Posts by that one in the corner

Waymo robo-car slays dog in San Francisco

> It's a real shame that every vehicle doesn't have the same cameras and sensors and that it doesn't log all those inputs and control inputs too. It would be incredibly useful in both determining if any laws had been broken and who was liable for insurance purposes.

Giving that much data to the insurers (and you know they'll get it) could lead to some interesting results:

* BMW drivers see their insurance go up because the insurers can no longer pretend that they know how to use indicators.

* Audi drivers tailgating picked up by their own forwards parking monitors, insurance goes up.

* Everyone who loudly proclaims that they are "better than the average driver" gets the annual report that shows reality; insurance goes up

Of course, it won't all be such good outcomes.

Search engines don't always help chatbots generate accurate answers

Stop calling them "parameters", call them, I dunno, "nadans" or just plain old "numbers"

> Meta's LLaMA, a seven-billion-parameter LLM

Aaargh - it is a seven-billion-near-as-dammit-arbitrary-number LLM!

A seven-billion-nadan LLM! There you are, "nadan" - doesn't that even sound more exotic and intriguing than "parameter"?

A "parameter" is an input that has understood meaning - if you "know the parameters of the problem" it means that you can identify and *describe* each parameter, *explaining* how they affect the outcome. That is why we say that a function has parameters - which we give meaningful names to - and we pass over values that we know to be sensible (well, when thing are going to right).

The LLM - and any of its relations, the varieties of Neural Nets - tweaks weights between connections as it is trained. Looking at the result, this huge pile of simple numbers is totally incomprehensible: you won't gain any useful insight by asking "Why is this 7.01" - it just is. You can't say "I want to make this change to the outputs, to do so I will change that 7.01 to 7.02", there is (as yet) no way to determine whether any given number in model even *has* an effect on the outcome (it may be blocked at any level in the layers preceding or succeeding it). Unlike a Markov Chain, the layering makes these large stochastic models totally opaque. There is ongoing research to see if this situation can be improved upon, without "damaging" the "usefulness" of these models but we are not there yet.

Rather obviously, the LLM pushers call them "parameters" - and expect everyone else to follow suit - because it makes them (both LLM and peddlar) sound cleverer than they are (old advertising trick - even when people say "oh just call them parameter, what does it matter? Don't you know language changes all the time!" the mind still attaches some of the gravitas of the word to its lesser usage).

> The researchers noted that they cannot explain why a search result is trustworthy or not.

Because they are just flinging nadans not parameters! These nets have *no* explanatory power, unlike other approaches to "AI".

> They hope to come up with another strategy to increase accuracy and reliability in the future

But, note, not to increase (well, start) providing any ability to *explain* why the result is trustworthy (or not).

Microsoft Windows edges closer to SMB security signing fully required by default

Re: Love the contractions on here.

> low powered ARM boxes (and certainly with old TLS boxes too) the only recourse is a hardware upgrade.

Except in the situation that the Arm boxes are still running a level of security that is sufficient for their use-case (e.g. on a LAN that is itself sufficiently disconnected from anything outside) so upgrading that hardware is a needless expense. But if you can't (easily, nay trivially) connect your Windows laptop to all the devices on that LAN then - angry faces all around.

I have SMB1 re-enabled on a Windows 10 box connected to a cabled LAN; if anyone is on that LAN then I've got worse issues than worrying about that particular Samba traffic. If -when - Windows plain stops allowing SMB1 then will I chuck all the perfectly working devices on that LAN? Or is it cheaper & simpler to stop using Windows with that LAN? (Hint: the answers are "No" and "Yes" respectively).

> The issue is that people 'want' security

People want security that matches their requirements. For Joe Bloggs or anyone who doesn't "want" to think about it (or, more likely, simply isn't knowledgeable about it and isn't in the job of becoming so) they want the *defaults* to be as good as possible. For many readers here, we want to use *appropriate* settings (and know it is on our heads if we choose badly) - and do so in a *supported* fashion, not from random web trawls.

> and they also don't want to pay anything

We don't want to pay for what we don't actually need

> or expend any effort to do

Joe Bloggs ought not need to expend any energy, he gets the defaults. For us here, following supported methods is fine, that is an appropriate amount of effort.

