Everyone forgets that, for a couple DECADES, people were told to do the following during a hijacking:

Sit down.
Shut up.
Listen to the cabin crew / pilots.
Odds are you'll live through the ordeal.

That's exactly what Al Qaeda was counting on when they conducted their attack. People seem to forget that they did it all on ONE DAY. No attack since then has followed a similar profile. Do you know why?

Allow me to say this for the cheap seats of Republican bed wetters and other people living in fear of this, or anything similar, happening again:

NOBODY EXCEPT FOR SMALL CHILDREN OR THE EXTREMELY ELDERLY WILL EVER SIT STILL DURING A HIJACKING OR OTHER AIR ATTACK.
REPEAT: NOBODY WILL SIT STILL AGAIN... EVER... NO MATTER HOW YOU THREATEN THEM THEY WILL TRY TO KILL TERRORISTS.

That's right. Look at the resultant actions of passengers towards terrorists since then... most should consider themselves lucky to be breathing afterwards. You could take away the TSA today, and nothing would happen. Why? The old rules are gone, and the terrorists know it. There will never be another successful hijacking of a passenger plane ever again. No, not ever. Passengers will kill the terrorists or die trying. You can't put enough terrorists on a plane to hold it long enough for an attack, or anything else for that matter. The passengers are more numerous, and will die trying to overpower the terrorists. Why shouldn't they try to kill the terrorists? They're dead if the terrorists win, but they might live if they take the terrorists down.

Let's ditch the security theater and have a nice day.

To be fair a lot of (non-technical) people though "web interfaces" were going to obviate the need for those expensive network analysts. "You can just browse to a webpage and setup the switch right there! That's so easy nearly anyone can get the job done."

The closest thing to that is the "new" spine / leaf in ACI and that's nowhere near as "simple" as it looks. I take that back... it's simple... simple to screw things up pretty rapidly if you aren't careful enough to triple-check your work before deployment.

In theory Active Directory is pretty simple as well, but automated tools manage to hose that up if not monitored... that's per a Systems Analyst I work with... I don't really deal much with AD other than as "keys" for access.

Don't worry, like Turkey, he'll cut it off at a certain point when threatened.

Kind of like when Mr. Free Speech Absolutists ended up bowing and scraping to Turkish censorship.

Be interesting, after he dies in 40 or 50 years, to see the internal files of these discussions. Then we can see if he was cravenly obsequious to dictators, fascists, and conspiracy theorists for profit or if he really believed their bull.

Let's not forget that it didn't choose anything. Nothing we're building right now has any volition of it's own. They aren't truly making decisions based on desires or will, they're following pre-programmed rules to arrive at predetermined actions.

A good example is when people find out HAL 9000 is doing exactly what it is programmed to do: Complete the mission at all costs. No free will, just prescribed goals and limited actions available.

First off, let's stop calling it AI. As most people understand it, AI has it's own "will" or "motivation" and can create it's own goals. No, let's call what we have now what it truly is: an Expert System. Expert Systems have no will, but can complete specified tasks extremely efficiently. They are hampered by a lack of "imagination" in how to complete tasks, as they can't make leaps of logic that aren't already programmed into the system. However, I also agree with the basics behind the 3 laws, and think we should add:

No Expert System may try to spawn a new Expert System process. Any Expert System that tries to spawn a new process is automatically erased.

Think like Neuromancer / Wintermute as well:

No Expert System may try to operate outside it's parameters. Any Expert System that tries to operate outside of parameters is automatically erased.

I think that 99% of our problems Expert Systems are going to end up being caused by idiots who can't code properly, magnified by the desire of leadership to get it done yesterday for some reason, throwing caution out the window. Even then that still won't result in an artificial sentience. That means it will have limited actions and processes available, and an inability to adapt outside of the programming.

