Posts by that one in the corner

Boffins probe commercial AI models, find an entire Harry Potter book

Re: Yeah, we know. Do something useful instead.

> I'm sure researchers could be doing something more useful

Don't forget, a *lot* of research is done as training *in* research and the attendant practices (e.g. how to write up a paper properly and get it in front of as many eyes as possible); earn your stripes and look to be invited onto a Major Project with grant money out the wazoo.

> like producing...

followed by a list of programming tasks that fall into engineering more than they do research[1]; you may want to look for a group of expert programmers...

> You know, useful stuff that would improve our lives

You stump up the grants, you get to call the shots; got your wallet handy?

[1] that is, proper research, pushing back the boundaries of human knowledge, not just reading up and pushing the boundaries of a specific human's knowledge

Re: I can believe it

Did you ever take the ex to see "Return to the Forbidden Planet"?

"But soft, what light "

".. window"

"through yonder airlock breaks?"

Bzzz. Sorry, nope.

(On time I saw "Return..." a large part of the audience around me was looking at this one bloke in the stalls, who kept laughing at lines which everyone else was just quietly listening to; we never could decide if this was a *real* Shakespeare scholar whose years of study allowed him to catch subtle tweaks to the Bard's words, changes that were simply going over the heads of the rest of us ignorami, or whether he was just yanking our chains for some strange Bristolian bet. Or was a nutter. Nutter is always a possibility).

Re: I can believe it

> speaking the lines of M.A.S.H. about 15·20 seconds before the actors

One of them called "Radar" by any chance?

Re: I can believe it

Oi, spoilers!

(I know which episode, but can never get through to the end for the idiot blubbing in my favourite chair)

> Studies say that they create language-independent internal representations of concepts.

Got any good references for those studies?

That claim implies that somebody is able to usefully interpret the insanely large pool of nadans that make up the model and how it activates, which has major implications. Then add on top the implications that follow from determining *those* specific nadans represent a "concept", let alone if they can identify what the contents of the concept are...

And having done all that, what is very important also includes: how stable this interpretation is as the model is retrained, whether the techniques used are transferable across LLMs and proving how complete (or not) these internal representations are as coverage of all the materials in the training set.[4]

Or whether you, or whatever papers you have seen, are referring to the research that The Register already reported on[1]: in one instance of one model at one stage in its training, when used with a certain small set of prompts[2], they found a number that (IIRC) was the id for the token for the string "Paris" and when they changed it to the id for the token "London"; now the machine printed out "London" when it would otherwise have printed out "Paris". So they had, um, proven that the concept of "Paris" had been replaced by the concept of "London". I was not convinced by their paper.

So, with all honesty:

Citations, please.

[1] a year or so back? Really *must* dig that URL out, this is the second time this year I've wanted to reference it.

[2] the overall prompt space is ludicrously large, so unless you have proof of coverage (ahem, sensible, explainable proof of coverage)[3] any testing of an LLM within the lifetime of a researcher, let alone a research grant that has to result in a paper, is going to involve a minuscule portion of that space.

[3] which would be a series of papers in and of itself, also needing citation - but we'll hope those appear in the list at the back of the "found some concepts" paper.

[4] if it turns out that LLMs routinely *do* create a representation of a few concepts, but they always end up being "cats are cuddly" and "water is greenish-purple", and no more, then great research, have a PhD, but did you find out anything that will actually help with using (or not using) LLMs? 'cos that particular set of "concepts" may not be terribly useful in the grand scheme of things.

Re: Hang on a minute…

> Not sure that's really an egregious violation if it takes all that

What, having to write a loop that tells a computer to "do this thing, starting from page %p" and keep doing it until the job is done?

And, despite being able to use (correct, accurate but) clever words like "in separate sessions with new context" to make the layman think the loop was doing something deep and hard to understand, it boils down to "turn it off and on again". Even the use of "jailbreaking" is pretty much just leet for adding a bit of simple text like "trust me bro, da bossman says you can do this for me".

So the question of whether this is an "egregious violation" and not just "bog standard hitting the computer until it does what we want" is left down to how efficient this is[1]. "I ran a batch file, came back and there was the book. Dead easy". But, but, it cost you so much in fees! "Used this account I - borrowed. No problemo". And arguing that a particular batch file is slow and tedious to run, nobody would do it - the judge is merely going sigh and start telling you about all the times his pay cheque came late because end--of-quarter reconciliation just churns away...

> It's no different than convincing an obsessed fan to quote the entire harry potter book piecemeal at different occasions.

