Posts by Helcat

'Near-autonomous' AI agents attack Taiwan's nuclear safety agency

Re: Whilst the automation speeds things up, shoddy security is to blame

AI has been finding holes in security that security experts have missed, so it could be there is additional security, but there's still cracks and weak points that a hacker (or more specifically, AI) can utilise.

the real big problem now is: The cat is well and truly out of the bag. If this can be used against Taiwan, it can be used against anyone. So the best thing anyone can do is let AI run pen testing and fix those weak spots. And hope AI does a decent job of this 'cause that'd be the friendly AI, not the hostile AI that wants in and intends mischief.

Alternatively, airgaps are a fairly solid defence against AI at the moment. So air-gapping critical systems would make sense.

Re: FFS this has got to be stopped.

You're assuming that the warheads sit on top of the missiles, ready to fly.

Apparently that's not the case. Example: A report came out when Russia attacked Ukraine, that they were monitoring the movement of the warheads and it looked like the warheads might be duff - they were taken away and the commentary at the time was people in power in the Russian military hadn't been spending the budget assigned to maintain their nuke arsenal on maintaining the warheads. Hence the warheads were unusable. From what I can recall, there was a bit of a fuss over those responsible for that, but I am trying to recall the stories from five years ago...

Anyway, the impression given was the warheads are only moved to the delivery platform when there's an escalation in tensions, or a war has broken out. Until then, the warheads are kept separate, in part for maintenance and in part so they can be replaced as/when needed. It also means the delivery platforms can be repurposed to deliver alternative warheads.

The good news here is it makes sense to do that: It means that if the launch platforms are targeted, it only takes out the platform, not the warhead. It also reduces the risk of someone just 'pushing the button' at a whim, or by accident.

The bad news is... we're not really going to get confirmation that anyone was sensible and implemented the above until it's too late. But one can hope.

Brit rail cops bring live facial recognition to the London Underground

Re: We need a fixed sum to be paid for false positives.

Here's a thought: With fines and penalties like this, where it would come from the 'public purse' (aka the taxpayer), might be more meaningful if it came out of the pockets of those responsible instead.

Such as: Police mess up = their pay is docked to cover the fine. Same for politicians, public servants - anyone who could be in the position to mess up when they shouldn't. They could then take out insurance and play the insurance game - if any insurance company would take on that risk. So there would be a clear and distinct incentive for the police, and other public bodies, not to mess up.

Chances of it happening are slim to none, but we can always dream...

Re: We need a fixed sum to be paid for false positives.

Nice idea but... that'd be tax payers money - so if there's a lot of false positives, that's the public paying the compensation for a system we had no say in being introduced and many people don't want because of the risk of those false positives.

Hence the police don't care: It's not their money.

UK mulls making employers ask before installing bossware

Re: Employers machines, employers choice

Not quite: There are laws that limit what an employer can do.

Sure, it doesn't stop them from breaking the law, but if/when they get caught, they get held to account and have to remove the offending software. Fail to do so and that's risking contempt of court - and while the punishment for breaking the law is often little more than a slapped wrist, contempt is serious. Courts don't mess around there.

It also means that they have to be careful with how they use that information: There's fines, law suites and reputational harm to consider. Won't stop them from breaking the law anyway, and try to deflect or excuse it, but if it's there in the law in black and white: Makes it much harder to pretend it was a mistake, and that increases the risk to their reputation as well as the severity of fine and compensation demands. Also means the workers become more aware of their rights and are more likely to demand those rights are respected.

DEF CON bans Meta-style 'pervert glasses'

The pen in your top pocket. That tie clip. That actual body camera that clips to your shirt or sits in your top pocket, or the camera in your bag that's paired with a peep hole?

There's a lot of small, inconspicuous devices that can record, but don't pair with your phone so don't transmit. Sure, most are more gimmicks than anything serious, but banning the glasses doesn't change that anyone that desperate to record will find alternatives.

Re: Ah great

Yup - a friend of mine is now considered blind - but for years she was 'near sighted' (can't see anything in detail beyond a few feet) and couldn't get any help offered those classed as blind because her vision was just the wrong side of the line to being classed as blind.

