Posts by Ashentaine

UK police dangle £75 million to digitize its VHS tape archives

Re: “ The UK public sector has often proved reluctant to give up its pre-computing era technologies”

There are quite a few old buildings in major cities around the world that can't have their systems upgraded because the infrastructure for the CCTV system was placed when the building was constructed, and would require gutting the entire structure to replace it. I imagine those ancient systems are still using VHS recording in some capacity out of necessity, since there's also still a factory somewhere in the world that's producing CRT monitors specifically for that application as well.

Palantir jumps aboard tech-nuclear bandwagon with software deal

So far all of this palaver about un-mothballing nuke plants to run AI data barns just looks like another grift with no actual roadmap behind it, so I can't blame Palantir for wanting to grab a few fistfuls of cash for themselves before it all collapses.

US Department of Defense will stop sending critical hurricane satellite data

Re: Sharpies at the ready

Just mention that this puts Mar-A-Lago at risk of being sunk into the Atlantic, and he'll have a replacement system up and running by the end of next month.

Actually, might be a useful way to distract him from everything else he's been mucking up so far...

The SmartNIC revolution fell flat, but AI might change that

Hey, remember that thing your company lost a bunch of money on a decade ago because it wasn't really necessary and didn't take off? Well we just stuck a bunch of AI into it! You know, the really impressive AI! So you should totally buy it again, because otherwise your competitor might buy it and figure out something useful to do with it first... and you don't want that, riiiiiiight?

No, of course you don't. So, how many should I put you down for?

Tesla Robotaxi videos show Elon's way behind Waymo

Re: Maybe not drugs

Elon isn't nearly that clever, and it's not the first time that dumb weed references like this in a lame attempt to look cool have cropped up either.

Wanted: Junior cybersecurity staff with 10 years' experience and a PhD

I have to wonder

...if at least some of those jobs are ones that were already filled internally but due to regulations they're required to post a public listing, and so set ridiculous or conflicting requirements to keep anyone but the pre-chosen individual from applying.

Danish department determined to dump Microsoft

To reckon a guess...

...I'd say that in year or two some high ranking official will come in and throw a fit about how they want Office back and everyone else needs to be using it for "standardization", when the real reason is the glass marble they have for a brain can't process that their settings have been slightly moved around, even though all they ever use is a letterhead template and the Underline button. And because this is a person you can't just say "no" to because they can quickly replace you with someone else who will say "yes", it just ends up happening.

PowerSchool paid thieves to delete stolen student, teacher data. Looks like crooks lied

Re: Pay AND probably have your data spaffed about

Look at it from a board member's point of view, though:

Don't pay, and you get lambasted for lack of action when the news gets out, money has to go towards actually improving security to prove you're doing something about it, and worst of all... the shareholders might get upset with you and want you out.

Do pay, and if you get doublecrossed then you can shift blame by saying you were only acting in the clients' best interest, it's those dirty cyberthieves that are to blame for not holding up their end of the bargain. The ransom can be written off as an operational expense, questions about the state of your IT security can be deferred till they're someone else's problem, and the shareholders will likely pat you on the back for at least trying to be proactive.

The end result is basically the same, but one is far more likely to keep you in your nice office for another year.

Hacking US crosswalks to talk like Zuck is as easy as 1234

Re: Passwords, missiles

Largely because the system was still driven by technology from the 1970s and it couldn't be connected to the internet even if they wanted to.

What to do once your Surface Hub v1 becomes an 84-inch, $22K paperweight

I imagine most Surface Hubs followed the standard corporate lifecycle for devices of this nature:

Board member wants shiny new tech toy to wow his contemporaries with, board member gets shiny new tech toy, board member realizes tech toy is either not as amazing as it first seems or can't figure out how to make it do all the cool stuff they envisioned, tech toy becomes abandoned after a few months but board member won't allow it to be reallocated because that would be admitting they wasted company money on it, tech toy sits around for years until everyone forgets how it works or why they even had it in the first place, tech toy gets written off by the beancounters as they can't figure out its value and a different board member wants it gone to make room for their shiny new tech toy that's arriving soon.

Procter & Gamble study finds AI could help make Pringles tastier, spice up Old Spice, sharpen Gillette

It tastes like a computer, all right

Last year Coca-Cola did a limited run of a flavor that they claimed was designed by AI, called YT3000 or somesuch. It tasted like normal Coke but with too extra artificial sweetener in it, and when the initial novelty period passed nobody wanted it. After a couple weeks the local supermarket had put their stock of it on 50% discount just to get it off the shelves. (At the time I suspected that a bottling plant screwed up a batch of Coke Zero Sugar and rather than throw it out, they decided to try marketing it instead.)

