* Posts by vtcodger

1736 publicly visible posts • joined 13 Sep 2017

The last mile's at risk in our hostile environment. Let’s go the extra mile to fix it

vtcodger Silver badge

Re: <list of effective ways of dealing with threats>

Actually, most companies seem to care even less about their shareholders than they do about their customers. Check out share price to dividend payout ratios sometime. Their priorities appear to be -- in order -- executive pay, value of executive stock options, and executive perks. Welcome to the casino, mate. Where the house always wins. Bigtime.

As if working at Helldesk weren't bad enough, IT helpers now targeted by cybercrims

vtcodger Silver badge

Re: Helpdeskers are disciplined to be helpful

Helpdeskers are disciplined to be helpful

Although I am quite skeptical of many of the claims made for AI, help desks being helpful is one problem that I am confident AI will put an end to. (Whether an AI agent pretending to be a helpful human can be persuaded to dump your entire database in response to an innocuous looking query from a user is a somewhat different issue.)

Voyager 1 starts making sense again after months of babble

vtcodger Silver badge

Re: If ever there was a use case for LLM

"AI is the solution to everything!"

AI is the long sought Universal Solvent of legend and fable? Could be I suppose.

Developers beware, Microsoft's domain shakeup is coming soon

vtcodger Silver badge

I seem to have gotten to this planet by mistake. Does anyone here speak English?

"Microsoft's stated goal is to use microsoft.com for "non-product experiences" such as marketing or support, while cloud.microsoft will handle authenticated, user-facing product experiences."

"non-product experiences?" "user-facing product experiences?" "authenticated?" (by whom?, to what purpose?) What, if anything, does all this mean? Is an English translation available?

Fedora 41's GNOME to go Wayland-only, says goodbye to X.org

vtcodger Silver badge

"Being a bit of a minimalist, I am convinced that Debian and XFCE is right for me."

Well, OK. But why bother with XFCE? I should think that Fluxbox or Openbox or maybe something even more basic would satisfy the needs of a minimalist.

Your PC can probably run inferencing just fine – so it's already an AI PC

vtcodger Silver badge

Re: So I can run a local chatbot

Of course your cat has more brains than a chatbot. You are demonstrating a common misunderstanding fostered by marketing scum. The I in AI does not stand for "INTELLIGENCE". It stands for "INCOMPETENCE". Are you really submitting the argument that your cat (or wife for that matter) is more incompetent than a sophisticated modern technology that has been lovingly tuned by mankind's best minds to produce random, unreliable, and possibly wildly incorrect answers to just about any conceivable question? Really now. How likely is that?

Justice Dept reportedly starts criminal probe into Boeing door bolt incident

vtcodger Silver badge

Re: Airlines Being The Safest Form Of Transportation

Never thought of it before. Do you think airline food is the reason that the crew and flight attendants are always skinny and disgustingly healthy looking? Any possible urge to snack while on duty immediately stifled by one look at the available provisions.

Reddit wants to raise $748M with IPO, sets value at $6.4B... and it has yet to turn a profit

vtcodger Silver badge

Re: Is there anyone in El Reg land

My marbles most certainly are NOT lost. Just mislaid. I admit, I can't produce them just now, but I'm 100% confident they are around here somewhere.

vtcodger Silver badge

Re: Is there anyone in El Reg land

I dunno. What kind of marbles?

Microsoft confirms Russian spies stole source code, accessed internal systems

vtcodger Silver badge

Re: Military supplier

"Ms sells software to everyone including the military"

My impression, and I sure hope I'm right, is that the US military only uses Microsoft and other commercial software for routine office tasks -- payroll, tracking vacation, ("Leave" in Milspeak), Probably some purchasing and accounts payable -- especially COTS (Commercial Off The Shelf) stuff like office supplies or products resold in the Base Exchange. Combat systems hopefully remain on dedicated software far from the weird notions that vendor testing is adequate and that nothing can possibly go wrong with Over The Air updates.

vtcodger Silver badge

Re: Russian cyberspies and ‘secret’ emails /s

Most likely a clever plot by the CIA. Acting on full access the Microsoft source code may well set Russian IT and cyber intelligence efforts back a couple of decades. Maybe more is Microsoft actually has documentation for their code -- a conjecture I've encountered from time to time but for which there seems to be no known evidence.

