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Comment A question about TCP/IP (Score 1) 48

The TCP/IP protocol seems to be an inherent barrier to high-speed trading. That is, the purpose of the protocol is to be a) redundant b) insure that the message is sequentially ordered c) error-checked. Specifically, if you have a hardware speed-up or place servers closer to the exchange -- or any other physical process that reduces the time of execution -- you still may be inherently slowed by the process of actually exchanging information between servers. So, was wondering how high-speed trading firms get around this protocol?

(Yes, I've googled this and have found quite a few links to explain this. But I was wondering if there are actually any people who work on this problem who could briefly explained the strategies involved.)

Comment Social media as a recursive function (Score 2) 92

Maybe: there are too many unknowns to determine what's going to happen with these bans. Also, it may help to think of them as the first step in a recursive function. That is, if the ban (largely) doesn't work, what then? The policymakers learn from those who want to avoid tha ban and vice versa.

Also, this is an explicit large, worldwide experiment in which countries are attempting to exclude an important part of childhood in many countries, social media. So, you have a few controls and many experimental groups. This could lead social scientists and others to observe the differences in mental health, voting patterns, addiction to drugs and alcohol, and many variables that can now be measured of what happens when you use social media as a teenager and when you don't.

Comment Which specific technology and how does it work? (Score 2) 64

Read the article. It bizarrely has few technical details of what the surveillance technology is and how it works. That is, I realize this article is for non-technical readers but it is about a technical topic. I would expect at least a few details of how it works.

For instance, one example mentioned is that Li's location was found because he took a taxi ride. It's mentioned that his taxi cab driver was matched to a specific location. How? Is there a database of taxi cab drivers? How was the photo taken? How was it transmitted? And how is this specific to technologies that were developed by American corporations?

Comment Re:Also, why can't ChatGPT control a robot? (Score 1) 120

The link wasn't to a prototype by OpenAI -- or anything related to OpenAI.

Language generation of a large language model works by finding mathematical relationships between concepts. And this is done using vector calculus. Robots work by translating physical space into a coordinate space of vectors. In other words, both large language models and robots work by calculating on vectors -- usually in a Euclidean space. There should be a linear correlation between the two but there doesn't seem to be.

Comment Re:Also, why can't ChatGPT control a robot? (Score 1) 120

The "encoded data" is encoded using lexical analysis (see link). The purpose of this is to convert characters into numerical representations in a vector form. That is, it's to find distance relationships between sets of characters. In other words, lexical analysis is the equivalent of vectors.

All physical data can be transformed into vector form. This is, for instance, the basis of classical mechanics (eg, vector calculus). So, lexical analysis adds a step to get to the vector representation. If anything, using your reasoning, it should be easier to apply the mathematical reasoning of large language models to robots, not harder

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lexical_analysis

Comment Also, why can't ChatGPT control a robot? (Score 1) 120

Two years ago, on Slashdot, there was a post about how Microsoft was trying to get ChatGPT to control a robot:

https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/23/02/25/2330204/microsoft-tests-chatgpts-ability-to-control-robots

As far as I can tell, there's been little or no progress on this. That is, there is no (public) prototype of either a robot that's built using the same principles as ChatGPT or that ChatGPT can control one. Why not? Why doesn't the mathematical foundation of large language models translate to the physical world?

Comment This is Cisco's fault (Score 5, Informative) 69

Here are details of the hack:

The hackers used an exploit, that's been known for Cisco for about 2 years. It's called CVE-2018-0171 and affects Cisco IOS and IOS XE software. Specifically, it's a bound checking error that can be attacked using UDP on one specific port. What the hackers did was simply execute a buffer overflow attack on the HTTP format of the authentication. That is, they overrode the authentication with an executable script, which obviously writes over the memory address denying anyone not authorized, to gain root access.

Cisco has advertised that this was a potentially dangerous exploit but said that they won't issue a patch:

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/cisco-warns-of-auth-bypass-bug-with-public-exploit-in-eol-routers/

Here's a quote from the linked article: Despite rating it as a critical severity bug and saying that its Product Security Incident Response Team (PSIRT) team is aware of proof-of-concept exploit code available in the wild, Cisco noted that it "has not and will not release software updates that address this vulnerability."

Instead, Cisco sent out warnings about which ports should be blocked from sending and receiving UDP packets

Comment Two other points: (Score 1) 50

I thought this was a statistically sound blog but there are two points worth considering (and not mentioned):

1) RT is an average of an average. That is, it's a binary variable, good or bad, of a review and this is then averaged for all reviewers. It's worth considering if Fandango changed either or both of these measurements. In some cases, for instance, it's not clear if a review is positive or negative. It could have been, if an analysis found that there was an equal amount of positive and negative sentiment that it should revert to negative. Fandango could have changed this to revert to positive. Also, "average" is a statistically variable concept. It could also be that, prior to 2016, the averages weren't weighted. Now, it could be that they are. Or, it could that they weren't and now they are. The point: small changes in measurements metrics could be what caused the more positive reviews -- not actual manipulation of the reviews or reviewers itself.

2) It's worth looking at the ratio of positive to negative reviews for each reviewer, before and after the acquisition. If the reviewers selected after 2016, for instance, like more movies than not, and significantly more than before 2016, than this may also cause the change the acquisition.

Comment Why wasn't a backdoor installed? (Score 1) 47

If you assume these AI servers contain integrated WIFI chips, then the question is why a backdoor wasn't installed?

This likely could be only a few lines of code. Also, the transmitted signal doesn't necessarily have to connect to the Internet. It could either send an encrypted packets of message identifying itself or, also, the message could simply state what ports are open and sysadmin credentials. This, then, could be intercepted with a packet sniffer. In any case, there are many other ways a backdoor could be installed and made to be very difficult to detect.

The question is why it wasn't done so and I suspect the answer is: 1) this was done without consent of the manufacturers 2) the people who put the trackers on the shipments don't have the technical knowledge to do so.

Comment Re:Throw It on the Pile (Score 1) 186

(Haven't read the article.) Am going to assume what you've described is true. If so, then you've confused the qualitative with the quantitative. That is, the increase in the risk of disease is an average, measured with many types of people. What you're describing can be measured quantitatively. That is, all that's necessary is to get the right medical tests to determine how, say, your insulin level changes the more hot dogs you eat.

So, the likely possibility is that eating one hot dog, say, a week may make one but, say, eating 100 Slim Jims a week could be deadly. So, this would be clearly evident with a quantitative test but be smoothed out in an average.

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