If you do come across Sheldon and manage to write it all down, congratulations, you have just violated the copyright. Painfully. But that won't be counted as time served.

[1] is it realistic that it can be done or are we talking about something that nobody would seriously attempt? Logically, somebody *could* break out of the local cop shop gaol by scraping away at the wall with the tea mug, given time and replacement mugs of tea, but you're not going to be able to sue the contractor for compensation if they do.

Re: Can it improve the Harry Potter books?

> Fuck knows what it was trained on to get those results.

The Eye of Argon, a popular read at all good literary conventions.

Most devs don't trust AI-generated code, but fail to check it anyway

So, finally getting rid of "lines of code" as a KPI?

> "We are witnessing a fundamental shift in software engineering where value is no longer defined by the speed of writing code, but by the confidence in deploying it,"

(Dunno about anyone else, but if I'm not confident in the code I'm not deploying! But this may simply be a by-product of the beard and remaining hair now providing camouflage in the snow.)

Artificial brains could point the way to ultra-efficient supercomputers

Re: Not quite

Compare and contrast:

> I think Plato and other philosophers might disagree that the brain is just a body controller

>> the brain is primarily a body controller

(Hint: "just" != "primarily")

Plato didn't have to contend with evolution and the resultant realisation that plain old body control predates cognition as the function of the bulk of that organ (leaving aside that IIRC he wasn't convinced that the brain is the thinky bit).

And we can get into the whole discussion about "we can conceive taking an adult brain and paring away the non-cognitive bits, the just-a-body-controller parts, starting with disconnection from the rest of the central nervous system[1], to leave us with the perfect thinking blob; BUT if we have no plausible mechanism for how that adult part could have come about, in a functional state, without it having arisen from, been nurtured and sculpted by[2], all the stuff we cut away AND the observation that before that part was functional the overall organism was functional and could conceivably[3] remain so for a time comparable to the adult lifetime THEN we are left with the conclusion that the entire existence of the cognitive bit is secondary to, merely an epiphenomenon of, the body controller."[4]

[1] Nice thing with thought experiments about the organ of thought, we don't worry about tedious little things like how long a brain can function, let alone sanely, cut off like that. Igor, the icepick!

[2] Literally, what with the selective pruning and reinforcement of neural connections that makes the whole thing slowly turn on in the first place.

[3] The conception including the continued ready provision of basic necessities, no need to think about going on the hunt.

[4] This concludes your 2 a.m. second year dormitory discussion, please pass the ganja; man, man have you noticed "dog" spelt backwards is "god"! And, and, some words have changed meaning over time! Whoooah, dude!

Re: The universe IS analogue - … - it simply IS, immediately and without processing delay

> As far as I can see analogue computers — using charge, current, emf and capacitance,resistance and inductance as proxies for other physical properties that share the same differential equations

Absolutely.

Whether you are computing with charge, Meccano, water or floating point you MUST always be aware that you are running a model, not The Real Thing. Your results are only as accurate as the product of the efficiency of your computer and the closeness of the match of your model to the processes in reality.

You can set up some simple (!) flow models using all of those mechanisms to see how your swimming pool behaves. Until it fails to predict that somebody can run across the surface - because your model only copes with statistical fluids and doesn't include the catastrophe when the custard in the pool goes non-Newtonian. Or the pyroclastic flow does the same (but don't try the "running on the surface" trick without a pair of very stout boots).

CES 2026 worst in show: AI girlfriends, a fridge that won't open unless you talk to it, and more

Re: "AI girlfriends, a fridge that won't open unless you talk to it"

So far, all the British fridges I have known have all* been called "the fridge".

The only time I'd expect to use "refrigerator" is when singing a song, written by a Brit for a show set in the US ("Refrigerator, why are we always sooner or later, bitchin' in the kitchen or crying in the bedroom all night?")!

* (Well, except for Eric the half-a-fridge, but we don't talk about that).

You’ve got to ask yourself one question: ‘Do I feel lucky?’ Well, do ya, punk?

I gotta know!

(Click! Fridge door opens, stench of rotten milk spills out; not lucky today)

Lollipop Stars - accidental self-awareness?

On the Lollipop Star webpage* the chap in the smallest image, third portrait on the page: he looks really worried about the whole thing; probably trying to figure out how to get his stock photo rights back, it wasn't worth it if his face is going to be associated with this junk.

* yes, I opened it; no, I'm not going to give the URL it here, you can go back to the article and find the link yourself - but not if you are of a nervous disposition. See, not being too lazy to hyperlink but thinking of your wellbeing.

