* Posts by Ken G

708 publicly visible posts • joined 29 Apr 2021

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Sci-fi author Neal Stephenson wants AIs fighting AIs so those most fit to live with us survive

Ken G Silver badge

so, management?

"I’d be putting my energies into building AIs whose sole purpose was to predate upon existing AI models by using every conceivable strategy to feed bogus data into them, interrupt their power supplies, discourage investors, and otherwise interfere with their operations.”

I've now started wondering if I'm an AI.

AWS says Britain needs more nuclear power to feed AI datacenter surge

Ken G Silver badge

Yes, but then again, No.

Nuclear power is a useful contributor to carbon neutral power generation. Europe (and it's semi-detached neighbour, the UK) would benefit from more of that.

Kicking it off to serve the current AI bubble is pointless since there's a 99% chance* that will have burst before the first reactor is designed, let along got through planning approval.

* with a 0.99% chance that AI will work as intended and provide us with smarter and smarter machines designing portable fusion generators and a 0.01% chance that it will work not as intended and make us it's duracell bunny bitches ala The Matrix

‘Infuriated’, ‘disappointed' ... Ex-VMware customers explain why they migrated to Nutanix

Ken G Silver badge

Re: Can we start IT revolution 100% devoid of USA in 10 years?

I don't know about sovereign but there are several EU initiatives in that direction (one being mentioned in El Reg today around search engines). I agree an injection of money to scale these up to enterprise level would be welcome.

As US scientists flee Trump, MP urges Britain to do more to nab them

Ken G Silver badge

Aged like milk

I don't know if the British Prime Minister reads El Reg, but this Europe Day article (May 9th) was followed after the weekend on May 12th by a White Paper condemning immigration, especially skilled immigration.

The damage this has done to our country is incalculable. Public services and housing access have been placed under too much pressure. Our economy has been distorted by perverse incentives to import workers rather than invest in our own skills. In sectors like engineering, for example, apprenticeships have almost halved while visas doubled.

But arguably even worse is the wound this failure has opened when it comes to trust in politics. It is a wound, as I said on my first day as prime minister, that can only be healed by actions not words.

Computacenter IT guy let girlfriend into Deutsche Bank server rooms, says fired whistleblower

Ken G Silver badge

Re: Will they never learn?

It sounds like these bodies were uncovered.

Linux in Excel? Sure, why not ruin both

Ken G Silver badge

It's ideal for the parts of the business who refuse to move off Excel

Nationwide power outages knock Spain, Portugal offline

Ken G Silver badge

Re: Good old radio

I would have gone with longwave, if anyone except Sweden is using it.

Ken G Silver badge
Trollface

Re: To channel a certain class of reader ...

You need to get out more. Take a holiday.

Ken G Silver badge

Re: To channel a certain class of reader ...

A grip on the big knife switch marked "do not touch"?

Ken G Silver badge

The Russians didn't defeat the nazis. That was the Soviet Union. Ukraine lost more people fighting the nazis than Russia, per head of population so why back Russia over Ukraine? The USSR was led by a Georgian then so why back Russia over Georgia? Russians aren't a different race to the rest of Europe so saying this isn't racism.

There is no-one in the Russian government today who fought the nazis. There is no-one in the German government who was one. Look at their actions now.

The one interview question that will protect you from North Korean fake workers

Ken G Silver badge

Re: Hiring candidates who can't pronounce their own name?

I was thinking something as simple as "Sean Costello".

Ken G Silver badge

Re: Hiring candidates who can't pronounce their own name?

If you ask someone their name and they tell you something, you've got to assume that's how they pronounce it.

Many yanks have Irish names, both given and surnames but pronounce both incorrectly by Irish standards. I imagine the same is true for Polish names.

Ken G Silver badge

Re: The one interview question that will protect you

This must be one of those trick questions where you know the answer is forty-two but can't explain why.

IBM dragged down by DOGE contract cancellation roulette

Ken G Silver badge

Re: "thousands of US jobs have been cut"

Can you talk me through that one, please?

I'm not arguing the principle, just confused as to the application.

"I think there should be a law whereby, if a multinational corporation cuts jobs anywhere, it does not have the right to create jobs elsewhere before a given amount of months."

Given the corporation is multinational, which country should make this law, the one where the jobs are to be created or the one where they are to be lost?

Or the one where the company is registered or the one where beneficial ownership rests?

DOGE may help Elon Musk's biz empire dodge $2.4B in liabilities – Senate probe

Ken G Silver badge
Devil

How dare people attribute grubby commercial motives to Mr Musk

All his life he's wanted to be the smartest man in the room and in the Oval Office he's finally achieved that.

