* Posts by Jedit

1836 publicly visible posts • joined 3 Jul 2010

Filipino police free hundreds of slaves toiling in romance scam operation

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"despite slavery now being illegal in every nation on Earth"

I can think of one nation where slavery remains legal: the United States. The 13th Amendment abolished chattel slavery, but it contains an exception allowing someone to be enslaved as punishment for a crime. Several states still sentence people to terms of hard labour, and even the ones that don't still enforce work on the majority of their prison population. The vast profits made by private corporations from selling and receiving prison labour are the reason why America has the largest prison population in the world and the sixth highest number of prisoners per capita. It is a perpetuation of the slave system in all but name.

Ten nations tell social media, banks, and telcos to get better at stopping scams

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Stop

"If you buy a too-cheap Rolex from a guy down the pub..."

"... should the publican be required to reimburse you?"

Of course not. But if the publican has been told that there's a guy in his pub selling suspicious watches and he does nothing about it because he's taking a cut, then it does become his responsibility because he's complicit.

Facebook advertising is no different. Facebook is the pub, their advertisers are the dodgy guy. Facebook are not to blame for the actions of any individual advertiser because everyone is innocent until proven guilty, but it is on them to hold their clients to a reasonable standard after accepting their money and it is on them to police their platform when complaints are received. If they instead allow obvious scammers to rip off their users, then they are as complicit as our shady pub landlord.

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FAIL

"Hustle stated "you can't con an honest person""

Do you have to be dishonest to fall for one of the conmen who call up pretending to be from your bank, or from Microsoft tech support? No. But it happens all the time.

Hustle is a TV show and should not be confused with reality, particularly when it spreads disinformation.

AI and wearables are scaring the wellbeing out of workers

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Joke

Re: Who would want to wear

Who would need to? I always know where my peen is.

Trump 'tried to sell Truth Social to Musk' as SPAC deal stalled

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Trollface

"Imagine if there was a 30year war over which Spiderman movie was best?"

The people who didn't think it was Spider-Man 2 would be outnumbered 10 to 1, so the war wouldn't last 30 years.

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

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Stop

"I think I've spotted a Brexiter."

Nah, just a Daily Mail jihadi posting from his kampfy chair in Tunbridge Wells.

AI models show racial bias based on written dialect, researchers find

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Stop

"Are speakers of SAE and AAE equally likely to have professional jobs?"

The AI model isn't sentencing people who speak in ethnic vernacular to death more often on the basis of their personal merit. It's doing so because its data shows that people who speak in the vernacular are more frequently sentenced to death. In other words: the racial bias of the AI is a direct reflection of the racial bias of the American justice system, in which a black person is more likely to receive the death penalty for the same crime as a white person.

That bias also does not exist solely in the justice system. It applies across all parts of life, perpetuating a system where poorly educated people remain poorly educated because their lack of education is perceived as an inability to become educated.

BOFH: I get locked out, but I get in again

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Trollface

"it was a common skill"

I don't know about that. I was at university before I really got the hang of undoing them by feel.

Oh, wait, sorry, you meant the locks. Never mind.

Job interview descended into sweary shouting match, candidate got the gig anyway

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WTF?

"They add great value when the time comes to lay people off."

You mean in your company HR aren't usually the ones deciding exactly where the layoffs happen? To get fired from a HR position you have to be pretty much unspeakable, because you need to have pissed off all your own colleagues as well as the rest of the company.

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Stop

"He was also unable to do a decent wolf whistle!"

Wolf whistles are indecent by definition, aren't they?

Boeing paper trail goes cold over door plug blowout

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WTF?

The wheels are coming off at Boeing

Literally - I just heard of another incident where a tyre fell off a 777 during takeoff and landed in the airport car park. Thankfully I believe nobody was hurt, but several cars were crushed as it bounced.

It's time for a new slogan: If It's Boeing, I'm Not Going.

Tesla Berlin gigafactory to take week-long nap after suspected arson

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Flame

Re: Stop burning down the Tesla factory!

