Posts by Persona

That's the problem with statistics.

Mere counting equates a brief mid morning toot to a continuous start of day 45 second wheezing rumble.

And does a late evening helicopter gunship count as one or 20(ish)?

Re: As a kid in the 60’s

Oh shit!!!

Typed from back behind the settee.

Re: Comparing fruits

I recall back in the mid 1970's the proprietor of a book shop I frequented served time in prison for some of the publications he was flogging. I only bought science fiction books there and was not aware of the under counter offerings. Yes, I was very naive back then. Later when I asked around I learnt that he had been flogging some pretty rough stuff that quite possibly was beyond what we see on PornHub today, or more accurately what we saw on PornHub before the age verification check drove most of its customers away.

Re: It's a contract designed for a specific company

I had a colleague who specialized in these type of tasks. He would do the work in advance and based on what he had done get it speced out so there would be no other bids. Once the contract was secured he would drip feed it out over the contract term with bugfixes first and updates towards the end of the term. Whilst it was all rolling forward with no real work needed he would work on his next future projects that would follow the same route.

Re: Safety?

48V is the maximum practical voltage that still qualifies as Safety Extra-Low Voltage (SELV) under IEC standards (≤60V DC). This brings the benefit of largely removing the risk of shock and arc flash and no special insulation, creepage/clearance spacing, or insulating barriers are required. Consequently technicians can work on it without high-voltage certification.

Re: Problem here is that Musk's Starship built its city on endless layers of bullshit...

That's "relatively" good.

In September 2014, NASA awarded Boeing a fixed-price Commercial Crew Transportation Capability contract worth $4.2 billion. They were expected to beat SpaceX by a large margin yet Starliner still hasn't managed to commence operations for NASA, putting it 8-9 years behind schedule. The severity of it's failures on the crewed test flight make it unlikely to become operational for a few more years.

Re: A very healthy sign

The King is dead. Long live the King! A succession plan is always needed.

Re: Lithium...

Lithium based medication, on average, doses patients with a bit over 150mg elemental lithium per day. The report estimates 30kg of elemental lithium in the aluminum lithium alloy in the returning Falcon 9 second stage. That means we are talking about a one day dose for 200,000 people if we could harvest consume all of it. This is about the population of Norwich, though if you did dose everyone there no one would notice.

Re: I don't see what the problem is

"Back to point 1, why would anyone ask 'AI' for medical advice, or get 'AI' to organise my prescriptions?"

Have you met my wife's doctor? Just because an AI makes mistakes doesn't necessarily make it worse than some members of the medical profession. It's also worth remembering that the pass mark in UK medical final exams is around 50-60%

Re: "Then Helen of Troy arrived, naked, oiled-up, and carrying the Dummies Guide to Coding"

I too have had countless instances waking up and having the solution to a gnarly problem pop into my head. Solving problems in your sleep does seem to invoke lateral thinking but seemingly only when you fall asleep almost instantly without thinking about the problem as you go off to sleep.

Some regulations are good and some are bad. The hard part is working out which is which and this will vary depending on your perspectives. From my perspective we do seem to have quite a few that cost us a lot with very little tangible gain for all but the legal profession.

Re: Remind me...

Are saying that to solve this issue with "free" software it shouldn't be free?

Re: Well this works .... for me

It's a matter of scale. For a small garden using it to suck is appropriate. For a big garden that would take forever. I have a very big garden. I use my blower to push them out of flower beds and move them into a manageable heap where I pick them up by the armfull and put them into 0.6m^3 bulk bags .... several of them. In the back garden its easier. I use the blower just to move them away from the edges then sweep them all up with my ride on lawn mower.

Re: Consequences

They are comparable as you are just arguing about the relative quality of the tools. Both need the intent of the person using them, one just needs more skill.

Re: paraphrase

There is another angle: is the AI trustworthy?

As I understand it open source contributors gain their reputation coding over many years and over time they become more trusted. Their code is still examined but it's inevitably not liable to as deep scrutiny as that submitted by a newbie with no pedigree.

The AI you use to write some code for you is most probably not quite the same AI you used yesterday. You can't really trust the code to be correct let alone not malevolent. Even so any code it writes and you submit will carry your pedigree rather than that of the first post from a North Korean contributor.

One exploit scenario is for a bad actor (think sovereign state level) to have "tuned" the AI they control to target particular programmers that use it and infer where the code is going to be used. For the right programmer in the right place it inserts a carefully crafted back door good enough to fool them that it's working code. Having looked at how devious the CIA can be, as demonstrated by Snownden disclosures, it does not sound totally implausible.

Security has traditionally been an afterthought in IT. Choose the AI wisely.

Re: that's called privacy

Encrypted SMTP is a thing and has been for a couple of decades proving that it is something that in practice no one really wants.

Fortunately the problem of email passing through multiple routers was addressed by Opportunistic TLS. Well over a decade ago many financial firms agreed to require TLS when transferring email with each other because we were paranoid enough. Doubly so as a devious intermediary could reject the opportunistic TLS.

The cat doesn't need you with that can of tuna. If you don't provide well enough it will go down the street till it finds someone else.

Washing machines have gone that way partly because variable tariff electricity is becoming more and more prevalent. It's not much use getting low cost electricity at a time when you are not there able to make use of it. A WiFi controlled washing machine, and the foresight to load the machine up in preparedness allows you to make use of cheap rate power which is why they make them and part of why they sell.

