Posts by Not Yb

Building up the US power grid won't be wasted, even if the AI bubble bursts

Re: Would this be the same McKinsey that...

Daylight savings time was created because factories and other employers didn't have good cheap artificial light in the early days of the industrial revolution.

These days that's not really a problem. It has almost nothing to do with generating capacity as lighting is way down on the 'major usages of electric power' these days. Good LEDs changed the game.

Latest numbers I could find: Lighting was only 17% of electrical usage in the US, in 2018. It's probably gone down since then.

Sysadmin summoned to explain italics – to a user with at least two degrees

Re: Stupidity plus arrogance

The ones who could be taught, but refuse to even try to learn... those are the difficult ones. So many of them on the internet since that one September back in the 90s.

Re: Stupidity plus arrogance

Reminds me of a 'bot detection question' I once saw:

"How often do you experience a fatal heart attack while watching TV?"

"Frequently, Occasionally, Seldom, Never"

'Asimov was right' about rules for robots, says ex-US Cyber Director

Re: Stupid

Isaac Asimov's Guide to the Bible is somewhere on my bookshelf.

Re: Sorry folks, the Three Laws of Robotics are ...

Read the stories again. The Three Laws barely work in any situation more complex than "wash the dishes". They are purposely ambiguous to allow storytelling.

Re: Interesting hypotheseis with truely staggering consequences

I had some fun asking one how many r's in strawberrry (yes, with that spelling). The (so-called) thinking trace started arguing about whether or not I meant to ask about strawberry or strawberrry, and depending on which model I asked, wouldn't stop 'thinking' about whether the answer should be 3 or 4 (or very rarely 2) until I hit the 'stop' button.

They've gotten better since those days, but things like that can still happen.

Re: Chris Inglis hasn't read Asimov

He even admitted in more than one interview that he (and Campbell) invented them to have many loopholes to run a story through, not as a 'good idea to implement for real'.

I consider the robot stories to be narrative examples of how Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem applies to logical systems.

Re: zeroth law

Due to Russian governmental chaos at the time (early 1920s), immigration policies, and a lack of passport, he never officially had any Russian citizenship to renounce.

It's possible he could have requested to become one later without much trouble as his parents were Russian, but he never did so.

The Document Foundation says Microsoft's file formats keep users on a short leash

Re: I send all documents as pdf files.

PDFs of scanned documents are generally the worst for accessibility, especially the ones that just put the image directly in without OCRing anything.

LG monitors are using Windows 11 feature to serve adware

Re: Total C-Suite fail

Once you've bought Windows, you're not the customer any more. MS has long considered web ads (and others) to be significantly more important than the person who isn't giving them any more money for the operating system. I'd not be too surprised if one of these days MS implements a "pay $1/month to run ad blocking software on device drivers" subscription. Annoyed, yes. Surprised, no.

Re: Total C-Suite fail

To read the Elvish runes, you merely need to heat the EULA in a fire until they begin to glow. The paper burning before reaching that temperature is also cultural.

Scalding hot AI accelerators have put datacenters in hot water. Two-phase cooling could chill them out

I recall an early demo of some Intel chip...

Some youtuber used a fairly simple method to get higher speed ratings.

Just put the computer into a freezer, and the 'safe' over-clocking speeds went up a bit.

The earliest example I could find in a quick search was Intel in 1999 breaking the Gigahertz barrier for the first time using 'special cooling techniques'.

Anthropic's extravagant tokenizer complicates AI pricing

Welcome to AI. In the case of Google API access it's even worse... "Someone else might steal and use your key without your consent, and we'll helpfully increase the payment limit on your account for them so you can owe us more money than you expected..."

Photovoltaics are still running after a year under Swiss trains

Re: It would be more expensive, but...

I'll just remind you that the space between rails is flat, and there's not much space for anything but a thin panel. Even if it could be done in such a small space, this would also significantly increase the cost of a panel.

To really get good efficiency from tracking and angling the panels, they'd need to tilt significantly enough to have to flatten back down if a train approached during morning or evening.

User crippled a network while trying to learn Nmap

Banned because nmap can be a stress test (among other things) on networking hardware...

nmap can fairly easily be told to hammer a network badly enough that most other data transmission either slows down or stops entirely.

Back in the day, running nmap on a network could also cause badly programmed networking devices (or some common OSes) to halt until power-cycled.

AI slop writing has taken over the internet, particularly LinkedIn and X

AI detection seller detects AI everywhere?

