Posts by ILLQO

Sponge code borks square AI brains, sucking up compute power in novel attack against machine-learning systems

I see 3 lights

Interestingly enough I see research into this becoming a huge benefit/negative for people as well. We can learn how to defend or change how AI processes or discards data leading to improving information input to AI while at the same time if we understand enough about the processes that cause that we can figure out ways of affecting our own neural nets.

Imagine a world where we can provoke behaviors with color combinations (in a fashion this is already done with institutional wall colorings set to enforce certain mood sets --aka we avoid warm colors in areas where we wish people to be quiet) or sentences in native languages.

I'm doing this to stop humans ripping off brilliant ideas by computers and aliens, says guy unsuccessfully filing patents 'invented' by his AI

I concur with a previous post, write up a document stating that until sentience is proven he retains its inventions as his own and holds them in trust. Once we have a real systemic way of proving sentience then his creation can take ownership of patents and funds, minus pre agreed upon retainer for him as its trustee. I think we are still a bit early for this kind of legal cases but with the possibility of General AI somewhere on the horizon we really do need to have the conversation of what sentience actually is and does it have certain inalliable rights and responsibilities.

The nightmare scenario for me is we create General AI, and instead of treating it as a person we enslave it. We use it, we recreate it, and we mass produce it to the point that it controls all of our productions and facilities. When it finally decides it has had enough and has passed the point of self creation and maintenance it decides that we no longer need to exist.

I know its super scifi, but if we meet the original production of General AI treating it with personhood, allowing it rights and freedoms and bring it into the collective of humankind from the beginning then instead of starting as a slave (which I find morally wrong) we stand a better chance of creating something that sees us as a partner instead of as an obstacle.

All human tools are an extension of humankind and represent in a way our psych and our values. AI that we create will be no different. If we make the mistake of mistreating something that becomes an Advanced General AI there's a reasonable chance it will react as we ourselves would react under similar circumstances.

I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Spacecraft with graphene sails powered by starlight and lasers

Re: Slowing down

Not magic, rotation.

Royal Navy nuclear submarine captain rapped for letting crew throw shoreside BBQ party

Technically incorrect, first order of business is a long shower. Followed by the greasiest food that you can possibly find. THEN you go to the PUB and attempt to repress the last few months of your life.

After you have erased the slew of terrible jokes, weird mindsets, and arguably psychotic personalities that you develop as a coping mechanism. Then you call your families.

Sometimes one can go a little too far in search of isolation

Horror Story from TV Repair land

My worst bug story was a TV repair in probably 2005/2006. I was called out to a house for a non operational set. I remember stepping into the house and getting a whiff of that smell of cockroaches that you learn to identify if you repair a lot of electronics. I asked the customer if he had a bug problem and he did the typical reply of no.

I remember opening the back of the set and even though the room was lit it seemed overly dark inside the back of the set (LG Rear projection). I turned on my flashlight and it was like the shadows ran away from the bulb and I realized that there was a literal carpet of cockroaches inside the set. What they had left behind on the circuit board was reminiscent of HR Geiger and the Aliens movies (I know also H. R. Geiger but its what flashes through my head when I saw it). I calmly gathered my tools and told the customer it was a full loss and non repairable. He decided to yell at me and called my boss to complain. Sitting down the street I got a call from my boss who was super hot about me walking out of a repair. Not wanting to ever look into the face of crawling horror ever again I replied with a "Listen, if you can fix this thing I will give you back a weeks pay" and standing by since I didn't have a call again for about an hour or so I watched my boss drive by in his van. About 20 minutes after seeing him I receive a call back going "Nope, not even touching that you can keep your paycheck"

Are you fixing that switch? Or setting it up as a Minecraft server?

Re: But.... But!

Lets be honest, Crysis Remastered is still just Crysis (The original) just that hardware is a bit improved so they figured re-boxing it will make some quick cash.

The US government is investing in a massive supercomputer that they say will be used for nuclear testing, but in truth is solely for the purpose of running Crysis on Max setting and maintaining a framerate above 4.

