* Posts by aerogems

1886 publicly visible posts • joined 16 Feb 2021

Grok-1 chatbot code released – open source or open Pandora's box?

aerogems Silver badge
Boffin

I've always kind of wondered.. if you could somehow quantitate the storage capacity of the human brain, how much would it be. Then, assuming you could ever create a truly sentient AI, or do like the show Upload and digitize your consciousness, it seems like storage would be the problem. If you could exist essentially forever, and continue racking up new experiences and knowledge, that all has to be stored somewhere. If something that is basically just repeating back to us our own questions in the form of a statement, and maybe pulling in some random shit from who knows where, nothing even remotely close to what the average human brain is capable of, and that already takes somewhere around a TB of memory... I guess I won't be living long enough to ever see a sentient AI that approaches even the level of a squirrel or cow unless someone comes up with a major breakthrough in storage density.

Nvidia turns up the AI heat with 1,200W Blackwell GPUs

aerogems Silver badge
FAIL

Not sure what comment you meant to respond to, but it couldn't have been mine unless you willfully misinterpreted what I wrote. I know subtlety on the Internet tends to get lost, but I went out of my way to give a rather specific example. Maybe that's why you put a question mark instead of a period, you weren't sure you were responding to the correct comment.

Instead of increasing the amount of power drawn, work on improving performance within existing power consumption levels. Like how ARM chips can give performance within spitting distance of x86, but at maybe 20% of the power draw. The point at which video cards started needing their own dedicated power feeds from computer PSUs, that should have been the point at which either they worked to up the amount of power that can be supplied by the bus, or started working on efficiency rather than performance.

Though, you are right, I added an extra zero onto the end of things, so it is KW, not MW.

aerogems Silver badge
Mushroom

Who needs central heating when you can just play a few rounds of the latest FPS and heat your place with the waste heat? Shit, you could just pump it into the clothes dryer too.

What I want to see, is sort of where CPUs have been going. Improving the performance per watt ratio. If I could get RTX 20XX performance out of the power demands of an old GTX 9XX series card, great. Then try to improve it to 30XX and so on; 1.2MW just for the GPU is well past ridiculous. I just picture that scene from National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation where they turn on the Christmas lights and then cut to the power meter spinning like crazy.

https://youtu.be/oHVG2UrWNh0?si=hP4QD0VTSC8j6zLY&t=75

Sorry, Siri: Apple may be eyeing Google Gemini for future iPhones

aerogems Silver badge

Wouldn't at all surprise me if this is a "victim" of the EU gatekeeper law. Why waste all that time and money when you could just make it Google's headache to deal with?

Ad agency boss owned two Ferraris but wouldn't buy a real server

aerogems Silver badge
FAIL

The article very specifically mentioned SMB shares. Even on Windows, where it's the "native" file sharing system, it can be flaky AF, working one day and then not the next despite no discernable changes. macOS is using SAMBA, which adds another layer of flakiness onto things.

aerogems Silver badge

Re: The owner has two Ferraris. They have that kind of money

I remember hearing somewhere or other that the gear ratio on a Ferrari is such that you can basically never take it out of first gear and be within legal speed limits almost anywhere. Which, kind of makes me wonder what the point is. Then again, I've always been a bit of a function over form sort of person. If something looks nice, bonus, but it's a distant second to getting me from A to B reliably.

aerogems Silver badge

Sort of reminds me of a global company I worked for once upon a time. In certain areas of the healthcare field, this is a very well-known brand. I saw the markups on some of the products they sell, and they were ridiculous, like 300-400%, and I was in a meeting where some SVP was saying how if customers call them up saying they're going to go with a cheaper competitor they tell them, "Good luck with that!"

Anyway... internally, the company is incredibly stingy. They wouldn't pay for a proper PLM tool, or even to make some changes to a home grown one they had for a specific site to make it applicable for the entire company. So, instead of copying and pasting a bunch of shit from spreadsheets into emails all day, I had to cobble something together with VBA. A horrible solution, but pretty much literally the only one I had available, and likely only because the IT department forgot, or was too lazy, to modify the Office install to not include VBA.

In the rush to build AI apps, please, please don't leave security behind

aerogems Silver badge
Coffee/keyboard

To Quote Futurama

Hahahahahahahaha! Oh wait, you're serious! Let me laugh even harder!

If history is any guide, security will be like concern #30 on a list of 20 concerns. Up until it starts to affect an influential politician, celebrity, or a large enough group of common people that it sparks a sea change.

