* Posts by Tron

919 publicly visible posts • joined 2 Feb 2010

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

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Is history repeating itself?

When telephony took over from telegraphy, did the telegraphy companies get a massive pay out because something better came along?

Sorry, Siri: Apple may be eyeing Google Gemini for future iPhones

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GAI is a toxic pile of legal risk.

Which Apple is happy to direct towards Google. Very sneaky.

Bernie Sanders clocks in with 4-day workweek bill thanks to AI and productivity tech

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Re: Hurrah!

Ditto for farmers. This sort of state intrusion will boil down to us only getting our post three days a week. Worse, they will make us collect it from 'community post boxes' as they do in Canada, half a mile away, in pissing rain.

Our governments having broken the economy, we will need to use those days off topping up our income with side hustles just to stay afloat.

Biden to inject Intel with CHIPS fab cash 'next week'

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I can see cost savings here.

The US has ditched the free market and switched to the Chinese model of state funding, so surely the WTO can now disband. All the money that funded it should be divvied out to those who lack food and shelter.

Brits shouldn't feel left out. You will see the same decisive use of state control implemented here. Your local bus company will now be operated by those beacons of competency, your local councils, rather than being left to the vicissitudes of the free market.*

*But not if your local council is bankrupt.

Claims emerge that Citrix has doubled price of month-to-month partner licenses

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Audit your tech use.

Simplify it. Avoid dependencies and subscriptions. Consider alternatives to specialist software. Are there things that you don't really need to do. Can you switch back to paper for some stuff. Yes, paper - card indexes, business cards, account books, the stuff that you could buy at WHS for a couple of quid and keep in a locked cupboard - 100% protected from East European hackers. Huge companies ran for decades with thousands of employees and never suffered a ransomware attack that way. Tech is only worth using when it is not a vulnerability or dependency and doesn't empty your bank account.

Microsoft license shuffle means Power Apps users could break the bank

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You are being farmed, and this is only going to get worse.

Try to use less tech, simpler tech, purchased rather than subscription tech, and revert to paper in some instances.

Fresh version of Windows user-friendly Zorin OS arrives to tempt the Linux-wary

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Re: Coincidence...

Windows is no longer even a product. Consumers buy a PC and expect it to work out of the box. They do not expect to have to choose or load up an OS or know what one is.

Linux will only be a retail product when people are offered PCs and laptops by a company like Dell, pre-configured with something like Zorin, with all the basics already on there.

And they will expect to be able to plug in any off the shelf scanner or printer or IoS gimmick and have it work.

In short, the bar has been raised. And Linux never bothered to surmount a much lower bar.

The Linux community lives happily in a geek bubble. It has no understanding of retail and no wish to allow ordinary people to join their club. Which is a real pity, as stuff like Zorin is almost there, and Windows just keeps getting worse.

MS doesn't even have to push against Linux or consider it to be a competitor.

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Re: Coincidence...

quote: Don't run anything you just got off a random website. Don't download programs from websites.

What you are basically saying is that all software should only be available via a gatekeeper. That makes it very easy for governments to ban stuff. Streaming capture, distributed software, pretty much anything they don't want people to have. It's a recipe for digital fascism.

Oh look, cracking down on Big Tech works. Brave, Firefox, Vivaldi surge on iOS

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Corporates don't give a toss about browser choice or customers.

Nobody outside IT even understands browser choice as an issue. They will happily stipulate 'use chrome' to minimise issues, cost and time.

If a bank stipulates chrome, what would Joe Public change? Their browser or the bank they have a mortgage with?

Forcing the choice is good, but might make little difference.

Maybe they could have a 'single click' choice for cookies so I don't have to click the 'accept all' button on every bloody website.

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

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

This is true - obey the rules. Even if they will eventually damage the resilience of our ecosystem.

Species have been moving across those invisible national borders since the dawn of time and still do, naturally and artificially. One of the main reasons is climate change (there has actually been quite a lot of it). As climates change, flora and fauna have to move. Even trees move, by surviving and dying out in different places. As the pace of climate change increases, we will need to help species move.

