Posts by that one in the corner

That old box of tech junk you should probably throw out saves a warehouse

Re: Golden Junque

For some reason, the box of hemispheres keeps catching my eye. Tubing? many uses. Breathable air? Given what they get up to, the best kind of air. But - a box just labelled "hemispheres"?

> I still need to find a use for my biggest supply

Christmas will be here soon enough and LED chains (buy in bulk!) will run at all of those voltages.

Although, if some of the displays that get featured on YT are to believed, you may want to get another PSU.

PS buy a family pack of welding masks as well!

Best way to do it, these modern mice just don't have the build quality.

Re: Golden Junque

I decided to "organise" myself, starting last year. So stopped into Rymans[1] every weekend to pick up a few more Really Useful Boxes[2]. Now I can be assured that, if nothing else, The Stuff isn't being squashed beneath The Things and all The Doodads are together, by colour.

But now the pile is over halfway up the window and every time I try to look for something, by the time all the 9l boxes on top have been moved out the way, I'm knackered and have covered the door, walling myself into my office! Send help! And coffee!

[1] You ad could be here!

[2] Other plastic boxes are available, but, really, do you want to?

Re: The one law of TBFOOTYSPHTOBKJIC

You icon, sir

Re: TBFOOTYSPHTOBKJIC vs managers

Gesundheit

Re: TBFOOTYSPHTOBKJIC vs managers

Not to mention the loss of knowledge and can-do spirit 'cos the young lads are no longer being shown how to recognise when you can grab the similar part from the previous model but they added two more lines to the cable, which can be rigged with one of these (yes, I *know* the packet says "floppy drive" but look, it uses the same connector).

Re: PSUs

How can anyone be sad when they have a model railway?!!

So, is it in the chuff-chuff style or the whiiRRR WHOosh era?

Must keep re-fusion urge to convey-or belt out - feelings about puns that eclipse my best efforts.

Windows XP activation algorithm cracked, keygen now works on Linux

Re: DO NOT go on the Internet with XP

> And good luck with anybody around here knowing what a Twinkie is

All I know is that, according to Family Guy, they will be one of the very few things that survive the nuclear war. Twinkies, cockroaches and something called "Velveeta, the cheese that would not die".

Re: DO NOT go on the Internet with XP

> Have you never heard of intranets?

I've only got a LAN with a few servers, will that do instead?

Experimental brain-spine computer interface helped a paralyzed man walk

Wonderful story to end the week with

Bravery and an uplifting use of tech. A real pick-me-up after - well, no need to dwell on that.

Thank you for reporting this. I hope there will be many more opportunities for similar.

Twitter Spaces groans under weight of Ron DeSantis and Elon Musk's egos

Re: Twitter chief engineer falls on sword

> Silver herald[2] ... and all

[2] Ha! He wishes he had a Herald, now that would be a Triumph![3]

[3] Curses, missed the edit window by - *that* much. Come along, 99.

Re: Twitter chief engineer falls on sword

From that BBC article:

> However, Mr Dabiri said: "Working with @elonmusk has been highly educational, and it was enlightening to see how his principles and vision are shaping the future of this company."

Now, that is a carefully worded reply (and who can blame him - he quit rather than be pushed, Musk is probably outraged that Elon[1] didn't get the chance to defenestrate and would set his rabid legal ferrets onto any more informative statement).

[1] Come on, you know Musk refers to himself in the third party as any good mook character does; although he imagines himself as poor misunderstood Galactus, big space ships, Silver herald (albeit with broken windows) and all, when we see "Musk smash".

What amazing technology

> stream reached a peak of 600,000 people

All trying to listen to the same audio-only stream. Why, that is over one tenth the audience for The Archers, who only manage 13 minutes per evening, not even every evening in the week!

What an amazing time to be alive, to be able to witness such a feat! What genius, to be able to bring us these marvels of the modern age!

(/s ooobbviously)

Facial recog system used by Met Police shows racial bias at low thresholds

Re: Facial recognition test

Hence the concern that the Met's facial recognition will get said personage pulled over for the outstanding offences of driving a Holy Roman Empire without due care and attention, causing it to break up on the hard shoulder.

Get ready for Team America: AI Police

Why bother tackling the actual problem?

> It also changes one of the plan's strategies: 2019's "Make long-term investments in AI research" becomes "Make long-term investments in fundamental and responsible AI research" in the 2023 document.

Ignoring the reality that it is controlling for the responsible *deployment* of these systems that is important.

Research has to look at every aspect - it has to (aim to) *find* every aspect - of a field. So we can know what is a Good Thing to implement and what would be a Bad Thing to deploy and market and hype past the point of irresponsibility and into the rank marshes of maliciousness.

All Microsoft Surface Pro X cameras just stopped working

Re: Certificate!

> Basically built in obsolescence

BINGO!