Microsoft license shuffle means Power Apps users could break the bank

aerogems Silver badge

Re: Very generalised response ahoy

That's both more than I needed, and would never have gotten approval. I just needed something to facilitate collecting info for things like creating new customers and vendors in SAP. Which is more than their Forms thing could do (it only seemed useful for creating questionnaires) and something I could not, for the effing life of me, figure out how to do using their app builder because there was no documentation. I just needed something that would do some real basic validation checks and then email me the result in a nice easy to use format for creating the BP record(s). You'd think Power Apps would be perfect for that, maybe even overkill... and it might be... if I could have ever found even a working example app similar to what I wanted to do.

I tried just creating a simple Access form that people could fill out and send to me, but my manager at the time must've been molested by Access in the past or something for the way he was so adamantly adverse to the very idea of using Access for anything. He got visibly angry at just the mere suggestion without even being willing to hear me out on why it was better than using a bunch of Excel sheets.

Anyway, good job.

aerogems Silver badge
Windows

At a previous job I was looking for a way to help automate routine data collection, and looked at the Power Apps as a possible solution. But, for the life of me, I couldn't find any real documentation on them. You either use whatever the SharePoint wizard things create, or fumble around in the dark until you chance across a light switch. Not that I give a gerbil's wet fart if it would have ended up costing that employer more, but suppose it's just as well. Now I know not to bother with those apps in the future.

Oh look, cracking down on Big Tech works. Brave, Firefox, Vivaldi surge on iOS

aerogems Silver badge
Facepalm

Re: Be Brave

If you see no irony in that statement, you are one of the fuckwits in denial about being a raging asshole.

aerogems Silver badge

Re: "make their websites dependant on Google's proprietary features"

Not just with games, but especially with games, I've always been of the opinion that the game/app should be developed using systems specced to the minimum system requirements. Then you don't even need "recommended" listings because if the game/app is playable/usable on the "minimum" it will always scale up better than it scales down. None of this shit where you give the devs some absolute bleeding edge level system for their dev work. You can have a really nice powerful server with a metric shittonne of cores to compile the code, but when the devs are testing their work, it's done on systems that will be considered the minimum requirements later.

aerogems Silver badge
Trollface

Re: Be Brave

You could just say MAGA cultist.

aerogems Silver badge
FAIL

Re: Be Brave

FFS, give the culture war bullshit a rest already. The reason people don't want to associate with you isn't because they're "woke" it's because you're an asshole. It's not them, it's you. It's always been you, and will always be you unless you are willing to put in the time and effort to change. Save the virtue signaling for the next klan rally.

aerogems Silver badge
Coat

Who knew Highlander was right!? There can be only one!

aerogems Silver badge

The webkit only thing wouldn't be quite so bad if Apple actually bothered to keep it up to date with web standards. But, sort of like MS with Internet Explorer, they lost interest in it as soon as they became the dominate player. It wasn't until there was some competition that all of a sudden they decided it was worth putting some work into it.

Trump 'tried to sell Truth Social to Musk' as SPAC deal stalled

aerogems Silver badge

Re: Trump is desperately looking for someone ...

Awww... are you jealous, sweetie? I'm sure if you weren't such a raging asshole someone would pay attention to you too.

aerogems Silver badge
Terminator

Re: Hey Buddy... can you spare a dime (or a billion or two)

So the T-800, the T-800v2, and the T-1000?

aerogems Silver badge
Big Brother

Re: pushed for Elon Musk to speak at the upcoming Republican National Convention

Given the whole "we can refuse to sell you any future vehicles if you don't let us buy back your cybertruck" bit in the purchase agreement, I wouldn't put it past Xitler to try and add something about how you must register with the RNC and vote for Republican candidates. I doubt any court would uphold that provision as being legal, but until someone actually bothered to challenge it in court, a lot of people might just assume it is legal or decide they don't want to risk it.

aerogems Silver badge
Facepalm

Re: Trump is desperately looking for someone ...

Stop using borrowed words you don't even understand and try thinking for yourself for a change.

aerogems Silver badge

The fact that SPACs are created with the specific purpose of acquiring a private company. It's basically right in their charter.

aerogems Silver badge
Boffin

Re: Hey Buddy... can you spare a dime (or a billion or two)

Anyone who actually reads the Bible will quickly realize that God is not the hero of the story. Not saying Lucifer necessarily is the good guy either, but it's definitely not God. The "guy" creates humanity as exhibits in a private zoo, creates women for the sexual gratification of men, kicks humanity out of his zoo for gaining self-awareness, commits global genocide and later infanticide (which Christians still celebrate to this day), he helps the Jewish tribes roam around the desert wiping out various city-states for 40-years... then he cucks Joseph, is a deadbeat/absentee father who basically only shows up once during his kid's entire life, and has basically been completely absent from the world since the Old Testament days.

