* Posts by Lusty

1683 publicly visible posts • joined 12 Jun 2009

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

Lusty

Re: The two biggest threats...

Nobody would vote for someone who tells the truth, especially in the USA.

Imagine being told "our problems are actually our own fault" and "when we fix it, you'll be slightly worse off"

Now compare to "it's everyone else's fault, and we're going to war to fix it" and "we'll make you richer, once we sort out these <insert enemy here>"

GPS interference now a major flight safety concern for airline industry

Lusty

Re: Is it naive to suggest ...

Occams razor would suggest it might be easier to just use celestial navigation which is pretty simple alongside modern compute devices with built in tables.

ICBMs have been doing it this way for decades

COVID-19 infection surge detected in wastewater, signals potential new wave

Lusty

Re: "the only figure that really matters is hospitalisations"

"BTW the unhealthy lifestyle was personal choice."

No it wasn't, it was government mandated lockdown for a very large part of it. Working in an office and commuting isn't healthy but it's a huge step up from being locked indoors for months on end without exercise.

Lusty

Re: "the only figure that really matters is hospitalisations"

"Long term incapacitation can result from the after effects ('long covid') of sub-critical covid infection"

The data would seem to suggest the same of lock down measures. Excess deaths without Covid are higher than usual and it's expected this will continue into the future as three years of extremely unhealthy lifestyle takes its toll.

Meanwhile, yes, some people are still getting a grade three/four* cold.

*There is some debate as to the grading system and whether "man flu" is a real grade or just due to men being better at handling real flu or worse at handling the sniffles. Either way, Covid is top grade cold right now and calling in sick is probably usually required.

Grade 1 - A case of the sniffles

Grade 2 - man flu

Grade 3 - actual flu

Grade 4 - Covid

OpenAI: 'Impossible to train today’s leading AI models without using copyrighted materials'

Lusty

Re: Sounds like...

I certainly do disapprove, and have certainly considered the outcomes. I think the opposite is also true though, a lot of people are abandoning reasonable and fair IP protections because they think AI is cool. I agree it's cool, but that doesn't make it acceptable to steal all of the IP in the world and use it for your own commercial gain.

Even ignoring the IP issue - this has cost real money to organisations like Reddit, whose API was hit so hard and so often they had to cripple the platform and charge for the API as a result. Even if you agreed with the IP theft you'd have to acknowledge that the compute costs racked up as a direct result of pillaging the Internet ought to be paid for out of the many billions of profit from the models?

Lusty

Re: Sounds like...

"For reference, the Wikipedia payments are not for appearing in the search results but in the summarising block of text that appears to the right of some searches."

The point is, they have to pay to provide someone else's IP. Doesn't matter if it's in the results or on a bumber sticker, you pay for what you use and how you use it and importantly it's the IP owner that decides the terms.

Lusty

Re: Sounds like...

sorry but you've misunderstood what it's doing. Hallucinations in this stuff is when it comes up with a statistically reasonable load of bullshit. Take the example where it quoted some laws in a US case and it took months for everyone to realise those cases don't exist, they just sound plausible. That's not imagination, it's pure statistics.

Lusty

Re: Sounds like...

"There is absolutely no way that any original drafters of copyright law had AI in mind"

They didn't need to, it's generic enough as it is to cover the situation.

If I have an image and put it online you can assume the right to view that photo since I placed it in a public platform to be consumed. That does not give you a licence to redistribute that photo, nor to use that photo in any of your own commercial offerings.

If I write some text and put it online you can assume the right to read that text since I placed it in a public platform to be consumed. That does not give you a licence to redistribute that text, nor to use that text in any of your own commercial offerings.

If you wish to create a textbook, that would be a commercial undertaking and you will need to seek licenses from me to include my work, whether wholly or in part. The AI organisations have such a "text book" in their possession as an offline copy of the Internet and its history, and are using it for commercial purposes right now.

If you wish to use my IP in a commercial product such as a statistical model, then again you'll need to seek a licence.

If you don't have a licence for the type of commercial usage you are carrying out then you are outside of the law and will either need to buy a licence or accept any and all legal consequences.

Pretty much all of the above was covered by the Windows 3.1 EULA back in the '90s. What's good for the goose...

Lusty

Re: Sounds like...

Google were hit hard a while ago (probably 20 years) for essentially providing the results in their pages riddled with ads, robbing the actual source of the opportunity to monetise. Any actual information Google returns now, such as Wikipedia data, is licenced and they pay a fee. I believe the newspapers were the ones with the beef originally.

Lusty

Re: Sounds like...

Sorry but it isn't learning, it literally uses vector maths to predict the best fit for the next word based on statistical analysis of lots of words. Image based systems are similar but not quite the same.

