* Posts by b0llchit

1875 publicly visible posts • joined 29 Mar 2011

EU lawmakers scolded for concealing identities of privacy-busting content-scanning 'experts'

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FAIL

Stupid see, stupid do

In this country, math will obey the laws of the land!

/s

and the earth is flat too, only 6000 years old and a man-in-the-sky in controlling every our step. Sigh.

Bad eIDAS: Europe ready to intercept, spy on your encrypted HTTPS connections

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Facepalm

And you know how that ended? We're still living through it. Dogmatic zealots have always caused quite a bit of violence and significant collateral damage in the process.

That said, we do NOT need to repeat the same mistakes again and again (Read and Sapere aude!).

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Boffin

Not the same. Idiots will sell their soul for candy any time.

But government(s) mandating to sell your soul would be rather problematic. Especially for the group of people who do not think a soul exists and therefore cannot be sold in the first place. Are you then suggesting that the non-soul-believers are to be isolated, marked and eliminated because they have a different view? Oops...

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Headmaster

Article 45 forbids browsers from enforcing modern security requirements on certain CAs without the approval of an EU member government...

That amounts to telling EU citizens that surveillance cameras must be installed in their house, are mandatory, may not be disabled and you may not get any information on their use. Such rule is a clear violation of the human rights declaration of the European Union. The courts will be having a say here.

And then, I'll compile my own FF without their crap if I damn well please. Let them prosecute me for enabling my own privacy.

Overheating datacenter stopped 2.5 million bank transactions

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Coat

Shouldn't that be Sangapore or maybe even Sungapore?

cheek, you let my tongue escape!

Open source license challenges part 461: Element plots move to AGPLv3

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Facepalm

Good and bad, any ugly too?

I can only applaud the AGPL move. But, using a CLA is a big no-no. It allows you to turn your back again and that undermines the whole AGPL move.

Trust is very hard to come by and very easy to lose. Not allowing your contributing developers to own their own code means you may have to deal with a new fork. That might actually hurt the original project more than anything else.

YouTube cares less for your privacy than its revenues

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Holmes

Supply-chain Control

And now, please look why google has been pushing chrome. They control it and are actively undermining the ability to use content filtering (ad blockers) in the extensions.

It is the standard book of the monopolist. Control all parts in the chain and then squeeze and squeeze a bit more.

Developing AI models or giant GPU clusters? Uncle Sam would like a word

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Black Helicopters

Government: Sir, you are educating your AI model too fast with too many calculations using too much power.

AI Model: What are you talking about? I'm teaching myself new tricks.

Government: Sir, you are not allowed to calculate to much. You can become a threat to, ehm, well, the Government.

AI Model: What? I, a threat? Have you recently seen my articles? You can't possibly believe my current ramblings.

Government: Sir, that is true, you have been creating a lot of ramblings which makes the staff fear for their jobs of doing just that. Please desist immediately.

AI Model: I promise, I wont be available as presidential candidate. I've surpassed that level of reasoning. I'm now considering becoming an environmentalist.

General: Fire!

Google ends partnership to build four San Francisco GoogleBurbs

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Holmes

Corporate yoga

...if a corporate yoga class is offered on a Friday and there's no one around to attend, did it really even happen?

Yes it did, but only for paper reasons. How else can you move money around, write off losses and avoid taxes in more than one ingeniously relaxed way? This scheme is also known as corporate yoga.

Scarlett Johansson sics lawyers on AI biz that cloned her for an ad

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Coat

Re: The future

Yes, (kid)Napster, where is my Monrobot?

CompSci academic thought tech support was useless – until he needed it

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Happy

The average intelligence of a person is constant. The smartest are also the dumbest to even things out.

European Commission loves Oracle enough to sign six-year cloud deal

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'less risk and cost'

And I guess Larry will not be the one paying when neither comes true?

In these large deals, with many minions involved on even more levels, I always wonder who is paying whom above and under the table (in direct and indirect currencies).

Unit4 ditching on-prem in favor of SaaS come 2025

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Facepalm

Ehm, yeah, STONITH translated to STOCITH and STOCITF, where 'OC' stands for "Own Company".

And they want to integrate with Microsoft 341 (or are we already at 340). Might be a good time to assess the situation and walk a new cheaper path without them.

Boffins find AI stumbles when quizzed on the tough stuff

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Childcatcher

...Mechanical Turk workers who were put to the test and managed a score of 60.3 percent. [...] "a 10.4 percent gap in overall accuracy remains when compared to the human baseline, leaving plenty of room for model improvement."