Updates are plenty but fans are few in Windows 11 land

vtcodger Silver badge

Re: Be less intrusive, less pushy, less blocking work,

Is Intrusive Carp an Ubuntu version name? If not, maybe it should be.

vtcodger Silver badge

Re: "you'll start seeing a new user interface on eligible Windows 10 devices soon"

I can't say as I have any great enthusiasm for either Microsoft or Apple. And I find it easy enough to avoid both. You might want to try it for a year or three.

"As for Change is everywhere and rightly so", Why would anyone buy into that?. It's the formula for entering a perpetual Red Queen's Race (ref: Carroll, Lewis: Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There, Chapter 2 https://www.gutenberg.org/files/12/12-h/12-h.htm) -- something that no sane individual should want any part of unless they work in management or marketing and therefore profit from peddling product that would, if sold on its actual merits, sit on the shelf and collect dust.

Watchdog calls for more plugs, less monopoly in EV charging network

vtcodger Silver badge

Re: It is still not as simple as pulling up in a forecourt and filling up a tank

Indeed -- Here in the US, fuel pump nozzle form factors are dictated by the government (largely to discourage the drunk,or distracted from dumping a load of diesel into their gasoline vehicle) , And pay at the pump with a credit card is ubiquitous. I can't recall the last time I had to seek out and pay an attendant/cashier. It was years ago. There is often a provision at the pump for those who belong to the vendor's exclusive club to log in and receive some sort of benefit -- a small discount? Brownie points of some sort? Why on Earth, other than utter regulatory idiocy, should EV chargers be different?

And while we are on the subject of regulatory lapse, should not all this have been hashed out and settled years before legislators set out on a probably futile quest for "Net-Zero" using a tool kit (only wind,solar -- neither of which are dispatchable -- and a handful of minor technologies are the proper shade of green apparently) that certainly appears to be quite inadequate? FWIW, I expect that Net-zero will prove to be as elusive as the Holy Grail was in Arthurian times.

White House goes to court, not Congress, to renew warrantless spy powers

vtcodger Silver badge

Re: Or perhaps it's

Or maybe neither. Truth of the matter is that the US legislative branch is currently in a state of extreme disarray. The Senate where the Democrats have a razor thin majority is moderately functional and a well thought out Section 702 revision might stand a chance of passing there. The House of Representatives where the Republicans hold an even slimmer majority is pretty much completely paralyzed by a group of extreme right wingers who view any attempt to legislate as an opportunity for extortion. Pretty much nothing is getting done there. The chances of any meaningful legislation actually getting through the legislative branch this year appear to be slim to none. I suppose pragmatically that the courts might be the only recourse. (Personally Section 702 going away completely wouldn't trouble me at all).

Uncle Sam explores satellites that can create propellant out of thin air

vtcodger Silver badge

Re: OTOH

On top of which, the drag up there at the top of the atmosphere isn't constant. That'd be too easy. The drag depends on how much material is arriving from space -- IIRC chiefly via the "solar wind" -- which is anything but constant. Doesn't mean this scheme can't be made to work. But getting it to work is likely to be challenging.

OpenAI sued, again, for scraping and replicating news stories

vtcodger Silver badge

How Long?

One wonders how long it will be before some publisher(s) obtain (a) DMCA takedown notice(s) for ChatGPT and its kin.

OpenAI claims New York Times paid someone to 'hack' ChatGPT

vtcodger Silver badge

Re: If you deliberately ask for it…

"they jumped through a huge number of hoops to force it out"

Not sure that matters. At least not in the US. Providing a way -- however devious -- to bypass IP protections that doesn't fall under exceptions like fair use is, I'm pretty sure, illegal and actionable. Might be different elsewhere. Caveat: I am Not A Lawyer (And wouldn't want to be).

vtcodger Silver badge

A Ghastly Thought

It just came to me in a burst of insight that AI could replace not only marketeers, but lawyers. Wrt to the marketing types, I doubt we'll notice the difference. AI, no matter how clueless, might even be an improvement from the client (i.e. victim) point of view. Lawyers however perform a useful and necessary function in modern societies. Albeit, not all that well. But they could be worse. And AI can probably achieve that.