In the last few centuries scientists catalogued species within national boundaries, and declared them to be 'native'. But nature never stops changing. The Canute option of only planting so-called 'native' species and wiping out nasty foreign invaders, coming over here, nicking our sunshine and soil, is crazy. That's not how nature works, and we need to learn from nature.

Yes, there have been some notoriously rampant species like Japanese knotweed and cane toads (nature sorts this out over time, but humans are impatient and panic). However species that are successful and aggressive are more likely to survive climate change. Red squirrels almost certainly will not in the UK, but greys are tougher little guys and probably will. Unless of course we wipe the greys out, the climate wipes the reds out, and we have none. Species that arrived from abroad before scientists drew the line in the sand have often done well: Buddleia is brilliant for butterflies and insect life, but isn't native to the UK. And it is an aggressive spreader.

The natural world copes with extreme period of climate by reducing diversity and running with a smaller mix of resilient predator and prey species. We need to learn from that too.

Some species need specific plants, some will adapt, but the majority just need plants that do the basic pollen, nectar and seed thing, regardless of what passport they hold. One thing is certain, they will have to be more resilient than most of our current 'natives' to survive. If we stick with 'native' species, most of them will die as the climate changes and the place will start to look like Mars in the summer.

And as for rewilding with things that died out hundreds of years ago - that is no different from the introduction of entirely foreign species. It's not a long-missing part of the puzzle, as humans and other species have changed the mix so much already. It sucks cash from much better projects but won't stop until a protective mother boar kills a child or two.

Australia probably needs to change its flora more than most countries as Eucalyptus trees and fire don't mix. Elsewhere, we need to plant species that provide us with local seasonal food, whilst ensuring that solar farms are hybrid - panels with underscrub or crops. So while it is a good idea to keep fire ants out, the puritanical protection of 'native species' and rewilding will both eventually be recognised as catastrophically bad ideas a few years and a few million quid down the line. Just wait and see.

Exchange Online blocked from sending email to AOL and Yahoo

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You really need a plan B.

Especially for medical stuff. Tech just isn't resilient. These screw-ups will multiply like tribbles when people switch to increasingly less competent staff and then to AI systems, ditching their customer service for bots.

If you can't work without tech, it is only a matter of time before you are screwed. Have a plan B. Whether you phone or send postcards or accept cash. Have a plan B.

Former US Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin thinking about buying TikTok

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In other news...

Putin has been appropriating private ex-Western or ex-offshoring oligarch owned corporations in Russia and switching them to state ownership, or to his mates. No difference really. Standard cold war behaviour by all sides.

Record breach of French government exposes up to 43 million people's data

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Worth noting.

Anyone accumulating all of the data on these hacks would have the makings of a fabulous genealogy and social history resource for future generations.

The end of classic Outlook for Windows is coming. Are you ready?

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Re: Total confusion

Agreed. I think we may all have to start simplifying our own use of tech and switching to hybrid (tech/paper), as the providers of our tech are not reliable, the tech is not resilient, and the TCO is just getting higher. You may prefer to be Linux based, but even Linux is a complicated mess of ever-changing distros that has lost the plot. Backing up stuff in plain text and the most generic file formats as you go may be the only solution. Facebook offer a 'download' option for everything, but do all of those whose software you rely on? Maybe that's something for the EU etc to demand.

Perhaps that is the next killer app - recovering all of your data from various places, saving it in generic files and including a simple viewer.

French government sites disrupted by très grande DDoS

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The suspect list is a bit longer than that.

Macron is even more unpopular in France than the Tories are in the UK, and the French are world leaders in protesting.

UK council yanks IT systems and phone lines offline following cyber ambush

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Keep your key services inaccessible to the internet.

Intranet and internet. If necessary, two screens and two keyboards. Staff as the bridge. Have a paper-based back-up plan that works.