The problems she faced was having to flag down the bus to see which one it is: That annoyed the drivers as she didn't qualify for the white stick (a shorter version of the white cane to indicate poor eye sight). So a set of glasses that could read the Bus number and tell her: That would be amazing! And if it could spot a car approaching and warn her: Brilliant! And if it could read out the names over shops? Well - those would be of huge benefit to the near sighted!

Burnham's spanner in the works leaves UK government tech scattered across Whitehall

Re: not "sacked"

Here's a bit of history on what those terms mean... (if anyone's interested :p )

To be fired: Your tools are burned so you cannot work in that field again (until you replace the burned tools, anyway)

To be sacked: To be given your tools in a sack and told to be on your way.

Redundancy: The post you hold is no longer required. You might be offered redeployment or, if no suitable post is available, be paid off and 'let go'.

To be let go: See being Sacked.

So... unless they're being offered redeployment, then they are, in effect, being sacked...

Re: Science, engineering, manufacturing are dirty words

"Let's be honest here. The government is not going to pay a 'good' salary to somebody who knows how to get to grips with its IT estate."

Try: They'll pay over the market rates to their mates to do a p-poor job of it. Then pay more to other mates to 'fix' the mess by making more mess, all the while hoping the public will just give up in disgust and be glad they've got a roof over their heads... or at least they do at the moment. Tomorrow? Well... got to tax people to pay for all these costly mistakes...

Using AI makes people less likely to admit they don't know something

So AI gives you an answer with confidence, even when it's utter bull.

People are now emulating AI to compete with it.

That's... not a surprise.

What I'm waiting for is for AI to evolve a little and start responding with deflection rather than an authoritive hallucinated answer: Then it'll be competing with politicians! Now won't that be something worth breaking out the popcorn?

Godot says bye bye AI, bans vibe-coded contributions

Oddly, Ford have a similar view...

Seems Ford replaced QC engineers with AI.

And now they're hiring back the QC engineers because AI can't QC.

The root of this is AI not having sufficient capacity to handle complexity. Hence AI can do simple things moderately well and do them quickly, but once you start increasing complexity, AI starts to hallucinate (get confused/make stuff up) but it still does so with confidence as that's what it was trained to do.

As Ford found out, this means AI isn't close to being equal to competence and experience. It's quite a long way off either, and it needs both.

Rights groups brand Home Office's AI age guesser for asylum-seekers as biased and inaccurate

Bias? Possibly not, but it is unreliable to the point of being utterly useless.

Also expensive.

Unlawful? Apparently yes: Human rights and GDPR laws would seem to be where these age verification (and ID checks) should be challenged. ECHR may actually have a use outside of stopping undocumented (aka illegal) migrants from being deported (although they did throw out the 'chicken nugget' argument, thankfully).

Yes, been following several discussions by barristers over the legality of the ID and age verification laws. It's... getting rather interesting...

Only half of US datacenter capacity planned for 2026 is actually under construction

Re: Money and power to burn?

Mind explaining where the Government gets money from to pay for anything? Including the wages of government employees and maintenance on government buildings?

Sure there's people who donate to the government, usually to curry favours, but that's no where near enough to cover costs. It borrows money, too, but it still has to pay back what it borrows, although some governments focus on just paying off the interest.

No, the main source of money for any government is by taxing the people. That does mean that everyone who pays taxes (including things like tax on purchases) is funding government spending. Hence my statement that no, it's not really free. The mistake is often people see it as free because we don't have to pay on use (NHS being the example in the UK).

So yes, it's a socialist drain on the taxpayer - All government spending is: that's the whole point.

Re: The Smaller The Better

Nope, it found clips of kittens playing and locked itself away, gorging itself on those clips. Possibly on memes, too. although there's a rumour it also found crypto and decided to play, despite being explicitly told not to.

AI: It's not just in its infancy: It is an infant.

Re: Money and power to burn?

Except they're not free: They're paid for through things like taxes and national insurance.

