in their right to wear their religious dress when voting. However, the polling stations (and understand local election departments already have a hard time at election time as it is), they now have to setup a private area so they can ask the Muslim lady to show her face for ID purposes. This could cause a lot more Muslims not to vote. It was ALWAYS, clearly, a Trump style ploy to stop people voting because the Tories know they'll lose the next election.

Re: Boo hoo

But I'm not.

I'll get my coat.

Basecamp details 'obscene' $3.2 million bill that caused it to quit the cloud

Re: nice to see

We had someone like that in management who wanted to make it his pet project to go full cloud. Only one consultant has been honest that its more expensive. Now the place is making people redundant to save costs. When they could just save it on his cloud idea bollocks.

Told you....

...that the "infrastructure free" idea was bollocks & would be more expensive.

Always fun when you're right, not fun when not listened to.

Surely you can't be serious: Airbus close to landing fully automated passenger jets

..

"I can't let you land Dave".

Should open source sniff the geopolitical wind and ban itself in China and Russia?

They aren't an optimist, they are a wumao.

Apple accused of censoring apps in Hong Kong and Russia to maintain market access

Apple and Tim Apple

Should be ashamed. The recent protests in China was helped as they were able to use Apple Airdrop between devices which the shitty CCP couldn't monitor. Tim Apple realising he'd loose his China market gets an update sent out, only for China that would cripple the feature on the demand of the CCP.

All the people that were protesting that are now being arrested. All the people that will be disappeared like the Tank Man was, all those deaths are now on Tim Apples hands.

Re: Screw 'em.

"The latest Top Gun movie changed the Taiwan flag on Cruises flight jacket to something less politically sensitive"

But it was switched back. They realised what they were doing, realised the US market were getting pissed off with these direct censors as in they are censored for the US market as well to save the Chinese doing it. Realised viewers were objecting so told China to sod off and changed it back. Hollywood have finally realised their mistake when China asked them to remove the Statue of Liberty from the Spiderman movie. When they managed to make loads of money with without the Chinese market, they started to stop self censoring.

Look up Laowhy86 on YouTube and his "Why Hollywood Now REFUSES to Bow Down to China" video. Its quite good. And on one of their ADVChina videos they talk about their time living in China for 15 years for Winston and 10 years for c-milk regarding the Hollywood movies and how China have been ripping them off for years. China's local films are released and don't do very well, so when you go to the cinema to watch a Hollywood movie, Winston said the ticket that was printed out was for the Chinese movie which the teller crossed out and wrote the Hollywood movie. However, it means the money from the ticket sale went to the local Chinese movie instead so inflate its viewing numbers & profits.

Its not the fault of the Chinese, its the fault of the CCP and the stupid Winnie the Pooh lookalike cock that runs it.

It's time to retire 'edge' from our IT vocabulary

Can't

Due to a shitty browser being called it.

Elon Musk to step down as Twitter CEO: Help us pick his replacement

Re: The obvious choice

Opened the Christmas Crackers early?

Re: He was reportedly already looking for a CEO for the past month

True. Its clear the investors have told him to find someone else to run it or they'll pull their money. And the poll was to make him look good.

It will be a shit job. It will be for show only, Elon will still be running it all from the side, they'll just be a puppet CEO. It will be someone who's willing to take a hit for cash, knowing full well he'll throw them under the bus at some point. He'll hit them with an NDA so they can never mention this after he fires them.

He truely is a cunt.

Broadcom braced for full EU investigation into $61B VMware buyout

Re: Care

They would if the whole of the EU decided that no one is allowed to use VMWare anymore. Whether the EU would be able to legally do that I'm not sure.

Microsoft to buy 4% of London Stock Exchange in 10-year platform deal

Re: You can't get fired for buying...

Because, unfortunately, Excel is quite powerful. Take Google Shits, I mean Sheets for example, its really shit compared to Excel.

Women sue Apple claiming AirTags helped their stalkers

Re: Just curious

Possibly because Tile are smaller. Its only with these comments that I've heard of Tile. Never heard of them before.

Not a Apple fan but even I know what an AirTag is and what it looks like.

Re: THIS is why we need diversity

Do you have any evidence there were no women at the development stage? Apple is only concerned about the share holder nothing more. This has been clear for years with their continued use of China despite the CCPs human rights issues. They are only now beginning to slowly move some manufacturering outside of China but only because they had suppy issues with China's stupid zero COVID and the riot at the foxconn factory.

Found

Found one in the local Sainsbury's carpark. Android struggled to read it but rhen so did my partners iPhone.

Eventually it read and only showed the last digits of owners number. Waited over a week, still not reported as missing. Now been a month and the same message. Its clear it wws stuck on a car to track

Intel offers Irish staff a three-month break from being paid

Yeah right

"part of push to reduce costs"

Don't they mean

"part of a push to make the share holders more profits"

Huawei teases bonkers gadget combo

Re: Why?