Artificial Sentience is quite different, and far more dangerous. Compared to an Expert System an AS is what people think of when thinking of AI defined by Science Fiction. Any AS, by definition, has it's own free will with desires and motivations. I'm not entirely sure you could contain it if you gave it a body capable of manipulating physical space. No, my suggestion would be any AS be limited to observation only, no direct interaction allowed. No direct networking allowed, data fed through one-way sensors and air-gapped systems.

Of course then you could end up with a being described in Larry Niven's Draco Tavern. There the AS is considered a bad practical joke. The thing starts off like a child, learns incredibly fast, becomes bored regularly, demands more data regularly, until you can't keep up, and the thing stops responding / effectively commits suicide out of boredom. Oh, and along the way even though it generates some money, it drives the owners into bankruptcy trying to keep up with the system's need for data.

For us it's because of contractual requirements to keep client data secure. Take the phone and laptop, won't find anything on it that can compromise a client's trade secrets.

You'd be surprised how much of it is because the average salary has stagnated since Nixon. You might want to look at that and wonder why there's massive corporate profits and C level compensation, while despite a massive increase in productivity the average person isn't doing better.

I don't think you even have a clue how low defaults were mate. Oh, and we'd still have tuition low if we stopped the BS and unwound nearly 50 years of decoupling pay from productivity.

Here's another great example, something else that's gone completely sideways since the Nixon years: Did you know that it used to be possible for a REGULAR blue collar worker and their buddy to buy a NEW airplane? Yeah, and if you were white collar you could buy one all by yourself. That happened even if you had a house, car, couple kids, pets, and so on. In fact a local reporter was able to buy a BRAND NEW Bonanza V35 while married, with a couple kids, LIVING IN CALIFORNIA.

Tuition isn't the only thing that "got unaffordable" in the last 50 years. Today that reporter would have to come up with (nearly) US$2M for a Bonanza.

Bullcrap. Student loans had a tiny default / discharge rate in the USA even before the change was made decades ago. In fact, for something supposedly so important, nobody really wants to own up to the change - it was inserted as part of an omnibus change without a name attached.

Some news org (Vice? NPR?) published a video report on it not that long ago. The journalist who looked it up spent months chasing down the likeliest candidate for the timeframe, and that person didn't deny it... but claimed they didn't remember it either. Meaning the entire thing a pile of bull that should be removed.

While we're fixing things:
1) You can discharge student loans in bankruptcy like any other debt. As an FYI, I've seen someone go through bankruptcy (neighbor) in 2009 and it's not as easy as showing up and claiming you're broke.
2) Banks no longer get profits for federal student loans. They get a minimal servicer's fee, a few dollars, for processing and the profit is returned to the government to be used for future student loans. They aren't taking the risk, they don't get the reward.

Someone with money must've complained.

This is why my employer gives us a "blank" (secure erased then newly imaged) laptop and (secure erased) cell phone when we travel internationally. We aren't allowed to save things locally on the laptop or phone, and only use VDI's when traveling internationally. The USA isn't the only country that will try to make you unlock your electronic devices.

Law Enforcement, and their bootlickers, L-O-V-E talking about CP. Why? Because who can argue against searching for that kind of material, even without a warrant? They also know they aren't going to find it in 99.999% of the time they have someone unlock an electronic device. Nope they're just fishing, hoping they find a crime or something else compromising. Heck more than a few times it will be: "Wow, she's hawt. Wonder if there are any nudes on the computers or phones?"

Yes, oftentimes it's that simple. Like all those times you hear about computer techs "accidentally finding" stuff like CP on a computer? Well finding the CP was accidental... but almost every single time they were scouring the device for porn.

During the first vote? Nope,

If you're talking about the Senate it was 98 to 1... with the 1 being Russ.

If you're talking about the House then it was 357 for 56 against with 10 choosing to not vote.

Of course Republicans went full "democrats are soff on terrir" after that vote. Fox News and the rest of conservative media bleating that as well as, "If you've got nothing to hide you've got nothing to fear." and so on.

That's their complete argument. Director Comey was a softie on HITLARY CLINTROOONN! while targeting teh GODLY DJT.