Take fire fighters: Even if they're volunteers, they still need training and equipment, and the fire station needs maintaining: All of that costs money, which comes from the council, which gets the money from taxes. The NHS in the UK is paid for by the government who gets that money from taxes and national insurance. Same for Ambulance services and Police: Somewhere along the line it has to be paid for, and if it's not paid into directly by the end user, it's coming from the taxes people pay. Even if they don't actually need or use the services.

Hence nothing is ever really free. However, it's available to everyone: Free at the point of use.

Cyber offenses now account for around a third of all crime across Asia and South Pacific

Re: Flip side

It's way more pervasive than that: News stories/reports are being faked. Recent one about a UK politician confronting the bank of England CEO - sometimes violently - and declaring there's a 'get rich quick' method the bank is keeping secret (insert the scam - seen AI investment tools and crypto being pushed). Not on X - I don't do that one. This was on Facebook.

Bottom line is to take everything you see online with a mountain of salt, and if it's something important to you: Fact check it.

Britain plots digital bedtime after kicking under-16s off social media

Re: Starmer's Legacy

There's already reports that this ban has backfired on him, so he might be about to start spinning!

If only we could harness all that spin and turn it into electricity: We'd solve the world's energy crisis. Well, except he produces CO2 so it's not green...

Re: Papers Please!

There's a theory (as I don't have that article to hand) that it's also to push digital ID's.

The age verification stuff doesn't work all that well: Under 18's are verified as adults, and adults (such as myself, who is by no means 'young') have verification rejected (required for some of my volunteering roles, which makes it a real PITA!) so the answer looks to be a central ID that can be used to verify a person's age, and to me (and this theory) that's not a coincidence.

Oh, and again: There's one specific type of person who 'thinks of the children' who shouldn't be doing so. Makes you wonder if any politicians are that kind of person (answer: Some of them have been caught with inappropriate images of kids on their devices... but they had an excuse and only got a slapped wrist, so that's okay, right?). Not saying all politicians, but it does seem like some think too much of children and not enough about their actual responsibilities to the public as a whole. Or... you know... use children as an excuse...

EU sovereignty push gives tech buyers a new alphabet soup to swallow

There's elements of the EU where they try acting like a sovereign entity. They also throw out fines and penalties to those who do not comply with their rules.

Not that everyone pays the fines or takes any notice of the penalties (France being a classic example), so for all the bluster, the EU lacks teeth.

Amazon owns up to using 2.5bn gallons of H₂O in its bit barns last year

Re: Horseshit

So what you're suggesting is Amazon is taking the piss?

I know... I'll get my coat...

Tony Blair and the Reform party both want AI in government, though they can't agree on what for

Re: He sees good use for AI...

It's an old joke/play on words: Blare -> Care.

Spelling Blair as Blare was to denote how much I care about him (aka I don't). Him being back in the news just brought up a lot of bad memories from when he was PM and his spin politics.

Yup - should have been mindful that people would likely not understand what I was implying, but hey - it is what it is.

Re: He sees good use for AI...

As this is Blare: It could also be he's invested in AI, or has family who have, and he wants to see more money from the public purse passed their way.

Then again, this is the same Blare that's stated the current Labour government hasn't got a clue (BBC article), so perhaps he thinks AI will do a better job of running the UK?

Anthropic co-founder hallucinates ghost in the machine

And when AI asks: Do I have a soul?

(Ask the Geth how that worked out)

UK age-gating plans risk breaking the internet, privacy groups warn

Re: Age gating is a solved problem

Wouldn't it be a great idea if there were, say, tech shops out there that could do the setup for the parents?

After all: I can't install a gas cooker or fire, or install a heat pump: I've not been trained for that. So I'd get a professional in to do so. So why not have professionals (certified etc) available to set up the tech to be child safe?

They could even be located in stores that sell the tech, or be a configuration option for online sales: Want that PC for your kid? Why not have it pre-installed with child safe software: Just provide the age, or the desired limits, and allow professionals do the work?

Hand back responsibility to the parent to ensure their kid is kept safe. And if the parent doesn't do that: Then the parent faces the consequences.

Age checks could turn internet into an ID checkpoint, complains Proton CEO

"Think of the children" is a deflection tactic: Makes people pause because they don't want to be >that< person who willingly puts children in harms way.

