Posts by jmch

Elon Musk flogs $8.4bn of Tesla shares amid Twitter offer drama

Re: Irony

"Right to free s[p]eech should not be anonymous" he said, posting anonymously... :)

On a serious note, there are a few conflating issues here...

The possibility to be able to post anonymously is what allows activists, whistleblowers etc who live under oppressive regimes to be able to post critical comment without getting rounded up and thrown in a cell. That's a difficult balancing act to work out - you either have anonymity to help the good guys in bad places, but that allows bad actors to also act anonymously, or you force everyone to reveal their identity, which cuts off a valuable channel for people for whom anonymity can be literally a life-saver. Add to that the complexity of a US-based company that is active worldwide under multiple different jurisdictions.

If I correctly understand the concept of a verified account, if that means Twitter has verified the ID and therefore the person is not anonymous conferring extra privileges... for example people could choose to block all non-verified accounts. The other thing I can think of is an intermediate layer of 'verified anonymous' ie verified to Twitter but pseudonymous to the rest of the platform. Illegal tweets can then be subpoenaed for the user's identity, otherwise a user staying within the rules could stay anonymous to the wider community

Google releases beta version of Android 13 'Tiramisu'

Re: Tiramisu

And totally (not) unlike Android, is far better when using the minimum of ingredients instead of throwing in whatever takes the chef's (or manufacturer's - ugh!!) fancy.

Almost two-thirds of SMIC's Shanghai employees are living at work

Re: WTF???

" at some point they are going to have to recognize reality and admit zero covid is no longer possible"

Absolutely this. Since omicron isn't just more virulent than other variants but also less severe, might as well let it run freely and forget about quarantine at all. At some point enough people will have built-up natural immunity that it will just recede into the background noise like a severe cold.

WTF???

"Residents, including ....delivery drivers ... are confined to their homes... The government has delivered vegetable boxes to registered residents"

So delivery drivers who live in Shanghai are quarantined, and the Chinese government uses some other different party-approved delivery drivers, because presumably Shanghai-based delivery drivers can transmit Covid while party-approved delivery drivers don't??

Also, quarantine is usually 10 days to 2 weeks, but the lockdown is going on for over 4 weeks???

Eh, whatever, I'm sure the CCP knows what it's doing \sarc

MIT's thin plastic speakers fall flat. And that's by design

Interesting tech!

Re noise-cancelling - in cars and aeroplanes the sounds tend to be lower frequencies. 100Hz to 100kHz range means they're not covering the 20-100Hz bracket where a lot of mechanical background noise lies. Also, human hearing tops out around 16kHz (higher for kids, lower for adults), that's why audio headphones / speakers have audio ranges of typically 20Hz-20kHz. (at really low frequencies, vibrations are no longer 'sounds' heard in the ear but rather vibrations felt in the whole body ).

Another interesting application might also be short distance radio-wave-free low-power communications in the inaudible range.

Although I do foresee a dystopian future where every surface that isn't an ad-screen is a speaker surface spouting inane muzak.

Elon Musk set to buy Twitter in $44b deal, promises stuff

The reality is, every one of these sentences is a compressed soundbite that has a grain of truth, but whose subtleties cannot really be expressed in a 140-character limit. Unfortunately too many people on either end of the spectrum are unwilling to have an honestly open intellectual debate. Preaching to the converted (and riling them up even more to the extremes) is much more attention-grabbing (and therefore profitable).

The Trump Campaign colluded with the Russians: Not sure about 'colluded' but they sure as hell were happy to sit back and allow Putin to meddle to get Trump elected.

The Covid-19 Virus was a natural occurrence: Lie-ish. Evidence is questionable either way, but certainly there is enough doubt to be cast on the official 'naturally occurring' story. Occam's razor and Hanlon's Razor point to a risky experiment that was accidentally released, but China's determination to not lose face has probably gotten rid of any conclusive evidence.

The NIAID was not funding gain of function research at the Wuhan lab: Probably a lie. It's no secret that the Wuhan lab was being funded in part by the US. Maybe not specifically for 'gain of function' research, but that's probably just plausible deniability.

Hunter Biden's laptop is Russian Disinformation: ??? I got nothing

Police in America are murdering innocent black men by the thousands: False, but true if you replace 'thousands' with 'hundreds', and in many cases for varying degrees of 'innocent'

"I also read an interesting comment this morning that Musk is borrowing billions to fund this acquisition and that the payments & interest on this sum of money would exceed Twitter's annual net income"

It actually says right there in the article that expected interest repayments are approx $1bn vs approx $1.8bn cash flow. Now of course cash flow isn't the same as net income, but it still gives a good indication that Twitter isn't in over it's head. (anyone more versed in balance sheets is welcome to expand on this!!)

