Posts by parlei

Tesla sues Swedish government after worker rebellion cripples car biz

Re: FFS

Not really. Sweden decided a long time ago that if unions and their industry (etc) counterparts come to mutual agreements there will be a stable situation that benefited the nation as well as both the workers and employers. The workers would not want to harm the companies that employ them, and the bosses have to actually bargain with en entity that has teeth and can hurt them if they step over the line. If all this was ruled by laws then you would get the well known game of "who has the most politicians in their pockets?". Which tend to give the workers the short end of the stick.

So the main opponents are forces that really would want serfs rather than employees, but unfortunately can't do that any more.

Long-term space missions may make liftoff harder for male astronauts

Last time I checked the moon was beyond the Van Allen belt.

Re: Exercise to prevent physical decline ...

I have not checked if there is published research, but the only thing one would need to (initially) test the issue is (a) erection and/or (2) ejaculation possible. Neither one requires more than one male over puberty for an initial pilot study. Then of course it would be interesting to see if our, comparatively to many other mammal , crappy spermatozoa can do their job. Initial microscopy to determine if they are moving in a useful manner. Actual intromission is not needed for an initial study, and would actually hamper an actually interesting study.

US nuke reactor lab hit by 'gay furry hackers' demanding cat-human mutants

Re: Beware the law of unintended consequences

Yes, are we talking Hani or Kzinti? Big difference, and both are "possible" cat-humans. And the Kzinti is not even the scariest thing that comes to mind.

But I would more say the kind of people who think a tiger or a bear is a safe pet.

Sam Altman set to rejoin OpenAI as CEO – seemingly with Microsoft's blessing

Yes! For *any* position calling for extremely high competence there is, on a global basis, thousands who could to the job well. The main goal is not to find The One, but to make sure not to promote The Wrong One. The "look at the horrors of equality-targets" are basically claiming that there are *no* suitable candidates that are woman or BIPOC, etc, Which is almost certainly bullshit.

OpenAI staff threaten to leave if ousted CEO Altman is not reinstated

Re: For now, just speculative conjecture, but does anyone know of anything better......

Low bar. At least manfromMars might be entertaining, while the usual muppet show mostly induces the petunia response,

Lawyer guilty of arrogance after ignoring tech support

I have solved "error 220" for years, but nowadays error 230 is more common.

Just because you're paranoid, doesn't mean AI's not after you

Re: Horses *did* protest

Don't you worry, it is just a visit to the veterinarian. You have worked so hard all your life, why should we send you to the knackers in the name of short term profit?

Scarlett Johansson sics lawyers on AI biz that cloned her for an ad

It is rather the issue that "we" must spank the thieving AI-goblins whenever they try to get out. Would you want your image to be used for an ad, without your permission?

X looks back at year of so-called 'engineering excellence' under Musk

Re: He's hopeful

My thought too:I want my banking to be utterly boring, rules bound and exceedingly predictable. Musk-fun entities are, on the other hand, Chaotic Evil (or at least Evil Adjacent).

BOFH: Adventures in overenthusiastic automation

"and if they like the idea, tell them it definitely won't have a built-in chainsaw – then ask them again."

Why, exactly why, does anyone stay employed at that place? The "flee in panic" response should be the only rational one

On-by-default video calls come to X, disable to retain your sanity

Re: Random bots liking posts

I've gotten those for years: I think they are the male equivalent to DM from US officers with suitcase of bills in Afghanistan (or The Real Keanu Reeves) that women receive.

I also get the wannabe social media star who only posts in Turkish (etc), and friends thousands daily, hoping for routine mutual friend/following: step 3 is presumably profit.

Re: Not Holding Junk Debt

There is a niche for CEOs that could be described as "comes in, does all the hard-to-brutal cost-cutting, changes things internally according to the Agenda, and then departs 1-3 years later (for the next job)". The boards know what they hire, be it the obedient stooge or the brutal henchman, and they will hire what they want.

In the case of working for the Musky One? It is a suicide mission, but if you have the hubris to think you can both salvage something and survive you might decide it is worth it.

When is a privacy button not a privacy button? When Google runs it, claims lawsuit

Re: Who can you trust...

In reasonably well regulated nations you can trust banks to skim a profit from your money, but that they will follow some basic rules in doing so, and not outright steal them.

Hacktivist attacks erupt in Middle East following Hamas assault on Israel

Re: Unwanted fall out from Israel/Hamas conflict

Not quite. Isn't the Glorious Leader in Pyongyang still supporting RU?

DoJ: Ex-soldier tried to pass secrets to China after seeking a 'subreddit about spy stuff'

Re: team leader and sergeant

Yes. With some changed names and adjusted tech it sounds like one of those stories about the Soviets trying selling obvious bait to Abwer, them laughing it out out of the building, and then the Gestapo swallowing it with glee and gusto.