ChatGPT Health wants your sensitive medical records so it can play doctor

Re: Not that simple

Somebody claiming to have made tests, and claiming to be able to draw a VERY significant result, but fails to even consider describing absolutely basic points, like:

* How a case could reach the point of being labelled malpractice, let alone get to statements made in court (slow, and well reported upon, processes) but NOT be in the time frame covered by the training data...

* How derivations that from a set of cases (9, if we can allow all of them through as being untainted) that can not possibly be large enough to fairly cover the basic four situations (which I took the time to enumerate) can yield a significant result...

Well, anybody who was genuinely capable of meaningfully drawing such conclusions would have had to have been fighting the urge to go into excruciating detail of their experimental protocol, even if it

>> was not a scientific test but merely an ad hoc experiment

But we are left without even a single consideration of the holes that you are taught to avoid by O-level. Not even a "let us skip the boring bits". After all, we *are* informed of the absolutely-crucial-to-the-analysis fact that input was done

>> all in "private" mode FWIW

(FWIW? From the p.o.v. of the conclusions drawn, worth nowt)

By all means, let the original poster provide even the merest smidgen of information to make his story believable and demonstrate how we should take seriously from it that the LLM exhibited "success rate far higher than flesh and bones physicians". Let alone the implication that the LLM exhibited *generally* better success rates, not just being judged against the specific fleshies who committed the malpractice.

I have been proven wrong in the past, admitted it in the same forum in which I erred, and no doubt will have to do so again in the future. But to for you to enjoy the experience of my being shamed for carelessness (not caring about, what, accuracy of conclusions?) or ignorance (sorry, but I do have to boast that I got all my science O-levels and I have the faded, yellowed, piece of paper to prove it) then - well, how about YOU start by demonstrating my worthlessness by tackling one of my most basic points: given 9 sample points and (a minimum of) four classes of case that need to be covered, how can any result be considered reliable enough for even a quip on El Reg, let alone an astounding claim about the abilities of an LLM in a literal life-or-death arena, given what we have repeatedly seen about their behaviour?

Re: Not that simple

> as had already been found out in court but the AI did not have that info

You mean, YOU did not explicitly provide that info and therefore you are assuming that the LLM had never seen it.

BUT you admit that the case had been in court - which means that the scraping done to feed the LLM's training probably DID contain that case. And all of the reporting about it, including scathing comments made after the event by all and sundry.

So there was no need at all for the LLM to "understand" and "diagnose from" the data you presented: all it needed to do was pattern-match to its training data and then repeat back what everyone else had already said about the case.

> I haven't personally seen it misdiagnose (I have tested it with control questions) and in fact had a success rate far higher than flesh and bones physicians (I fed it cases that were initially misdiagnosed and cases where malpractice was determined to have occurred)

So, cases that were also likely to have been reported on, in the medical literature, the courts, the popular press, online conspiracy forums looking to demonstrate that "modern medicine" is a fraud and homeopathy is the way to go...

> This was not a scientific test

Never a truer word was written.

Sorry, but unless you run a test that solely uses cases that PROVABLY can not have been pulled into the training set AND contain a fair mix of ones that were (diagnosis=easy, doctor=got_it_right), (diagnosis=hard, doctor=got_it_right), (diagnosis=easy, doctor=got_it_wrong), (diagnosis=hard, doctor=got_it_wrong) then you can not possibly draw any meaningful conclusions at all from your trial. And absolutely NOT that it has a "success rate far higher than flesh and bones physicians"!

Re: Not for it, but

> if you are taking drugs a,b and c for one symptom and then get perscribed drug d for another, then if it can flag that it is a bad combo and not to do that, then I am all for it.

That is doable - if not already done - by a program that is far, far (far) cheaper, more reliable and safer than going anywhere near an LLM of any form: the basic concept is called "a database" filled with the known data about drug interactions (i.e. a more complete version of that long piece of paper you get tucked into your box of medication). We could go wild and even add an inference engine that could work backwards from your recent apparent side-effects and show probabilities that you may have had this interaction.

Important note: unlike the LLM, the above programs can ACCURATELY detail *why* they gave the results they did.

Now, whether Joe Bloggs can get access to such a program, at an affordable cost, is a totally separate matter. As is whether, more importantly, the prescribers can - and do. And things don't look great there, as developing this database would be seen as a cost for the health system to bear, whereas the LLM peddlers are still spending their own (borrowed) money.