I am contemplating spending my declining years in a mountain cave suitable for hermits. Anyone know of such available for a long-term lease at reasonable rates? I might even come out in a few decades (if I last that long) to see if anything is left of society after this craziness plays out.

Starting over: Rebooting the OS stack for fun and profit

vtcodger Silver badge

Re: Costs and Benefits......

Not only were Lisas expensive. They were also incredibly slow. The summary I heard from others was "Cute but useless". When I got a chance to try one, I had to agree.

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

vtcodger Silver badge

Re: That's not what he said

"That I can believe (eventually, some future generation of AI well beyond the current one) because that's basically rote translation of a concept into code."

Color me skeptical on that. The problem is that in my experience expressing concepts completely and unambiguously is even harder than writing perfect code. My guess is that a lot of folks will learn -- painfully and a great cost -- that actualizing their visions will require not Artificial Intelligence, but Artificial Clairvoyance. I don't think any number of Nvidia chips are going to be able to deliver that.

Boeing-backed air taxi upstart Wisk plans to fly you across town at UberX prices by 2030

vtcodger Silver badge

Re: Traffic is easier in the air

Agreed that there is a lot less to run into in the air. But to offset that, there's the maintenance issue. Broken cars generally limp, coast, or are pushed to the side of the road. Broken aircraft on the other hand DROP. And without a pilot to try to pick a safe landing spot, they will likely drop on something or somebody.

Firefly software snafu sends Lockheed satellite on short-lived space safari

vtcodger Silver badge

Move fast, Break things

Move fast. Break things. ... Oh sh...

Twilio reminds users that Authy Desktop apps die next month – not in August

vtcodger Silver badge

"We made this difficult decision to sunset the Twilio Authy desktop apps in order to streamline our focus, and provide more value on existing product solutions."

I expect the English translation is either "We've run out of money, so we're bailing" Or "Customers? Really, In this day and age who gives a damn about customers?"

Tesla's Cybertruck may not be so stainless after all

vtcodger Silver badge

Re: Cybertruck - the gift that keeps on giving...

Cant be used off road.

Cant go up hills.

Cant be used in the rain ....

But it has really, really amazing acceleration. Something you might really appreciate if you find yourself pursued by a large prehistoric reptile. And the bullet resistant skin would certainly come in handy if said reptile is armed.

vtcodger Silver badge

Re: It's 301 stainless apparently

ex-Californiia kid here. No road salt there. Most of the populated area gets maybe a dusting once every few decades. And where they do get appreciable snow, they often get stunning amounts. Too much for salt to have much affect. They depend on plowing and for those who insist on driving in the stuff tire chains. I do not think putting chains on a Tesla Cyber-Monster looks like much fun.

ANZ Bank test drives GitHub Copilot – and finds AI does give a helping hand

vtcodger Silver badge

At Long Last ...

So, at long last, Clippy has found a real job. About damn time. Now let's see if he can keep it.

I have to admit to being a trifle nervous about the job being with a bank. But what the heck, it's not my bank. And better a bank than a hospital or a nuclear power plant.

Sam Altman's chip ambitions may be loonier than feared

vtcodger Silver badge

One wonders

One wonders at times how much, if any, normal garden variety human intelligence is behind the AI push. Not much it seems to me. But I'm old and increasingly cynical.

Amazon overcharges shoppers with Buy Box algorithm, fresh lawsuit claims

vtcodger Silver badge

meh

I suppose the Buy Box thing is a bit opaque and deceptive. But on my short list of vile ideas perpetrated by retailers and marketing creeps, it's right around entry number 1043 or 1044. And unlike Amazon's diligent and persistent attempts to persuade/trick me into signing up for Amazon Prime, I suspect any bias/unfairness might be inadvertent rather than deliberate.

