Posts by Howard Sway

Swedish Tesla strike goes international as Norwegian and Danish unions join in

"I just don't like anything which creates a lords and peasants sort of thing"

Bullshit. His entire business career has been one big example of acting like a lord and treating staff like peasants. The trade union movement has its roots in workers organising against bosses in new industrial production who acted like the old aristocracy. He can't stand any challenge to his entitled authority, and constantly needs to pick fights to keep his massive ego inflated. It would do him a lot of good to start thinking of other people as something he needed to always take into consideration, rather than just himself. And I don't mean in his current "I am the brilliant saviour of humanity who is always right" way.

Elon Musk's xAI wants $1B cash infusion in exchange for equity shares

you could still buy into Musk's quest "to understand reality"

A year ago he was claiming that Twitter is too full of bots.

Now he's selling bots full of Twitter.

'Wobbly spacetime' is latest stab at unifying physics

Oppenheim proposes to overcome the barrier with the idea of "wobbly spacetime"

I believe that there's already much experimental evidence for such a theory :

1) Take a person and put them in a 90 minute meeting discussing which database access framework a new application should use. Time will be observed to have stretched out to what felt like a week amongst all observers.

2) Take the same person and send them on a week's holiday to some sunny island where good food and wine are abundant and cheap. Time will be observed to pass so quickly that it's time to go home again before they know it.

This is ample proof that we live in a giant cosmic jelly.

Steve Jobs' $4.01 RadioShack check set to fetch small fortune at auction

Why wasn't the check cashed?

And how come it has "re-emerged" decades later as an auction item? I mean, it's not as if Radio Shack would have known that this tiny purchase was going to lead to the formation of a massively successful company in the future, so they;d be better off keeping it instead of sending it to the bank...... Did someone have a spooky premonition? Or maybe Jobs had a pal in the shop who accepted the check as payment, then "forgot" to put it through and accidentally kept it instead.....

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

the whole world will know that those advertisers killed the company

Yes, in the same way that Tesla and X are killing my company by not spending millions advertising on MY website. Put your hand in your pocket Elon and fork over the moolah, otherwise the whole world will soon know that you killed my company.

OpenAI makes it official: Sam Altman is back as CEO

the OpenAI board will henceforth include a non-voting observer from Microsoft

So Sugar Daddy has decided that the brats need a grown up present to stop the World's Most AI-xciting Computer Project turning into Lord of the Flies.

Share your 2024 tech forecasts (wrong answers only) to win a terrible sweater

Musk / Zuckerberg cage fight takes place

as a one-off Netflix pay-per-view event. Musk enters the cage wearing a golden robotic exoskeleton, which breaks down 5 seconds after the fight begins. This leaves him trapped in it, Zuckerberg is free to start slapping his face, and he starts crying. Record worldwide viewing figures, plus billions more who try and sign up when they hear what's happening, cause unexpected catastrophic overload failure of every Cisco router in the world, and the internet goes down everywhere.

Society struggles to carry on. Man with 10 boxes of unused dvd-roms in shed becomes multimillionaire software and porn vendor overnight. Daily newspaper version of Facebook launches. People begin scrawling graffiti in pub toilets again. "Influencers" all have to look for a proper job for the first time in their lives. Somebody cooks a recipe from a book, not an app.......

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

The goal was to get it to the point where everything would still work... and I think they made it

They might very well have made it, it's just a pity that they never released it.

User read the manual, followed instructions, still couldn't make 'Excel' work

still couldn't make 'Excel' work

The correct solution in this scenario is to take another screenshot of the spreadsheet embedded in the Word document, open Paint and paste the screenshot there. The spreadsheet can then be edited by drawing numbers into the cells with the pencil tool. If you need to add columns up, open Calculator and type in each number,in the column, pressing the '+' key between them - quick AND easy!

No more staff budget for UK civil service, but worry not – here's an incubator for AI

an upskilling event in which civil servants were to be trained in programming, AI, and data science

Wow, all those years I spent learning stuff, when I could have just gone along to an "upskilling event" instead!

