Posts by segfault188

Lego crams an ASIC in a brick to keep kids interested

flushing it away

"You might hear our SMART Brick roaring like a jet plane or flushing like a toilet,"

The best thing to do with a Smart Brick is to flush it down the toilet. That way it can't spy on you. </paranoid mode>

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

Dell UltraSharp 52

A disadvantage of having one giant screen rather than multiple smaller ones is if it stops working. In the latter case if one fails you can likely continue without too much inconvenience until a replacement is sourced.

Whereas if the single 52 inch screen fails, will there be a spare one available or will you be making do with a laptop screen until the IT department can find multiple monitors as a replacement?

New York’s incoming mayor bans Raspberry Pi at his inauguration party

Re: The Banned Item List

Pets (other than service animals)

Bats or batons

They're making doubly sure I can't take my pet bat. Or maybe singly if I claim it's an emotional support bat.

Accused data thief threw MacBook into a river to destroy evidence

salt bath

a forensics expert who advised using salt water to destroy evidence because it does more damage to electronics than fresh water

So the data thief would have been better having a relaxing bath containing Epsom salt* and the submerged laptop?

* not the same as sodium chloride, but might do enough damage

The future of long-term data storage is clear and will last 14 billion years

porn collection

That's nearly big enough to store my porn collection!

You think that 5 inches is almost sufficient?

As humanoid robots enter the mainstream, security pros flag the risk of botnets on legs

Plastering stilts

Looking like an accident waiting to happen

Apply here to win a Microsoft Ugly Sweater. It's uglier than ever

pay someone

> I'd actually pay someone NOT to send me this sweater!

Just provide your bank account details, and I promise to only take what I regard as fair recompense for not sending you this sweater. Merry Xmas (without the xmas sweater).

70-hour work weeks no longer enough for Infosys founder, who praises China’s 996 culture

When it fails

> plans to link the nation’s Unified Payments Interface (UPI) with Europe’s TARGET Instant Payment Settlement (TIPS)

So when the link fails it'll go TIPSUPI as well as TITSUP.

Brits to help foot power bill for datacenters under government AI plans

millions of TVs charging overnight

Was that meant to be EVs, or is there a new acronym TVs I've not discovered yet?

Re: UK Government Seriously Delusional

I can confirm what you say about costs & earnings. I buy electricity at 7p/kWh at night to charge up my home battery (and electric car). During the day everything in the house runs off the battery and when it's sunny I sell excess solar power at 14p/kWh.

I could make extra money by discharging my battery to the grid during the day, but choose to keep a good buffer in case there is a power cut (especially during winter storms).

Alibaba releases chatbot that produces error when asked about Tiananmen Square

buns

Maybe it's just as well it refused. I've heard that in US parlance, 'buns' is equivalent to the word 'bum' used here in the UK. A reply might not have been palatable.

Jaguar Land Rover hack cost India's Tata Motors around $2.4 billion and counting

active noise cancelling tech

NTT touts room-scale active noise cancelling tech

Finally, a non-lethal* way of dealing with noisy neighbo(u)rs

* disclaimer: lethal action is not condoned

Russia’s first autonomous humanoid robot staggers and falls on debut

A big Musktake?

Elon Musk will be relieved that this happened, to distract from his disastrous FSD* Optimus robot.

* FSD = Failed Snack Dispensing - on opening day of the Tesla Diner, Optimus was briefly teleoperated to dispense popcorn. It failed after a few scoops and the minder standing beside it was unable to fix it by switching it off & on again.

Re: lol

After his failure to cover up the previous failure it's curtains for him.

UK asks cyberspies to probe whether Chinese buses can be switched off remotely

Pelican

Meanwhile, the importer of Yutong vehicles for the UK and Ireland region, Pelican

Not mentioned in this report, but Pelican have also been accused of phishing.

Apparently they are based, not in China, but at Pelican Island National Wildlife Refuge in Florida.