Ken G Silver badge

Re: Ummmm...

That is exactly what the American people (who bothered to vote) voted for. None of that was secret.

They are now rounding up federal judges who interfere with deportations of US citizens to South American (allegedly death) camps.

Trump blinks: 'Substantially' lower China tariffs promised

Ken G Silver badge
Facepalm

Re: Looks like China Learned the Lessons of the Opium Wars

The name of the country, in English, is Ireland. The name of the country, in Irish is Éire. You're using neither.

Silly me thought that the Irish were 'elbow deep' in the Great Hunger at about that time but perhaps they were trading opium for potatoes all along?

Downward DOGE: Elon Musk keeps revising cost-trimming goals in a familiar pattern

Ken G Silver badge

Re: "Not too bright, huh?"

No to both of those.

The nationalist side hadn't worked out their path from union to independence, any more than Ireland had in 1922 or Estonia in 1989. They assumed a transition period when they could work things out. That's not an unreasonable assumption, a lot of people thought there'd be a transition period from your EU membership to your preferred Brexit, not a hard break.

The EU said the lights are on in the window and Scotland is welcome, though they'd have to meet the same requirements as anyone else. That would involve having a written constitution and a working central bank (not necessarily it's own currency).

At the moment the Scottish banks issue Scottish pounds as promissory notes pinned 1:1 to English pounds and need to have the same value of English notes in their vaults as Scottish ones they hand over the counter. They do this by holding 'Titans' or £100million notes. A future Scottish central bank could do the same, but maybe float the exchange rate rather than having it 1:1.

Ken G Silver badge

explain KFC and Chicken McNuggets then

Trump's tariff turmoil leaves IT projects in deep freeze

Ken G Silver badge

Re: Shipments

Or send them to Canada and run them across the Great Lakes in fast boats to sell in internet speakeasies?

Ireland opens probe into Musk’s X over Grok’s AI data slurp

Ken G Silver badge
Facepalm

OK, that post tells me two things, firstly that you're not Irish and have never lived in Ireland (because otherwise you would know RTÉ) and secondly that you have what I will politely choose to call strong views on the effectiveness of the principle of subsidiarity within the European project and on Ireland's immigration policy (again without having lived there). Care to explain what exercises you so much about either?

Ken G Silver badge
Trollface

I know, I know, that's supposed to be the job of you Brits but we've learned to make do over the past century plus.

So long as that 'destruction' takes the form of higher living standards, longer life expectancy and being welcome in more countries then I guess we'll continue to put up with it.

Meta's AI, built on ill-gotten content, can probably build a digital you

Ken G Silver badge
Boffin

Caprica

Great show, cancelled too soon.

Avatars built from social media, medical and surveillance data of their subject become self aware in their virtual world.

It wasn't just giant killer robots. It was giant killer robots on a mission from god.

Microsoft resets 'days since last Windows 11 problem' counter to 0

Ken G Silver badge

This bigger

Remove the '0'.

How do you explain what magnetic fields do to monitors to people wearing bowling shoes?

Ken G Silver badge

Superpower?

I haven't formally worked Tech Support in a very long time though I am called in informally and I'm often involved in root cause analysis.

I am completely useless for these purposes because no-one is ever able to reproduce a problem when I am in the room. When I'm there, things work perfectly, as soon as I leave they break again.

The converse is sometimes true, there have been several systems where I've been told those never go wrong or you can't do anything to hurt it from the keyboard and 5 minutes later...

Genetic data repo OpenSNP to self-destruct before authoritarians weaponize it

Ken G Silver badge

Re: One small remark here

You may be in a country where this is true, I am in one (and from another) where I don't believe it is.

Even in the UK, where it is almost a duopoly, do you believe the same people are funding Reform, the LibDems and Sinn Féin?

Boeing's Starliner may fly again, pending fixes to literally everything

Ken G Silver badge

Re: Boeing. The *safe* option because of all their "experience"

Starliner Neo Max

Ken G Silver badge

If it doesn't then what will fly escort on the B-52s?

Signalgate storm intensifies as journalist releases full secret Houthi airstrike chat

Ken G Silver badge

Re: I cannot see how bombing the Houthis helps

When all you have is a hammer, everyone you meet looks like someone who needs to be hit with a hammer.

Source: Thor (2011)

British govt wants to mainline AI, but its arteries are clogged with legacy tech

Ken G Silver badge
Windows

Re: Legacy Tech - How legacy?

I remember having exercises scripting "AI" in LISP in the early 80's.

Ken G Silver badge

Re: And this is a bad thing why?

