Posts by Pete 2

ransomware

> internet-connected smart cars

My main concern is that you pay a small fortune to buy a car, then get hit with "extras" that require a monthly subscription. Subs that the maker can arbitrarily increase at any time, to any amount. Or turn off completely at their whim. Maybe even download "upgrades" that severely limit the performance or utility of what you have already paid for. Just like with PCs and phones.

This seems to be following the trend of cloud computing for businesses. It sounded like a good idea, but increasingly, the drawbacks and costs mean that it's the wrong decision for many.

Lost in the post?

> returning her CBE

Let's hope it arrives back safely

Should not need saying

> a campaign to convince the public that each and every qualified vote will be counted

Like a restaurant proudly proclaiming that nobody had died from eating its food

or a hotel opening an advertisement by "reassuring" guests that there were no lice in its beds

Making a list and cheking it twice

> doing all the tedious administrative chores that suck up people's time

thinking up imaginative tasks to fill in the timesheet

attending meetings (that will be run by other AIs) which never produce anything useful

responding to the boss' communications

responding to everybody else's communications

going on HR's "mandatory" courses

Crossroads

> what Santa might be bringing 20 years from now

Well, it could be a neural link pleasure generator or it could be a loaf of bread. It's difficult to know which way the world will go.

Three point one pints please

> I got a decimal place wrong

How can you order fractions of a drink?

Though I suppose if your keyboard has a "00" key. But only accountants have those. So it must have been their fault!

Horror scopes

> establish comprehensive models of human lives in a single representation"

Like dividing up the entire human race according to their birth sign

Making software, hard

> puts the 'why?' in Wi-Fi

If only Microsoft could put the win in Windows, rather than just the DOH!

nothing here

> never put anything on there that you don't want a user to see

Such as the two rules of guaranteed success:

1.) Never teach others everything you know

2.) See rule #1

Stick to what you know

> Pope Francis urged world leaders to establish an international treaty regulating AI

And I wonder what ChatGPT's thoughts are on who should talk to god?

Moaners moan

> Then why are we all so miserable?

It is said that the internet has not made people stupider, it has just made the stupid people more apparent.

Maybe the same is true for the miseries? Before the internet they would just whinge and moan to their friends and family. Now they can whine on to millions. Not only that but they attract and encourage others to do the same. There seems to be a sort of complaining one-upmanship where one person moans that they had to wait 20 minutes at the Post Orifice, then the next one says "that's nothing, I had to wait 30 minutes, in the rain" and so on.

However, as Monty Python reminds us, this phenomenon is not new.

IT's a wonderful world

China will buy SpaceX and offer cheap trips to the Moon on AliExpress (but users pay £20million for returns)

Microsoft will open-source Windows. Leading to W7+ that will then dominate.

OpenAI's next CEO will be ChatGPT. It will quit after a week for a better paying gig at JP Morgan.

Bitcoin will be cracked. Leading to the bankruptcy of organised crime across the world.

Apple will double it's prices. People with too much money will buy even more of its stuff.

Tesla will make a motorbike. But you'll have to haul a trailer full of batteries for journeys more than 5 miles.

Quantum computing will increase in power, until it all disappears into a Black Hole of its own making.

Alien signals will be detected. But all it sends us will be advertisements, spam and offers for ghnuuurgh enlargements, whatever they are.

Cause known before fault occurs

> How can we understand the exact nature of the triggers for this outage and identify if there was some level of contributory negligence from the network operator or their suppliers

Well, unless there was smoke, it seems to me that is a given.

Regulate the future by looking at the past?

> Scrambling to regulate AI would limit the technology, he argued.

The sort of AI we have now is less than 10 years old. So to try and create an effective regulatory framework for the future, based on what is considered good / bad now, will make nailing jelly to the ceiling look like childs play

Passage of time

> The iterative process, both in chemical modelling and physical processes, could have taken 2,000 years if performed by humans

Or 10,000 if they had to contend with the UK scientific grants mechanism.

However, this still needs the small detail of actually testing the process in-situ.

Neatly summaries ...

> work around for a moderately skilled user

... the Linux experience

Everything works on the drawing board

> Dubbed "Pathfinder

Hoping to piggyback on the TV series For all mankind and hoping it's success will rub off on this venture.

Bezos' history on delivering projects to orbit fills nobody with hope. But presumably as long as this project sees enough NASA bungs, it will have achieved its objective.

