Posts by Benegesserict Cumbersomberbatch

AI Catholic 'priest' defrocked after recommending Gatorade baptism

Re: Interesting naming

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

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)

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.

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

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

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

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

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'

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mein Führer! I can walk!

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

Re: AI Doctor

Inconceivable!

Re: You will be upgraded, resistance is futile

The series seems to have a loose canon.

Twitter's lawsuit against anti-hate-speech crusaders gets SLAPPed out of court

Re: Elmo Fails again!

How to test Elon Musk's free speech absolutism: #invadetaxhavens

What's brown and sticky and broke this PC?

Re: Chocolate?

I believe in miracles.

BOFH: So you want more boardroom tech that no one knows how to use

Re: Don't give Microsoft ideas...

Special K is 2-(2-Chlorophenyl)-2-(methylamino)cyclohexanone.

When life gives you Lemon, sack him

Re: Ketamine

I use it for procedural sedation for children routinely, safely and successfully.

Yes, it has risks: hypersalivation, tachycardia, increased ICP and IOP, emergence phenomena. They can be managed, usually by premedication, and are rare enough that the risks are less than the bigger risks of a typical anaesthetic like propofol or volatiles. Having, for example, an appendix removed under nothing but ketamine is not unheard of in remote areas or where access to hospital theatre standard is not available or impractical.

Its starring attributes are the protection of airway reflexes, its single agent achievement of the anaesthetic triad and its cardiostability. No other single agent comes close, even inhalation induction.

Personally I prefer IV over IM because the pharmacokinetics of IM is more like an infusion, so the redistribution phase is much more prolonged. However, the IV access itself can sometimes be more traumatising than the procedure itself - that's a judgement call.

Observing someone having it is peculiar. In particular the nystagmus and occasional vocalisation. Warn parents in advance and they won't freak out when it happens. It's not traumatic, except vicariously. The one advantage to that is you know for sure when dissociation has kicked in.

Some treatments, usually chronic pain related, involve gradually escalating an infusion until dissociation occurs, then stopping. The theory is that pain mediating neurotransmitters "wind up", and ketamine can wind them down again.

It can see how it would be easy to confuse recreational and therapeutic experiences (the "set and setting"). For recovery, dark, quiet rooms with familiar voices are good at preventing emergence phenomena - more of a happy dream than a scary nightmare. Take it out of the controlled surroundings of a critical care environment and it shows its mean streak.

As an NMDA antagonist it is an analgesic in subdissociative doses (up to 0.5mg/kg), and progressively becomes an anaesthetic at higher doses. It is also a horse tranquiliser, for the same reasons. Mammals share a lot of physiology. Who'd'a thunk it?

Re: Lemon didn't kiss Musk's ass

His Muskiness obviously uses irregular verbs:

I am a free speech absolutist.

You have a woke mind virus.

He has had his contract cancelled.

Cancel culture at work.

McDonald's ordering system suffers McFlurry of tech troubles

Re: I refuse to use those touch screen thingies

My favourite language option on a self service terminal is the loans desk at my local library. Touch the Skull and Crossbones flag and ye can put it in talk like a pirate mode. Avast, ye scurvy dogs!

Rancher faces prison for trying to breed absolute unit of a sheep

Re: Martial arts

Yu-dō?

Re: Ovine Park

The 'G and the late great Ron Barassi send you a downvote.

Re: "captive hunting operations – aka shooting sheep in a barrel"

"PULL!!"

"Baaah!!"

"Boom!!"

Re: "The .. crime we uncovered here could threaten the integrity of our wildlife species in Montana"

And that "genetic material from sheep parts to ... create cloned embryos" turns out to be, literally, a load of bollocks. I'm guessing the Absolute Unit as described didn't give those up voluntarily.

I suspect it's easier to smuggle a platter of Mountain Oysters into a country than a live-and-kicking ram.

Baaah-Ram-Ewe!

Re: Ovine Park

obligatory XKCD

'Chemical cat' on the loose in Japanese city

Re: Poor Kitty

It is in a superposition of alive and dead states, and until someone looks in the box, there's not enough information to say which is accurate.

Re: My cats...

And when they do.