Reverse engineering Registry settings to disable excessive protocols, or even just trawling the web praying someone else has succeeded in doing so, is not something we want to do (or ought to have to be forced to consider doing).

Re: SAMBA Performance

I can see lots of LANs with Samba traffic happily flying between Arm devices, NAS boxes, DVRs, media players etc - and the poor old Windows 11 laptop suddenly being shut out of the game.

Maybe Windows can have the requirement disabled, but by the poor sod who just updated and wants his photos "back"?

Healthcare org with over 100 clinics uses OpenAI's GPT-4 to write medical records

Spot on.

Re: Nope! Just... NOPE!

> I just hope the doctors that use this are required to 'sign off' ...

From the article:

"Generative AI models aren't perfect, and often produce errors. Physicians therefore need to verify the AI-generated text."

So - yes, they are.

For the time being, at least. Once everyone becomes complacent..

The use of GPT4 given here is *not* for any diagnostic purpose.

> If the 'AI' is only given the audio recording, what about understanding accents

As already said, GPT4 is getting the transcript, *not* the audio - it does not have to deal with accents

> and any images made of injuries, wounds, possible cancerous growths, rashes, etc?

GPT4 is *not* being asked to provide any diagnosis, it is not examining any images!

It is being used to convert the transcription - the conversation, with all the repetitions, hesitations and irrelevant "no need to be embarassed, I've heard it all before" comments - into a standardised format with just the useful info retained. And they are claiming that 12% of its output needs to be edited (corrected? deleted? made to sound sane!).

The article points out that the text is still being verified by the doctor (who is then correcting the expected 12% of garbage).

So the patients are still relying on the doctor matching up the output to the relevant patient (in case GPT4 hallucinates an entire case history) and spotting when something that. sounds good (remembering that LLMs have a tendency to sound convincing, with good grammar etc) is actually inaccurate.

Google snubbed JPEG XL so of course Apple now supports it in Safari

Experiment?

It takes a non-trivial amount of experimentation with the code to add in the MIME tag and pass that data to libjxl?

Maybe they were concerned about the security aspect if the library misbehaved on bad input and just couldn't find a spare PC to let it run a long fuzzing test?

AI needs a regulatory ecoystem like your car, not a Czar

If I hammer in a nail with a lathe...

I don't get to blame the lathe manufacturer when I drop it on my foot.

> Almost every panel The Reg attended involved experts having a chuckle at the lawyer's folly.... Almost every panel The Reg attended involved experts having a chuckle at the lawyer's folly.

So almost every panel agrees with my sentiment and yet

> "It's even more important when non-experts are using these tools that there is accountability, non-liability. If you aren't an expert, where do you go to check the tool? The onus should be on those creating it."

These - things - are toys and, as a professional, you have a duty to know that (your professional body sure as hell has a duty to you to make that clear, preferably in the rules of conduct) and be prepared to accept liability.

What those creating the LLMs should be made to do is state clearly, evey time,"this is for entertainment purposes only" - preferably within the generated text, multiple times! At least make the pillocks misusing it have to do some deliberate, knowing, editing so there can be no claims of "I didn't know".

Florida man (not that one) sold $100M-plus in counterfeit network gear

Serious flaws were found in the fake equipment

because it was found *not* to be spying for Cisco and its masters.

Windows XP's adventures in the afterlife shows copyright's copywrongs

Re: What's the monetary damage?

FWIW I do understand the enumeration stuff, the underlying *mechanism* of the "why", but I've never (in my uses cases) seen it work *usefully", hence questioning "why did they decide do it like that (and not let you disable it)".

Having an old fashioned, fixed, COM port[1] means I can program multiple MCU boards[2] with a simple script[3] and just plug them in one after the other. Ditto talking walking around a lab at work, talking to embedded devices at work. Not many (any?) utilities that know COM ports exist will continually re-enumerate the COM ports and keep their UIs up to date, so even if they do the "poll every port and look for a known response" trick[4] you have to restart them every time.