How unusual that something that depends on detecting AI to get people to buy into it, detects AI everywhere. (/s)

This seems like the wrong place to ask to get a meaningful statistic from. Somewhat like asking an Anti-virus software seller, how widespread software viruses are. They both have a vested interest in the results of their research/marketing being worse than reality so they can sell more software.

Sensationalism still sells.

.

Dev says Google warned him about account hijack – then charged him $11,000 anyway

My recommendation for usage of Google's AI products via Google API remains:

Don't.

They don't care about small (or even most medium-sized) customers. If you don't already have a legal department, stay away.

Security boss thought MFA would be too much security

Re: Not quite the same but...

Best use of most fire extinguishers in anything beyond a very small fire is: Use fire extinguisher as battering ram, and get out.

Re: Not quite the same but...

Last place I worked the phrase was "You are neither requested nor required to use the fire extinguishers, but here's how to use them." Our only requirement was to instruct people to leave, and assist any disabled customers. Life was more important than anything in the building, and portable fire extinguishers aren't going to stop anything beyond a relatively small fire.

Re: Not quite the same but...

You must be related to the coworkers who would leave the building using the clearly marked "Fire Exit Only" doors, disrupting the board designers from whatever they were doing for 10 minutes until the alarm timed out. We eventually printed up an even larger sign saying "NOT AN EXIT - EMERGENCY USE ONLY" and putting it on that door so that people wouldn't use it except in an emergency.

Yes, I know the oddness of putting a "NOT AN EXIT" sign on a Fire Exit, but apparently management yelling at them about it didn't work.

Re: Not quite the same but...

"It's quite possible that statistically..."

Whatever follows that sort of beginning is generally entirely imaginary statistics.

Most of the terrorist groups that would phone in bomb threats are more interested in property destruction (or business disruption via fake threats) than killing.

The worst loss of life has been from unannounced explosions, not threatened ones. (Oklahoma City wasn't called in as a threat first.)

Former Microsoft engineer shrinks Notepad down to size

Re: Mr Plummer

If you remove the bloat from outlook, there's really not much left. (And this quote from the recent moon fly-by sums it up... "I have two Microsoft Outlooks and neither one of those are working")

US auto regulators want to kill robotaxi brake pedals

No, it isn't effortless.

Effort required:

1: Balance

2: Ability to stand or sit on a fairly narrow seat, for however long it takes to get somewhere

3: Ability to ride a bike while also navigating unfamiliar territory.

... There are other significant efforts required. Please don't assume everyone has the same ability you do.

Re: Fucking idiots

in-app purchase: Subscribe to release parking brake after free trial.

Re: emergency stop button

On most cars the electronic parking brake is still an emergency brake. It doesn't have a cable, but it's still a separate system from the hydraulic/electronic brakes. The redundancy is there, just differently implemented.

Toyota Owner Manual specifically mentions that it's usable in an emergency stop situation.

Easy to test if you can find an empty parking lot or other safe space to test braking.

Re: emergency stop button

Parking brakes (yes, even the electronic ones on my Toyota) are still meant to work in an emergency stop. It's even in the owner's manual that, in an emergency, you can use that brake to stop.

And with brake by wire (probably including Tesla, though I can't confirm that): Press hard enough and the physical brakes come on just like regular brakes.

What we've got with the current NHTSA is the fox regulating the safety of the hen house.

How dare you stop data loss – that's not your job!

Re: It messes up ...

Much like many league sports, where it's best if you slowly improve over time, instead of getting much better one year and then 'plateauing' because getting better requires expensive equipment. (Looking at you, league players regularly bowling 300 with specialized wrist braces)

Re: Bah!

4. Stores may only order fuses when the blown ones have been turned in for replacement.

Re: I am guessing…

A very loud mouse, indeed.

Many computer viruses definitely existed in the 90s. It was most definitely 'a thing' at the time to run anti-virus software.

However, IF you were careful, the likelihood of getting one was still slim enough that anti-virus scanners didn't need to be run at all times. These days computers and disks are fast enough the overhead is usually worth it, but back then, running Norton AV in continuous scan mode was a significant drain on resources.

Micron locks in historically high memory prices for five years

Just guessing here, but...

I'm not sure you understand the nature of building DRAM factories. MU would love to sell more DRAM at these margins, but the leadtime on a new high-end DRAM factory is at least a year, and frequently quite a bit more than that. They are building new factories right now (check news release)

Digital indigestion: Fizzy Coca-Cola display chokes on full storage

Re: The real question is

Log sales and marketing data.

Don't erase logs.

ERROR device full...

Or... Storage device failed and went read-only.

These things are not 'single-purpose' computers by any stretch.

