Posts by Securitymoose

Nanny state?

It may be an addiction, but there are perhaps more important things the SG should be focusing on - cancer, pandemic, obesity...

"The casino heists proved to be the final straw for the FBI"

They always say, "Follow the money". Makes you wonder why they haven't been fully involved before, when hospitals and public services have been attacked.

A.I. Another example of eggheads creating systems that can only be operated by other eggheads...

I'll get back to UNIX then if that's okay.

What about civil service jobs?

With that bloated army of penpushers talking about striking because they are asked to go back into the office for a couple of days a week, wouldn’t A.I. be the ideal tool to replace most of them while they are out? It gets my vote.

When they say 'beer' they actually mean 'lager'.

Even my dear old dad called it 'onion water', and he was polite in the extreme.

I thought most decent breweries, certainly in the UK, take their water from natural springs and therefore at least have the filtering effect of rain and rock to help purify. They then produce a decent 'ale' which can be drunk without having to worry about stomach bloating, dissolved hormones and excrement.

BTW, 'small beer' (actually a weak ale) was a staple drink for the working British population before the modern water supplies were filled with mind-altering chemicals.

As they say, "To err is human...

...to really foul things up requires a regenerative language model."

Watch out World, we're all going to die, victims of a misconfigured algorithm.

I wonder what part of the world the main source of these devices is located…

Don’t tell me. I can make a good guess, especially if they come from a well known internet souk.

To be honest, I'd prefer a properly programmed AI chat-bot for first medical contact.

Rather than waiting for an appointment 2-4 weeks away (in the UK specifically), an initial chat with a machine might diagnose symptoms more accurately. If there was anything serious discovered, the system could quickly escalate to a human medical specialist in the right area. Getting rid of those initial contact delays would drastically improve the state of medical care worldwide.

One almost feels sorry for them

In my experience of components from that part of the world, if they work at all, they work just fine until the warranty expires...

Why bother? Surely an opportunity to track the crims?

Why not train the A.I. to cross reference dodgy searches against known criminals (e.g. sex offenders' register etc.) and report suspicious incursions to the authorities? In real life, if you popped into Citizens Advice and asked for details on making bombs I'm sure they would be glad to help. Why should A.I. be any different?

I'm sure that sort of thing is already in place. I asked one of the bots to write me a scenario about cracking a bank vault. Apart from producing banal rubbish, it told me I was naughty and shouldn't attempt that of of thing.

One problem I can see is that the jails will soon fill up with innocent authors such as I researching their future works. Oooops.

A pack of lies?

So, the pack of lies told in some of the product descriptions will be replaced by an A.I. generated pack of lies?

As usual, Amazon are continuing to rely on the consumer to root out all the dodgy kit, but for us it will be more difficult to spot, because the spelling mistakes and weird sentence construction will be obfuscated.

I’m sure it will result in many more returns that Amazon will have to pay for. What they save using A.I. will be swallowed up in postage.

And why should we tell Meta anything?

When you sign up they ask a number of personal questions. There is no validation check, so when they ask date of birth for example, why would you tell them the truth (I know people do)?

Yes they monitor your posts, but you then have the opportunity to skew your comments whichever way you like. Love pigeons, hate ice-cream, got baked beans and caviar for dinner, drive an electric Model T Ford? I pity A.I. having to try to sort out something meaningful from that lot.

What could possibly...

"swarming as a group to fight alongside human pilots"

go wrong?

How will they determine friend or foe? Shooting each other down because of software glitches or worse, shooting 'friendly' humans. Head for the shelters now!

Best spies ever

Didn't think that their names would give the game away? Even the internet scammers and 'support' folks have the decency to call themselves Pete or Steve or Victoria.

And so a new race of killer robots populate the universe

How long before they decide they don't need puny humans at all?

Imagine their first meeting with intelligent life... Beep beep, take me to the nearest charging point.

You couldn't make it up!

If I wrote a plot like this in one of my satires, I'd be laughed out of the jobcentre (and not in a good way).

So who gets the money?

Pensioners back in the 1980s are unlikely to still be alive to get their missing millions. A cunning plan eh?

They can send me a cheque for my granddad's underpayment - Third Washbasin Along, King's Cross Station, Alabama (you ain't seen me, roit?)

The reverse of people trafficking in the UK

It's just a variation on what they tell the poor folks looking for a better life over here, who end up in farms, factories and prostitution. Trafficking is illegal in any country. What are the Cambodian authorities doing about it?

This is all we need.

We've already devastated Bolivia, Argentina and Chile by digging huge holes and poisoning the natives. Why not extend that to Iran as well. Alternatively, find a better technology for power storage?

There's no denying it: EVs are here, and they're gradually displacing more gas-powered vehicles.

Excuse me, you might find that the EV market is already saturated, with only the hype pushing it on in the hope that we idiots will buy more of the things.

Limitations such as climate, chargers, cost of electricity, range etc are putting the brakes on further take up of this cul-de-sac technology.

My advice, ditch your Betamax and Gramophone, Granddad, and wait for fuel cell development to mature. Then we will see an auto revolution which won't involve the horrendous accidents and melted people that are certainly coming our way with all these spent lithium batteries.

A plot straight out of 'Hustle'?

One of the last great shows the BBC ever did before they went all weird on us.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0379632/

The bell curve is so last century

But then again, isn't the WoW set in an imaginary past/future?

I worked for an organisation that insisted on sticking with it, and yes, managers were given the task of allocating one low grade (2) and one high grade (4) while everyone else sat on the middle (3). The recognised procedure would them be for the token 2 to complain to Personnel/Union that they were being victimised (assuming they weren't dead wood, and deserved it), whereupon the 2 would be bumped up to a 3.

