We also need people to know if ChatGPT is giving us correct answers or just stating authoritative BS.

  Reality is were going to start seeing more and more AI produced BS that sounds right. I expect "working with AI" will mean knowing when and how to know the AI response is full of errors.

Combine this with humans laziness and inability to gauge risk we'll be seeing "death by AI answer" soon.

I'm also curious what will happen to the internet once Special interest groups, Scammers and Spammers will start using AI to scam people... I think we'll have an even bigger problem where many people will have trouble telling "truth" from "BS".

I think there's a very real chance the internet will get overwhelmed with AI generated content... the questions will be will they be correct or not...
I may very well be a big change the question is will it be for the better?

Anyone working in automation or with AI+automation knows if you can succeed "at scale" you can "fail at scale"...and knowing the difference if you've succeed or failed may be hard in some cases, in which case laziness will likely trump caution.

Google, Facebook etc... are rent taking privacy violating parasites

When corporations seek to undermine democratic created laws there need to be questions.

Frankly they have far to much influence already with "custom search results".

There are good alternatives...

Where you aren't the product...
eg: https://duckduckgo.com/
eg: https://www.signal.org/

That said I'm still working to reduce my dependence on "free" isn't "free" apps / sites, as they are pervasive...

If you thought code was hard to get working before, wait until it starts "fixing" itself while you're trying to update it.

It's kind of like trying to clean up a toy room with a bunch of 4 year old kids loose, running around taking toys off the shelf again...

Good luck... especially if you're working with hardware drivers etc....If the code gets out of the sandbox or starts coding disallowed values it could literally get your hardware to "commit suicide"...

The real problem is much more terrifying.

The reason the Chinese are catching up is because the US has slowed or even ceased to innovate in a number of areas. There are too many MBAs, accountants and lawyers in charge who don't understand what is needed to support innovation and invention.

All of this blocking exports is really just misusing government for international competition in business. In addition to that capitalism has lead them to seek cheaper sources and even helped transition tech to Asia where cheap labour can produce the products. Realistically the only way to compete in tech is to continue to innovate. That requires long term strategic spending on R&D and product development. If your business model for competing has become to outsource to lower costs and litigate (patents / copyright) or lobby for protected markets then its only a matter of time before someone comes up with a disruptive technology and puts you out of business.

Much of the recent innovation in the US corporate world has all been about "rent taking", turning products into subscription services and turning customers into products (advertising, eg google and facebook). Amazon is basically rent taking for building an online catalog and delivery service (which brings some value), but there's limited or no invention there.

Greed and self enrichment has taken precedence over investing in the future for many US companies and share holders. The resulting loss of capability and talent has also hamstrung the US. Realistically you cant even produce complex products like the iPhone in the US anymore as the know how for manufacturing no longer exists here, you cant hire engineers that know what to do.

The Chinese on the other hand have people working hard to understand the technology, a strong focus on engineering, and considerable number of scientists and engineers in leadership roles. There are long term strategies for technical development and innovation. Unless the US seeks to change this its simply a case of the fact that accountants and lawyers will never and cannot out innovate scientists and engineers.

Frankly I expect the Chinese to copy stuff. This is nothing new. The US space program was built based on stolen tech (V2) and poached German engineers. The US is just crying because this time they are not doing the stealing but getting robbed instead.

The solution is real investment in R&D and innovation. Something quarterly Capitalist thinking is unlikely to do enough of, and government in the US is captive to the Military Industrial Complex (which is about finding excuses to turn US tax dollars into private profit) and isn't spending much money on real research.

There are some small exceptions... but the reality is in the west one needs to look to Europe (mainly Germany) for leadership in innovation at this point. I don't see it coming out of the US.

The Capitalist will sell you the rope you hang him with.

Optimizing only for "profit" (a nicer word for greed or self interest), has left resilience by the way side, along with solidarity with the rest of humanity, sustainability and common human decency.

Its time to realize when you accept the market on faith... and neglect the other variables that drive history its only a matter of time before you're on the losing side of history.

