Posts by pip25 318 publicly visible posts • joined 17 Jun 2010
Well, I'll be damned. They've actually learned their lesson... err, well, in part, if the current video is any indication. Past models of the same type were headless, for example the one they've given to the NYPD around 3 years ago, and the reaction was unsurprisingly abysmal.
They make great robots, but are absolutely hopeless when it comes to making them likeable by humans. (And I'm not talking about anything sophisticated, just things like their robot dogs not having a friggin' head.)
And then they're surprised when some of their pilot projects, especially those in contact with the general public, dive head-first into the pavement.
It seems as if the company had retained most of its negative practices, but has slowly abandoned its former privileged position of being an innovator and a trend-setter. Turning to Google on the AI front would be especially embarrassing when you consider the models that are openly available today. You'd think Apple would at least build something on them.
I am getting increasingly convinced that current AI implementations merely make us come face-to-face with all our hypocrisies and perversions... and we're obviously not prepared to witness it. So the model is given an impossible task: be as human as possible without being as biased and fallible as humans generally are. Obviously, that is not going to work.
I can't help but be reminded of how the power consumption really got out of hand on the mining front - only this time, it's Nvidia itself that is apparently fuelling the flames. Energy efficiency might not be what people are looking for in these accelerators, but this still sounds rather extreme.
Audio made the CD ubiquitous. Video helped the DVD spread. And Blu-ray failed to make the same splash exactly because at that point, many people had an Internet connection that was good enough to just stream whatever they were interested in.
So, what would they be selling on these disks with petabit capacity? Because I doubt archival in itself will let it get off the ground.
"Everything else in computing has gotten cheaper and easier to make over time, but printers really haven't at all."
How mysterious. The printer hardware must be cursed. Or maybe, just maybe, they weren't trying that hard to reduce costs to begin with. If they get their money from the fools, er, I mean, their customers either way, why bother?
Considering Koreans will still be able to access Twitch via a VPN, its bandwidth costs will not simply disappear. Not all users are savvy enough to do so, but those that really want to will still watch the streams, except the telco will no longer be able to bill Twitch for it.
The software has all the features 99% of its users could possibly imagine, not to mention need, since over a decade (at the very least). Yet, of course, Microsoft still wants to sell new versions, so it WILL get new features, regardless of whether they are useful or not. Not the most motivating situation to be in as a developer, I imagine.
I'm using a completely free and open-source code assistant, StarCoder via Huggingface's VSCode extension. I don't have to pay a penny, though I am seriously considering it just to support the project. It came out recently, but it's already pretty useful. Microsoft, you can go ahead and stick your proprietary crap everywhere, you won't get any money from me!
The contractor's greed is undeniable, but I have little sympathy for Orqa. Even if they extend their license now, they're not going to extend it forever - in other words, these devices will have an expiry date. They should have never signed such a license agreement. Ever.
My problem is that these preventive measures cost a lot, not just in terms of time and money to implement, but also in terms of performance. Slowdowns of up to 70% percent and other horrifying numbers are thrown around - if that is the price we have to pay to be protected from a certain threat, it'd be nice if it were a threat that is provably dangerous and exploitable, and by "provably" I mean outside of academic papers.
I hear a lot about speculative execution vulnerabilities, how hard they are to mitigate, and how they can potentially be exploited to nefarious ends, but much less about actual attacks against "major cloud providers" or other infrastructure using these vulnerabilities. Either I'm being terribly ignorant, or it feels as if we're chasing an actual spectre, not a practical issue with real-life repercussions.
It's scary, but I can actually see a market for this.
"If you lost some precious company or personal data, give us a call. There's a possibility that we may have ACCIDENTALLY backup up your stuff in the recent past, and are willing to return in to you for a small fee."
I got a phone from my employer for work-related purposes years ago. Soon enough, I started getting calls, from banks to complete strangers, all looking for the same lady who obviously wasn't me. At first, it felt hilarious. After the 10th call it felt annoying. I may have managed to track down the lady via social media, but my polite letter to resolve this situation went unanswered, so I guess I'll never know for sure. Thankfully the calls petered out over the years, so now only the moral remains: these days your phone number is part of your identity. Be careful with it.
I was starting to get weird, bizarre thoughts about trying out Edge, but this decision has brought me back to my senses. Thanks for that.
No, seriously, why anyone at Microsoft would think that integrating what is widely considered horrific bloatware into their browser is beyond me.
I first encountered VMware in a magazine article around 2000, when such computer magazines were still a thing. It heralded virtualization as something new and groundbreaking (I'm not sure the author was aware of the prior non-x86 virtualization efforts El Reg refers to), but I remember myself blinking in confusion. Why would you use a computer... to simulate another computer, especially one with the exact same architecture? Of course, I was only 16 at the time and not at all aware of what the stuff meant for the industry.
It's good to see that VMware is still around. I tend to use desktop virtualization and Virtualbox most of the time, but if there is one thing I've learned since reading that article back in the day, it is that our line of work desperately needs alternatives. Preferably more than one. So here's to another 25 fruitful years, VMware. :)
We actually WANTED to make it the official video conference tool in the company, but its stupid pricing model left us stuck with only a handful of rooms, which wasn't really usable. Now we are transitioning to Teams, which is an inferior product in every way, except one: it is basically free, since we have an O365 subscription anyway. It's a damn shame.
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