With that in mind, it's probably safe to say that the only enhancing that P&G's AI will do is enhance the bank accounts of the consultants who sold them on the idea in the first place.

Writing for humans? Perhaps in future we'll write specifically for AI – and be paid for it

Re: No, no, no...

>You only have to go on Instagram to see how the AI slop is drowning out actual real art, due to the slop factories churning out hundreds of posts a day.

Or leave Youtube's autoplay on for more than three videos and inevitably it will queue up some trash of a fake British voice emotionlessly reading a poorly written script generated by ChatGPT with equally poorly generated artwork as visual filler. Such stuff wasn't made for the pursuit of artistic endeavor or even human consumption, it was made specifically to abuse the autoplay algorithm for viewcounts and ad impressions. It's the media equivalent of styrofoam packing peanuts.

OpenAI wants to bend copyright rules. Study suggests it isn’t waiting for permission

Re: "rigid copyright rules are repressing innovation and investment"

And remember that "rules are repressing innovation" was the mantra of the founder of Oceangate, and we saw what ultimately happened there. Not understanding why the rules exist in the first place before you set out to subvert them is aiming for failure.

LLM providers on the cusp of an 'extinction' phase as capex realities bite

Re: Not going there.

Just the fact that they can't explain exactly HOW generative AI is going to add to the experience of using every scrap of tech under the sun says volumes on its own. It sort of reminds me of those TV ads that BASF was running back in the mid-late 90's where they proclaimed "We don't make the products you buy, we make the products you buy better", and almost nobody had a clue as to what that meant, or what BASF even did, or who said ads were even meant for.

If you can't give valid use cases, don't waste everyone's time by proclaiming "but think of the applications!" It's not OUR job to figure out how YOUR thing is going to be beneficial to us.

Linus Torvalds forgot to release Linux 6.14 for a whole day

I'd say it's a much more forgivable slip-up than releasing a new version too early and spending the next few months playing catchup to fix everything that it's ended up breaking. Much like, y'know, most software vendors of past, present and inevitably future.

2 in 5 techies quit over inflexible workplace policies

Reasons given vs. actual reasons

Reasons given: better innovation from in-person work, helping younger staff to learn the culture and the job better, and improving productivity.

Real reasons: The CEO doesn't want to give up their plush office in that trophy HQ they snatched up back when COVID had commercial property prices at rock bottom, the shareholders are grumbling about why the money being used to keep the lights on in a half-occupied building isn't going to them instead, and it's much harder to impose a culture of superiority and fear over the rank-and-file when you aren't there in person to loom over them at uncomfortable moments.

Google’s broadband balloon laser comms tech floated out as independent company

"Graduated"

Presuming that isn't just a fluffier way of saying "we transferred as much of the parent company's debt into them as possible and then shoved them out the door so we could clean up our books some", which is usually what happens when a spin-off like this occurs.

But then again having a niche technology that caters to a specific set of customers with specific needs can work out in the long run, since there probably aren't that many competitors looking to fill that niche.

SpaceX Dragon pod arrives at ISS to finally pick up stranded Boeing astronaut pair

Re: Terrible!

To be fair, spending an extended time in a zero gravity environment without proper preparations does carry the risk of fairly severe health issues upon returning to terra firma.

That said, of all the jobsites to be stuck at for a long period, the one that's as far away from earthly chaos as possible can't be all bad.

AI bubble? What AI bubble? Datacenter investors all in despite whispers of a pop

Re: Would an AI

So the same line that cryptobros use to try and convince suckers to go whole hog into their shitcoin of choice: "This is not financial advice, do your own research... but you should totally buy into this now".

Need cash? Your IPv4 stash can now be collateral for $100M loans

Re: they dont have to "work" on it... theregister.com is cloudflare and they can do it...

I think the point is to not rely entirely on a third party vendor to do all the work and then hope that they don't bork it entirely with a bad update, or mess up the settings, or just decide to say "well we decided we're going to charge extra for this now, deal with it".

Bybit declares war on North Korea's Lazarus crime-ring to regain $1.5B stolen from wallet

And there you go.

>It's believed the code was changed by compromising an AWS S3 or CloudFront account used by SafeWallet to host its software. This analysis has since been confirmed by the wallet maker itself, which said one of its developer machines was compromised – likely leading to the cloud storage tampering.