Climate change, COVID-19 and other large unforeseen challenges will test the resilience of not only our supply chain, but also our infrastructure and values. Many key factors to succeed in these challenging times do not show up in current accounting balance sheets, and blind faith in the market to solve all problems is just that: Blind. We are capable of so much more than self-interest / greed. We should not let the greed of a few define us as a society.

As long as Americans worship the almighty dollar / wealth as the highest achievement, they will remain unprepared for the real world, and truly be poor.

You can pry my passwords from my cold dead hands... wait

You cant.

Maybe that's the point...

I need to retain control of 1) access 2) separation of parties / websites etc 3) not tide to anything that cant be reset / thrown away (eg no biometrics) 4) transferable to those I trust (in emergency or death). any other form of authentication that does not include those features is a no go.

The real reason the big players are all pushing MFA is that they want device IDs so they can combine data an create profiles for tracking for commercial purposes. (Which can and will be misused by other actors).

I get constant security warnings from google on "new device logins" as some of my devices rotate mac addresses.

Don't for a moment think the big players care one iota about your privacy. They only care if you walk away from their service, and its the one lever (along with laws) we have to change their behaviour. Most recent changes have come as a result of European privacy legislation.

Passwords will be around for a long time. So learn how to use them and manage them properly.. anything else is just giving up control to someone else.
I treat them as my legal signature (and so do the courts BTW), unless its a throw away account.

The answer for the password problem is a good password manager (with secure backups).

Next.

Its true that most of Europe including the Germans bought Russian gas and coal...

My questions are: 1) do you pursue a policy of engagement and trade with countries in a hope to change them / help develop... or ignore them completely and give them no means to develop / improve? (aka buy something from them and sell them goods? )

Note: EU membership and NATO membership growth for eastern European countries has been _Very_ successful in this regard of development through engagement (perhaps to successful).

2) Until recently, where the fuck are you going to get Natural gas and Clean Coal in Europe, if not from next door? In case you haven't noticed Natural gas is hard to ship in any significant quantities. Resources inside Western Europe are all in active use, depleted or Dirty Coal. Note: USA wants to ship gas from NA to Europe, (for their profit) but infrastructure still needs to be built, its way more expensive, if it can be scaled up to the point where it can provide for Europe's needs at all.

3) Oh BTW significant shale Natural gas reserves where found recently in Ukraine in the sea next to Crimea, in the Donbas region and near Moldova.... They where starting to be developed by western companies (as Ukraine did not have the expertise or means), until Russians invaded eastern Ukraine and annexed Crimea destabilizing Ukraine and causing the developments to stop.

Also wrt to Germany doing something it looks like your getting you wish. Germany announced 100 Billion in extra defense spending, (now exceeding 2% of GDP), also Note: Ukraine is not a NATO member so Article 5 defense obligations are not relevant. Frankly I think _not escalating_ and showing some disagreement inside EU and NATO is important to leave the door open for negotiation with Russia on a possible de-escallation... the alternative is an escalation possibly leading to global nuclear war with NATO on one side and Putin's Russia on the other side. Given most of the fighting will happen in Central Europe (aka in Germany) I don't blame the Germans for being hesitant to further escalate things. Being brave when you ass is sitting in North America when the war is happening in Europe is much easier...

First off looking at _European Union_ defense in terms of Germany is utter nonsense.

Starting with historical context... after losing WW2 there have been considerable restrictions on any non-defensive German army capabilities.
Also Germany is _not_ a nuclear power as they were encouraged to join NATO instead of building their own capabilities.

Germany's armies have been mostly defensive, since WW2 and the specter of a economically Strong Germany being armed to the teeth has lead to a European defense strategy and NATO.

Despite that, lets look at the numbers...

There are 38K US troops in Germany ( https://www.dw.com/en/us-milit... )
and
183K German Troops ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... )

What do you think is the main non-nuclear deterrent keeping the Russians out of Germany?

Neither Germany, the EU nor NATO are under attack here (at this point) so a defensive role / obligation does not exist for Germany beyond supporting NATO defensive deployments.

Calling Germans gutless is naive and ignorant at best... also anyone that thinks that a war on Europe's door step is desirable is either not European or a fool. Germany's government is seeking a diplomatic and economic solution to this problem and ( and correctly so ) see's a military response as a measure of last resort.

