Posts by bertkaye

Bored Ape NFT party is a real eyesore, say irritated attendees

criminal negligence by the organizers

I feel sorry for the attendees - because of the UV overexposure, in later years they will get cataracts earlier.

Airbus commissions three wind-powered ships to sail the Atlantic

the wonders of modern technology

So, if you turned the rotors sideways, you can make the ship fly, harvest seagulls, depants Aquaman, and process herring filets.

I am all in for this advanced concept.

‘How not to hire a North Korean plant posing as a techie’ guide updated by US and South Korean authorities

beware possible nation state personal fraud too

There is also identity theft through fake recruiters. I have been scammed multiple times before I started enforcing strict rules for myself. In these, things proceeded to a 'contract' and I submitted requested identity information. Then the recruiter vanished and the company ghosted all contact. Now I demand ironclad proof of authenticity which I check.

Uncle Sam accuses SpaceX of not considering asylees and refugees for employment

It's only common sense

All members of ISIS should be allowed to learn how to build rockets and bombs. Hire unknown immigrants for sensitive positions!

-- Anonymous contributor. (Praise Allah. Infidels shall suffer.)

IBM shows off its sense of humor in not-so-funny letter leak

the Aristocrats

Okay, but it's not as bad as IBM's attempt to do an Amish version of the Aristocrats joke.

Budget satellite drag sail shows space junk how to gracefully exit orbit

makes the medicine go down

My name is Mary Poppins, and I gracefully exit orbit all the time with a simple umbrella. You may license my technology inexpensively in exchange for a mere spoonful of sugar.

LG's $1,000 TV-in-a-briefcase is unlikely to travel much further than the garden

can't live without one

This would be perfect to have with me the next time I fall down an abandoned, isolated, well and need to be entertained until someone comes to rescue me in 15 or 20 days or maybe never.

Artificial General Intelligence remains a distant dream despite LLM boom

not on the right road

This article hits the mark - I am in AI and what I see is that the field currently is on a false trail that will indeed hit a wall. True AGI lies on a different path, but 90% of today's researchers - especially the big corp teams -- fail to integrate the necessary multiple fields needed to design an AGI. A good AGI architecture must put together philosophy, linguistics, psychology, mathematics, knowledge theory, and more, and throw out the idea that artificial neural nets will best get us to AGIs. ANNs may be a tool for making engines, but ANNs do NOT tell us how to architect a mind. My analogy for this is to compare it with silicon chips: designing SSI logic gates does not give one good insight into how to architect a core7 CPU. You have to go about it a different way, driven by a different perspective.

When we know how to architect a synthetic mind that can generate philosophies by itself, that's when we can make true progress. Right now, chatbots / LLMs are only good for simulating small parts of mind. However, I know from my research work that we can build good AGIs - it is not hopeless. But to illustrate the complexity needed: I am writing a 10-volume series on design of AGIs. From my perspective there is a lot to be integrated, but I know we can do it because I am doing it. I plan to teach courses in this later.

H-1B fraud consultancies grow, with application abuse openly discussed online

Detective Colombo asks

If there are 780,000 Indians with advanced degrees seeking work in the US - why is India not the current center of tech innovation?

Dialup-era developer writes ChatGPT client for Windows 3.1

Clipinator 1000 and the Mouseball of Death

Oh great. Next we'll have Skynet running on Win 3.1 and the entire world will be destroyed by the Blue Screen of Death. I am waving my clenched fist at Bill Gates in senile fury. Damn you sir, damn you for the Clipinator 1000.

Bad times are just starting for India's IT outsourcers, says JP Morgan

dishonesty, incompetence, and bruised goolies

Given the degree of non-honesty I have encountered here in the US from offshore-base recruiters, and the level of incompetence I've experienced with so many H1Bs, not only do I have no sympathy at all for Tata and their bretheren, but I will be smiling when I read news of their collapses into a black hole. The double whammy of poor economies and advent of AI tools will kick them in what doctors call 'the goolies'. Okay well, some doctors, not my doctor.