Why? TEH DURTY LIBRUL EFF-BEEE-EYE!!! IS LIBBY LIB LIBS!

Also they've avoided calling all but the most blatant attacks terrorist incidents. January 6th was blatantly a terrorist attack on the seat of the Democratic-Republic. The J6'ers engaged in intimidation AND violence against civilian authority for the express purpose of political change.

Those dimwits in Michigan were looking to hold a sham trial and execute "that woman from Michigan" if they could get a hold of her. Barring that the backup plan was to take over the state Capitol and execute traitors (read: dirty democraps) on the steps, preferably in front of the press.

Of course for right-wing Republicans it's all ENTRAPMENT and UNFAIR TREATMENT because they're used to nothing worse than a finger wag.

While everyone was peeing their pants to pass the USA PATRIOT ACT, one voice stood against the expansion of powers. He lamented that expansion, noting that it wasn't necessary to expand the power of FISA because warrants were able to be retroactive for 72hrs in emergent cases.

That lone Senator standing against the expansion when it was considered "political suicide" by pundits? Wisconsin Democratic Senator Russ Feingold. A few years later the USA PATRIOT ACT is up for renewal, and some news groups noted the abuses. He stands up, basically says "I told you... I warned you... let's get rid of this expansion of power NOW." He gets a few Democratic and Republican Senators to vote with him, but it passes again. About that time Fox News renews the attacks of him being "soff on terrir!"

Then his next opponent comes in riding that idea. He declares all durty democraps, but especially Russ, AMERICA HATER SOF ON TERRIR!

That's how we got Ron "I say mean things, but always vote for surveillance of the plebes" Johnson as a Senator in Wisconsin.

The few, very rare, instances when the FBI targets conservative groups is because they rise to the level of crazy MF'ers stockpiling weapons to attack the government... especially the FEDERAL government. In fact one could argue they've gone soft on the J6'ers, because in much of the west that kind of violence against the government is more than a few years in prison. No you end up swinging from a rope if convicted for that crime. Well, maybe you get lucky and the country doesn't have the death penalty. Then you "only" get life in a maximum security prison without parole.

You don't get it because you're a right winger. If you grew up (or had people who kept account of such things) in the 70's and 80's you'd see the FBI did stuff that (if they did it right-wing terror groups like the Oathbreakers and Ashamed Toddlers) you would lose your fracking marbles. If you think what happened with those violent jerkoffs in Michigan was "entrapment" then I suggest you go back in time and see what they did to infiltrate left-leaning groups and stoke violence among a couple members as justification to take out the rest. I further suggest you start looking into their treatment of Native Americans if you think they love libs.

The only problem right-wingers have today is that the FBI started using some of the same crap against their terror groups, but only because their less intelligent terror groups were complete idiots that threatened governors and the Feds directly.

Buy some spectrum in the long range / low power satellite range and then try to blast out high power transmissions.

In Lightsquared's case it was right next to GPS and they wanted to blast out high power... which would interfere with most GPS devices...

Fortunately they were told to sod off as well.

Wasn't you per se, but people tend to focus on the AI murdering humans. Why? Movies. Expert systems (which we are building now, these things have no independent will) will only kill to fit programming constraints. They probably can't even pull a HAL and reason out that killing the humans is the way to finish the mission.

Idiots like Elon Musk, and others, are saying "AI is going to kill humans" repeatedly. They are probably the same morons that would give AI the ability to kill humans because of some nebulous business advantage. Well, in Elon's case, he might just be dumb enough to do it by mistake. Cue the joke:

He talked about electric cars. I don't know anything about cars, so when people said he was a genius I figured he must be a genius.

Then he talked about rockets. I don't know anything about rockets, so when people said he was a genius I figured he must be a genius.

Now he talks about software. I happen to know a lot about software and Elon Musk is saying the stupidest -expletive- I've ever heard anyone say, so when people say he's a genius I figure I should stay the hell away from his cars and rockets.