I must say that on the whole, my experiences with Amazon have been positive. It has proven to be a pretty reliable source for stuff that isn't readily available locally. The one screwup I experienced -- ordered blue jeans. got a red womans bathing suit. (Doubt it would fit. Hate swimming pools. And red's not my color) was handled expeditiously by an adequately intelligent, English speaking, human. And they didn't route my phone call through some badly designed voice recognition system with poor comprehension, an IQ of about 30 and an attitude problem.

So, I think I'll continue to use them. At least until they do something a lot worse than this.

India to make its digital currency programmable

vtcodger Silver badge

Re: Programmable vs Offline-exchangeable

The potential for controlling individual usage is real. And concerning.

But were I the government, a more immediate concern would be that ANY "zero-day" flaw in the implementation opens one to the possibility of an adversary expiring some large fraction of the money in circulation and shutting down my economy.

Republican senators try to outlaw rules that restrict Wall Street’s use of AI

vtcodger Silver badge

Wallstreet

"Wallstreet" is different things to different people. If you're Warren Buffett or somebody like him, it's a tool to easily buy up a share of a business that makes money for its shareholders by profitably selling goods and/or services. Hard to criticize that. But for many folks, it's a vast 24-7 gambling parlor available even in places where other forms of gambling are banned. Unfortunately probably, the latter seem to be catered to by today's financial "industry".

vtcodger Silver badge

Re: So how long until

"It outputs EXACTLY what it is told to output"

Would that were so. Reality is that these things seem to produce often quite plausible outputs of unknown quality in some fashion that no one really quite understands. What they clearly are not is electromechanical parrots echoing what they are told. That's what makes them so scary.

Intel delays Ohio fab build, blames semiconductor slowdown

vtcodger Silver badge

It ain't that easy

Semiconductor fabs are complicated facilities full of unusual equipment. Things you wouldn't think of. Squirrel-Cage fan blowers the size of a small house for example. Much of that stuff is not likely to be available off the shelf. And some will likely have to be built to Intel's spec after months of meetings and negotiating, I wouldn't be surprised that it takes several of years from the decision to activate the facility before the first products start to emerge. They also require a huge support staff -- thousands of folk, Those have to be hired, trained, and forged into a working organization. 2025? Never very likely, one thinks.

Tesla power steering probe upgraded after thousands more incidents reported

vtcodger Silver badge

I am shocked ... shocked ...

"Tesla didn't respond to questions from The Register for this story. ®"

I am shocked ... shocked ... to find that Tesla Motors did not jump on this opportunity to explain the many advantages of locking one's steering while driving. In fact, I'm rather surprised they didn't charge extra for the feature.

Tesla hacks make big bank at Pwn2Own's first automotive-focused event

vtcodger Silver badge

... awarded over $1.3 million to the discoverers of 49 vehicle-related zero day vulnerabilities

Only 49? I'd have expected many hundreds. Maybe there are ways other than the contest to monetrize knowledge of how to hack someone else's car.

Eyeing China, US may require clouds to report when foreign actors rent kit to build AI models

vtcodger Silver badge

Superficially, it sounds like a good idea. And maybe it is. But, there are some negatives:

1. As you said, It possibly discourages revenue for the US AI "industry"

2. If the Chinese actually need a US AI for something, I should think they are perfectly capable of renting it while claiming to be Future Venture, Inc and running the interface through a proxy located in Capetown or Buenos Aires. One suspects that the CIA/NSA worry about that very thing. They (the 3 letter boys) probably will produce more thorough reports internally using methods they likely won't discuss.

3. Running those reports costs time and money. And the reports will likely be legally required for decades if not for all eternity. Long past the last date of any possible need.

4. Assuming that AI is more than a foolish passing fad like NFTs or cryptocurrency (Potemkin money), is encouraging the Chinese to develop their domestic AI industry such a great idea? On the other hand, if it turns out that AI is a pointlless and expensive resource sink, maybe the idea has some merit.

