My root privileges on my workstation that I can literally pop open and reimage present absolutely zero marginal security risk.

But what if a malicious website executes malicious code from my user account?

Well then it's gonna own my box. Which will let it do what?

Hack other boxes on the LAN? Can already do that without root access.

Exflitrate business data? That doesn't require root.

Steal credentials? Stored as user read only, no root required.

Again: if the end result is I get root access either way, but I stare blankly at a web training in one path...wtf is the point?

Same point as office 365 making me find the modal popunder to click before it signs in with cached credentials anyway: CYA for some lawyer and fuck wasting everyone's time.

Which especially creates friction in engineering organizations.

Yes I need root access on my machine. So naturally instead of working, I have to waste time sitting through root user trainings and documenting that yes I do have root access to my machine that sits on my desk in my office that I have to badge through the front door to even get to.

>"required her and fellow hourly workers to log into multiple security systems [...] all before the clock started ticking on their workday."

White collar working from home job. And I am sure all the time on the clock was spent glued to the computer/phone doing work, right? Or at least as much as would be, had that person been in "the office", right? But, anyway....

>Workers turned on their computers

Leave computer on or suspended. 0 sec

>waited for Windows to load

Leave computer on or suspended. 0 sec

>grabbed their cell phones

2 sec.

>to request a security token for the company's VPN, waited for that token to arrive

5 sec?

>logged into the network

10 sec?

>opened required web applications with separate passwords

have to guess on that, I do it every day and takes me about 20 seconds

>and downloaded the Excel files they needed for the day.

10 sec?

So that is maybe 47 seconds? Double or quadruple it, it is still much ado about nothing, unless their systems are DREADFULLY slow or problematic. If the workers do need to get on a tech support call to get logged in, due to issues, I agree that there should be some way to account for that time.

In addition, the part of that money spent on computer centers will be useful even if AI doesn't pan out. It's not like investing in tulip bulbs. If AI doesn't pan out, it will just take a few years longer to pay for itself.

That said, AI will pan out. Even if there's no further development (HAH!) the current AIs will find an immense number of uses. It may well be "growing too fast", but that's not the same as worthless. (But expect well over half of the AI projects that are adopted in the next few years to fail. People don't yet understand the strengths and weaknesses. Unless, of course, AGI is actually developed. Then all bets are off because we REALLY don't understand what that woud result in.)

It's going to take more than one more efficient algorithm. OTOH, there've already been improvements in more than one algorithm. Nobody knows how far that could go, but the best evidence is that it could get a LOT more efficient. (Consider the power usage of a human brain...it uses a lot of power for an organ, but not really all that much.)

I'm guessing this is a summary:
Banks are legally allowed to loan more money than they have in deposits...to a degree. They've occasionally been found to go well beyond that limit. And they aren't carefully audited often enough.

Whether that's an accurate summary or not, it's true, if a bit shy on details. (I don't know the details this decade. But there probably haven't been any basic changes in the last few decades.)

Fall behind in what? The race to the bottom of the ethical barrel? Apologies to Gary Larsen for borrowing a couple of his characters to illustrate my point. Thag was an optimist; Thog was a pragmatist. Thag sharpened the first stick to bring down dinner. Thog used the same stick to bring down Thag and take his cave. Both sets of genes made it through natural selection because competition works in a world with limited calories and no Geneva Conventions.

The problem is, that’s not the world we live in anymore. "Falling behind" isn’t measured in spears per capita. It’s measured in how well we can keep the Thogs of our species from turning every new tool into a weapon. Ethics are not a luxury; they’re a competitive strategy in a civilization that no longer gets a do-over.

Every generation of humans has stood around its campfire debating whether the new tool -- fire, bronze, dynamite, fission, AI -- will make us gods or ghosts. We’ve survived this long precisely because enough of us insisted that how we use the tool matters as much as whether we can.

The choice you present is pretty clear to me: If it is falling behind to build a world where Thog doesn't get to rewrite your neural firmware while you sleep, I'll take the slower race every time. Progress without guardrails isn't progress; it's just entropy with better marketing.

You are 100% correct.

And yes, often they were sold in buckets. And also there were some generally-generic sets that had tailored pieces, like roof, wheels, hinges, swivels, but they could be used to build anything. They weren't designed/patterned/colored for a specific model.

Call me old skool, but Legos were my favorite "toy" growing up and those sets were far more "generic". You build anything and everything, not just whatever a set was designed for... that kinda came later. Anyway, it is more fun and educational, using your imagination than it is just building a predetermined "model". I spent endless hours making stuff.

Don't get me wrong, I am a super STTNG fan and think this kit is awesome. I mean, it even has Spot! (But I also won't be forking out that much money for some plastic blocks).

>"I, for one, much prefer this kind of LEGO"

OMG, that is freaking fantastic :)

I'm afraid that you, and history, ignored Rosalind Franklin, whose work was vital and also deserved the prize. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

That's right kids. Back in the day, "apps" were disturbuted in ROM soldered onto a PCB inside a plastic case with an exposed card edge connector containing data and addess bus pins, that you would physically insert into your device.

If you wanted to change "apps" you would need to remove one and insert another in its place. Kids' rooms would have entire shelves full of these memory modules (a whopping 64kB each) for all their "apps."

Now git push off my lawn.

I'm sure most of them were sociopaths too. They just had the good sense to hide it better and it was easier to suppress the flow of information pre electronic media.

MLK had groupies of whom he availed himself.

FDR was as out of it as Biden by the end and he still went for a 4th term.

Lincoln declared martial law.

Washington didn't just own slaves but he also cultivated a personality cult during the early days of the Republic.

On it goes.

The problem prominent and/or mildly successful scientists of all stripes run into is that they begin to confuse their imagination for a source of truth. Having been rewarded with success in their careers for having done the so on their way up, it is almost reasonable to conclude their imagination *is* a direct line to God, Truth, or Whatever.

Feynman had a chapter in one of his books about this phenomenon. Several actually, but I'm thinking not of the famous Cargo Cult Science speech but of his experiments with psychedelic drugs in the 70s, where he wrote he almost felt like he was one with the eternal truth of creation until the high wore off and he realized that what he actually did was smoke some weed and seal himself off inside a sensory deprivation pod.

And they key is that sealing oneself off and interrogating the wider universe are mutually exclusive exercises.

Maybe Phillip K. Dick was right, but you won't find out by consulting your imagination; you will find out with hard-nosed and clearheaded systematic investigation.

Maybe there is a genetic component to race and intelligence that's separate entirely from culture and upbringing. I think it's plausible too, but having read Charles Murray, for example, I find his analysis simplistic and insufficient to make the case. And the reason is most of his doorstopper of a book he's making charts and graphs of responses to opinion polls and extrapolating into his own narrative, not conducting controlled experiments or even looking for good solid natural experiments with sufficient power to make the case.

Now obviously the kinds of controlled experiments necessary to answer questions of intelligence and genetic as separate from culture and upbringing would take too long and need to cross some ethical lines we presumably care more about not crossing than we do about knowing the answer.

So the scientifically honest thing to do is to say exactly that: it's plausible but we don't have a way of knowing for certain. Period.

Are they vagrant if they aren't moving around?