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Comment Re:Existing instruments give us a data firehose (Score -1) 60

by DNS-and-BIND (#65514276) Attached to: US Abandons Hunt For Signal of Cosmic Inflation

What I don't get is why the Left isn't cheering wildly. The USA is the most racist warmongering genocide-in-Gaza-supporting country in the world. I mean, imagine sending C-17s full of machetes to the Hutu in Rwanda, the US sent bombs to Israel.

The US is ethnic cleansing with ICE.

"If we strike first and our victim dares to fight back, then weâ(TM)re the ones being attacked." The United States is a brutal and immoral actor in the world and has been longer than any of us have been alive. To wave the flag at a pro-immigrant rally would be to somehow suggest that the country the flag represents is worth celebrating, and it is not. Left-wing protestors donâ(TM)t carry American flags because carrying the American flag is a symbol of support for the United States of America, its government and its actions, of condoning its project in whole or in part, and left-wing people (like me) canâ(TM)t do that because the United States is a brutal and immoral actor in the world and has been longer than any of us have been alive. To wave the flag at a pro-immigrant rally would be to somehow suggest that the country the flag represents is worth celebrating, and it is not. Itâ(TM)s not for many reasons, the most direct and salient of which is that no country on earth has caused more wanton destruction, cruelty, and degradation of freedom and democracy Americans are the least educated and knowledgeable of foreign affairs, languages, and disparate cultures, societies, and social norms among all Westernized countries and the least exposed universally.

America is based on demonizing whole groups of people (migrants, Muslims, independent women, LGBTQP people).

This is the basis for all your horrible politics and terrible policies.
AI

McDonald's AI Hiring Bot Exposed Millions of Applicants' Data To Hackers 25

Posted by BeauHD from the perils-of-AI dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: If you want a job at McDonald's today, there's a good chance you'll have to talk to Olivia. Olivia is not, in fact, a human being, but instead an AI chatbot that screens applicants, asks for their contact information and resume, directs them to a personality test, and occasionally makes them "go insane" by repeatedly misunderstanding their most basic questions. Until last week, the platform that runs the Olivia chatbot, built by artificial intelligence software firm Paradox.ai, also suffered from absurdly basic security flaws. As a result, virtually any hacker could have accessed the records of every chat Olivia had ever had with McDonald's applicants -- including all the personal information they shared in those conversations -- with tricks as straightforward as guessing the username and password "123456."

On Wednesday, security researchers Ian Carroll and Sam Curryrevealedthat they found simple methods to hack into the backend of the AI chatbot platform on McHire.com, McDonald's website that many of its franchisees use to handle job applications. Carroll and Curry, hackers with along track record of independent security testing, discovered that simple web-based vulnerabilities -- including guessing one laughably weak password -- allowed them to access a Paradox.ai account and query the company's databases that held every McHire user's chats with Olivia. The data appears to include as many as 64 million records, including applicants' names, email addresses, and phone numbers.

Carroll says he only discovered that appalling lack of security around applicants' information because he was intrigued by McDonald's decision to subject potential new hires to an AI chatbot screener and personality test. "I just thought it was pretty uniquely dystopian compared to a normal hiring process, right? And that's what made me want to look into it more," says Carroll. "So I started applying for a job, and then after 30 minutes, we had full access to virtually every application that's ever been made to McDonald's going back years." Paradox.ai confirmed the security findings, acknowledging that only a small portion of the accessed records contained personal data. The company stated that the weak-password account ("123456") was only accessed by the researchers and no one else. To prevent future issues, Paradox is launching a bug bounty program. "We do not take this matter lightly, even though it was resolved swiftly and effectively," Paradox.ai's chief legal officer, Stephanie King, told WIRED in an interview. "We own this."

In a statement to WIRED, McDonald's agreed that Paradox.ai was to blame. "We're disappointed by this unacceptable vulnerability from a third-party provider, Paradox.ai. As soon as we learned of the issue, we mandated Paradox.ai to remediate the issue immediately, and it was resolved on the same day it was reported to us," the statement reads. "We take our commitment to cyber security seriously and will continue to hold our third-party providers accountable to meeting our standards of data protection."

Comment Re: Go BRICS! (Score 4, Informative) 128

by Zocalo (#65503840) Attached to: BRICS Demand Wealthy Nations Fund Global Climate Transition
It does, but there's a slight issue with that. In terms of the world's largest economies by GDP the BRICS countries rate as:

#2: China
#4: India
#10: Brazil
#11: Russia (sanctions not withstanding)
#17: Indonesia
#28: United Arab Emirates
#38 South Africa
#42: Egypt
#44: Iran (again, despite the sanctions)
#66: Ethiopia

Now it's not like these countries are doing absolutely nothing to mitigate things, but it would be really interesting to see some numbers on exactly how much of a proportionate contribution they are making to "fund mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions in poorer nations" when even lowly Ethiopia still has over 130 poorer nations to choose from.

Comment Re:Time to resurrect the old meme... (Score 1) 249

by Zocalo (#65496884) Attached to: The US Dollar is On Track For Its Worst Year in Modern History
Unofficially, it's already done. It used to be that if you were going to somewhere with a weak and mostly cash-based economy you took the bulk of your cash in USD and the rest in the local currency. For quite some time now retailers in such economies have been just as likely to take Euros or Sterling as they were USD when they are after some hard currency, and on my last couple of trips I've actually been asked for Euros or Sterling in preference to USD. My local contact for my upcoming trip to the Far East has advised me to forget the USD and just bring Sterling or Euros because I'll get a much better exchange rate.

When the hawkers on the street and small store owners don't want USD any more, it's just a matter of time before that sentiment climbs up the ladder to larger retailers, and eventually to governments.

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