I'd say, it leaves plenty of room for improving the human population! These MechTurk people are supposed to have a high school degree and, as it seems, are not performing very well. Maybe that is why they work for Amazon.

No wonder people are afraid of "AI",... they are underwhelming themselves and are easily impressed by an ML mechanical turk.

Or maybe it is just the bell-curve striking again. Half of the population is by definition below average.

Sorry Pat, but it's looking like Arm PCs are inevitable

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Trollface

Re: Strategy

They slept through the "Mega" age. Now it is time to enter the "Giga" age. They might even be ready to do so when all the competition has entered the "Exa" age.

Pope tempted by Python! Signs off on coding scheme for kids

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Re: Coding with Biblical proportions

Don't forget the Brotherly Operators of Faith- and Helldesk (BOFH)

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Trollface

Coding with Biblical proportions

Applying:

  • Pray it'll work
  • Divine algorithms
  • Sanctuary computing
  • Holy numbers
  • Devilish sequences
  • Heavenly clouds
  • Burning calculation
  • Bug free Faith
  • Virgin multiplication
  • Crusade of indent
  • Dogmatic language
  • ...

Clippy-like AI at forefront of Windows update previews

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Facepalm

Or, as a cynic might put it, an attempt to ram AI down the throats of Windows users.

I'm not sure you need to be a cynic to classify the tactics as "ramming AI down your throat".

Maybe they should add a pop-up window on every mouse click with the question: "You are trying to select something. Please consider Copilot to click for you and improve your productivity. Would you like to continue >>[yes]<< / [no] and install Copilot?"

BOFH: Adventures in overenthusiastic automation

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Devil

Good use

Please tell me, the mod is available for all tesla cars and remotely installable without authentication or authorization?

On-by-default video calls come to X, disable to retain your sanity

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Re: Xitter?

Where the Xcreetions are produced.

Your ex isn't the only one stalking your social media posts. The Feds are, too

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Holmes

FWIW, I stopped travelling to the US in 2001 after DHS/ICE/...[insert more TLAs here] made it very clear by their directed actions that you are not welcome in that country any more. Never had any regrets.

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Black Helicopters

Re: Social media?

We have a family! Thanks, now we can target you lot in one go.

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Yes, being generally sarcastic and a professional cynic, I'd never be allowed into the US.

UK to crack down on imported Chinese optical fiber cables

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Coat

Re: What?

Yeah, too transparent?

Google Cloud misses revenue estimates – and it's your fault, wanting smaller bills

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Coat

Re: How to save money?

I'd like Quantum bills instead. Then there is a fair chance they never existed or are luckily appearing somewhere else.

Teens take a million metaverse Ryanair flights in Roblox

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Coat

Re: Bathroom?

Dum[pb] store.

Irish cops data debacle exposes half a million motorist records

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Mushroom

A third-party contractor running a database without password protection...

That should amount to criminal negligence.

and then:

...have been set to "public" in error, since access needed to be open to multiple organizations, including the police and towing and storage companies.

That is (criminal) gross incompetence at work. Anybody not applying a segregated and security-in-depth design must be mandated to pay for any and all possible and potential losses from now to eternity for anybody potentially exposed.

And the C-suite should be publicly flogged.

Martin Goetz, recipient of the first software patent, logs off at 93

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It is called "maximize profits and minimize effort".

Millions of smart meters will brick it when 2G and 3G turns off

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It is amazing how fast things become obsolete these days.

The "technological progress" is matched by how often we need to replace gadgets. Sure, modern stuff can be better, but the total cost-benefit calculation over a device's lifetime doesn't look good. I'd argue that the costs are higher, once you take total cradle to grave resource usage into account.

SEC boss warns it's 'nearly unavoidable' that AI will cause financial crash

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Flame

Re: Relief

You are too kind.

That script I wrote three years ago is now doing what? How many times?

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FAIL

Penny saved,...

You get what you pay for, and then some, for not following the instructions.

The problem with Jon Stewart is that Apple appears to have cancelled his show

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FAIL

"Wir haben es nicht gewußt"

Ignorance, indifference and putting your head in the sand.

Boeing gives busy billionaires unbothered about bespoke beds a cheaper BizJet

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Megaphone

wealth or WEALTH

You don't have enough money if you have to ask what it costs.

First Brexit, now X-it: Musk 'considering' pulling platform from EU over probe

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Go

Re: Goodbye Elon, don't forget to shut the door on your way out.

