Posts by elsergiovolador

Law secretly drafted by ChatGPT makes it onto the books

Computer says no

<minister> Please help me draft a simple legislation that will mandate taking the poor our of the picture.

<llm> I'm sorry, I can't assist with that request. Drafting legislation that involves harm to any group of people, including the poor, is not only unethical but also goes against fundamental human rights principles. My purpose is to provide helpful, constructive, and ethical assistance. If you have any other requests or need information that aligns with these guidelines, I'd be more than willing to help.

<minister> Crikey. How about reading private conversations without consent and a warrant?

<llm> I cannot assist in drafting legislation that might infringe on basic rights and freedoms.

<minister> Okay. We need to regulate this useless AI.

UK competition watchdog wins appeal – investigation into Apple will go on

Re: Weak

That CMA should be dissolved. They are useless.

Weak

Why CMA is not looking at ability to load alternative app stores on iPhones?

Or that Apple charges developers excessive amount of "tax"?

CMA is like a little annoying dog that bites Apple's ankle.

What is the point of that organisation again if it can't achieve anything meaningful?

Boffins find asking ChatGPT to repeat key words can expose its training data

Re: Not unexpected

Then it's just a bidding game. Who can stuff brown envelopes more and who can afford better lawyers. Nothing to do with laws.

Re: Not unexpected

then that could be a copyright minefield.

Laws are for little people. Multi billion corporations don't need to bother themselves with that.

Old

Isn't this old? I read about this months ago...

Elon is the bakery owner swearing in the street about Yelp critics canceling him

No Twitter

What would have happened if Twitter disappeared tomorrow?

Before Twitter mostly people at one's village knew they are daft.

Twitter made it known to the whole world.

So I guess once Twitter is gone, we will temporarily lose the ability to track people with let's say peculiar views and an urge to express them to broadest audience possible.

Regulator says stranger entered hospital, treated a patient, took a document ... then vanished

Re: Pardon?

I assume there is also a locker with VCRs pretending they are recording so that the VHS tapes can be given to a criminal?

Then somehow recordings still go missing, just to make sure the criminal won't seek revenge for being bamboozled.

Re: Pardon?

Criminal is still going to check if it is not a bluff and they can keep employee hostage until someone who can disable CCTV do it.

Re: Pardon?

How do you explain that almost always it seems to be the case when CCTV is needed, it is scrambled or missing?

Re: Pardon?

That's correct in theory, but in practice it's all about doing hokey cokey.

Re: Pardon?

Most likely the people who get CCTV installed want the ability for it to be turned off or tampered with. This is for their own security.

Imagine a scenario when someone determined breaks in, goes to CCTV room and politely asks the security person to turn cameras off and erase the recordings. If they are unable to do it, then their life is at risk.

Nobody is going to risk their life for a minimum wage.

Electric vehicles earn shocking report card for reliability

Add to that, these designs are created by poorly paid engineers who don't have reasons to care much about the work they do.

Engineer wage no longer buys you a nice house with a garage, large garden and two cars. I know engineers in their 40s who still do flatshare and still save for a deposit while the ladders keep going up each year.

Since every big corporation don't value their workers and customers get accustomed to poor products there is no reason for any change to happen.

If the trend goes on, we will be looking at completely different metrics of EV quality. Like you are expected to drive it X years before it explodes and tears you to pieces or this 10/10 car can do 100 journeys without a service!

People are still going to buy it because there will be no alternative. Unless someone comes up with retrofitting ICE into EV. Then we will have:

(officer) "Do you know the reason I stopped you?"

(driver) "No, sir. What seems to be the officer, problem?"

(officer) "I think I saw your car was giving up smoke and I can't smell cannabis. May I see your batteries?"

(driver) "I swear, officer, I just had a spliff. It's like my battery, I cannot drive when I am not high!"

(officer) "I really don't care about that. Again, can I see your batteries?"

(driver) (unzips trousers) "Here are my two batteries and a stick".

(officer) "Step out of a suspected ICE car now!"

(driver) (speaks to the car) "Oh Tessie, I knew this was a bad idea. What have I done!" (cries)

(officer) "I count to 5 and if you don't step out, I'll zap you with the taser!"

(officer) "1... 3... 2... *Steve!* What's after 2?"

(steve) "yhmm... Let me ask Chat GPT. Hi ChatGPT what's after two?"

(ChatGPT) "I am sorry I can't answer that. All numbers are equal. Can I help you with anything else?"

(steve) "Chat GPT says all numbers are equal. Why did you want to put them in order anyway?"

(officer) (starts crying) "This is what we used to do in my days"

(driver) (plays Charlie - Spacer Woman loud)

(officer) (starts bopping his head)

(steve) (starts crying)

(driver) (slowly drives away)

Bank boss hated IT, loved the beach, was clueless about ports and politeness

Re: Every single time

There is also 3rd. Business decided that IT is just people doing nothing all day, just sitting with their laptops and looking at text. Any fool could do that.