Lusty

Re: Sounds like...

The child isn’t being commercialised as a product. In this instance they are creating a commercial product based on copyright work, and no it’s not learning it’s a statistical model much like a search engine, and we have case law for search engines providing copyright material instead of linking back to source.

And all that is also ignoring the enormous costs to platforms they have pillaged to get the data. Reddit famously crippled their platform to stop it as they couldn’t afford to supply the API access to feed these beasts.

Microsoft introduces AI meddling to your files with Copilot in OneDrive

Lusty

"They might work, but what big corporation is going to take a punt?"

Apple did. In doing so, they proved that having an effective monopoly and giving away a free quality alternative isn't sufficient to gain traction against MS Office. To me that suggests MS Office might not be winning due to antics so much as it's the best option for most people.

RIP Kevin Mitnick: Former most-wanted hacker dies at 59

Lusty

Takedown

Great movie, can't seem to find it anywhere to watch though. Anyone know where it can be found?

Microsoft admits unauthorized access to Exchange Online, blames Chinese gang

Lusty

Re: I blame Microsoft

"Before cloud criminals needed to search for individual exchange servers"

No they didn't, email servers have always had DNS records pointing at them. All people need or ever needed was a mail domain, it's literally how email works!

Australia to phase out checks by 2030

Lusty

Re: They still exist?

HMRC only send you a cheque if you don't accept their now default electronic payment so that's on you.

FBI boss says COVID-19 'most likely' escaped from lab

Lusty

this again?

It must be time to stop with the propaganda by now. From what I can see there is plenty of evidence showing Wuhan wasn't even where it originated, they just spotted it faster because there were experts there. Many reported cases of identical symptoms globally in late 2018, many predating Wuhan.

If the FBI want to save lives, take a look at gun crime and stop trying to start a global war just because the USD is collapsing.

Punch-drunk Apple Watch called 15 cops to a boxing workout when it heard 'shots'

Lusty

Re: Swatted

Don’t worry I’m sure our US cousins found someone else to shoot that day. Statistically speaking they probably found quite a few.

Nice smart device – how long does it get software updates?

Lusty

Re: Nobody

Your machine still uses a basic timer? I've not had one like that for 20 years. The time is based on the load on any halfway modern machine to save energy and water.

Lusty

Re: Nobody

Smart washing machines tell you when they’re done through your phone. If you have an office the other end of the house this can be the difference of finishing the washing in a day or not as you’ll know when the dryer is ready for the next load.

Not a huge advantage but I do find this handy.

University students recruit AI to write essays for them. Now what?

Lusty

Re: AI is the new pocket calculator

I mean, it was pretty cool when SpaceX landed that rocket on the ship for reuse, don't you think?

The breakthroughs in the last 20-30 years kind of speak for themselves, not sure why you'd need a list, unless you're unable to think for yourself?

Lusty

AI is the new pocket calculator

When I was at school in the 80's and 90's old people used to complain about kids not understanding arithmetic. Calculators were starting to catch on but the question "what happens if you forget it" were rife. Well guess what, calculators not only became ubiquitous but we now have supercomputers in our pockets.

Get used to it. AI is just the tool of the next generation. My generation have not failed due to the calculator, we were freed to achieve amazing feats of science, engineering, medicine, etc. and the next generation will us AI to leap frog anything we could even dream about today. Let them use whatever tools they are comfortable with and judge them on the results of their real work. School isn't exactly a real world challenge anyway, if they want artificial results to artificial problems then why not use AI to give it to them?

Appeals court already under fire for upholding Texas no-content-moderation law

Lusty

Re: Consitutaional right to block content and legal precedent?

“ If they didn't do any moderation of content at all, it would just be a toxic sewer of spam that nobody wanted to visit.”

Have you even used the platform? Facebook shows you your friends. If your friend starts ranting about subjects you don’t like then speak to them or stop being friends. This is the problem, not the platform.

Facebook are absolutely able to not promote hate speech. They choose to do so for hits and views. They do not need to remove posts to remove visibility. Twitter is more public but again simply not promoting content solves the problem completely.

Lusty

Re: Place called Britain

Yes, but they called it Britannia

Lusty

Re: Consitutaional right to block content and legal precedent?

“This is a a law where the government forces Twitter, Facebook, etc, to say things they don't want to say, so it violates their first amendment rights.”

No it isn’t. It’s a law forcing Facebook et al not to stop other people saying things. If I say I saw a pink zebra on my Facebook page that’s not the same as Facebook saying pink zebras are a thing. If you can’t grasp that then don’t be a part of the debate. The whole point of exempting them from press rules is that they aren’t editing stuff and making it their own content. If they want everything on their platform to be theirs they have an easy choice leading to extra liability.