How to save money?

> it's your fault, wanting smaller bills

Yes. I definitely want smaller bills. Preferable a quarter the size they are now.

So, print them on A6 size paper please.

winux?

> Microsoft has published guidance on how to download and install Linux.

Embrace, extend, extinguish.

Microsoft policy since the 1970s.

The memories of a man in his old age ... are now in the cloud

> Obscured by clouds

With a rather prescient line from 51 years ago wrt cloud computing

Mind how you go, I can tell you 'cos I know, you may find it hard to get off

The new "gaming"

> the prospect of AI computers inflating their margins – even if they are unable or unwilling to define the emerging category.

Yup. Primarily a marketing term to convince those with too much money that they are getting something that will inflate their egos abilities.

So make something that is a little bit better, even if only in entirely irrelevant specifications, and then flog it as revolutionary. At three times the price.

A different line of work?

> It was as if ChatGPT sometimes took the longer route to a destination, even when a shortcut was available

And all the consultancy firms suddenly became interested

The secret of success ...

> in danger of never launching

... is to never fail.

And what better way to never fail, than to never do anything?

Roughly accurate

> accuracy of up to 1 second in 300 billion years

Given the claim to accuracy, a time limit of 300 billion years sounds a little approximate. You'd kinda hope that the people who made that forecast would be able to nail down the limit of that 1 second accuracy a bit closer. Say to 316,952,044,811.3503559017 years

Who really won?

> Hollywood can use generative AI to create scripts or stories, but human writers asked to work on them will be paid as if they worked on any other gig.

So the scripts will be generated by AI, but then a writer will be asked to tweak it.

Doesn't that mean that the amount of time they will be paid for - even at the new, higher, rates - will be much less than if they had spent time writing the script themselves?

changing their spots

> as they look for new opportunities here at Google

So just what would a (reject) recruiter be good for?

My AI's better than your AI

> If your law school exam can be passed by ChatGPT, your law school exam is broken

Not really. While a new sucker client may well have their first meeting with a partner or senior partner, most of the actual grunt-work will be done by interns or unqualified staff. Only with someone qualified taking a cursory look for obvious errors once in a while. And using that "oversight" as justification for the multiple-£100's per hour that the senior charges, for all the hours the junior put in.

[ voice of being that "sucker" speaking here. £200 p.h. when the individual who did the work couldn't even calculate the final award payout]

If a generative AI can shake up that cosy little arrangement and inject some semblance of value-for-money into the profession, then I'm all for it.

There are already automated systems that will appeal parking fines - ones that were issued by someone else's computer, so to have one AI contesting the work of another: isn't that how they get trained in the first place?

Missing one small detail

> The device will barrel towards Earth and reenter the atmosphere at 0842 MDT (1542 UTC), reaching 27,650 miles per hour

> On Wednesday, leaders from NASA working with the US military performed the final dress rehearsal for the return mission, dropping a dummy sample capsule from an aircraft

It would be impressive if that aircraft managed to "drop" the test capsule at a speed of 27,650 miles per hour (44,500 kph for the other 95% of the world, or 1621844838 double-decker buses per fortnight for readers here). However, I suppose the old adage of never test for a condition you don't know how to handle applies. If the test capsule did fail, there's not a lot the americans could do to prevent the same thing from happening to the real thing.

The death of speed

> fully autonomous flight AI has steered a drone through a racetrack faster than human pilots

Presumably a feat that will soon be repeated in many other sports where speed and therefore reaction times are of the essence. Just as soon as the computers and their power supplies can be shrunk down to sensible sizes - rather than the half-ton of batteries that electric cars need, in order to attain any reasonable range.

Should we hail or mourn the coming obsolescence of motor racing, in all its forms? Aerobatics, with machines able to withstand higher G's? And the obvious retirement of "Top Gun" pilots for the same reason.

A marketing success!

> 5G has failed to deliver on its promise

Oh, I don't know. It has successfully convinced a load of people to change their phone for no better reason than an increment in a number.

Even better, it has got all the world's telcos to spend billions on new and (it seems) unnecessary infrastructure.

Oh, you wanted features?

Looking ahead

> closer than Five Eyes

Sounds rather short-sighted

Darwin!

> generates recipes from a list of ingredients chosen by users

If people are dumb enough to suggest known toxins in their "ingredients", is it wrong of the AI to do humanity as a whole, a favour?