Mythos discovers 'Squidbleed,' a memory leak that's gone undetected since Clinton era

Ummm... typo

"a single spFace"?

Bold move, Cotton: Trump administration tells US techies it expects American quantum computer by 2028

Ah, yes, another unfunded mandate.

As per normal Trump practice, he's announced something, but not bothered to work out where the money is coming from. That's "Somebody Else's Problem"™

Why Amazon hates 'human-in-the-loop' AI governance

Re: it hates it..

This doesn't actually require AI. High selling items at big retail stores are generally reordered automatically as people buy them at the register. It's easier for an algorithm to get the math right than it is for a random sentence generator to place the correct order.

Don't ask an LLM to do complex math, they're not very good at it. They still have problems with basic math.

Re: A solution to the 'getting used to the beeps' problem...

Modern servers don't beep much unless something is seriously wrong anyway, so this is sort of a bad analogy to start with. Even old PC-based ones didn't really beep unless the POST failed after a power cycle.

And of course, computers are much more likely to crash 'halted' than 'beeping'. I get this odd feeling that the VP didn't actually work in IT (shocker!)

Re: Hahaha, classic!

See also: "The humans keep finding problems with our output. IGNORE ALL HUMANS!" -- multiple dystopian sci-fi stories and movies over the years.

Re: Dear Mr Brandwine, I call BS ...

And a good human that isn't sure about something will usually say "I'm not sure, but ..."

Most AI just doubles down on incorrect responses, and says "I've checked, and that's entirely correct." There's no understanding of how likely a response is to be correct like you can get from a smart human's response.

A solution to the 'getting used to the beeps' problem...

Since most of the beeps were false alarms, you should be cutting down the false alarm beeps... Or doing what one of my coworkers did a while back.

He set up a logging server that got logs sent to it, and when a possibly interesting one came in, it beeped in various frequencies depending on what subsystem and/or warning level.

"Getting used to the normal beeps" was exactly the idea, because when the sound coming out of that machine changed, they knew to take a closer look at things almost immediately.

When it stopped beeping at all, the network was down.

Chinese e-tailer claimed 14-inch box stretched the size of a 9-inch tablet

Re: Knowing what to look for.

Fairly sure one of my old not-so-cheap tablets didn't have BT either. Battery lasts longer that way, and in some niche applications, BT wasn't considered necessary for a tablet.

It is NOW considered almost mandatory, but before BTLE and other BT radio tweaks, the battery life hit was quite significant.

Re: Chinese e-tailer

Scammers don't care about customer service, because they're trying to make up for it in volume. Unfortunately it works often enough that scammers keep trying despite losing accounts, etc.

Feds freaked over Fable 5 after simple 'fix this code' prompt, not jailbreak, says researcher

Re: T-Shirt Model

Probably photoshop, or AI. I wouldn't expect that to have been a ready-made t-shirt, and paying someone to create an actual shirt just for a headline photo seems too high-budget around here.

Don't hold your breath on this...

"The Register reached out to the Trump administration for comment on Moussouris' assertion, and we'll update this post if we hear back. "

If they'd understood this the first time they didn't read it..., the 'ban foreign nationals' wouldn't have happened in the first place.

Elon Musk is now worth more than $1,000,000,000,000

Re: Seen it all before.

Don't forget the bottles of urine on the floor.

Re: How big is a trillion?

Even $1million is enough for a fairly comfortable retirement in most places in the US. At least, if your taste doesn't run to fast cars, huge houses, and high-end fashion accessories..

Re: Elon - World’s greatest (manipulator)

He's already gotten a 'spacecraft' to Mars orbit, as a publicity stunt.

Fired IT worker jailed for 21 months after sabotaging old school district

Re: The elephant in the room

One mad IT person in almost any company can do fairly severe damage. It's not as simple to 'secure everything properly' as it sounds.

Implementing good computer security is NOT simple, and if you think it is, you're probably doing it wrong.

This is your BIOS speaking. Please fix me. Your PC is broken

Except in special cases (like turning lane lights) US traffic lights are almost entirely the round solid color versions.

Logitech knows when to fold 'em

Re: Just take the damn hammer and hit the son of a bitch

Most actual drywall installers don't care about the impression in the wall, that's what joint compound and paint are for.

Also, the likelihood of them using an actual hammer on more than a few nails per install is pretty much zero. Nail guns can be rented. Right tool for the job, etc. etc.

Benevolent dictator Zuck will give Meta staff 30-minute breaks from keylogging privacy assault

Re: And when you're in your yearly review

I'm sure most of the C-level executives get the exemption automatically. "Rules for thee, and not for me" etc.