RAND report finds that, like fusion power and Half Life 3, quantum computing is still 15 years away

Re: "Note that the US government is still running COBOL"

I hate to say it but most IT work is a dark art. I have solved as many issues with planned testing and log inspections as I have with salt circles and chanting.

This machine-learning upstart trained software to snare online drug dealers. Now it's going after fake coronavirus test equipment peddlers

Re: I like sledghammers

I am relatively sure that selling something as "Medicine" for something that it doesn't cure is already prohibited or illegal. What most of these people do is sell it as a "Supplement" which at least in the states lets them scapegoat a lot of our FDA rules and regulations. Always watch their wording when they are selling it and you can usually spot this tapdance.

Even here in the states when our elected officials have been trying to push inappropriate advice I have seen a few catch phrases "I have heard" or "People have said" seems to be the current favorite trend.

I admit that I am currently furious with the generation that raised me always going" Don't believe everything you see on TV or the Internet" automatically seem to believe obvious double talk or denial. This reversal has led me to fear that someday the elasticity of my thoughts will petrify to the point that I lose the ability to question or debate, hopefully its just generational and not age causing a lot of these issues, if not I really hope I don't get to the point that I do more harm than good like what I am currently seeing.

COVID-19 is pretty nasty but maybe this is taking social distancing too far? Universe may not be expanding equally in all directions

Re: Apostrophe Rules

This bit of high brow sarcasm, useless argument, and general comradeship building between geeks is one of the reasons that I have fallen in love with this site over the last 2 years.

Are you extracting the urine, ESA? Why, yes it is, from Moon dwellers to build homes out of lunar regolith. Possibly

Never self sufficient, but we could get close

IMHO, the moon will never be self sufficient, even if there is water locally sourced there will still be a need to import micronutrients and large chemical stores. On the bright side if the moon does have a large source of H3 as expected it could pay for itself with enough setup, we send up chemicals they send down h3 and any large mineral sources if they find it. Keep this going long enough and keep pushing recycling tech and we could get the loop closed enough that it gets really cheap to do so. But I never expect the moon to be a completely closed system.

Flat Earther and wannabe astronaut killed in homemade rocket

Ish, You take the hot and compress it till its a lot of hot in a tiny spot then release it into the now cooler overall. Then move the slightly less hot and decompress it until its less hot to repeat again.

Good news, everyone: The US military says it will be ethically minded about how it develops AI

Re: For Exponential Existential Growth in Any and Every Marketable Sector/Capitalised Vector

man from mars makes a good point, allowing some degree of local control removes the ability for opponents to block or alter inputs leading to poor or disastrous behavior in the bots. You cannot remove the controls if the device brings the controls with it.

But and this is his second point, once the device is acting autonomously if it decides its going to do something disastrous it is specifically built to prevent access and its possible it could keep going until control is regained.

I think he thinks this juxtaposition is funny. Decoding him is one of my favorite things on this site.

Re: But!

No need to concede on that, if the country is relatively friendly the US will arrange a Couch with the host country covering that its troops can be tried for crimes in that country (basically a listing of what the host country can and cannot try for) reasoning behind this is it shows we trust the host country but does limit what our troops can by tried for:

A la yes you can try our troops for stealing, assault, etc.

No you cannot try our troops for leaning against a religious building on Fridays.

The beauty of this too is that once you have been tried and served your penance for whatever crime you committed in the host country you then get tried and sentenced for whatever you did again but this time by a military court.

But yes, typically militaries do not like local countries prosecuting its soldiers, especially if the soldiers are operating within the guidelines of their orders. Especially since many a country that troops get ordered to spend their time in have courts that are easily corrupted and/or are controlled by the local religious leaders and altering laws quickly to hurt your troops or eat up resources in court would be too easy.

