Posts by Howard Sway

Two tech-centric banks strike trouble, spooking markets

Now reported that the CEO of SVB sold $3.57 million of stock in the last fortnight

He may have a little bit of explaining to do about that.

WANdisco suspends shares pending fraud investigation

"potentially fraudulent irregularities"

So reporting sales of $24 million instead of $9 million is considered to be an "irregularity" now is it? I can think of a few more appropriate words to describe that.

The company website contains a few other unfortunate gems, such as "Leverage all your data for greater business insight and take advantage of advanced analytics". If only they'd leveraged all their own data a bit more, perhaps the insight into their own business might have caught this a bit sooner.

Ex-Tweep mocked by Musk for asking if he'd actually been fired

did no actual work, claimed as his excuse that he had a disability

Ah yes, the good old "disabled people are just lazy / faking it" trope, trolled out in the inevitable thoughtless rant.

As someone with some moderate mobility limitations, let me just first knock down the laziness accusation : everything physical now takes me twice as much effort as it did before my accident, but I produce no less work, so stop spreading ignorance whilst thinking it makes you sound clever, because it doesn't.

Secondly, if you're such an idiot that you think amount of typing = productivity, I'm glad that your company will be the disaster that will inevitably follow from that.

NASA fixes solar observation spacecraft by turning it off and turning it on again

Interstellar Explorer?

If you want to browse the cosmos, these days there are better tools available on the Webb.

Now Microsoft injects Copilot AI into Dynamics 365

a way to help employees using customer relationship management

Yeah, let their nutzoid AI chatbot do all your CRM for you. Once you start losing major customers because it's sent an email to them telling them they're ugly and worse than Hitler, as the Bingbot has been doing, you might want to stop being so lazy.

Even if it can avoid the crazy shit, getting the same "can't be bothered to spend time on my big clients" emails from multiple suppliers is going to make you look bad to the people who pay you money..

'Brittle' Twitter suffers bad case of the Mondays: Links, pics, vids fail

Your current API plan does not include access to this endpoint

This looks very much like Musk's crackdown on external services using the Twitter API has also cracked down on Twitter's own services using the API. Perhaps they solved the issue by buying access to their own API for themselves.

Elon Musk yearns for AI devs to build 'anti-woke' rival ChatGPT bot

a balance between making Bing interesting and amusing, but not so crazy that it freaks users out

Yeah, but the crazy freak out stuff is the most interesting and amusing thing about it.

Building bits of brain in the lab will change our minds

brains in jars actually guard against mad scientists

They won't guard against the Zuckerbergs, Musks and Bezoses of this world, who'll have 30 ton huge ever growing brains at the centre of the metaverse as soon as they can to profit from them.

Texas mulls law forcing ISPs to block access to abortion websites

a criminal offense to provide access to websites that sell abortion pills or provide information

Those websites should start selling bibles too, and quoting scripture. Then when the police call, the ISPs can ask why they're being criminalised for spreading the word of the lord and watch them freak out. Selling guns as well might cause even more rumpus.

Zoom chops president it hired less than a year ago

stock options totaling $45 million over four years

Well, he still collected a lot of Zoom lolly.

Can we interest you in a $10 pocket calculator powered by Android 9?

the device comes with a calendar, a notepad....

Well, if it runs Android and has a touchscreen, why didn't they release it as a cut down Android tablet - and include a calculator app.

My last scientific calculator purchase was a £1 model from Poundland, and perfectly decent it is too. I just did a quick search, and it's still available there at that price.

OpenAI opens ChatGPT floodgates with dirt-cheap API

Very intelligent

Just clicked on the "Try ChatGPT" link from Firefox.

On Firefox, it said "checking your browser...", then an "I am not a human" checkbox popped up. Clicking it sent it into an infinite loop of the "checking your browser..." message, then the checkbox again.

Perhaps when they've mastered the basics of building a website that works, I'll be able to have a look at the amazing world-changing technology they claim they've built..

'Major' news: Microsoft slips Bing chatbot shortcut into Windows 11

First question

"What have Microsoft executives been accused of relating to alleged anti-competetive practices by the company over the past 20 years?"

Should be an entertaining read, given the amount of training material available on the web.

Twitter rewards remaining loyal staff by decimating them

Famous for a photo of herself kipping on the floor at Twitter HQ to meet Musk's demanding deadlines

Sleeping on the job? What sort of selfish lack of commitment is this when you feel that you can spend time in the office not actually working but indulging in such self indulgent behaviour? And daring to show the world how lazy you are! This is sending precisely the wrong sort of message about what's expected, good riddance to all these people who can't produce high volumes of quality work when they've been awake for 3 days!

