* Posts by EGeee

12 publicly visible posts • joined 17 Mar 2019

If you're on invite-only tech-testing scheme, take care with Amazon's Alexa-powered answer to Google's Glass

EGeee

Re: Go right ahead. "...take care..." is an understatement.

I can see how they could potentially be a great AR tool for all sorts of jobs and hobbies, but given the potential for misuse should only be available to the general public in styles that would put Dame Edna to shame.

Any promises to extend rights of self-employed might win an election, hint Brit freelancer orgs

EGeee

My wishlist

Reduce maximum invoice payment times from 30 to 14 or even 10 days, at least for payments under a certain amount (e.g. £1,000). If you don't have the money to pay me, don't hire me.

Compulsory use of either escrow or an up front deposit for jobs over £50 in value.

Government backed holiday pay, even if we have to pay a couple of percent extra tax (with 100% of it being returned once or twice a year as holiday pay).

School children to be taught how to be self employed.

The moon on a stick.

It's happening, tech contractors: UK.gov is pushing IR35 off-payroll rules to private sector in Finance Bill

EGeee

Since flouncing would look bad....

Anyone think this might be an attempt by the Tories to flounce out in the general election and avoid any more responsibility for Brexit?

In a world of infosec rockstars, shutting down sexual harassment is hard work for victims

EGeee

An age-old problem....

Speaking as a woman, and as a techie, I can confirm that a large part of why close-knit groups of males tend to shout down or ignore accusations of sexual misconduct and harassment is that men don't know if their other male friends are badly behaved towards woman. In a sort of reverse confirmation bias, they simply don't see these problem men outside of the sausage-heavy environments they know them from. As a result, they rarely see the men in question interact with women. They're certainly never on the receiving end.

Add to this a large number of men who aren't making women uncomfortable with their behaviour due to power play or maliciousness. They simply don't know how to interact with women, having spent their life in male-centric environments.

Another issue is the human tendency not to believe bad things you're told about your friends, especially where the report is coming from a third party you don't know well. This is something we can all be guilty of in the right circumstances.

Of course the only effective way to improve the situation is to increase the numbers of woman in cybersecurity.

Here are some deadhead jobs any chatbot could take over right now

EGeee

A fine feature in an artist, less so in a plumber or electrician...

I'm not sure a bot could yet manage the levels of impressionist improv I've seen demonstrated by several plumbers and electricians.

BBC detector vans are back to spy on your home Wi-Fi – if you can believe it

EGeee
Pirate

Plug and don't Pay...

For argument's sake, let's pretend that this technology really does work as advertised.

Wouldn't miscreants just watch iPlayer with an Ethernet cable?

Hell hath no fury like a radar engineer scorned

EGeee

Re: Can this inform the 5G debate?

Anye fule knowe you can only slice Maxwell's fruitcake with a colloidal silver hammer.

Harvard freshman kicked out of US over OTHER people's posts on his social media

EGeee

There's a tangential link, given that anti-immigrant sentiment is largely responsible for the "leave" vote, except in the UK it's come to "we don't want immigrants taking our jobs, so we're going to sc**w the economy and make those jobs disappear".

EGeee

If there were a revolution in the US, there's a high chance it wouldn't have the results you're hoping for, given who has all the guns.

Two in five 'AI startups' essentially have no AI, mega-survey of nearly 3,000 upstarts finds

EGeee

Hang on just a minute...

"Hang on just a minute" is something I frequently think when I'm researching an article. There's an awful lot of blaggers out there in startup land, as we all know. Add to this the fact that many acronyms are misused in order to confound clients, or simply used without care and attention to the fact that the same acronym is already in common parlance for something else. I've already got a list of almost 50 things that can be 'as a service', including 4 that are SaaS, after about 30 mins of light Googling.

Where we would all be beyond surprised to see someone offering 'true' strong AI, I think it's fair to say that most would hope for at least some element of machine learning to be involved in a product purporting to be 'AI'. Presumably some of these companies are fudging things in the hopes that they will get enough expertise/funding/miracles in the near future to be able to implement something like what they're promising.

Others will simply be taking advantage of the fact that people assume AI to mean 'artificial intelligence', as in the case with AIOps - originally coined to mean 'algorithmic IT Operations' rather than 'artificial intelligence operations' as customers would be prone to assume. Of course, some of those companies have gone on to add a lot more in the way of artificial intelligence, or at least machine learning to their products.

These boffins' deepfake AI vids are next-gen. But don't take our word for it. Why not ask Zuck or Kim Kardashian...

EGeee
Facepalm

Re: Seems good enough to fool most people to me

I had a go at the http://www.whichfaceisreal.com/ site, and got 100% right out of about 50 tries. No idea who falls for these.

All good, leave it with you...? Chap is roped into tech support role for clueless customer

EGeee

Re: Have you ever ended up being roped into doing more tech support than you’d bargained for?

As a teenager my dog actually did eat my homework. I lied and said I didn't do it.