I've always found the idea of debt leveraging a company to buy it out to be a bit dodgy, but then again it's not that much different from a gigantic buy-to-let mortgage, is it? Musk might be many things but he's no mug in business, for sure he will have solid plans to increase Twitter's revenue.

Robots are creepy. Why trust AIs that are even creepier?

Re: Robot Barman

From the video, it looks like it's just moving cups around to the appropriate dispenser, out of which the drinks come premixed.

Not much of a barman!

Netflix to crack down on account sharing, offer ad-laden cheaper options

"70% of the ads are directed at 3% of the population."

I wish! If that were true, 97% of the population would hardly ever see ads. I look forward to a time when ad networks are clever enough to realise that I never buy any of the stuff I get shown so they may as well stop

Shanghai lockdown: Chinese tech execs warn of supply-chain chaos

Re: Get out

Thumbs up for everything except the last sentence, which is demonstrably false

Re: Get out

They might have prevented many more than 3 deaths, but with those numbers who knows? How many of 25 million people are getting sick physically or mentally because of the lockdown? How many of 25 million people would you expect to die anyway over the course of a month?

'Normal' covid quarantine is 10-14 days, if they had to completely lock down a whole city for 22 days and counting, and they're still not thinking of unlocking, something is very wrong or very fishy. Either way, take the official story with a few pinches of salt.

Re: Blame the CCP and Winne the Pooh

Humans evolved for hundreds of thousands of years without capitalism. It is absolutely NOT 'just how human beings work'. How human beings are 'designed' (evolved to) work is in small groups of closely-knit people who developed relationships that cared about each other.

Shit starts happening when one person or group wants to impose their will on another person or group.

Re: Blame the CCP and Winne the Pooh

It's not the communism that's evil, it's the totalitarianism.

Communism (which is ultimately about egalitarian decision-making) can, and does work in small groups (communes) of like-minded people who respect each other and are willing to make some trade-offs for the shared benefit of the community. This is mostly how humans lived for hundreds of thousands of years (even if there is an 'alpha' or tribe leader, the difference between top and bottom is minimal)

Totalitarianism is getting everyone to do what the boss wants. Nonconformists can be killed or jailed, and that's the same whether the governing ideology is left-wing (Chinese / soviet communism), right-wing (Nazism, Chile under Pinochet etc), theocracy (Iran) or just medieval (Saudi and other Arab states). Where, under (capitalist) liberal democracies, governments can't jail dissidents willy-nilly, nonconformists can just be socially ostracised, denied employment opportunities, 'cancelled', publically hounded on social media etc, whether they're on the 'right' wing or the 'left'.

Hate and intolerance is not the monopoly of any '-ism', rather it is shared among them. Hating against any particular '-ism' doesn't solve the problem, it just adds to the problem.

Immersion-cooled colo is coming to Ohio... via a crypto-mining datacenter

Absolutely. Here in Switzerland the local power company is building a system to extract heat from the lake and put to useful use.

Being able to capture and re-use waste heat is really something we need to master given how much of it we produce

Cisco's Webex app phoned home audio telemetry even when muted

I don't know why the software would need to inform you if you appear to be talking but are muted. Every other person on the call is sure to tell you

When the expert speaker at an NFT tech panel goes rogue

"Note that with an NFT, all that you actually own is a *URL*"

AFAIK, just as with crypto wallets, you can have an NFT on your own PC, USB drive etc

Star loses $500,000 NFT after crooks exploit Rarible market

It might be more subtle than that though...

Say its possible to create a copy of the Mona Lisa that exactly duplicates the original to a standard undetectable by the naked eye, even to an expert.

Thought exercise : the Louvre actually exhibit an undetectable copy, no one would ever know since its impossible for visitors to examine it closely. The actual original is stolen and resold, it would still not fetch the original's price.

Thus the value of the one hanging in the Louvre is based on 'everyone knowing'* that it's the original painted by Leonardo (whether that's actually true or not ) . So even in the physical world there is the equivalent idea of an original being worth much more than a copy even if the copy is, in any respect that matters, identical.