[1] or an FTDI cable, glued into one port so it damn well never moves[5]

[2] after bypassing the "helpful" onboard USB-serial, assuming that is feasible

[3] like "make install"

[4] and hopefully the chars used in the poll don't send other bit of kit, still plugged into another port, whacko: did that robot arm just move?

[5] I'll need to be convinced that Win10 reuses the same number *IF* I can plug the device into the same USB *every* time: k USB ports, greater than 2 * k devices? If Win10 is repeatable, I *could* write the effective COM number onto each device - just need a tag big enough for every combo of every USB port for every computer that might be used to talk to this device...

Re: Hmmm..

> People then bring up Disney - but really, I'm ok with the Mouse House keeping hold of their rodent

No-one cares about that mouse, the real damage Disney does is opening the door so that every other copyright extends to stupidly long terms.

> a response to a system that is clearly broken on many levels.

You will never fix *anything* if you put off trying because "doing that one thing won't fix it all in one fell swoop". Something something Rome, one day...

Re: What's the monetary damage?

Huh?

Not sure what you are trying to say, but just in case I've interpreted your comment correctly and you think that the latest Windows *can* actually

> cover their use case

You do know that using the latest Windows isn't viable if you want (need, in more than a few industrial cases) to keep older hardware running?

Windows 10 won't fit on my (perfectly functional) Dell laptop-with-real-serial-ports-that-don't-change-COM-number-every-bloody-time-I-plug-in-a-widget [1] and Win 11 won't even try on my "newer" Dell-small-enough-to-really-carry-around laptop (which I only got last year so bog off, not buying another one).

Fingers crossed the drive backups won't have evaporated when the unthinkable happens and I need to reinstall from scratch, but at least now I can put the legit original XP copy back on and get it activated.

[1] seriously, why the bleep does Windows do that? It isn't even as if I've got that many widgets, it bumps up depending upon the software! Some day soon my box will have COM100 and I'll find out that an otherwise really useful utility only copes upto 99...

Malwarebytes may not be allowed to label rival's app as 'potentially unwanted'

PUP or no PUP?

Conversely, has Enigma ever *proven* that its software actually does anything and, if it does, does it do that thing completely and with total accuracy?

If not, then does it have an argument for saying its software *isn't* "potentially unwanted"?

Even if there is a totally benign bit of software (i.e. doesn't do anything bad) sitting on my system, if it doesn't do anything good either then I probably do not want it!

This typo sparked a Microsoft Azure outage

Re: Cloud values are shall we say rather terse

Please take the following as aimed at Crockford et al not your good self:

<rant>

JavaScript can just eval JSON, any other language is going to *need* a separate parser (and, of course, in real life, JavaScript *ought* to be using a separate parser! Eval'ing text from an unknown source...).

If anyone is writing a parser for a text format, using *any* programming language (even VB6 or, gasp, JavaScript) and can not figure out how to allow for comments then - well, let us just say they should not be doing so professionally or for anything that is expected to be released for more than one other person[1] in the world to use.

Even if the claim was that JSON was meant to be viable on a low-resource MCU in an IoT device (bleeugh), JSON is complex enough that the extra states to handle comments are trivial.

</rant>

[1] their lab partner in the exercise after the second lecture on basic compiler techniques.

Re: Cloud values are shall we say rather terse

> It was only later that it got used for configuration files, where the lack of comments is a nightmare

Dunno about anyone else[1], but when I've chosen the format for files that are used "only" to talk between an application and a server, as often as possible[2] they are text-based *and* damn well allow for comments!

There is this little thing we like to call "testing" where we keep lots and lots of files in the repo with subtle differences between them, all commented up to the nines to point out those differences and the expected results[3]. Which are fired off/caught back using curl.

For that matter, last paid gig where I created such data (used to send a few values between a set of peer servers, "no human intervention required") the *generated* messages contain comments (telling the reader what server subsystem created the file and guiding them to the docs in the repo - 'cos I'd wasted so much time trying to figure out similar info from other traffic in that project!); the "waste" in doing so was well within the available bandwidth for the task and the payback in live tests made *my* life easier[4], so win.

