I think it's important to separate intelligence from consciousness.

I'm simply using dictionary definitions: https://www.google.com/search?q=definition+of+intelligence

See also: https://www.britannica.com/sci...

Your pocket calculator cannot identify information; it has a very limited ability to manipulate that information.

As we still have zero clue how general intelligence works, that is not even on the distant horizon and it is still completely unclear whether it is possible at all.

Intelligence is the ability to identify, store and use/manipulate information. Information itself however, is intangible. "Where is the sabre-tooth tiger lurking?" "How do I obtain food?" "How does the bird know how to build its nest?" - the answers to all these are information. How much does that information weigh? In its encoded form, from a stone tablet to a TCP packet, it can have weight. But the information itself? Intangible. Zero mass.

Then - consciousness. The ability to feel. Feelings are intangible as well. The experience of sensation is intangible. So combine feelings, which are intangible, with processing information, which is also intangible, and one gets an idea of the difficulty of understanding consciousness.

We could however make an intelligent machine, one that is somehow able to identify, store and use information to achieve some end. A conscious machine, one that can feel (and again, feelings are intangible) - that seems farther away. Feeling, that "motivates" or "drives" the use of information towards goals that produce positive feelings is far away. That would require the creation of an intelligent machine combined with a conscious machine, that can feel.

The processing of an intangible (information) driven by intangibles (feelings).

I think we're getting close to a system that can identify new information and can use prior experience to achieve a goal that is pre-programmed, but not driven by feelings. I'd call that an intelligent machine. We'd need to be careful about what goals we give it.

It's okay that the link didn't publish, because publishing implies 1) high quality data and 2) peer review by experts. I think that chart has obtained that by being in front of so many eyes, experts included. NPR published an article about criticisms of it.

Their criticisms are:
1) The bottom part of the chart, the current time, is based on observed data whereas the bulk of the chart is based on reconstructed data. The two are not comparable because reconstructions encompass averages over hundreds of years rather than individual yearly observations.
2) It is possible that if this period were in a hundred year group, it would be smoothed out.

However, if the climate predictions continue to be correct, they would not be smoothed out, instead the chart would move to a higher plateau.

Capitalism is the best economic system that humans have ever developed. However, to work effectively, competition is essential.

The tendency of organizations and companies to accrue power is a natural part of human societies, and capitalism. The ability of companies to amass and pay politicians and capture regulatory agencies ("regulatory capture") is a natural manifestation of that tendency. What's missing is there has been little pushback against that tactic.

My concern is that people do not give up power and wealth casually. And once you reach a tipping point, where enough power and wealth has been accrued and concentrated, the only way to fix it is via essentially a revolution sparked by some catastrophe.

If one doesn't have access to the data, and/or one does not understand the math being used, what option do we have? Look to unbiased experts who do have access to the data and do understand the math being used. I found this link from NASA showing several scientific associations' statements on global warming. They uniformly state that global warming is happening: https://climate.nasa.gov/scientific-consensus/

One has to admit however, that these activities are very profitable before they implode.

Privatize the profits, socialize the losses.

Believers in "artificial intelligence" miss the most worrisome part: even the people working in the field don't understand how the "artificial intelligence" algorithms are working, and what they actually understand.

There's even a field of study around trying to figure out what the AIs are doing, "Explainable AI": https://www.google.com/search?...

"Maybe he should regret being stupid?"

I was fortunate to discover ChatGPT's Authoritative Bullsht Mode (ABM) during a private conversation when I was pursuing personal interest information. That's why I would only use it in conjuction with a search engine (Google / Bing / DuckDuckGo).

The system is new. This guy unfortunately found out about Authoritative Bullsht Mode in a very public setting.

There are people to this day who do not understand that anyone can put content on the Web, and cite YouTube videos as authoritative. Smart, successful people, in my experience.

I hold people responsible for their intent and actions. This guy just got caught in an unexpected trap. The AI is amazing to talk to, and I can easily see someone becoming too credulous of it.

This was at a critical moment a few days ago, trying to scan documents to send them off. Suddenly, the scanner starts throwing an error and halts. I'm in a hurry so I run through the previous issues that caused this - nothing, they're all good. But this issue is not relenting so I start troubleshooting with the HP software. It coyly reports that maybe the problem is the ink is low. Then the troubleshooting program hangs. Checking the ink reveals they are low, but green checkmarks indicate they're okay. Then the lightbulb went off - it's probably the ink. HP has disabled the scanner in my printer because the ink is low, even though the device is reporting it's fine. There are news stories of them releasing bastard updates to get more ink money.

So, I had to run out to the store, drop a cool Benjamin on ink cartridges - going to change them all because I don't have time for this - and lo and behold, after changing all the ink cartridges - and no other changes - the scanner starts functioning again.

I HAD moved away from HP printers, but I'd let my guard down and purchased this one after several years. This was a good reminder.