These are not "good guy" type activities, even based on the morality system "he" handed down to humanity.

aerogems Silver badge
Holmes

Re: How much?

Actually, I'd argue it's value is whatever the buyer is willing to pay.

aerogems Silver badge
Boffin

Re: Trump isn't planning to invade Russia in winter

Let him try. The US govt can just seize any assets he owns, like property, and sell it off. Not to mention freeze his bank accounts. He'd basically be dependent upon Putin to provide basically everything for him, and I doubt Putin would be terribly inclined to do so. He might be willing to allow Trump to claim asylum in Russia because it will annoy the US and provide him with a valuable bargaining chip, but I doubt very much he'd be willing to supply Trump with the kind of lifestyle he's accustomed to. Sort of like Snowden, he might be given a work visa and allowed to apply for jobs with Russian companies, but I'm betting that's about as far as Putin'd be willing to go.

Though, I have to say, I'm very curious to find out what would happen if a former US President were convicted of a felony and sentenced to time in prison. Does the Secret Service continue its protective detail or does being convicted of a felony mean that is forfeit? What about the pension and other perks former POTUS' get? Does that continue or does it also go away? They'd have to keep Trump in protective custody, but that was never really designed to be a long-term thing. He'd be completely isolated for years. Just all kinds of things that, up to now, no one has ever really had any reason to really even think about, because every previous POTUS (maybe save Nixon) was smart enough to avoid all the shit Trump just did right out in the open and even bragged about.

Also, as a number of cases involving Bill Clinton have demonstrated, a sitting POTUS can still be expected to stand trial for things that happened before they were POTUS, not to mention states can do their own thing regardless. So, things like the hoarding of classified documents and refusing to give them back when asked (numerous times) along with conspiring to obstruct efforts to retrieve them... that all happened when he wasn't POTUS, so could continue on regardless. Which would be another interesting one. What if a sitting POTUS is convicted of a crime they committed before being POTUS? You'd think if we had a functioning legislature, it would be a pretty swift impeachment and conviction to remove them from office, but a functioning legislature is not something we have right now.

aerogems Silver badge

Re: "the use of a Chinese firm"

He had basically two options: China or Saudi Arabia, and it wasn't much of a choice. If you default on a loan for the Chinese, they don't sent a goon squad to kill you, dismember your corpse, and have someone wearing your clothes act like a body double.

aerogems Silver badge
IT Angle

Re: Hey Buddy... can you spare a dime (or a billion or two)

But you know, the longer you listen to this abortion debate, the more you hear this phrase ‘sanctity of life'. You’ve heard that. Sanctity of life. You believe in it? Personally, I think it's a bunch of shit. Well, I mean, life is sacred? Who said so? God? Hey, if you read history, you realise that God is one of the leading causes of death. Has been for thousands of years. Hindus, Muslims, Jews, Christians all taking turns killing each other ‘cuz God told them it was a good idea!

The sword of God, the blood of the land, veangence is mine. Millions of dead motherfuckers. Millions of dead motherfuckers all because they gave the wrong answer to the God question. ‘You believe in God?' ‘No.’ *Pdoom*. Dead. ‘You believe in God?' ‘Yes.' ‘You believe in my God? ‘No.' *Poom*. Dead. ‘My God has a bigger dick than your God!

-- George Carlin

Truly one of the greatest philosophers of the modern age. Pick almost any topic and there's likely a fitting quote from Carlin on it.

aerogems Silver badge
Facepalm

Re: How much?

He did stare directly at a solar eclipse, so I wouldn't put it past him.

aerogems Silver badge
Big Brother

Re: Trump is desperately looking for someone ...

Care to ever actually put your name to your shitposts you coward?

aerogems Silver badge

Re: Why would Musk want to buy that

Trump doesn't outright own TS, and he has some kind of exclusivity agreement with the holding company. So, he basically can't post on Xitter without violating the terms of that contract, which then probably can strip him of his ownership stake and potentially cost him hundreds of millions when he's bleeding cash everywhere.

aerogems Silver badge

Re: How much?