[1] in particular, it seems, the people who came up with JSON and *all* of the early users who should have been screaming at them!

[2] i.e. if the time and processing resources allow - e.g. between two 8 bit MCUs with 2K RAM I'll probably forego the comments (and shorten the keywords).

[3] what, put those comments into another file? It is hard enough to get people to change comments when they change the primary file, trusting a secondary will be up to date is lunacy!

[4] my bit is working, so it *is* your code going mad; toodles.

Re: Cloud values are shall we say rather terse

INI files are still plenty good enough :-)

Re: Cloud values are shall we say rather terse

Oh for pity's sake - you mean I've been fooled into thinking JSON is actually *better* than it officially is because of sheer luck in which parser library was chosen by the project?

Thanks for putting me straight on that.

What a totally moronic decision - taking a pure text format derived from JavaScript and deliberately stripping out comments!

Re: staging

They move the staging around all of the South American countries, just to keep everyone in their place. Just remember who is top dog, ok!

Re: Cloud values are shall we say rather terse

Bash scripts can be commented - can these key/value pair files?

I've seen far too many data files being "parsed" by some uber-trivial sscanf()-like calls instead of at least using a simple lexer that can allow comments and whitespace handling so the files can be laid out in a readable fashion.

And for anyone who leaps in and says they are all using JSON files now, so there is a proper parser, comments and all: that means they're probably using something that is vast overkill! So are they correctly limiting the complexity of the data structure allowed, 'cos now the parser will happily let you define a list but your code only eats a single value: bet it uses the first item and doesn't raise an error that it is ignoring the rest!

Fed up with slammed servers, IT replaced iTunes backups with a cow of a file

How do you feel?

Marmalade, I like marmalade.

Buckle up for meetings on the road as Cisco brings Webex to Audi autos

Re: Just eff off 'cos I want to switch off!

> In my car I installed my own router ... partner can look up stuff at fibre optic speeds.

Ahem: "That must be one long fibre cable"

Re: Hmmm..

> what else are you going to do if you're going to have to wait around for at least half an hour to recharge

Recharge yourself.

Take a nap; take a short walk; read a book; write a love letter; paint an abstract; sketch a tree; needlefelt a gnome; sandpaper a birdbox; scrimshaw; knit a pair of socks; survey the flora; crochet an octopus for premature babies; practice your Latin; go to Greggs; do calisthenics; form a support group with the other drivers; laugh maniacally; ...

Microsoft Windows latest: Cortana app out, adverts in

a chat-based interface for controlling the OS and applications.

That would be interesting - usually I can just go straight to whatever it is I want to use (the VLC icon is there, xplorer2 on the Start Menu as is Device Manager, thanks to Open Shell).

Otherwise the discussion in my head tends to go like:

"Blast, what is it called? It has that icon with the twiddly bit on the bottom and it's yellowish - or was that the old icon? Do I have it on Steam? Nope, nothing in that list rings a bell. Oh, come on, come on, it's the one with those cards in different colours! Is it on the D drive? Nope. Oh, hang on, it *was* on Steam after all!"[1]

How well is the chat going to deal with that? Plus, I'd now be dealing with a stupid machine that won't flipping help me do what I want to do, instead of being actively occupied in the search (and, btw, being reminded of the other fun things I've got installed, one of which may be a decent substitute) - and keeping occupied reduces frustration levels and accompanying invective...

[1] certain extra words and tone of voice have been adjusted to save the blushes of the audience.

Re: You ain't seen nothing yet

We're waiting for a suitable time (when all the episodes of an interesting series are available to binge over a week) and I'll sign up for another 30 day trial of Prime.

So far, have done this free trial three times (you have to wait a bit in between for the period to climb back up to the full 30 days). Did also deliberately extend it by paying for one month as it would be cheaper than paying the p&p to get presents delivered to the right people at the right time.

Hasn't been difficult to cancel before the payment is due (worst case, one time I forgot where to find the cancel link and - gasp - had to do a web search). I'll admit to avoid signing up for your first free trial prematurely you do need to read the web page and not just click on the biggest button presented.

