Interesting findings on the internet

[bd139]

Strangely I also used Australia as the example of how simplistic notions of time would cause cellphone users to be annoyed - and hence our customers to be annoyed.

I'd love to see what an LLM chatbot would give as answers to such time-elated questions.

Much like when I asked one about constrained cabin bag sizing, it hallucinated a reasonable sounding result that was completely wrong and would have cost me money.

I expect the Ministry of Apologetics and Ministry of Vague Explanations will be very busy in future when people mistake it for viable technology.

[tggzzz]

That's, um, "insufficiently proactive"

"Air Canada must pay damages after chatbot lies to grieving passenger about discount
Airline tried arguing virtual assistant was solely responsible for its own actions"
https://www.theregister.com/2024/02/15/ ... tbot_fine/

[bd139]

The schadenfreude is strong on that one

[vk6zgo]

My mind shut down during all the preceding blather, but came out of hibernation when I saw this example.
It is not a rare problem & is solved multiple times a year by real people.
The obvious answer is to use UTC, but for ordinary folk as distinct from computers, hams, comms people & the military, it is normally solved by knowing about time zones & the iniquitous practice of Daylight Saving.

I don't normally reply to myself, but I was thinking------ ( I know, it's dangerous! ) .

In the example, "next week" is a fairly broad time interval. If he is "currently in Perth" he could drive back to Eucla, using up the remaining one day of EADT, & most of the next day, then everything would be back to normal.
In the real world, his ISP would probably have assumed he was on WAST all the time, anyway, so in Perth or Eucla would assume the same time.
Indeed an error, but a workable one.

An interesting example is buying on line from Coles (for non-Oz folk, a major shopping group).

On their website,on the page showing delivery times, they warn that after 9pm you can't book deliveries for the next day & will have to do it for the day after that.
So far, everything on the website gives the impression of having made the time zone correction for wherever you are in "this wide brown land", but when at 6:05 pm WAST I tardily selected the delivery time for "tomorrow", I realised that their "tomorrow" was my "day after tomorrow", as it was now 9:05pm EADT!

Now this is an excellent post because it shows exactly what the humans who deal with it think about the problem and that is always disparate to the logic applied from afar.

Our approach to solving this was to send someone from the UK who knows nothing about it and assumes that we are the centre of the temporal universe (well we are) to Sydney for 2 weeks and work it out with two people there who have never left Sydney.

You can imagine how that went.

They probably have left Sydney but the concept of time zones didn't "stick"----it's a Sydney thing!
That's one situation where the much-maligned hams have an advantage, as they learn about time zones as part of their hobby.

[tggzzz]

The schadenfreude is strong on that one

Indeed.

Possible positive outcome: companies learn not to attempt to blame the victim for the company's crap technology.

Possible negative outcome: companies design mechanisms so they can (more or less plausibly) shift the blame onto victims[1].

[1] Traditional technique: the correct password/biometric/handwave/incantation was given for this transaction, therefore either it was you(->fraud) or you gave it to someone(->broken Ts&Cs), so go forth and multiply on your own

[Zenith]

"Air Canada must pay damages after chatbot lies to grieving passenger about discount
Airline tried arguing virtual assistant was solely responsible for its own actions"
https://www.theregister.com/2024/02/15/ ... tbot_fine/

That was flying a kite. I can't see why it should be any different to any other company endorsed source of information. And as for checking what it said against other parts of the website.........

[tggzzz]

The Wealth of Dragons
https://existentialcomics.com/comic/540

Looks like an amusing strip, only one per week so its RSS feed will be useful. Anything that has Wittgenstein, Russell, and Thomas Aquinas arguing with each other has got something going for it

I've not posted the image, since it has xkcd-like explanatory text below. Bit long-winded in that example, but helpful other times.

[Specmaster]

This store has something for everyone, which it was here in the UK.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2GwxPQzN04

Here is their website https://epohouston.com/

There's more, they also have their own YouTube channel

https://www.youtube.com/@electronicpartsoutlet/videos

[tggzzz]

This store has something for everyone, which it was here in the UK.

There used to be a general store like that in my village; not electronics, just hardware and anything else that caught the brothers' eyes.