But ok, if what he did was direct troops to collect hard drives and USB sticks in combat zones then that kind of tradecraft would not have been his department.

It's time to celebrate the abysmal efforts to go paperless in the NHS

Re: Mega-projects

I can only speak for part of your laundry list, since i work with hospital laboratory systems (LIS): all the other stuff does not generally happen in medical grade systems, and is definitely separated from the medical records. The medical systems talk, in our case by sending XML/ASTM files to each other through interchange middleware.

The closest interaction to outside systems I can think of is that our laboratory systems can produce a monthly billing file, that is manually transferred to the the financial/billing system: I literally move the file from one server to another, manually, on the first workday of the month. Files actually , since the blood bank system is separate.

There is a two-fold quandary: we want -- and have to -- protect patient data from unauthorized access to match laws and regulations. On the other hand one really want the medical staff to quickly and easily can access the relevant medical records in an emergency. Preferably nationwide, since people persist in traveling outside their local region, and even occasionally need urgent medical care there.

Re: meh

Hospital records systems are fun and interesting, in the proverbial sense. They are long term, multi-million projects where everyone from politicians at all levels, health care standards authorities and even healthcare staff (strange but true, even they want to have a say) have various opinions on what they want. Add to this the natural consequence of expensive projects: various form of bribery[1]. So currently parts of Sweden is in somewhere in the process of maybe implementing a US system that is more designed to facilitate US style insurance company billing rather than a functional public health system. And the idea of modifying it to be workable for the way health care works in Sweden, for something as tiny as a part of Sweden: surely you are joking.

And proper health data protections? Have no fear, we will guard our access to them to the best of our ability.

[1] The brown envelope with cash is so old school and definitely illegal, but we are looking to hire someone in the next year or so, someone with experience with this kind of stuff. Quite a well paid position too, I'd imagine. Do you know of anyone that would be a good fit?

Fuming Tom Hanks says he had nothing to do with that AI dental ad clone of him

Re: "Bootleg movies" with replica actors created with AI will start to pop up

But then someone will make hard core porn "starring" e.g. Liz Truss, Hedy Lamarr and Liza Minelli.

And the revenge porn crowd will set up a RPaaS site and allow you to upload a few images and specify what you want from a tick-box list (or has this already happened?). Imagine the "fun" of being a teacher when the "whits" decide to take revenge for a poor grade (there are already prank calls as a service sites that are being used that way).

PhD student guilty of 3D-printing 'kamikaze' drone for Islamic State terrorists

Re: Watchkeeper

I keep thinking about all the creative drone uses that the Ukrainians have come up with. How long until sone nutjob decides that rather than running down the street with a knife, lets use a racing drone to try to blow up $whatever?

Re: The cops also reportedly discovered at the home an IS application form,

On the other hand there is almost certainly a form for applying to the SAS.

BOFH: A security issue, you say? Activate code tangerine

Re: Wonderful episode once again!

Back in the 70s (or early 80s) a Swiss business traveller made a joke at Stockholm Airport "I'll put the bomb here" as he put his keys on the tray when passing the checkpoint. IIRC it ended with some time in the arrest, a fine and an entry ban.

Re: Wonderful episode once again!

Except of course the word "bomb" is not ok. They are expected not to have a sense of humour when it comes to that topic.

International Criminal Court hit in cyber-attack amid Russia war crimes probe

Well, yes. But legally anyone is a "suspect" or "accused" until found guilty by a court of law.

Re: How International is international

Ok, so "International" in this case means only the ones not actively trying to build an a sort-of-fascistoid empire. Understandable, but still ethically problematic.

IBM Software tells workers: Get back to the office three days a week

And how many change the heating during the day? Sure, technically you can get the thermostat to lower the heat e.g. 8-15, but is that something that is actually done? Lights, a laptop and a monitor or three is not going to be a large part of a homes energy budget.

PEBCAK problem transformed young techie into grizzled cynical sysadmin

Re: Enter Password

Yes. Annoying as it is, the "I'm smart, I'll just guess and go ahead and try something" crowd is more annoying.

Cutest was during the Win3.x era, when someone cleaned up som junk files. One of them was autoexec.bat...

If you like to play along with the illusion of privacy, smart devices are a dumb idea

Re: Why would a Washing Machine require my Date of Birth ...

I must try entering 1712-02-30 the next time some site asks for it. It is, after all, a valid date in Sweden, due to the up-fuckery of how we went from julian to gregorian calenders[1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adoption_of_the_Gregorian_calendar#Sweden

The Anti Defamation League is Musk's latest excuse for Twitter's tanking ad revenue

I just pronounce it "ex-Twitter"

BOFH: What a beautiful tinfoil hat, Boss!

Re: ECO DECT

There are fish that are primarily herbivores, but most fish we eat are carnivores

Re: ECO DECT

"I only eat animals that eat plants."