5. If the Chinese have any sense (they appear to have a lot), They'll do any AI work that's strategically important on their domestic systems -- even if it takes a bit longer

Missed expectations, zero guidance: Tesla's 'great year' was anything but

vtcodger Silver badge

Re: Right

Comment Withdrawn by author.

Energy breakthrough needed to build AGI, says OpenAI boss Altman

vtcodger Silver badge

Re: A modest proposal

"Are you suggesting that we give the AIs access to high powered lasers and fusion reactors?"

Well, maybe. Presumably if we don't give them access, they'll just come up with some other way to exterminate humanity. Perhaps it'd be best not to piss them off.

Ya gotta remember. AI is the **NEXT BIG THING** and, like all **NEXT BIG THINGS** it can do **ANYTHING**

vtcodger Silver badge

A modest proposal

Why not just build a few -- 2 to maybe 6 -- internationally accessible, ITER like, research facilities for AI in order to see what it can and can't do? And ban ANY general use of AI anywhere that doesn't meet reasonable standards of safety, IP protection, power consumption, etc. Yes, that'll require a lot of CEOs/marketeers to find a different Next_Big_Thing. So what? Dealing with problems is presumably what they are paid handsomely for.

vtcodger Silver badge

Re: Doctor heal thyself

Flying is not a big problem. Simply jump from any high place. The problem is safely dumping all the kinetic energy you gain on the way to your landing.

Zuckerberg wants to build artificial general intelligence with 350K Nvidia H100 GPUs

vtcodger Silver badge

Re: Bet

In the hopefully unlikely event that AGI actually were to appear, what are the chances it would turn out to be a) malignant and b) clever enough to hide that fact?

Can solar power be beamed down from space? Yes. Is it commercially viable? Not yet

vtcodger Silver badge

Re: An alternative

Geothermal is a perfectly reasonable source of power. They've been generating electricity at the Geysers complex North of San Francisco for 74 years. A respectable amount -- 900MW currently. There are many other geothermal plants operating in the world.

There are a few problems.

1. There's not all that much really hot rock at reasonable depth, so potential easy sites are pretty limited. You are probably not going to site a geothermal plant near New York City or London. Not any time soon. Probably not any time ever. Naples OTOH.

2. Natural geothermal fields have limits as to how much steam can be generated. Drill more wells than your field will support and your production from existing plants will drop.

3, Natural sites tend to be near volcanoes. There are certain drawbacks to building infrastructure on volcanoes. Parts of Hawaii's Puna plant including the access road were eaten by a lava flow in 2018.

4. I personally wonder about what else is coming out of the ground besides steam/superheated water -- Sulfur very likely. Toxic gases? Dissolved salts probably. Probably no problem as long as proper handling and disposal procedures are in place. But still ...

vtcodger Silver badge

Re: Alternative uses

"There are terrestrial solar arrays ..."

That would be the Ivanpah (California) bird burner. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivanpah_Solar_Power_Facility The facility used 13sq km of mirrors to heat 3 boilers to 560C. It also used large amounts of natural gas (4 times the original plan) to start up generation in the morning when sun angles are low. And it fried an estimated 6000 birds every year. the 2.2B USD faciility did generate well over 800Mwh of electricity in 2020 its seventh (and best) year. It had other problems including attempted self-incineration in 2016 (A software bug as I recall). and bankruptcy in 2019. Regulators were threatening to shut it down permanently in 2023. I have been unable to determine if they succeeded.

Overall, apparently not that incredible a success.

John Deere tractors get connectivity boost with Starlink deal

vtcodger Silver badge

Starlink subsidy

I think the FCC rejected Starlink's proposal because if Starlink is going to provide adequate service in cities like New York LA ,Seattle, Boston it'll already have all(?) the infrastructure it needs to provide rural broadband in the lower 48 and Hawaii. Little need for a subsidy. I'm thinking that they might need a few better placed ground stations for some very remote areas, but I don't know enough about their network to say for sure. Maybe they can get money for those.

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

vtcodger Silver badge

Yes ... But

Actuallly, I pretty much agree with two caveats.

