* Posts by Benegesserict Cumbersomberbatch

799 publicly visible posts • joined 25 Mar 2022

An attorney says she saw her library reading habits reflected in mobile ads. That's not supposed to happen

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Re: Land of the Free

All remaining provisions of USA PATRIOT Act expired in 2020.

Doesn't mean some of them weren't snuck into some form of reincarnation under even more sinister things like FISA.

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Re: Not a good move

It will set in when a precedent is set: Ts & Cs which it is impractical for a reasonable person to comprehend in the interval between being shown them and being asked to accept them are void. Ts & Cs that you actively have to seek out else not shown, with the option to just press an "Accept" button, likewise void.

Dublin debauchery derails Portal to NYC in six days flat

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Pint

Foolishly, I followed you to Dublin

Like a ghost I walked the streets of Temple Bar

And all the bright young things were throwing up their Guinness in the gutters

And once I thought I saw you from afar.

Now I'm in a nightclub in Helsinki

And they're playing La Vida Loca, once again,

And I can't believe I'm dancing to this crap but I'm a chance here

And every fucking city sounds the same.

- Every Fucking City, Paul Kelly

(Okay, so Temple Bar's the other side of the Liffey...)

Oklahoma saddles up bill of rights for crypto wranglers and miners

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Re: Dodgers and hammer that stein

O--Oklahoma! Where the blocks come sweepin' down the chain!

What's with AI boffins strapping GoPros to toddlers? We take a closer look

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Re: The brain is also 3-dimensional

...and too cowardly to use the slur they were thinking.

Cybercriminals hit jackpot as 500k+ Ohio Lottery lovers lose out on their personal data

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Re: Why do they need so much data anyway?

The tax man got paid when you bought your ticket.

Gambling winnings aren't income. Even people who run businesses based on gambling have argued that point and won. For one thing, that's why the Museum of Old and New Art (Hobart) exists.

UniSuper Google Cloud outage caused by an unfortunate series of events

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Re: UniSuper

Every Australian employer is obliged to put a fraction (currently 11%, up to a limit of $27500/year) of each employee's wages into a retirement superannuation fund which becomes accessible to the employee when they retire. This has been the case since the early 90s.

The funds under management as a result of this scheme reached AUD3.5 trillion in 2022.

Unisuper started as the industry fund for tertiary education. They are the 5th-biggest such fund and the $120b mentioned in the article is in AUD.

BOFH: The greatest victory is that which requires no battle

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Maybe BOFH will ask his new overlords: hey boss, I've just written these programs. Can you tell me what data I need to give them so that the programs always return?

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Re: Who knows a future AI Boss could be in play?

Wall-E's child care bots were too cute.

My premonition is more like the Michael Sheen bartender bot in Passengers when he goes on the fritz and starts making drinks out of the glassware.

Apple crushes creativity and its reputation in new iPad ad

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Re: Correction

If Milligan were still around, it would have been Hugh Jampton.

Palantir's CEO calls 'woke' a 'central risk to Palantir, America and the world'

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Re: Thin pagan religion

Unorthodontist: someone who offers, in exchange for money, to not knock out some of your teeth.

There were a lot of them at the Capitol on 6 January.

AI Catholic 'priest' defrocked after recommending Gatorade baptism

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"What have the Romans ever done for us?"

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Re: 2000+ year old con moves up a notch

Maybe an improvement on the Ancient Egyptian religion, which was, obviously, a pyramid scheme.

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Re: Interesting naming

Must be running on Intel's new Timber Lake™ processors.

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Re: hellish simulation

Actually, the road to hell is paved with door-to-door salespeople. In the winter, some of the lesser demons go ice-skating on them.*

(* With so many thanks to Neil G and Sir Pterry)

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Re: ten commandments

Science works because its predictions fail. It's how you know you need a different idea.

Charlatans work because people don't think scientifically.

Religions work because of a bug exploit of that last observation.

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Re: Interesting naming

Ironically, for an organisation where the flames usually come after the judgement.

EU duties might not be enough to hold off flood of Chinese EVs

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So vice signalling by investing in a three and a half tonne ute that doesn't fit in a parking space just to show how much you don't give a shit about what climate your grandkids will have is just fine, eh? Nice attitude.

Miles of optical fiber crafted aboard ISS marks manufacturing first

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Product of USA

and the Azores, and Portugal, and Spain, and Algeria, and Libya, and Egypt, and Sudan, and Ethiopia, and Somalia, and the Maldives, and Australia, and New Zealand, and Fiji, and Samoa, and the USA (Hawaii), and the USA again (mainland)...

ByteDance 'would rather' torpedo TikTok than sell it off

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Re: I, for one, welcome our new insect overlords

Ad hominem and devoid of either fact or opinion. More likely to be a mouthpiece than the OP.

UK's Investigatory Powers Bill to become law despite tech world opposition

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Re: Give me 10 lines by the hand of the most honest of men (Or his Internet usage)

Don't let me detain you.