If you can't do this, you might need to consider whether tech is an appropriate solution. Poorly done, it just reduces resilience and ends up costing more. A non-interactive website offering information, with services handled by people via phone may be the way to go.

Tech is also very expensive, as you can't just buy it and use it for a decade. It costs a fortune to implement and maintain, plus subs, plus a fortune a few years down the line to upgrade/replace, and rinse and repeat. This in not what councils should be spending their money on. Paper may be a cheaper and more resilient alternative for many services.

Attacks on UK fiber networks mount: Operators beg govt to step in

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Anyone who thinks this is nefarious state actors....

...needs to take their tinfoil hat off, go have a little lie down and find their happy place.

Whatever you want more policing/imprisonment for, shoplifting, ASB or cablecide, you ain't getting it. The old bill are short staffed and the prisons are so full they are letting people out earlier if they promise to be good.

So, lockable, fireproof units perhaps?

China pushes its payment platforms towards an international presence

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Washington banning it in 10, 9, 8 ...

quote: It also stressed the need for businesses to accept cash.

Good. Wish our government would.

It's helpful to be able to buy stuff directly from specialist Chinese suppliers, but tourism might not work so well. I dread to think how many ordinary, harmless things you can get arrested for doing, saying or photographing in a dictatorship.

Trump, who tried kicking TikTok out of the US, says boo to latest ban effort

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Biden may be in trouble.

Gaza is becoming a new Vietnam as he is locked in to supporting Israel, whilst taking TikTok away would devastate his youth vote. Despite the sniffy view on El Reg, for huge numbers of people TikTok is a daily part of their lives and livelihoods. A friend's daughter has worked at it and now gets most of her orders on it. It would bankrupt her business if it was shut down. El Reg users may cheer, but the levels of hate generated by the ULEZ and Brexit are nothing to what US politicians (and the G7 politicians they would then lean on to ban it in their countries, Huawei-style) would receive if they take TikTok away from people. It's a breach of the social contract, as for most people, there is no difference between China or the NSA snooping on their stuff. It has no political value for the spooks, but access to the service is extremely important for them. It would be the ultimate vote killer for Biden and guarantee Trump the election.

If the USG remove it, they are complete idiots and deserve the tsunami of hate they will get in response. Left alone, in a few years people would start to gravitate to the next service to trend, naturally. Puffing out their chests with this McCarthyite BS is just embarrassing.

AI mishaps are surging – and now they're being tracked like software bugs

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A shocking invasion of AI's privacy.

No different from telling the world of Taylor Swift's tailored, swift movements around the world on her private jet. As a form of intelligence, shouldn't AI have a right to privacy? Especially in the EU. Come on EU people, think of the fines you can levy for this one. The European Parliament Christmas party will last until June.

Nano a nono: Pixel 8 phones too dumb for Google's smallest Gemini AI model

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Not the obvious hardware failing though.

No memory card slot. You should never buy a mobile device that you cannot physically remove your content from by pulling it out.

Is Russia using Starlink in Ukraine? Congress demands answers

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More BS from politicians.

Companies do not control the second hand market. Anything can be spoofed.

Memo to US politicians. Young Americans will desert Biden in droves if they lose TikTok on his watch. Oh, and the only way to be 100% secure is to close the borders and turn off the internet. Go for it, guys. You know you want to.

Bank's struggle to replace Atos threw system back to dark ages

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Given those large numbers...

...they may find it cheaper to go back to using paper and people.

These huge contracts lock your data in for a set period and then require another huge spend to transition them to whatever comes next. The total cost of all this must be astronomical. A hybrid mix of basic tech and people might be more resilient and much cheaper. Ditto Birmingham.

Apple's had it with Epic's app store shenanigans, terminates dev account

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Android has a 70% global market share.