The people who do those "How to become a" series of documentaries on Netflix should do one on how to become a world class grifter. Then, of the 5-6 people they profile for each episode, Trump and Xitler would be the capstones.

aerogems Silver badge

Re: How much?

The whole point of a SPAC is to end run the IPO process. An already public company, created for the sole purpose of merging with a privately held company, merges with the privately held company and it's then instantly publicly traded. Which is why it's something I say should be outlawed, or at least very tightly regulated. There may be a few edge cases where it's the legitimately best option, but probably 99.9 times out of 100, it's going to be a bunch of grifters looking to scam gullible idiots.

aerogems Silver badge
Windows

Re: Obviously a Trumpist lurking in El Reg

There's always at least one sad bastard who's a member of the MAGA and/or Xitler cult.

aerogems Silver badge

Re: Hey Buddy... can you spare a dime (or a billion or two)

“Religion has actually convinced people that there's an invisible man living in the sky who watches everything you do, every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a special list of ten things he does not want you to do. And if you do any of these ten things, he has a special place, full of fire and smoke and burning and torture and anguish, where he will send you to live and suffer and burn and choke and scream and cry forever and ever 'til the end of time!

But He loves you. He loves you, and He needs money! He always needs money! He's all-powerful, all-perfect, all-knowing, and all-wise, somehow just can't handle money!”

-- George Carlin

https://youtu.be/iouZYYzQEjU

aerogems Silver badge
Unhappy

Re: How much?

There are, sadly, millions of people who are willing to give this "rich" asshole money. Money they often can't really afford, and he shouldn't need if he were as wealthy as he claims to be. If of the 70-something million people who voted for him last time, they all gave him an average of like $13, you arrive at a billion dollars if my math is correct.

But, as with anything involving the stock market, the valuation is generally a worthless figure useful only for bragging rights.

aerogems Silver badge
Mushroom

The SEC, and its various counterparts around the world, really need to outlaw this SPAC garbage. They're designed specifically to get around having to provide a lot of the investor info you'd normally need to give for an IPO. Generally the only people who would be interested in that sort of thing are shady organizations with people who are looking to cash out before they're required to file anything with the SEC and everyone else is left holding the bag.

That said, there's even more drama going on with the Truth Social SPAC. There's now one more lawsuit Trump has to deal with, alleging that he's trying to alter the terms of the deal by giving himself a larger stake in the resulting company and diluting the ownership stake of one of the major financial backers.

https://www.politico.com/news/2024/03/01/legal-hurdles-swell-for-trumps-truth-social-deal-in-11th-hour-00144398

The end of classic Outlook for Windows is coming. Are you ready?

aerogems Silver badge
Boffin

On the one hand... the classic Outlook codebase has got to be creaking loudly by now. It was created back in the innocent days of the interwebs and before Microsoft was forced to consider security implications. So, starting fresh, taking all those lessons learned over the decades, seems like a good thing.

On the other hand... making the cutover before you have a lot of key functionality in place just seems stupid. Windows 11, as a whole, is fine, but the decision to use the incomplete 10X UI overhaul is just baffling. Here they are doubling down on this bizarre idea. I tried the new Outlook a couple months back, and ended up going back after a couple hours. I can deal with it looking different, I can learn new button placements... I haven't surrendered the higher functions of my brain. but it was lacking some things I needed at the time.

On the other other hand, if it means we finally get a unified inbox, there's at least that.

Cryptocurrency laundryman gets hung out to dry

aerogems Silver badge
Thumb Up

I always kind of wondered about that. Why is bitcoin so beloved by online scammers when there's the ability to trace every transaction built right into the "currency" itself. Seems like it would make it easy to see where the "money" is flowing. I just never really cared enough to look into it on my own, so thanks El Reg for satisfying a minor curiosity of mine.

Justice Dept reportedly starts criminal probe into Boeing door bolt incident

aerogems Silver badge
Unhappy

Re: Airlines Being The Safest Form Of Transportation

What food?

aerogems Silver badge
Coat

Re: And another one today

Just so long as I'm not using my legs like some kind of sucker.

aerogems Silver badge
FAIL

John Oliver did a good piece on the rise and fall of Boeing two weeks ago. It's worth a watch. Short version: Aggressive cost cutting. Who knew that gutting quality control would affect, you know, quality!?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8oCilY4szc

Intern with superuser access 'promoted' himself to CEO

aerogems Silver badge

Eeek. I had a brief job in 1991 where we similarly all had admin level accounts. In fact, it was worse than that. Everybody was told to log on as user root! I thought that sort of nonsense had been killed with fire.