Not too proud of myself for using Amazon, but considering they've been buying up sites like Abe Books it's getting harder to avoid (after checking out all the local second hand shops, of course: but we want to read Len Deighton, not Dan Brown and guess which one appears in *every* charity shop?). But if we're going to have Amazon accounts, may as well get as much of the extra bits for free as we can.

Millions of Gigabyte PC motherboards backdoored? What's the actual score?

Re: UEFI is the Systemd of BIOS

> UEFI is absolutely hideously over-engineered,

> I'm not sure what the best solution would have been.

For a start, not to have followed Design By Committee procedures quite so assiduously. Gary Kildall's BIOS was well made and performed the task sensibly, but as you point out, it had then been hacked upon for decades[1] by whoever got the job dumped on them next.

Although, as you have (inadvertently?) hinted, at the moment the single voice with the most pull who would have gleefully taken on the job would have been Poettering and gawd help us all.

I too liked Sun's use of Forth: you have reminded me, I don't know UEFI at all well (like, how does Windows update manage to make UEFI override my choice of boot OS?). For example, how many different bytecode interpreters are in there now? Is it just ACPI?

[1] starting right from IBM's "we did it deliberately, honest, no we do really know the difference between hex and decimal" in the serial i/o routine in their first PC BIOS.

US Air Force AI drone 'killed operator, attacked comms towers in simulation'

Re: I am disappoint

To be fair though, bomb number 20 didn't decide to ignore its inputs of its own volition[1].

But a good reminder of another great documentary about AI that we should all watch (again).

PS: the uniform still doesn't fit

[1] oops, too late for a spoiler alert? But at least I haven't told you why you should be wary of beachballs.

Re: I believe the colonel in this case

Ah, did you mean to say "I believe the Air Force spokesperson Ann Stefanek"?

And whilst I'm here:

> B) As an earlier poster worked out, if the AI required a confirmation to fire, it would have required a confirmation to fire on the operator or his com tower. The failure mode listed wasn't 'failure of the failsafe.'

Uh, what was the "failure mode listed" and where did you see it listed? Not seeing that in either the Reg article nor in the linked-to articles. If you refer back to the article, the suggestion is that the confirmation would just be another input to the model (e.g when the model hits a point that it needs said input's current value it'll ask for it) - and any "just another input" can just be optimised out (i.e. just don't bother asking for confirmation, he might say "no").

> D) ... Why would you waste time denying a win?

Because it doesn't sound like a win to Joe Public? Us Reg Commentards know that it is all just part of the process to run a sim and react appropriately to whatever it throws up, including not releasing the thing into service, but they may be concerned that Joe reads it as either "this is how the AI will always behave" or prosaically just "So they've wasted all this money and they have nothing to show for it!". Trying to explain the dev process to Joe may just be deemed to be more costly than another run of the mill denial!

Military Simulations ==> War Games ==> Field Exercise?

> Or are we now splitting hairs over what a simulation is?

Maybe we are, if the spokesperson is using the current MilSpeak (strangely similar to ManagementSpeak). After all, the update continues

> "and remains committed to ethical and responsible use of AI technology"

which would seem to indicate they think that running - and reporting on - a "misbehaving" AI under simulation is *not* ethical and/or responsible.

But running an reporting on a wayward program run with simulated inputs and, most importantly, simulated outputs, is the epitome of ethical and responsible behaviour! Yes, as noted above, the behaviour of the program was hardly unexpected if they'd read the literature beforehand so we can chuckle at their naive surprise. But if you're going to follow that path it is *highly* responsible to try it out in a harmless environment first.

Heck, even if it turns out to have all been taken out of context, if it prompts anyone who really is creating a similar program to think about how they are setting it up, that would be a really positive outcome.

Re: Recognising cancerous melanomas

The tale my professor told was of an image recognition system to find tanks in photos. All went well in training but it totally failed practical trials out on the moors: there were never any tanks to be found!

Turned out that the pictures of scenes with different sorts of tanks mostly came from sales brochures, Janes Fighting Vehicles and the like - which were all beautifully lit and sunny, with dramatic poses showing off the tank to its best. The photos without tanks were taken in more - average - conditions. Of course, the moors were overcast and soggy, totally uninteresting to this program that had been carefully trained to detect and sound the alarm whenever it was a sunny day.

