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Comment Re:No need for security (Score 1) 40

While this is not completely correct, it is also not completely wrong. The thing is that password guessing attacks are generally high effort attacks because they have to be customized. Far easier to wait until Microsoft (or Google or Apple) mess up and then get in with a generic attack. At least Microsoft does it often enough. Or use mass-phishing for another no-password-required attack that works reasonably well in practice.

Comment Re:Too many eggs... (Score 1) 55

Even worse: Most of the end-user computers run just one OS and most of the Mobile devices do so too. Ideal conditions for an internet worm to take over everything within a few hours. Houses of cards standing on sand in a location with frequent strong winds ...

Well, the human race will eventually learn a lesson here. Maybe it will be a tiny bit mire careful afterwards. Or not.

Comment Re:Good luck with that (Score 1) 24

To add to that my settings of "telemetry: off" even survived a downgrade from Win10 to Win11. (Gets displayed in the settings, but cannot be set there. Needs some obscure "organizational" settings, which still can be done locally.) That means MS did not dare reset it and for good reasons. It would have been an actual crime for them to do so.

Comment Re:Good luck with that (Score 1) 24

Ok, since come people are so clueless to think I am trolling. I am not: https://www.schneier.com/blog/...

This stuff is a massive security problem at this time. The AI pushers do not care how much damage they do and their fanbois are completely disconnected from reality. LLMs are not the servants you are looking for.

Comment Who cares (Score 1) 17

While freezing is a bizarre way to bury a corpse, this is still a corpse and there is no chance of revival, ever. The damage done by the freezing is exceptionally severe and irreversible, as there is no data on the "good" state.

Hence, who cares? Stupid people doing stupid things. This is just a stupid person with money. People with money are not smarter than average.

Comment Re:Good luck with that (Score 1) 24

In Europe, MS has managed to credibly assure it is all getting anonymized and aggregated. That was likely not a lie as they got threatened with a prohibition to sell their product (which got almost no press). In the rest of the world, obviously detailed data is collected and not getting anonymized or anything.

Comment Re:The price of wealth (Score 1) 79

Does a story like this make anybody else wonder if the lifestyle cost of wealth is too high?

The problem in this story is not the wealth, but its form. Cryptocurrency transactions are generally irreversible and not subject to the layers of process and protection that have been built up around large banking transactions. Keep your money in banks and brokerages like a sensible person and you don't have much risk.

Comment Re:Huh? Where? (Score 1) 59

No it's far from the most expensive option

Uh, yes, the 24-hour cancellation option is always the most expensive one for a given room (ignoring paying extra for add-ons like free breakfast or extra points). What other option would be more expensive? The one that gives the consumer the most flexibility is the one with the highest risk to the property, and that's priced in.

TFA postulates a scenario where the cancellations have disappeared.

Yeah, TFA overstated it. Though if you're not booking through the chain directly, in many cases it is hard to get a 24-hour cancellation policy. Many of the travel aggregator services hide them.

Comment Re:way more than some irrationality (Score 1) 55

The AI thing absolutely is a bubble, but it's not "sand-castle based or vapor based". It's very real. The problem is that the massive wave of investment is going to have to start generating returns within the next 3-4 years or else the financial deals that underpin it all will collapse. That doesn't mean the technology will disappear, it just means that the current investors will lose their shirts, other people will scoop up their assets at firesale prices, and those people will figure out how to deploy it effectively, and create trillions in economic value.

The problem is that the investors - and lenders - potentially losing their shirts include major international banks and pension funds, not just private shareholders. Recently, a J.P. Morgan analysis estimated that at least $650 billion in annual revenue will be required to deliver mere 10% return on the projected AI spend. And already banks like Deutsche Bank are looking to hedge their lending exposure to AI related projects.

If the AI bubble crashes hard, it could be a repeat of the 2007 global financial crisis.

Yep. That's all true even if AI is the most transformative technology ever invented, even if it generates trillions per year in economic output -- it might not do it soon enough to prevent another crash. You don't have to believe that AI is "sand-castle based or vapor based" (which it's really not) to see a big problem coming.

Comment Re:way more than some irrationality (Score 1) 55

Here is the thing, you are posting on Slashdot. Don't tell me you are not sharp enough to find a broker, and buy some long dated at the money PUTS either on the AI and AI adjacent firms or just the market over all with funds like SPY / QQQ.

The market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent.

The better strategy, IMO, is to keep your money safe and wait for the bubble to burst, then pile in for the recovery. Where to keep money safe is a good question, though. Just holding cash might be risky if inflation comes back, and the current administration seems anxious to pump up inflation.

Comment Re:way more than some irrationality (Score 1) 55

It is quite clear to everybody it is a bubble and a lot of the AI stuff is sand-castle based or vapor based... At least those of us understanding what the current crop of AI does

There's a pair of seriously bad assumptions underlying your analysis:

(1) What AI does right now is all it's going to do. Given the way capabilites have grown recently, this is a ludicrous assumption. Keep in mind that ChatGPT was launched November 30, 2022... it's less than three years old! And the reasoning models are barely a year old. There is no reason whatsoever to assume that this technology has peaked.

(2) We already know how to take full advantage of AI. Every time a new technology comes along it takes decades for us to fully understand how to effectively use it, and to deploy it everywhere it is useful. I'd say we still haven't fully incorporated the Internet into our society, and we've been working on that for over 30 years now. We're barely beginning to understand how to use what AI we've already got, and it'll take years, if not decades, for the full economic benefits to be achieved -- and in the meantime AI is probably going to continue improving.

The AI thing absolutely is a bubble, but it's not "sand-castle based or vapor based". It's very real. The problem is that the massive wave of investment is going to have to start generating returns within the next 3-4 years or else the financial deals that underpin it all will collapse. That doesn't mean the technology will disappear, it just means that the current investors will lose their shirts, other people will scoop up their assets at firesale prices, and those people will figure out how to deploy it effectively, and create trillions in economic value.

Well, assuming AI doesn't just kill us all.

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