Binance and CEO admit financial crimes, billions coughed up to US govt

is washing drug money too hard these days - come to Binance we got cake for you

Noooooo! It's even worse if they were also tempting people to enter the nightmare of cake

X's legal eagles swoop on Media Matters over antisemitic content row

Reputation management via lawsuit

So Elon is going to win the following prizes :

1) A set of damaging worldwide headlines about how he's filed a lawsuit against people who pointed out that ads were appearing next to Nazi shit on his website.

2) Another set of damaging worldwide headlines about how he's lost a lawsuit against people who pointed out that ads were appearing next to Nazi shit on his website.

The idea that not having the Nazi shit on his website might have prevented the damage in the first place doesn't seem to have occurred to him.

OpenAI meltdown: How could Microsoft have let this happen after betting so many billions?

could eventually be the most powerful computing technology in the world

The fact that it is being developed by people who are behaving like a bunch of squabbling 10 year olds doesn't really make such a prediction seem likely. There's not much human intelligence being demonstrated here, let alone artificial. They're generating more news stories than their chatbot could.

Microsoft dials back Bing after users manage to recreate Disney logo in fake AI-generated images

Teens can also get Bard to help them learn skills or complete homework

Given the choice, I think you'll find that 100% will opt for "complete homework".

Fired OpenAI boss Sam Altman may join Microsoft

Microsoft has scooped up the team and tipped them into an AI research unit

Please give a big welcome to our new AI executives Bing Altman and Bob Brockman!

Sorry, you've just been hired, what do you mean you're not happy with being subject to our AI brand naming decisions?

Why have just one firewall when you can fire all the walls?

Re: Can tell it's a Monday!

They even spelt "labour" properly in the same sentence!

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman's ejection sparks theories as odd as some ChatGPT output

Altman also bossed crypto startup Worldcoin

That's why he left : to combine his cryptocoin with AI, creating the world's first currency that autonomously decides what it wants to spend itself on.

Control Altman delete: OpenAI fires CEO, chairman quits

Altman constantly crying about the potential for AI to destroy society

He was partially right though : some people will end up losing their jobs because of AI. As he has now proved.

IBM pauses advertising on X after ads show up next to antisemitic content

Re: Yaccarino went into damage control mode

Very catchy, but the meaning of that job title is a little too open to multiple interpretations when it involves working for Elon Musk.

Windows users can soon ditch Bing, Edge, other bundleware – but only in the EU

Windows uses the region chosen by the customer during setup to identify if the PC is in the EEA

When people all over the world discover that they can dump all the Bing and Edge crap simply by saying they live in Sweden on the setup screen, I can imagine Microsoft getting a bit perplexed by future usage stats showing that 58% of Windows users live in Sweden.

UK won't rush to regulate AI, says first-ever minister for digital brainboxes

5th Viscount Camrose to give him his full title, is a member of the House of Lords

Nothing demonstrates that your country is thrillingly modern and cutting edge like having an unelected hereditary aristocrat in charge of your AI strategy. Especially one whose lineage consists of former press baron owners of the Daily Telegraph.

Oh well, I suppose he might be slightly preferable to having somebody who actually knew about this stuff in the role, as there's a much higher chance of nothing being achieved with him leading it.

AI copyright row deepens: Stability VP quits in protest over 'fair use' excuse

training generative AI models on copyrighted works is 'fair use'

I too think he's right in principle, and also think it's a wise move because when the legalities of using copyrighted content really get tested by big businesses instead of individual authors, models that have cost millions to train might have to be thrown away if they're judged to have infringed it. This probably won't happen until someone tries to publish something featuring a LLM generated cute cartoon character called "Muckey Mouse", at which point all hell will break loose in the courts and governments that have previously green lighted the larceny.

Use AI to accelerate adoption of central bank digital currencies, says IMF head

We've left port and are now on the high seas

She sounds more like she's left reality and is now in cloud cuckoo land. Specifically, in the province of TechnoMeNoUnderstando where people with no idea of what things do shout "blockchain! it's the future of everything! AI! It's the future of everything!" to try and sound like they're keeping up with all the cool kids, but reveal their lack of understanding of the trend du jour.