The value isn't in the item, it's in the human belief attached to it. But then we already know that art has much less intrinsic value than the value assigned to it by humans willing to pay for it, whether that's millions for an original painting or 10 bucks for a copy of a CD.

*and incidentally, this is unverifiable by pretty much anyone

You can buy a company. You can buy a product. Common sense? Trickier

Re: 'twas ever thus

In Switzerland all ovens, cookers, dishwashers, fridges etc are typically built-in and expected to stay. Washer and drier ditto though not built-in.

On the other hand it's normal to take all the light fittings and leave just wires (though individually insulated!!), though it also happens to leave a basic bare light bulb.

It's also weirdly common to not have any wires in the living room ceiling, and instead to have light switches that control sockets into which you then plug standing lamps

'Bigger is better' is back for hardware – without any obvious benefits

Thanks for the feedback.

Re Android, though: it's possible to work offline, and will work in aeroplane mode, but if there is a connection it will do it online. Not sure if there is a setting to make it permanently offline even if the phone is online

*Still no voice dictation. Still no talking to my computer*

One of my greatest bugbears. For all the local power available, Google, apple and amazon* insist on transmitting audio to their servers, where it is not only processed but also harvested and stored**. Most other dictation /voice command apps use 3rd party cloud provider.

Yet surely there is enough local power, even on a mobile, to do the processing locally. And if its 92% accurate instead of 97%, I can live with that

*and other culprits

**in whatever form they can get away with

Swedish firms ink deal to make green hydrogen with wind power

Re: That's the future

"the gist is that H2 takes more to create it from water than to burn it, so it's a loser's proposition."

Every conversion is lossy. As long as there is some output at an economical price (both cash and environmental), any addition to the mix is welcome

Re: Oxygen by product

True. But pure oxygen is difficult to store (has to be pressurised to have a usable amount) and has a very high potential for making other stuff go BOOM

Dell trials 4-day workweek, massive UK pilot of shortened week begins

At this point in my life...

... The real difference maker is the possibility of 100% WFH. The resulting savings in time, commute and lunch costs, and sheer stress far outweigh any other factors.

Of course it helps that my productivity also improves and I have a certain flexibility in working hours. And I get to have more time with family and my 'real-life' friends rather than colleagues as surrogate 'friends' (though to be fair, a select few colleagues over the years have become actual friends)

Re: There s no way to buy more time

My Swiss roles have always allowed remote in Switzerland only. My understanding has always been that it's related to Swiss data protection laws, which are more strict than EU ones (for financial sector at least)

US Army to build largest 3D-printed structures in the Americas

Re: I wonder if it would be simpler

For something semi-temporary you don't need utility connections, you just dig a septic tank hole, rig up a generator, and sit a water tank on the roof (which can be supplied by truck if no pipes are available.

For a single story (relatively light) building, you don't need to dig deep foundations, nor underground parking. The use-case isn't replacing the way we build 'proper' buildings, it's exactly for crappy buildings that squaddies (and, I guess, possibly homeless people) have to put up with. By definition they will be built in wide open available spaces, not in cities

PC sales start to ebb as pandemic buying spree ends: IDC

The Buffet effect

Warren Buffet's wealth must be a self-fulfilling prophecy at this stage if whatever crap stock he buys jumps 10% jus because he bought it!

In the graveyard of good ideas, how does yours measure up to these?

Re: Annapurna Fallacy

Excellent reference, wrong name... It's "Who Framed Roger Rabbit".

>>icon for Jessica Rabbit, teenage geek fantasy before Lara Croft was ever thought of

Apple notches up ninth €5m fine for ignoring nation's competition watchdog

This comment warrants 2^30 upvotes!

US is best place to be a software engineer, salary survey finds

Quite true. Cost of living also a factor, for example Switzerland is far more expensive to live in than any of the other countries mentioned.

114 billion transistors, one big meh. Apple's M1 Ultra wake-up call

Re: I was there

"So a faster version of what we already have is, yeah, a bit meh."

There is that, yes, but I think the article author discounts too much the natural age cycle of these things. Simply put, young people are more excitable. Experienced IT pros who have seen it all are a bit more cautious / skeptical.

That doesn't make this chip any more or less exciting, than say the Pentium way back when. It's mostly in the eye of the beholder

'Quantum computer algorithms are linear algebra, probabilities. This is not something that we do a good job of teaching our kids'

Re: How fast does a force propagate?

