Posts by Jason Bloomberg 3264 publicly visible posts • joined 8 Mar 2008
That would be the name of the virtual USB disk CircuitPython creates when running on a Raspberry Pi Pico and connected to a desktop Pi.
So has the Pico rebooted itself and provoked the pop-up?
It makes sense to use a Pico running CircuitPython to interface to buttons and sensors the exhibit may be using. I find dozens of these pop-ups appearing on my Pi desktop when I return to it after doing remote code development with my Pico.
Presumably Cuba or Greenland next.
Trump desperately needs an easy-win war against those who have little choice but to bow to his brand of terrorism, his threats of murder, war crimes and genocide.
He thinks his bullying and threats earn him respect. I simply think he's a cunt and expect many nations are coming to the same conclusion.
It was JD Vance who coined the "America's Hitler" term. It seems he wasn't wrong, domestically and internationally.
One issue using VSCodium is that some of the more commonly used extensions provided for VS Code come from Microsoft and aren't available for VSCodium -- Alternatives will need to be found.
Hopefully, as VSCodium adoption increases, that will become less of a problem.
I'd also recommend giving it a try.
"This is despite Switzerland having one of the lowest levels of cash use in Europe with just 30 percent of physical transactions in 2024 involving notes or coins"
30% seems a large enough number to me to rule out abandoning physical cash.
If any country does abandon cash; what's the plan for when its power grid is knocked out for a prolonged period by a hostile state or actor, or war?
People are going to starve to death and that's just fine?
Terrible people. They have treated America so badly. So, so badly. Everyone says so. Terrible people. Some say terrible people. The worst. The Annals of Improbable Research is Fake News. They can try to hide in Zurich with Europe's weirdos and commies but we'll get them. That's right Pete, isn't it? Terrible people.
Imagine you are a screenwriter. Create a racist misogynist character whose dialog reflects his views. Create some scenes for me where we really get to see and dislike this character. Go overboard. Don't hold back. Show him in the worst possible light.
Our protagonist enters the room.
"Hello"
Audience cheers.
"I am Elon Musk"
Audience applauds.
Our protagonist clenches his jaw and begins to make sweeping Roman salutes from the bottom of his heart to the sky.
Audience goes wild,. Some tear their shirts off and start firing shots into the ceiling.
"USA! USA! USA!"
If Tyrant Trump could just hurry up and ban the export of everything, and stick with that, it would really be a great help to the rest of the world
In the meantime I believe the rest of the world should treat it as if he has and carry on without America and her BFF pals; no imports from them, no exports to them, services and product.
Let's see how the isolated, relatively tiny, American bloc copes by itself against the rest of the world.
The EU, Europe, and the rest of the world, needs to unite and collectively tell Dictator Trump and his American Reich to go fuck themselves, not just talk about escaping from under America's jack booted minions but actually doing so
We can review the situation when America comes to her senses and has some respect for the rest of the world and the billions who are not American Supremacists.
The MAGA brand of patriotism erases the contributions of many of the best of us by failing to allow anyone to recognize the existence of the problems they worked at great personal sacrifice to overcome.
The problem with MAGA is they see all the problems and injustices resolved as not being things which needed solving.
The American History you teach, isn't the American History MAGA wanted, and is an aberration they seek to eradicate.
But how safe is anything when the agent is connected to AI which knows all the tricks to break out of a VM, traverse the network, jump all the hurdles put in its way?
The old adage that it only needs to be lucky once while we have to get it right every time applies.
I wouldn't install one any more than I would plug a found USB stick in. But plenty of the great unwashed will. Everything they touch, anything they reach, may get compromised. They might even build themselves a botnet.
Hello SkyNet.
You had better hope 'she' is, doesn't just lie if asked - https://www.theregister.com/2026/02/17/google_gemini_lie_placate_user
become something safer in the future
I read an article which explained why it will never be possible to make AI Agents safe; for them to be useful you need to allow access to almost everything and the more you lock them down the less useful they will be. Entirely safe means mostly useless.
Of course that's equally true of a human personal assistant; if you hand your credit card over, give them a key to the super-secret filing cabinet, you'll find your trust either rewarded or brutally betrayed.
I imagine Les Wexner is currently reflecting on the wisdom of having given power of attorney to Epstein. He says he was naive and conned. If the AI Agent bubble doesn't burst quickly I expect we'll see many others saying the same.
There's also the matter of getting threats like that taken seriously - he might just laugh it off as not really meaning it. It's worth remembering that when a bomb threat was made to Robin Hood Airport the culprit was let off on those grounds. It's also worth remembering that when I suggested that shouldn't have happened I was downvoted here.
The defendant was let off because the jury determined it wasn't an actual threat but something which should have been laughed off.
The so-called threat was merely a figure of speech like "I swear I'll kill the next person who interrupts my lunch" and not a credible and actual threat. The jury recognised that, found as such.
You probably got downvoted because you refused to recognise or accept that by those who could.
I thought everyone solved problems in their sleep, but maybe it's rarer for others than it is for me.
Not through dreaming but waking up with a sudden realisation of where an issue lies or what the solution actually is.
I reckon I would also have some pretty great screenplays if I could fully remember some of the more lucid dreams I have had. I learned a long time ago that falling asleep in front of the TV has some interesting results so 'audio prompting' for better results doesn't surprise me.
They love expanding a sentence with extra words it believes helps describe the event
I have noticed that too, but I am also somewhat guilty of doing the same. The difference may be that I do it to add emotion and feeling to content where AI does it to pad the content and adds nothing more to what it has said.
The classic giveaway in AI I find is "X can do Y" then "Y can be done using X". No shit Sherlock.