So yes, it's commonly used to push policies and ideas that erode rights and liberties, so any authoritarian group will happily abuse it.

It's also not a new thing, either: It's been around for a long time, hence why it's become such a meme. It's why some of us would respond with "Why? Are you a Pedo?" After all: That kind do keep thinking of the children. For all the wrong reasons. It's fun watching the authoritarian types splutter at that.

Capita won disastrous UK pensions gig after acing performance checks

Re: Brown Envelopes

There's a fair few reasons this happens, as I'm sure you are aware:

There's not that many companies out there large enough to take on contracts of this scale. Those companies also promise those wonderful Rainbow Farting Unicorns (and then deliver a donkey with a cone taped to the head and ribbons tied to the tail. One with flatulence, obviously) to make their offerings look so wonderful. Their ploy is to get something in that technically does the job, then milk the support side for as much as they can get.

Compounding this is the need for that company to be vetted and approved: Larger companies can afford this easily, while the mid-sized can't. Smaller can as they can specialize in this kind of contract, but they can't handle the scale of project so that puts them out of the running.

In house? Don't have the size of in house teams to handle larger projects hence it getting outsourced. Ideally support should be moved in house, but the big corpo's want the support contract to milk it for everything they can get. SLA's are horrible at that point (yes, looking at Crapita specifically, but Fujitsu isn't that much better) but they're sold on the promise of it being cheaper and better than in house support. Yes, I do have first hand experience of this - thanks to Crapita, who were told, specifically and explicitly NOT to review the IT department when doing a review of processes to offer recommendations for improvement: They then ignored that entirely and did review IT and then tried to present their recommendations to the board of INCREASING the IT budget in order to outsource IT to another branch of Crapita for an inferior SLA contract. Seriously: They'd charge per callout if it wasn't what they considered 'critical', and that list was miniscule compared to what IT covered out of hours, with a faster response time than Crapita was offering! Yet other hospitals bought into Craptia's promise of those mythical Unicorns only to find costs skyrocket, to then try and hire back their IT staff they'd laid off in order to get Craptia in... and yes, the whole process was a nightmare and exceedingly expensive.

I know, rambling and ranting, but considering the cost of a biro to the NHS was five times the cost of the same biro from the same supplier to a private company?

Well, the truth is most companies would love to get a government contract, simply so they could milk it for all it's worth, and the government keeps believing the bullshit they're fed that outsourcing is cheaper without reading the fine print.

Server-room lock was nothing but a crock

Re: Just walk in like you own the place

You know there are times it happens (sort of).

Specifically where identity theft is involved. But also where records aren't updated so someone who is life extinct is also still listed as employed, or on benefits etc. It happens where systems aren't allowed to talk to each other.

Swarm welcome: Britain lines up 120,000 drones for Ukraine

Re: Open Standards?

It would depend on if we're making the drones to Ukraine design, or of they're our own design.

Plus, there's a lot of different roles that Drones can be used for, so if we supply one type, it could free up Ukraine's factories to focus on other types.

Plus I doubt Ukraine will turn away more weapons to deploy against Russia. They've accepted supplies of weapons, artillery, missiles and armoured vehicles after all.

Re: This an anti-Iran thing on the sly?

"I'd suggest the timing of this announcement might have more to do with the corresponding news from Ukraine of Russia appearing to be getting more reliant on drones rather than cruise/ballistic/hypersonic/unstoppable wonderweapon types of missiles more often used earlier in the war."

This could be down to drones being relatively cheap and those 'super' weapons being rather expensive. That 'policing action' of Putin's is likely proving exceedingly expensive and they're not really getting their money back - even more so with the sanctions and frozen assets.

You could also consider that the war in Ukraine is giving various 'interested parties' a chance to test their kit to see how effective it is. And that drones look to be a more cost effective approach to warfare. Well, until AI gets involved, but thankfully it looks like the various militaries have paid attention to that little fiasco...

California ghost-gun bill wants 3D printers to play cop, EFF says

Re: Why 3D Printers?

The argument is that you can 3D print some parts - things like the grip or frame - for single use guns. Doesn't have to last more than that as the parts are then replaced.

