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Comment Sadly, not unusual. (Score 2, Interesting) 83

The British emergency number had a bad IT upgrade, back in the 80s, which resulted in emergencies never getting displayed, only error messages.

I think it was in the 90s that an aircraft crashed because an airport monitoring computer was so infected by malware that it was unable to alert the crew or ATC that the aircraft had a serious issue and needed to abort the takeoff.

Recently, Oracle updated Birmingham UK's government IT system. It is no longer functional. At all. At a cost of hundreds of millions. The local government went effectively bankrupt.

I, honestly, DO NOT CARE that you cannot prove software "correct". We need IT lemon laws that make this kind of a botch-up very very very expensive for software vendors to mess up on. When something is mission-critical,

It might deter vendors from supplying government, but I'm not sure how that can be a bad thing. It is better to have an inefficient system than a new iand shiny broken one.

Comment Honestly. (Score 1, Insightful) 40

If you want to deinstall the app, blowing up the owner's house is not he way to do it.

This was stupid, reckless, does nothing for actually improving AI safety, risks worsening that very safety, risks OpenAI letting their systems being used on more and more extreme products (because all publicity is good publicity), and in short does the exact opposite of anything that anyone could possibly have imagined going through the mind of of this dweeb.

However, it is what we've come to expect from the Nu Society that is emerging - violent extremism, senseless violence, thoughtless acts, utter stupidity.

Welcome to the "brave" new world where nobody has any brains but plenty of explosives. Any claim America might have to rationality is degraded every time something pathetic like this takes place, and the rest of the world is honestly in no better shape even if it hasn't degraded to open violence yet. I am really not happy.

Comment Are the MS-MiB still operating (Score 2) 120

Does anyone remember when the US State of Massachusetts went to switch to OpenOffice and the ODF file formats? The MS-MiBs were all over the place making sure MA senators got trips to One Microsoft Way for a bit of the 'flashy thing'. Then the MS-MiB sent out worldwide to MS-ISVs with checks and scripts in hand to flood the ISO in order to vote MS-OOMXL( MS-Office Open XML ) format as an international standard so the Massachusetts government could vote it as their open standards format for public documents.

The MS-MiB were sent out worldwide to shut down the One Laptop Per Child initiative so that poor children around the world wouldn't be forced to use a Linux based laptop which could operate for 8 hours on a charge, be charged with a hand crank and was readable in full sun besides having built-in mesh networking. The MS-MiB have been instrumental in other things too. Like when school districts across the US were getting notices of required district wide licensing audits costing many $10s of thousands of dollars or sign new license agreements with the MS-MiB folks. When a couple of districts rescinded their licenses and switched everything over to Linux and started to show other school districts how they too could do it. Did the MS-MiB get recalled back to One Microsoft Way.

Tucked neatly under the MS-Marketing department lives the MS-MiB offices and if they've been reduced over the recent years, surely France has given them reason to throw a few hundreds of millions of dollars into upgrading the offices.

LoB

Comment Re:Porn (Score 1) 257

If you think about it, you'd be grateful for the ethnic replacements when your decreasing native population gets old, stops working and no longer generates tax for your government to run - or maybe they'll work and tax you until you die.

I think they're more concerned about the gene pool, 1 Latina could potentially disrupt centuries of inbreeding.

Comment Re:Navy SEAL drills work best for Navy SEALs (Score 1) 113

Question: why do they need any of that at all? Why have your employees do this stupid shit? What does it accomplish? Can the bros really not think of a better way to spend $500k? Does this really enhance your product? Does this really help people get their work done and gel as a team? Or... is it really so the CEO can say "hey guys, guess what we did, lol (not me, i was faking E.Coli so i could stay in my room)" to his cadre of other insufferable douchebags at the next conference?

Less of a need and more of what would be beneficial. They don't actually need any such training but one thing the armed forces teaches in basic is how to work together, even with people you don't like and that would be beneficial in an office environment (have you ever tried herding cats into a coherent meeting).

But it's a moot point as those with an abundance of ego and dearth of talent or self awareness would never accept that they'd learn anything from "basic" training.

Comment Re:A little late. (Score 1) 187

There is no left in America, they moved to the right.

The Dems are probably about level with Ronnie the Ray gun, possibly a fraction more to the right.

If you think the Dems moved 51% to the left, then the reality is you moved 55% to the right, and the Republicans moved even further.

Comment A little late. (Score 0) 187

The organisation, after Musk took over, became a cesspit of far-right extremism, in which anything the far-right "disagreed" with (such as facts and other inconveniences) were censored.

The EFF has, by this announcement, basically said that censorship did not bother them at all, that extremism did not bother them at all, that death threats against the left didn't bother them, that the only thing they were bothered by was the fact that the intellectuals had all left.

That does not give me overwhelming confidence in the EFF as being concerned with freedom.

Comment sanctions (Score 1) 220

ensuring they can't be traced or confiscated due to sanctions

This got me interested. What exactly is he saying there? Does it mean what I think it means - that they immediately shift that money around, possibly through some mixers, to muddle the origin? And, of course, make it better suited to pay their proxies now that Qatar isn't sending suitcases of cash to them anymore?

Comment Re:Pyrrhic Victory (Score 1) 220

It's designed to keep people off balance, uncertain, distracted and misinformed

Thank you for writing that. I was starting to think I'm going crazy and I can't possibly be the only one who sees through that.

If you ignore the messaging, and pay attention to what's actually happening

And if you realize that Trump is just the clown at the helm. There's literally an entire bureaucracy underneath him doing most of the planning, deciding and executing.

Douglas Adams was right. The role of the president is not to excert power, but to distract from it. President of the Galaxy, president of the USA, no difference.

Comment Re:on the one hand (Score 2) 85

This.

You don't need billions to be care-free. Even double-digit millions in some nice safe assets already give you enough fuck-you-money to be good. And while everyone looks at the super-super-rich and they're in various public lists and tracked by not just the tax authorities, barely anyone knows the multi-millionaires. I know three or so that I'm sure nobody on here has ever heard anything about. They stay quiet, comfortable, private.

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