Not forgetting HaaS: Hardware As A Service - only they weren't even competent at controlling that and the trigger got pulled before they could send out the threatening^^^^^^^^^^^ subscription reminder[1] emails.

[1] What subscription, you ask? You didn't read the entire EULA, did you!

Microsoft finally gets around to supporting rar, gz and tar files in Windows

Re: but why?

> send that spreadsheet as a PDF, damnit, that's why it was created.

Just so long as you only want a copy that looks like it was printed.

But if you were expected to use it as a, well, a spreadsheet, PDF will be pretty useless.

> they use Excel, why don't you?

Other programs can eat XLS...

> It's RUDE to send a file format that isn't a "universal" standard and expect others to deal with

As already pointed put, the most well-used archivers, such as Winzip and 7z, handle all the old formats as well - if the user just double-clicked, it'll open, same as a ZIP. And now MS is even extending that to opening in Explorer.

> .RAR is not a Windows-standard file format

If you want a properly Windows-standard file that competes with RAR then you presumably are looking to using CAB files? Windows did, eventually, add some support for looking inside ZIP files, but they aren't a Windows native format, more there because they had their arm twisted.

> RAR should have been dead since the days of the floppy, though, it's only used as some kind of "hacker" cachet label

That would be the ZOO file.

> RAR serves no useful purpose nowadays

All of the formats are much of a muchness (bar "I can compress just that little bit better than you") and if one is established in a niche there is no reason (other than "give me the shiny or die") to just stop using it (and having to change otherwise perfectly functional code for no good reason).

You may not (knowingly!) be using RAR files, but I've downloaded some from perfectly safe places fairly recently: e.g. paid good money for totally legit copies of comics & GNs from Humble Bundle and downloaded them as CBR files.

Re: I'll still use 7ZIP

VLC FTW

The Internet (or even your own LAN - same thing, after all) hasn't ever compressed the data itself.

Perhaps you are thinking of the commands you used to use "back in the day" to send your data from A to B? Quite a few people had a favourite sequence they'd use each time, using streams: e.g. tar into gzip into ... [1]

[1] nope, not going to try and give a real command sequence: I'd never get all the args right without a lot of looking things up, so you'd then be all "Fule! You just overwrote the remote's /bin with your /var"

Re: Consistency is key

> On my corporate machine I have third-party WinZip, the regular Windows zipping function, WinRAR, 7-Zip...

Any reason you feel the need to have so many tools that replicate each other's functions? Perhaps if you stuck with just, say, 7zip you'd find things less confusing?

Re: rar files!

Huh? If you have already downloaded the RAR file, why not just open that instead of downloading the data a second time?

ChatGPT can't pass these medical exams – yet

Re: Passing grade - mirror, indicate before passing

> Yet the standard of AI driving is already (measured as accidents per 100,000 mile / km) better than the average for police drivers

How do the numbers for Police driving beak down between, say, pootling from A to B with no particular urgency, responding to a callout, chasing some prat at high speed?

And how many actual Police miles are driven a year compared to AI miles? Along motorway, town roads or twisty B roads?

Are your numbers really comparing like for like?

Re: I have a major problem with this ChatGPT rush

> To me, this feels like we may be heading for a computer version of thalidomide.

You mean, something where we literally had to learn a whole new area of drug research (chirality) before being able to understand what was going on?

The thalomide disaster was a disaster for everyone caught up in it (thankfully, those I knew personally were just getting on with it, no fuss - made pretty good perfect, actually). No getting away from that.

But, much as I question the use of ChatGPT et al fr anything other than amusement, I'm not seeing that there is a connection to be made here.

Re: Passing grade

> Then why is 70% the passing grade?

Because even the worst graded medical student will go on from the exam to a junior learning post where they'll be expected to continue to study and be brought up to speed (or remain in a lowly position in the gastro unit).

With ChatGPT, that is it - one shot and it is done.

*Maybe* the next iteration will do better - maybe not (see article).

PS I was trying to find the Foil Arms and Hog "Doctor Google" but Google is refusing to find it for me. Anyone?

PPS Doooomdahh

Microsoft enables booting physical PCs directly into cloud PCs

If this catches on

Maybe the Wayland people will finally realise why we like[1] using X11 over the network[2].

Of course, X11 does it better[3]: connect to as many clients on as many remote systems as you want, but only have the one desktop to manage (and that can be local or remote, you get to choose!).

[1] okay, there is room for improvement, but the basics are sound. Yes, even clipboards - basic ones.

[2] over a suitably encrypted link, of course.

[3] them's fighting words: cue being told off 'cos RDP can do that sort of thing nowadays (? it may well do better now than last time we tried it)

Re: Corporate use

So, logging into a server close to your database - why does that need anything new and shiny from MS? Hasn't that just been SOP forever?

Green screens? Nah, it'll be proper TTY, with green and white paper, so that management has a full log of your day's work.