How much do you want to bet that said developer was contacted by "Steve from IT" and told that there was an issue with their account, and could you just install this program AnyDesk please and then log in so we can fix it remotely? That seems to be happening far more often than not these days among people involved with crypto.

Arizona laptop farmer pleads guilty for funneling $17M to Kim Jong Un

>It's unclear how much of the ill-gotten gains Chapman pocketed, but according to the Justice Department, Chapman's overseas IT workers received more than $17.1 million for their work.

Probably it was barely even five figures total. These type of operations tend to rely on the naive and desperate who are getting a pittance and unaware of just how much they're generating for their overlords. The full details probably won't be disclosed, but I'm willing to bet the laptops were supplied by a middleman already set up and her involvement was to just make sure they remained plugged in and with an internet connection.

Anduril picks Ohio for 5 million square foot autonomous weapon factory

I expect this will go the same as every other large industry project that gets proposed here in Columbus; they'll see how inadequate the road infrastructure around the city is, realize that winter weather is miserable because the state is basically in a giant valley and can snow paralyze travel, spend a couple years waffling while getting pushback from various self-interest groups seeking to line their own pockets, then eventually just slink off quietly because they managed to squeeze an even more one-sided deal out of another state even more desperate to get any kind of industry to come in.

It's happened before, it'll happen again. Ohio is just a bargaining chip in the great game of corporate greed.

$800 'AI' robot for kids bites the dust along with its maker

Re: It happened to the McLaren F1 fuel injection first.

>Even games where the producer -that didn't go bankrupt - promised they would keep working offline, they don't. Ubisoft for example killed off The Crew, a racing game. It took some effort from fans to recover this one (...)

(...)In the case of games, Steam promises to keep a copy of most games on their servers, at the same time that GOG promises to keep the original installers for download, and it is up to you to safeguard a copy and maybe the original media the game ran on, like compact discs. None of this ensures the continued existence of any of them.

Funny you should mention this, because shortly after Ubisoft shut down The Crew they had it removed entirely from Steam and deleted from people's accounts with no prior warning. This obviously caused a furor from not only owners of the game but from people in general, and when their stock began cratering Ubi had to make promises that The Crew 2 and Motorfest would both recieve offline patches when they were EOL'd just to keep more players from abandoning them.

Still, it's a clear cut example that if it's on someone else's server, it's not safe from disappearing without warning.

OpenAI's Sora lets ChatGPT subscribers churn out janky text-generated videos

Re: 20 second video's...

Youtube Shorts are about 20-30 seconds long and generate a lot of views thanks to their autoplay-when-scrolled nature, and I can imagine all those garbage channels that are already crapping out AI-voice narrated drivel by the bucketload will be loving this to get more traffic their way.

Bitfinex heist gets the Netflix treatment after 'cringey couple' sentenced

Re: Biggest Heist Ever?

To the average couch dweller that doesn't know or care about crypto (which is likely the vast majority), it would be an unfathomable about of money. Granted, even if Lichtenstein and Morgan still had access to all those coins there's no way they could realistically cash them all out and access their full worth, which makes it less impressive on that alone, but still.

Cryptocurrency policy under Trump: Lots of promises, few concrete plans

Someone should tell Trump that instead of refabbing leaky oil wells or throwing up windmills everywhere to power his cryptoslop, he should just take over all those data barns being used for AI development and get a much quicker turnaround The resulting scrum between the two groups of con artists would be quite the slapfight, and might keep him occupied enough that he can't get around to implementing the more harmful stuff.

Amazon's nuclear datacenter dreams stall as watchdog rejects power deal

Re: Demons

I dunno man, I've played enough DOOM to know what happens when scientists start mucking about with demons...

US Army orders next-gen robot mule to haul a literal ton of gear

Re: How is this better than a truck ?

Pickup trucks have a high center of gravity, their cargo area is restricted to the back and most don't even offer large truck beds anymore (the majority are 4 feet long, just barely enough to fit a dirt bike in if you leave the tailgate down), and when at full load capacity the suspension is so burdened that their off road capability is severely compromised. Not to mention that you only have to take out one wheel and/or damage the suspension to render a pickup immobile, which any roadside kerb can do quite easily let alone an actual weapon of some sort, where I presume that S-MET could lose two or three and keep moving fine.

US proposes ban on Chinese, Russian connected car tech over security fears

Re: Do the Chinese actually make...

