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Comment Re:Is AI free speech? (Score 1) 62

Historically free speech, often had editorial control, which helped moderate the point of views, and just ignore the wackos out there. Sure you can be a nutter standing in the middle of a street saying your manifesto, or handing out fliers about your crazy idea. However in general you were not taken seriously.

Social media, as opposed to the traditional media in the past. profits off of conflict. Where in the past if a newspaper posted something really out there, they would get a bunch of letters which was expensive for them to read and process, and often making them back track and redact their statement, if shown to be false. Social Media with a nutter stating something means more clicks and advertisement impressions. So more revenue, and because it is user generated content, they have no responsibility to redact or stop that post unless it goes into criminal territory.

However still, often the more extreme ideas fail to take traction outside the echo-chambers, because they often are worded and expressed in a way that shows the persons general unreasonable nature.

But if we can get someone with a stupid extreme idea to get an AI to generate a well written essay on the topic, with what seems to be real citations, and avoids a lot of the common logical facilities, and just will outright lie to make sure all the points are made. It becomes much harder to spot of the crazy from the actually new and researched idea that just may be opposite of the current point of view. and the actual researched POV may not be written as well, and it would be considered the fake.

However to the point, if a nutter asked ChatGPT to prove their point, is it really their free speech, as their free speech is an incoherent mess, while chatGPT just generated something that sounds logical.

And gasp... we might have to weigh opinions based on supporting arguments, and their rationality, as opposed to the way they're presented? The horror!

Also, I find it funny how you seem to think that everyone who thinks different than you is a blubbering frothing moron, incapable of producing anything other than spittle, and only ChatGPT will allow them to erm... "pass off" or something as normal. Here's a newsflash: people from the other side are perfectly capable of forming normal human speech, and if it seems otherwise it's because the things that are allowed to pass into your information bubble are just examples of "hey look what morons those people are". Actual, rational, reasonable discourse is just carefully kept outside of said bubble, that doesn't mean it doesn't exist. So don't worry, your information bubble is perfectly safe, and its gatekeepers are just as capable of filtering ChatGPT-assited content that is dangerous to your worldview as normal.

The reason why there is division between the left and right is because each side is looking at different data points as facts and the media reinforces the division by painting the other side as "crazy and dilutional" and purposefully discrediting the other side's sources of data points as misinformation or discreditable.

I am a strong believer that A MAJORITY OF US would unify if we are looking at the same data points that we accept as facts.

America has been historically known as "The Land of Opportunity", if you work hard, you can have the comforts enjoyed by the middle class, or even establish yourself in luxury in the upper class.

The more people there are in the middle class of a nation, the more self reliant and less dependent on the government welfare programs and more opportunities for individuals born in poverty to get themselves out of poverty.

The more people that are in poverty in a nation, there is more government dependency for welfare programs (handouts from the government), and a lack of a strong middle class with small businesses creating more opportunities for individuals to break free of poverty, and a more exclusive upper class.

Early on in civilization the upper class had a monopoly of being in the "elite" because they could read and write and have wealth enough to go to institutions to learn additional skills that could keep their children on the path of staying in the upper class.

Early on in society, not knowing how to read or write or do math would limit individuals to a life of poverty along with their children.

Long ago, the people in poverty who wanted their children to break free of the poverty cycle could clearly see that it is necessary for their children to have the same basic skills as the children of the elite upper class. Read, Write, and Arithmetic. If a town could pool their money together they could afford hiring someone from the elite upper class that was educated to teach their children the basic skills. Once the children had basic education they could now try to get a job that could earn them more money and enter into the middle class.

How does all this relate to each other?

The "Left" and the "Right" are in conflict because both sides have lost touch of reality. Think about it, they fight about the government's involvement in all our lives, what it does for us, how it helps the poor, how it helps the sick, food and drug regulation, airport security on planes.

The US Government is $31 TRILLION dollars in debt with all of the government programs. It doesn't matter which side got us here, because the reality is that each side has flipped sides multiple times, so blaming one particular party makes no sense. You may not know this, but it was the democrats in the south that owned slaves and started the civil war to keep their slaves. So blaming any one party or saying one party is anything is ridiculous.

It's my opinion that the "elite" wealthy ruling class wants the middle class divided and in conflict with each other.

The reason I believe this is because I can sit down with anybody, on either the left or the right, and have a productive conversation about various issues, exchanging the data and rational we are for or against various government initiatives. Through this I have found the biggest problem is that one side or the other isn't aware of specific facts, and where the conflict persists is whether the other person believes the source of the facts is credible.

So that last point is the main point. Why doesn't the media focus on facts and showing both sides along with the facts that they are basing their opinions on? Instead the media is programming the viewer with a bias to discredit the crazy people on the other side. That way there is no debate, there is no discussion, there is no opportunity to have real unity as a nation.

The more the nation is divided, the easier it is for the ruling "elite" to pull the strings to make sure the system works for them.

The ruling elite don't care how much money the government spends on welfare programs, they only care that you vote for them.

