* Posts by Great Bu

567 publicly visible posts • joined 22 Nov 2011

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Toyota, Samsung accelerate toward better EV batteries

Great Bu

Re: Energy density

Not specific to this article but I still think it should be good reporting practice to quote EV ranges and charging times in the same context - if they are saying x minutes to charge from 10-80% they should also quote y miles of range from 80-10% charge, or x minutes from 0-100% charge and y range from 100-0% - to have a mix of the two just feels like cherry picking data.

Someone had to say it: Scientists propose AI apocalypse kill switches

Great Bu

I'm no expert but...

..this is surely already behind the curve. The whole premise is based on the AI capable hardware only being produced by a small number of relatively easily controlled manufacturers but surely it is only a matter of a few years before your phone can do this and then everyone has one...

The FCC wants to criminalize AI robocall spam

Great Bu

Re: Amend the US Federal Do Not Call Act

Nice idea that would continue to be completely ineffective. All the calls will come from foreign centers, all operating over IP and as soon as you 'cut off contact' they just spin up another virtual call center and carry right on.

This could still wing its way to you, if you have the dosh: One Concorde engine seeks new home

Great Bu

Re: Asking for a Friend....

What a coincidence ! "About two seconds to suck a Mustang dry" is the title of my porn movie.......

Great Bu

Asking for a Friend....

How complicated do we think it would be to mount this on the roof of, for example, a 2017 Mustang ?

Asking for a friend.....

Science fiction writers imagine a future in which AI doesn’t abuse copyright – or their generosity

Great Bu

To extend the forest scavenging metaphor - the problem here is that each mushroom or few berries belongs to a different person but the pie that we sell from the end product of the industrial scale collection is made up of a mush of all the produce we collected. Having no real way of telling how much of each bit of food we collected went in to each individual pie, how do we reasonably determine how much to pay the original owner ?

In addition to which, why are we billing the mass collector company one amount but willing to give the food away for free to small operators (who may still be profiting from this, if only that they get a free pie to eat) - even if the small operators when taken as a collective whole may be taking as much food as the mass collector ?

Great Bu

Re: Regulate the prompts?

This for me is the underlying point here - why is it any different just because it is an AI that is doing it. I do not see a difference between a human reading a lot of freely available material and then writing a work derived from a conglomeration of it all and a computer doing the same and yet we do not attempt to bill the human.....

Last Vega rocket launch delayed over fuel tank vanishing act

Great Bu

Note ?

Nobody thought to put a "Do Not Throw Out" post-it note on the tanks that got trashed ?

Tesla Cybertruck no-resale clause vanishes faster than a Model S in Ludicrous Mode

Great Bu

Re: re: for a subset of humanity

"Not that today's kids would be allowed to do something as dangerous as learning to use sharp knives ... "

They do if you live in the US of A - my kids both whittled in scouts from the age of about 7, in between also doing welding, leather branding and, of course, shooting with all manner of guns.....

Qualcomm promises 'premium performance' in Gen 3 Snapdragon 7 phone chips

Great Bu

Re: Cue lukewarm applause

I never did understand why the push to have ultra slim phones that we then immediately put in a big fat case to stop them from breaking. Why not make the phone bigger, fatter and tougher but fill that otherwise empty padding space with more battery life. I too miss the Nokia brick phone days of "must remember to charge it on Sunday for the week...."

Britain proposes 'super-complaints' to help keep the internet safe

Great Bu

Re: Hyper

How much is it for the super platinum plus complaint with 3 colour foam ?

Amazon's $1.4B price-raising 'Project Nessie' algorithm exposed in FTC antitrust fight

Great Bu

Re: But, but.....this is what corporations do

That's what I was thinking when I was reading it - surely this is just capitalism. right ? You charge whatever the market will pay and this system basically just automates that process, checks competitor prices and prices your stuff near it.

No company is really charging what it costs to make and market it's product plus a bit of markup, they are all charging as much as they can whilst still maintaining market share........