1. Current EVs cost too damn much. Especially if one includes the cost of a home charger. That sort of disqualifies them for a large fraction of the potential users who are probably better off economically with a decrepit used ICE vehicle that barely runs, but is satisfactory few trips a week for shopping, and entertainment.

2. In developing countries the ideal EV for many users is probably not the same as the vehicles those of us in the developed world are looking at. It's probably something like a three wheel tricycle with a maximum speed of 30-40kph, but with enough power to lug 400kg of crops or the wife and three kids 20km to a market town ... and back. I don't expect to see that from Tesla, Ford, VW, or Toyota. Probably they will come from some companies we have never heard of in China, India, Indonesia.

vtcodger Silver badge

You're probably right. I should have said "Those who don't make long trips thru thinly populated areas"

One problem with long trips in the US is that for many users, they correspond to holiday weekends when most everyone is taking long trips. Thanksgiving and Christmas for example. In populous areas there may be a lot of choice of charging locations, but out in the plains or Great Basin, or the Mojave, one is likely to find themselves at the end of a LONG queue awaiting access to a charger. The holiday weekend queues at the original Tesla supercharger site at Kettleman City half way between LA and San Francisco on I5 are legendary. Tesla, to its credit, has added sites there. But somebody is going to have to pay for all those rarely used chargers. I reckon that in the long run, it'll be the users.

The other potential problem is the chargers. Vermont seems on paper to have a lot of publicly available EV chargers. But reading the labels on the (non Tesla) devices in my local supermarket parking lot, it looks like they will give one, at best, 10kwh (40 miles or so on a nice June day) charge in an hour. There's not all that much to do in a rural strip mallish sort of place for hours while one "refuels." Especially at night. In Winter. Queuing probably won't be a problem though. Nobody much in Vermont owns an EV. I think I've seen two cars in the past 3-4 years actually use the things

vtcodger Silver badge

Re: Norway

per Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_of_Norway

Olso records

Records-26.0(-14.8F) -- 35.0(+95.0F)

Typical Jan low -- -4.7(23.5F)

Typical Jul high -- 22.7(72.9F)

Mild summers, nippy winters. Can, but usually doesn't, get really cold

vtcodger Silver badge

Frozen batteries

I once had an elderly (10 year old) lead-acid battery actually freeze on me during a Northern New England cold snap. Took the fill caps off, and there was ice where sulfuric acid belonged. Surprisingly perhaps, after being thawed out in the bathtub,it managed to start the car.

Yes, oil can be a problem. My impression is that modern multi-viscosity oils have much reduced the problem. But a chemist once told me that the viscosity extenders are the first thing to fail if intervals between oil changes are too long.

vtcodger Silver badge

Anyone who has actually done "due diligence" on pure EVs should know that the current crop are best suited to users who:

. Live in mild climates

. Don't make many (preferably no) long trips.

. Are driven frequently. (parasitic drains of various sorts will likely eventually kill the battery if you let them sit without charging for many months -- and yes people do that with ICE cars sometimes).

. Have a place to charge them (and a power grid capable of charging a large number of EVs if one's neighbors are also buying EVs)

. Don't drive in very mountainous areas.

One doesn't have to fully satisfy ALL those criteria in order to be happy with an EV. But satisfying most would be a good idea.

Hybrid EVs should be a satisfactory alternative for many folks. They still burn fossil fuels, but often significantly less than pure ICEs.

Future EVs will be better. Probably on all counts. But it'll be a long time (maybe never) before EVs are the right vehicle for every use case.

Windows 12 fan fiction shows how Microsoft might ladle AI into the OS

vtcodger Silver badge

Exit plan

It's possible that AI will actually be good for something. But it looks to me like projections of AI future capability are dramatically in excess of likely actual utility. And my guess is that MS management might well end up forcing Clippy_on mind-altering_drugs on one and all.

Those who haven't long since jumped ship might want to start thinking about an exit strategy from Windows. Hopefully, they won't have to use it. But if they do, it's likely not going to be anywhere near as easy as just buying a bunch of Apple gear or simply downloading some Linux release. Being prepared to bail will probably require some effort. But if one does need to switch OSes, one does not want to do it in a state of panic.