When the US government collapses due to unsustainable debt, whatever reset happens, you can be sure that the wealthy "elite" ruling class will still have their wealth, their own fenced neighborhoods, security guards with guns and ice cream in their refrigerators. Each political party will blame each other, but I promise you that the leaders of both political parties will survive any major "reset" with their wealth.

So, we can keep fighting amongst ourselves about which party is more racist, or equitable, or inclusive, or which party can scream "my body my choice" louder (Democrats scream "my body my choice" advocating for abortions and Republicans scream "my body my choice" because they don't want to be forced to take the vaccine)

We can keep fighting between ourselves about which politician is more corrupt than the other one.

But all along the while, the government is getting bigger, the middle class is getting smaller, the "elite" are getting richer, the poor is not getting the basic education and taught skills to break out of poverty, all leading to eventually the system collapsing because we could not unite as a nation.

To change the trajectory we need to break these party walls that we have around us, stop letting the media get away with slander the other side and just report the news without bias (let us decide for ourselves), and defend our rights to speak our views without getting canceled.

We have a chance if we can look at each other as humans who want the best things for our selves, our families, our communities, our nation, and our planet.

We have no chance if we go further into any ideas that create division and degrade anybody for having a different opinion than your own.

Comment Re:Micro-grids are the answer (Score 4, Insightful) 128

Great motivation for developers to start building their own micro-grids.

There is absolutely zero reason that a new neighborhood can not come with solar, wind, and storage, and leave the old grid behind.

Distributed micro-grids are where we really need to be moving. They are more fault-tolerant and less expensive, and unlike with carbon-based plants there is little efficiency gain for solar and wind at scale... the efficiency scales much more linear... so why try to centralize it all? It is old-school thinking.

That sounds fantastic. There aren't many cloudy/rainy days in london (Ya right) and the wind is always blowing at around 15 KPH (nope), and exactly what Solar and Wind "Storage" are you talking about? Micro Suns and Blow Dryers? I love the"magical thinkers" that make it sound so easy to have "reliable energy" with solar and wind ... and issolated at a neighborhood level is laughable.

If you were talking about micro neuclar plants, or even coal/gas as the reliable energy source (aka. "storage" as you might call it), then you could have something to talk about. But issolated grids depending completely on wind and solar and this mythical storage that doesn't exist yet is setting themselves up for issues like Sri Lanka.

If you don't believe the reports about how terrible it is for Sri Lanka, and others that have gone "green", you're not paying attention. Sri Lanka has national "power cuts" where people have to shut their power off after specific hours. It's insanity, but you ironically won't find this talked about in the US news. I only know about it because I talk to people in Sri Lanka and they have been having to work around the "power-cut" schedules for the past months.

https://ceb.lk/

https://newsin.asia/power-cut-...

Comment Re:Maybe don't expose your NAS to the internet? (Score 3, Interesting) 68

Devices behind firewalls and not directly exposed to the internet are being hit with this ransomware as well. I haven't seen any details as to how the devices are getting exploited, but being that devices behind firewalls are venerable it would have to be some sort of 'man-in-the-middle' attack is my guess. Perhaps QNAP wasn't validating SSL certificates, or not using GPG signatures to validate software and allowing a rootkit to be installed from an auto-update. No matter what it was, it seems like it has to be some sort of "pull request" from the devices themselves, so as long as the device is accessible to the internet, and does those types of "pull requests" either checking for updates, or auto-downloading software and extracting it to stage it for update, then ANY device is venerable if that is combined with not validating SSL certificates, and not validating software signatures... But of course, if their private keys get stolen then that's a whole other concern.

Submission + - New DeadBolt ransomware targets QNAP devices, asks 50 BTC for master key (bleepingcomputer.com)

ryanw writes: A new DeadBolt ransomware group is encrypting QNAP NAS devices worldwide using what they claim is a zero-day vulnerability in the device's software. The attacks started today, January 25th, with QNAP devices suddenly finding their files encrypted and file names appended with a .deadbolt file extension. Instead of creating ransom notes in each folder on the device, the QNAP device's login page is hijacked to display a screen stating, "WARNING: Your files have been locked by DeadBolt," This screen informs the victim that they should pay 0.03 bitcoins (approximately $1,100) to an enclosed Bitcoin address unique to each victim. After payment is made, the threat actors claim they will make a follow-up transaction to the same address that includes the decryption key. The DeadBolt ransomware gang is offering the full details of the alleged zero-day vulnerability if QNAP pays them 5 Bitcoins worth $184,000. They are also willing to sell QNAP the master decryption key that can decrypt the files for all affected victims and the zero-day info for 50 bitcoins, or approximately $1.85 million.

Comment It is this bad (Score 1) 809

I have been in the industry for 18 years or so and have worked for many fortune 100 companies. The answer to your question is "yes, it is this bad".

"Back in the day" we used to need to know several core functionalities to even just get a unix box up and running. I know many "enterprise architects" and they couldn't tell me anything about a tcp stack, how to configure a unix box for performance, how to pxe boot a system, how to patch a system, what mode to configure the network interfaces for LACP, should we use ipmp or LACP?, etc.

