* Posts by lglethal

3902 publicly visible posts • joined 11 Jun 2007

Ford, BMW, Honda to steer bidirectional EV charging standard

lglethal Silver badge
Trollface

Re: Clarity

Ahh the good old missing comma! It's the difference between:

"Lets eat, Grandma!" and the somewhat creepier "Lets eat Grandma!"

(My mind automatically puts the commas in now, because they are so often left out, so I wasnt confused about it being 3 firms, but you are correct, they really should have had another comma in there....)

Alibaba set to unleash AI that offers financial advice – do you feel lucky?

lglethal Silver badge
Trollface

Re: Question

I believe we call such people, "Politicians"...

(and unfortunately, some people do seem to actually listen to them...)

lglethal Silver badge
Go

Well considering most "advisors" are limited to shilling for whichever insurance company/financial service offers them the biggest kickback, sorry incentive, then this might actually stand a chance of helping people. After all, an AI doesnt get kickbacks (I have a mental image of someone talking to an AI offering them a faster processor or two...), so it's alerady an improvement...

Then again, who knows it's AI, it's bound to tell someone to commit suicide at some point. Perhaps, directly after the market crashes...

PS, I know not all Advosors are shills, when you find a good one, be very happy! But there are a lot out there, who make Used Car Salesman look like they belong in the clergy...

Lawyer's Microsoft email snafu goes from $1.75M lawsuit to Ctrl+Alt+Settle

lglethal Silver badge
Trollface

"opened him up to the risk of being accused of serious ethical violations"

I thought him being a lawyer pretty much guaranteed he'd be accused of serious ethical violations! I mean that's almost the definition of being a lawyer, isnt it?

Watt's the worst thing you can do to a datacenter? Failing to RTFM, electrically

lglethal Silver badge
WTF?

Re: Check the power supply

Personally, after the first 2 didnt work, I'd have stopped testing until I'd passed the buck up the tree to say "Something isnt right here. They say everything's fine, but the first 2 I've tested failed. What do we do?"

To do 12 in a row - Either someone was very stupid (so why on Earth where you letting them test new kit!), very afraid of asking questions (management fail), or it's a rather subtle version of sabotage. Since I dont think there are any more monitors being manufactured in Scotland, I guess the sabotage succeeded!

PEBCAK problem transformed young techie into grizzled cynical sysadmin

lglethal Silver badge
Trollface

Re: Enter Password

If it gets people off anti-social media, then that sounds like a win to me!

lglethal Silver badge
Trollface

Re: PICNIC > PEBCAK

This is where you need to practice your "Hello, I'm not a serial killer, really!" manic grin.

Trust me a few days of that, and your boss will be begging for your grizzled normal face again...

(occasional manic laughter, muttering, and random stabbing motions, can also help... :P)

Moscow makes a mess on the Moon as Luna 25 probe misses orbit, lands with a thud

lglethal Silver badge
Facepalm

And unfortunately those are the same Russians who religiously vote for Putin, because Russia needs a strong man leader for... reasons...

Google reportedly designing chatbots to do all sorts of jobs – including life coach

lglethal Silver badge
Facepalm

Considering the "life coaches" or "career councillors" that we had at school, an AI certainly can't be much worse...

Florida Man and associates indicted for conspiracy to steal data, software

lglethal Silver badge
Trollface

Re: The smell of desperation

That would be a good solution. Maximum 3 terms in office for any candidate. Maximum 3 terms for holding an executive position within a political party.

You would see a steady stream of new faces, and new ideas coming through, and perhaps even some adults!

Lets keep going - firms not allowed to donate to political parties (they're not people who can vote after all!), maximum limits on what people can donate, full list of donors must be published (or at least provided to electoral commission/Tax authorities for review).

I'd also personally add, no political science majors allowed in parliament, and no lawyers. But then again, not all political science majors are evil... Lawyers on the other hand... :P

lglethal Silver badge
Go

Re: This is the most problematic indictment for him, by far

Ahh I see your going with the "Everyone's guilty of something!" mindset. How very Police state of you.