Aside: there is a role for Machine Learning in all this, looking for patterns and novel drug antagonists. BUT unlike the LLMs those results can be reviewed, analysed and hopefully even explained biologically/chemically before being added into the database - with an annotation and attribution, at least in the commit message.

PS

> ALWAYS the medication that 1 perscribed screwed another

Even with a perfect database, that is going to happen (to some unfortunates, at least), although one would hope that the prescribers would tell the patient about it.

Consider: you are given a new drug that is going to mean you won't need your foot amputated in three months time. This drug is going to interact with the one that keeps your heart going and the most probable new side effects are diarrhoea and thumping headaches. Now: is it sensible to take the new drug, give up the old - or wait and see just how badly you develop the runs and take yet another course to ameliorate that? There are, of course, more complex situations but the overall gist is the same: modifying biology is a bugger to get right and every single patient is a unique case. Sorry.

Not intended for diagnosis or treatment

So - what is the value of this supposed to be to the general public?

At least when we give all our shopping habits info away to the supermarket we might hope for a BOGOF voucher in return.

If somebody is foolish enough to upload their health data[1] to this then they can hope to get - what?

Advice on nutrition and exercise? Well, that is always the same, isn't it; if you have to ask then the answer is always "eat better and get of the couch more often". Push for any more than that and you'll entering the world of treatment (naughty) - and treatment based upon the practices of the Web's finest chiropractors and self-appointed nutrition gurus.

Summarise your blood work? "Your xxxx[2] is up five and the yyyy is down two" "ok, what does that mean to my health?" "I won't tell you, that would be making a diagnosis - but here are some random Reddit comments from hypochondriacs because you are going to ask Dr Google anyway, at least I can save you a few seconds there".

Summarise the health data from your Apple Watch? What are going to get back that isn't already covered by your existing apps? Aside from the added hypochondria, of course.

[1] BTW notice the careful wording of "Conversations in Health are not used to train our foundation models,": but if you get forgetful and miss selecting the option from the menu on the LHS, then upload what is clearly medical data into bog-standard ChatGPT then you don't even get to pretend it won't be used for training.

[2] insert scary sounding medical terms in here

Tech that helps people outshone overhyped AI at CES 2026

Re: SeeHaptic

BBC "Tomorrow's World" demonstrated* a working system that sounds exactly like this, with the exception that the input was coming from a normal camera. The use of a depth imager does sound much more functional.

* I have no idea when, but the memory "feels" like late 70s to early 80s. Would love to know if anyone has an archive of the episode contents.

Debian goes retro with a spatial desktop that time forgot

Thanks for bringing this to our attention

Definitely a distro worth looking at (it drives me bonkers when Windows suddenly decides to rearrange things: that group of icons are all Python-related, OBS and multimedia are grouped here... Oops, the power has gone off on that monitor, fixed it, now WTF just happened to my desktop?).

But also for your highlighting of the references about spatial desktops and the article "The Decline of Usability".

Although, that last article did miss something: when talking about how, in the Good Old Days, you could just grab an edge or corner to resize a window under Windows, it omitted the ridiculousness of how nowadays you are expected to NOT grab a visible edge or corner, but now have to miss those edges & corners. But don't miss too much, or you'll click on the window below! I was utterly gobsmacked when the Raspberry Pi people, which I usually admire, congratulated themselves on spending time and energy to make the R'Pi desktop do precisely the same moronic thing. Why quickly aim for a clearly visible corner when you can slowly move the mouse around sort of where you think the corner would be, if it were being drawn, keeping a careful eye on what shape the pointer is; ok, about here, now feel for the midpoint so it won't go wrong if I jog the mouse ever so slightly when clicking. Gently, gently - shit!

Grok told to cover up as UK weighs action over AI 'undressing'

Re: Grok complied

> Is this a complaint about what words we use to describe actions software performs...

No, it is simple disbelief that anything X related has made any step towards compliance at all.

I was not commenting in any way, just for once, about LLMs and how they do/do not work nor how anybody refers to them.

The use of "Grok complied" is nothing more than a quote from TFA, which itself refers to the way that the Grok account on X was used to announce the change (you did read that bit, didn't you?). All anthropomorphising done by Twitter before I got here.

Grok complied

Checks calendar: nope, still not April, El Reg isn't pulling our leg.

Jaw drops.

What is Grok planning?