That would be Ivor Catt Inaboks

Rate of autonomous vehicle safety improvement slowing – research

One disengagement per 8000 miles in a mixed environment seems quite good performance ... If disengagement simply means human had to take over rather than any accident.

While I agree that general AI suitable for all driving conditions is unattainable, a mixture of better sensors, better processors, improved training sets and specifically designed roads will, I think, bring a 'close to' general case for most roads, not just motorways within 10 years.

It's more a question of the time it takes for infrastructure to be renewed.

President Biden calls for ban on social media ads aimed at kids

Spot on!

"For the past 40 years we were told that if we gave tax breaks to those at the very top, the benefits would trickle down to everyone else. But that trickle-down theory led to weaker economic growth, lower wages, bigger deficits, and the widest gap between those at the top and everyone else in nearly a century."

Exactly this!

Ukraine asks ICANN to delete all Russian domains

No, appeasement doesn't work, but neither generally do sanctions. It's not an either/or.

With respect to sanctions, they usually impact the general public, pushing them to further support the regime, while having little impact on the rich and powerful who still have access to numerous resources. That's why to be effective sanctions must be targeted at things used exclusively by the rich and powerful... International travel and property ownership, finance, luxury goods.

With respect to 'appeasement', not getting tough on Putin will simply encourage him to go further (and also encourage China to take over Taiwan). For example, the response to the Russian annexation of Crimea was not strong enough.

Having said that, it's utterly insane of NATO countries to publically consider including Ukraine, since they were poking the bear with a sharp stick while clearly not committed enough to declare war on Russia over the invasion of Ukraine.

Ukraine hit by DDoS attacks, Russia deploys malware

Re: Every country would have to do it

"If you have one that doesn't, then Russian hackers only need to silently compromise systems in that country to use as a springboard for their real attacks."

Absolutely. There's very little difference if traffic goes direct, or if it's routed through any of Russia's neighbours. Nevertheless I would still do it, both symbolically and to make things more difficult for the Russians.

Also keep in mind that many of Russia's neighbours might not be happy with their network infrastructure being compromised by Russian hackers (you can bet your ass that China has its digital defences on full alert), not to mention being a proxy battleground.

Quick look at the map, it just needs 3-4 more countries besides US, EU and China to pull the digital plug to shut Russia out completely.

That of course leaves satellite Internet...

US imposes sanctions as Russia invades Ukraine

The Russian plebs would. See if Putin cares

US to attack cyber criminals first, ask questions later – if it protects victims

Re: "to track money through the blockchain"

"a blockchain is a public ledger, emphasis on the word "public"."

Correct. "Reading" through a complete blockchain allows one to view all transactions that have ever happened on that blockchain, and consequently the balance of every single wallet that ever transacted on that blockchain.

However if a wallet was not set up through an exchange, or if it was set up before KYC procedures became commonplace, it's not possible to associate a person to a wallet. ( Although there are ways of deanonimising a wallet)

HMRC: UK techies' IR35 tax appeals could take years

Re: Dumb question...

"if you do work for a company and it comes within IR35, how do you know that the company has paid your income tax and NI for you? I mean really know, not just receive a piece of paper from their payroll system."

Well, as a permie, how do you know that the company has paid your income tax and NI for you? I mean really know, not just receive a piece of paper from their payroll system?

AI-created faces now look so real, humans can't spot the difference

Re: Detail and perception

Yes it's just the unit. The rest of the numbers look correct, and by the way, excellent analysis!

photo vs movie

Firstly, this tech seems to be limited to photos and not movies. I would think full-realistic AI generated movies would be far more complex, although given the rate of advancement they surely can't be far behind.

Secondly, I would think that as far as nefarious purposes are concerned, simply being able to generate a photo is limited in scope. Based on what I read of the process, the AI is simply generating pictures that can fool another AI (and only incidentally, humans) into classifying a fake photo as real. As with all of these "AI"s it's not really an AI it's a pattern matcher/generator. It doesn't 'know' anything about what it's generating. It's not like someone can tell the AI to generate the face of a specific gender / age / race / body type etc, or specify a particular background, facial expression etc (short of retraining the dataset with only that type of image, which sort of defeats the purpose of having an AI do it for you). Any fraudster who needs to use a photo of a random face, or even a very specific type of face, can already pick them by the thousands on the web.

What is more concerning is the indistinguishability of photoshopped / deep-fake photos and movies.

Re: Detail and perception

"d is the diameter of the pupil. At... d of 5m... "

!!!

Should we expect to keep communication private in the digital age?

