The real problem is "connected", not un-encrypted.

With the ESA supplying the spacecraft, most of the software is likely to be competently written and/or open-source. This will prove to the Martians that there is indeed intelligent life on Earth.

It's a good question and one I'm working on trying to get an answer to. By giving AI hard, complex engineering problems, and then getting engineers to look at the output to determine if that output is meaningful or just expensive gibberish.

By doing this, I'm trying to feel around the edges of what AI could reasonably be used for. The trivial engineering problems usually given to it are problems that can usually be solved by people in a similar length of time. I believe the typical savings from AI use are in the order of 15% or less, which is great if you're a gecko involved in car insurance, but not so good if you're a business.

If the really hard problems aren't solvable by AI at all (it's all just gibberish) then you can never improve on that figure. It's as good as it is going to get.

I've open sourced what AIs have come up with so far, if you want to take a look. Because that is what is going to tell you if good can come out of AI or not.

I would think it goes further. If the company has already failed (ie: no longer exists) then the action is not taken by the company but a former employee of that company (even if said former employee was the CEO). Former employees are not granted special authority over PII or over company-owned information.

Irrelevant. PII protections are not subject to company discresion.

The conversations are not private, but PII laws nonetheless still apply. Anything in the messages that violates PII privacy laws is forbidden regardless of company policy. Policy cannot overrule the law.

Now, in the US, where privacy is a fiction and where double-dealing is not only perfectly acceptable but a part of workplace culture, that isn't too much of an issue. The laws exist on paper but have no real existence in practice.

However, business these days is international and American corps tend to forget that. Any conversation involving European computers (even if all employers and employees are in the US) falls under the GDPR and is under the aspices of the European courts and the ECHR, not the US legal system. And cloud servers are often in Ireland. Guess what. That means any conversation that takes place physically on those computers in Ireland plays by European rules, even if the virtual conversation was in the US.

This was settled by the courts a LONG time ago. If you carry out unlawful activities on a computer in a foreign country, you are subject to the laws of that country.

It's possible that cetaceans have a true language. They certainly have something that seems to function the same as a "hello, I am (name)", where the name part differs between all cetaceans but the surrounding clicks are identical. The response clicks also include that same phrase which researchers think serves the purpose of a name.

But we've done structural analysis to death and, yes, all the results are interesting (it seems to have high information content, in the Shannon sense, seems to have some sort of structure, and seems to have intriguing early-language features), but so does the Voynich Manuscript and there's a 99.9% chance that the Voynich Manuscript is a fraud with absolutely no meaning whatsoever. Structure only tells you if something is worth a closer look and we have known for a long time that cetacean clicks were worth a closer look. Further structural work won't tell us anything we don't already know.

What we need is to have a long-term recording of activities and clicks/whistles, where the sounds are recorded from many different directions (because they can be highly directional) and where the recording positively identifies the source of each sound, what that source was doing at the time (plus what they'd been doing immediately prior and what they do next), along with what they're focused on and where the sounds were directed (if they were). This sort of analysis is where any new information can be found.

But we also need to look at lessons learned in primate research, linguistics, sociology and anthropology, to understand what ISN'T going to work, in terms of approaches. In all three cases, we've learned that you learn best immersively, not from a distance. If an approach has failed in EVERY OTHER SOCIAL SCIENCE, then assuming it is going to work in cetacean research is stupid. It might be the correct way to go, but assuming it is is the bit that is stupid. If things fail repeatedly, regardless of where they are applied, then there's a decent chance it is necessary to ask that maybe the stuff that keeps failing is defective.

So the addresses are bigger, so what?

In most cases, all you care about is the prefix, which is just 64 bits, expressed as 4 groups of 4 hex digits. This is IT, is hex really beyond people's grasp?

Most of the admin is done one terminals that support cut and paste anyway.

What if I voted for a cat but the election went to a pit bull with a brain injury?

Sounds like it's time for U.S. auto makers to figure out how Chines manufacturers are making their cars so inexpensive.

And no, it's NOT all from cheap labor. It's also from efficiency, making a fair profit rather than hand over fist, less marble and mahogany in the executive suite, and paying a reasonable amount to upper management. Also less jet setting for execs.

Do we REALLY have to repeat the '70s and '80s when the Japanese manufacturers spanked the big three?

What happened to "free trade" and "deregulate all the things!"

I've said it elsewhere but...

At least one electricity company in the UK (Octopus) is already doing this.

Last year I had about a dozen "fill your boots" sessions from them, where they tell you a timeframe and in that timeframe not only is all electricity "free" (they only charge you for what you would have normally used in that period, any extra is free) but they enter you into prize draws, etc. for participating.

I used them to not only do all my chores, heating, cooling, cook dinner, etc. but also to fill my solar battery bank from the grid (which I then used to reduce my grid usage over the next few days). In fact, that's how I discovered what the maximum draw I can pull through my main consumer unit is before the main RCD trips.

I even did things like charged up all my cordless tool batteries and the like too.

This isn't new, but making it "official" and widening it to all electricity suppliers is just obvious.

I don't know what the electricity companies will think about it, because they seem to be largely profit-making worthless privatised entities, and asking them to help people reduce usage of their own product is nonsensical (I remember schemes were the water companies were supposed to encourage less water use, this involved sending you useless tat to drip-feed your plants and suchlike, and similarly for electricity companies, which involved sending you a free lightbulb).

But I suppose with the right incentive (e.g. penalising low usage or offsetting the extra usage against their later energy purchases, etc.) it might prompt them to take up the scheme too.

It's largely irrelevant, long-term, though, because as far as I'm concerned energy production is not democratised. I myself intend to be utility-independent by retirement, and electricity was the first and easiest to achieve, and I'm way ahead of schedule there.

Nope. No such thing when I paid to have that button first time around.

I don't use companies that try to monetise my use of them, especially if I'm paying for their service.

On that note...

Why the fuck am I seeing huge ads on Slashdot now for "bolt.new" and other shite when I paid many years ago to "Disable Advertising"?

Only idiots spy in person. They either pay for an insider or do all monitoring remotely. When was the last time an actual foreign agent was caught in a base? Now look at the number of times they've used USB keys to import malware, used cash to pay off insiders, or used remote sensing technology like microphones capable of analysing vibrations in windows, or other tracking devices.

I'm looking at where spies are caught. And they are never caught trying to be janitors on bases. If they're caught at all, then it's because the people they bribed to do all the inside work were themselves caught.

You have to go by the evidence and the evidence doesn't suggest infiltration.

Regulation in the modern US is not about a level playing field, it is about corrupt businesses and corrupt officials using regulations as an excuse to persecute competitors.