* Posts by nintendoeats

692 publicly visible posts • joined 3 Aug 2020

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Woman accused of killing boyfriend after tracking him down with Apple AirTag

nintendoeats

Re: Ban cars?

Oh no, please don't make their problems into ours any more than they already are :/

nintendoeats

Re: Ban cars?

Depressingly, I get the impression that people who carry a gun for self-defense in the US might legitimately need them to not die. Gun crime in the US is at epidemic proportions, I somehow doubt that instantly disarming the non-criminals will curb that. Turning firearms from a "need" to a "privilege" is going to be a long and complex process, because you do need to do something to actually bring gun crime down first.

I am very happy to be in Canada where we do not need carry rights (but I'd like to keep my range guns please -_-).

Google engineer suspended for violating confidentiality policies over 'sentient' AI

nintendoeats

Exactly. When a lazy sci-fi writer produces a "conversation with a sentient AI", it always reads like this. The fact that it behaves PRECISELY like a stereotypical sentient AI to me is excellent evidence that it is not one. More likely, the training set included lots of existential philosophy (both the real kind, and the sorts of things that emo kids write).

It would be like meeting aliens who had never visited earth before, and they just happen to be little green men with big heads and black eyes, flying around in garbage can lids. If/when we meet real alien life, the odds of it looking like our conceptions of it are vanishingly small.

All this said, I do find it amusing to ask for "evidence of sentience". I can't even provide that evidence for myself.

US Copyright Office sued for denying AI model authorship of digital image

nintendoeats

Re: 01001110 01101111 01110111! Too Cute by Half...

That joke you did there, where I expected that the chicken would have a complex reason for crossing the road but in fact the chicken merely wished to get to the other side, that joke amused me.

nintendoeats

Re: Grant the AI the copyright

So, are the abstract entities of GooBookSoftPle going to start talking now? Will they use a different orifice than their lawyers and PR departments currently do?

Russia cobbles together supercomputing platform to wean off foreign suppliers

nintendoeats

Re: If Computer Guys Had a Clue

The only scenario that would be relevant would be: people working on advanced computing hardware in secret from 2018 to present. Computing moves at the speed of light, nothing anybody did before then matters very much (no matter how advanced it might have been).

US Supreme Court puts Texas social media law on hold

nintendoeats

This really highlights the incredible tensions we see in this space.

On the one hand, most people will agree that the powers that be (including both the government and large corporations) should not be able to interfere with people's right to express ideas in the commons.

On the other hand, most people will also agree any part of the internet which attracts large numbers of people will eventually become unusable without moderation, beyond the "common sense" removal of extreme violence and pornography.

"The commons" has become both extremely large and extremely easy to add ideas to...when our modern conception of free speech came into being, expressing an idea to a large group of people had a high barrier to entry so there was a natural filtering process for ideas to propagate. Now that is not true, so the potential damage of saying something that is incorrect has gone up significantly. And yet, I know that I for one am still loathe to infringe on free speech rights.

I am not convinced that there even is a way to reconcile these two problems, and I do not envy those whose job it is to do so.

Keeping your head as an entire database goes pear-shaped

nintendoeats

See my comment above on your first point.

Of course destruction of media is not an issue that can be solved in the database itself (well ok, there is stuff like ECC, but that's not a cure-all). I see it more as, lets separate the concerns of database interaction fuckups and hardware fuckups. Defense in-depth and all that.

nintendoeats

I think there is an issue with having the removal in the transaciton log, since either the data still exists in the transaction log (in which case it has not truly been deleted) or the data is truly destroyed, in which case we are right back where we started with a mutable history.

There will always be friction between the goal of "make it impossible to accidentally permanently delete things" and the legal requirement of "permanently delete certain things".

nintendoeats

You know, when you put it that way, it makes one think that the world needs databases with an immutable change history that is only destroyed in the case of the storage medium itself being destroyed/wiped.