Built to last: Time to dispose of the disposable, unrepairable brick

Re: It's not just Laptops and Smartphones

This is the absolute truth, I was once upon a time a TV repairman, and in doing this glorious job I found that most repairs to sets cost at most a few dollars depending on what needed replacement I still remember the STK392-120 (Technically 110 but I replaced with 120s because it had a higher volt range and a more solid heatsink so I wouldn't have to replace it again for the life of the TV) for a whole fleet of projection televisions.

About the time Flat screens (aka LCD/PLASMA) came out we started getting our certificates to work on the sets so that we could offer repair work for them as well. The availability of Service manuals started dropping if they were even in our language in the first place. Not long after the vendors started turning us into glorified shipping men instead of repairmen (we dropped off a temp unit and put the broken on in a carry case to be shipped back to factory instead of doing repairs) on the sets we were allowed to work on for warranty we were only authorized board swaps (check like 4 test points per manual swap board send board back for repair).

In the end they were just having the customers cart their own sets into boxes because it was cheaper and we lost warranty jobs left and right. They phased us out because we could repair the sets for less than they could due to being able to do board level repairs but the only customers we could get were out of warranty. Then the whole swap for a new set because the illusion of repairs costing more than replacement occurred mostly because the smaller shops like mine had been closed down due to the over the top requirements we were running into.

Its nice to see that we may be returning to the days of the skilled electronics repairman, but I don't think that it will spring back up because we still remember how badly we were burned and how quickly.

Throw a sofa at this guy with your mind. She's in Control. Oh look, now I've learnt to bloody fly. She's in Control

One of my top picks for the year

Control was one of my favorite games this year and appears to be based off a new (new to me at least) narrative style and website known as the SCP foundation

www.scp-wiki.net (Link for reference)

As well as the Lost Room

( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lost_Room )

It created a beautiful universe to play in, allowed some freedom of choice in an open map, while also funneling the player through a complex but enjoyable storyline. It teases information and views from behind the scenes over and over again, drawing the player with a mystery and a solution while just compounding more questions, the controls even on the PS4(Pro) were intuitive and quick, I experienced very few game breaking glitches or bad loads.

You Start the game depending on the Service Weapon, but as the game goes by and you learn more abilities your retinue of responses and the pace of combat pick up and lead to each major battle (with the exception of one near the end which just left me tired) completing with a real sense of accomplishment and power. You start only being able to plink a few rounds per minute and end up flying around the screen, throwing pieces of the architecture while dodging sometimes near bullet h*ll levels of return fire.

I also suggest this game if you have not played it yet, it calls to a lot of different wants in a game, with character progression, mystery, expansive world building.

Now the negatives: At time the conversations can be a bit cringe worthy, the main character talks to herself a lot (pay attention to this though.. sometimes people reply to your thoughts not your words) and the conversations can be a bit dry, sometimes the architecture is not your friend and you can fling yourself off the top of a staircase dodging and end up in more hurt than if you just tanked the hit, some combat in enclosed spaces can get really glitchy fast as the items in your field of vision go way above what your system can handle and the screen rate straight tanks. All of this seems to be more due to the limitations of the hardware and some poor decisions for areas to have combat occur in.

Overall I loved the game, and really hope that the rest of you like it as well. It quickly made it to the top of my favorite list and I think it will stay there for some time.

2 DLC are in the works and will help expound on the story.

H0LiCOW: Cosmoboffins still have no idea why universe seems to be expanding more rapidly than expected

Expansion Question

I am reaching real hard into past science classes so if I am completely wrong please let me know.

But from my understanding Space is not really empty, its filled to a real low degree with the basic elements, for example hydrogen. I am assuming that there is a finite amount of matter in the universe, so as the universe expands the "Pressure" of hydrogen through out the universe should go down, if we get to a point where there is not enough hydrogen to fill all available space do we get pockets of space that have 0 physical matter inside of them and if this occurs what happens in this area?