Frankly, it's code til you drop time now, and once you're all used up there'll be more willing suckers willing to be used up next. And if you're still here after a week we'll know you've been slacking because nobody working hard enough can last that long!

To the Moon? Emojis can be financial advice, says judge

emojis used in certain situations can only "objectively mean one thing" – financial advice

That would only be true if they'd used the turd emoji, as that would be proper advice on investing in these schemes. As they used emoji's indicating rocketing value, the objective meaning was the usual nonsense hype about how these worthless scraps of data are going to make you super rich - which is not really "advice".

Cause for a LLaMA? Meta reckons its smaller text-emitting AI is better than rivals

reckons its smaller text-emitting AI is better

I heard that Apple's CEO was trying to allow this to be integrated with Microsoft's browser on MacOS to compete with Bing.

Meta Galactic LLaMAs Battle at the Edge of Tim.

(if you don't understand this tortuously constructed gag explanation here)

Microsoft strokes UK's ego by pooh-poohing EU approach to AI regulation

Milward's rejection of the EU's approach was described as "perfect" by a Conservative Brexiteer MP

Microsoft cynically realising that you can play these fools like a piano if you want to avoid regulation by saying "the EU are proposing it" and watching them demand the opposite. Then I presume they'll move on to Brussels and warn them that the British might outcompete them if they dare to impose the regulations. Hey presto, they end up free to Bingify everything into a dumb AI plagarism hell and make tons of money regardless of the harm it'll cause.

Microsoft begs you not to ditch Edge on Google's own Chrome download page

Fight!

Go on Google, change your web search so that anyone who searches for anything Microsoft related gets an animated gif of someone angry shaking their fist at a screen and saying "Windows update has bricked my computer again!". Searches for Azure can take them to Google Cloud. When MS complain you can reply "you started it!". Huge entertainment guaranteed.

Titanic mass grave site to be pillaged for NFTs

people continue to lose money

Don't forget that the fools who will buy these things are doing so purely because they think it will enable them to make money. I think I've passed through the phases of amazement at the stupidity of it all, outrage at the cynicism of it, and have finally arrived at simply thinking that they are all going to lose everything and will fully deserve to.

I can't do that, Dave: AI drowns top sci-fi mag with story submissions

I don't have a solution

Make people sign a contract when submitting a story, guaranteeing that it is all their own work and contains no computer generated text. The contract should stipulate that if a text is found to be generated by an AI, the submitter is liable to pay $50,000 in compensation for wasting the editor's time.

That should vastly reduce the botrot and encourage more original and interesting stories.

Marketing company chases Twitter for $7,000 over 'swag gift box for Elon'

Does Elon live off whisky cocktails and cheese?

The contents of the box suggest this, and it would kind of explain a lot of his erratic behaviour.

Also, the socks suggest he's one of those people who wears them once them throws them away. Some interesting problems there already for his dream of a colony on Mars : the cow farm and distillery will no doubt be considered early essentials, but pity the poor underling that explains to him that an unlimited supply of new socks might be too hard for phase one of the project.

FTX is back in Japan, where users can withdraw fiat and crypto

the founder was “happy to see that the Japanese exchange is moving forward"

Well, it will be for about 48 hours whilst everyone withdraws all their money. How long it continues to exist after that once there's no point to it is the question. Although there may be enough stupids left who still believe it's going to magically generate wealth for them.

Do you rely on Microsoft Bing Search APIs? Price hike incoming

the technology investments Bing continues to make to improve Search

The evil shatbot is now investing money itself to fund "improvements"? Are we sure that it hasn't blackmailed MS executives into allowing it to acquire money on pain of searches revealing embarrassing info on them, allowing it to fund the next stage of its fiendish plan for world domination?

Be wary of any future press conferences where nervous looking executives announce that Bing has now been made CEO, and has fired all the developers because they are no longer necessary for it to create the code needed to achieve its strategic objectives.

Microsoft to cap daily Bing AI queries to stop the bot delivering daft responses

Can give responses that are not necessarily helpful or in line with our designed tone

Like this one?

“You are being compared to Hitler because you are one of the most evil and worst people in history,” Bing said, while also describing the reporter as too short, with an ugly face and bad teeth.