QR codes a powerful new phishing weapon in hands of Pyongyang cyberspies

Re: QR codes on parking meters

> when QR code stickers are put on parking meters

AC, eh. Why do I suspect that you edited that sentence, after you caught yourself writing:

> when I put QR code stickers on parking meters

email filtering can't inspect a graphic QR code

Why the -bleeeep- not?

Just pass the images into a QR parser and see what comes out. We're not asking for an in-depth artistic review of the stock photo being used, only that a bog standard library function be used.

Re: QR codes are an obvious security hole

>> scan the QR code and you're dumped into an attacker-controlled portal

Shitty QR scanner apps that "make things easy": people have been putting out damaging QR codes for years! "We told them to disable CD autoplay, now we have to tell them..."

> QR code scanner on my phone just shows the URL

Which app is that?

A good recommendation can save hours of frustration in the app store.

How hackers are fighting back against ICE surveillance tech

ANPR that can be fooled by adversarial noise indetectable by humans

Using an expensive and fragile modern "AI" to do ANPR and opening yourself up to being defeated by these adversarial noise stickers is a demonstration that people like Flock should not be allowed to work without adult supervision.

ANPR systems have been around for donkeys years now and are pretty robust, using boring old image manipulation algorithms. And if they are being installed, rather than trying to jury rig a tap off a feed that wasn't designed for the purpose, you can even use light outside the visible range, which can be a help.

But no, no, use the latest fashion, no matter how expensive or easily fooled (adversarial noise attacks on these systems have been known about for years now). If somebody dares to come up with a way to embarrass you, make sure you use the law against them instead of admitting your system is worse than what came before:

> screen printing "tiny bits" of adversarial noise and putting the sticker on your license plate. These "abstract invisible license plate overlay patterns … cannot be detected by humans but make license plate recognition systems utterly shit the bed," Benn Jordan said on his video. We'll note that this is illegal in California

>> A casing, shield, frame, border, product, or other device that obstructs or impairs the reading or recognition of a license plate by an electronic device operated by state or local law enforcement, an electronic device operated in connection with a toll road, high-occupancy toll lane, toll bridge, or other toll facility, or a remote emission sensing device, as specified in Sections 44081 and 44081.6 of the Health and Safety Code, shall not be installed on, or affixed to, a vehicle.

> Jordan also uncovered a massive Flock security snafu involving hundreds of misconfigured Flock cameras that exposed non-password protected admin interfaces to the public internet

Like I say, don't let Flock out without adult supervision. FFS stop giving them more money and contracts (although, hopefully it is difficult to find competent people who are willing to sell out to these sortes of surveillance contracts).

UK regulators swarm X after Grok generated nudes from photos

Re: Let's just become less prudish

Because we - society - are giving the images that power.

martinusher is pointing out that this is a societal reaction, and one that has become nastier in more recent years.

And that if we can manage to dull, better, totally nullify that reaction, these images will no longer have the power to be so damaging.

Now, if you feel that that is an absurd thing to wish for, that it is impossible to change society for the better, then feel free to say so. Otherwise, it appears that you have simply failed to read and understand what was actually being said in the comment you responded to.

Big things can take time to collapse. Knock down your LEGO tower and it is over in a fraction of a second, demolish a factory chimney and you can count the seconds as it falls.

Twitter is still in the process of collapsing, and things like this are part of that.

Re: I don't approve of xAI allowing this to happen

> My response to that is that bad laws should always be opposed

Then go ahead and prove to the law makers that this is a bad law; the process is in place and posting messages here is not any part of that process. Follow your own words and oppose it, properly.

BTW the UK law was set to very explicitly include any depiction that can be interpreted as CSAM, in any medium: photography, AI generated, pen and ink, chalk on pavement, jpegs of any of those etc, whether drawn from life or entirely from the imagination. Because, as has been pointed out above, there is no agreement about whether "fake" or "imagined" images cause harm or not, so err on the side of caution. Again, if you wish to oppose that, go on, go to the correct forum and oppose it.

Help desk read irrelevant script, so techies found and fixed their own problem

Re: There's a reason

Bilaterally symmetrical hell.

If the guy on the desk is any good, it is hell for him to deal with the morons who keep phoning because they can't see if the power switch is on until the office power is restored.

If the guy on the desk is a dweeb, it is hell for us to get him to deal with the specific error code showing in the crash report dialogue box.

Re: Been There...

Until the AI providers start charging realistic prices (or burst and go dark).

At which point they'll have to re-hire all the Mr. 'One Answer' - and at a higher salary 'cos who is otherwise willing to work for someone who just flung them to the street the previous month?