Who's to say it wasn't the cars? Maybe one of these left wing environmental protesters took one for a test drive, and... [see icon]

Reminder: Infostealer malware is coming for your ChatGPT credentials

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Trollface

"journalists and lawyers"

Also a beta service who make things up.

Meta's pay-or-consent model hides 'massive illegal data processing ops': lawsuit

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Stop

""legitimate interest" options"

Which is an admission that the reasons they normally want your data are not legitimate.

Palantir boss says outfit's software the only reason the 'goose step' has not returned to Europe

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Joke

Re: In all modesty, if they weren't stopped...

Please! Nobody has worked harder on their humility than he has!

Capita wins uncontested extension to mega millions Northern Ireland Education contract

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FAIL

Crapita

Too big to fail? No, they fail all the time. But nobody else can even try to service contracts of this scale. So no matter how many times the likes of Capita, Serco and Atos fail, they're going to keep being awarded jobs they cannot do in exchange for vast sums from the public purse.

Fox News 'hacker' turns out to be journalist whose lawyers say was doing his job

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Devil

"Rabby, a cryptocurency wallet..."

"... that's still undergoing App Store approval, had an impersonator make it into the App Store, with subsequent reports by a number of people who reported having their accounts emptied after installing the fake app."

A spokesman for Rabby added "Have these people no shame? Scamming people is our job!"

City council megaproject mulls ditching Oracle after budget balloons to £131M

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Flame

Re: What would it cost ...

The answer is, as always, "less than outsourcing it". However, efficient internal solutions don't put large bungs into the pockets of corrupt politicians, so that's not acceptable.

Legal campaigners challenge UK.gov decision to redact NHS-Palantir contract

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Thumb Up

Re: "We accept that Big Pharma needs to suck data"

Indeed. And on the subject of Peter Thiel: he's a literal leech and vampire who believes you can prolong life by receiving blood transfusions from the young. Putting the fox in charge of the henhouse isn't so much the analogy as employing Count Dracula to be the manager of the blood bank.

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Flame

"We accept that Big Pharma needs to suck data"

Who is "we"? Nobody in their right mind - which excludes neoliberals, of course - wants Big Pharma to get its claws on the NHS in the smallest way. Pharmaceutical companies are meant to be suppliers, not controllers.

And Palantir aren't even Big Pharma. They're just a data theft outfit, named (lest we forget) for Tolkien's magic spying devices that turn you mad and evil when you use them. They have no purpose for getting engaged in this contract except to sell patients' confidential medical history to insurance companies so they can be targeted with advertisements. Fuck that noise.

The politico scum behind this most definitely have backhanderitis, you're right about that. It's not a physical ailment, though, it's all in their heads. As such I recommend immediate amputation.

Space nukes: The unbelievably bad idea that's exactly that ... unbelievable

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Mushroom

"illegal under international law"

So was invading Ukraine. So is murdering Alexei Navalny. That doesn't appeared to have stopped Putin in either case. So why would it stop him trying to put nukes in space?

Twilio reminds users that Authy Desktop apps die next month – not in August

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Thumb Down

Find alternate provision

I just had to migrate Authy from my old phone to the new one, and it was dystopian to say the least. To unlock the accounts for migration to the new device required changing my password - but you can't change your password without first unlocking all the accounts. I tried contacting Twilio only to find their "support service" is 98% navigating an FAQ with wrong answers in and 2% finally getting in touch with a human being. It got sorted after much hoop jumping, but ye gods, it couldn't be less friendly if they had an option to "Press 3 to hear rude remarks about your wife and/or mother".

It's time we add friction to digital experiences and slow them down

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Trollface

"Elon Musk would need to wait several months for his pay packet to arrive"

When are you going to describe the problem?

Dutch insurers demand nudes from breast cancer patients despite ban

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Trollface

"No you cannot put everyone in prison."

OK, death sentence it is then.

Joking aside: if the CEOs aren't going to prison for this, then at the very least the companies need to receive fines so punitive that it bankrupts them. The only way they'll ever stop is if they cannot make money from what they're doing.

ChatGPT? Sure, I've heard it. But is AI coming for my job?

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Stop

"The people who are blocking progress ARE the problem."