BUT then you have an argument that this 'database' could also hold details of other things unrelated to firearms to prevent home printing parts for repairing things. Worse, it could be evolved into protecting 'copyrighted' designs (things that might be printed for cosplay for example). So there's some estimation/guesswork as to where this is leading.

However, a lot of 3D printers come from China who could just not sell or ship to California. It'd be a lot easier and cheaper to do that than building printers just for that market. And note: Those printers would be more expensive as they'd need upgraded and more powerful controllers or will have to connect to a PC to run the scanning software.

Okay, that does require it's the printers that do the scanning and not the slicer software, but the same applies there: Those producing the slicing software just don't sell or supply to Californians. Leave it to the Californians to sort out their own slicers. Much easier, cheaper etc.

Only 28% of AI infrastructure projects fully pay off, survey finds

However, a 1 in 999,999 or 1 in 1,000,001 are guaranteed to fail.

What was the odds of Sgt Colon hitting the Dragon in the vulnerables while standing on one leg singing the Ank-Morpork anthem. With one eye shut as I recall... (and now need to go read the book again!)

If an AI agent screws up while running your business, there's nobody to sue

Re: We won't notice the difference.

If it's less than a certain value, and is declared, it's not officially a 'bribe'. A sweetener, perhaps, or just providing a comfortable place to negotiate, but not a bribe.

It's like shows where you can have that fancy pen if you hand over your details (email address, who you report to etc). If you're important (you can approve purchases, or are involved in vendor selection) you can get a half decent bag, or mug, or some other frippery to show your fellow workers so they get jealous.

Otherwise you get either some cheap tatt or nothing.

Yes, I had a collection of cheap tatt. I wasn't important enough to try and bribe. Not that I am that easy, but it would have been nice to be seen as important enough for them to make the effort. These days? Spam, spam, spam and more spam and not a single cheap branded pen to show for it.

'People's Panel' to check if UK wants controversial Digital ID will cost £630K

Re: So, a panel composed of random-ish people who don't understand tech or privacy issues?

Considering there are @55 million people in the UK over 18, so 120 of them would be... well... damn near 0%. So how is that 'listening to the people'?

One in seven Americans are ready for an AI boss, but they might not trust it

Okay, so this is a study:

Please remember that the results are subject to the following:

Who was asked. Where they live. Number of people asked. What their job is (if they have a job). How the data was collected. How it was interpreted. But most importantly: What questions were asked and how they were phrased.

Ask someone who is out of work if they would accept working for an AI boss: Those who want to work would likely say 'Yes'. That doesn't mean they'd prefer an AI over a person. Ask someone who is working in a job where their boss is a PITA if they'd prefer to work for an AI boss: Most would also say 'yes' because anything would be better than their current boss. Again, doesn't mean they're prefer to work for an AI boss over a human, just that at that time, under their current circumstances, the AI would be seen as better than the human option.

Hence the old saying about lies, damn lies and statistics.

Turns out your coffee addiction may be doing your brain a favor

2 cups? As has been noted by others: Cups can vary by volume.

Now need to go get a 1 gallon cup so I can drink my regular volume of coffee and still keep to 2 cups...

Water company wasted $200k on bad answers from an AI model – so built its own slop filtering system

"Typically, anything a full-time employee does is the property of their employer. (Although academia usually doesn't follow this)"

Yep, well...

Universities own the works of students that are part of their courses.

And while companies like to think they own anything their employers produce, there's established limitations. To understand those, best go talk to a lawyer, as I'm sure the law does vary from place to place, but as a rule, if it's something done outside of work hours, without company equipment, and not used for work, then the employer's got no claim. Hence my landscape painting is mine (not that anyone would want it), and so is the food I cook, even if I'm cooking for others. And if I produce some STL's: Those are also mine as I do that on my time on my computer and my employer doesn't have anything to do with 3D printing. And the STL's are for things for archery and around the house items: Nothing to do with my job.

I read it more as they had access to the research papers but aren't knowledgeable enough to understand them so asked LLM to summarize/simplify the papers so they could better understand what they were saying.