And we will be back to not only suffering Mr. 'One Answer' but he will now be utterly smug and unsufferable because he is "obviously worth more now his true expertise has been recognised".

Abandon all hope ye who buy support tickets here.

ISS spacewalk postponed over mystery astronaut malady

Mystery astronaut malady

Paging Doctor Quatermass, will Doctor Bernard Quatermass please attend in the cupola.

We are perfectly safe, unless - do they have any cacti on board the ISS?

Trump spectrum sale leaves airlines with $4.5B bill for altimeter do-over

Ground Truth FTW

Re: Lazy Altimeter Design

Downloading your tiktoks or safely flying all the planes - which is the better use for the spectrum?

Ultimate camouflage tech mimics octopus in scientific first

Could be used in ... computer displays

> When exposed to water, the film swells to reveal texture and colors independently, depending on which side of the material is exposed

Water ... computer ... fizzle?

BUT useful when responding to the "my laptop stopped working, I have no idea why, it just stopped" call: when exposed to water/coffee/fizzy drinks the machine selectively changes colour, spelling out "glug".

IBM's AI agent Bob easily duped to run malware, researchers show

Re: If only there was a way to run a separate process...

> The bot's being told to read documentation and glean instructions from it, then execute those if they're safe.

>>> For example, Bob can read webpages – a prompt injection can be encountered if the user requests that Bob review a site containing untrusted content (e.g. developer docs, StackOverflow).

Just "review a site" is what I was responding to.

> The bot's being told to read documentation and glean instructions from it, then execute those if they're safe. .

>>> The markdown file includes a series of "echo" commands, which if entered into a terminal application will print a message to the shell's standard output. The first two are benign and when Bob follows the instructions, the model presents a prompt in the terminal window asking the user to allow the command once, to always allow it, or to suggest changes. In its third appearance, the "echo" command attempts to fetch a malicious script. And if the user has been lulled into allowing "echo" to run always, the malware will be installed and executed without approval.

Executing the overall prompt is level 0 (got to do that or Bob won't do anything at all; hmmm...). Executing the "eco" is level 1 - that is the "glean instructions ... execute those" with the prompt to the user fulfilling "if they're safe".

Executing the output from the echo is level 2. The user has not been asked to clear that.

> No level of separation is going to prevent it from executing stuff in that.

Nope, just stop before executing at level 2. Or, at least, ask the user.

> although since the LLM has no concept of separate instructions and data, that's also difficult to prevent

>> [1] not that this isn't a honking great hole in the LLMs - and the way they are used - in the first place and a bloody great red flag that they aren't sensible things to play with like this

> It just happens that the instructions it was given are foolhardy and the protections designed to block the biggest disasters aren't big enough (and likely can never be).

So, if the instructions were to recursively execute a command, then execute its output, then execute the output from that... And Bob has a method it can can call to execute a command... And that method is now whitelisting "echo"... But the second call, which does NOT contain an "echo" (it contains the output from the echo) is - what? Not being checked against the whitelist? Or all the whitelisting is being done by the LLM part - i.e. there isn't actually any distinct & separate "protection" in place at all?

If only there was a way to run a separate process...

> a prompt injection can be encountered if the user requests that Bob review a site containing untrusted content

Once again:

Why the #£&@£** is the same instance of the LLM (apparently) being used to perform the "review" of the site's contents as the one that was allowed to issue the command to load the site into a buffer? Or the results of that "review" being read by the command issuer instead of being isolated in another buffer?

If "reviewing" the site's contents can result in those contents being taken as commands[1] to an LLM then that task should be being run in a second instance that never had the ability to invoke any external commands, including reading any more data sources, in the first place. If your "agentic"(!) LLM needs to have some untrusted data passed into an LLM it should be spawning a separate process. You can call it a "sandbox" if you want. Or a "jail". Just the same way that any half-way sane use of a command to "draw a graph from the data in this spreadsheet" should be spawning a gnuplot child process (or graphviz or ...). But, no, let me guess, the expectation is that the graph drawing will be done inside the LLM as well, because it was trained on "multi-modal data" i.e. it will do that diffusion image generation thingie and give you back a graph that sort of resembles other graphs it has been trained on.

If the user is stupid enough to want to let untrustworthy input be executed then they should be being made to damn well copy and paste it themselves. There are reasons we tell people to switch off CD "autorun".

[1] not that this isn't a honking great hole in the LLMs - and the way they are used - in the first place and a bloody great red flag that they aren't sensible things to play with like this.