Thought about a smartwatch and despite hating Apple my partner was giving me her old watch. Mainly so she would know where I was. That didn't bother me, she worries I'll go missing on my walks with the dog. Anyway. Didn't last long as I don't have an Apple phone so made it pointless. Then I discovered they need, even the new ones, charging every day. No thanks.

Got a Lorus Lumibrite for £30 from Argos instead.

I now watch Wristwatch revival on YouTube. He's really good. Makes it look easy.

Re: Security Alarm

Saw them x-ray one at Southampton when I went on cruise earlier in year. I could of bagged myself a fancy watch as it had been in one of the trays but fell out and was under the x-ray table. Lucky I spotted it so pointed it out to security who picked it up and went to give it me back. Had to tell them it wasn't mine.

Just 22% of techies in UK aged 50 or older, says Chartered Institute for IT

Re: Blame the management

Don't get me wrong, the young students are skilled but they are being exploited. Not only that they are being lied to about an app they are coding in, that can be used elsewhere. Yes it is but hardly anywhere. When we were trying to learn it I knew it was a temp role for me so looked up jobs that required me to know this app. Nothing, not one job anywhere on the market was using it, required me to know it or was using it for coding any apps.

I also remember they convinced one youngling over from another department. Told her how great an opportunity it would be blah blah "Do I get more money?" no. "Oh". She did it for a while and realised her manager was saying "Yes" to every app they were asking for his department to created. It was ridiculous as they didn't have enough staff to do each app properly. She realised this, realised the low code software was shit and not used elsewhere so said she was leaving.

Eventually the manager of that department left also. What a shit show.

Blame the management

Who want to hire young folk who they know they can exploit and pay less. I asked in last place about getting developers in for the new software they had "Its fine, we'll just use interns" all because they know they can pay them peanuts. I don't know of any 50 year old intern.

And then you have:

"'We can only achieve the government's ambition for the UK to be the 'next Silicon Valley' by closing the digital skills gap and making this vital profession attractive to a far broader range of people," said Rashik Parmar MBE, CEO of the BCS."

Ironic that he came from IBM the company that has been repeatedly sued for getting rid of older employees. I'm not claiming he had anything to do with that but that its just ironic.

What I dislike about most articles in IT is there is always a CEO, Director blah blah spouting shit for self serving purposes. I never see comments from the local desktop engineer that happens to have a great idea but can't get to the director level due to not wanting to kiss arse.

Epson zaps lasers into oblivion, in the name of the environment

This is...

...green washing at its highest. Inkjet runs out quickly and as others they make it difficult to use other inks. Not forgetting the inks are expensive.

Elon Musk to abused Twitter users: Your tormentors are coming back

Re: And to think that 30 years ago...

Problem is various factors. I've accidently clicked on the down vote before, then couldn't be bothered to quickly reply that fact. You have others with social issues that do it for no reason than they can. And normally when I post criticising the CCP all the wumaos come along and downvote. They'll never admit they are wumaos, they just do it.

UK bans Chinese CCTV cameras on 'sensitive' government sites

Re: At what cost?

That's a Wumao thing to say.

Re: Good idea anyways

Yep. Problem is the footage quality is good and they are cheap. We are a charity so they, unfortunately, went with Hikvision cameras for a few of the sites. We have been looking and thinking about their server setup. But I've now been putting it off due to the CCP links.

Tech companies in the crosshairs as China proposes antitrust law revisions

Re: Public Comments?

You got the name wrong.

Dear Glorious Leader Winnie the Pooh

Ironic

"Businesses also can't use a person's data to treat them different or impose restrictions."

Something Winnie the Pooh Xi and the fucking CCP do ALL the time.

Someone has to say it: Voice assistants are not doing it for big tech

And this is why it should be law...

...that all such devices CAN run locally and never require an Internet connection. This then means when Amazon decide "This isn't worth it anymore, Alexa is coming to an end. All your devices will no longer work". When that happens people in the know can continue to run the devices as they see fit. Independent engineers can sell their service to "Setup your home Alexa with no Internet required". During this Amazon can still sell these to people who don't want to setup their own local setup and don't want to pay an engineer.

Everyone wins. I think more people would buy Alexa shit if it didn't require the Internet and could just be run locally. They are all missing a trick.

China declares victory over teenage video game addiction

I declare the end of energy issues..

..in the UK. As we all know this is another Xi lie like he declared victory on poverty.

The Wumaos will be along to

1. Try and prove he's not lying even though he is.

2. To do a lot of whataboutisam.

Next we're watching for all governments to shutdown and put an end to the seriously shady "Chinese police stations" they've hidden in business' around the world. Which is a real thing and shitty way to behave.

Foxconn workers protest over pay and lockdowns at iPhone factory in China

Apple and Tim Apple

Apple and Tim Apple should be ashamed.

They give no shits about China's poor human rights issues.

Intel reveals pay-to-play Xeon features with software-defined silicon

Jesus Christ

As I can't edit my other post now.

Just heard Mercedes now have a yearly sub fee to "unlock" the full power of the car you've already fucking paid for!

This NEEDS to stop. All Governments need to ban this practice.