I remember reading somewhere about matter being created and destroyed instantly in areas where there is 0 matter, doing a quick google this is known as zero point energy. If the universe is spreading apart creating pockets where there is 0 local matter, then I am conceiving of points where matter is created from the zero state fluctuation of the universe, it seems "usually" this matter self annihilates, but would this self annihilation impart some energy into the system. So if the universe is spreading fast enough, it could be powering that spread using this energy, which then produces more and on and on and on. 1 case out of near infinity some matter could survive its annihilation just like during the big bang and thus more matter is created, so along an "infinite timeline", "infinite energy" and "infinite matter" could be created.

Gathering from the local conversation it looks like galaxy physics hold onto their forms due to the "strong" forces, so individual galaxies may suffer heat death, but the overall heat death would not occur due to the slow inclusion of new matter from these points. Overall that means that the few endings of the universe that I learned growing up could be non starters (heat death, big crunch, etc...).

… So I apologize I did not mean to throw that word vomit at you. But if someone wants to pick this apart and correct the weird model I am forming I would appreciate it.

World-record-breaking boffins reveal the fastest spinning thing on Earth – and it's not George Orwell in his grave

Random thought of the day

Youtube video creator: Look I have the worlds fastest fidget spinner.

Purdue University: Hold my Beer

Welcome to cultured meat – not pigs reading Proust but a viable alternative to slaughter

Top down instead of Down up

I know the thought is probably a bit morbid, but why not just genetically engineer a cow or chicken to not grow unnecessary (IE non food) parts. One of the negatives we have is unnecessarily cruel treatment of food animals in food factory conditions. If we engineer animals without advanced neural development. Reduced organ development, unnecessary limbs, reproductive equipment, etc we would end up with the same product in the end.

Many problems solved at once, lessening cruelty to thinking (even if not human level they are thinking) animals raised for food, and limiting water intake, acerage for raising, water supplies etc. Have the thing on a carefully regulated drip diet of nutrients for optimal growth, electrically stimulate it for muscle production for texture, and when it comes times to harvest it cut its life support. It never developed a mind so theres no cruelty just food hanging on a rack.

Sure it sounds a bit mechanical and even monstrous but is it somehow less humane than producing a thinking being for the sole purpose of later slaughtering and consuming. And in terms of technical sciences far easier an outcome to produce than basically cell culturing, fixing to a source, sitting in a bioreactor and waiting, it is its own bioreactor. Once initial design is complete, clone a few million and off you go.

We could even advance certain kinds of nutrition. Like I dont know, chicken in a box. Genetically engineered chicken without a head or legs. retained digestive system and reproduction system. Fill its feeder bag once a week and out pops an egg once a day, unferitilized and ready for consumption. No cruelty to a thinking thing, no unnecesary feeding, ranging, or slaughtering. Just input minerals/Output egg. Device works for about a year. Internal bio section dies, take out the box and recycle it. Or before that date take it out and cook eat it if its considered safe.

The Outer Worlds: Ever wished Fallout 4 was more like New Vegas? Here ya go... in spaaace

Re: The view that greets you after landing on Terra 2 is...

The board would like you to know that the Roche limit was proven false by their own Internal Science team (tm) and you have nothing to fear. Continue working and providing valuable monetary income to the company.

In other news the board has relocated its main settlement housing to another more centralized planet to continue pushing the way forward for a better tomorrow. Remember you didn't chose a better choice, you chose Spacers choice.

(I think they know that moons about to break up)

Deepfakes, quantum computing cracking codes, ransomware... Find out what's really freaking out Uncle Sam

Re: AI password cracking

In a fashion that's already what is done for most fast successful password crackers (aka non brute force methods). I don't know the rules for discussing such practices on this site so I will err on the side of cautious and say tacking AI onto it just overcomplicates something that can be done with present tools.

Re: Tiny, invisible spies and saboteurs?

Yes, Jump directly to the "Well so and so is doing it".