[Steeples fingers, raises eyebrow]

Now all Windows 11 users are getting adverts to 'make the Start menu great again'

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Re: Is this their final 'footgun' moment?

I wouldn't use Grammarly because it shits itself over a perfectly well-constructed subjunctive.

Australia’s spies and cops want ‘accountable encryption’ - aka access to backdoors

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Re: Given that---

"Unless it's insurrection in another country, in which case thousands will be working on it." -also Russian, I believe.

Elon Musk's X to challenge Australian content takedown orders in court

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For the time being, the court has said that as long as the footage remains visible anywhere, then X is in violation of the instruction from the AU government to take down the graphic violence. The court found that geoblocking was an inadequate response, because VPN circumvention is easily accessible.

Interestingly, X tried to avert an interim injunction by arguing that it was 2am in San Francisco and that their lawyer had not had sensible instructions from their client.

There has been no argument from X to the court claiming that keeping the footage visible in Australia is justifiable. Allegedly attempted murder is fine for everyone in the world to see, as long as it doesn't happen where you live.

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Zuckerberg tried that vs. the Australian government a few years ago. He tried to instigate a user rebellion against laws saying he had to pay authors to post links to their work, as far as news generation was concerned. Faecebook's users told him to shut up and get on with it, which he did.

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The point which was made in court was that, due to VPN circumvention of geoblocking, if it's visible anywhere, it's visible in Australia. Therefore the court (at least, on an interim basis) has been asked to order it taken down with global effect.

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X basically live-streamed the attempted murder of a religious leader from a notoriously religiously sensitive geographic region. It was then one of the main rumour distribution networks for the messages that provoked the riot that followed. During that riot dozens of police cars were vandalised and paramedics had to shelter in place for more than three hours.

This is a public order issue, not a free speech issue. Famously there is no legal right to shout "fire" in a crowded building. Free deliveries of petrol to people in a burning building whether they want it or not is wrong and stupid.

Musk is loudly proclaiming his right to be wrong and stupid. $750k/day fine is a good start to remedying that. Long may he fight. X might be good at dodging compulsory taxation, but they look to be rubbish at avoiding the voluntary ones.

US Air Force says AI-controlled F-16 fighter jet has been dogfighting with humans

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You want advanced? Watch what happens when they reconfigure the construction of the airframes to cope with the maximum stresses they can handle, not just the maximum stresses the pilots can handle. Suddenly pulling 10Gs isn't the limit.

Tesla asks shareholders to reinstate Musk's voided $56B pay package

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There's a solution

He can have his $56b but it has to be in the form of new equity in the Tesla company.

If shareholders really think he's worth it they won't object. If he's really worth it, everyone will get what they want. And if he's a posturing egotist about to deflate like a bad soufflé, they can all lose their fictitious wealth together.

Loongson CPU that performs like 2020 Core i3 makes its way to Chinese mini PCs

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Re: Good enough

What was in the box was written on the outside of the box. If you wanted to know how many cores/threads, you only had to look it up.

My low/mid-priced Ryzen 7 has 8 cores, and the battery life keeps me happy.

Support contract required techie to lounge around in a $5,000/night hotel room

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Re: So, a nice week-end then

I used to work for a large, multinational pharma company.

Said company had run foul of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

But you repeat yourself...

We never agreed to only buy HP ink, say printer owners

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Mushroom

If its function is actually customer resource management, maybe we have it designated the CRM-114 unit

Mein Führer! I can walk!

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Re: Just... wow

Not to mention firmware updates that cause the printers to randomly jump off the desk and smash into a million pieces.

US Air Force secretary so confident in AI-controlled F-16s, he'll fly in one

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Re: R2?

You'll have to talk me down. I've got damage.

- OK, Topper. Ease her in.

Landing gear's frozen.

- Lookin' good.

Lost my radar.

- A little more power now.

I'm out of fuel.

- Right for lineup.

Lost a wing.

- Doin' fine.

There goes the other one.

- OK, Topper. Call the ball.

Touchin' down.

Simulation reveals all Japanese will have the same surname by 2531

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Re: Well, they aren't supposed to be working so much

Not if they want to retain the right to be called Japanese citizens. There are some very tight restrictions on whom Japan is prepared to claim as one of their own.

US reckons it's about time the Moon had its own time zone

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Re: 'Time Zone'

Speaking as a resident of Down Under (albeit only 17°S at the moment), pareidolia works just as well from up here as down there in the north.

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Re: 'Time Zone'

Erm, it's tidally locked to the Earth. That's why the face of the man in the moon always looks at us and the really cratery bit is the half that faces away from us.

At a point on the lunar surface there's a sunrise and sunset, once per lunar month, but Earth just sort of hovers in the same place in the sky, nutating a little because of the elliptical orbit and tidal precession.

Apollo astronauts only saw Earthrise when they were in orbit around the moon, not when they were on it.

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Of course, the French will insist that ESA uses the time in Rochefort. The cheese it's made of is as strong as rock, after all.