There is a little thing written in your constitution called Presumption of Innocence. Or to put it another way Innocent until proven Guilty.

Trump is at present considered Innocent, as he has not been found guilty of anything (which is something we should all keep in mind)(well apart from the sexual assault case where he was found guilty), however, charges have been brought before the Courts on this indictment (and a host of others), which means that that Innocence can be considered suspect. Still until he is found Guilty by a jury of his peers, he should be considered innocent.

Since no charges were ever even brought before the Courts on Hilary, her Innocence on your grand conspiracy case is not suspect. She was found guilty of using an unauthorised email server and received the appropriate court decided punishment. On that she can be considered Guilty, on everything else she is and can be considered Innocent.

lglethal Silver badge
Go

Re: Election Integrity

A 2 party state is no better than a 1 party state, for precisely the reasons you mention. Indeed a 1 party state is better, as they can move agenda forward consistently, and do long term planning.

The BEST solution is having multiple parties across the entire political spectrum. This allows people to choose the party that best represents them, and because it's rare for one party to take ultimate control, coalitions and compromise are required. It's not perfect, but it is the best way to get the will of the people actually in operation. That and compulsory voting, taking place on weekends, in non-gerrymandered districts...

The US loses on all accounts...

lglethal Silver badge
WTF?

"best educated nations in the world"

Umm have you seen the state of general education in the US recently?

lglethal Silver badge
Stop

Re: This is the most problematic indictment for him, by far

If No jury would find her guilty then by definition she is Innocent. Or have you forgotten that a jury of your peers are the only ones who can determine if you are guilty or innocent.

Cage match: Zuck finally realizes Elon is full of twit

lglethal Silver badge
Trollface

"If we get lucky and Zuck … actually answers the door, the fight is on!"

So Elon admits it will be pure luck if the FSD works and gets him to Zuck's house... Nice to know he has confidence in his product..

I dont know why, but I'm having a mental image of the car pulling up at the wrong house, him rocking up to the door spouting his usual bollocks, and the door opens and a Mr Burns like character opens the doors, listens to Elon for a minute and then simply says "Release the Hounds". Followed by a shot of a not very fit Elon trying to run down the driveway to the waiting Tesla with Hounds biting his ass...

FTX crypto-clown Sam Bankman-Fried couldn't even do house arrest. Now he's in jail

lglethal Silver badge
Trollface

Re: The Nitty Gritty Bottom Line

If Little Sammy ever happened to get sent to the electric chair - would that be a case of Nominative Determinism at it's best?

Norway to hit Meta with fines over Facebook user privacy from next week

lglethal Silver badge
Facepalm

Re: Meta

But your honour, I have to keep selling those drugs in the short term. I mean I have agreed to stop selling these illegal drugs, but I cant just flick a switch and that stockpile in my stash will just disappear. It takes time to get rid of that backlog, and the quickest way is if you allow me to keep illegally selling these drugs. Once the stash is gone, I'll stop, honest!

BOFH: WELCOME TO COLOSSAL SERVER ROOM ADVENTURE!!

lglethal Silver badge
Trollface

Re: Spoiler alert - game solution

Sorry that solution would never work. Have you ever met a H&S person who smokes. Of course, not because *engage whiny voice* "That's dangerous!"....

Couple admit they laundered $4B in stolen Bitcoins after Bitfinex super-heist

lglethal Silver badge
Facepalm

Re: "Lichtenstein gained access to Bitfinex's network using unidentified tools"

But that sort of thing costs money!!! And the banks are on the hook if things still go wrong!!! We cant have any of that, in the Wild, wild, crypto West... For reasons of freedom, and sticking it to the man, and decentralisation, and.... oh look a monkey picture....

What we're we talking about again...?

Twitter sues Brit non-profit, claims hate-speech reports scared off advertisers

lglethal Silver badge
Trollface

Re: Free speech?

Hey as any good American capitalist knows, anything that's FREE is Worthless. Air, water, speech. If you can't put a price on it, it ain't worth nothing...

*Note: For the Americans in the room, this is called sarcasm... *

Twitter's giant throbbing X erected 'without a permit'

lglethal Silver badge
WTF?