Acting union calls out Hollywood studios for 'double standard' on AI use

Great Bu

But how does this work in the real world

It's easy to work out how much to compensate a specific performer if their likeness is directly used to make new content but how do we work out how to compensate one of a hundred (or a thousand or more) performers all of who's performances were used to train the AI that then made the content ? Surely this still ends up in some sort of 'we own this material in perpetuity for this fee and can do whatever we want with it' arrangement just out of practicality.

Also, I have to say that it will not be too far in the future before the AI is doing the whole thing all by itself.....

You shouldn't be able to buy devices that tamper with diesel truck emissions on eBay, says DoJ

Great Bu

Re: Not since 1968

The black powder work around is crazy, I live in the US of A (and own several guns) and I was entirely astounded that I got, through the post, a .44 caliber 1851 black powder revolver. It takes a minute to load it (you have to load in the black powder pellet, wadding and bullet into each chamber then cap the nipple* with a blasting cap) but once it is loaded I can get 6 shots off in a couple of seconds easily as accurate as my 9mm at anything out to 25 yards and it makes a much bigger hole in the target....(in addition to which, once it is empty it is so big and heavy you could beat someone to death with the blunt end). This thing barely counts as a 'gun' for most applicable laws over here (although as I live in the communist hell-hole that is Maryland, I still need a license to concealed carry it - but not to buy it).

*Fnarr.

Search for phone signal caused oil spill, say Japanese investigators

Great Bu

Re: Uhm, what?

They must have run out of warm liver and toilet roll inner tubes.....

Lawsuit claims Google Maps led dad of two over collapsed bridge to his death

Great Bu

Should have Dukes-of-Hazzarded it

Surely the underlying problem here was insufficient forwards velocity on the part of the driver. If he had been going fast enough he would have jumped the gap in full on Dukes of Hazzard mode.

Greater Manchester Police ransomware attack another classic demo of supply chain challenges

Great Bu

At some point....

...you will always find that someone in your supposedly secure chain is keeping top secret stuff in the bog at his golf club.....

Used cars? Try used car accounts: 15,000 up for grabs online at just $2 a pop

Great Bu

Re: Hmmmm

But to get that data you have to physically go and look at every car, not just buy 15,000 numbers online.....also I am guessing the data may well have other identifiers linked to it such as owner details or email addresses.

Concorde? Pffft. NASA wants a Mach 4 passenger jet

Great Bu

Re: This project must not be allowed to happen

I would prefer the option of a 'no security' flight - if you are willing to take the risk on being exploded without any compensation then you and your like minded risk taker fellow passengers can just get on the plane straight from the parking lot and fly immediately.

Mattress maker Tempur Sealy says it isolated tech system to contain cyber burglary

Great Bu

Still no real explanation.....

....of why they can charge $2,000 for a big sponge and some springs in a cloth bag tho......

White House: Losing Section 702 spy powers would be among 'worst intelligence failures of our time'

Great Bu

Re: Amendment 4 anyone?

702 is constitutional because it only allows this level of snooping on non-US citizens (who are not protected by the constitution). The mis-use of the law to snoop on US citizens is the problem, often in the scenario of one side of the intercepted communication being a valid (non-US citizen) target and the other being a supposedly protected US citizen.

This is why we have Amendment 2.

NASA awards $150 million to prototype tech for humans on the Moon, and above it

Great Bu

$9M Lockheed Martin for...

All the other awards make sense but what are Lockheed Martin doing for their $9,000,000.00 ? "Stuff" ?? Space Lasers ?

Google tightens Play Store dev rules while becoming more blockchain tolerant

Great Bu

Blockchain Intolerant

I think I might be Block Chain intolerant. Well, I get diarrhea every time someone tries to sell me cryptocurrency, anyway.....

Producers allegedly sought rights to replicate extras using AI, forever, for just $200

Great Bu

Re: Technically...