The American made* ones however, being designed to essentially be living rooms on wheels, are stuffed with touchscreens and phone docks and countless other technotoys that the dealerships order to maximize their overhead, so they're hardly exempt. And thanks to planned obsolescence the software in said vehicles is rubbish since it only has to work as long as the average lease period lasts, so who knows if, how or when it's been compromised.

*and by made I mean assembled in Canada or Mexico, depending on the company

Valencia Ransomware explodes on the scene, claims California city, fashion giant, more as victims

Re: 200MB of Data?

That could imply that they either knew what to look for or had the exact method to get into the important stuff, rather than using the standard "smash and grab" tactics most data thieves employ. And for a new group of cybercrims looking to make a name for themselves, that kind of precision would certainly get them noticed.

I reckon it's either that, or they actually just did a sloppy job and got locked out before pilfering much. Either or, I guess.

Microsoft's Copilot 'Wave 2' is a tsunami of unanswered questions

Re: Required CoPilot feature

Don't worry, you only have to wait until folks have begrudgingly accepted its presence and managed to find a way or two to make it somewhat useful. That's usually the point at which they abruptly cancel a feature, when it would be at least somewhat inconvenient for it to not be around anymore.

Tech upgrade broke the casino – took slots offline for days

Re: Konami?

More or less. They mostly exited game development around the early 2010s and make their money off producing gambling hardware now. Pretty much any electronic slot machine you'll encounter in a casino these days was manufactured by Konami with the software installed on it being from someone else, though I reckon many of those are the same program with swapped graphics cause you can only do so much to dress up a format like that.

McDonald's not lovin' its AI drive-thru experiment with IBM

Ironically the advertising department is the one area that could be wholly replaced by AI with no real negative impact, given that all adverts have basically congealed into the same unmemorable, homogenous blob of white noise in the last 10 or so years.

Elon Musk ends OpenAI lawsuit without explaining why

Apple announces they're integrating OpenAI into their devices. Elon throws a hissy fit about it, then promptly drops his lawsuit against OpenAI. I think I see where this one's going.

I reckon he figures Apple will be more wiling to pay him to go away, and that such a "victory" will convince those shareholders that he deserves that $50 billion payout.

Oklahoma saddles up bill of rights for crypto wranglers and miners

From the sound of it, I wouldn't be surprised if the governor has a stake in at least a couple of the wind farms out there. But on the flip side, concentrating all the cryptobros in a state that is notoriously tornado-prone sounds like a fantastic idea.

Microsoft's carbon emissions up nearly 30% thanks to AI

Re: "getting suppliers to use renewable energy"

I'm sure MS is keenly aware that by 2030 the AI/ML bubble will have long since burst and they'll have disposed of anything related to it by then, so this is a convenient way to look like they care without actually having to do anything that would incur a long term cost.

Watchdog tells Dutch govt: 'Do not use Facebook if there is uncertainty about privacy'

Re: Why use it at all?

>Penny wise and pound foolish in my (not so humple) opinion, but my opinion doesn't count for those people, overlooking the fact that I won't visit their Facebook page while I might visit their website.

Though at the same time, there are just as many people who won't visit a website more than once or twice but will think nothing of joining a Facebook group, as they spend all their free time on it anyway and it's no effort on their part when updates automatically pop up in their main feed.

A proper website will always give a much better experience if made right, but when Facebook handles all the promotion, distribution and notification for you it's going to be more attractive to those who don't have the time or staff to just do it themselves.

US Air Force says AI-controlled F-16 fighter jet has been dogfighting with humans

Re: They made a film about this

The scariest implication of that film being not that the plane could go rogue, but that it may start downloading nu-metal songs off the Internet.

Google squashes AI teams together in push for fresh models

Putting them all under one jurisdiction, so they can conveniently jettison the whole lot once the venture starts proving too unprofitable. Or whenever Google just gets bored with it and decides to put their attention elsewhere, like they have with countless other projects.

Unintended acceleration leads to recall of every Cybertruck produced so far

Re: Remind me

I dunno, I saw that Father Ted episode where Dougal got trapped on a runaway milk float, and that caused quite a bit of havoc. Granted a disgruntled milkman wired it to explode if it came to a stop, but still you never know these days!

Cyberattack gifts esports pros with cheats, forcing Apex Legends to postpone tournament

>The messages didn't specify the component of the game that was allegedly exploited. The community has been debating whether it could be in the Apex Legends game client itself or in the game's built-in anti-cheat mechanism (Easy Anti-Cheat).