Next year, Epson & Nvidia will release their full-screen printer with "What the Butler Saw" carousel to get your Doom fps up to an unbelievable 14! Twitch will die, to be replaced by Lulu's FlickNow tech. Speed runs: see level 12 in a pamphlet!

Phones' facial recog tech 'fooled' by low-res 2D photo

Re: Need LIDAR

> Steve Jobs once said about phones that needed a stylus, “You’ve already lost”

Except that Jobs wasn't talking about 'phone security, just his perception that a 'phone with a stylus[1] wasn't something that would sell as the latest shiny: the seller has lost a few sales.

As opposed to duff security, which (involuntarily) loses the buyer the contents of his bank account.

[1] Personally, I miss a stylus and decent way to use it: taking notes in a darkened lecture was easy with the old Palm Pilot (didn't have to move hand across the screen, just use Grafitti v1's easy shapes); not worth attempting with a virtual(ly useless) keyboard or any junk "handwriting recognition" that disturbs the audience with a glowy pad that ruins their, and your, low light vision. Have gone back to using an A5 notepad and pen. Ghastly scrawl but still better than the "modern" alternative.

Astronomers spot Earth-sized exoplanet probably 'carpeted' by volcanoes

Re: Any architects care to comment?

Except your waterfront property is on the nightside, so you'll have more to worry about from the underfloor heating than the sky.

Ex-Twitter sextet sues Elon Musk for 'stiffing' them on severance

Re: You favourite authors are all morally bankrupt

> or doing other useful work like tightening steering wheel bolts on Teslas.

That's because he could never figure out the "righty tighty, lefty loosey" rule (insert your own punchlines here, e.g. "What? But the Right are as about tight as you can get!")

Re: There is a reason

> A decent article in today's bbc asking "what happened to Elon Musk".

Don't suppose you can dig out a URL for that, can you?

My famous-search-engine-fu is failing to find anything much more than

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-65609927

which isn't that much more than what we got on The Register, really ("Musk tweets stupid things, here is the latest sample...").

TIA

You favourite authors are all morally bankrupt

> He claimed it was "morally wrong" that some people get the luxury of holing up at home all day on their computers

It was bad enough when we heard of their extravagant lunches with publishers down the local Greggs, now we finally understand the full depths of their depravity. Get them out of the house and down the pits, make them ply their typeface up against the coalface!

And the Twitch streamers! [1]

Good grief, Musk has been spending too long sniffing the RP-1!

Thinking of authors, GNU Terry P. - now there was a man who knew how to make holing up at home on the computer a worthwhile occupation![2]

[1] actually, that one I do find a bit weird, but, hey, enough people find it entertaining, at least it keeps them from Love Island.

[2] though he did wander off every now and again, but that is another story or fifty.

Professor freezes student grades after ChatGPT claimed AI wrote their papers

Re: @Filippo

Ah, ok; thanks to both for putting me straight.

Yay, have one black-box "AI" deciding whether a piece of text was written by human or LLM. That will work well when it comes time to appeal the decisions:

"Can you explain to us how the program decided the text was machine-generated?"

"Nope"

"Well, can you show us which parts of the text were key in reaching this determination?"

"Nope"

"Can you give us any reason at all to believe that the determination was correct, despite the protestations of the accused?"

"Nope. Weeellll"

"Yes?"

"It is a computer, they always get it right! And we spent lots of money running it, we wouldn't waste our funds if it was wrong, would we?"

"True enough. Appeal rejected, no degree for you laddie. Next!"

"Okay

Re: utter idiot

> the US constitution was written by an A.I

Behind the barn on a cloudless night, the townsfolk swore they heard a clap of thunder and strange lightning hit the ground. The next morning, a perfectly circular section of the barn wall was found to have been burnt away. Just beside it, one of the town's less-favoured sons, a ne'er do well tough, was found in just his undergarments on the ground, telling an unlikely story of how "a naked man approached him and demanded his boots, his trews and tricorne hat before stealing his horse". A stranger calling himself Nathaniel Gorham left by the East Road, ignored by all.

Two days later, as the news reached the city, reported as "a marvellous tale from our country cousins", another stranger startles Edmund Randolph, grabbing his arm and pulling him aboard a wagon with the words "Come with me if you want our Constitution to live; please, call me John".

The rest is history. We now can only wait to see if the future was won.

Re: A simple solution

How long to knock up a Python script[1] that can:

* send a text prompt into an LLM

* commit the result

* pause for a random time between 2 and 36 hours

* preferably, tweak a random seed to be given to the LLM [2]

* if not yet time to hand in assignment, loop back to the start

[1] dunno myself, still "getting around to" learning Python, but I hear all the cool kids use it.