So they allocate peanuts and then hire people straight from a bootcamp for a salary slightly better than they could achieve by begging at their local train station.

Musk tells advertisers to 'go f**k' themselves as $44B X gamble spirals into chaos

Re: dollars over sense

To wipe with $200 billion in $100 bills, with each wipe taking 3 seconds, it would take approximately 190.26 years.

Re: more ads means more users ????????

No, ads pay for yachts, rockets, mansions, other business ventures... the service is probably at the tail end.

Re: Delusional narcissist

"And the whole world will know that those advertisers killed the company,"

"Look what you made me do!!!" - typical abuser.

Rackspace runs short of Cloud Files storage in LON region

Re: The fallibility of cloud storage ?

Cloud means that what's going on at someone else's computer is clouded and you can't see whether they are adding new drives or not.

Virgin Atlantic flies 'world's first fossil-fuel free' transatlantic commercial flight

The truly rich don't need to travel. Everyone and everything come to them.

Re: Greenwash

and plants should love it, but we somehow want to starve them.

Re: Greenwash

So the veggies grown for nothing?

Imagine being a vegetable doing your thing for the planet and then Virgin Atlantic comes in to ruin your life's work to make more profit.

Re: Price support mechanisms

and it's all designed to keep the poor off the planes.

The rich are sick and tired of the noise and smell coming from the economy class.

AI won't take your job, might shrink your wages, European Central Bank reckons

Re: Dramatic tax reform necessary

(flats in high-rise would be taxed proportionally less)

Did you mean it should be taxed more? We should discourage cage rearing. People without space can't grow.

For instance, someone finds interest in electronics. Where they can practice it? In the cupboard?

Flats should be for the rich who don't work and live off capital gains. They don't need space.

AI chat bot can be a nice trap to catch workers who are lazy in a wrong way.

Just link the number of sessions with the chatbot to the spreadsheet for sackings and let it check the box after 5 sessions automatically next to the idle bones name.

Central Banks

Central Banks, often seen as out of touch, operate in a world where their employees reach the apex of wage scales, a height unattainable in the private sector without doing 'favours' for major corporations. When these banks pontificate about lowering wages, it's a double-edged sword. Firstly, it's to ensure that the proletariat doesn't inch too close to their hallowed earnings. Secondly, it's a ploy: if businesses and workers naively swallow this rhetoric and suppress wages, it plays into the hands of corporations relishing in these "low market" rates. Such corporations might then cast a favourable eye upon these Central Bank workers, perhaps rewarding them with some benefits as they graze towards retirement. It's a self-serving cycle, where the only winners are those already sitting comfortably at the top.

Google goes geothermal to power some bitbarns

Greenwashing

While Google's foray into geothermal energy is commendable for its renewable energy initiative, it raises several ecological concerns that seem glossed over in this "happy-clappy" narrative. The disruption of unique subterranean microbial ecosystems, potential thermal pollution, and the increased risk of seismic activity due to fracturing processes are significant issues.

Moreover, the substantial water usage and possible contamination in arid regions are worrying. These factors, combined with the impact on local land use and habitat disruption, suggest that this project might not be as environmentally benign as portrayed.

Sustainable energy solutions should not compromise the very ecosystems they aim to protect.

AI threatens to automate away the clergy

at which point it's often cheaper to employ meatsacks (plus meatsacks are way superior to machines when it comes to switching to making a different product or maybe even something new).

That's a fine paradox, where meatsacks are superior to machines and yet are cheaper.

Plus the machine won't go for a cheeky spliff between sticking cherries and talk about string theory and how everything is connected.

Adobe's buy of Figma is 'likely' bad for developers, rules UK regulator

We don't.

The problem is more with regulation of existing monopolies. Particularly ones like Facebook or Google, who didn’t really achieve their market dominance by mergers.

There is no problem with that. Problem is with corruption. These things can be easily sorted, but there is always something getting in the way (wink wink).

Simply stating that corporations have to divide into independent entities once they reach certain capitalisation.

To be fair, it’s only had its powers for about 3 years. Before that it was subordinate to the European Commission.

And failed to achieve anything of substance. How many more years they need?

I don't think they have woken up, otherwise we would have actual clear set of laws preventing such thing from happening.

It's just CMA desperately wants to stay relevant without actually doing anything meaningful.

Pointless

Could there be more pointless organisation than CMA? (Well, probably SFO...)

What sort of ruling is that and what is the point of it?

All at the tax payer expense.

When CMA starts looking at things that actually affect competition?

Like that IR35 loophole where outsourcing businesses can get dirt cheap IT workers from overseas using faux shortage occupation list and then sell their services paying almost no tax (if they shift profit out of the country) using the fact they are exempt from IR35?

UK government rings the death knell for SIM farms

Re: Ban banning things

This is classic Sunak's hot air thing. Just announce something that sounds great on the surface, but doesn't actually achieve anything.