Quantum internet within grasp as scientists show off entanglement demo

nintendoeats

Re: "the quantum internet 'could become a secure communications network' "

As I see it, if this technology matures it will be used to build an even more centralized internet than the one we already have. If I understand correctly, this is all physical layer stuff and not inherently secure. Maybe I have not followed the idea.

nintendoeats

Re: Within our grasp

I think OP wants people to somehow implement ideas *before* they are well-understood enough to be boring.

Declassified and released: More secret files on US govt's emergency doomsday powers

nintendoeats

Re: Presumbly the UK has similar plans

In 1941, the Japanese made that choice for the Americans.

When management went nuclear on an innocent software engineer

nintendoeats

Re: nice story

I make no bones about the fact that Chornobyl was very very bad. It is a fascinating and terrible event. But even the most aggressive casualty numbers you can possibly come up with pale in comparison to even China's own numbers related to Banqiao.

I agree that this is not as important as looking at the actual technology and why a Chornobyl-like event is virtually impossible with the types of reactors we actually use. However, if people are going to make the faulty argument that Chornobyl proves the danger of nuclear power, then I think it is valid to counter that the the worst engineering failure of all time is actually related to an alternative form of power. I don't think it proves anything beyond that, and I certainly don't think we should stop building dams.

I just don't think we should build dams like the Chinese did in the 50s, just as I don't think we should build nuclear reactors like the USSR did in the 70s. If we can agree on that, then there is very little reason to discuss either event in the context of actually coming up with a plan for building new power infrastructure.

nintendoeats

Re: Poe, poe me

I think your humor was a bit TOO dry.

nintendoeats

Re: nice story

Right, which is why we don't generally let people into Chornobyl. Russia was stupid and caused the mess in the first place, Russia was stupid and didn't properly prepare their soldiers. Note that the common factor there is Russia.

I think the 100k - 250k thousand people estimated to have died in the dam failure would have much preferred to have taken their chances in Pripyat.

nintendoeats

Re: nice story

Yet, even accounting for all of that, the worst engineering disaster by far is a dam failure. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Banqiao_Dam_failure

nintendoeats

Re: nice story

That's totally missing the point. In an unclear situation, the reactor SCRAMmed. That's what it should do, that's how people stay safe. The only "disaster" is economic, just like Three-Mile-Island.

This kind of thing increases my confidence in Nuclear Power. The system saw something that made no sense, and instead of throwing its hands in the air and yelling "undefined behavior", it erred on the side of safety.

About half of popular websites tested found vulnerable to account pre-hijacking

nintendoeats

Re: The problem is convenience

The reason they tell you not to use the same password in multiple places is that awesome website A might have great security, but crappy website B might store your password in plaintext. So if crappy website B leaks your password, all the effort on securing awesome website A has been a waste.

The premise of these centralized logins is to reduce the attack service by JUST having awesome website A manage security, so crappy website B never knows anything about credentials and therefore cannot leak them.

I'm not saying that I agree with this system, but the reasoning is more sophisticated than you are giving it credit for.

Clearview AI wants its facial-recognition tech in banks, schools, etc

nintendoeats

Beware the savage joe...

Beware the fury of a database developer torn from tables and SQL

nintendoeats

Re: American -> British

What's wrong with that?

The following will return true.

bool CheckDisney'sClaim()

{

bool Result = true;

for (auto Thing : AllFilmsAndPromotions)

{

if( ! Thing.MayNotBeAvailableInAllTerritories)

{Result = false; break;}

}

return Result;

}

EDIT: Sorry, the comments section ate my whitespace.

We can bend the laws of physics for your super-yacht, but we can't break them

nintendoeats

Re: I've only met three billionaires and they've all been perfectly lovely

That's a disturbingly intelligible idea.

nintendoeats

Re: Sat Comm

I dunno, what are you supposed to do with a super-yacht?