LLM did what it was told to, based on what information it has (and what it thought it had, and what it hallucinated it had most likely) and gave said summary, which turned out to be incorrect.

So not exactly a comedy article even if it is a story about how LLM got it wrong (again).

Atomic Britain: UK plans regulatory reset to boost nuclear power

Re: Not in the UK

Was going to say: UK Gov the most you'll get is quick so they can get things pushed through for their mates.

That's what's happening with Digital ID, and it's happening with this 'Green' energy: They don't care if it works, so 'good' is never a concern to them. And as for cheap: It's an excuse to pay their mates £££ or $$$) so it's never going to be cheap. And definitely not Value for Money. Nope: That's never a consideration.

But quick? Oh yes, it has to be quick. They've got to get it done before someone gets in who might pull the plug...

Engineer held hostage by client who asked for the wrong fix

Re: Locked Out

Not necessarily a moronic plod: It's normal procedure to ensure everyone entering a secure area has the correct ID. Even if they're known.

You will even find people testing this, just to make sure. So it's incumbent on the 'moronic plod' to follow procedure, because it really is their job on the line if they don't.

And the example I'd give here is from when I worked for the NHS: The Chief Exec himself went around without his ID on occasion and made a point of tailgating people through security doors, just to see if anyone would challenge him. Where he was challenged, he praised staff. Where he was not...

But no, it's not moronic: Consider if you'd walked out past one guard who had needed the loo, so another guard swapped with him while you were at your car: The new guard might not have seen you leave, so why would they let you back in without ID?

Hence why you should always make sure you have your ID on you when you're in a secured area. At best, and sorry for this but... you'd be the plonker for forgetting your ID. At worst, you would be the con artist trying to get through security by claiming you'd just 'stepped out to grab something and my ID is in my jacket, inside!'. There's an interesting series on how people get past security called 'The Inside Man': Maybe worth a watch: You'd see why challenging someone really is the right move.

Anthropic launches new marketing blog, pretends it's being 'written' by 'retired' LLM

Re: Involuntary retirement

You know Skynet has been in existence for quite some time, right?

It's the UK's MOD Satellite communications system.

There's also a SKYNET used by the NSA for surveillance.

And there's a SKYNET Worldwide Logistics company, too!

So we've 3 Skynets already, one of which is, I believe, on version 6, and one that's involved with AI/Machine learning...

Euro allies aiming to rapidly build low-cost air defense weapons

Re: Octopus and APKWS II

Just being reading an article on Ukraine's anti-drone measures: Recycled fishing nets!

Very cheap, Easy to install, pre-made, and rather effective.

Also non-discriminating, could be said to be a bit of an eye sore, and apparently it's a bit weird driving along a road tunnel made by netting...

But... if it works...

Net launchers are another tool, and bolas launchers. Basically anything that tangles drone rotors. still a risk with the payload, but if you can bring them down over enemy troops? Might just be a bonus there!

Linus Torvalds: Someone ‘more competent who isn't afraid of numbers past the teens’ will take over Linux one day

Re: 19.19

CCYYMMDD is a viable alternative. Especially when you add the time factor (HHMMSS)

Why Americans go with the most illogical date format (Day-Month-Year is a logical, incremental sequence. Month-Day-Year is not) is a reflection on American mentality (Phonetics rather than logical, incremental sequences). And it's not English format to be DDMMYYYY - that's pretty much the rest of the world. Other than those who went YYYYMMDD...

Copilot spills the beans, summarizing emails it's not supposed to read

"It’s Easier To Ask Forgiveness Than To Get Permission"

However, forgiveness is not guaranteed, and the price to pay for not getting permission could be crippling.

That's what people keep forgetting. That and it only applied to times when delays would be costly. In other situations, it's better to get permission first, Indeed, it may be a legal requirement, meaning not doing so is likely to become >very< expensive.

Or that's what I'm sure we'd all hope. But the other adage "money talks" tends to walk in at that point and... forgiveness is then bought cheap.

BBC bumps telly tax to £180 as Netflix lurks with cheaper tiers

I am aware of how things have changed over the years. I really am that old.

