Little is more Orwellian among our government's many exploits than its attempts to break into our computer systems.

The ever-present security camera? That's bad, but it's still out in public. It's on the street, maybe in the stores. They're not in your home, not yet. Rubber stamp warrants? That's worse: It allows targeted invasions of privacy. But at least it requires a the resources of a human with a paycheck and his own sense of morals. But breaking into computer systems? They're in our pockets, in our homes, and have access to every bit of our modern lives. From shopping lists to love letters to medicine prescriptions they contain whole lives. Snippets from every trip you've taken are encoded there.

And a program doesn't have a sense of right and wrong. It will never refuse to spy on ethical grounds. It won't bring things up to the attention of oversight committees. It won't make anonymous calls to the ethics line. It won't refuse to work, leak information, or demand orders in writing. A program will quietly do as its told, wherever it can. Above all prying surveillance I believe ubiquitous IT access by the government needs to be contained.

People were poopooing the virus, but I think that's because they didn't read the report.

This is a highly sophisticated polymorphic virus using multiple forms of encryption in multiple layers against multiple attack vectors. It's really a piece of work. I don't know why someone would write it and then use it directly against Kaspersky but whoever did it had the cash to hire some very clever people, or was a team of programmers with a genius at the helm and amazing opsec.

Considering the sophistication of the virus I think it would be silly to speculate about who wrote it: whoever it is had to spend a good deal of effort covering their tracks and could easily have compromised multiple third parties just to create red herrings.

It's been extremely slow since this all started. I hope the finances work out such that they can get the capacity they need in time to scoop up freedom-loving users.

There's a certain critical mass of dissatisfaction in a user base/community. Until that point the site can be salvaged. It takes more than an unpopular move by admins/community leaders. There has to be BOTH:

• A significant percentage of users dissatisfied with admins. Not with something else, with the way the site is being run. It can't be external and it must be administrative.
• Administration unresponsive enough to make users even more unhappy

I think it can be generalized to other communities but for web sites in particular there has to be enough dissatisfaction to create a feedback loop of angry users being ignored leads to leadership blunders leads to more angry users. When meta-conversation overwhelms normal conversation there's a tipping point. Slashdot has almost been there. coughcoughbetacough But it takes more than that. At the tipping point administration must demonstrate such disregard for the users concerns that a revolt becomes meta-shared knowledge. Many users knowing isn't enough. They need to know that other users know. Only if that happens the site will descend into a digg-esque melt-down and hemorrhage users until admins capitulate or the site collapses.

I don't think Reddit has reached that point. In fact, I think this will serve as a safety valve. Users who strongly value freedom of expression will go to voat and everyone else will stay, and not see as many complaints. Obviously this makes the culture more brittle. Reddit is not in danger now but will lead to other problems down the road.

This is a big step toward Reddit becoming an echo chamber. New users will be less likely to stay and it will create its own cultural feedback loop. Those unwilling to toe the party line will find themselves shunned. Users will pretend to go along, hiding how they really feel, leading to a more intense echo chamber. Soon there will be prescribed viewpoints on almost any topic. Reddit will die then. Not with a bang but with a whimper.

Honest question: In the end does it seem likely robots that succeed at these tasks mostly do so because, as in other DARPA challenges, they're the ones with high-end hardware?

Some real science has been done on DNA data storage as relates to evidence of panspermia. The theory goes that if intelligent life deliberately seeded the universe it may have used DNA or RNA sequences that could be decoded into a message. So far science's tendency toward conservatism has prevented anyone from coming out and saying it but I think available evidence is more than sufficient reason for optimism and intense study.

As I said on another site, Not as bad as they try to make it sound. The red cross initially committed to building homes but when that didn't work out due to them not being able to buy land they spent the money on improving some homes, building a hospital, and helping out elsewhere as possible. It's true there was a lot of administrative waste, but that waste was due to careful management. The article echos complaints of hiring "lazy" locals. Then it criticizes them for hiring expensive ex-patriot workers. Then it criticizes them for contracting the work out to other companies causing high administrative costs. Well how the fuck were they supposed to do it? If they had advertised for volunteers they would have been criticized for spending the money in another country. It can cost a lot to assure money is spend effectively. Maybe they erred too far on the side of caution on this one, maybe they got as much done as was possible. I don't know. Neither do you. This is making a chicken out of a feather and makes me wonder what real news I'm missing out on.

America: If you can't afford lawyers, fuck you.

What US Prosecutors say is quite irrelevant to the law. Thank Goddess there are still a few checks on their kind of power.

It may be, but it's damned impressive technology. Have you seen the demo? A guy with an accent asks at normal (faster than normal for most people) speed for a statistic requiring some deductive reasoning (the population of the capital of the country with the Space Needle) and is given only the required answer.

I really don't mind a slashvertisement for a sweet bit of technology like this. It's informative as to the industry state-of-the-art. It helps me track the progress of AI. And it's cool.