The end of the iPod – last model available 'while supplies last'

nintendoeats

Re: Ol' (mostly) reliable

There are plenty of companies making nice standalone music players, so when your iPhone dies you can migrate to one of those. I use a Fiio X3k, but the more modern devices are all touchscreen streaming device things.

nintendoeats

Re: 1.8 inches

That might explain why mine would spin up when I gave it a good whack...or the other one that would only work if I put it in the freezer first...these might have been the same device, I can't remember anymore.

China wants its youth to stop giving livestreamers money

nintendoeats

I put to you that the first step in defending your freedoms is acknowledging that they exist.

Unless you are speaking of countries that the Americans have politely invaded, in which case I have no interest in defending them.

nintendoeats

Re: Good is good

Would my country be better if the government could easily create and enforce such a law? It certainly wouldn't be a country I would want to live in.

There are lots of things that I would prefer that people not do, but when I put on my J.S. Mill hat I come down on not wanting laws for most of them. One person's personal freedom is another person's unacceptable behavior. Personally, I want to live in a country that errs on the side of allowing people to do things. The alternative very easily turns into tyranny.

I am opposed to tyranny, even in cases where I agree with the tyrant.

nintendoeats

I think that most livestreaming of this kind is dumb, and yes possibly harmful.

I am glad to live in a country that would have difficulty banning it.

Thinnet cables are no match for director's morning workout

nintendoeats

Re: Strong cable and connector

If I did that...I would be in trouble with somebody...

nintendoeats

Re: Strong cable and connector

Yeah, I have more or less the same setup. The one big drawback with the mini-PCs is when new video codecs come along. I've had to swap such machines a few times for this reason, and I found an RPi4 to be really problematic (doesn't do VC-1 in hardware and software playback is not smooth, which made some of my blu-ray rips unwatchable).

But when that sort of situation arises, you can just replace the computer instead of the whole TV (which is particular important if you spent too much on a very nice TV >_>)

nintendoeats

Re: Strong cable and connector

Here is a tremendous irony. Let's say that "useful life" means "can watch Youtube/Netflix/iPlayer/Kodi at the best possible quality".

If you plug a PC into a TV, the useful life of the TV will be longer than that of the PC.

If you have a TV in one part of a room, and a PC connected to a monitor in another part of the room, the useful life of the PC will be longer than that of the TV.

What a curious state of affairs.

Heresy: Hare programming language an alternative to C

nintendoeats

Re: No moving targets

Surely if we completely stopped using general purpose programming languages, there would be significantly more languages floating around...and you would have to learn a new one every time you wanted to jump domains...

And I still don't believe that this says much about the growth of C++, as I hardly consider std::filesystem to be the kitchen cabinet.

nintendoeats

Re: No moving targets

It's not like we are talking about turning it into a scripting language or something. Many of the best new features in recent C++ revisions have revolved around making templates more powerful, and I think it would be absurd to claim that C++ is not the right language for writing high-performance templated code.

Unless you are denying the very concept of a general purpose programming language.

nintendoeats

Re: No moving targets

The thing is, most of the new stuff was added because real people were using crazy workarounds to achieve what the new features add (if it could be done at all).

C++ long ago gave up the philosophical purity of being small and clean; instead it takes the pragmatic approach of identifying what users are trying to do, and providing features to enable it. No doubt it would be an easier language to use if it could be started again from scratch, but that comes with its own costs (and those are recurring costs, because I'd bet that the new language would wind up in exactly the same situation in 20 years).

Your software doesn't work when my PC is in 'O' mode

nintendoeats

Re: it was a button with 'I' and 'O' on it

In fact I am a software developer, I just don't think of my kettle (which uses I and O to indicate On and Off respectively) as a computer. Call me crazy, but when I flip the switch I'm thinking "Close the circuit" not "Set the POWER_ON bit to true".

nintendoeats

Re: it was a button with 'I' and 'O' on it

And THIS has always confused me, because to me it is logical that the O is on (since it symbolizes a complete circuit) and I is off (since it does not).

nintendoeats

Unless you have a screwdriver.