I'm just curious...

... but is this SF Headquarters where Musk keeps making changes (sleeping rooms, taking signs down, putting idiotic code breaking lights on top, etc.) the same Headquarters where he stopped paying rent and is being taken to court to pay back the arrears?

Surely if you're the owner, at some point you have to bite the bullet, lock the doors, and stop the idiot, before you end up with a building so messed up it has to be condemned???

On the record: Apple bags patent for iDevice to play LPs

lglethal Silver badge
Stop

Sooo....

It's a docking station. A docking station potentially with a screen. Also a docking station potentially with a screen and a keyboard (otherwise known as a laptop). And you can connect things to it, like you have been able to do with cables for quite a while... I'm kinda failing to see the innovation here, or what there is to be excited about.

Laptops are regularly connected up to Decks (sorry Turntables for the older generation). It's incredibly common to mix records and digital music during a set these days. And on the mixer you see all the info you need, so I'm kinda wondering what the purpose of the screen behind the Deck would be. It certainly would be less convenient to put the controls behind the deck. So easy to bump the arm whilst fiddling with a setting) and digital controls suck on a mixer! So I really dont see the point...

A modular laptop could be interesting admittedly. We already have modular computers (there called Desktops or Towers), but a modular laptop could (big could!) be interesting. But, considering that laptops are designed to run in one configuration and one configuration only, due to things like cooling being a right bugger to make work in such a small form factor, I cant really imagine these will be modular in the way that we would actually want (being able to swap out memory, graphics cards, chips, etc.), I'd bet there basically just talking about swapping peripherals (like we already do using cables!).

So I guess this is good for the Apple hype train, but I'm failing to see anything to dance about...

What does Twitter's new logo really represent?

lglethal Silver badge
Joke

Nah they can just claim (justifiably and with plenty of evidence) that they are indeed an "Anti-social Network".

Google's next big idea for browser security looks like another freedom grab to some

lglethal Silver badge
Angel

Best way to kill this...

The firm attesting that the "Environment" is safe and untampered with is legally and financially responsible for any failure in the system.

Add in a clear penalty on top (say $50k) per failure.

I'm sure Google would be more then happy to take on the burden...

Tesla to license Full Self-Driving stack to other automakers, says Musk

lglethal Silver badge
Joke

Re: ALERT: Your license will expire before the next stop sign

So that explains why BMW drivers never indicate!

I thought they were just arrogant d&$ks!

lglethal Silver badge
WTF?

Re: Behind, always behind

Sorry I have to ask, but you really need 11 hours to do LA to SF by train??? Goggle maps tells me that's ~560km.

Munich to Hamburg is ~615km. I can catch a train from Munich to Hamburg with a lot more stops in between than in the US in only 6,5 hours!

Hell in 11 hours I can get from Munich to London by rail (and that includes switching trains 4 times and having the associated waiting times in between!)...

You Americans really need to fix your Rail system!

Judge lets art trio take another crack at suing AI devs over copyright

lglethal Silver badge
Go

Re: Extension of the Existing Situation

Just to respond to one point of your comment.

Right at the start, you wrote if you read a book by Author X. Assuming you have not pirated that book, then you have purchased a copy of that book. Either directly by buying the book, or indirectly through the licences purchased by libraries to lend you that book. Hence the Author X is being paid for their work.

If you read every one of their books, then you would be paying each time for that book.

When the AI scrapes all of those books off the internet, has it paid for them? No. Not one cent. If the AI firms had paid for a single copy of each book they scraped, there would be no question here, no lawsuit. But they havent and naturally, they dont want to, because paying for every single one of the millions of books they scraped would put them out of business. And I would hardly call that fair use.

If the judge rules that the AI firms have to pay the cost of purchasing one of each book they scraped, I would suggest that would be fair. But you can bet the firms will fight even that, as it would open up the door to them being on the hook for millions (if not billions!)...

Tesla board members to return $735M in compensation settlement

lglethal Silver badge
Trollface

Re: $735M

Can the Lawyers sue them for lost earnings, for not pursuing the litigation?