AI slop hits new high as fake country artist goes to #1 on Billboard digital songs chart

Re: Spotify

It's certainly a downside of Spotify that they pay a pittance to artists. There is a donate button so anyone who wants to send money directly to the artist can do so.

Personally, most of the bands I listen to are ones I'd never have discovered if not for the Spotify algorithm (or similar on another service) that suggests music I might like. In which case they wouldn't even have got that pittance from Spotify or a possible donation if I like them enough.

AI generated music can sound good, but block it anyway

There are loads of AI generated bands on Spotify. To avoid Breaking Rust's songs being suggested to me, I have now searched for them in the Spotify app and selected 'Don't play this artist'.

In recent months, Spotify has suggested rock music (based on what I normally listen to) which is clearly or likely AI generated. It often sounds really authentic, but there are various indicators that it's not a real band, including:

- the band's biography just talks about the genre of the music, with no names of band members or where they met or where they are based

- clearly AI-generated photos of a flawless looking singer in front of an unreal background

- no tour/gig information (although a new band might not have toured yet)

- a large number of singles generated in a short time

If I suspect music is AI generated then I block the band in Spotify as above. I'm conflicted about this as I really like some of the music but I don't want to support non-human 'bands'.

You'll never guess what the most common passwords are. Oh, wait, yes you will

Re: a random character

"icantbelieveitsnotbutter" - We were told that this password was discussed in the Australian parliament!

The lady who revealed this was called Marge.

China uses Mars orbiter to snap interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS

Re: Captain

There are Klingons literally on the Starboard bow.

Steer the ship violently and see if they can still cling on.

From Intel to the infinite, Pat Gelsinger wants Christian AI to change the world

Re: John

> John

> Eleven:thirty-five

John says it's ok, he has an Apple watch and doesn't need to be told the time.

Japan’s new space truck is also a temporary space lab, just worked first time

Re: "just worked first time"

Staliner is the finest spacecraft known to man!

Staliner must be the Russian copy of Starliner, like Buran vs Shuttle. Except in this case it wouldn't be something worth copying.

High-stakes poker scam used rigged card shufflers, X-ray tables, and special glasses

Re: X-ray to read cards?

x-ray flourescence is a thing

Yep, that's the reason that bakers wear protective clothing.

AWS outage turned smart homes into dumb boxes – and sysadmins into therapists

Oh sh*t

in a world where beds, bins, and bulbs need cloud access, who's to say the the crapper isn't next?

As it happens, today is the day when pre-ordered cloud based crap monitoring devices are shipped.

Nothing to worry about as they assure purchasers that they use encryption at every step, and there is fingerprint authentication on the device. No mention of whether the fingerprint reader works if the finger is.... shall we say, unclean. Yuk.

China blames US for cyber break-in, claims America is world's biggest bit burglar

Who watches the Watchmen?

Well, the British Horological Institute and the Worshipful Company of Clockmakers, to name but two organisations.

See icon ---->

Away from Oktoberfest, Munich's museums also serve science on tap

Remove the sub

As there is a convenient river running beside the museum, a tunnel could be bored out from the basement to the river, and the submarine sailed out to allow refurbishment of the basement. A certain Boring Company could carry out the tunnelling. It was established by a self-proclaimed expert on submarines (particularly for use in Thailand).

In the meantime, the submarine could give tourist trips along the river bed and earn some money for the museum. Assuming it is still seaworthy and has working engines. Hmmm, perhaps there are some flaws in this plan?

Tesla on the wrong tracks with Fail Self Driving, Senators worry

FSD - Fools' Self Destruction

AI in your toaster: Analyst predicts $1.5T global spend in 2025

I prefer my toast dumb

AI Toasters will need the same treatment as modern TVs - remove from the packaging and never, ever connect to the internet.

1,200 undergrads hung out to dry after jailbreak attack on laundry machines

They got away with it

It sounds like the miscreants made a clean escape.

