Posts by Pete Sdev

Five years after quitting a job, developer’s former boss asked for rapid tech support

Re: URL for Pick

Here's a Dick Pick for you:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9Sz3MDl1XRw&t=38s&pp=2AEmkAIB

Poor sod apparently died at the age of 56.

CoreWeave revenue doubles as debt pile reaches $35.6B

They have a grand total of 3 customers, in essence.

They are running at a loss.

They have a shed load of debt, and that debt will grow.

Their 2 main customers, OpenAI and MisAnthropic, also run at a loss. Their 2 main customers also have debts.

What could possibly go wrong?

Brit boffins boast of beating barriers to building fusion power

Re: Looking like...

That sounds like the most likely outcome. Britain is strangely really good at coming up with things and then letting others further develop and/or profit from them

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

Re: Stupidity plus arrogance

Contrast with Nice but Dim Tim.

Re: Stupidity plus arrogance

Many moons ago, in one game our hooker (I played second row) bit the ear of the opposing hooker in a scrum.

So, maybe it would add a sore ear.

London cops handed victim's new address and number to her stalker, watchdog says

Re: CC

If you're sending an email to multiple recipients outside your organisation *and* you want to expose everybody's email address to all recipients, that needs to be a very conscious deliberate decision, rather than an 'oops addresses in CC instead of BCC'.

Re: CC

Damage limitation:

1) Disallow email addresses in the CC field that have a different domain than the sending address. This could be enforced by the MTA rather than the client.

2) Client shows a warning dialog requiring confirmation whenever attempting to send an email with more than 1 address in the CC field. The default action is cancel.

The AI bubble is already popping; we just don't know it yet

Hmm, which bit don't you agree with?

That, for example, Lehman went bankrupt due to the 2008 crisis and Goldman Sachs didn't (and indeed made a profit by betting against mortgages, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldman_Sachs_controversies#2008_financial_crisis ) is pretty objective.

Specifically to Lehman, I'll add this anecdotal story out of interest: https://www.informath.org/apprise/a8800.htm

I only mentioned Lehman as an example, and Golman Sachs as the exception in that they apparently listened to their lowly risk analysts,

Re: Bah

While the US Government did play a minor role in the cause - relaxing lending rules in the *1990s', and repealing Glass–Steagall - it was mainly greed and stupidity by banks (esp. synthetic CDOs) that caused the crash.

That no-one responsible went to jail (let alone was strung from the nearest lamppost) means the next crisis is pre-destined.

Re: Bah

There were risk analysts (often with an engineering background) at some investment banks who saw the danger at least a year before the crash.

They were, unsurprisingly, mostly ignored by their higher-ups. I believe Goldman Sachs may have been the exception, hence they're still around and firms like Lehman Bros. aren't.

Re: Competition in AI

Looking at the SpaceX IPO, there are still enough greater fools about, at least for the moment.

Situational Awareness

Leopold Aschenbrenner also worked for OpenAI (until fired) after FTX. That sort of person.

His book was completely invested in "AI" related stocks. No diversity.

His only "hedging" was shorting software companies - so basically exactly same bet as his long positions.

He was hugely leveraged - apparently 4x.

He didn't have liquidity in reserve to cover his leverage if his stocks dropped temporarily, hence the margin calls and the firesale.

Hardly a "good stock picker". It's easy to make a plus with leverage in a bull market...

The wolves of Wall Street saw this overconfident amateur with too much money (mostly other peoples of course) and took him to the cleaners at the first opportunity.

AI researchers let models off the leash – then watched as they tried to add malware to a FOSS project

Or spoken to Plod re. Computer Misuse Act...

Hyperscale, hypersensitive: US teacher cuffed for applauding datacenter critics

Land of the Free!

With a bit of luck (or good lawyers) he'll hopefully be able to later sue for false imprisonment, rights violations, etc.

Leading AI models (even Grok) are all a bunch of leftist punks

Re: Probably not that surprising...

Wasn't the "liberal bias" of reality the reason things like Conservapedia were set-up?

Cassette simulator rewinds digital audio to a more analog time in hiss-tory

For the full nostalgia hit

I'd like a GUI player that looks like a cassette player and plays music using these filters on the fly.

Including simulated forwarding/rewinding (no instant skip to next track) and an option for a 1 in RND chance of making a tape being devoured sound.

Anti-AI open source has an enemy in common, but almost nothing else

Steve Balmer, as an example.

Europe slaps AliExpress with €550 million fine for selling dodgy goods

Re: Well EU goods are not just more expensive...

Took 3 weeks to get from Germany to the UK

That'll be one of those Brexit benefits we've heard about ;-)

Fountain pens are one thing I love getting from AliExpress

Fair enough. With the observation that a faulty fountain pen will at worst ruin a shirt; a faulty charging device will potentially burn your house down.

Cured Pork Perspective

Evil EUSSR meddling with the free market! We should be free to import cheap goods that maim our children if we want to!

/sarcasm

Sovereign AI is 'nonsense,' says Doctorow

I'm with Doctorow on this

The idea that it's important, for say the EU, to have sovereign "AI" is implicitly buying in to the idea (or hype or lie if you will) that what's currently being sold as "AI" is actually useful and important.