To do whatever AI does, of course.

Turn electricity into waste heat mostly.

Ken G Silver badge

But what happens if some bots become racist and homophobic?

Boeing's Starliner future uncertain as NASA weighs next steps

Ken G Silver badge

Re: Boeing needs to learn from SpaceX's mistakes and failures

That was 1997, most of these contracts happened since.

Show top LLMs some code and they'll merrily add in the bugs they saw in training

Ken G Silver badge
Facepalm

rather than anything that might be described as intelligence

It's a multi dimensional Markov Chain working on tokenised input. Calling it "artificial intelligence" isn't the same as describing what it does as intelligence.

BOFH: HR's AI hiring tool is perfectly unbiased – as long as you're us

Ken G Silver badge

Re: HR's AI hiring tool

Yes, just because they're lucky to get the job doesn't mean you're lucky to hire them.

UK must pay cyber pros more than its Prime Minister, top civil servant says

Ken G Silver badge
Thumb Up

Re: Careful what you wish for

Thank goodness you don't pay your PM so well then.

Ken G Silver badge
Trollface

A good Cyber Prostitute costs money!

Think of the training data alone. Whereas a British PM requires almost no training past housetraining.

It begins: Pentagon to give AI agents a role in decision making, ops planning

Ken G Silver badge
Black Helicopters

Re: What..

Not yet, but they're building it. Imagine a President for Life, without the Life.

A virtual Trump can look and sound like the original and translate any policy from Musk and Thiel into Trump-speak but will never stroke out.

Look out for a minor medical episode from which he bounces back stronger but stops appearing in public.

(unless there are doubles, can you imagine a more financially rewarding but spiritually draining job than being Trump's double?)

Techie pointed out meetings are pointless, and was punished for it

Ken G Silver badge

Re: Scrum

Well, early on the tester could be refining the test cases (or does Agile mean never having to agree your requirements in advance)?

Ken G Silver badge

Re: Scrum

Cascading dependencies always broke the model for me, I've worked in 3 places using SAFe and every time the problem was having a critical dependency on another product, whose product owner had no incentive to prioritise that over their own deliverables.

Ken G Silver badge
Facepalm

Re: Scrum

Yes, I and another external worker were amused by a new Scrum Coach (old Project Manager) having a daily standup which every day grew in length and size of team until it was about 30 people in a small room taking an hour to an hour and a half to micro-manage issues. The only part of the original intention that remained was that no-one was allowed sit down.

Hey programmers – is AI making us dumber?

Ken G Silver badge
Windows

Maybe I like the misery

Drivers these days, the don't know how to keep in lane or reverse into a parking space because AI does it for them. I meet drivers who don't know how to clean the plugs or how far to pull out the choke.

Airline pilots these days, they have GPS and collision avoidance radar and autopilots bringing them everywhere. Some of them don't know how to hand prop their engine and refuse to fly with their head out in the open air.

And you try and tell the young people of today that, and they won't believe you

As Amazon takes over the Bond franchise, we submit our scripts for the next flick

Ken G Silver badge

I think this opens up a world of possibilities

I would love to see several TV series in the Bond universe;

Paloma

Ideally with Ana de Armas continuing her role from NTTD, played as traditional Bond adventure.

Q Branch

Comedy about the trainee boffins and the adventures that provoke them to build exploding Lilos or chainsaw watches.

Moneypenny

Set in the 1960's with flashbacks to WW2 to show how Moneypenny became M's secretary in the style of Agent Carter

AI summaries turn real news into nonsense, BBC finds

Ken G Silver badge

Re: "The price of AI's extraordinary benefits"

Ask Copilot to enumerate them for you.

Ken G Silver badge

Re: I'm sorry, I'll read that again.

What?

Ken G Silver badge
Facepalm

More like the same automatic deflection that Anon users post to comments on sites such as this one.

Once there was a distinction between trolls and bots but AI means now bots can also troll.

Trump’s cyber chief pick has little experience in The Cyber

Ken G Silver badge

Re: In other news

Let's hope the Russian invasion can be over.

I'm a security expert, and I almost fell for a North Korea-style deepfake job applicant …Twice

Ken G Silver badge
Black Helicopters

Re: Asian accent!!!

What if they're speaking Polish but using an Asian simultaneous translation AI?

Ken G Silver badge
Angel

Re: My new interview question

There's good eating on them!

Ken G Silver badge
Trollface

Re: I won't be able to decide if the person I'm talking with is a real person or not

What if an AI tool can summarise the works of G.E. Moore and Hegel sufficiently well that it can convince you it is real and you aren't?

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