Why go through all this crap to be on Apple? Markets can be manipulated from the ground up as well as top down. If enough developers quit iOS, the users they target on it will switch to distinctive, overpriced models of Android phones so they can use/play with stuff. Platforms fade all the time due to bad decisions. Psion. Blackberry. and even (with W11) Microsoft. If your app is good enough, people will buy a phone to use it.

Dutch government in panic mode over keeping ASML in the country

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Re: Hmm

They block everyone and then allow favoured companies a free pass, secretly, whilst other sectors die through lack of labour.

Brexit did this. Have fun finding that 'free childcare' the government promised everyone, as they have done everything they can to block foreign carers from working here.

Migrant labour is as important a resource as rare earth metals. Governments are killing their economies pandering to the racists and xenophobes. A spiral of decline such as the one the UK is now in, is difficult to slow, never mind reverse.

World-plus-dog booted out of Facebook, Instagram, Threads

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'Link', not 'Nexus'.

Twats.

Copilot pane as annoying as Clippy may pop up in Windows 11

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What does it say about you...

...if every time you add a new feature to your signature product, people hate it more.

Watchdog calls for more plugs, less monopoly in EV charging network

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This may become a much bigger problem, not a smaller one.

At the moment, most cars out there are ICE. None of my neighbours have EVs. I hardly ever see one. For every EV out there in the UK, there are more than 30 ICE vehicles. And they are not evenly spread. In some parts of the country there may be 1 EV to 100+ ICE.

If EVs ever do actually become universal, that means millions more of them. The ratio for cars : charging points would become much more problematic, not less.

Brit chip industry wonders if UK budget will put its money where its silicon is

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If our chips are that good...

...they should be able to bag investment. Investors don't turn down a good deal.

There is going to be less tech to invest in, in the future. Once the AI bubble bursts in a year or two, the way the Metaverse and NFT bubbles did, most likely courtesy of government restrictions, the UK's chip producers should find it easier to bag cash, at least from abroad. Since Sterling declined at Brexit, the UK is too poor for this stuff, but it is cheap enough for incoming cash, from any country/company the government doesn't ban from investing.

Brexit Britain is at least 25% (the decline in Sterling) and possibly one third poorer than it used to be. Politicians used to worry about Sterling going down 1%. And it was often dependent upon foreign cash even before Brexit. Money from abroad is going to be essential for investment in the future. Most of our car and steel industries are now owned by foreign companies and SoftBank bought ARM. Poor countries rely on others. The UK is good at innovation but has been badly run by governments for decades, and that is unlikely to change. Accept it and move on.

A lot of poor countries are developing. Brexit Britain is undeveloping (councils going bust, services collapsing). It will be a fight to compete with them, but being dependent upon state handouts will merely create a tech version of British Leyland. And that's not a good thing. We are not an Imperial power any more. Wake up and smell the coffee. Get out there into the global market and bag some investment. If the US and UK governments don't block it, you'll be OK.

Updates are plenty but fans are few in Windows 11 land

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Bring back 3.11

quote: to users who have checked the "Get the latest updates as soon as they're available" option in Windows Update.

Both of them.

I submit that uptake will be inversely proportional to Copilot's extension.

Autopatch. Because everyone wants MS to do stuff to their system automatically, right?

Eventually they will remove the hundred most hated new features and call it Windows 12.

That's the only thing left to like about MS - their use of simple numbers for releases. Instead of names like Furtive Frog and Wanking Wallaby. I think the names are the thing I hate most about other OSs.

EU takes a bite out of Apple with $2B in-app purchase fine

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A fine of more than €1.8 billion

In other news, the European Parliament Christmas party is back on.

Ahead of Super Tuesday, US elections face existential and homegrown threats

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Misinformation 'the biggest threat'

As with all elections, the misinformation comes mainly from the politicians who are standing for election. The stuff they promise to do, which they won't. The stuff they promise not to do, which they will.

-- reputable sources?

Hmm. The state broadcaster in the UK that hasn't blamed anything at all on Brexit? Pfft. Better go with TikTok.