Not much fish in your diet then?

What happens when What3Words gets lost in translation?

Re: Was that sheep (singular) or sheep (plural)?

And sheep.sheep.sheep and steep.steep.steep is fairly close...

Re: Was that sheep (singular) or sheep (plural)?

More important: where is sexy.smart.handsome?

I long ago decided that them finding me if I end up with a broken femur on a mountainside is too important to leave to a glass fondle-slab. So I spent a bit of money -- but less than a decent fondle-slab costs -- and now have a device that will not only send a GPS position to emergency services, but also sends a radio signal that passing aircraft can pick up. And I not need to pay a subscription fee or remember to charge it daily. And it floats. It just does one job, but it does this job fairly well.

Of course they can fix it: just use a totally new set of words with no collisions or homophones. And if they actually want to be global they should think about how it will work for someone who only speaks Fininsh, Mongolian, Japanese, Inuktitut or French. And hope they do not believe that there is an unambiguous 1:1 translation between languages.

Actually, digits are generally fairly unambiguous between languages, one could design a system where a location is determined by a sequence of digits, where you add digits to get more precision. We could all it "What12Digits" and sell it to emergency services globally!

Here in Sweden you can download an emergency services app. If you then use it to call emergency services they automatically get your GPS coordinates. One or app that has my location, I know, but perhaps actually justified in this case.

Tired: What3Words. Wired: A clone location-tracking service based on FOUR words – and they are all extremely rude

Re: Not my kind of humor, but

And it is, presumably, disruptive.

No, it does not matter what it is disruptive of, or what the consequences of disrupting it might be: as long as it is disruptive it is good.

USENET, the OG social network, rises again like a text-only phoenix

Re: Is there anywhere giving free access to the alt.binary newsgroups

I had anna kournikova as a wallpaper for awhile. Not the pin-up picture, but the first part of the virus as text.

Yes of course I'm normal. See, forms a normal line relative to the floor when I stand up. Ok, not perfectly normal, but close enough.

Re: What killed USENET was ...

Just "add" -5 or so to your scorefile if the post is in HTM, and all the silliness would go away.

The email lock in effect is why I registered my personal domain: seeing other graduate students in the 90's trying to figure out what to do when their uni address would evaporate after they graduated.

NASA to outdo most Americans on internet speeds, gigabit kit heading to the ISS

To be fair: if I was willing to spend the kind of money they spend on this I could also get incredible Internet speed, regardless of my location. It might pe possible to use a few Iridium Go units in parallel to get at least semi-decent Internet anywhere.

Re: Hot singles?

ObXKCD: https://xkcd.com/713/

Veilid: A secure peer-to-peer network for apps that flips off the surveillance economy

"They aren't. Haven't you noticed the the WEF (or Bill Gates, Rosacrutions) is slowly shutting them down because they allow people to exchange private messages."

The modern tragedy: is this someone being serious, or way over the top satire? No way to tell these days.

Need a decent dining spot in Ottawa? Microsoft suggested a food bank

Re: My two cents

In other words it works just like a lazy but "clever" student: copying and then changing a word here and there. Now, does masquerading as a lazy 15 year old count as AI?

80% of execs regret calling employees back to the office

I would not mind 1-2h on a non-crowded well functioning train as much as I would mind the same time spent on a bus or driving myself.

My dream commute is 30-60 min on a bicycle, on well maintained bicycle paths. A 1 hour walk would be fine too, as long as it was not on city streets. Time to think, some daily exercise...

Please note the previous post said "not unusual" rather than "perfectly ok" regarding the 2 hour commute.

The price of freedom turned out to be an afternoon of tech panic

Re: D'oh

Excel is the proof that if all you have is a hammer, then everything is a nail. Even if it is spherical and made from glass.

Lock-in to legacy code is a thing. Being locked in by legacy code is another thing entirely

Re: Almost got locked in

I know at least 2 PhDs that have worked as security guards. It pays the bills while you study, and if you take e.g. weekend night shifts they (a) pay better and (b) allow you to attend classes full time

Google launches $99 a night Hotel Mountain View for hybrid workers

Re: I spy a business opportunity

And if Google was a company that had the technical ability they could easily detect patterns such as as badges that entered or left all together, moved past the same checkpoints at the same time, etc.

Two US Navy sailors charged with giving Chinese spies secret military info

Re: the US are such hypocrites

I get the impression that it is actually a balance. If your opponents are confident that they know that you are (a) not actively preparing an imminent attack, but (b) quite capable of either repelling, or at least make it too costly to attack them, then any sane operator would refrain from starting a war. Of course you do not want them to know everything, because then they might figure out how to nullify your abilities to respond. So not perfect security for the low level stuff, but increasingly better for the truly critical stuff.