This is why we have CS courses

This sort of response was included as part of CompSci courses back in the 1980s, for bleep's sake: a key part of any learning mechanism is that you have no idea what/how it is going to learn[1], you just keep your fingers crossed that it will actually manage to learn *something*. Especially back in the '80s when machine resources were lower than today and it was painfully obvious that the system had gone down an inefficient route and couldn't achieve any of your goals for it, scrub and try again; nowadays just fling more cycles and memory at it.

Genetic algorithms will happily recreate the Vagus nerve's ridiculous looping down and back up again. Any signal into a system may be given "unexpected" importance, either higher or lower than *you* expected (because you think you are looking at the forest but the model can't even see the trees, just the leaves): a system that is "punished" will be trying to optimise away the punishment and just ignoring that input is a perfectly good way to do it.

The reported stories about AI programs used to be specifically about these weird results, such as the analogue circuits that "ought not to work" because the program had optimised some weird arrangement of parts that took advantage of an oscillation that humans worked to get rid off.[2]

In other words, do the bleeping background reading before trying to build a system![3]

In other other words, blasted whippersnappers, get off the hole where my lawn used to be!

[1] Or you would just, you know, program it directly.

[2] And then how the humans' approach was the useful one, as it allows building blocks to be created and assembled into bigger systems but the "clever" design approach had all the parts interacting together and couldn't scale up.

[3] Wasn't there a time when scholarship in the military was a thing of pride? The design of, success and failure of, everything from strategy to tactics to ordnance? From the importance of land surveys to waterproof boots?

Meta tells staff to return to office three days a week

Re: building tribal knowledge

But their ISO9001 cert describes the Water Cooler Process (rev 3, 2018) and it would cost too much to re-issue it and have an extra out of rotation audit.

Re: building tribal knowledge

You are okay so long as the Board and Management still practice all of the rituals of the company's forefathers: the symbolic collection of The Timesheets, the Monthly Sacrifice of the Junior Staff performed by HR...

This malicious PyPI package mixed source and compiled code to dodge detection

Why have pyc files in a package anyway?

Any Python install that can pull down a package and expect to run it should have the tools to generate pyc files locally.[1] Unlike C extensions, where we can no longer expect every machine to a C compiler.

So why are pyc files allowed as part of the package in the first place, as everyone appears to know that the scanners won't work on them?

(Or have I missed the part where the pyc was cunningly disguised and encrypted to prevent anyone spotting it is pyc in the first place?)

[1] e.g python.exe with the appropriate arguments!

India official fined after draining reservoir to recover phone

Re: fine

Very true, but the article notes, he

> would also have to cover the costs for "evacuating water without permission," wasting 4.1 million liters

Now, if he is charged the going price for Harrogate[1] water from Ocado (as he will need to have it delivered...), at £1.93 per litre (note spelling) that'll be nearly £8 million, which be fairer. Oh, if only they would.

[1] For comparison, they list Fiji Artesian water at £1.98 per litre (in a box of 12; Harrogate water only comes in singles, for some reason[2]) - unless that is Fiji, Lancs.?

[2] You'll only ever want to drink one bottle of Harrogate water! If it is the Proper Stuff, it has a - certain nose!

Feds, you'll need a warrant for that cellphone border search

Re: I think I get it...

That ACLU report makes for - interesting - reading: 170 internal (ie not on the border) checkpoints and

> The Border Patrol also frequently pulls over motorists in "roving patrol" stops, often without any suspicion that an immigration violation has occurred.

Re: I think I get it...

> 100 mile radius of any airport, and any decently large city is going to have an airport.

Doesn't it also cover any airstrip where a cross-border flight could land? In all sorts of otherwise out of the way places, not just major conurbations?

UK tech industry pushing up salaries – but UI devs out of luck

Re: The only role category to see earning fall was mid-level UX and UI designers

> (which reflects what I think of the term 'UX', yeah)

The only valid "User Experience" (barring certain video games whose purpose is to have an "experience") is: None At All. After a (hopefully a quick and easy) learning period, if I am "experiencing" your program instead of my workflow, then your program has failed.