Given that EAC is rubbish and has been compromised multiple times for no reason other than people wanting to prove it could be done, I'd wager that's a good place to start looking.

Electronic Arts frags hundreds of workers 'to grow fandom'

Yeah, no.

>Electronic Arts has noticed a rapid shift among video game players, who now apparently prioritize large open-world games, online communities, and live services.

No, that's what the AAA game industry has prioritized because it maximizes arbitrary engagement numbers and revenue. Most people don't want games that are large and directionless (most open world games), encouraging trolls and abuse (most multiplayer only games), have time limited content that players are locked out of if they didn't join on day one (most live service games), and will be completely unplayable when the servers are shut down (see all previous examples). But when that's all you offer because your beancounters tell you that those make the most money, then of course that's what you think everyone is playing.

Lordstown Motors to pay $25M in SEC settlement over misleading investor claims

Pretty much everyone here in Ohio was skeptical of these guys after they came out of nowhere, bought a shuttered GM factory for a ton of money, then just happened to get a large investment from GM shortly after. We were pretty sure it was actually a shell company that was meant to soak up debt incurred by R&D costs from EV development and keep the main company's books cleaner, but apparently it was just a grift from day one. But then again GM also threw money at Nikola, so I guess it's not the first time they got bamboozled thinking they could push development costs on someone else.

I will admit though, the renders of the truck looked really decent and functional at least. Most vaporware EVs reek of ugly sci-fi impractibility, because that's what attracts people with lots of money and short attention spans.

LockBit leaks expose nearly 200 affiliates and bespoke data-stealing malware

Re: Warning

I presume LockBit was keeping extensive data about their thralls, I mean affiliates, on the chance that one or more of them might get the notion to go into business for themselves. No honor among thieves, and all that. In that case it doesn't really matter if they try to cover their tracks because the evidence is already well documented.

Not to mention what the federales really want are the top ranking folks in the organization, so rattling the small fry like this may convince some of them to try and strike a deal to save themselves if they have something particularly spicy to share.

Hackers mod a Sony PlayStation Portal to run PSP games

Re: Back catalogue

They tried a few years ago with the Playstation Classic, and did it so poorly that it ended up being a disaster because they don't apparently didn't understand how emulation even works (using PAL formats on games on NTSC units, using a less capable emulator software, and so on). Plus a lot of the games that really sold the earlier systems were made by studios that don't exist anymore and finding out who holds the rights to them is a slow and expensive process, one Sony probably doesn't care to undertake.

Cops turn LockBit ransomware gang's countdown timers against them

Re: I suppose they earned their corn, but...

If the LockBit gang happens to be sponsored by the Russian state though, then this will probably put them on the bad side of Putin and the problem will eventually resolve itself (most likely via a tall building and an open window, like so many of Putin's other "problems" lately). Why pay for such unsavory services when you can find ways to have them done for free, and keep your own hands clean as well?

HP CEO pay for 2023 = 270,315 printer cartridges

The article headline gave me the mental image of one of those giant quarry dump trucks backing up to Lores' house and burying it under a mountain of used cartridges, which was certainly a good laugh to start the day off with.

AI won't take our jobs and it might even save the middle class

This line of thinking makes it feel like we're already approaching the backside of the boom cycle, where the true limitations of the technology are starting to show and those invested heavily in selling it have started pitching more practical sounding but still highly improbable use cases to keep interest high.

Saying that an LLM could be used as an instruction book that can enable non-skilled people to performed highly skilled tasks sounds silly to people who have been watching this closely over the last couple years, but there are just as many who weren't scrutinizing it as much that will hear that and think "Oh, it could do that? Wow that sounds great, let's go ahead and look into that then. Here, have a research budget." And thus, another year or so on the payroll while they try to stretch out that dead avenue as long as they can.

It's time we add friction to digital experiences and slow them down

Re: Ain't Gonna Happen ...

That's the unfortunate truth, convenience will always trump security for the average person. Providing a faster and hands-off experience is always going to be more attractive because people are inherently lazy and would rather have mundane tasks completed quickly rather than ensuring they're done safely (and yes, I'm including myself in that lot as well). Give the average person a choice between using 2FA and manually entering their details and going through a basic security check, or just dumping all their credentials into a one-click solution presented to them and just presuming that it's going to be fine and never end up being compromised and they don't have to worry about it anymore, and they'll always go for the easier option.

It's never a problem, until it is a problem.