Vote now on who should take the lead in Musk: The Movie

The whole AI resurrected Carry On team would be even better. Carry On Don't Lose Your Investment, starring Sid James as Elon Musk, Barbara Windsor as Grimes, Kenneth Williams as Jack Dorsey and Charles Hawtrey as Mark Zuckerberg in the cage match scene.

X fails to remove hate speech over Israel-Gaza conflict

claiming the group was responsible for destroying $4 billion worth of Xitter's valuation

Stop trying to blame others for the consequences of what you turned the site into. Advertisers don't put posters up in sewers because they don't want their products associated with the smell of what flows through them, nor do the people they want to reach spend their free time in them.

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

it creates more emotional problems for me than I do for myself

That's clearly the case if you've reached the stage where you think that horses can talk.

Want a Cybertruck? You're stuck with it for a year, says Tesla

you agree that you will not sell or otherwise attempt to sell the Vehicle within the first year

Free Cybertruck! When you buy this $50,000 used plastic bag.....

AWS staffer shows off the workplace that used to be a prison

a prime AWS location — a one-hundred-year-old prison

It's there to act as as motivation to the distribution centre staff - if you work hard enough you might one day earn a promotion to a job in the relative luxury of a high security prison.

Poloniex crypto-exchange offers 5% cut to thieves if they return that $120M they nicked

High Street Bank offers 5% cut to thieves if they return that $120M they nicked

And if they don't bring the cash back within a week .... they'll call the police!

Nope, still not seen that headline, but this is at least the 4th big straight up crypto theft like this so far this month (not counting scams and fraud, which are also numerous).

Datacenter would spoil beautiful view ... of former industrial waste dump

need for 1,730 MW of additional data centre capacity within the SAZ (Slough Availability Zone)

Another fine example of jargon obsessed fools who have to obsessively create acronyms for everything, then explain what they mean whenever they use them, because anybody outside their tiny group is going to be completely unaware that there is such a thing as the "Slough Availability Zone".

It's perfectly legal for cars to harvest your texts, call logs

infotainment

Now we find out this is an abbreviation for "information obtainment".

What other bad stuff are they hiding in their names? Is Honda an abbreviation for "Honestly officer, I didn't do anything with that panda"?

Monero Project admits thieves stole 6-figure sum from a wallet in mystery breach

they're all "reasonably secure" and reputable organizations.

Goes to prove that "reasonably secure" is not a sufficient level of security, especially when you entrust it to a 3rd party. As for reputable organizations - can't say I can think of one who would be trusting some combination of crypto wallet and password manager as part of their banking and bookkeeping operations.................

UK may demand tech world tell it about upcoming security features

forced to get permission from the UK government if they want to make changes to security features

Hmmm, let's introduce a captcha style test where you get presented with a photo containing government ministers and have to "select every square containing a corrupt or clueless arsehole".

Bored Ape NFT party is a real eyesore, say irritated attendees

painful eyes, sudden vision loss and even skin burns

It's not the first time the people who bought into this bollocks got burned.

UK throws millions at scheme to heat homes with waste energy from datacenters

Levelling up

I notice the taxpayer subsidised projects are situated in London, London, London, Watford (London), Suffolk, with Lancaster being the one exception outside SE England. Obviously, data centres are congregating around London, as that's where the highest % of their customers will probably be, but it's a bit rum that well off Londoners will be getting the (presumably) cheaper heating as a result.

'Corrupt' cop jailed for tipping off pal to EncroChat dragnet

are using to intercept forearms

Is this some kind of secret criminal slang, used so that the police can't understand what they're talking about?

No, it's the work of the criminal mastermind who decided to warn his friend with a standard text message that encrypted text messages could now be read.

Google ends partnership to build four San Francisco GoogleBurbs

binned their scheme to create four master-planned California communities

Quite odd for Google to cancel something at the planning stage. If they'd behaved as they usually do with new projects they'd have built it, thousands of people would have moved in, and then one day everybody would have come home to find that their house was no longer there.