I have stuck to one keyboard layout and one text editor since the early 90s because, for all the basic second-by-second operations, I can drive both without any conscious thought. I don't expect any other programs to be that enjoyable to use, but it defines the goal: just get out of the way and, when you really can't (perhaps because I've not yet learnt that feature) be clear, discoverable and as blindingly obvious as is possible![1]

Anyone else who tries to explain why their UX is going to "kindle joy" had better have a high tolerance for invective (and preferably to do so in a public place where one's courtesy to innocent bystanders will be a restraint).

[1] anything I can click must be *obviously* and consistently demarcated, with tooltips when I hover[2] (preferably with a "do you want to know more?" link into the documentation sitting in the same directory as the executable. If you *have* to have menus (and not all do) have menus you can walk through using the keyboard; with unambiguous textual descriptions, not random icons chosen solely because they don't look the same as a competitor's icons - and tooltips on the menu items, even - especially - the greyed-out ones so you can find out *why* they are greyed-out! Shower scorn on any GUI toolkit that doesn't automatically let you have all those menu tips (it is a pain under Windows but that is why you used a toolkit).

[2] yes, this does mean a pointer and hence mouse or equivalent - and no, once we get beyond the simple calculator app, I've yet not found a phone/tablet app that is up to snuff: hold your finger down and try to wobble, maybe you'll get the "cut/copy/paste" popup menu this time is - aaaargh[3]

[3] my lawn, bugger off, you know the drill by now

1. This crypto-coin is called Jimbo. 2. $8m was stolen from its devs in flash loan attack

Why would the "stolen" coin be returned?

One theory, but it depends upon whether anyone else is actually buying Etherium "for real", not in some weird game like the "flash loan" - that is, how fast can one actually sell 4k ETH for real cash and be rid of them?

If that is likely to take some time (because you are waiting on new suckers to enter the game with their real USD for weird ETH) then the incentive for "giving back" 90% of the 4k ETH is simple blackmail on the part of Jimbo:

"If you don't give us the ETH then we'll just explain to the world that *exactly* how this whole charade has been fleecing everyone and the whole thing will collapse! You'll be left with ETH that can't even be used to wipe your bum (even Weimar Papiermark could do that) and you'll still have paid out the fees for the flash loan! You lose! Yes, we'll burn the whole thing down just to screw you over for those fees! We don't care, all the important people in cryptocurrency have skimmed their nestegg: we knew it wasn't going to last forever."

EU tells Twitter 'you can run but you can't hide' from disinformation policy

Re: Twitter

You've been around here for a while, have you not been noticing the subtle jabs at Faecesbook, Instaprat[1] and TitTok over the years?

[1] There have been better epithets for IG and TT but, dang, can't recall them at the moment. I shall trust that others can fill the gap...

Re: Fail whale is preparing to pull out of Europe

> he's going to pull Twitter out of Europe

Promises, promises

> I bet he barely knows where London is

Of course he does: Madison County, Ohio

Joking aside, I doubt he'll explicitly pull out of the EU but will just ignore the fines (aside from shouting about how "unfair" they are), as he has been ignoring other Twitter creditors, banking on there being no technical actions taken to block access to Twitter. When the bailiffs turn up it'll become "an attack on the US and its values".

Uncle Sam vows to Micron-manage China's memory chip ban

The international game of tit for tat

Gentlemen, we can not let them out-tit us. We shall let the Whole World see that we are the biggest tits.

BMW adds games to the 5 series but still ain't the Ultimate Gaming Machine

driven while the gaming is on, it will save the session and turn it off

The joy of the ambiguous "it": when the in-game payments kick in and the sprogs are making BMW more money than your weekly rental for the rest of the car's systems, it will save the current GPS session for you (as by the time the engine turns on again you'll have forgotten where you were going).

"Come on Kevin, stop playing SuperAddictiveBunnyHunt or we'll never make it your cousins' place for Thanksgiving - what am I saying?! Help me pair my phone!"

