March 2005

March 3, 2005 by yorksranter 0 comments

Interesting, and rather worrying too (Fun with Electronic Warfare)

Via Wampum, this article regarding an unusual application of WiFi networking – setting off claymores! The US Army in Iraq is apparently using the well-loved 802.11 standard that makes grand people’s laptops connect to the net in airports to control command-detonated mines used for perimeter defence. Great. The weapon concerned is not technically a land…

March 2, 2005 by yorksranter 0 comments

Moldova; worth reading

Mark Ames of the Exile has an excellent report from the Moldovan election campaign. Read it, it’s good and terrible.

March 2, 2005 by yorksranter 1 comment

Privatised Interrogators in Corruption Scandal

Why am I not in the least surprised by this? Titan, Inc., one of the companies involved in supplying privately-employed interrogators at Abu Ghraibh, has been caught paying out huge bribes to the president of Benin in order to get contracts. They shelled out two wedges of a million bucks each for him, and tossed…

March 1, 2005 by yorksranter 0 comments

Curious search requests

Steam locomotive explosion, Ukraine….east/west cargo airline cia….and the best of the lot, nick the chicken bulgarian gangster.

March 1, 2005 by yorksranter 0 comments

Des Browne: Slimeball

Immigration Minister Des Browne has just been on BBC Radio 5! As we haven’t had any ID knocking copy for a while, I think some of his points deserve scrutiny. For a start, can anyone take his answer to a caller complaining about the cost of the scheme seriously? Mr. Browne felt moved to reply…

Meta AI falsely claims lawmakers were accused of sexual harassment - City & State New York
City & State tested it out with over a dozen lawmakers from both parties and of different genders. For most, the chatbot invented similar stories of sexual harassment allegations that were never made, investigations that never took place and consequences – in particular, being stripped of committee assignments – that never occurred // interestingly it […]
Habecks Geheimakten - Wie die Grünen beim Atomausstieg getäuscht haben | Cicero Online
Und wieder war Robert Habeck der Gekniffene. Obwohl er die AKW-Debatte parteiintern und in der Öffentlichkeit ausfechten musste, bekam er die erste, unverfälschte Version des Vermerks wahrscheinlich nie auf den Tisch. Denn Steffi Lemkes Staatssekretär Stefan Tidow schickte am 3. März nur den neuen, von Gerrit Niehaus umgeschriebenen Vermerk ins Wirtschaftsministerium. Er schrieb dazu an Patrick […]
GOOG Exhibit 99.1 Q1 2024 - 2024q1-alphabet-earnings-release-pdf.pdf
mixshift mixshift mixshift!
Selling to yourself: the private equity groups that buy companies they own | Financial Times
once a fund has finished its so-called “investment period”, when it is buying companies — roughly its first four to six years — it stops charging fees as a percentage of the money committed. Instead it charges fees as a proportion of the money used to buy the companies that the fund has not yet […]
Huawei's 7nm chip capability and HBM development reflect China's advanced processes ambition
the latest teardown of Huawei's newly launched Pura 70 series smartphones reveals the highly anticipated presence of the Huawei Kirin 9010 chip, believed to be manufactured using SMIC's 7nm N+2 process, an enhanced version of the 7nm process. This highlights Huawei's capability to design advanced chips. In addition, reports suggest that Huawei is also developing […]
Phison's aiDAPTIV+ poised to bridge the gap in on-device AI fine-tuning, CEO foresees exponential growth
Pua highlighted that the aiDAPTIV+ solution employs a distinctive AI computing architecture incorporating SSDs to deconstruct large AI models structurally. Subsequently, it synchronizes model parameters with SSDs according to the application's time sequence. This approach optimizes the execution of AI models within limited GPU and DRAM resources // this sounds like the Apple "LLMs in […]
SpaceX has now landed more boosters than most other rockets ever launch | Ars Technica
SpaceX has landed about 85 percent of the Falcon rockets it has launched. These days, more than 90 percent of all its missions launch on previously flown boosters. So rocket recycling is totally a thing.
Tesla profits drop 55% as Elon Musk dodges cheap car questions | Ars Technica
Musk continues to maintain that Tesla's future is in AI. It spent $1 billion on GPUs in Q1—almost as much as it spent on total R&D during the same time // that's funny as they have both training and inference asics
Man who bought fake Greek driving licence is sentenced | Bradford Telegraph and Argus
Saghawat Hussain paid £1,800 for a counterfeit full Greek driving licence, which he then sent to the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA). He had hoped to dupe the Swansea-based agency into giving him a full UK licence so that he could drive illegally having not passed his test // what is it with these […]
Eric Eiswert: Ex-Pikesville athletic director framed principal with AI voice, police say - The Baltimore Banner
Baltimore County Police arrested Pikesville High School’s former athletic director Thursday morning and charged him with using artificial intelligence to impersonate Principal Eric Eiswert, leading the public to believe Eiswert made racist and antisemitic comments behind closed doors // a real one!