* Posts by Doctor Syntax

32782 publicly visible posts • joined 16 Jun 2014

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Sam Altman set to rejoin OpenAI as CEO – seemingly with Microsoft's blessing

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Re: Meh

Cookies? The ICO would like a word with you.

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"Six stories about Sam Altman on the Register in the last week! Who is paying for them? Is he issuing his own press releases?"

Alternately:

Six stories about the OpenAI on the Register in the last week! Who is paying for them? Are they issuing their own press releases?

Which is the better fit? A useful guide to working that out might be to identify the prime mover(s).

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Re: Satya?

Golden or pinchbeck?

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Re: Mmmmm

It doesn't need to be species-ending to be harmful. What we're seeing is individual victims suffering penalties at the hands of the state or big business with inadequate or no redress. Disentangling such cases is made worse because there is no audit trail to show how the problems occurred.

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Re: Mmmmm

The big attraction is that with any form of algorithmic decision making there's nobody to blame so that nobody can be charged with misfeasance in public office, fired or even given a bad annual report.

This needs to change. Individuals need to be held responsible for lack of due diligence, lack of supervision or whatever it is that leads to bad outcomes. There also needs to be an emphasis on sorting out consequences ASAP.

Horizon is a prime example: once the misuse of a faulty system had been exposed it should have been assumed that all convictions that involved Horizon data were unsafe, including those where the accused had been persuaded to plead guilty and/or made "restitutions". Not only should convictions have been quashed in bulk, there should have been urgent measures to compensate the victims and investigations into perjury, etc. started. As it is many convictions still stand, compensation is still being argued, nobody has been brought to court for their parts and we have a long running enquiry to establish what's by now largely public knowledge.

No more staff budget for UK civil service, but worry not – here's an incubator for AI

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TL:DR

We don't know what we're talking about but it won't stop us talking.

MOVEit victim count latest: 2.6K+ orgs hit, 77M+ people's data stolen

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Re: What is this MOVEit?

"but why would anyone need a middle-man to actually send the data for them?"

Because manglement have, in their wisdom complete lack of understanding how their businesses work and/or gullibility in the face of salesdroids, hollowed out their organisations to the point where they don't have anyone of their own capable of doing it.

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It might have been cheaper in the long run for organisations to hire a capable sysadmin to write their own scripts to shuffle data around their boxes.

OpenAI meltdown: How could Microsoft have let this happen after betting so many billions?

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A rule of thumb for all occasions

Never underestimate the cockup explanation.

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You say that like it's a bad thing.

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Re: Hard to say

"It sucks to be them either way"

But not undeservably so. It seems to have been a fairly probably outcome of the board's action. As directors it's part of their job to consider probable outcomes and avoid those which are undesirable.

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Re: What about Non-Competes?

You'd like to think so but in that case it would very likely survive with its litigation as the main corporate asset.

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Re: Boostrap problem?

"it is quite interesting to see just how many problems can be cracked open by a really good pattern matching engine"

I saw that sort of thing back in the 80s. What we have now, at least as far as powering search engines is concerned, are really poor pattern matching engines constructed on the basis that as many hits as possible are a good thing and an empty results list is an anathema, even when there are no hits that match the search terms.

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Re: Board

Already answered by Charlie Clark in an earlier post.

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Re: don't see how this is bad for Microsoft

"Except that the OpenAI board thought they'd sling Altman under the bus, and be left holding all the cards, and laughing all the way to the bank...I can't see the board of OA having a future with that company"

If they really didn't give thought to the possible downside would they have a future at board level at any other company?

Capita scores £239M contract to manage mega public sector pension scheme

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Re: WTF

"I just cannot believe that this has been approved and it shows the unbelievable level of incompetence in procurement."

Why not? The level of incompetence has already been demonstrated many times so it's entirely believable.

Meanwhile, does this include NICSP? Asking for a friend.

CompSci teachers panic as Replit pulls the plug on educational IDE

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Re: 2) observe how users flock to it

The shareholders here are those of the vendor. AFAICS the only customers are public sector.

Boffins claim invention of rechargable, biodegradable, supercapacitor drug pump

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OK, the battery dissolves. What about the charging coil, the delivery mechanism and the wiring between battery and mechanism?

Fired OpenAI boss Sam Altman may join Microsoft

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"a three-point plan for the next 30 days: ...talking to customers and employees, ..."

Yes, talking to customers and employees is such a drag but you've got to do it sometime and it's only 30 days.

Microsoft dials back Bing after users manage to recreate Disney logo in fake AI-generated images

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"A big part of what attracted us to Airbnb was our shared commitment to using AI to enable human connection,"

And how big a part was that compared to the money?

CEO of self-driving cab outfit Cruise parks his career

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Re: They're not alone

"Quite apart from the defective grammar"

Which pales beside the defective thinking.

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"to spend time with my family and explore some new ideas."

His family's view is that he shouldn't do both at the same time.

Why have just one firewall when you can fire all the walls?