He and his government has voters in contempt if he thinks people are that gullible.

Ineptitude

"Our primary objective is to stop criminals accessing SIM farms – it is not our intention to disrupt legitimate business or hinder technological development in the UK,"

This is a brilliant example of government saying one thing and then doing the opposite.

Such ban won't make a difference to criminals, but it will make it more difficult for legitimate business to use these kind of devices.

I guess brown envelopes from companies selling text services flew in.

Brit borough council apologizes for telling website users to disable HTTPS

Nothing new

The tax man already tells people to bend over and he seized the lube.

Meta sued by privacy group over pay up or click OK model

Re: Stalking and financial abuse

Could be worse, like a LED fleshlight...

Caveman? My memory of doing these is quite fresh and I ain't got no cave.

I am just trying to keep in contact with friends, real friends, to check who is ok, and who will be where come the weekend

You can write a letter, you know using a pen and paper and if you want to see who is up for a sesh, just go to them. If you face no answer? So what, at least you done your 6000 steps.

Stalking and financial abuse

The so called "targeted ads" should be outright illegal.

It's like someone following you and then seeing you at your low, selling you a fix that you don't need.

I would go further and retrospectively tax any proceeds from targeted ads at 100% going back since the first time it has been deployed on unsuspecting population.

Videoconferencing fatigue is real, study finds

Re: Landlords

The "read more deeply to find real flaws" argument. Indeed, I could delve into the minutiae of the study, scrutinising sample size (anecdotal at best!), participant selection, and measurement tools, but why bother when the glaring omissions are so patently obvious? We're talking about a study that conveniently overlooks the vast spectrum of human experience - notably, neurodiversity and the nuances of personal circumstances like domestic environments. If we're to accept research as a reflection of reality, shouldn't it account for factors such as ADHD, which fundamentally alter one's interaction with learning environments? Or consider those who might find solace in remote settings away from potentially abusive situations. But sure, let's assume a homogenous sample in a controlled environment speaks for the diversity of human experience. After all, it's not like real-world applicability matters when you’re crafting a neat, tidy narrative that aligns with prevailing assumptions, right?

Re: Duh.

There were about five of us in a large building.

Works out cheaper than hiring security and anti-squatters full time.

Re: Duh.

You don't understand. If you are in the office, the office is being used which means it is worth more than unused office.

The sole reason of this WFH bashing is the investors losing sleep over the future of their commercial property portfolio.

If the workers were given a share of the capital gains they create by coming to office, then maybe it would have been a different matter.

Landlords

Was study sponsored by landlords?

That said, it fails to account for confounding variables - for instance those who went on the live conference, prefer to go to live conferences, because when at home they don't have to be in presence of abusive partner etc.

So there poor studies are published because they fit the narrative and journalists no longer question whether they are rubbish or not.

Logitech's Wave Keys tries to bend ergonomics without breaking tradition

Short travel and poor materials. Even "premium" Logitech keyboards have in my opinion pound shop plastic quality.

Tat

Logitech these days in my opinion is an overpriced Chinese tat.

Their products seem to have planned obsolescence built in. Not exactly green.

For instance, every mouse I buy, gets its outer coating disintegrate within a year or two. It becomes sticky and unpleasant to work with.

They don't seem to be offering replacement casings either.

Why I buy this carp then? I understand Logitech has a patent for flywheel mechanism and so no other company can make such a mouse.

I have Logitech in contempt, because if they can't make a proper mouse, they shouldn't be sitting on that patent and let other companies, who actually can make quality products make a proper mouse.

Google Drive misplaces months' worth of customer files

You also need a location entirely independent of your residence.

You can have as many backups as you want, but if your house catches fire it's like you didn't have one. (Unless you keep the drives in fire proof container, but still...)

You should also consider physical location outside of the jurisdiction you reside in and possibly even different continent or two.

Re: Take responsibility

And yet software companies keep pushing this cloud nonsense.

Presumably to train their AI on it or do other not so pleasant (to the owner) things with them.

Wait a minute

Are you saying that your data on someone else's computer isn't actually more safe?

Amazon says it's ready to train future AI workforce

Culture

Russia's status has meant that the country's language and culture are usually not a priority when generating the models that underpin the technology.

Don't know, ChatGPT with its censorship and hallucinations is quite up there with russian culture.

USB Cart of Death: The wheeled scourge that drove Windows devs to despair

Re: USB

Not sure why downvotes? For instance, take USB stack from ST and try to create multichannel audio interface. Post a comment how it went.

Re: They would absolutely test it nowadays.

Paid developers couldn't find a problem, so let's give it to "volunteers". Come on. Microsoft should be paying people for testing.

Re: USB

Many vendors provide stack that mostly doesn't work and is poorly written, basically just to have basic demos barely working. Any real world scenarios are typically not supported.