Wont someone think of the Lawyer's children??? How are they ever going to be able to afford to buy them each there own yacht, if the rich people dont litigate...???

lglethal Silver badge
Go

Just a little thought experiment

So we have excess compensation of $735 million (so that's not the total compensation, just what was considered excessive!).

$735,000,000.

What do we think the profit margin on a Tesla is? A Tesla sells for what €50,000 give or take. Lets assume that like Apple it is able to charge a higher profit margin then the likes of the standard car companies, lets be generous and say 10% margin per car. So $5,000 profit per car sold. I would suspect it would be less as most cars have a profit margin in the realm of 1-2%, but lets go with that for some nice round numbers.

$735,000,000 / 5,000 = 147,000.

I'm so glad that those Execs were able to shift so many cars on there own. Nearly 150,000. I mean that's why they were getting that level of comp, right?

Just think of the mentality that thought that was an acceptable level of payment in the first place. Crazy, no?

We will find you and we will sue you, Twitter tells 4 mystery alleged data-scrapers

lglethal Silver badge
WTF?

LLM?

I have to wonder what the point of scraping twitter would even be!? You're not going to get cogent or constructive conversation. Or correct spelling, grammar or even full sentences.

Basically creating an LLM from Twitter would get you the equivalent of a 3 year olds speech, full of racist and hate filled vitriol.

Who on earth would want that?

OECD finds 27% of jobs are under threat from AI

lglethal Silver badge
Go

I personally want to call bullsh&t on this. But it is making me think.

What jobs use a lot of people?

I cant see farming being reduced any further in the western world. AI might be able to help the farmer with planning and a few small things, but it's not going to replace them, or the pickers who harvest the fiddly crops (at least not until we have robots! And Robots with AI!!!). In the third world, I would suggest the reduction in workforce would come more from getting western levels of equipment, then anything AI can provide.

Mining in the west already has a massively reduced workforce, and apart from some very limited cases (driving machines underground perhaps), I cant see AI reducing the workload there. Again, in the third world AI wont help anywhere near as much as western levels of equipment and procedures.

In manufacturing, maybe AI could do somethings, but I mean that's so case specific. I work in Aerospace, we already use CNC machines, but you still need an operator to program the machines, put the material in, move the pieces between different machines, then when you come to assembly, there's no way an AI can do any of that sort of thing. As for the design side of things, every 10 years "Automated Design" in one form or another comes up as the new buzzword (Knowledge Based Engineering, Automated Design, AI Design)... It's never worked out beyond the simplest of simple things, because there is always individual requirements on every product that require a person to control the output (and usually rework a ton of stuff). I imagine it's no different on the tech side of things either.

In the service and hospitality industries, you're still going to need a cook to prepare the food in the restaurant. You're still going to need waiters, and bar staff. Actually that's not true, with Sushi trains, and coin (or note) operated drink machines. But even though staff are the biggest expense in a restaurant, restaurants still employ them, why? Because people like talking to a person. A few restaurants or stores might embrace robotics, etc. but again that's not AI, and it certainly wont be the majority for a long time.

So where could AI actually have a major effect? Advertising, Hollywood, Management? :P Would we notice if it took over those positions? Maybe it already has? ;)

From cage fight to page fight: Twitter threatens to sue Meta after Threads app launch

lglethal Silver badge
Mushroom

"former employees had access to confidential company information, "owe ongoing obligations to Twitter"...

Excuse me?!?!

You fired these people, they owe you NOTHING! Of course they had confidential company information, they worked for you. Every employee of a firm has confidential information about that company in their heads. It's called knowledge. They use it to build products for you. But the moment you fire them, they are free to take that knowledge and use it in their future careers elsewhere.

Have an ongoing obligation to Twitter? The cheek of the prick. I wish there was some way this a$$hole Lawyer could be sued for implying that the ex Twitter employees are Serfs that still owe there obligation to their old Master...

Tesla ordered to cough up data for Autopilot probe or face heavy fines

lglethal Silver badge
Trollface

Re: Raise the fines

It has the added benefit of making fines more equitable...

