Posts by parlei

Altman to Musk: Don't go full supervillain – that's so un-American

Re: "I don't think people would tolerate that. I don't think Elon would do it"

Nah, it is just the expected response. You know "Surely you, great, wise and powerfull Lord, would never stoop so low as to act like those vile scum that we both despise, and which act would, in the practially inconcievable event that You would chose such a path, seriously inceonvenience and undermine me, your loyal and ever faitheful servant and worskipper". The only difference is tbat he is not exepect to do a full prostration and kiss Musks feet, and that we try to avoid the more flowery language: the expectation is still there.

Letting chatbots run robots ends as badly as you'd expect

Re: Sex

Just don't say "harder!" repeatedly or you may end up the victim of a penectomy or penetration trauma (etc), depending on your equipment and what you are having it do.

BOFH: Don't threaten us with a good time – ensure it

Insurance is like an airbag or seat belt in a car: I can honestly say that I have never had any use of either. But if I get into a situation where they will be usefull (i.e. accident) I will be very happy have them.

UK sleep experts say it's time to kill daylight saving for good

Re: Leave the clocks alone

It is stockpiled by the EU, to use in an emergency. Or rather it was, until the NPM-fanatics sold the whole stockpile to their mates.

The most common use is to improve high speed trading, bu having an extra second or two to complete the trade.

Ford CEO admits he drives a Chinese electric vehicle and doesn't want to give it up

Re: :)

Plenty of EVs in Norway and northern Sweden. Not yet ideal for long range driving -- infrastructure -- but it is getting there. And for the large number of cars that pretty much never leaves a town: EV is the ideal choice.

Linus Torvalds affirms expulsion of Russian maintainers

You mean the wars where Finland pretty much had to side with however could help them prevent the USSR from conquesring them?

Internet Archive user info stolen in cyberattack, succumbs to DDoS

Re: haveibeenpwned

About the same here: mine is now a different, and slightly longer, character sallad than it was yesterday. But for alla the "it is just a website, I'll use the same one" people out there...

Incumbent congressman not turning up to debates? Train an AI on his press releases

"But can they make an AI that can babble disconnected mumblings like Trump?"

Isn't that the default mode for "AI"?

Microsoft security tools questioned for treating employees as threats

Re: Limited scope...

Waiting for the version that detects wage theft...

UK tech pioneer Mike Lynch dead at 59

One possible explanation is that she had a lifting (ballasted) keel and a very tall mast. If they had lifted the keel when at anchor -- not unreasonable -- she would have been very succeptible to capsize. According to the news the nearby yatch had to use their motor to stay correcly aligned to the wind.

And once a yatch is filling with water she would go down very fast: a boat with a ballasted keel is only boyant if the water is on the outside.

Liferafts deploy automatically when sufficiently submerged.

Missing scissors cause 36 flight cancellations in Japan

Re: Meanwhile in Zürich...

I am certain I could make a had wood insert that would mimic the function of a liner lock. It would look very innocent with the misc pens and pencils in my pen case...

Re: Meanwhile in Zürich...

Back in the 90's I mentioned to a US friend that no, once could not buy those in Sweden. So she helpfully mailed me a couple... Customs naturally caught them and I had to explain/excuse "certain kinds of americans..." to the nice customs agent on the phone.

Re: Meanwhile in Zürich...

Heathrow security in the 90's: "As long as it is Swiss Army it is ok". Times have changed.

OTOH, La Guardia in the 80's: they took a Swiss army knife from me (got it back when we landed!), but missed the 6" bowie knife in my carry on luggage (I was young and had only a small carry on duffel bag).

OTTH: do not ask someone with a chemistry degree what they could arrange...

US regulators crack down on AI playing doctor in healthcare

Re: All insurance is a bet?

Actually I would say it is not a bet, but more of a lottery. Kind of. A lot of people pay the premiums (lottery tickets). Then a maller portion of them recieves paid medical care, exceeding the cost of the premiums they paid (a win). Of course the analogy quickly breaks down, for various reasons. And that society as whole looses out by it not being universally available, regardless of the ability to pay the premiums.

Ransomware can mean life or death at hospitals. DEF CON hackers to the rescue?

Re: YAWN !

Your home, presumably, is not a medium sized hopsital or critical infrastructure facility.

Lights, camera, AI! Real-time deepfakes coming to DEF CON

Re: A change of sayings

Good point. More business travel again, or good ways to confim an identity remotely.

Founder of Indian ride-share biz Ola calls for 70-hour work week

So, does he intend to raise all salaries by 75%? Or is the peons supposed to work the extra 30h for free? Though so.

Thanks for coming to help. No, we can't say why we called – it's classified

Whiskey on the rocks, Soviet style

Cybercriminals threaten to leak all 5 million records from stolen database of high-risk individuals

Re: Are lists of dodgy criminals secret ?

Back when a certain Supreme was in the news for not seeing all expense luxury vacations as a problem a lot of normal government employees described the rules they operated under. As in if they inspected a facility they had to pay for their own coffee. Supposedly some companies kept a separate coffee machine where you could pay for it just for this purpose, even if everyone else got theirs for free.

So I suspect that the risk category is rather "politically appointed government official".

Ransomware feared as IT 'issues' force Octapharma Plasma to close 150+ centers

Re: don't want to pay for, the resources to protect themselves

If it was just the vulture capitalists that got hit many would be tempted to cheer the crooks on. But what is at stake is patient data and medical organisations ability to function.

Senator Warren slams Intuit's 'junk fees' as America's Tax Day rolls around again

Re: A solution?

I cant find the exact proportion here in Sweden, but it might very well be about 90%. Including various home owners. The process this year for me (owns a condo apartment, so not totally simple).