[2] can't name an LLM off the top of my head that gives you access to a seed like that, but bet your bottom dollar the UI for that will appear as soon as your idea gains traction (cf how Stable Diffusion gives you access to all the controls compared to the dumbed-down UI of Craiyon)

Re: Education itself is partly to blame here.

When you got out into the the real world, did you get given tasks to do that were like assignments or ones that were like exams?

Learning how to do well at which would be better preparation for going into the workplace?

Re: More misunderstanding of what an LLM is

> University professers tend to be smart, but we all have our areas of expertise.

And a good professor - a good academic at any level - will go and ask a colleague in the appropriate field when they come across something outside of their area of expertise.

Not just apply magical thinking about what "an AI" can do. And certainly not when doing so impacts on other people's lives.

Re: More misunderstanding of what an LLM is

> giving convincing looking answers.

That is, your basic answeroid.

Re: @Filippo

> I just had ChatGPT come up with a description for a character in a novel, and it came up with...

Why bother using ChatGPT for that? There is no shortage of random character generators out there, including ones for specific genres: just shake the dice or shuffle the decks, pick the cards out and ta-da! You'll have a far lower carbon footprint than running ChatGPT.

You can even make up your own card decks or join a writers group and swap cards with each other.

Of course, one difference between shuffling cards or rolling dice compared to asking ChatGPT is that the latter will be spitting out items that it has already seen are often used together, that are statistically linked. There is a well-worn name for that kind of correlation, isn't there?

> It's formulaic

Yes, correct, that is how we describe such correlations. Also, when it gets too closely correlated, we then call it a cliche (sorry, dunno where the e acute is on this Android touch keyboard thingy).

> And this is specifically a creative task

I *really* hope you aren't saying that you thought the ChatGPT results were creative!

Microsoft decides it will be the one to choose which secure login method you use

> it's a fundamental way about how the function works (See also: TPM)

On the subject of TPM, you may want to have a little read (and consider, for example, why there is any need to have anything other than version 1.0 of such a technology):

https://www.covertswarm.com/post/how-secure-are-tpm-chips

> You can't even reset the PIN via 365

What you can and can not do via a cloudy system like 365 really is not relevant to what could be done by an adversary, should they find a flaw in the implementation (and history shows us that anything complicated enough is going to have flaws).

> I guess I (perhaps incorrectly) presume that people frequenting a tech news site may have a modicum of tech knowledge

Which is why I worry that you are so completely trusting of the implementation as to ridicule even the idea that there may be flaws. You have been keeping up with all the news over the years where cryptographic mechanisms have been designed that are uncrackable but have been ruined by flaws in the implementation? Such as the use of unencrypted comms between the TPM and the CPU (see above URL)?

Re: What is it actually?

> you device is supposed to...

My device is supposed to do many things it oft times fails at (and quite maliciously too)

> It's unthinkable that a device's firmware biometric interface could ever be hacked

You just thought of it, then I did, now the person reading this has as well!

> to generate confirmations surreptitiously

Don't underestimate the guys at DEFCON! We're just waiting for someone to find the correct sequence of brownout resets and I2C spoofing...

Also, please don't use the word "hacked" when referring to biometrics - it conjures up some unpleasant images: https://www.theregister.com/2021/05/06/samsung_galaxy/

Re: Who's PC?

Hews

> Biometric data is ... never broadcast off the device. This is why you can't ...

They would tell you that, wouldn't they.

Okay, who took away the black helicopter icon? Just have to make do:

c(X)--x

or going the other way, but without the cockpit:

x--(X)

Search the web at least once every two years or risk losing your Google account

Re: 2FA

> we start looking like 90s drug dealers with 3 phones

Didn't your local plod put up those big posters from the Met in 2008, warning that people with multiple phones or owning a camera are terrorists?

https://observers.france24.com/en/20080307-terrorist-campaign-photographers-searched-london

Re: @chivo243 - Nice?

> you seem to be in a different region since your last login

You mean, whatever random place geolocation places my IP? Which is currently Bangor (I wish, easy shipping from the EU) but it has been on the South Coast of England, sometimes Greater London, or in the Reading area; even, IIRC, Bradford as well (that one is getting closer).

Always good when I get those emails from the likes of Ebay: someone logged into your account from this approximate location, was that you? No idea! Tell me the IP they used, that'd be of more use! Though it was me, I just viciously have more than one browser installed.

BTW, I'm very happy with this peripatetic life, so no need to offer any advice on how to "improve" it!

Tesla batteries went from fully charged to fully disabled after botched patch, lawsuit claims

Re: My old car just keeps on trucking

I foresee a bright future for the old fashioned British farce, as the Vicar is roused out of his bed to charge his car, only to see that the vehicle just leaving the bay belongs to young Aubrey, who swore he was in Brighton this weekend. Gracious, isn't that Felicia, his cousin's intended, standing by the Tesla in her flimsy negligee, illuminated from behind by the flames?