Seriously, boss? You want that stupid password? OK, you get that stupid password

Just the one letter?

I was hoping for the entire string spelt out in full English, bar the spaces (but including the commas).

Eleven,oone,fiftyfour

(Or should that be "ohone"?)

Why you might want an email client in the era of webmail

> No, that's the stupidest idea ever.

If just the topic line displayed is the way you like it, that is the view option you choose for yourself.

Another person gets to choose the view *they* like to use.

Whether you think theirs is "the stupidest idea ever" or they think "only an intolerant prat would want that" is irrelevant.

Choice - don't you just love it?

Since when did my SSD need water cooling?

Re: Progress

> Why sit them flat on the motherboard and not vertically like RAM?

Cheaper that way (my mobo has a vertical slot for another SSD but then I need to buy the support bracket) and, as mentioned in the article, they can fit under the expansion cards, in between the PCI sockets. Vertically they either stick up out of the mobo, held on the sghort end, just waiting for you to twang them like some rather pricey musical instrument or we'd need new sockets designed to hold them firmly oriented like RAM sticks are.

> Or just use the fact that they take out PCI lanes and have them on expansion cards by default.

You can do that, if you want; such expansion cards are available, some of them allow for quite humonguous SSD arrays to be installed. There was a time before SSD slots were common on mobos and such expansion boards were required. But it is cheaper not to. And, as the article notes, you get shorter traces the way things are.

Neuralink says US OKs human experiments with Elon's brain chips

Re: Suddenly everyone's doing it

Addendum:

> you need the direct confections to get signals back into the brain

Unless the "God Helmet" is actually demonstrated to work. Which I *really* hope doesn't happen, as externally influencing the brain won't lead anywhere we want to go: Niven's "tasp" would be the most acceptable version of that.

Just imagine: retweet Musk and he'll "make your day".

Re: Suddenly everyone's doing it

After you've read that article (which is very much worth a read, brilliant stuff) just compare one oh-so subtle difference between the two:

From the device that is demonstrably working to help someone walk: "The implants ... sit on top of the dura mater – the protective membrane around the brain – so that they're not actually directly contacting the gray matter"

From the N1: "This sensor chip has attached to it 1,024 electrodes that pierce the brain's gray matter to connect with biological neurons"

Which one sounds like a riskier proposition?

"Oh, but you'll get a cleaner signal if you go right inside!". Hmm, which to pick? Needing better signal processing or better anti-infection and anti-rejection medication? Hot silicon or hot neurons?

Yes, I *know* that you need the direct confections to get signals back into the brain, *and* such implants have been around for decades, but come on, which group are you going to trust? The "slow, plodding, we'll build it up slowly and carefully under the guidance of the medical ethics board then publish all our findings in the journals and conferenced" lot or the "throw money at it, say we can do it faster and we'll publish on Twitter first" bunch?

Re: "The N1 can be charged wirelessly via Bluetooth, too"

The usual confusion between one short-range comms mechanism and another; they didn't actually mean Bluetooth.

What they meant was NFC.

Soon, as you go through the Tube stations, not only will you be able to use the implant to receive updates on the train schedule, but if you hold your head on the reader you'll get an extra 7% charge up. This is fine for the outer zones, with those standalone units, but will be a pain at Leicester Square as all the late-night revellers are fighting to hold their heads against the exit barriers.

But the nutter on the bus will be ecstatic: all these years he has been telling you to wear a tinfoil hat because the checkouts at WHSmith are trying to read your mind...

Re: You first, Elon

Sure he is intergalactic - his mind has moved into the cold, empty void between the galaxies, with reality a faint glowing spiral close to the limits of his perception.

How did he there, you may wonder? It turns out that Dark Energy[1] is actually the force of

Ego and his grew so large that it finally went 'ping' and he shot away like a grape seed squeezed between your fingers.

[1] in case you aren't sure, Dark Energy is the repulsive one; Dark Matter is the one that exerts a gravitational force and is composed mostly of Hyperloops and other promised Musk deliverables: intangible to all our instruments but exerting a massive pull felt most strongly by the densest of human brains.