This worked well, satisfied the box-tickers, appeased both employee and manager and rendered the whole appraisal process pointless, as indeed it is if you insist on sticking to the bell curve.

No amount of logic seems to work with the advocates of this archaic process. All it does is waste everyone's time and company money, and generally hacks off the workforce. Again, sooooo last century.

Appraisals should be based on individual merit, not relative to others. If there is any scoring, it should be based on objectives agreed between employee and manager at the beginning of each period. If this then falls into a bell curve for a set group of workers, management can smile knowingly, and this is fine, but the tail should not wag the dog.

Art for art's sake?

Money for God's sake?

One argument goes along the lines that 'art' should be free for all, otherwise eventually everything you see will have to be paid for. The BBC practises this already by charging everyone for the licence fee.

Are the accused to be considered as 'galleries', charging an entrance fee, or are they like Pixabay where all the artwork is free?

Maybe the case hangs on whether artists using the platform agree, as part of the hosting agreement, to let everyone view (and use?) their material. After all, it is free publicity, and I know a number of excellent artists who have received commissions based on what they have exhibited. If they are really desperate for the cash, rather than spending it on lawyers (which suggests they are already awash with the stuff), one way to secure their work would be to watermark it and only release the clean version when paid. Is that an issue between artist and buyer and really nothing to do with the host?

This case seems to me to be a very effective way of throwing money away, and as always, it will only be the lawyers who win.

73% of the ballot papers were returned

The rest lost in the post presumably. My mother still hasn’t received her birthday card posted in June.

It's known as the concertina effect

Surprised nobody's mentioned this. AI can look further ahead than humans and control the traffic movements more effectively. Basically the assumption is that humans are too stupid to drive and should be locked away while the robots deal with moving traffic around. Oh, wait a mo...

Close the factory? Bring the work back to less oppressive countries? Don't buy Apple phones anymore?

I'm as guilty as the next man (he's called Bruce), in touting an Apple phone - sorry. When it comes to replacement, I'll be looking at alternatives if they haven't done something to improve human condition at their factories. I'm sure it's starting to happen anyway. How many of you readers have bought an iPhone 13?

It will come eventually

It's all very well civilised nations doing the right thing, but how long before certain despot regimes are employing them to control the population with no restrictions? After all, Covid is getting to be a really lame excuse these days.

Arthur Daly said...

"Remember, Terry, you only get out of life what you put into it... plus a bit extra if you can find a few mugs." He would have been impressed with a $10m scam.

You might not even get 50 miles on a freezing day. Would there be any sales in Canada?

We all know that a cold battery has less power output. During a Canadian winter and you're stuck in a snowdrift with the battery dying 20 miles from a warm and cosy, I think you'll wish you'd stayed with hydrocarbons. Go and buy something that doesn't need the Duracell Bunny to keep it running.

Here's an idea...

https://sage-advices.com/how-many-miles-does-a-hydrogen-fuel-cell-last/

And how many bots is he buying?

Twitter don't like to make it easy to find out how many of your followers are fictitious. If they went through and cleared out all the false and duplicate accounts, he would have a hissy-fit.

And this is news to just about nobody?

Every time you go on Amazon you get their recommended' products stuffed in your face. Of course they will promote their own stuff. Presumably the crime is to not make clear that they are doing that even though it's b***** obvious to everyone that buys stuff from there.

Welcome to your new job

Here is your essential equipment: identity badge, desk, workstation, key to the bathroom, luncheon vouchers, shotgun for taking out spy drones.

Accountancy doesn't have to be boring.

It beggars belief...

...that some big companies can still be bamboozled by this sort of scam. What sort of people and systems do they employ, for goodness sake?

And when China invades Taiwan?

Will they be given the same treatment as Russia vs Ukraine, and MB lose their deposit?

Short term blinkers by Merc, presumably the same bunch who used to rely on Russia for just about all of their energy?

"Oh dear, we never saw that one coming, Otto," will be engraved on their candles this winter.

The should have asked Nikola Tesla

He knew how to do this 100 years ago, but nobody listened.

Seems an awful lot of effort to put a guy behind bars for 12 months

Perhaps they should keep him in until he's paid off what he owes, or better still, make him legit by giving him a job with our fuel companies.

What critical data could they possibly have grabbed?

How many people connect to CC and give them all their personal details? Many a bunch of addicts, buying the stuff by the lorry-load, but I can't see it affecting the majority of folks.

Perhaps they have captured internal reports saying how bad the product is for health or the mess its bottles and cans make of the environment. Earth shattering if it gets out... not.

I don't think I'm going to lose any sleep over it.

(At least CC didn't steal Christmas, as rumours would have it. The rotund home invader used to have a green suit, but it wasn't CC who changed it.

https://www.thefactsite.com/how-coca-cola-changed-santa/ )

What could possibly go wrong?

Of course, we will never hear about the number of people mowed down by system failure in such a teeming city. Perhaps they will link everything with 5G to make it doubly entertaining, or perhaps the lockdown will keep everyone off the streets anyway, and the only folks out there using taxis will be exchanging germs like there's no tomorrow (which sadly there may not be for some of them). At least with human taxi drivers, they can disinfect after each fare. Will the self-driving ones do the same, and if so, how much time will they be out of service while they are fumigated?

Cyber warfare

If we could keep the guns off the streets it would be a small price to pay, but it won't be the first case of poacher turned gamekeeper in the cyber world.