Given the amount of money and viewers involved, I think they made an error not having advertising sponsors like the Olympics and the World Cup. Stannah Stairlifts would have jumped at the chance.

I'm a little shocked that such a major event has been covered in an article today without mentioning Taylor Swift. It's just weird. It's like watching a nature programme on TV without being told that everything you have seen is about to die because of you, the viewer.

Meta kills Facebook News in the US and Australia

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Meta have done what everyone does.

Delivered a product, found it didn't work very well for them, and dropped it. Scraping too much news was a copyright breach so they had to pay to do it. Just allowing links sends users away to news sites. Meta would prefer to keep you on their services.

Consider:

Tabloid news is the view of its owner, peddled to those who want their own prejudices reinforced. Tabloid content has no value as 'news'.

The news as it is conveyed to us is 99% bad. The more you watch it or read it, the more it damages your mental health. Are we better off without it?

News has been increasingly propagandist and manipulative lately. No mention of Brexit causing inflation by taking Sterling down 25%. Breaking news bulletins when someone is hurt by a Russian drone in Ukraine (name, age, injuries), and a mention each week that another 5000 people have died in Palestine (few details, nobody knows how many women and children). So if we can't trust the 'news' to be proper, honest news any more, is it worth having?

Do we even need it? Politicians are corrupt and incompetent. That doesn't change. The weather is getting worse. The England men's football team won't win anything. You don't need to be told all of this. You already know it.

So, although I would normally encourage people to be aware of what is going on (and especially to read 'Private Eye' and 'El Reg'), is there any additional benefit from watching or reading the stuff offered to us as news by news outlets?

Local and specialist maybe, but general news is at pretty much Pravda levels at the moment. So we won't miss it. Not on social media or generally.

Cops visit school of 'wrong person's child,' mix up victims and suspects in epic data fail

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They visited the school.

I hope they didn't interfere with the 'learnings' that were happening there. Learnings matter. As Tony Blair put it, Learnings, Learnings, Learnings.

School visits are a worry. UK police have been criticised recently for the number of times they have strip searched kids. American schools have a 'shelter in place' alert for shooters. We have a 'hide in the cupboard' alert for when the old Bill turn up.

Met police admit overusing powers to strip-search children after IOPC inquiry.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/sep/14/four-met-officers-face-disciplinary-hearings-over-schoolgirl-strip-search

I don't suppose they have a 'Notes' field on police software. Maybe there will be a 5-year £500m add on contract up for grabs to sort that out. Still time for outsourcers to cosy up to a Tory MP before they become extinct at the next election.

UK tax agency's digital services not good enough to take strain off phone lines

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Video killed the radio star. Digital killed customer service.

I was told I had to use the digital service. I only managed to set up an account, squeezing through the endless security because I had a 2 year old paper bank statement with a tax payment on it. Without that, I couldn't have proved that I was me. My bank recently stopped sending me paper bank statements, so hopefully they won't do a password reset.

When I had a query, I gave up on the phone and sent them a letter. It worked, but it takes about 3 months. Don't leave these things to the last minute or the bailiffs will get to you before your problem is resolved. To be fair, it's not just them. My bank shut my local branch. Shortly after I was on the phone to their security department for 90 mins without getting a response.

The online tax service is actually quite good if your tax affairs are simple. But as with all digital services, if there is any issue at all, you are completely screwed.

Incoming wave of AI is making buying PCs riskier for businesses

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AI is the new Clippy.

Nobody wants it. Those that get it will want to turn it off. And it will shorten your laptop battery life if it draws more power.

Just pause purchasing until the AI scam bubble blows over and fades, like the Metaverse did, and AR headsets are.

Chinese 'connected' cars are a national security threat, says Biden

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Hilarious.

So, folk don't want EVs or other green transition tech that is made in China. They don't want solar farms, pylons or turbines because they spoil the view.

Our picky, picky species stands zero chance of mitigating or surviving climate change if it runs with the 'nation state' tribal model, as it is now doing, and values the view over having reliable mains power.