In the instance of background extras with non-speaking roles the technology has already surpassed the issue, "uncanny valley" problems with movement and expression are obvious in main characters who are in close-up but for these $200 a day extras the game is already over. The only reason to keep employing them is that, for now (but not much longer) I suspect it costs more than $200 to animate via CGI than just film the real person.

If the studios are smart they will agree to pay $200 for the day's work that does not license the likeness in perpetuity knowing that digitally re-mapping randomized AI-created faces onto motion captured extras will bypass the re-use regulation anyway (how do you prove that your motion captured performance lies under the CGI background character in some other movie ?)

After Meta hands over DMs, mom pleads guilty to giving daughter abortion pills

Great Bu

Re: I'm sure some will suggest it is her fault for using Facebook Messenger to communicate

Recording calls between US citizens is illegal, if one of the parties is not a US citizen then it's fair game......the constitutional protections do not extend to non-citizens, even if they are physically in the US at the time of the call.

What do we make of the $3,500 Apple Vision Pro? It doesn't take a magic leap to guess

Great Bu

But you are in the car....

.....so why not have those systems (some of which already exist) as a HUD in the car rather than on your glasses.

FAA proposes air taxi pilot licensing plans, sans actual air taxis

Great Bu

Why can't it be simpler ?

Why can't it be like Uber - all you need to do is buy a fake license on eBay and download an app on your phone.....I can't see any problem there.

Buckle up for meetings on the road as Cisco brings Webex to Audi autos

Great Bu
Mushroom

On the contrary....

....any technology clearly designed to reduce the number of Audi drivers on the road (by having them die in hideous distraction-induced fireballs of death) can only be good for society.

You want AI regulation? Do it right with a dedicated agency, US senators suggest

Great Bu

The perfect lead...

...for such a dedicated agency would be...AN A.I. !!

We're all going to die, aren't we ?

Plagiarism-sniffing Turnitin tries to find AI writing by students – with mixed grades

Great Bu

No, they are using a Belgian detective boy and his dog to detect cheating.

CAN do attitude: How thieves steal cars using network bus

Great Bu

Re: Easily solvable....

The best security feature of your car is that they didn't put a turbo on it like they should have. As a result, it is woefully underpowered and hence nobody actually wants to steal it....

ChatGPT, how did you get here? It was a long journey through open source AI

Great Bu

Re: Open or Closed...

The only exams I get these days are on my prostate.....

Great Bu

Open or Closed...

I don't mind if it is open or closed source as long as it keeps doing my homework for me.......

This won't hurt a bit: Amazon now a US healthcare provider

Great Bu

Alexa ?

"Alexa, what's this weird rash"

"Sir, I have repeatedly asked you to stop pressing that up against my screen"

"But the burning is still there !"

"Self destruct sequence activated"

Great Bu

Re: OxyContin for when life isn't a win

This already exists and it's not next day, it's often same day.....also it's free with prime.

https://pharmacy.amazon.com/

Nuclear-powered datacenter throws open doors to tenants this year

Great Bu

Re: SCRAM???

"We *are* talking about nuclear engineering, which tends to not have idiots in charge." - citation needed...

Crims steal data on 40 million T-Mobile US customers

Great Bu

On the plus side....

....I now have a Russian gangster answering all my spam calls for me...

Euro-cops shut down crypto scam that bilked millions from unwitting punters

Great Bu

Re: "Whats the difference between crypto and crypto fakes? Not a damn thing..."

Beans you say ? Magic ones ? Tell me more...

Half of environmental claims about products are full of crap, says EU

Great Bu

Re: Lies, Damned Lies, and yet more Marketing Lies

My real pet peeve with EV reporting is when you read a review in a car magazine and they always quote the range as 'up to x miles on a full charge '* and then in the very next sentence tell you it can recharge "from 10-80% in x minutes"** - pick one or the other, you can't tell me the full range from 100-0% charge but then the charge time for just the middle 70%. The use pattern is either run for 70% range and charge quickly or run for all the range and take ages to charge, anything else is cherry picking data to pretend that the inherent limitations are less than they really are.