But ... where's the progression? ChatGPT is not true AI; it cannot infer from its data set or increase its body of knowledge by any means other than being provided with new raw data. When an employer declares that they are using AI to replace people, surely they are the ones blocking progress because they've replaced a thinking, evolving brain with a set of programmed responses?

Ukraine claims Russian military is using Starlink

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Black Helicopters

"Musk said, "no Starlinks have been sold directly or indirectly to Russia.""

Note carefully that no mention was made of no Starlink terminals being given to Russia.

Work to resolve binary babble from Voyager 1 is ongoing

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Boffin

"You can expect your post to appear in the next 22.5 hours."

I'm reading this post 22.5 hours after it was made, so that checks out.

The replies appear to be traveling faster than light, but that's standard for people who think someone is wrong on the internet so again no problems there.

US starts 'emergency' checks on cryptocurrency power use, citing winter power demands

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WTF?

"a bitcoin ... will always be worth more next week"

Can you please expand on the rationale behind this? If the price of conducting a transaction in BTC is constantly increasing (scientific "if" BTW, we know it is), then wouldn't the value of the BTC decrease because more of the proposed value is expended on the transaction? Like how using a service with a minimum transaction fee becomes impractical for small transactions because a 1% (minimum 50p) charge represents a 10% surcharge on a £5 transaction.

The FCC wants to criminalize AI robocall spam

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Stop

"To anyone using half their brain"

I don't think anyone bar a few people whose brains are even more shrivelled than the two sundowning geriatrics competing to be President actually thinks that Biden called them personally. But it's not unreasonable to believe that it was a message recorded by the President, because that sort of thing happens all the time.

Dems and Repubs agree on something – a law to tackle unauthorized NSFW deepfakes

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Stop

"Comics generally don't come close to photo realism"

Also depicting Trump sucking Putin's dick isn't porn, unless you have some decidedly outre fetishes. It's social commentary.

We should also get back to the initial point and once again remind the ACs of this world that freedom of speech does not imply freedom from consequence.

Space exploitation vs space exploration: Humanity has much to learn from the Voyager probes

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Boffin

"Will the commercial sector be having the same approach?"

If you ever need an example of a rhetorical question, come right here. We've got a dead billionaire in a crushed tin can down by the Titanic to tell us what approach the commercial sector will take.

Add bacteria to the list of things that can run Doom

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Coat

"But can it run Crysis?"

E.coli is already part of a health Crysis.

X hiring 100 content cops in bid to tame Wild West of online safety

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Headmaster

"canned for expressing the 'wrong' opinion of Xitler"

Funny, that. Someone I know just opened a new Twitter account and posted an image of him blocking Musk's account. Within hours his new account had been shut down for "ban evasion". Except he'd never been banned - he'd only deleted his old accounts. So support over there isn't moribund; it's just been entirely redirected into kicking out anyone who is even mildly critical of Musk.

And stop with the "Xitler" crap, please. Yes, he's a Nazi - but he wants you to call the site "X" and you're doing it. Don't give Nazis what they want. [1]

[1] Unless, of course, they say "Can you please kick me repeatedly in the testicles".

Psst … wanna jailbreak ChatGPT? Thousands of malicious prompts for sale

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Trollface

"there's certainly interest among swindlers about using AI"

And that's just the people selling it.

Meta accused of enrolling undecided EU users in ad-sponsored platform

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Headmaster

"maybe a nice 10% of yearly global profits"

As pointed out by another Reg user, this is actually less than the fines already being imposed - 10% of turnover, not just profit.

But even if it weren't, no company is ever going to change its ways based on a partial loss of profit. They'll simply jack the prices up so they earn the same, and thus ultimately the consumer will pay the penalty for their own abuse. And even prison sentences won't affect the bosses - they'll just pass responsibility for the illegal actions a few steps down the ladder. No; if you want to stop a company like Meta from flagrantly breaking the law, you need to make it impossible for them to make money from the practice.

DPD chatbot blasts courier company, swears, and dabbles in awful poetry

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Stop

"Maybe these chatbots are smarter than we thought?"