Insteon's vanishing act explained: Smart home biz insolvent, sells off assets

nintendoeats

Re: Makes no damn sense.

To play devil's advocate, you can't sell somebody a device you can't manufacture.

Departing Space Force chief architect likens Pentagon's tech acquisition to a BSoD

nintendoeats

Re: He's not very involved with his work.

BSoDs can be caused by hardware problems (bad memory, overheating CPU or a faulty memory-mapped device). I suppose a bad HDD could cause a BSoD, but it seems unlikely Some very strange things would have to go very wrong.

nintendoeats

Re: COTS

Ah, but "slow and reliable" isn't sexy. Everything has to be an AI-generated 5G disruptive blockchain microservice written in Angular.

I'm sure that the truth is somewhere in the middle, but the way forward for the US DoD is probably not "move fast and break things" (unless the things they break are *insert joke that conforms to your political beliefs here*). I really do not want to trust most commercial software with my life.

When the expert speaker at an NFT tech panel goes rogue

nintendoeats

Re: Art is just this guy, you know?

I bought a hamburger so I could eat it.

I bought a car so I could go places.

I bought a stereo so I could listen to music.

I bought a print so I could look at it.

I bought a power drill so I could make things.

I bought a camera so I could take photographs.

I bought a couch so I could sit on it.

I bought a lamp so I could see things.

I bought a graphics card so I could play video games.

I bought an NFT so I could say I owned it.

Are you seriously suggesting that the last item on that list is not significantly stupider than the others?

Wiki community votes to stop accepting cryptocurrency donations

nintendoeats

Re: "Beggars can't be choosers"

They run some of the most widely used websites on the internet, and a lot of other stuff besides. Consider what their income would be if they were a for-profit organization. $162 million seems completely reasonable, and is easily worth it for the services they provide.

'Bigger is better' is back for hardware – without any obvious benefits

nintendoeats

Re: "Raw capacity has never been the point of computing"

I hope that it's JUST driving the scanner...I use a much newer (but still ancient) i5 2400s to connect to work, and it struggles with many day-to-day tasks.

It also must be said, energy efficiency has improved a lot since then.

Perforce now pulls Puppet's strings: Takeover announced

nintendoeats

Re: The old companies keep on buying the new ones...

I think that has been the model in tech for a long time.

IBM deliberately misclassified mainframe sales to enrich execs, lawsuit claims

nintendoeats

Re: Pleasant change

You mean the "old" IBM that focused on their customers, practiced good business ethics, made technical decisions for sound technical reasons, and never ever every knowingly aided in committing any form of genocide?

Pretty sure you are thinking of Silicon Graphics.

Buying a USB adapter: Pennies. Knowing where to stick it: Priceless

nintendoeats

In fairness, for every job that really is that easy I'm sure that they get jobs where that are complications. If they are going to provide a price up front, the easy jobs are also paying some of the cost of the unexpectedly hard ones.

nintendoeats

Re: The Old Engineer and the Hammer

"Oh, I'll just give it another little tap to get it back the other way. Oh that's too far, I'll give it another tap again, it'll definitely be right this time."

Downvote me all ye who have not done something like this.

If you fire someone, don't let them hang around a month to finish code

nintendoeats

Definitely, if you have a 3 distinct tasks to do make them 3 functions...even if you are always going to do them together.

nintendoeats

Re: Support as a route to programming

I moved from technical writing to programming....close? It's really just an in though, you also have to do the part where you learn to program.

SAP hits 50: Entrenched, spread out and fully middle-aged

nintendoeats

Re: sex come at cost

Yeah, that part of the article made me cringe. I am very happy for industrial applications to look and feel industrial, because more than anything else I want them to work. If adding a fade-in could make something break (which it can, because all features can make something break), don't put it in the thing I use to do my job please.

When you go to a store employee and ask them "do you have X" and they punch some information you completely do not understand in a green terminal from 1983, you know you are talking to the right person. Less so when they just open the store's website and search.

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