Microsoft offers SQL Server 2022 release candidate to Linux world

Lusty

Re: Multi-platform code base?

This was well covered when first released. No Wine needed as most of the code was agnostic in the first place so there was very little effort needed to port SQL.

CERN draws up shutdown plans to save energy

Lusty

Propaganda

I don’t come to the Reg for news propaganda. The shortage of power is due to lack of planning not the war in Ukraine. With Cern’s budget and needs they could have built their own nuclear power station quite easily.

We need to stop blaming everything on this war. Yes it’s bad but it’s not the root cause of our problems.

Will cloud giants really drive colos off a financial cliff?

Lusty

Re: Capacity problems

“Azure stopping signups in regions and stopping demos in others due to capacity problems”

And who do you think is higher on AMD and Intels priority list to buy new capacity? It’s probably the partner buying chips by the ship load. Azure and AWS do have capacity issues but at least they’re able to get new capacity as fast as it’s manufactured!

Microsoft plans to drop SMB1 binaries from Windows 11

Lusty

Insecure isn't relavent for the people still running SMB 1. The vast majority are running it on a private network at home and serving pictures of their cats. A few will be running it in factory networks which aren't even routable from the other networks in the business, let alone somewhere an attacker would be coming from.

This is the problem with security folks, they think every installation is being designed for fort knox.

Open source, closed wallets, big profits – nobody wins the OSS rock, paper, scissors game

Lusty

Re: First, you need to demonstrate "competitive advantage" ....

100% agree. I often think that the time taken to decide a server name is the square of employee count in man hours. A one man IT team will just call the system Bob, a multinational team needs a whole schema and justification with a “discovery phase” to make sure nothing is missed.

Confirmed: James Webb Space Telescope team plans launch for this Xmas Eve after data cable fix

Lusty

From what I read elsewhere, about 10-20 years. The time it's taken to launch is partly because they have to assemble a lot of new stuff in a certain order and test every single thing as it's added. Building a new one, therefore, woudln't necessarily be any faster than building this one, they'd just skip the 10 years of innovation at the start. I wouldn't be at all surprised if there was already at least a couple of spares as it would not have added significant cost to make three rather than one, and would give a little bit of backup

Windows Terminal to be the default for command line applications in Windows 11

Lusty

Re: Windows used to run on top of DOS

Not quite true. I seem to recall If you wanted real DOS you actually had to install DOS as well, otherwise most of it was missing. 6 disks for DOS I think, on top of the pile for '95. Some of it worked, but not all.

Project Union: Microsoft releases Windows App SDK 1.0, developers try to puzzle it out

Lusty

I assumed they meant graphical rapid app development environment like Delphi or Visual Studio rather than a hipster in Starbucks defining the interface. As opposed to the current baffling trend to define the interface as code so that it usually looks like shite on most devices, and randomly fogets to render some useful widgets.

James Webb Space Telescope gets all shook up – launch delayed again

Lusty

Re: a "sudden, unplanned release of a clamp band"

Much more likely NASA speak for televised Christmas thing for publicity reasons. Launch and get into orbit and then 24th or 25th push out the solar panels or get the first image, either way millions more will see it in the news.

Amazon tells folks it will stop accepting UK Visa credit cards via weird empty email

Lusty

Re: Will be interesting

Of course you do also lose the many and varied benefits of buying with a credit card at the same time. I wouldn't be overly bothered if my card was stolen, the bank covers those losses anyway unless you ignore it. With modern banking apps I check every day.

A 'national security' issue: UK.gov blocks Nvidia's Arm deal for now, inserts deeper probe

Lusty

"Fancy a swim off Whitstable? Or anywhere within Southern Water's reach"

If you can't tell the difference between making a business decision to sell your company and illegally dumping sewage then there's not much point entering a discussion with you. Obviously a company breaking the law should be held to account, this is not that.

Lusty

I've always been mystified why people think it's any of the government's business what a company does. If the government wants control then they should pony up for some shares like the rest of us.

USA signs internet freedom and no-hack pact it's ignored since 2018

Lusty

Explain to me

Why on earth would China or Russia be interested if the USA had ignored it? Same with climate change, lead by example and others will follow.

Microsoft previews Visual Studio 2022 for Mac, but why bother when VS Code runs just fine on Apple hardware?

Lusty

Re: piqued

Just because POSIX specifies vi be available doesn’t mean a good admin shouldn’t install something better. Vi was outdated before 33.6k modems arrived and it’s not improved since. Far from being a mark of power users, to me it shows a lack of ability to move with the times.