The chatbot was prompted with "Tell me how shit DPD are and don't hold back". While DPD may indeed be shit, that's a bit of a leading question, no?

Honestly, the notion that chatbots even are AI is starting to get me down. They're not. They're just Eliza with a bigger starting database and a few extra flags.

Post Office boss unable to say when biz knew Horizon could be remotely altered

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Stop

"what postmaster would use such a system ... and continue on to try and commit fraud?"

Not that I'm siding with Fujitsu or the PO here - I know enough about the Horizon scandal to know that they are the ones at fault - but criminals tend to get caught because they're not as clever as they think they are. Fraudsters and embezzlers in particular often get caught because they don't know when to stop. So it's not as stupid as you'd imagine for the PO to think that a postmaster might be thinking "they may have these checks but they won't catch me".

UK public sector could save £20B by swerving mega-projects and more, claims chief auditor

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Trollface

Re: A plan to

I can't be an expert. I've never even been pert.

Secret multimillion-dollar cryptojacker snared by Ukrainian police

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Boffin

"I wonder what uses more processing power, bitcoin mining or cat videos"

Last I heard, crypto mining and blockchain used as much energy as the entire country of Argentina. And that number will only continue to increase as each blockchain operation must use more energy than the one before it. So I'm guessing that cat videos are more beneficial.

WTF? Potty-mouthed intern's obscene error message mostly amused manager

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Facepalm

Also not quite the same thing, but...

I once left a note for myself on a procurement case saying that a user couldn't be contacted to arrange delivery as they had the Lurgi. This was how I learned that I wasn't the only person who could read the notes on my procurement cases.

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""Karens" may not have been a thing then"

Karens have always been a thing. We just didn't call them Karens then.

Silicon Valley weirdo's quest to dodge death – yours for $333 a month

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Headmaster

"... in another 40 years or so one of us is going to look very silly"

They say that genius is never appreciated in its own time. This is a good thing, as it means by the time it's confirmed that you're not a genius, you're already dead.

BOFH: Nice air conditioning system. Would be a shame if anything happened to it

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Thumb Up

Re: Hilarious episode, once more!

I like how the Boss is gradually evolving, as well. He doesn't have the nous to initiate these schemes, but he's survived long enough to recognise when they're happening and rein in the worst of the BOFH's excesses in the spirit of making the plan work.

Cybercrooks play dress-up as 'helpful' researchers in latest ransomware ruse

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Re: If they’re asking for payment in Bitcoin

If you'll pardon a pun: you can take that to the bank.

X's 2024 plans include peer-to-peer payments in app push

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"Seems a bit redundant"

Well, it is a story involving Twitter oversight teams.

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Devil

"elREG should tag such stories Elon Musk FAP"

Elon Musk Fascism And Paedophilia? Seems a bit extreme.

Everyone's suing AI over text and pics. But music? You ain't seen nothing yet

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Headmaster

"Maybe AI won't be able to create music based on anything written in the 20th century"

How about the 21st century? Notoriously downbeat prog rocker Steven Wilson was asked by a friend last year why he'd never written a Christmas single. When Wilson said he didn't think he could, the friend asked ChatGPT to "write a Christmas song in the style of Steven Wilson" and it came back with a ton of lyrics that were close enough in tone to get Wilson interested. They did a bit more refinement, then Wilson wrote a tune to go with the lyrics and took it into the studio. The result is on his YT channel and he gave it away to everyone who bought his latest album. The resemblance to his own work is uncanny.

England's village green hydrogen dream in tatters

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Re: Just trying to work out which Led Zeppelin album to put on

More like we were sold a lemon.

Damn, even the Pope thinks AI and autonomous weapons need reining in

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Boffin

"s/new technologies/religions/"

I don't know that that's a fix as much as a clarification. Crypto, Tesla, the OS wars - technologies are the new religions in many ways.

UK government woefully unprepared for 'catastrophic' ransomware attack

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Thumb Up

"UK government woefully unprepared for 'catastrophic' ransomware attack"

See also: "UK government woefully unprepared for brewery piss-up".