I saw a malware incident. It was caused by a bad configuration change. It was cloud-hosted but managed by local staff. Another part of the network was again cloud hosted, but managed by a different group. It escaped untouched. Any security configuration changes should require review by some kind of committee. There is no magic bullet. Cloud-hosted solutions can get blown away too.

From the ACM Queue Magazine:

It seems zero trust might be best described as a strategy or approach, which is to say it's somewhat nebulous and hard to pin down. That, of course, makes it an absolute gift to those who market cybersecurity products and services.

Indeed, zero trust has been promoted with real gusto. The trade press commonly uses the word "hype" in reporting about zero trust and the efforts made to market it. Yet there are aspects of the approach that even critics readily agree are entirely sensible.

One thing seems certain: The jury is still out as to whether zero trust will ever manage to live up to all the marketing froth.

And another quote:

AV I share much of Rick's skepticism. Over the years, we've certainly seen plenty of new approaches to security, whether in the form of technologies or strategies. The introduction of malware sandboxes about 15 years ago as a new way to identify malware is one that comes to mind. Until then, we all used signature-based antivirus detection, which wasn't working so well. Then this new technology came out that proved to be a clear improvement. But it also was largely oversold as the solution to breaches and, accordingly, made billions of dollars for a few vendors. Now, it's nothing more than table stakes for most organizations, and it never actually managed to solve the problem. It helped in some cases, but then the attackers evolved.

It could be argued that zero trust is a bit different in that it's a strategy rather than a tactical countermeasure. But we don't know yet whether it's going to live up to the hype, and red team exercises will likely be one of the best ways to evaluate its effectiveness.

From: The Arrival of Zero Trust: What Does it Mean? A discussion with Michael Loftus, Andrew Vezina, Rick Doten, and Atefeh Mashatan

It used to be that enterprise cybersecurity was all castle and moat. First, secure the perimeter and then, in terms of what went on inside that, "Trust, but verify."

The perimeter, of course, was the corporate network. But what does that even mean at this point? With most employees now working from home at least some of the time—often on their own smartphones or laptops—and organizations relying increasingly on cloud computing, there's no such thing as a single, enterprise-wide perimeter anymore.

And, with corporate security breaches having become a regular news item over the past two decades, trust has essentially evaporated as well.

John Kindervag, who articulated the zero trust enterprise defense strategy a little over a decade ago, explained: "The concept is framed around the principle that no network, user, packet, interface, or device—whether internal or external to the (corporate) network—should be trusted. Some people think zero trust is about making a system trusted, but it really involves eliminating the concept of trust from cybersecurity strategy."

Easier said than done, naturally. Still, how well is that effort going? We asked Atefeh Mashatan, the founder and director of the Cybersecurity Research Lab at Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU), to explore that with three enterprise security professionals of long standing: Andrew Vezina, the CISO at Equitable (EQ) Bank; Rick Doten, the VP of information security at Centene Corporation, as well as CISO of Carolina Complete Health; and Michael Loftus, an IT consultant with considerable corporate security experience.

People should not think Zero Trust is a concrete set of action items.

In Vietnam, there was a strategy called "Search and Destroy". Michael Herr, who wrote "Dispatches", said "Search and destroy was a state of mind rather than an actual strategy."

I don't know if that applies to Zero Trust, but caveat emptor.

I disagree. I believe it does not work like this at all, i.e. I do not believe that dumb people actually fall for fakes. I believe they fall for their own big ego in combination with no fact-checking ability at all. Also, smart people will keep fact-checking and all fakes get exposed sooner or later. So smart people learn and adapt. Dumb people just stay trapped in their parallel world construction.

I saw a headline that fit my expectations. I discussed that issue with someone else. We delved into the headline at which point I realized it was false. I would not have otherwise determined it was false unless I'd argued it with that person. I now look at all headlines from that media outlet with suspicion - false until proven true, by reading the article - because they made me look like a dumbass (BTW, I test well enough to belong to a high IQ club so I'm arguably not a complete dumbass).

I don't think people are going to voluntarily fact-check headlines and deepfakes that fit with their pre-conceived notions. They would have to be challenged. How that plays out, I'm not sure, but it will help in polarizing the populace.

There was an NBC News report on Elizabeth Warren saying Republican voters had to be suppressed. There was a separate report on Ron DeSantis saying leadership was about fooling the voters. Both are deepfakes. The political season is going to get interesting. When you have people who would invade Comet Ping Pong Pizza with an AR in search of a pedophile ring because they take Alex Jones seriously, imagine what this is going to do.

If these clowns try to keep Rust for themselves and decide how the little people can use it - even if for now it's just the name - the the little people will just give them the finger and feck off back to C++, C#, java or even Python.

Java now requires licensing from Oracle. They started that only back in 2019.

Gotta wonder what kinds of protections for Rust there will be from this sort of thing.