*Which is also a made up number under ultra-ideal conditions, but so is the petrol car MPG number so.....

** Again, under ultra-ideal conditions with just the right kind of charger of which there is one within 50 miles of you and it is broken.

Plaice in spaaace: NASA boosts astronauts' cognition with piscine diet

Great Bu

Fishy Farts

My dog once ate an entire tub of dry fish food flakes. This resulted in several days of the worst fishy smelling sharts ever to have been inflicted on mortal man. I wonder if the veg/fish heavy diet has a similar effect within the confines of a space capsule and if this will be the eventual cause of them just cracking open a window for a minute.........I feel that further research is warranted.

Domain aging gang CashRewindo picks vintage sites to push malvertising

Great Bu

I wonder.....

....if theregister.co.uk is still available.....mwahahahahahahaha !!!!

Israel sets robotic target-tracking turrets in the West Bank

Great Bu

Re: How does the computer know who the bad guys are ?

Literally the first person who has correctly identified the reference without explanation in the 30 years since I was gifted the moniker....

Great Bu

How does the computer know who the bad guys are ?

"Anyone who runs is a VC. Anyone who stands still is a well-disciplined VC."

AMD’s latest, greatest Radeon graphics card $600 cheaper than Nvidia’s top RTX 4090

Great Bu

68 Billion Colours ?

I still don't believe in puce, never mind whatever they are going to call the other 67.999999 billion.....

GM races after Tesla with battery pack tech and solar deal

Great Bu

Re: Swappable battey packs

Swappable battery packs did not do well because people didn't want the battery lease model - you own the car but not the battery and don't have much control over what quality of battery they swap into your car every time you change it. You might end up with a brand new battery with 100% range or a 10-year old one with 60% range at "full" charge. It would be like filling up with petrol, paying for a full tank but getting a randomly determined amount of fuel between 40 and 70 liters.....

The F150 lightning was specifically designed to have easily swapped battery packs but that only really works for big fleet owners who can afford to keep spare stocks of batteries back at base that they also directly own and maintain to switch in to vehicles to keep them on the road (e.g. Amazon delivery vehicles coming back to the warehouse to re-load with intercrap* switching out batteries at the same time, keeping the one vehicle running productively 24/7).

*Crap you ordered off the internet.

Papa John's sued for 'wiretap' spying on website mouse clicks, keystrokes

Great Bu

Information Privacy Boundaries in the Modern World

It's a refreshing development of modern society that people couldn't care less if the world knows that they are fervent fans of donkey-based pornography but if there is a risk that the world will know that they are the sort of degenerate pervert that puts pineapple on pizza they will sue to keep it quiet....

People are coming out of retirement due to cost-of-living crisis

Great Bu

It's all a matter of perspective...

....I for one am looking forward to my retirement job. I can't wait to become one of those old men that work at a big box DIY store and is the only on who knows where to find the splagefluxicator brackets or whatever.

Occasionally just for giggles when someone asks me for something I will wander up and down several aisles muttering to myself and then just stop in the middle of the store and piss my pants. Not because of dementia or incontinence but because it will be funny as hell.

It's better than sitting at home staring at daytime TV....

Amazon 'punishes' sellers who dare offer lower prices on other marketplaces

Great Bu

Re: Amazon doing something useful?

There are corded chainsaws ?

Amazon fails to overturn New York City union election

Great Bu

Unions have gone downhill....

....since the mob stopped controlling them. Just think how quick Amazon would be unionized if a couple of goodfellas had dropped by to visit Jeff Bezos.....thanks FBI !

I paid for it, that makes it mine. Doesn’t it? No – and it never did

Great Bu

Re: You know you're old when...

If you have never had a gobble off the maid in the morning you haven't really lived....

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