Software engineer helped put Sam Bankman-Fried behind bars, say prosecutors

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Re: denied deliberately committing crimes

Crypto-crook Sam Bankman-Fried's conviction was expedited by the cooperation of the chief software engineer at his FTX crypto exchange, prosecutors have revealed

sounds better at trial than

Crypto-crook Sam Bankman-Fried's crimes were enabled by the cooperation of the chief software engineer.

Doesn't mean they're not both true. Someone who didn't listen to their conscience is listening to their lawyer.

Uber Australia to pay $178M to settle cabbies' class action

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The $250k valuation was what taxi licenses were rumoured to change hands for between investors prior to the intervention of Uber and the like.

It was actually an investment strategy for some, buying some of the finite supply of taxi licenses, usually from state governments at about $20k a pop, and hiring drivers to do the actual work - at pay rates not much better than what Uber delivers to their drivers now. In some cases, they were people's life savings and job security rolled into one.

The class action was to settle the perceived destruction of value those investors and owner/operators suffered.

What's interesting is that Uber has chosen to settle rather than have the internal office discussions of the illegality of their strategy to pry their way into a regulated market aired in open court. At one point they were paying fines of nearly $2k for any driver who scored a ticket from an inspector; they were running "ghost cars" in the neighbourhood of the taxi inspectorate so that the inspectors who were trying to catch them at their illegality would never find a real Uber car, and they were blacklisting / ghosting devices if they suspected they had been used to prove Uber was operating illegally.

Now they claim their local operations don't make a profit, so they don't pay tax. Funny how well those Irish / Dutch / BVI subsidiaries are doing, though.

Ex-White House CIO tells The Reg: TikTok ban may be diplomatic disaster

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Re: Mind your footing

Try getting a law that addresses the actual concern, data harvesting, past the legislators already in the pocket of big tech. It's only palatable if it's framed in terms of national security, not high minded abstractions like the right to privacy.

Want to keep Windows 10 secure? This is how much Microsoft will charge you

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Don't say it too loud, they might hear you! That said, they'd keep the money and escalate their support fees.

Exponential support fees, firing the quality control department, mandatory hardware upgrades, the difficulty of creating an account without an online subscription... all point to the the same conclusion.

Micros~1's business model is to charge you rent on a computer you already own.

Polish officials may face criminal charges in Pegasus spyware probe

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Re: in 99 percent it was used against criminals

Even if you're not using it against politicians, by the time Pegasus has been used to upload "evidence" to the compromised devices, every target will be found to have incriminating documents / photos / conversations on their phones.

FTX crypto-crook Sam Bankman-Fried gets 25 years in prison

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And fair enough, too. If you do a crime all on your lonesome, you get the punishment. If you find some other person to help you who but for your solicitation would not have helped, and enabled your crime, extra punishment is fully in order. Your accomplice might already have been criminally-minded, but you helped make them a criminal.

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Re: Theres a shock

I thought that too, when I received a bill for about a year's worth of gas supply in summer, when I basically don't use gas.

I had already done my own meter-read and got a refund from the utility company by the time I realised my mistake: the first 100MJ (or something) of gas are the most expensive, then an intermediate tariff for 100-500MJ, then the cheapest rate was for usage 500MJ+ per billing period. So by paying for gas I hadn't used yet, I was buying the most expensive gas in advance at the cheapest rate.

The winning strategy therefore becomes: pay what looks like an exorbitant bill for gas I haven't used yet in summer, then get a negative bill the next billing period and use the credit on the account to pay for the gas in the winter when it's expensive and I actually use it.

This strategy becomes possible because I realised the gas company can't be arsed to do an actual meter-read more than one or twice a year, and because of the time of year that they do the actual meter-read, their extrapolated estimate of my consumption is based on winter usage, not average usage, let alone summer (non-)usage.

Oh, and I'll heat my house with solar powered reverse cycle AC which is free, even in winter.

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Re: This morning's local news

Hang on, what about the Bitcoin Bros' dogma that fiat currencies are the scam, and that BTC is a store of value? On that basis, his USD liabilities for his frauds are much higher now than they were when he committed them.

Do not touch that computer. Not even while wearing gloves. It is a biohazard

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Re: What happened to the truck or its driver?

Sometimes safe distances are higher than that.

I have treated a man for electrical injuries who was working on an 11kV power pole on a drizzly day, after a dust storm the day before. Leaning against the wood of the pole was enough for him to complete the circuit with the layer of electrically conductive mineral mud that now coated the outside of the pole. He was standing on the ground, easily 10m from the conductors.

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Most important lesson

Correct response though, full marks, to the person who sent the tar-box back as a biohazard. Some jobs are inherently dangerous, but not that one.

"Sorry sir, the carcinogens that broke your Apple box are yours, because you put them there. You'll have to remove them before I can do anything to help you."

Workplace Edvard Munch moments can be fun in retrospect, and how we deal with them makes them more so.

BBC exterminates AI experiments used to promote Doctor Who

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Re: AI Doctor

Inconceivable!

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Re: You will be upgraded, resistance is futile

The series seems to have a loose canon.