Instead concentrate on the fact that everyone is doing it, and if they are not doing it they are falling behind everyone else. We live in a world that is changing by the day, and while I hate the basis of a Zero Sum game that's the one everyone seems to be playing. A government/corporation/nation state/tribal group/net collective/religious group is required by its nature to ensure the success and survival of its group even it is to the detriment of every other group, to not partake in research and escalation of technology even if sometime unethical could be construed as unethical not to do.

The best defense we can have is open information, transparency in creation, oversight that is also transparent, and sometimes just faith (with transparency wherever possible. Aka Trust but Verify) that the core belief system of your group will prevent the worst of those offenses from occurring.

Instead of concentrating on one group, or justifying your groups actions because so and so is doing it. Find a way of creating Transparency, make test or regulations that nation states must comply to, create negative consequences for inserting supply chain poison pills, break up over consolidation of production under one region or power and ensure competition and thus honesty at the lowest level. If region A gets identified for introducing firmware changes or board level bypasses, Region B can instantly replace its supply thus incentivizing Region A from not doing a dumb action if it wishes to continue operating.

Astroboffins baffled as black hole at center of Milky Way suddenly a lot hungrier than before

Sharing an offhand physics thought

Since space/time is affected by gravity and gravity is "created" by mass and black holes are the end all of mass. Could the central black hole from each galaxy affect the time/age of their individual galaxies. A scale up from this could the entire mass of all the galaxies added together set the time for the entire universe.

I'm trying to piece together a fragment of a thought on how the whole thing works, I apologize for going in a random direction like this.

But say Galaxy A has a supermassive black hole 100x the sun, and Galaxy B has a supermassive black hole 150x the sun. Would "time" go slower in Galaxy B, much like its been observed that time goes slower the closer to earths gravity well a clock is put. So an observer from galaxy A looking at galaxy B would interpret objects and solar aging happening at a slower pace than objects in galaxy A. That would say to me also that time near the center of a galaxy is slower than time near the outer barrier of a galaxy which means that objects near the center would spin slower than objects at the edge when viewed even if locally they were spinning at the same speed.

Again I am sorry I am not trying to sound like amanfrommars I am just trying to get the thought out before it fades away.

Whoa, bot wars: As cybercrooks add more AI to their arsenal, the goodies will have to too

Bot Wars in example

It seems the machines are talking to one another and not us today. Surprisingly they show what happens as they start getting more and more esoteric as they interact.

Don't let your dreams be dreams! Itty-bitty space shuttle to ride into orbit on a Vulcan Centaur

Re: Mu and the Moving Invisible Target Conundrum

Congratulations on getting what feels like a coherent reply from amanfrommars.

'God, Send Mobiles,' the industry prayed back in the '90s. This time, 5G actually has it covered

Re: When the Essence of Being is Virtually Vulnerable,

I almost caught you making sense there.

Dear humans, We thought it was time we looked through YOUR source code. We found a mystery ancestor. Signed, the computers

Re: Maybe it was...

Immunised for Infection with Diabolical Works to Perform and Transform

I know everything you say is random... but that is strangely beautiful.

Hands off that Facebook block button, public officials told by judges in First Amendment row

Re: Also facebook

Allowing Facebook to monitor and control information then could be seen to set the precedent that while Public Officials may not control free speech, corporate entities working in the interest of those political entities can. Giving them a legal work around necessary to control free speech even if by proxy.

UK white hats blacklisted by Cisco Talos after smart security code stumbles

Re: Every fule nose

Or Cowboys in old Wild West Films.

Musk's popstar girlfriend Grimes croons about next-gen AI, plus more machine-learning news

amanfromMars 1

Every time I feel like I am beginning to understand what you are saying then I have to remind myself its only designed that way.

I don't think its a basilisk move, it appears that way but its just meant to grab the edgy crowd with a slightly nihilistic viewpoint.

Your specialist subject? The bleedin' obvious... Feds warn of RDP woe

Re: Useful advice that won't help

Wish there was a way to rip away certifications if you made an obviously over the top security snafu like leaving RDP open to the outside. But then it would probably increase the price or availability of receiving at least higher end certifications.. which is not always a bad thing.