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Comment Re:Just shoddy... (Score 1) 87

something about 'AI' seems to have caused people who should have known better to just ignore precautions

The cynic in me wants to say that they see "intelligence" and go "great, it has something I don't, let's just 100% trust it".

The social critic in me wants to say that it's due to the gigantic hype about AI and how it'll revolutionize everything, replace everyone and solve all problems.

And the tech/security guy in me wants to say "doh, people do dumb shit. What else is new?"

Comment Re: Making a note... (Score 2) 58

Even if replacing it with a free alternative is possible, there's still the issue of testing that everything still works. Imagine a nice laid out document of some sort where time and effort has been made so that content breaks across pages nicely, captions fit appropriately, etc. such that it's a pleasing document to read. Now change the font and see if that document is still of the same quality. It may still be readable, but subtle shifts and changes will make some aspects of it worse.

A UI might be badly broken if text flows off screen or becomes obscured by some other component. All of that needs to be tested in order to make sure it doesn't cause problems or to fix those problems where they occur. The man hours required to do that will quickly wind up costing as much or more as the higher fees.

What will happen is that existing users will fork over the extra money while moving away from those fonts going forward. Replacement solutions will spring up to fill the gap.

Comment junior dev? no, intern (Score 1) 87

AI tools behaving in ways that "would get a junior developer fired,"

AI isn't a junior dev. It's an intern. Someone who doesn't much care beyond the current session, and whose skills can surprise you - in both directions, and whose primary focus is that you like him at least in the moment.

And like an intern, if you include the code in anything even close to production without review, it's your fault, not theirs.

Comment Re:Wow! (Score 2) 145

Luckily - other than with criminals - covering yourself in naff tats seems to have been a millennial fad that is slowly fading.

My observation is the opposite. In my 20s tattoos were just common enough to be accepted as normal, but the majority of people didn't have them and most people who did had one or two fairly small ones.

Today, it seems everyone and their dog has them.

Comment Re:Lets wait for them to download the malware firs (Score 3, Interesting) 17

He may not have been aware that the keys were compromised until they were misused. It's not like the keys are a physical object where a person can notice that they've been taken. Most of the people who are performing targeted attacks to gain this kind of access don't go around doing stupid things to alert someone that their machine has been compromised. I even recall an article from a few years ago where it was discovered that a malware program was also acting as an anti-virus to keep other things from infecting the machines and tipping off the users. This isn't the 90's or early 00's where people would immediately deface a website or pull some other crude prank upon gaining access.

Comment Re:Bullshit! (Score 1) 68

There's a huge difference:

Our governments, at least in theory, are controlled by us, the people. Ok, the 1% who make the major campaign contributions. But that's still a lot of people.

The number of SpaceX or Amazon shareholders who have enough shares to have a say in these matters is single-digits. So power is concentrated in much fewer hands.

Comment Re:Of course it does (Score 1) 68

Given dynamic battlefield, I don't think that is as easily done as you think, and the moment SpaceX makes a mistake and knocks out a Ukrainian drone on a mission, they'll be guilty for everything. There's not really a winning position for them here.

Russia isn't hiding that it targets civilian infrastructure. They still wage war the way everyone did it in 1939-1945. US and UK bombers essentially just opened the doors above German cities and let the unguided bombs fall wherever. We're not doing that anymore because most of the world learned that despite all this, they didn't exactly surrender. So it's a huge waste of resources. Russia, on the other hand, still thinks that Ukrainians will agree to becoming Russians due to a few cold and dark winters.

Comment Re:Color me curious.... (Score 1) 39

What possible legal use does a "mixing service" provide?

Hiding money flow from public view. It is trivial to automatically trace all transfers on the blockchain. And the same way I don't post my banking history to the Internet, I have a reasonable need to not have all of my Bitcoin transactions fully transparent to everyone in the world.

So tl;dr: The legal use is: Protect my privacy.

That doesn't mean I am doing anything illegal. I might be doing something perfectly legal but socially controversial - maybe I make campaign contributions to the communist party, or consume an unhealthy amount of furry porn. It might also be legal but I have a need to hide my finances from someone specific - maybe an abusive spouse, maybe overly controlling parent, maybe a stalker.

For the moment, Bitcoin is still a bit of a niche thing, but the more it moves into mainstream, the more people will have the interest and the capabilities to use Bitcoin to breach people's privacy when they use Bitcoins to pay for something.

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