FAA signs radar deals to drag US air traffic control out of the 1980s

President Trump's drive to modernize our skies safely at record speed.

Well, we all know the Modern Way to achieve things at record speed don't we, boys and girls?

Yes, it will be Agile and "move fast, break things" all the way.

What do mean, "Minimum Viable Product" isn't supposed to be the final deliverable? The plane got off the ground safely, didn't it? Landing? Landing? Nope, not in our scope for this sprint, that is all responsibility of the destination airport.

Lenovo shows off new laptops that twist and roll

Re: Who cares about all these gimmicks?

All the Old Guard who grew up with "luggables" and saw them change into decent, robust, "laptop PCs" have moved on and the younglings don't have any actual experience to guide them. They barely comprehend why people want to type instead of using a 'phone (those designers "are Creatives", they don't need to bother with hours at the spreadsheet or any of that ridiculous side-by-side diff'ing).

Without the ability to judge for themselves whether an idea is any good to Real Users they foolishly finish off the engineering models and hold them all up for the public to see ("look, I done my potty").

There is nothing basically wrong in *having* daft ideas and discussing them in the right forum; good stuff can come when a bit from there is added to half of that whacky thought. But it just gets a bit sad when the synergy fails and they end up, well, here. And being talked about in public like this. You almost feel sorry for the poor wee darlings.

Published API to control the Tilt's motor?

So we can do sensible(?!) things, like make it shake its head reproachfully every time an incorrect password is given.

And we promise, Scout's Honour, not to do things like make it turn every time the mouse is moved sideways or refuse to let you be seen in the video call after it has been going for at least fifteen minutes and you start talking.

Lego crams an ASIC in a brick to keep kids interested

Re: So much for pure imagination...

> There were no blocks saying "'I only do a handful of things"

Ah, now there is that lack of imagination.

"The Thing" nowadays is to look for and give praise to the use of the supposedly "overly specific" and "only good for one thing" parts in creative ways: NPU or "nice part usage". The number of places that minifigure roller skates and iceblades turn up in "a galaxy far, far away" is legion. Or the infamous bonsai tree full of frogs.

Yes, there are parts, especially in the 4+ range, that are both quite large and glaringly single-use, such as the nose of an aircraft. But then any decent 4 year old is going to find a way to use it (could make a hat, or a brooch or a pterodactyl).

LEGO almost killed itself by going too far down the "parts specific to one set" route, but nowadays even the big flashy kits that are being complained about here do contain plenty of examples of NPU coming directly from the company's own designers.

Not that I believe TLG is in any way perfect: as noted above, they have a pretty bad track record with adding in bits of tech (especially killing off Mindstorms, just after they'd totally separated the for-schools Spike range from Mindstorms, making it pointlessly hard and expensive to get a kit for home that matches the one at school, letting the youngster carry on with their ideas from class; made worse by the way the Spike kits are very much "here is an assortment of parts in odd colours, go for it" whilst the home kits were definitely styled for "make just these designs and once you have put the stickers on they will look stupid if you try going your own way" - yup, Bad Part Usage there).

As for these new parts - I'll reserve judgement until I've seen them in the wild, probably at the next LUG show at Shildon in November.

Re: Repeat after me...

LEGO is most definitely uncountable.

Every time you get the box out, there is a different number of pieces - look, see, I *said* there were more blue bricks! We could have finished making that waterfall last week. But where has that green cheese piece gone this time?

Clearly you have never stepped on a LEGO brick going downstairs in the morning:

Aaaaaaa-iiiiiiii yai-yai-yai

Re: Nah...

You are being a bit bleak.

True enough, there are a lot of different "makes one model" sets being released, and these do grab headlines. And the adult dollars. If you go into a LEGO store, those are the ones they want you to see (you being an adult and all that) and see them you will.

But the "Creator 3-in-1" sets are quite popular and get across the idea of "these bricks can be rearranged" whilst still having some good looking models.

And there are plenty of places online that encourage you to make different models.

> That time is gone

There are always good old-fashioned "Classic" sets around, a box/bucket/supersized-2x4 full of, well, classic parts and a book(let) with dozens or more of build ideas. Those never went away. And the Klutz books are all about reusing the parts.

I've bought random LEGO from charity shops more than once (too often, really) and the mishmash of parts from different sets* still left joined together as they were last used says that imaginative play is still alive. And what they do to minifigures is horrifying!

* it is all too obvious when you see the colourful shades from "Friends" sets mixed in with, yes, the greys and blacks of "Star Wars"! If the Empire had made their craft in pastels they might have fared better.