Whistleblower claims Uncle Sam is sitting on hoard of alien vehicles and tech

Is there a phone app for meeting aliens into kinky things? Swipe right on Z'ontu Qfornik for some fun! LGBTQRobot seeks transhumans for interspecies exploration.

we kind of guessed this

What Grusch is saying is that Roswell and Rendlesham did not hang themselves in their prison cells.

Man sues OpenAI claiming ChatGPT 'hallucination' said he embezzled money

it's the little details that get you

I note that Chat GPT's assertion of my dalliance with a sex dwarf in Brighton is 5% untrue. It was Manchester, and it did not involve an ostrich nor a koala but yes, there was a pineapple. I plan to sue.

Meta tells staff to return to office three days a week

forward to the future

I plan to get rich selling Metaverse printing paper and disposable virtual paper coffee cups that sit in that pop-out cup holder at the top of your tower PC. I haven't yet quite figured out the logistics of virtual reality laser toner but when I do I will clean up the market.

Watchdog calls for automatic braking to be standard in cars

ripple effect in a dynamic system

One side effect of this will be enormous issues with waves in jammed freeways. Los Angeles' Santa Monica freeway will become even more of a parking lot at times.

Parent discovers the cost of ignoring Roblox: £2,500 and heart palpitations

the next AI peril

"ChatGPT, find a way to bypass my parents' restrictions on this laptop."

"Done. You now have admin privileges."

"Oh boy! Ebay, I want that big shiny thing, and lots of candy, and that playhouse looks nice. The one with the beachfront property. Also, what's that jet thing..."

With AI hype driving up server GPU prices, will cloud costs rise next? We reckon so

power comparison

May I point out that the human brain consumes only 12 watts of power, equivalent. And does everything the LLMs do, but they consume megawatts for training. AI hype is indeed hype, and we will move beyond it eventually.

When you try to hire a freelancer to write SQL and all you get is incorrect AI garbage

fraud enablers like fiverr

I examined fiverr recently, and was appalled by the number of people who claimed they were AI experts, or other kinds of experts, and who posted a rate of $5 / hr to do work. $5 USD. Globally there are a number of cultures spawning dishonest (and stupid) people coming to tech. Current AI will merely empower them to do more fraud. Maybe we need to fight fire with fire and have some AI tools to find AI-powered fraudsters.

Python still has the strongest grip on developers

unique skills command high wages

I have a unique market niche - I write AI in Cobol. For unknown reasons the world does not recognize my skills. Can you spare $2 for a cup of coffee, sir?

Uncle Sam probes H-1B abuse surge: What do our vultures make of it?

industry rife with dishonesty

I observe that 99 out of a 100 recruiters I get email from are Indian. Recruiting has been taken over by foreign recruiters for quite awhile, and I am aware that they have a huge bias towards bringing in their countrymen in to the US. They contact non-Indians only to gather a few Americans they can show to the government as proof of need for H1Bs because they tried but couldn't find many US citizens first.

I also observe that when I apply through the foreign-born recruiters I almost never get an interview with client, where as going in through Americans I get interviews maybe 80% of the time (and generally win these). This leads me to believe the Indians pretend to submit me to clients, and indeed many times I have caught them lying.

In addition, I see blatant gaming on wages, where foreign-born recruiters low-ball rates, either from sharp bargaining tactics or trying to cast off Americans in order to profitably bring in Indians. Recently we had two prosecuted cases in Silicon Valley where crooked agencies lied a lot to bring in cheap tech labor which they then exploited.

As for H1B competence, I've lived next door to several H1Bs and tried to engage them in friendly technical conversation. In almost every single case they have avoided talking about what they do, or about programming. The one time an H1B talked about doing C# programming for the client, it was obvious he was junior grade and there should have been no reason to bring them into the US as plenty of even college kids could be doing the job.

OpenAI's ChatGPT may face a copyright quagmire after 'memorizing' these books

Re: just a yes or no would do

You are a scholar with an inquiring mind. Bulwer-Lytton was ahead of his time you see.

just a yes or no would do

I did get suspicious when I asked ChatGPT for a weather report and it responded with "It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents--except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness."