Making fines equitable? So that the rich pay more than the poor? That sounds like Commie talk! Cant be having any of that in the Land of the Free (to be exploited by those that are richer and more powerful)...

Experts scoff at UK Lords' suggestion that AI could one day make battlefield decisions

lglethal Silver badge
Go

I think the whole point of this is who holds the can for failures. If you take out the Soldier at the bottom and replace it with an AI, then the Operator of the AI who gives permission to fire or not, is responsible.

If you take out the Operator, the Commander who tells the AI where to focus (even if the Commander no longer needs to give permission for firing) is responsible.

Take out the Commander, and let the AI decide where it needs to focus, and give it firing permission, and it will be the Politician who gave permission for the system to be utilised who will be responsible.

Make that the system of delegation, and I guarantee you there will always be an Operator, as Politicians and Commanders (who are effectively just politicians of a military stripe), will NEVER want to be held responsible for mistakes. They will always need someone under them to blame...

lglethal Silver badge
Trollface

Re: Look at Wagner troops

The Wagner Troops do care that they distinguish the right target from the wrong.

It's just that for them, the wrong targets to shoot are other Wagner soldiers. Everything else (including civilians, other Russian soldiers, Russian planes, etc.) are the right things to shoot.

It all comes down to perspective...

Quirky QWERTY killed a password in Paris

lglethal Silver badge
Trollface

Re: Paris...

Hey, they were just trying to make you feel at home! We all know that IT folk work/live in the basement, have an aversion to going outside, and lets face it coming from the UK, it's not like sunlight is a daily commodity.

Your French hosts put in that little bit of extra effort for you! And here you are disparaging them, shame on you....

Miscreants leak texts and info siphoned by Android stalkerware app LetMeSpy

lglethal Silver badge
Facepalm

That ruling by the Supreme Court is really messed up.

Well at least it's good to know that we can now send 1000's of messages to the various Justices, with the words "Fuck off and die!" and they will happily ignore them, as clearly it doesn't meet the "True-threat" standard....

Insanity...

Singapore to roll out (literally) more Robocops

lglethal Silver badge
Go

I can kinda, just about, see a use case where basically having a walking security camera would act as a deterrant - you know known shoplifting and pickpocketing areas. Same as an officer walking by will cause a pickpocket to leave the area. Not because they are actually afraid of being caught in the act, but because if they're seen in the area it will cast suspicion on them. Just easier to leave and work elsewhere.

I can also see it for controlling airport parking and stopping people parking in emergency areas, which happens at every major airport.

But apart from those 2 use cases, I'm really not seeing much benefit. And since you can get some low paid security guard to do those roles (do not need actual cops for that). Is the cost really so much cheaper for a robot? I suppose it doesnt need food and toilet breaks (whats the equivalent for a charging break?), and is less likely to accept a backhander to let a scrote go, but it still seems a solution looking for a problem...

Recipient of Europe's largest ever seed round doesn't even have a product

lglethal Silver badge
Facepalm

No product, no results, no details, just a cool name, and you too can rake in the millions!

Welcome to the next Hype Bubble!!!

Woohoo, let's all cheer for AI!!! We're going to be rich, because ..... AI!!!!

Europe to vote on AI laws with potential 7% revenue fines

lglethal Silver badge
Go

I'm glad I live in Europe now...

I have to say I much prefer the EU take on this.

Outcome based results, when you cant actually assess how it's coming to those results (as per the black box that most AI's are), are a direct path to dodgy outcomes, that support existing biases.

Policing, renting, financial aid, bank loans - the people involved in those roles all come with biases, and add in an AI trained on datasets that those people provide will clearly have the same biases. Good luck arguing your case if someone with a bias against you can point to an AI and say "See the AI says No too!"...

Hong Kong tries to outlaw uploads of unofficial and anti-Beijing anthem

lglethal Silver badge

They do it to put fear in people, and to give them an excuse to "legally" throw any body they don't like or whom they disagree with in prison.