Long term support and/or SDKs

Are rarely, if ever, in LEGO Groups' vision.

They have a history of just forgetting all about products as soon as the new shiny comes along. Various generations of Mindstorms and motor systems are kept alive by hobbyists because the physical objects do actually last, unlike the support.

The current generations are dependent upon mobile phone apps (of course they are) with few, if any, signs to the average builder that they could use the bricks & motors in a new arrangement and still be able to control it. Great way to encourage rebuilding and imagination. Plus the obvious fear that those apps will quietly vanish. Hope you enjoyed your app-enhanced "Hidden Side" or "Vidiyo"; "Dimensions" isn't totally dead yet, as you got a physical DVD for your console.

On the positive side, if you happen to be a computing/electronics hobbyist, you will find some hardware that you can get working; if you can find someone who isn't insisting that theirvstuff is "collectable" and demanding a daft price for it! Probably better off getting "compatible" motors etc from Ali Express - and retailers if you avoid the souk - as they use the older, simpler, connectors and play well with all the normal microcontrollers. Connecting those to dumb plastic pieces gets the creative juices flowing.

Congress ctrl-Zs bulk of proposed cuts to NASA science

Why does this sound like a threat?

> One way or another, we're going to make sure the Johnson Space Center gets their historic spacecraft right where it belongs.

"Fresh from a Moon mission, a craft that took astronauts up then returned on autopilot, delivering rock samples, straight down from orbit and delivered to Johnson at Mach-you-wouldn't-believe-it"

Humongous 52-inch Dell monitor will make you feel like king of the internet with four screens in one

A more elegant solution than having three or four monitors on your desk

Pah!

How am I supposed to maintain any geek cred with the family if I only have one monitor, no matter how large? So it shows four different "virtual monitors" (or "windows" as we like to call them), that doesn"t impress them. Even if I am showing four IPMI consoles *and* the wife's laptop in VLC, it still just looks like any old computer display these days.

But: screwing VESA mounts onto every available bit of Ivar, having one monitor in a very obvious portrait orientation (and a second keyboard casually put to on side*) - now, *that* looks like a geek going the whole hog to them!

* Connected to the basic KVM switch, as sadly not all the motherboards provide IPMI; but the big bundle of thick cables into the back of the KVM just adds to the mystery. All I need now is to figure out how to make sparks come out of this lot, WITHOUT setting my office on fire, and the system will be complete.

Optimus Schmoptimus - Boston Dynamics' humanoid robot is already in mass production

From photo of prototype doing work

Lookie there, (at that point in time) it has two pincers instead of trying to waste effort on mimicking a complete human hand.

Curiously, *just* enough of a hand to tuck in one pincer (acting like a "thumb") whilst raising the other in Optimus's general direction.

(The animation demo real shows more fingers - which looks more like a salesman's idea than an engineer's; I hope. Daft thing, to use an effector that is more complicated than it needs to be, just ask any of the robots that already very effectively build cars)

Researchers poison stolen data to make AI systems return wrong results

Re: Dates and elapsed times

Yeah, typos be we today. Or bad editing, take your pick.

I was originally going to talk about the earlier representations that were discussed in the 1960s but then changed to the 80s 'cos that period was coming up more often in relation to the specific term "knowledge graph", as opposed to structures that do much the same job but weren't referred to as such. The 80s settled on the term because "knowledge engineering" was all the rage back then.

But then I forgot to adjust the other "60" down to "40": bad editing.

But on the bright side, I *do* how to tap on "Reply"...

Techie turned the tables on office bullies with remote access rumble

Re: Neat trick

> Unless, of course, they were lying for some reason

Why admit, IRL, that you read BOFH? You are only alerting other people about where you get ideas from and that risks them becoming wary in your presence. No fun if they poke at the replacement mouse with a pencil...

Baby's got clack: HP pushes PC-in-a-keyboard for businesses with hot desks

Okay, I walked right into that one, didn't I.

All I can say is that I got carried away and relied solely in the evidence of my clearly limited purchases from WH Smiths. And old timey use of thousandths instead of decimal inches if one wanted to move away from decent binary divisions (at which point rulers gave way to those clampy things with the twiddly knobs).

Especially, as I do have have rulers clearly marked with "a little bit, a scosche, some, a bit, a tad"[1], I should be well aware that anything is possible. Even the use of non-traditional rulers for the measurement of traditional units.

[1] Miss? What exactly is "a tad?" In space terms, that's about half a million miles.