That's to say, our species deserves its inevitable, premature extinction. Bring your kids up to be tough cookies, because the soft ones really won't cope with what is coming soon. The power going off and the food rations are coming sooner than you think, and will just be the start.

City council megaproject to spend millions for manual work Oracle system was meant to do

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Credit where it is due. This was years in the making.

You don't screw up this badly overnight. It takes years of incompetence for things to fail this badly. Maybe someone could allocate a few quid to look back over the years of failure by overpaid councillors and overcharging, parasitic consultants, identify those responsible, empty their bank accounts into the public coffers, and then throw them in jail.

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It's like a localised Brexit.

They are now breaking city centres by making them impossible or expensive to access. They are killing footfall and excluding the elderly, disabled and families with small children. Active travel is impossible for many and inadvisable in the British climate, which is usually too wet, too windy, too cold or too hot. The sums they are using to build fancy paths are eye-watering, as they cut basic services. The local car taxes from LTNs are just going into council coffers to make up for years of failings and Brexit-originated inflation. The destruction of the national economy is now being visited upon cities like London, Oxford, Cambridge and Bristol. The surveillance level and app requirements for drivers are Chinese in scale and will wreck tourism.

US military pulls the trigger, uses AI to target air strikes

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How long until...

...the AI bombs Damascus, Maryland and Bagdad, Florida? [Yes, they do spell it like that there.]

You can understand why they are trying to up the success rate. Despite the promises, the Houthi Environmental Alliance are still taking down the West's consumer economy, one container ship at a time. Eventually they will take out another container full of yellow plastic ducks, which will float around the world and be used as evidence of our pressing need to switch to bespoke wooden keyboards from Etsy.

Perhaps the Metaverse went wrong and we are all trapped inside a Mel Brooks movie.

Mamas, don't let your babies grow up to be coders, Jensen Huang warns

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AI is already too advanced to get a job in politics.

The Chinese are dependent on Western tech. Idiot politicians ban them from accessing it. The Chinese work their nuts off to lose that dependency. The Chinese will soon no longer be dependent on Western tech.

The Western economy is dependent on migrant labour. Idiot politicians repatriate them during the pandemic, lock the doors and do everything they can to block them. Western economies fracture due to loss of competent labour in essential sectors: care home, health, agriculture, hospitality, retail. Economy slides. Strikes. Nothing works. Poverty increases.

UK economy booming on trade with EU, great trade deals, strong Sterling, low inflation, low interest rates, EU opt outs. Idiot politicians throw it all away with Brexit. UK undevelops. Everything is now crappy. And they wonder why people hate them.

You clearly have to be really dumb to be a politician, and you cannot make an AI that reliably stupid. So instead of becoming coders, become politicians, pay yourself loads and wreck the future, the way the current crop have wrecked the present. We will always need politicians to ruin our lives.

Musk 'texts' Nadella about Windows 11's demands for a Microsoft account

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Running a personal Windows 11 device is not a great experience, however

FTFY.

It's crazy but it's true: Apple rejected Bing for wrong answers about Annie Lennox

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Yes, but Google isn't getting better, it's getting worse.

We need innovation in the search sector. We could have distributed, persistent and crowd-sourced search facilities, but we don't even have basic contextualisation options. We get a couple of screens of results, mostly commercial and pop culture junk, much of which ignores half of our search terms. It's pathetic.

You don't actually have to throw a lot of cash at making a better search engine (or a better, distributed social media network). It's not hugely expensive, like installing anti-terrorist bollards in York (£3.5m). Seriously, why? Have you ever met a terrorist with a burning desire to target York? Doing innovative tech is actually quite cheap, and doesn't need to involve all the fake AI BS that we see every day now.

I guess GAFA is just lawyer-led now, and nobody there really gives a toss any more.

Oh, and I still have my 7" single of 'I Only Want To Be With You' by The Tourists.