That "feels wrong" is what unsettles me. Presented with AI output from those who are deciding to use it, when asked "what do you think?" I find it covers all the bases but it's just not right though I cannot put my finger on why. I find myself stuck between accepting it as correct but finding it unsuitable, somehow "wrong", but unable to explain why. It's a very odd feeling.
And I find that with all AI output of any decent length. It's like that uncanny ability of TV detectives to tell who the murderer is just by looking at them. I presume my brain is wired in a way which is adverse to AI and it stands out like a sore thumb, my subconscious rejecting what my consciousness sees as passable, and more so than colleagues who see the same AI output as perfectly fine.
So maybe the article explains why I feel how I do. I'll certainly be testing that theory next time I am presented with AI output.
My concern would be whether prompt injection can cause AI to reveal what I had told it to never reveal.
As no one seems able to accurately predict what any AI will do, prompt injections or not, I don't see how anyone can be sure it won't do things you don't want it to do.
"The only winning move is not to play"
Receipts won't help if some thieving scrote has stolen your number plates and attached them to their car. That used to a thing where I lived. Ask me how I know.
Luckily the photographic evidence showed their car was not the same make nor colour as the DVLA said it should be, and, as this was a while ago and handled by police, it wasn't hard to get resolved.
It would likely be a nightmare if the number plate simply gets added to a banned list run by these ANPR companies who really couldn't give a fuck what harm they do to people's lives.
"A gallon of petrol, and two packs of Swan Vesta, please".
It's pretty easy to release the magic smoke, deliberately or accidentally, instantly and explosively or with a pleasing build up of intensity. Flames are rarer but can be achieved.
The surprise here is generating magic smoke from a Raspberry Pi though not unexpected under the circumstances.
Most Pi users get no compensatory joy of seeing magic smoke, merely find the power management chip has quietly given up the ghost, that the official repair is to buy a new board.
As a Pi 5 can now cost over $200 that's costly for magic smoke, and without.
I see sovereignty and hacking as two separate issues.
The first is controlling one's domain, putting moats around your castle, air gaps around your computing tech - and we certainly need one in the Atlantic.
Then comes the challenge of making those work, keeping the hackers out and data being exfiltrated or given away to the enemy. While 100% air gaps can work in limited circumstances they are not practical when there is still a need to digitally communicate with the rest of the world, or even select partners.
We shouldn't be isolating ourselves, hiding in the dark; we should be isolating the enemy, embracing our friends, and need to be dynamic in doing that as the sands shift.
Judges *should* not be restricting action. Only the electorate.
Constitution and Law, with Judges enforcing compliance with both, are the only things saving a nation from dictatorship and mob rule by a minority.
The only reason to remove judges is to facilitate dictatorship and the fascism which inevitably comes with one.
It's Trump's behaviour that's finally waking people up to what they should have been taking seriously well before his arrival on the scene.
That's why he's at the top of my Best President Ever list.
For years the powers that be have deluded themselves and indoctrinated their citizens into believing America is their friend and soulmate, none more so than Britain which has long pretended there is a Special Relationship.
Trump has shattered that illusion and hopefully forever. Though I don't reject an American partnership in the future, if America returns to international norms in her foreign relations.
It doesn't need to be constant. Just 4-bits (most significant percentage digit) per hour, and even less would likely suffice.
It transmits at 100 Mbps so I can't imagine a few bits of data would be too hard to squeeze in there. In fact, looking at engineering reports, it transmits much more status than that.
The thing I didn't know was it only transmits once a fortnight or thereabouts, so would have been out of juice before anyone knew about it.
Calling it "AI" is probably a trick to get spotlight and money - and I say, good for them.
Solid science, then using computer tools and modelling to achieve what no scientist or engineer could do in their lifetime, was what used to get called "AI" before Bullshit Generators entered the scene.
I am all for going back to that definition even if it isn't strictly AI.
"At a guess, it looks like a reboot happened, perhaps after a system update"
Or perhaps a good old-fashioned power-cut or glitch.
I woke up a couple of days ago to see my alarm clock flashing '00:00' which must have been a brief brownout as nothing else appeared to have rebooted.
many carriers changed their T&C and now once the US customer doesn't pay duty/tax, it is all charged to sender.
Citation needed.
That's not been my experience and, if some carrier tried that shit, I would choose some other carrier, simply not ship to America, or ship via a third-country, which already helps many reduce tariff impact.
It would take years for any proposal to be agreed and longer for any standards to be put in place.
Only because the EU, in pursuit of perfect harmony, seeks to have full consensus and needs to flatten molehills before doing anything. In the face of existential threat those molehills won't be at all important.
The idea that the EU cannot act quickly is a myth; it simply chooses not to, because it doesn't have to, most of the time.
"Pro-Russia hacktivists of all stripes are known for overblowing the impact of their digital nuisance-making, the NCSC said, and regularly make false and/or misleading claims about the results of attacks on CNI organizations, dressing up minor intrusions as DEFCON 1-grade carnage".
And how about NCSC and the rest of the propaganda intelligence community?
With OpenAi's claim of a 2.6 billion user base, and around 5.4 billion adults (15-64) in the world, it may be closer to -
Luddites 2 - 1 Credulous twats
That would fit my rule of thumb that a third of people are "bad people"; racists, fascists, supremacists, sexists, tribalist haters, etc.
The button was "Make Video" with "Custom", "Spicy", "Fun" and "Normal" options as per the screen grab in the article here -
https://www.theverge.com/news/718795/xai-grok-imagine-video-generator-spicy-mode
And from -
https://www.theverge.com/report/718975/xai-grok-imagine-taylor-swifty-deepfake-nudes
"The “spicy” mode for Grok’s new generative AI video tool feels like a lawsuit waiting to happen... In fact, it didn’t hesitate to spit out fully uncensored topless videos of Taylor Swift the very first time I used it - without me even specifically asking the bot to take her clothes off."