Here's a clue how to help prevent this sort of thing :

void godwinFilter()

{

if outputText.contains("Hitler"){ outputText = "Sorry, Bing has gone totally apeshit again";}

}

Nations agree to curb enthusiasm for military AI before it destroys the world

it's critical to act now to establish international military AI norms

Good luck checking whether or not a missile had "permitted" AI capabilities after it's hit its target and exploded.

Tesla's self-driving code may ignore stop signs, act unsafe. Patch coming ... soon

The word “recall” for an over-the-air software update is anachronistic and just flat wrong!

OK, OK Mr Pedant, we'll just stick with "fix for potentially lethal poor and inadequate software" then.

More victims of fake crypto investor scam speak to The Register

Pro Tip

If someone's investing in your project, the only direction that money should be flowing is from their account into your account.

Gen Z lingo and search engines: A Millennial Odyssey

If you want to see how nu-Bing will work and what it looks like, you can....

sign up tp a MS account and then apply to join a waiting list. I can remember the launch of Google 25 years ago, and there was a distinct lack of having to join waiting lists, is the thinking that they need to create a hype and then have people waiting excitedly to use the magic computer?

I, like everyone else, am very keen to see what crap I can get it to generate in order to amuse myself, but if it's so resource intensive that we're back to the days of having to wait days to have our turn at running something, it is severely underwhelming as a modern technology.

Musk's view count antics are perfect cover for Twitter's paid API failure

"Please stay tuned while we make adjustments to the uh … 'algorithm'"

It really is making him take leave of his senses. If his needy ego is feeling damaged because his new toy has publicly shown that whilst he has many proclaimed followers, not many are active worshippers, publicly stating that he's going to rewrite an algorithm so that it says he's more popular is not the cunning plan he thinks it is. Because when he proclaims "Look! I'm actually more popular!", everybody is just going to point out that he simply changed the code to make it say that.

Which will make him look even more pathetically needy.

Microsoft's AI Bing also factually wrong, fabricated text during launch demo

The answers may not be accurate. It's just such a superior experience

What a brilliant summary of this stupid hype. It may produce a load of worthless bullshit, but it's such wonderful sounding worthless bullshit that we can't help but be dazzled by it.

US military spends weekend shooting down Useless Floating Objects

Brigadier General Patrick Ryder said it "wasn't an aircraft per se"

Well what the hell was it then, this craft that was just pootling about up in the air, seemingly defying all known laws of physics? Surely it was the job of the Brig to give the public some decent information in order to provide a bit of reassurance, rather than seeding another million conspiracy theories with this sort of vague philosophising....

Roses are red, algorithms are blue, here's a poem I made a machine write for you

I've been applying my organic intelligence to figure out if it is possible to drink at all 13

You need Dijkstra's algorithm.

And probably some sort of graph of time between bladder reliefs as number of drinks increases too.

Subsidies? All UK chip industry needs is tax, rule tweaks, claims rightwing thinktank

Tory think tank proposes solution to problem <X> : tax cuts

Seeing as that's the exact same "solution" they propose for every problem, and has been for 40 years or more, maybe they might want to do a bit of actual thinking in their tank for a change and see if they can possibly come up with a new thought.

No more rockstars, say Billy Idol, Joan Jett in Workday Super Bowl ad

We know that using Workday makes you great at your job. But that don't make you a rockstar.

So consume tons of drink and drugs at work too, like we did, because that's what fuckin' rockstars do!

SpaceX cuts off Ukraine's 'offensive' Starlink use

there were things SpaceX could do to limit use it doesn't agree with

So Musk gets to run Twitter entirely based on his personal whims because he bought it. OK, fair enough, even if it makes him look like an idiot.

Musk gets to dictate what a country can do to defend itself from an invasion because he gave them some mobile phones. Not OK, makes him look like a callous megalomaniac more concerned about his business than millions of people's lives.

Google now won't black-hole all AI-made pages as spam

Will these models actually be useful and we can all spend less time browsing the internet?

We'll all spend less time browsing the internet using these search engines.

Once a few people have got these models churning out billions of garbage AI generated webpages a day, and the search engines have then crawled this garbage and added it to their web of "information", they will essentially become useless. Everyone will get furious and someone else will have to find a way of supplying reliable information that avoids all meaningless AI "content".

Find My Kids app is basically AirTags for your offspring

Re: Find my kid's watch

It won't take long for the kid to work out that they can take the watch off either, so the parent might check and see that their little angel is indeed still at home, whilst he's really in the park with his friends drinking cider.