White goods manufactures are very cost and profit aware. If they didn't sell they would soon go the way of other failed innovations like 3D TV.

The other reason why they sell is they they tend to be on the highest capacity, feature full and most expensive machines. There are always customers that choose products on that basis.

Re: "Sovereign".....Exactly What Does That Mean?

COTTONMOUTH-I: A modified USB or Ethernet connector that installs Trojan software and acts as a wireless bridge for covert remote access, using a digital core (TRINITY) and RF transceiver (HOWLERMONKEY).

COTTONMOUTH-II: Similar to COTTONMOUTH-I but deployed in a USB socket (requiring target machine integration) to create a wireless bridge for data exfiltration.

COTTONMOUTH-III: A stacked Ethernet and USB plug that functions as a wireless bridge to enable remote network access and data transfer.

FIREWATCH: Disguised as a standard RJ45 socket, it monitors, injects, or transmits data via radio technology using HOWLERMONKEY, potentially creating a VPN tunnel to the target.

HOWLERMONKEY: An RF transceiver component used in various implants (like COTTONMOUTH) to extract data or enable remote control over air-gapped systems.

NIGHTSTAND: A portable Wi-Fi exploitation system that installs exploits wirelessly from up to eight miles away, bridging to air-gapped targets without physical contact.

RAGEMASTER: Hidden in a VGA cable's ferrite choke, it taps and modulates the video signal to RF (codename VAGRANT) for remote monitoring of a target's screen.

SURLYSPAWN: A keystroke monitoring implant that logs inputs on non-connected computers and transmits them covertly, often via RF methods.

TURNIPSCHOOL: Concealed in a USB cable, it provides short-range RF communication to software on the host, allowing data bridging from air-gapped machines.

Re: Déjà construit

One could hope that it would be a single table, yet when you look at one persons details you find the name on the passport is spelt differently from the one associated with the UTR and the address on the driving license is completely different. The date of birth for the NHS number is different too, but that's probably just a typo. They might all relate to one person, but perhaps it's five different people.

Re: WTF?

I've probably heard of it but as "media" has never been my thing I'm not familiar enough with it to be able to go from a description of what it does to what it's called. The same applies to audio processing. I had no idea what the audio equivalent of FFmpeg was till I looked it up, yet people into sound processing would be aghast that others didn't know it. I'm purposely not naming it as that would make it too easy for people to remember they had heard of it.

Re: Be prepared!

Switzerland has National Service and hence a lot of well trained part time soldiers.

A BOFH colleague of mine from the Zurich office was responsible for commanding a missile system in the event of war. He did refresher training every few months.

A BOFH in charge of missiles ..... what could go wrong.

Re: "China's maglev train recently reached a speed in testing of 650 km/h in seven seconds"

That's the least of your problems. If you were standing in the aisle when the train started, to all intents and purposes you would remain stationary till the door at the end of the aisle moved forward to meet you. If you were 10m from that door it would meet you at about 50mph.

Re: The obvious solution?

Lets also remind people that in the UK the daily output of a solar farm is over 10 times higher in summer when we don't desperately need the power, compared with the winter when it's needed most.

Solar is great for Spain, but not for the UK.

Re: Disguised recession

conflate the value of an AI that's right or useful only some of the time with a human who could be right a lot more of the time

We have all worked with some humans who were wrong almost almost all of the time. e.g. Tony, who was otherwise a really nice chap, always had out by one errors in his code. He simply could not write any form of loop that iterated the correct number of times. When you pointed them out he would "fix" them and the resultant code would then be out by two! Tony was be a prime example of a coder that "should" be replaced by AI or even just A.

Re: Shortsighted

A 7 cm change in average heights for 5 year olds over that period would be massive, so obviously dodgy data as that would be a sustained 7mm per year! Average heights of children do bounce up and down a bit. The numbers show a fairly consistent 1mm a year increase over that period till 2020 when there was a sharp 8mm surge apparently "linked" to obesity. Since that peak it's fallen quite a bit but still above what it was when Cameron became PM.

There are lots of potential reasons, but as heights increased during the days of "austerity" it's not credible to cite it as "the" reason for their decline.

TLDR; citation needed

Re: US datacenters are experiencing a significant shift toward coal-powered energy

Especially in Texas. Solar is (literally) brilliant in low latitudes. Doubly so as peak demand is often for air con so supply and demand are in sync.

It's when you get to the high latitudes like the UK, where solar output in winter is ~6% of that on a nice sunny day, that solar becomes a really bad idea. Coal or nuclear looks cheap by comparison because you would need a vast amount of solar to meet winter demand.

Re: 85 degrees N

I'm still trying to work out that 85 degrees N context.

Is it because the North Pole of the Earth and Arctic is cold you think space in near Earth orbit is cold?

It's not. It's hot.

Re: What the House of Lords is for..

I suspect they would be more than delighted to miss the end of the current parliament if it meant they had a realistic chance of winning the next general election.

Re: Paying

It's not going to be easy to stop. Every step of the way our legal professionals are cashing in. Every asylum tribunal and appeal is a three way money spinner. The claimant's team gets paid, the Home Office team get paid and so does the presiding judge.

Note, I'm not saying that they should work from free: just making the observation that the more time consuming and complex they make the process the more money they earn from it.