One of my most recent jobs, the company was migrating ERPs. As I was told it, the previous ERP, everyone had admin access. This was only a few months ago. It's unfortunately far more alive and well than it should be.

aerogems Silver badge

Reminds me a bit of a former coworker. If you left your workstation unlocked to go use the restroom or something, he'd use your computer to send messages to people or set up meetings for like 2am on Saturday to discuss the weather. He claimed it was to make sure people would lock their workstations, which it did, but really he was just taking the piss.

We're not Meta support: State AGs tell Zuck to fix rampant account takeover problem

aerogems Silver badge

Re: Phone number recycling

We don't have time for rational solutions!

-- George Carlin

Boeing paper trail goes cold over door plug blowout

aerogems Silver badge
Facepalm

Of course Ted Cruz is concerned. The next time Texas has some kind of major natural disaster and he decides to fuck off to Cancun, he could be in one of those door plug seats!

HP print rental service seeks more users to become subscription addicts

aerogems Silver badge
Boffin

Ah printers

One of those things I remember unfondly, like dialup modems, and CRT monitors. I still have a laser printer around here somewhere, but I haven't used it in probably around 3-years. I think the last time I used it at all was to print off a copy of my eulogy for a good friend that passed away about 3-years ago, and that was basically one page; haven't touched it since.

Still, for people who do a lot of printing, I can see how this might be better for them. If you're a lawyer, just as the first example that comes to mind as a profession that may do a lot of printing*, it might be worth paying a small premium to have ink be delivered to you rather than hit up Amazon or the local retail store when suddenly you get an error message about being out of ink. As long as this is an option people can opt into, and they are still selling a la carte carts... it's not something I am ever likely to be interested in, but if others are, fine.

What I still have a problem with, however, is HP and others integrating a bunch of DRM garbage into the carts so people can't refill them or things like that.

* Yes, yes, they should be using a laser, not inkjet... it's just an example, don't overthink it

Job interview descended into sweary shouting match, candidate got the gig anyway

aerogems Silver badge
Thumb Up

Respect

Not often I can say this about a CxO, but the CTO in this particular story seems to be the rare breed who could admit they were wrong. Not only that, they had someone speak truth to their power and didn't let their ego get in the way... eventually at least.

US politicians want ByteDance to sell off TikTok or face ban

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Trollface

The American mind must not be at the mercy of Chinese algorithms

Just the American politician at the mercy of Chinese dollars.

Chrome users – get an alert when extensions are in danger of falling into wrong hands

aerogems Silver badge

Google should buy this extension and make it a part of Chrome. The fact that they haven't done it already is kind of inexcusable really given how often they've been removing extensions for this very reason.

Apple's had it with Epic's app store shenanigans, terminates dev account

aerogems Silver badge
Boffin

Re: Android has a 70% global market share.

Being the sort who doesn't develop emotional attachments to inanimate objects or fictional entities, every time I'm set for an upgrade to my device I look at both Android and iOS, and iOS tends to win every time. Longer support, better performance, and better privacy round out three of the top metrics I use when deciding what to go with. Google has slowly been pulling its shit together with Android, but sometimes it feels like one step forward, three steps back. Also, to be fair, the longevity of support tends to be a Qualcomm thing that Google can't directly influence. We'll see what happens with their custom designed SoCs given Google's habit of randomly* dropping products. So far, they are still falling short of Apple's SoC, but they're within spitting distance. So, if Google manages to actually support these SoCs with newer versions of Android for roughly the same length of time Apple does iPhones, that would definitely be a big step forward. Still, we're still a couple years away from seeing how things shake out, and then I'd want to see that they are committed to doing it over the span of multiple SoCs. So, maybe by the early 2030s, if Google hasn't decided designing and maintaining their own SoCs is too expensive, I'll consider an Android device. I know Samsung has made commitments to like 5-years of support, but only on their flagship devices, and there's usually a pretty significant delay between the time Google releases some update and Samsung is able to graft their useless shit on top.

* At least from the perspective of someone on the outside. There's likely some kind of reason, like a key person on the project left or joined a different group, or there was a management shuffle and the new manager didn't see the value in the project.

aerogems Silver badge

Re: Android has a 70% global market share.

If you use one of the ad slinging APIs to add ads to your app you can "sell" it for free and still make a decent chunk of change if it's popular enough.