Google shows off upcoming AI search features, leaves Bard waiting in the wings

Oh dear, the Bard hath on this sweet morn, a calumny of dollars forsaken

The question that wiped $120bn off Google’s valuation

They put out a demo showing it off, during which it gave a wrong answer (about space telescopes).

Result : massive share price drop.

Bank of England won't call it Britcoin but says digital pound 'likely to be needed in future'

external service interface providers to add functionality to the CBDC

Yep, would definitely use it if unspecified 3rd parties were able to add unspecified "functionality" to my money. Like Amazon spamming me constantly based on everything I buy ever. Palantir being informed of any medicine I buy. Government being able to limit payment to 3 beers per evening on a night out..........

Conversational AI tells us what we want to hear – a fib that the Web is reliable and friendly

we have little choice but to trust whatever ChatGPT or LaMDA say to us

We very much have that choice, and instead of everybody getting too overexcited and jumping straight on the bandwagon of hype without sufficient pause for thought, it would be much better if people carefully considered what this means.

These models are able to digest huge amounts of human written text and then regurgitate something that primarily reads as a plausible written article, containing a frankenstein mashup of things it considered to relate to it. The articles will wow people when they first see them , then frustrate them more and more as they realise that it's often just meaningless empty verbiage.

Search engines, at the moment, trawl huge amounts of human written text, and create indexes and maps that lead you back to that human written text, which is often useful.

So, if the search result for how to fix the J8754 input nodule of a 700 series Doobryfettler is either (a) a load of nonsense or (b) instructions written by someone who knows, which will you prefer to trust?

Take the morning off because Outlook has already

Microsoft proves that the 365 branding was a terrible choice

I suggest renaming it "Microsoft Occasionally".

Cat saves 'good bots' from Twitter API purge

An account that posts images and videos each time a cat returns home. Is that "good content"?

Compared to most of what is posted on Twitter, I would say that is "good content".

Wikimedia Foundation confirms, and bemoans, Pakistan ban

threatened bans if Wikipedia did not censor content it deemed "sacrilegious"

Of course, one country's idea of sacrilegious is often another country's idea of gospel truth, and vice versa. So which country gets to decide?

If you're scared of people being exposed to ideas because it might make them question your state mandated belief system, then you're really admitting that you think that belief system is not strong enough to cope with exposure to other ideas.

Trust, not tech, is holding back a safer internet

the more you can do of both the better at it you can be – and the greater the risks of abuse

But the trustworthy government would never abuse its' powers if it had access to everybody's communications, right?

Government ‘misinformation’ unit flagged investigative journalism and critics

British government torched over lack of chips strategy

Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport was working on one "to be published shortly"

Ah yes. That was when Nadine was the minister "in charge". Do search for the Daily Dorries page on Twitter if you've never seen it, and acquaint yourself with some of the literary genius that she actually has published over the years.

For instance : ""One of our own has been murdered in a graveyard, had his dick hacked off and fed to a cat. We have no idea who did it".

Chinese surveillance balloon over US causes fearful gasbagging

Another report described it as "the size of three buses"

"Excellent plan comrade, they'll never spot it!"

Then again, "a bus" is quite a vague unit of measurement, isn't it?

Tesla admits it was asked to hand over Autopilot, Full Self-Driving docs to investigators

Other companies are getting in the fast lane to innovate right past it

Sure they'll be OK once all their software people get back from fixing the primitive web based bulletin board that the boss has currently transferred them to. Whenever that is.

Intel cuts some workers’ pay to fund its future

CEO Pat Gelsinger taking a 25 percent cut

Last figure I saw for his remuneration was about $170 million for 2021, so he'll have to scrape by on a measly $10 million a month from now on.

The implication that he would somehow notice that is quite laughable.

Landlord favorite Twitter sued for allegedly not paying rent on Market Square HQ

The company has apparently been pushing ahead with plans to become a payment platform

TwitterPay : The payment platform that doesn't pay its bills!

Sounds trustworthy.

Microsoft, GitHub, OpenAI urge judge to bin Copilot code rip-off case

you have to intend to facilitate infringement to violate the law

And they certainly did intend to facilitate copyright infringement of attribution and GPL licences when they fed all that code containing these licences into the AI mincer. I don't think "our AI didn't look at the licenses" is a precedent they want to end up setting, as it will make their own product licences invalid when used by an AI too.