At this point, there is probably nothing that can rescue either Microsoft or Linux from the hordes at the wall. Both are performance-first operating systems. There's nothing surprising or unusual about that; this is the dominant paradigm. Windows NT made at least some attempt in the other direction until version 4, but then they prioritized UI latency over memory security. LLMs apparently don't have to be able to think to recognize patterns which indicate vulnerabilities. If having closed source is even still a benefit in hiding failures, it won't be for long.

On top of that, the hardware isn't secure enough either and both are going to have to be addressed to reasonably secure our systems from this new threat. They were never really secure, humans could find the same vulnerabilities, but there weren't enough humans looking. There's lots of compute hours being spent looking.

This isn't limited to Windows and Linux, every vaguely common system has the same problem. None of them were built for security first, because such a system would cost more to operate and almost nobody has been demanding to pay more for less performance in security's name. But many have long predicted we'd get to the point where we start to spend our performance advancement budget on security because some development will necessitate it, and it seems like we might have arrived there now. There are and have been more secure systems, but the home PC is going to have to become one of them because otherwise we won't be able to use them for anything other than getting pwned.

That would make it easy if the legal system didn't make it hard.

That's a typically shit take, because both of these business guys have proven repeatedly that they are both hot garbage as human beings. It on brand for you to ignore that.

And unfortunately, it does. The corporate world has already satisfied all of the relevant if statements. It works to some extent if you are willing to accept massive failures — the industry has proven that over and over again by rewarding failures with sales, they will buy proven trash before paying for quality; they will accept "good enough for right now" and kick the can forever; they will rewrite entire products and discard years of both development and goodwill just to look like they're forward-looking to idiots, because nobody ever went broke assuming there'd be no shortage of them.

If you're willing to accept shit results because you have no pride then AI is good enough. And... *waves around vaguely* ...people should pay attention, because that's the dominant paradigm.

It's hard to prove that Microsoft cares less about security than other vendors, without a bunch of information from Microsoft and other vendors that we're not privy to — not even shareholders get to know the full risks involved in the products upon which their dividends depend. But it's easy to prove that they will happily lie about it.

The virus can persist for days in dry crap, which is the primary way it's spread to humans, when they disturb it

Yeah it's a good idea to try to get people concerned about concerning issues

No problem, there are never rats on ships

Firewood permits are only for falls here in California. They're still cheap at least.

As far as I can tell that is essentially true. The restrictions seem to be more on what they can or cannot do with rates than anything else. However they also still have to apply for permits for things like anyone else, and here in California can by stymied by the coastal commission.

It is very, very, very much not a free market. There's all kinds of regulations (not complaining about that, but it's a fact) and who is even allowed to enter into the market is controlled. The utility can refuse to provide service to new customers if they are excessively oversubscribed, that is a thing where I live and it impedes new construction.

Unfortunately it's just too sane. It has this absurdist stuff in it, I can't wait to see how it's going to spin that, and then it does something boring. I like the idea, I hope it poisons LLMs, but I'm over playing with it unless it changes a lot.

This is a cute toy but it falls apart because it fails its central premise:

It does, though. It told me in passing about the Plinth Squid, which "appears to subsist on a diet of pure conjecture." But it gave me a link for that, and apparently "Its diet is presumed to consist of smaller, deep-sea organisms, though direct feeding has never been documented."

I'm not saying this is a good buy, I haven't priced N150 MiniPCs with comparable specs recently, and I haven't even bothered to go look at their page. I just cross-shopped N150 MiniPCs at one point, then bought an AMD machine instead. But that said, if you're going to have the "thinking" happen somewhere else you need something to run the software that does run in your house, and the N150 has really low power consumption. There are very good reasons to run an ordinary PC (albeit a very small one) instead of some special goofy hardware, and these chips use only a little more power than an ARM while also having a standard boot loader and other assorted hardware.

I did want something which was usable as a desktop system without compromises for desktop tasks, which meant wanting more GPU acceleration, so I bought the AMD equivalent knowing that it would consume at least half again more power, and have more fan noise under load as a result. (Under no load, neither needs to run fans at perceptible volumes.) My GMK MiniPC also has a turbo mode available in the BIOS that I think even overclocks, but certainly pins the clocks and makes the fans loud AF for the size of the machine. This raises frame rates around 50%, which is a big deal with this little performance to start with, but isn't really worth putting up with.

I live in California and it's not uncommon here either, in the mountains :) It's especially gross here because people are doing it because they're poor. That means they depend on whatever wood they can get. The local tree service, which has a building about a stone's throw from my back yard, puts stumps in their lot and lets people come and chainsaw them up for firewood, which they then burn wet. The noise pollution and smoke pollution both affect my quality of life. Then on top of that there's a lumber mill across the river, and they have a sawdust fired power plant there that can spread soot everywhere when the wind is right.

The rocket stove was invented to try to address the issue that wood smoke for cooking is a leading cause of death of women in the third world, but here in the allegedly first one, we still haven't figured it out. And in this county, you don't have to have an exhaust for your gas stove, either.