One of the things I've never understood is why the police in such places seem to go along with it. Now I've known a few cops in my time in different lands (although admittedly only in western democracies) and as a general rule, if they think a law is daft, they'll tend to ignore it, or at least give folks a warning that what they're doing is illegal and to stop it. Unfortunately, this attitude seems to stop when other cops are around (Hence, why cops sometimes get stupid when it comes to protests), but still as a rule. They let things go, a lot.

Hong Kong police used to be considered very similar to Western cops. What had caused them to switch sides to totalitarian mode so fast, I wonder?

Cunningly camouflaged cable routed around WAN-sized hole in project budget

lglethal Silver badge
Joke

So can we say this was a migrating cable, that took nest in the trees for the spring, before leaving at the end of summer?

What is the carrying capacity of a migrating European Swallow Ethernet cable?

Feds, you'll need a warrant for that cellphone border search

lglethal Silver badge
Trollface

I think I get it...

So I think I now understand the 100 mile thing. Americans love to be able to claim to be pioneers. Pioneers are always exploring borders. Therefore by making the borders 100 miles from anywhere you can actually enter the USA, then all those Americans (2/3 of them according to the article!) can claim to be Pioneers.

There you have it, a nation of Pioneers. As defined by law...

NASA experts looked through 800 UFO sightings and found essentially nothing

lglethal Silver badge
Facepalm

Re: Ogopogo != Nessy

Nessy moves faster than light? I would have thought that would cause some pretty massive problems in Lake Ness, some unexplained Fusion explosions for one...

Fahrenheit to take over Celsius

lglethal Silver badge
Facepalm

NewCo's management team, however, will receive $35 million per year in management fees.

Nice work if you can get it...

In what world does a company with an Asset register of €500 million, spend 7% of that EVERY year paying their management? And the Asset register is NOT an indicator of the actual profit that will be generated from those assets. I look forward to seeing how quickly the Management can strip all of the profits and a large amount of the assets before folding the company in a few years time. My guess is 3 years....

Experimental brain-spine computer interface helped a paralyzed man walk

lglethal Silver badge
Pint

Awesome!

Great work all round by those Scientists.

I wonder if there is a specific reason for taking the signals direct from the Cortex rather than just intercepting the signal from the spinal cord. The Cortex would seem a more difficult solution (lots of signals to filter out), but then again, maybe you get a much cleaner signal when you know what your looking for.

Still, it's awesome that the body seems to be beginning to repair itself and get signals through the damage even without the artificial help.

Beer for those Boffins and for the guy willing to be a Guinea Pig!!!! ---->

One of the world's most prominent blockchain apps looks like being binned

lglethal Silver badge
Trollface

... deprive the world of one of the most visible and demanding applications for which it was ever mistakenly considered suitable.

Fixed that for you...

In a stand against authoritarianism, Montana bans TikTok downloads

lglethal Silver badge
Go

I find it funny that these things are always labelled as privacy issues. I doubt very much there's any particular privacy issue associated with Tik Tok that doesn't apply to Facebook, YouTube, Google and all the rest.

Where Tik Tok is dangerous though is in influence operations, especially of the young. Changing the algorithm just a touch to be more positive about China, or negative about a particular political candidate and the next generation of voters will be affected.

You could argue this is no different to Facebook and Google. But they walk a line knowing that every 4-8 years they will have to bend over to the other US party in power and so do there best to walk a rough middle ground (and so manage to piss off both sides!). Tik Tok only needs to listen to the CCP, so it can be much more consistent.

Still you never hear the arguments in this direction, which would make much more sense and be a more realistic thing to argue against Tik Tok...

We regret to inform you Earth will not be destroyed by an asteroid within 1,000 years

lglethal Silver badge
Trollface

"as a dark rock that nobody noticed slams into Slough..."

Well that would certainly improve the area...

Tesla batteries went from fully charged to fully disabled after botched patch, lawsuit claims

lglethal Silver badge
Trollface

"It's curious how they can do the decent thing in some scenarios, and yet in others royally screw over the customers..."

Where the Eye of Sauron Musk falls, then decency shalt no longer survive...