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Re: "could hear the telescope motors start humming"

Even so, it's abysmal coding around an "Are you sure" prompt.

I remember a similar condition applied to an X-ray detector in an electron microscope - the detector liquid notrogne supply shouldn't be allowed to boil dry. The thought occurred that if exposure to room temperature would destroy it did that mean it had ben manufactured under cryogenic conditions?

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Re: We've all been there.

Avoid sitting on saws. They make a big impression.

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Re: We've all been there.

As monkeys are involved it's clearly a combination of sitting and swinging and as blaming is involved somebody's going to have to swing for it.

Lawyer guilty of arrogance after ignoring tech support

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Re: Worst case I ever saw ...

I think I might have been relieved. Depending on $CORPORATE the authorisation might have been turned down after the bookings were made and the money taken out of pay.

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Re: The rumored traditional IBM script for that...

Managing your users is almost as important as managing your manager.

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Definitely not. He was a well-regarded defence lawyer with a self-deprecating sense of humour. I certainly regarded him well after he eventually objected to the prosecution leader cross-examining* his own witness, namely me.

* No way was I going to put any great weight on hair comparison as he wanted me to do. I could never understand why the FBI lab seemed to make a big thing about hair comparisons; years after I read an article proving that their evidence was unreliable.

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Re: Too many to count

I'll admit to forgetting my document camera had a sliding lens cover.

It took me ages to work out that it was actually finding the camera but the signal was all black.

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Re: Too many to count

Slight problem with that being that after nearly 40 years I can't remember the names - in fact I'm not sure I even knew all of them by name.

The names that stick in the mind were the really bright ones such as the one who managed to shuffle the order of his witnesses so as to ensure a key witness was called the next day. He knew the defence leader had to appear in another case and reckoned the junior was one of those who wouldn't be up to asking questions. Possibly the junior in question was the previous owner of the house of one of my colleagues who kept getting debt-chasing letters addressed to him.

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Re: Some places do get it right

"you had to take a 1 hour training session from the office manager"

Somehow that reminded me of the time when you had to pass the chief technician's test to drive the departmental mini. He was a bit deaf and had obviously been used to driving cars with bigger, slower revving engines. He didn't know the engine was really labouring when he drive it and he complained about people changing up too late.

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Re: Are you sure, this isn't the plot of an IT Crowd epsiode?

"Comedy and satire are built on reality."

Yes, but this is Reality being lapped.

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Re: Too many to count

There have been one or two where random chance is the only explanation.

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Re: Guy was an arse BUT..

"to discover she had somehow moved every heavy item of furniture & plugged into a dead data wallport"

I'd have been tempted to say "put it back as you found it and then raise another ticket if it's still not working".

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Re: Seems to me that ...

"PS: Pluto is a planet, dammit."

And very annoying to have it downgraded just after somebody had composed the extra piece for Holt's suite.

Ex-IBM sales veteran sues for access to health benefits

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Re: Oh look

And it will be surprising how pre-existing your condition may turn out to be.

IBM pauses advertising on X after ads show up next to antisemitic content

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They might also define what "hate speech" actually means.

IBM might define it as complaining about the ageism.

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Re: maybe he is a genius

"so Twitter is another way to get some real cash"

And it's all going so-o-o-o well.

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Re: maybe he is a genius

"a sale of Twitter to the highest bidder"

Would anyone pay enough to get them their money back?

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Re: Nobody complained for years

Poor historical knowledge there. Christianity was adopted and spread by the underclasses in the Roman Empire. It was suppressed by the state until the time of Constantine, emperor from 306.

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Re: Hamas

"their chosen idol"

Was that a spelling error?

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Re: Hamas

the "Orange Man Bad" crowd

Musk articles bring out those of us who want to rubberneck at slow-motion car crash (metaphorical, of course).

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Re: Hamas

"We're just anti-dumb."

In consequence the dumb are going to accuse you of bias.

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The main step being that he's not doing it from orbit - he's actually standing in the target zone.

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Time for a wee "vacation" at Betty Ford...

He'd only want to buy it, sack most of the staff and run it according to his whims of the day.

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"that thread rots my brain."

Don't read it, then. Reading it is what he wants you to do.

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"using the word incorrectly"

Which is pretty well what aerogems said. Just pretentious padding.

Control Altman delete: OpenAI fires CEO, chairman quits

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Re: Deliberate

And they certainly crowed about it enough.

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Re: Scandalous revelations coming out in 3...2...1

Or https://time.com/6300522/worldcoin-sam-altman/?

Windows users can soon ditch Bing, Edge, other bundleware – but only in the EU

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Re: UK workarounds ?

Good idea. I can always use my old address in Lisburn - Oh, I forgot. I don't need to. My only bit of kit which dual boots int0 Windows* won't go beyond 10 anyway.

* I keep it mostly to remind myself of what I'm missing and reassure myself I made the right decision years ago. Tomorrow I'll maybe run this month's patches and marvel at how long it takes and how many times it reboots.

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