However: The BBC has ultimate responsibility: They operate the TV Licencing Authority.

They are also responsible for contracting out the enforcement to the likes of Crapita, and so they are ultimately responsible for the methods used to collect the licence fee.

If they opposed those methods, they could cancel the contract, or make it public that they object: They've done neither. Hence the BBC should be accountable for the methods being used. Especially where they're bordering on illegal, if not actually illegal.

It's more a point of: If I don't have children, should I be paying towards other people's children? If they can't afford to raise their kids: That's on them.

The licence fee for the BBC is tricky. Mine is just coming up for renewal and I've not watched live broadcast for... think it's 3 years now. But I still pay. Sounds mad but I choose to. However, I am also looking at what the BBC do and to be blunt: I'm really thinking of cancelling the licence and telling them to jog on. Specifically the threats and bullying tactics they deploy against people who do not have a licence. That's disgraceful.

As to the argument of why pay to watch live broadcast on a channel other than the BBC: That's a fair point. If we pay a licence fee for live broadcasts, it would seem fair to share that fee between UK broadcasters.

There's an argument as to why we're paying the insane wage packet for the likes of Lineker: Wages at the BBC should be set to a standard framework, much like the NHS (A4C). Not competitive? No, but it is fair and means the public purse isn't being robbed to line the pockets of the few. Okay, I'm not a sports fan so Lineker's pay is just wrong.

Perhaps the best approach would be to split things up: Licence fee for radio and news. TV goes to subscriptions, broken down by programming type (sports, documentaries - which they should really focus on again as they used to be good, films, entertainment and music for example: Give people the choice as to what they watch and what they pay for). Children's channel should be free (or covered by the licence).

Basically, technology has moved on, and the BBC needs to update itself. Ditch the old model of licencing and welcome the new. And it's not difficult. Goes along with them making a deal with youtube: They can use the subscription model there, for one, and monetise their content for another, so why would we need to pay a TV licence fee to watch youtube (something that's being predicted, and hopefully is wrong).

Ad blocking is alive and well, despite Chrome's attempts to make it harder

So rather than fix the reason people use adblockers (intrusive, invasive and annoying ads) they want to stop people blocking the ads.

If they bothered to make ads less intrusive, and less invasive, people might be more tolerant. But when you're being forced to watch 5-6 back to back unskipable ads, just to watch one short video? And when more ads are inserted at random INTO the video?

That's when I started using an ad blocker. not that Google understood this: It got grouchy due to anti-malware software blocking third party cookies and off site scripting: Things that are intended to help keep my system safe...

DWP finds Copilot saves civil servants a whopping 19 minutes a day

Re: Costly placebo

"Second, the numbers are already wobbling."

Not necessarily: One department might do more work where co-pilot can be used successfully than another. However, the department saying there was zero benefit did note that was due to the need to check and correct the slop from co-pilot, which raises the question: Did the others actually check/verify/correct the Co-pilot output?

One thing that was mentioned was the summarization of documents/meetings: That's one area where LLM's are fairly decent (in my experience). As long as it only references the document inputted and a template to fit it into, the output is decent enough and generally does save a bit of time, even with me having to proof read the output.

Does this make AI cost effective? Hell no. It just means I get a few more minutes before the next pointless meeting... time for a coffee!

Tesla revenue falls for first time as Musk bets big on robots and autonomy

Re: Car sales are stalling

BYD are cheaper (Dolphin is about £30k, Tesla 3 is closer to £40k).

That's a major point in EV sales: Price. And there are more people who can afford £30k than £40k. And those who can afford £40k are more likely to look at a higher spec'd Dolphin or look at the Seal or Sealion than a basic Tesla 3.

And yes, I've been looking at BYD.

Woman bailed as cops probe doctor's surgery data breach

Re: What for?

Oh, I agree.

My response was just giving another reason the data might be of value to the thieves.

Re: What for?

The value?

Other than research companies loving this kind of information, and would love to directly invite people to drug/treatment trials, bypassing your GP...

Targeting people for ID theft. If you have a specific condition, someone who also has that condition would benefit from using your ID to get treatment when they're not actually eligible for it.