Simple example: I wanted a chuck key for a not-very-old Black and Decker drill, so I went to the local Big Shed. They had one, which didn't fit. Go to the local shop, one of the brothers says he thinks they have some, clambers over the floor, then uses a step ladder to reach a shoe box. Has 6 different types.

Unfortunately they died, the shop and their house behind was torn down because it was unsafe.

cs.jpg

[Specmaster]

This store has something for everyone, which it was here in the UK.

There used to be a general store like that in my village; not electronics, just hardware and anything else that caught the brothers' eyes.

Simple example: I wanted a chuck key for a not-very-old Black and Decker drill, so I went to the local Big Shed. They had one, which didn't fit. Go to the local shop, one of the brothers says he thinks they have some, clambers over the floor, then uses a step ladder to reach a shoe box. Has 6 different types.

Unfortunately they died, the shop and their house behind was torn down because it was unsafe.

cs.jpg

I remember back when I was in my late teens we used to have an old car showroom that was being used as a Army and Navy surplus store and they had all kinds of odd ball stuff in there ranging from spanners etc right the way through ex military radios etc. That place was always heaving with buyers and rapidly became a regular haunt for me, you would never know just what they get in from one day to the next. Sadly those places don't seem to exist anymore.

[bd139]

An excellent video. Subtitles required and yes it is actually worth sitting through the whole thing which is a rarity.

Contains technical stuff.

Formula 1 track - 10000 uC's, custom magnetics, driver boards, automation, software control, the lot...

[vk6zgo]

This store has something for everyone, which it was here in the UK.

There used to be a general store like that in my village; not electronics, just hardware and anything else that caught the brothers' eyes.

Simple example: I wanted a chuck key for a not-very-old Black and Decker drill, so I went to the local Big Shed. They had one, which didn't fit. Go to the local shop, one of the brothers says he thinks they have some, clambers over the floor, then uses a step ladder to reach a shoe box. Has 6 different types.

Unfortunately they died, the shop and their house behind was torn down because it was unsafe.

cs.jpg

I remember back when I was in my late teens we used to have an old car showroom that was being used as a Army and Navy surplus store and they had all kinds of odd ball stuff in there ranging from spanners etc right the way through ex military radios etc. That place was always heaving with buyers and rapidly became a regular haunt for me, you would never know just what they get in from one day to the next. Sadly those places don't seem to exist anymore.

In Perth, right in the city, we had "Anderson's Salvage", with a very large shop, full of weird stuff like throttle levers for various multi engine aircraft, Avro Anson engines, 800 Hz power transformers, Hupmobile headlights, Edison Splitdorf aircraft sparkplugs, & multiple other less identifiable objects.

They also had a smaller shop,crammed full of surplus electronics, where I used to go to drool at No. 19 & 22 transceivers, but couldn't afford them, so ended up with a No. 11.
That was a mistake, as they were designed for battery use & had directly heated filament tubes.
Easy enough these days to provide clean low voltage DC, but a nightmare back then.

There was another largish place, "O W Strang Surplus" in Victoria Park, just outside the CBD, which had an eclectic mix of surplus stuff, including a Rolls- Royce Merlin engine occupying pride of place in the window.

There were several smaller shops, with mainly surplus electronics.

Over time, the big places disappeared, & the small ones morphed into hangouts for those who liked to wear army surplus clothes & collect, (often fake) militaria, with a sideline of camping gear.

That was back in the day when people did real things in the central city-----now it's just "big glass boxes" full of "suits".
They appear in the morning, disappear into the glass boxes, come out for a while midday, then back inside again till home time.
A flurry of activity, then all is quiet.

[BU508A]

Interesting reading about LockBitSupp:

https://analyst1.com/ransomware-diaries ... lockbit-2/

[BU508A]

Is anyone here a Dell customer?

"Threat actor says he scraped 49M Dell customer addresses before the company found out"

https://techcrunch.com/2024/05/10/threa ... ccounter=1

[bd139]

Is anyone here a Dell customer?

"Threat actor says he scraped 49M Dell customer addresses before the company found out"

https://techcrunch.com/2024/05/10/threa ... ccounter=1

Yes unfortunately.

They sent me this:

Screenshot 2024-05-11 at 16.38.16.png

Appears their online services are as much of a shit show as their hardware is.

As you can see from the screenshot and the ebay item I have listed, my mitigation is not to own any Dell stuff any further.