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

The Beatles – or what remains of the band

What remains of the band appears to be a dull plodding song, considered not even good enough for a 1978 solo album, given the "just plonk some strings on it and it'll sound like the Beatles" treatment. Still, it gives an indication of just how bad they would have sounded if they'd stayed together til then, shortly before entering their 80s synth pop phase.

UK govt finds £225M for Isambard-AI supercomputer powered by Nvidia

Re: A bridge how far...?

No, it's because it's a version of the Bard chat bot that instead of SSDs uses ISAM to access data stored on a load of old tape drives using a knackered old mainframe they found somewhere in the basement of a government department.

To be honest it's an improvement on the UK Metaverse they were planning that ditched 3D headsets for ascii-art printouts on a bunch of old line printers.

UK convinces nations to sign Bletchley Declaration in bid for AI safety

"I'm completely confident the UK is doing far more than other countries to keep you safe"

So really, all those people here from foreign countries should just learn to stop being so irresponsible and listen to all my brilliant vague bullshit. I'll be interviewing Elon tomorrow about the safety stuff. He can tell us how he made the world a safer place by turning Twitter into a sewer of propaganda, hate and misinformation.

X says it's only worth $19B after year of Muskmanagement

If Musk wanted to build traffic to his social media, there must have been a cheaper and easier way

He could have set up an Elon Musk Fan Club online, given away a free Tesla Model 3 to the first half a million people to sign up and still lost less than $25 billion.

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

X "shutdown the Sacramento data center, and began doing much more on-prem"

That tends to become necessary when lots of users have gone and all that expensive kit is now sat there doing nothing.

Shut the site down and sack everyone and they'd save even more money.

Microsoft calls time on Windows Insider MVP program

What's this I'm hearing about no more Windows in cider?

Presumably it'll just be Apple from now on.....

Boston Dynamics teaches robo-dog to recognise speech, respond using ChatGPT

"This illusion was enhanced by adding silly costumes to the gripper and googly eyes"

Surprised that they have invented the most appropriate user interface for interacting with ChatGPT so soon. I may have misjudged just how rapidly real progress is being made in the field.

After nine servers he worked on failed, techie imagined next career as beach vendor

Re: Sorry, is it just me ?

It's describing working on Novell Netware. One of the reasons you don't hear of that product any more is that it was the very definition of "clunky". So don't expect tales of working on it to read like a silky smooth thriller.

Boffins find AI stumbles when quizzed on the tough stuff

Re: GPT-4 model managed to score 700 out of 800 on the SAT maths exam

You're right about how lots of people also study for the test. But the point of learning maths is not to pass the test, it is to be able to apply it to solve real world problems. And solving real world problems, replacing trained humans, is what LLM based AI is being hyped up as being able to do. Therefore it should have to prove that it has the capability to perform highly when faced with unfamiliar problems, just as people can.

GPT-4 model managed to score 700 out of 800 on the SAT maths exam

Statistics being pumped out like this need closer examination. Was the model trained on lots of previous exams and given all the correct answers? As these exams are similar every year, and test the same problems, it shouldn't be too surprising to get a high score if that is the case.

To test how good it is at "learning", it should be trained on the theory from the maths textbooks alone, then set a test which it hasn't seen before. I would bet that the score achieved is much lower, showing that it hasn't really learnt the subject, just how to answer lots of similar questions.

Pope tempted by Python! Signs off on coding scheme for kids

a Polish AI ad biz owner

I thought the church taught people to avoid scenarios involving a python and promises of the free gift of knowledge?

And an "AI ad biz" sounds very much like the work of the devil.

King Charles III signs off on UK Online Safety Act, with unenforceable spying clause

there will be no hiding place for their vile crimes

Considering what a huge mess she's made of policing and having enough prison places to put serious criminals, there will also be nobody looking for them, or punishing them if they happen to be caught either.

Infosys co-founder calls for youth to work 70-hour weeks

work twelve-hour days so that India to becomes a number one nation

Yeah, do it for patriotism and national pride, it's just a massive fucking coincidence that it will also make me even more filthy rich than I already am, and you live shorter, more miserable lives as a consequence.