It isn't. Currently non-measurable ROI for most customers, "hallucinations" (i.e. errors) unavoidable, actual real costs not going to justify any possible benefits in most use-cases.

Local (relatively speaking) LLMs specialised for a certain use-case (e.g. aiding medical research) running on not-so expensive and heat-producing hardware as now is the likely future.

OpenAI admits it was the source of the agent swarm that attacked Hugging Face

Hugging Face

Every time I read the name Hugging Face I automatically think of this: Image.

Which then again is probably a more fitting Logo considering what this company does.

Council worker spared prison after four-day data-snooping spree

Re: Yes?

From the article:

working in the Children and Young People directorate

Arguably, one would imagine that certain roles in this department are justified in being able to answer questions like "has this child had an usually high amount of injuries?" (medical records) and "do the the parents have a criminal record for violence related offences?" (criminal records).

Obviously this access needs to be tightly controlled and audited. Though given that the idiot in the article was caught (and the impression is fairly quickly), at least part of the system is working.

Using AI makes people less likely to admit they don't know something

That's not a bug, it's a feature

The conspiracy minded would say that that's the plan with "AI" (aside from mass unemployment) : make the population even less capable of critical thinking than they already are.

Icon: obvious.

For the record, no, I'm not being serious. Although I could imagine some nefarious people seeing it as benefit.

Prominent Haskell defector pilloried by anti-AI purists

Someone wants their cake and to eat it

Not used Haskel but I imagine it's advantages such as strong type safety mean compilation takes longer than with other languages. You don't get owt for nowt.

Using a faster development iteration language may be legitimate if that's the critical factor, but one needs to be aware of the then corresponding downsides of doing so (often runtime errors instead of compile time errors).

Moving a project to another language just so it's easier to use with so-called "AI" seems like a decision where I hope the maker has an organ donor card (as they appear to be brain-dead).

Linus Torvalds tells AI haters to fork off

Re: Tin men vs GPL

Thankfully that's a non-starter.

If I use a tool to convert an mp3 to flac, neither I or the tool suddenly become the copyright holder of the song in the output file. Even if I had to pass arguments ("prompting") to the conversion tool to do so.

Re: Tin men vs GPL

I beg to differ.

Language Models are dependent on their training data, which has been created by *other people*, and in many cases often without their permission, under licenses which limit what may be done with their work.

If I translate a book^* while I may be the automatic copyright holder of the translation (as I've put a significant amount of effort in myself), I can not publish said translation nor give someone else permission to publish it (a license) without the permission of the copyright holder of the original work. If I've used a machine to do the translation with no input myself, then I'm not even the author of the translation.

Entering a prompt to a LLM is not "sufficient human control over the expressive elements" to be the copyright holder of the output.

So while LLMs may be considered a tool (though more so in the British vernacular sense), they are not the same as other tools in this aspect.

You can't for example copypasta BSD Licensed code from various sources, then release the result under the GPL. Using an intermediary such as a language model to do the same doesn't free you from the legal or (IMO more importantly) ethical considerations.

-----

* one of those things made from dead trees

Re: Tin men vs GPL

This is a good point.

Only the copyright holder can issue a license (e.g. GPL).

When the code comes from a LLM, who is the author (per Bern Convention) ?

It's not the meatbag entering a prompt (precedent long set about the significant own creative input required) . The output is at best a derivative work.

The output of a LLM can only be GPL'd is you're sure the training data used to generate the output was GPL code (which you can't be). One bit of say BSD-licensed code used to generate the output and you can't license it under the GPL.

Dutch chip startup claims all-European fab flow – with help from a very American friend

In this case, it is GlobalFoundries (GF), an international business with its headquarters in the US...

The pair say that GF's Dresden fab is establishing a European manufacturing flow with funding from the European Chips Act. This will ensure that every step of the production process occurs within the EU, so that no sensitive design data leaves the region.

(Emphasis mine).

If you believe that last statement, I've a bridge you might be interested in purchasing.

The design will be sent/available to head-office in the US. There's also a risk of a TLA "insisting" on design changes at the factory level.

Now admittedly, even if it was 100% sovereign there's still nothing to stop a state actor at least attempting to bribe and/or extort someone at the factory to do the same, but it would be a level of more difficulty.

Microsoft chief turns hostile on frontier AI labs, warns companies to guard their IP

Re: Does that even deserve to be dignified as "irony"...

He who lives by plagiarism, shall die by plagiarism.

Cinnamon 6.8 will support Wayland – if you want it

Re: X marks the spot?

If I'm not mistaken, a subset of the idea of Display PostScript lives on in MacOS's Quartz framework.

Microsoft Global Device Identifier fingers Scattered Spider suspect

Re: Aaaand it's systemd for the win. Again.

fact that I am starting to suspect that a Three-Letter-Agency had a hand in it's "scope creep"

It was a 2 letter company that had a hand in it, Agent P's employer, MS.