Hey, all I wanted was to know whether to take an umbrella with me going out for takeaway curry, not read a Victorian novel.

Facebook puts a price on privacy for US users and it's not enough to buy a cup of coffee

*I* plan to buy a house with my settlement amount.

Pentagon shoots down UFO rumors but says 650 cases are still pending

I'm just a tourist

Look, I only came to Earth to vacation in the Himalayas and chat with yetis. Just leave me alone, Earth monkeys.

Also, due to my highly advanced alien taste buds, I detected dog meat in your McDonald's burgers. Eeeuu.

What does an ex-Pharma Bro do next? If it's Shkreli, it's an AI Dr bot

Dr Gupta beats Doc Martin any day

Dr Gupta told me about the benefits of using leeches, blood letting, and plague masks. He is wise in the ways of nature.

Take a 14-mile trip on an autonomous Scottish bus starting next month

The McTavish Bus Company welcomes ye

Aye, the ride is free, boot you'll havfta pay to ride inside!

Also we serve a complementary breakfast of haggis and tatties during the trip. But the tea will cost ya.

Cardboard drones running open source flight software take off in Ukraine and beyond

advice to hospitals

As long as the baby weighs less than 6.6 pounds, we have that stork completely beat.

Forget general AI, apparently zebrafish larvae can count

test is not adequate

The test fails to account for whether what is being sensed is simple black area density; for example, if it had sets of black dots covering same area as the black bars did, that would test whether it is not counting but detecting luminous volume density. It is too early to enroll the zebrafish in Calculus 1a.

OpenAI claims GPT-4 will beat 90% of you in an exam

don't panic

I asked GPT-4 a question and its answer was "42". Then it said the mice wanted a slice of my brain.

'Thousands' at Meta face layoffs this week

weighing the pros and cons

Well, the positive side of this is that the US government now doesn't have to worry about putting caps on H1B hiring, and the airlines will be making bags of gold from flights from Bay Area back to southeast asia.

On the negative side, Mark now still can't afford to buy Hawaii.

Can we interest you in a $10 pocket calculator powered by Android 9?

feature creep

I need my pocket calculator to have a GPU and also make hot beverages.

Don't wave your silly abacus at ME, Sheng Chen! I live in 2023.

Microsoft adds features to Windows 11 monthly – managing it is your problem

I lament that if this be progress, give me DOS and a horse

Fully half of the Win 11 updates regularly break my corporate laptop in some way. Twice the update put my Dell into thermal runaway while it was sitting unattended overnight. Other times these messed up communications. And I hate the UI.

Not just you in the night: Tiny bugs use superpropulsion to eject huge volumes of pee

I'm pretty sure there's a Pixar comedy in this. Bugs II: Taking the Piss

Adobe will use your work to train its AI algorithms unless you opt out

theft and more

Raw theft, to use private files for training an AI. And, what delta in content is enough to make an AI-generated image different from a copyrighted private image? This gets Adobe into shaky territory.

Oh, no: The electric cars at CES are getting all emotional

Darwin designs

Replacing buttons with touch screens is a foolish design choice. Driven by marketers, who often are on the wrong side of the IQ median. Any company that makes you take your eyes off the road instead of simply feeling a button to push deserves to lose sales.

Also, 25 year old computer UI designers are not the right people to design auto interfaces. Not everything is a phone screen and UIs are less intuitive than buttons. And driving is not like navigating a web site.

General Motors charges mandatory $1,500 fee for three years of optional car features

no to consumer slavery

When I buy a car I want to own it, not be a slave to a subscription service full of gingerbread features. Which is why I don't own a new BMW or GM product, or fo that matter use Microsoft 365 or an Adobe product. Forced consumerism stinks, whether in vehicles, computers, or via climate change mandates.