Icon? A newly washed lab coat.

Cybercrooks ripped the wheels off at Jaguar Land Rover. Here's how not to get taken for a ride

Only the Land Rover part of the business will be affected by the production shutdown. JaGUar don't produce actual cars at the moment, only an awful concept car and advertisements featuring dayglow clothed fashionistas. So, nothing of value will be lost by JaGUar.

Linux Mint 22.2 polishes the desktop, but kernel updates are the real deal

Upgraded successfully from Mint 22.1 to 22.2

I upgraded successfully from Mint 22.1 to 22.2. This upgrade leaves the LTS kernel 6.8 in place. The 6.14 kernel is available for manual selection from the Update Manager. However, the release notes say that the newer kernel has issues with Virtualbox and if that is required they recommend keeping LTS kernel 6.8.

My main use for Virtualbox is to test my weekly backup by restoring it to the same machine I've backed up without actually overwriting the original. In fact I did so before doing the upgrade, in addition to the recommended Timeshift backup of the system files - a belt & braces approach.

Tesla Model Ys recalled Down Under for overly enthusiastic electric windows

Easily sorted by OTA

One Cybertruck owner managed to injure an appendage

The accident was caused by an OTA (Overlook The Appendage) update, but fixed by another OTA (Operate on The Appendage).

Not in my browser! Vivaldi capo doubles down on generative AI ban

Phew

I'm glad that Vivaldi, my main browser on Linux and Android, is holding back from the current trend of stuffing AI/LLM functionality into browsers.

I also use Firefox for some things, and with every version update now I check that the relevant settings (e.g. browser.ml.chat.enabled, browser.tabs.groups.smart.enabled) haven't changed from turned off to defaulted on.

Wastewater monitoring project could catch next pandemic early, says health agency

cutting-edge technologies

The term "cutting-edge technologies" is supposed to sound impressive, but it actually refers to the spinning blade that chops up the turds so they can be analysed by an AI-enabled sniffer.

Please don't poo-poo the explanation.

One long sentence is all it takes to make LLMs misbehave

Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch

Just pop the name shown on the Welsh railway station signpost, *Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch, into a sentence a few times and that'll confuse the LLM. Perhaps an LLM-savvy reader could confirm this?

* real name is Llanfairpwll according the source of sometimes dubious 'knowledge', Wikipedia.

Saved you a click: Firefox 142 offers AI summaries of links

Don't want AI

All I need to know about AI in Firefox or any other software is how to turn it off.

Edit: Or is it called A1, as a certain British politician calls it?

August update leaves Windows reset and recovery dead in the water

Windows Fail

less like Russian Roulette and more like accidentally stepping on a rake left in the grass

The latter sounds preferable as it is less likely to be fatal, albeit more likely to happen.

Unfortunately the latest Windows Fail may well be fatal for the PC if a fix isn't applied to prevent it.

No need for me to worry, I abandoned ship years ago and all my computers from Pi up to workstation run Linux.

Every question you ask, every comment you make, I'll be recording you

Lesser demon

If you work in IT, it will be a lesser daemon

Teen interns brute-forced a disk install, with predictable results

WD-40 and heat

WD-40 and a lighter combine to make a great makeshift flamethrower. I used it many times to heat up a rusted nut (no jokes about rusty nuts please!) when doing car maintenance. The trick is to use the plastic straw to narrow the flame & stop it reaching the canister. It seems a bit risky in hindsight though.

Alexa hits snooze on basic functions as alarms and timers KO'd in UK outage

Just use a phone (qualified advice)

Why don't people just use the alarms on their phones, because they always work don't they?

Oops, Android user here, I forgot about our fruity friends:

Apple working to fix alarming iPhone issue

iPhone alarm glitch leaves Apple users late for work: ‘Trying to explain this to my boss and not sound like I’m lying’

Probably best to get an old fashioned alarm cube then.