This is not a penis comparison contest.. Despite what the Boris or the Americans and Putin think.

What's important? Discovering Earth Killer Asteroids early enough or Netflix?

The worlds richest Capitalist (or second richest) is spoiling our night skies for profit.

The destruction and pollution of humans is now graduating to space.

We've reached the point where Consumption and Greed (Profit) are more important than learning and discovering the truth about our natural universe..

It speaks volumes about humanity... and how short sighted and selfish we all are.

You have been brain washed... to accept your Capitalist feudal overlords actions and drugged into inaction with Social media and Netflix "Soma".

Brave New World here we come.

Perception of attractiveness has a lot to do with pupil dilation.
People that will go to the length of buying drops will do so not out of convenience but out of vanity.

They will pick up on the tiny pupils that last 8-10 hours... Better to just quickly put on reading glasses for a few moments.

The reality is everyone over 45 needs reading glasses any way and most are mature enough that they wouldn't care.

The loss of night vision will also be a huge problem.

This is totally not news worthy. The fact that one engineer / manager changed jobs (even if its a good one) is 100% silicon valley "rockstar myth" bullsh!t.

Engineering a car takes hundreds of man years. While its true that good engineers and developers are getting better pay and have more mobility, its also true one guy won't make or break a company.

Apples Self driving car is like Blue Origin's New Glenn Rocket I'll believe its real when I see it on the road / launch pad. At the moment its just a bucket of vapourware.

It should be as simple as this:

A condition of _any_ government / public research funding should be that:
1) any related published research must be available for free in open format electronic form on request, either by email or online posting, for 10 years after publication.
2) any related published research must be licensed under a creative commons accreditation share alike open source license at minimum. https://creativecommons.org/li...
3) Failure to do either of the above leads to exclusion of that researcher from any future rounds of public funding until compliant.

Further any libraries receiving public funding should be forbidden from licensing or subscribing content from publishers the require the author to sign over copyright, or that forbid the release of content under other license terms.

This will fix the problem in most countries within a decade or two as most junior researchers get their start up funding from government grants.

Tax payers should not have pay twice for research and we should not tolerate this rent taking behaviour.

If your employees need access to do their work...
They have access.

Eventually people will be photographing their monitors.

Ultimately this comes down to the fact that you shouldn't pay people poorly, treat them poorly, ask them to do something illegal...

Trust and loyalty is built over time and only exists reliably if it exists both ways.

Corporations want it both ways. they want their employees to be smart, innovative and thinking out of the box... but at the same time they want them to work for peanuts, and be blindly obedient...

These kinds of employees do not exist. Smart innovative employees apply those skills to their own success.

How issuing crypto reward points any different from issuing "air miles"?

If anything air miles is a private, coupon...

Crypto is at least independent, and has value on it's own.

I see this as the big credit players finally capitulating...

Instead of using their private currency "air miles" they are now allowing an independent "points" coupon instead.

My point being if you collect "air miles" you shouldn't be making fun of those of who collect cryptocurrency tokens...

The real value of "air miles" and crypto (and dare I say "fiat currencies") is that people believe in them having value. As long as crypto remains secure... (and its more secure than air miles) its not going away anytime soon.

I understand your frustration.

You're right that customers shouldn't have to hack their phones to get privacy. However until we have regulations that force for profit companies to not collect and sell information about us, or an alternate product exists that is more private by design, as a consumer we basically have 3 choices:
1) suck it up.
2) do without the technology (hard to do without a smart phone today)
or 3) hack the technology.

If you're trying to drive the discussion and get laws changed, people like us that show it is possible to design and build a secure device play a significant role in helping the get people to believe an alternative to what the for profit corporations say, is possible.

With respect to having a life... some of us work in technology and get paid to do stuff like this... so changing the firmware or installing a firewall on a phone doesn't take us long, plus the internet lets us cooperate and get help easily. Given the average person watches over twenty hours of screens (tv, streaming etc)... its not hard to find a few hours to "fix" a phone, while still having time for family, work, getting outside and a few other things. :D

Given this site is news for nerds environment some of us actually care about these details, and consider it news.