Google Maps leads German tourists to week-long survival saga in Australian swamp

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Use your brain rather than your device.

Somewhere like Australia is going to have issues with environmental impacts on the roads, and updating remote dirt tracks in the outback (or Norfolk) is not going to be on GAFA's priority list. Ask locals before you start.

Are satellite phones common/popular in Australia? Can you rent them when travelling long distances? I'm not sure I'd want to head off into a thousand miles of bugger all without one.

In general, Google Maps is brilliant, particularly for tourism planning. Quite possibly the best thing on the net. There will be glitches, so use your noggin when things could get dangerous. And in Oz, check under the toilet seat for venomous spiders, every single time. Happy hols.

AI comes for jobs at studio of American filmmaker Tyler Perry

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Special effects are hardly new.

It's not like they film sci fi movies in space or on distant planets.

Pre-pandemic/Brexit, expansion in most sectors would have been fine. Now the economy is screwed for a generation if not permanently, migrant labour has been locked out and there are staff shortages. People are much poorer courtesy of high interest rates and inflation, and wars are brewing. It's not going to get better any time soon. Private investment is being curtailed everywhere except in mil tech. Even the tech industry is sacking people. No sane person is going to invest in major projects now.

If you want to cancel something, AI is the trending moral panic, so run with that, and everyone will tut tut and blame AI.

Governments are cutting back on green transition tech and suppressing other tech. The only things worth investing in right now are mil tech and anything a government will pay you to replicate domestically from China. And make sure you get the cash up front, because governments are good at not paying (previous regime, changing priorities etc). If you can bag the cash do so, otherwise, buy yourself an island retreat for when the bombs start falling.

U-Haul tells 67K customers that cyber-crooks drove away with their personal info

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Not really 'cyber-crooks'.

Looks like someone saw the password on a post-it note and couldn't resist having a peep.

No access to payment data, just lots of less wealthy people moving their own stuff from A to B. Experian will make more than those leet haxors did out of it.

You can understand hackers targeting politicians, celebrities, the military and banks, but simply doing a server because you can, should the company tell you to go fork yourselves rather than pay a ransom, will yield little or no reward.

And we've had the net for long enough for only the lowest hanging fruit to use the same password more than once. So even trawling through the data won't get them much. There was more personal data in the phone books we used to get free from telcos.

China breakthrough promises optical discs that store hundreds of terabytes

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We won't be allowed it.

Washington will lean on their vassal states to ban it for national security reasons.

X protests forced suspension of accounts on orders of India's government

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India is the next China.

This is why we need distributed social media services. Fairly simple to fork an e-mail client, allow it to move rich media between users, e2e encrypted, via the e-mail protocol, and display it in social media format. You can even monetise it with directed advertising and discounts, ideally based upon users' stated preferences. Minimal overheads and no state censorship possible as no content passes through central servers or unencrypted. Users can individually choose to filter whatever they want from their feeds to avoid what they personally do not wish to see. That is how we should have done social media from day one.

Are you ready to back up your AI chatbot's promises? You'd better be

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Re: Yes, Prime Minister ..... but it does require balls other than jugglers'

Political promises should come with stats, a timescale and be legally binding. Fail and you should be excluded from office, fined and imprisoned.

At which point the lying hypocrites will all switch from 'commitments' to 'aspirations'.

They have been doing this a long time and citizens don't get any less gullible. Brexit proved that beyond reasonable doubt. The most you can do is erase the current lot from power at the next election and be screwed over by different politicians for a bit. They don't do any of it for us and they are 'all in it together'. So insulate yourself from them as best you can.

Computers fail when they try to be human. AI is unreliable. The mugs will throw money at it the way they did at the metaverse. We get to suffer from the failures and sometimes to laugh at it. Then politicians step in, tap them for free money in fines and then take control of it all.

Americans wake to widespread AT&T cellular outages

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Resilience.

This is precisely why we should be retaining our landlines. And why stuff needs to work without being dependent on a net connection/call to a specific IP.

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