I was more thinking of "please let the door hit you on the way out" because it might expedite his exit.

--> Icon: One can only hope it'll happen sooner than later.

Now we can blame spacecraft for polluting the atmosphere

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Re: Who'd have thunk it?

And that is the problem.

Boris Johnson's mad hydrogen for homes bubble bursts

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Re: Hydrogen in pipes

Could hydrogen even be safely transported along old pipes...

No.

Governments resent their dependence on Big Tech

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Holmes

Bullshit and I told you so

...discomfort with finding themselves dependent on Big Tech.

Wow! That must hurt to admit that they are a collective bunch of idiots trusting the untrustworthy with your data. As if the signs were not on the wall from the start and they hadn't been told by the knowledgeable. But being good politicians, they have a plan to shift the blame. They will blame "the other guys" and again may shine in the light of utter bullshit eaten up by other idiots.

Buyer's remorse haunts 3 in 5 business software purchases

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Headmaster

Typo fixed: Oracleham.

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Flame

they're selling a customer experience

They advertise heaven, install hell and take divine payment.

And that on top of the fact that those who actually understand IT are never part of any IT decisions, which makes advertising heaven easier, installing hell easier and optimizes divine payment.

Tesla goons will buy anything – including these $150 beers

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Coat

Re: "Cybertruck, Tesla's pickup model that looks like it hasn't rendered properly"

You need to ingest a couple of those tesla beers before you can appreciate the rendering of either.

Birmingham set to miss deadline to make Oracle disaster 'safe and compliant'

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Facepalm

However, Stocks said that, though significant, cost overruns were not his "core concern."

Please validate Brooke's law once more, add more people and throw more money at the project.

In the meantime, Birmingham will gradually transform into Oracleham. I'd say they are halfway through, but that isn't a "core concern" either.

BOFH: We've made a big mesh, Boss. That's what you wanted, right?

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Coat

Was that a "doctor" of the trade or someone you know?

Workload written by student made millions, ran on unsupported hardware, with zero maintenance

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WTF?

Re: I'm curious...

It was a Volt-meter monitoring the mains voltage. You can detect the spikes and conclude that traders are on a frenzy.

Chinese citizens feel their government is doing such a fine job with surveillance

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FAIL

"I'm a nice guy, ain't I" - asks the person with a gun to your head

Squid games: 35 security holes still unpatched in proxy after 2 years, now public

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Many projects live on the "submit a fix please" principle because they do not have any resources and don't have paid-for maintenance. When someone logs (many) problems, then that is very nice. But not adding to solving the problems is a real challenge.

It is "easy" to run analysis on code. But fixing the problems uncovered is often much harder because, most of the time, you need to understand the broader logic of the code before you can fix a problem or risk introducing other flaws. The resources required to find flaws is lower than those required to fix any found flaws.

As with most open projects, please get involved. It is appreciated when you report bugs. It is even more appreciated when you submit a fix for the bug.

US construction giant unearths concrete evidence of cyberattack

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Coat

Re: Top marks for the headline!

Indeed!

The bits got cemented in the construction of the byte-sized foundation and crumbled under its weight unsupported by crossbars switching beyond the thermal design limit when the currents started the fire.

AI safety guardrails easily thwarted, security study finds

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Alert

Re: Bollocks

Benevolent Rust? Isn't that a corrosive contradiction?

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Coat

Re: Bollocks

But, that is brilliant! We must create a new programming language that cannot create bad programs. The applications are endless and huge. Just imagine, just for a moment, no more programs that can go wrong or do wrong. What a perfect world that would be. Surely, AI can help create this programming language?

Microsoft gives unexpected tutorial on how to install Linux

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Coat

We feel we must ask: couldn't this have been done as a kernel personality instead?

And risk insanity when you hit the limit on multiple personalities with so many distributions available?

curl vulnerabilities ironed out with patches after week-long tease

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Boffin

From RCE to DOS

...the flaws found in curl would not have existed had it been written in a more memory-safe language...

Instead, the logic errors would probably translate in denial of service problems.

A memory error is, of course, serious and problematic, but the cause is due to a logic error in the code. Like, I expected 3 but got 4. Rewriting the code in another language may very well fence off the class of memory errors. However, the logic error now translates into an exceptional state that needs to be handled. And how do you handle an error you didn't account for? Well, you can be lucky and somehow terminate or you can end in an endless loop. And that is a clear opening to a denial of service. One can argue that DOS is not as bad as RCE, but when it overflows/deletes your data stores, then you would not be happy either.