Re: Still can't decide

" what their precise position is."

Private communications and personal data, whether digital or not, should remain private, or shared only with explicit consent. Users need to be clearly informed (in non-technical, non-legal jargon) of how their data is used, with whom its shared, how long its kept. Directors / c-level execs of data controllers abusing this should be personally and jointly liable together with the legal entity for any infractions.

India's Reserve Bank deputy governor calls for crypto ban

Re: is backed by the faith of hundreds of millions of users

"nullifying the basic rules of economics..."

Is it a problem that most people don't know the basic rules of economics? Why aren't kids not taught that at school? A cynic might think there are vested interests not wanting a financially educated population.

Much better for the school system to produce obedient workers who pay their taxes and never stop to wonder how for every dollar they deposit in a bank at 0% interest, the bank is loaning 10 dollars at anything from 5 to 20%, or where there savings are disappearing to between inflation, hidden fees etc!

Is it a wonder that when people realise how they're being shafted by the incumbent governments and banks, that they are willing to take (sometimes foolish) risks to get a better deal? Governments and central banks should stop pretending their anti-crypto stance is anything to do with concern about the proles. They just want no-one interfering with their control and money making.

Re: A Suboptimal Analogy

"Sherlock the tobacco in his pipe is a drug"

Sherlock was an actual cocaine user!

Re: He nails it in one!

"Ban it from being legal tender, don't accept it for any governmental transaction "

No need to 'ban' it, it already isn't legal tender.

"say that private companies can issue/accept it if they want to, but can neither require their customers to use it..."

again, that's already the case.

"...nor penalize those customers that refuse to do so."

Good luck with that! You've effectively banned store cards, membership schemes etc

The nub of the matter:

"cryptocurrencies are designed to evade government control"

There you have it, the real reasons governments don't like cryptocurrencies is that they can't control them. And big banks, as in the forum he was speaking to, don't like them because they cut thee banks / middlemen out of financial transactions. If people can lend money to each other directly, how do banks make money?

Many of the points he mentions can fairly be raised against some cryptocurrencies, but not all. For example bitcoin isn't 'backed' by any government, but is backed by the faith of hundreds of millions of users, which is more than most countries have citizens. That means that it works as a store of value. Other cryptocurrencies can be lent out, giving the lender far more interest than they would get in lending it through their banks. This is again why big banks and central banks are opposed to what they call 'private' (but are actually public) cryptocurrencies but quite in favour of creating their own truly private (i.e controlled by them) cryptocurrencies.

There are at recent count 800-1000 cryptocurrencies, and it's probably fair to say a good few of them are absolutely speculative Ponzi schemes, that doesn't mean they all are.

Intel chases after Bitcoin miners with dedicated chip

That's all a moot point, as any individual controlling the bitcoin network will be left with just a very expensive toy, since at the point the network security consensus is broken, the value goes to zero even for those people heavily invested in the success and high value of bitcoin.

(also, someone might notice if Dr. Evil ordered half a trillion dollars worth of solar panels!)

Re: If it's that good

"To make money you need a relatively low energy cost per hash."

Yes, but the energy cost is calculated in dollars not watts. The most successful miners get their energy for free or even get paid for it.

Example 1 - at times of high sunshine / wind when there is excess power on the grid, spot prices can fall to zero or even negative.

Example 2 - oil wells typically flare off excess gas, and there are (at least in the US) limits on how much gas they can flare. No flare, no oil, no profit for the drillers... Too little gas to sell in bulk, but miners run a generator off it and get it for free

In an arms race with criminals to protect our privacy, it's too early to admit defeat

RIPA

" if it is necessary: (a) in the interests of national security; (b) for the purpose of preventing or detecting crime; or (c) in the interests of the economic well-being of the United Kingdom."

So (a) if MI5 /GCHQ want, (b) if the police want (c) if pretty much anyone else in government or any businesses with close contacts in government wants

It's more than 20 years since Steps topped the charts. It could be less than that for STEP's first fusion energy

Re: We need to replace Vlad's Gas

Technically yes that's what would happen in a war. But the OP point is that it won't happen. China wouldn't go to war with the US when it can call in some debt (they are clever enough to not call it all in at once). The US won't go to war with China simply to get their debt cancelled, it would be a short-term win (only if they win the war) but long-term would destroy their trade as no one would accept their credit any more.

Sure, they will both continue sabre-rattling and jockeying over Taiwan, but it will just be posturing.