The only thing they do is certify a list of requirements to enterprise standards and drag and drop Visio diagrams to show how to plug things in. Then they turn it over to procurement to order it, then it comes in and admins are stuck trying to figure it out, working with vendors to install expensive software.. Which the whole process ends up taking a year or two in the "enterprise".

So if you want an "experienced architect" what you really should be looking for is a young smart kid and test him with a quiz to see if he's willing to work hard, stay focused, and has excellent troubleshooting skills with a verity of experience with various technologies. It doesn't even necessarily matter if the experience is in the technologies you are working with. Anyone curious, hungry, and willing to work hard is worth their weight in gold in today's world. Those have been the hardest to find, in my opinion.

Finding people to solve your riddles will vary in success, but the root of the problem is deeper.

Comment Legalize drugs (Score 2) 474

I was initially hesitant with the legalization of pot in California and the other states. But what's fascinating is that now people get their weed from controlled environments instead some back alley with a drug dealer pushing lots of other stuff as well.

I could be 1000% wrong as I have no data to back this up, but it made me think the streets have been safer in California since the legalization of pot. Anyone have any data to back that idea up? Any stats of declining use of other more serious drugs? Maybe it hasn't been enough time yet?

Comment Re:Whar is wrong with programmers? (Score 1) 158

I mean, it is a MAIL program, not a revolutionary new product. The protocols have been out there for years (esp. IMAP). Why is it still buggy? Even worse: why is it buggier than the previous version? If it worked before THERE IS NO F*ING EXCUSE FOR IT NOT TO WORK NOW. Very very very lame.

I would imagine they have uplifted the app and re-written a large portion of the application to work with new interfaces like outlook or whatever. Also perhaps they're trying to do something new with spam in specific to help reduce spam as a whole when using various services. This is a bad bug, and could cause a lot of problems for service providers if it's legitimate and not a "single case", but bugs happen. I'm surprised nobody caught it with the beta versions. Apple has been surprisingly good lately about getting developers the beta versions of the OS before the release. Due to the intense secrecy of apple, in the past, developers didn't get access to the later versions of OSX until the same time as the consumers. This used to be a nightmare when dealing with professional software and drivers for anything beyond what came with the mac.

Comment Re:Gave up on Mail.app years ago (Score 1) 158

Seems like Mail.app has been getting worse since about 2003. I finally gave up on it about 5 years ago - in favor of gmail's web interface. At first I was a little disgusted with myself - but I've never regretted it.

I still use mail on my iOS devices, though. Have not yet seen a better UI for those.

I agree. I find myself using too many machines, in too many places to really care about a desktop version of the mail program, especially now that my mail storage is using about 15GB of data. The only "mail app" I use is the built in app on my iPhone, otherwise all web portals for me.

Comment Apple OS Upgrade Expectations (OSX & iOS) (Score 2) 488

When upgrading my mac computers I have always seen a significant boost in performance on the same hardware (obviously).

When upgrading the iOS devices I have found the opposite to be true. Each new version, on existing hardware, is slower but the feature set expands incredibly.

I think this is because iOS started out as an infant and did what it was supposed to do really well and performed really well on the hardware it was designed on, and had features that only worked on the existing hardware. But as iOS has matured, so has the feature set.... There are incredible search engines, graphics engines, Siri, and tons more... this has required increasing hardware capabilities to keep up with the features. .... So the trick with iOS is don't expect to get performance gains with iOS updates unless you update your hardware at the same time. Each new iOS version brings new bells and whistles, but not performance. With each iOS capable hardware device you should expect significant performance boosts.

Comment Speculation & time to market is the killer (Score 1) 147

I think the real buzz kill is the massive leaks, rumors and speculation of what apple is doing compounded by their secrecy, and lack of being able to be first to market due to their desire to be the best which makes it take longer to execute and allows for only incremental updates to existing products.

I appreciate apple's due diligence to make amazing products which have the best overall complete end-to-end experience for consumers hands down. But with the leaks happening it's letting people speculate and come to conclusions that are even more grand than apple is going to release. This creates a sense of disappointment at the times of announcements. For example, people had speculated we would see the appleTV Television with integrated iSight camera at this product announcement. Since it didn't happen, and only other things which we already knew (5c, 5s, finger scanner, faster processors, updated camera) there wasn't a lot of room for surprise.

The only surprise I saw was the dual colored led flash. Everything else I seemed to have already heard about and seen leaks on the Internet for several weeks if not months.

If apple wants to keep surprising us, they need to close the loop on their leaks, or show us products sooner to be the first to introduce it to us, instead of the rumor mill.

Comment Easy Fix (Score 1) 358

When a game starts, it wants the entire desktop, it doesn't want the other desktop elements at all, no dock, no icons, interaction, etc.

Why isn't there a function to create a new virtual desktop at any resolution you want and leave the other desktop untouched? So when you switch between them it knows to switch resolutions as well. Have the resolution tag part of the desktop, so when you switch between them it knows what to switch to.

Seems like an easy fix.

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