[tggzzz]

Appears their online services are as much of a shit show as their hardware is.

As you can see from the screenshot and the ebay item I have listed, my mitigation is not to own any Dell stuff any further.

I think they screwed up the punctuation.
"Dell Technologies takes the privacy and confidentiality of your information seriously" should read
"Dell Technologies takes the privacy and confidentiality of your information. Seriously".

I presume you are going to ask them to pay for a year's credit report monitoring.

What's the alternative? All companies have layers upon layers of unknown/unknowable crap sucked into frameworks and mixed with libraries. Then one malefactor manages to redirect one component's update to a server in Waziristan/Illyria/NKorea, and the relevant maintainer in Nebraska is on holiday for the next month.

Whimpers, not bangs.

Shame it is cloudy here. https://aurorawatch.lancs.ac.uk/

[bd139]

Appears their online services are as much of a shit show as their hardware is.

As you can see from the screenshot and the ebay item I have listed, my mitigation is not to own any Dell stuff any further.

I think they screwed up the punctuation.
"Dell Technologies takes the privacy and confidentiality of your information seriously" should read
"Dell Technologies takes the privacy and confidentiality of your information. Seriously".

I presume you are going to ask them to pay for a year's credit report monitoring.

What's the alternative? All companies have layers upon layers of unknown/unknowable crap sucked into frameworks and mixed with libraries. Then one malefactor manages to redirect one component's update to a server in Waziristan/Illyria/NKorea, and the relevant maintainer in Nebraska is on holiday for the next month.

Whimpers, not bangs.

Shame it is cloudy here. https://aurorawatch.lancs.ac.uk/

The apologetics department will be out in force. Not much I can do. I very much doubt it'll translate into a real issue for me but I will never buy another Dell product again.

As for cloudy, it's not here. I have the Z50 waiting patiently with a 28mm f/2.8 lens for the photo opportunities. Hopefully London ambient light won't kill it.

[BU508A]

Firefox collects data from you.
https://blog.mozilla.org/en/products/fi ... ch-update/

How to disable it:
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/sh ... ve-firefox

[mnementh]

mnem

[BU508A]

The AZTEC pinball machine explained, step-by-step. It is one of the most complex electromechanical pinball machines ever built.

Part 1:

Part 2:

.
.
Perhaps there will be a part 3 (it mentioned at the end of part 2)

Here is part three:

[bd139]

This is a fun article: getting a file off a 30 year old Mac.

Involves electronics, hackery and some interesting ideas


https://www.unterminated.com/random-fun ... old-laptop

[tggzzz]

This is a fun article: getting a file off a 30 year old Mac.

Involves electronics, hackery and some interesting ideas


https://www.unterminated.com/random-fun ... old-laptop

What's the problem? My Macs are almost 40yo.

You do still have 3.5in floppies and drives around, don't you. (And an 8" drive)

[Specmaster]

This is a fun article: getting a file off a 30 year old Mac.

Involves electronics, hackery and some interesting ideas


https://www.unterminated.com/random-fun ... old-laptop

What's the problem? My Macs are almost 40yo.

You do still have 3.5in floppies and drives around, don't you. (And an 8" drive)

I have 3.5" floppy USB drive and some floppies still, just in case, even a couple of copies of early windows on floppies just in case I should ever get a rush of blood and want to back in time

[tggzzz]

This is a fun article: getting a file off a 30 year old Mac.

Involves electronics, hackery and some interesting ideas


https://www.unterminated.com/random-fun ... old-laptop

What's the problem? My Macs are almost 40yo.

You do still have 3.5in floppies and drives around, don't you. (And an 8" drive)

I have 3.5" floppy USB drive and some floppies still, just in case, even a couple of copies of early windows on floppies just in case I should ever get a rush of blood and want to back in time

Somewhere I have an 8" floppy containing illegally exported munitions. Naturally I need a drive for that; no idea whether either bit of hardware works

[tggzzz]

Move over obfuscated C, there's competition in town.

This is a proof by construction that the Intel MMU's fault handling mechanism is Turing complete. We have constructed an assembler that translates 'Move, Branch if Zero, Decrement' instructions to C source that sets up various processor control tables. After this code has executed, the CPU computes by attempting to fault without ever executing a single instruction.

https://github.com/jbangert/trapcc