Microsoft flips Windows Backup to on by default unless you're in the EU

Re: EU? By who's definition?

That's a good question.

I suspect part of the reason is the DMA, which the UK doesn't have, it being implemented post Brexit.

Samsung’s profits jump 19x in a year and you don’t need AI to figure out why

Re: Insanity...

Given that Samsung sells lots of other things as well as memory to "AI" companies, suggests their mark-up on RAM is even higher (assuming the mark-up on other items is till around the 6% mark - if some sections of the business, e.g. phones, are making a loss at the moment, that would push the RAM profit rate even higher).

AI startup that’s never turned a profit says it'll totally be around in 2047 to close its $19B lease

Thanks for the link, made me laugh.

Between the devil and the deep blue see

Misanthropic and OpenAI need to go public to raise more capital that they're burning through at a rate of knots.

On the other hand, going public will subject them to more financial scrutiny than they are comfortable with, with the risk they don't receive the desired valuation.

The only way they're not going to deflate, if not actually pop, is if they're classed as Too Big to Fail^* and are bailed out by the US government's deep pockets, directly or indirectly (E.g. the Pentagon is made to spend $500B on "AI" for example. The recent "Trump Accounts" where money from the state will go into US based indexes, boosting stock prices, is a related version).

Oracle should by all rights implode by 2030, except its owner's friendship with the current (and 50% chance future) administration may save Larry's yacht collection.

---

* If it wasn't for the current tulip planting craze boosting the GDP figure I suspect the US would be in a technical recession now

Zombie ‘who owns Unix?’ lawsuit comes alive again

It's quite possible that if that FUD generating lawsuit against BSD never happened, BSD would have proliferated more than it did and Linux may well never have been written, there being no itch to scratch.

Speculation, I know.

Re: The Novell Angle

If I'm ever unfortunate enough to become embroiled in litigation, I'd definitely be hiring lawyers that are known as The Nazgûl.

I'd wear a golden ring at court and everything.

Nvidia floats double-dipping datacenter financing scheme

Nice

To use the gold-rush analogy, Nvidia are lending money to people to buy shovels from them in exchange for a cut of the gold, if any is found.

What could possibly go wrong?

SoftBank enters the rent-a-GPU race as America looks for support for AI training

Errr

Isn't Meta now looking to selling their surplus compute?

How the AI bubble could pop and take down the global economy, according to the BIS

A genuine "AI" benefit

It might take down Oracle by 2030, and decimate (or quadimate) MicroSoft and co.

Germany went off the rails as wireless outage saw all trains cancelled

I'd imagine not without some risk. Particularly as at night there's more goods trains running, and they take *miles* to brake.

I'd guess (not my area of expertise) that when the network goes down, all signals go to red as a failsafe.

(Aside: El Reg needs a train icon)

Surely through a "Wer, ich?".

EU won't force publishers to grant dead video games an afterlife

Minimum support time

Legislate that for software, such as many games, that requires a propriatary online service to order to function, the service must be provided for a minimum time since last sold as new (not the release date).

Alternatively, when the service is a licensing system or similar, releasing an updated version that no longer requires said service within the minimum support time is also acceptable.

I'd suggest 7 years as a reasonable time (also matches the new EU spare-parts rule for phones & tablets).

Windows devs rerolled old code to save precious bytes

Ellipsis

Learn to use them properly.

They're not a substitute for scare quotes.

Only half of US datacenter capacity planned for 2026 is actually under construction

Re: Interesting

Enjoy your upcoming recovery.

Why Texas?

From the article:

pointing out that Texas had 14 GW of new capacity announced

Texas is, as far as I know, most of the time quite warm, which is usually suboptimal for data centers. Somewhere like Montana would be more intuitive.

Secondly, the electricity grid in Texas is well-known to be pretty fragile. Or are they planing on burning directly oil coming out of a nearby hole in the ground to power the damm things?

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

Re: What a wanker

another disgruntled ex-worker is releasing 0-days and people are rooting for him

If they're releasing 0-days, surely he's rooting people.

If your sex life is dead, you can blame Steve Jobs

Re: Our country does anti-support children

The EU doesn't appear to have more "no-gun zones" than the USA

In most European countries *everywhere* outside specific areas for hunting (controlled, time-limited, regulated, etc.) or military training grounds (military only obv.) or shooting-range is a no-gun zone, unless you're a police officer.

Re: Our country does anti-support children

I'll concur that at least part of the US's problem is cultural (and not just with guns...).

The UK was already pretty restrictive for gun ownership. Then in 1996 we had the Dunblane massacre, and pretty much the whole country went "fuck that, we're not risking that horror happening again" and gun laws were further tightened with widespread support, so much so that biathlon athletes often have to do half their training abroad these days.

IINM, Australia was somewhat similar with Port Arthur.

The problem with the US, that despite having experienced hundreds of the equivalent of Dunblane, it's not done much about it due to the US's mythological Individualist culture and so many yanks simply don't give a shit about other people .

Blockbuster new Raspberry Pi project turns any screen into old-school VCR

Loved that skeleton in the ad as a kid, thanks for the reminder.