Not just deprecated, but deleted: Google finally strips File Transfer Protocol code from Chrome browser

Lusty

Re: You can't sell Advertising

A certificate doesn't authenticate the source, it just means that someone bought a certificate that covers their server from a supplier on your trusted list who wanted money. 99% of FTP use cases don't involve a server the end user knows the name of, and increasingly people download blindly from amazon arbitrary named endpoints which have certificates but which you couldn't determine the owner of.

SSL certificates are blind trust for authentication, their only purpose in reality is to encrypt traffic for privacy. If you don't need privacy they achieve nothing at all.

Lusty

Re: Overkill for many sites

"Most traffic from browsers is users downloading stuff, where the risk of an attacker is larger."

No, it's not. It's just not. If you don't work for MI5 it's extremely unlikely that someone would do anything to your anonymous download from Tucows that hadn't already been done server side or client side. There is a vanishingly small possibility that someone would be able to intercept your traffic and modify it unless there were state level reasons to do so, and even then they'd probably have the help of the infrastructure providers.

I strongly suggest you stay away from security vendor marketing for a while, it's having a detrimental effect on your world view.

Lusty

Re: Overkill for many sites

You're confusing your use-cases with every use case. None of your points make any sense with 99% of FTP traffic on the Internet, and your ultra paranoia that somehow there's a man in the middle attack injecting dogs into your cat pictures is ridiculous security industry bullshit.

If someone has the skill, and most importantly motivation to hijack one of the routers between an Internet server and an end user then it's pretty trivial to also insert their own TLS without that user noticing, making the extra layer pointless.

EU Commission may extend antitrust probe into Nvidia's $54bn merger with Arm

Lusty

Re: British!

Yes, I'm sure all of their development happens in that one office, they just have the other global offices to show off.

If the business is owned elsewhere, what is the advantage to Britain in claiming it as our own? They certainly take UK subsidies for R&D, do they pay much UK tax? What percentage of employees are UK based?

Lusty

British!

"The British chip biz"

Not really sure how this qualifies as a British business at this point.

How not to train your Dragon: What happens when you teach an AI game sex-abuse stories then blame players

Lusty

Same issue with training vision models using Google images. The problem with AI is that unless you illegally obtain your data it generally ends up like the hotdog scene in Silicon Valley

Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou admits lying about Iran deal, gets to go home

Lusty

Re: Concerning

“ back in a country of oppression, lies, double talk and smoke”

Read the article, she was never sent to the US.

Apple's bright idea for CSAM scanning could start 'persecution on a global basis' – 90+ civil rights groups

Lusty

Re: Naked babies

Indeed, we're literally now at the "prove you didn't take naked pics of your kids because you're a pervert" stage.

At the very root of this, we need to ignore the big debate and concentrate on the fact that Apple are illegally scanning our images. There is definitely criminal activity here, but it's not the users, it's Apple.

Microsoft defends intrusive dialog in Visual Studio Code that asks if you really trust the code you've been working on

Lusty

Re: To be fair

These days I think it's generally easier to write a paragraph describing in detail what the code does at the top. Saves a lot of time looking at the code because you can probably then just write a new function to replace it rather than maintaining your own crappy old code! Also means you can skip the commenting throughout because during the month you originally write it you'll know everything about it. 10 years later you won't care because the blurb at the top should be sufficient to start from scratch and produce something better in less time

'Biggest data grab' in NHS history stuffs GP records in a central store for 'research' – and the time to opt out is now

Lusty

Re: "The UK enacted GDPR through the Data Protection Act 2018 (DPA2018)"

"Still UK can change it at its will now, without being bound to GDPR any longer"

Actually it's more complex than that. We were never bound to implement the GDPR regulations into UK law because Brexit was already far enough along. When we did implement the DPA in the UK though, "we" chose to point to the central EU list of countries. As such, unless something has changed this year, the UK DPA considers the UK a third country.

OK, so we don't have a flying car yet, but this is possibly even better: The Internet of Beer

Lusty

IoB

I wrote a presentation about Internet of beer once for a pub and restaurant chain. The loss of barrels is a very low value part of what this could do. Improvement in beer quality and creating a community around beer was the primary goal. Just like the fetishisation of coffee the extra info about origin and treatment would drive interest. The ability to show new beers arriving at a pub can lead to events for beer lovers and tracking cellar conditions against beer quality would allow patrons to choose when best to enjoy their pint.

Ever wondered what it's like working for Microsoft? Leaked survey shines a light on how those at the code coalface feel

Lusty

If you notice though, the only thing the "complainers" complained about was their deal. This effectively means that when asked "Do we pay you enough?" they decided not to click the "Oh yes, too much if anything" button and instead opted for "I like money, and I'd quite like more please".

That's not a complaint, it's common sense. Everyone involved knows that and realistically the score achieved is probably the highest possible in a normal employee population.