1. Tax office send me a copy of their pre-filled simple form to my secure digital mailbox

2. I look at it: can't think of anything to add or adjust: amending the form is dead simple in most cases. If I was a financially complex person (owning a business, etc) I might need to do the full form instead.

3. A week or so later I can digitally file my taxes, accepting all their calculations: salaries, interest, etc are all reported to them, so they know better than I what the numbers are. This takes about 1-2 minutes, and I naturally get a digital receipt.

4. A few week later I get the money they owe me* directly into my bank account

* I have my employer deduct a bit more then the tables suggest, such that something exceptional would have to happen for me to need to pay extra tax. Keeps my life simple, and I can afford to push a little bit of salary in front of me.

Ex-Microsoft engineer gets seven years after trying to hire hitman for double murder

Re: Crappy plan

I gather some mystery writers have a horror of the FBI (etc) pulling their internet (search) history and jumping to conclusions.

Labor watchdog wants SpaceX's gag clauses to disintegrate like its exploding rockets

Re: "Those would be big no-nos under US law"

Why should *any* job be less than a decent living wage?

GPT-4 won't run Doom but will play the game poorly

Give it the ultimate challenge: getting off Earth before the Vogon constructor fleet wrecks it.

Ethics question: could one make it produce Vogon poetry?

Palantir boss says outfit's software the only reason the 'goose step' has not returned to Europe

Re: Stone the flamin’ crows!

Simple: they read the first couple of words in the Cliff notes summary of the LotR and figured that was good enough.

I have a short list of grossly inappropriate name choices that I'm keeping an eye out for.

Google Maps leads German tourists to week-long survival saga in Australian swamp

Re: If only there were some sort of handy backup.

The moon can give you an approximate idea of N-S: I have done so a number of times when driving at night.

Staff say Dell's return to office mandate is a stealth layoff, especially for women

They just want to see a paddock full of prime cattle, I mean productive workers

2 am would have been problematic considering I wake up no later than 4 am. Not to say it never happened.

This could e.g. be small children. My (insane) hybrid schedule was for about one year this:

0400-0430: breakfast., shower

0430-0600: work at home

0600-0700: get two children out of bed and prepped for daycare, deliver said offspring to daycare

0700-0830: commute

0830-1690: work (on prem)

1600-1700: commute, pick up children

1700-1900: feed and "entertain" children

1900-1930 (ha): bedtime

1930-2200: work (remote)

(the other parent did a weekly commute, so I was a "semi-single" parent during this period)

For some inexplicable reason I once woke up just as my car was starting to leave the road during this period.

From my employers standpoint there was no problem, I most certainly did what was needed.

Macy's and Sunglass Hut sued for $10M over face-recog arrest and 'sexual assault'

Re: Behind bars for a few hours

Intentionally horrible ones. With added slavery for those convicted. For profit.

Users now keep cellphones for 40+ months and it's hurting the secondhand market

Re: No real surprise

I held out for years with my old Samsung rugged non-smart phone (B100?), mostly due to (a) just working and (b) loooong battery life.

Formal ban on ransomware payments? Asking orgs nicely to not cough up ain't working

Re: Absolutely should be banned

True. But even the most ardent ransomware haters would think even "tactical" nuclear weapons against ransomware gangs is overkill. I fervently hope.

Brain boffins think they've found the data format we use to store images as memories

Yes. A lot of science is asking questions like

* "How do we know this?"

* "We think this is (or may be) true, but actually there is no hard evidence backing it up. Could we test our assumptions?"

* "We are pretty certain this is true, but we have no idea of the details: how does this actually work?" and

* "There are several ideas about this with no clear data as to which one is actually true, can we test them to gain a better understanding?"

And hidden in this is everything from new drug targets to better ways to recycle plastics, by way of more efficient hard drives and understanding why Iceland has so many volcanoes.

And fairly basic research gives the background for thew people one day developing the end product (and these days making someone rich, but that is incidental-to-annoying to most scientists). In 10-15 years this may be the origin for a better Alzheimer treatment. Or not: this is one study, and we have no idea if this is even correct, or will lead somewhere "useful".

Science fiction writers imagine a future in which AI doesn’t abuse copyright – or their generosity

And the difference is scale. Let me tell you of an analogous situation. Here in Sweden we have a right of common access, where anyone could walk into (e.g.) a forest that was owned by someone else, and pick berries and fungi. For free. Few see this as problematic. But then some "enterprising" individuals came up with an idea. What if you imported a hundred Thai or east bloc people to spend the season picking tons of bilberries and lingonberries, with any cloudberries or popular fungi as an added bonus? Pay then as little as possible, make then pay dearly sleep on suspicious mattresses in derelict houses and work long hours.

So someone reading a few thousand books and stories and then using that experience to write themselves: not a problem, even a good thing. But the industrial hoovering of texts, with no compensation to the writers, and then charging to use what came out the other end of that linguistic meat grinder? A real problem.

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

Re: Pardon?

Just the other week here in a smallish Swedish town. The youth psychology service was recording sessions -- with consent by the patient! -- for training porpoises. But left the card in the cameras overnight. So when burglars broke in and stole the cameras they stole the data cards with the therapy sessions as well.

To paraphrase Darth Vader: I find their lack of paranoia disturbing

Re: Pardon?

I came here to say this. Armed gunmen in hospitals are fairly rare, at least here in Europe,

But CCTV in hospitals is problematic: what information can such a recording divulge? Would you want there to be a video of you walking into the STI screening clinic? Your weekly appointment with a therapist?

And no, there is nothing wrong with either therapy or making sure your partner(s) can make informed decisions regarding sexual practices. But some will make hay from it, even these days.

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.