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Comment Risk of updating software (Score 1) 71

Nice write up. I already was vaguely aware of the amount of rigor around avionics development which is why I was surprised to see how fast this update was rolled out--that with all that rigor they still got the change out quickly. Hopefully someone thought about the relative risks of a quick update introducing an actual bug vs. a repeat of a (theoretical bit flip).

Comment Re:Life is extremely improbable (Score 1) 42

Think about what you're saying .. LUCA's descendants were able to go to every possible life niche on Earth and displace all other types of life? That makes very little sense.

That is what I think happened. It took some time (millions of years) for LUCA to emerge, once it did it would have quickly spread across the planet, quickly being more millions of years. LUCA would have evolved, some being fitter than others: faster, more robust metabolism - these would have out competed less fit LUCA descendants and also non LUCA that was getting going.

That is not to say that non LUCA descendants do not exist in some niche somewhere - but we have not seen them - yet. So apply Occam's razor and say: possible but probably not.

Submission + - Microsoft faces new complaint for allegedly aiding Israeli war crimes in Gaza (aljazeera.com)

Alain Williams writes: The Irish Council for Civil Liberties (ICCL) has announced it filed a complaint against Microsoft, accusing the global tech giant of unlawfully processing data on behalf of the Israeli military and facilitating the killings of Palestinian civilians in Gaza.

In the complaint, the council asked the Data Protection Commission – the European Union’s lead data regulator for the company – to “urgently investigate” Microsoft Ireland’s processing.

“Microsoft’s technology has put millions of Palestinians in danger. These are not abstract data-protection failures — they are violations that have enabled real-world violence,” Joe O’Brien, ICCL’s executive director, said in a statement.

“When EU infrastructure is used to enable surveillance and targeting, the Irish Data Protection Commission must step in — and it must use its full powers to hold Microsoft to account.”

After months of complaints from rights groups and Microsoft whistleblowers, the company said in September it cancelled some services to the Israeli military over concerns that it was violating Microsoft’s terms of service by using cloud computing software to spy on millions of Palestinians.

Comment What interests me ... (Score 1) 89

is if our civilisation will survive the next few hundred years and, if it does not, what will be the causes of our decline:
* climate change (the effects will not be evenly felt)
* nuclear (or other) war
* rise of AI that takes control
* grey goo (molecular nanotechnology)
* strike from deep space asteroid

Feel free to reply with other possible causes.

Comment If OpenAI disappeared? (Score 1) 83

They've done great stuff, but I honestly don't feel dependent on them and simply don't see them as more than a one trick pony.

I'm 100% convinced that other than spending irresponsible amounts of money on building an infrastructure which is only competitive because they are willing to outspend their peers, they don't offer anything of value.

I currently am using glm-4.5 on a computer with 64000 cpu cores and 304 H200 GPUs. I share the machine with 10 other users. It's pretty fast. It gives me an idea of how AI will perform in 20 years.

But that's the point. OpenAI is interesting because they have computers that cost $1 billion. My little computer cost 1/20 of that. But, consider the NEC earth simulator cost $350 million in 2002. Performance-wise, it was about as fast as a $250 NVidia RTX 5050. It had 10TB RAM but the RAM performance could be matched by 8 2TB PCIe Gen 5 drives in RAID.

So, in 20 years, we should expect to see the biggest computer OpenAI has today for about $2000 in the size of a laptop.

OpenAI's edge isn't their IP. It's their spending.

Comment Re:If.. (Score 4, Interesting) 72

Comment Bullshit alarmism (Score 1) 52

Nonsense. Tor Indstoey's entire career is about being an alarmist. He studied at BI which is a school that explicitly shelters students from engineers and sells himself as an MIT attendee because he took two six week online courses with no entry requirements. He works in a group at Telenor who doesn't really do anything beyond look for ghosts and talk to the press. He's investigating Nio vehicles as if he could even identify the difference between the steering wheel and the computer in the car. Telenor employs way too many BI grads and its killing the company.

If you need to drive a bus into a tunnel to look for security threats, you already failed completely.

No government needs backdoors to shutdown these systems. You need a tourist and a funny hat.

Oslo's busses are electric and their charging stations are completely insecure, not even a fence. If I wanted to cripple Oslo's busses, I'd visit there driving an electrician's van one day with a gum to take the impression of the "lock" on the chargers. It's more of a security screw than a lock. I'd come back a day later and photograph the electronics. A few days later, I'd return with a circuit board capable of remotely shorting the contactor and also a component contains a corrosive that can be triggered to spray. I'd use a simple nbiot module with esim. Just label everything as Schneider Electric and it will be invisible.

Why sabotage the busses?

You can easily replace busses. The charging infrastructure is far more attractive and easier.

Comment Another problem with smart meters (Score 1) 52

The readings are downloaded frequently and have a granularity of less than a day. So if your electricity usage suddenly drops this can be noticed.

All it takes is a sysadmin type under financial pressure (divorce, gambling debts, medical bills, ...) who needs cash. S/he will be prey to crooks who can get them to do some SQL queries, or similar, to identify usage drops and pass them to the crooks - these addresses are prolly empty as the inhabitant may be away on holiday -- a great place to send a burglar.

They could largely fix this by putting a two week delay before meter readings are uploaded. They will not.

Comment Re: I'm so glad the government makes me safe. (Score 1) 116

The new law (according to the article) still allows the re-sale of tickets, but not for more than the original price.

Which is good as I occasionally organise group outings to a play or similar. People pay me the cost of their ticket. I do, sometimes, profit as some theatres will give (me) a free ticket if I buy more than 10 or so -- but that is not why I do it.

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