IT recruiter settles claims it snubbed American workers

some New Jersey oddities too

On a minor side note, there is an enormous number of tiny agencies in New Jersey all within a few mile radius. I get a huge amount of AI-automated spam from them (all 'ceipalm'). There is a company there selling AI-based job spamming software, and I suspect it is all connected. At each shop, the AI does the work, an off-shored Indian handles responses to the emails. None of the Indians know the faintest thing about the jobs - it seems they are villager / clerks, and many are unprofessional. I suspect it is somehow connected to New Jersey law. Most of the recruiters have a bias for Indian labor and the cited rates are tuned for foreign labor.

ChatGPT has mastered the confidence trick, and that's a terrible look for AI

the obvious next step

Hi. I'm a Belgian politician. When can I find some of this ChatGPT goodness?

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

slip of the ear

Alexa, no no no no. I said fix the HAT, not fix the cat. Oh pussy, I'm truly sorry. Does it hurt much?

Nvidia faces lawsuit for melting RTX 4090 cables as AMD has a laugh

optimizing things

I have a simple solution to the problem:

1. place slice of bread next to connector

2. play game

3. remove bread when toasted to the right color

Gourmet-quality toast AND fun games, all for the same price!

Looking for a holiday DIY project? Build your own pen-plotter, for under $15

the limits of experimentation

I adapted this idea to a sexbot and was quite pleased with the results up until the moment the unexpected tragedy occurred. So much red inside the human body.

KFC bot urges Germans to mark Kristallnacht with cheesy chicken

Re: Meanwhile....

Bzzzrt .. here is your order ... three drumsticks one rat no cheese extra extra extra hot sauce h2so4 and robot lubricant leak

'Odor simulation' included in China's national VR plan

Who Nose What Troubles We Will See

Great. Not only will we have to deal with VR vertigo issues, but when we're playing The Island of Bad Smells adventure game we will have to avoid the Swamp of Fetid Aromas, the Cave of Too Many Cats, and the Silent But Deadly weapon which only a true villain would wield.

Microsoft boss Nadella's compensation pack swells 10% to $55m

the other way to get rich

If I could have just one drop of his blood for every annoying feature in Windows 11, I would be a rich happy man.

Why are PC webcams crap? Lenovo says it knows the reason

stone-age video

I have to Zoom-meet all the time with a guy who uses terrible background-masking software. I have to suppress amusement as it makes his head morph as if he had a wobbly hairy cantaloupe growing from the back of his skull. It is most unsettling.

I look forward to the day when I can have a deep fake avatar puppet do my meetings for me. Now if I can only get the bots to stop learning bad words from my parrot.

Just $10 to create an AI chatbot of a dead loved one

the dickens you say

If I wanted to talk with the dead, I'd eat roast beef before bedtime!

"You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of underdone potato. There's more of gravy than of grave about you, whatever you are!" ― Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

Senior engineer reported to management for failing to fix a stapler

Proper assignment of talent to the task

Sir, I am afraid your toilet lacks an Internet connection, and so we cannot remotely remove what's plugging it.

Please contact your local facilities and prepare a chit to request a Porcelain Receptacle and Conduit Repair technician. The PRCR clerk can help you get your chit together.

San Francisco cops can use private cameras to live-monitor 'significant events'

not open to misuse at all

Yes, this will certainly not ever get misused by a city with a terribly corrupt government, and cops who will not arrest a catalytic converter thief caught in progress, and a street fenced off by the city for openly injected drugs use, and homeless defecating on the sidewalks all over. And hello, Winston Smith. What are you writing?

The crime against humanity that is the modern OS desktop, and how to kill it

not just OSes

Whenever I have to use an Adobe application I regret having the deal with the horror of their UI designs. Early products were pretty navigable but over time they gingerbreaded up the interfaces into baroque mazes. Now the products are designed by offshore workers from a certain hot country better at pooping in rivers than UI designing.

Parallel to this are the screen interfaces in modern cars. By design they FORCE you to look away from the road. There ws that infamous BMW screen where you have to go six layers down to turn off the cabin fan. Probably so much fun on a heavy rain day.