Comment Yeah. (Score 1) 37
Just don't leave the country after you participate.
For that matter, you may suffer remote retaliation even if you stay home. I would leave this to the military or other government branch.
Also there is the question of legality, government operation or not. It sounds to me like vigilante justice. And countries who like their anti-American cybercriminals will certainly treat it as illegal. (Hence the advice not to leave the country.)
We certainly need a way to stop cybercrime, international or otherwise. But this doesn't strike me as a good way to go about it.
Finally a prediction: in the not too distant future, one or more offshoots from this will turn into unmanageable domestic criminal organizations.
Comment Re:Don't let the door hit you on the way out (Score 1) 171
Mod parent funny. This was the joke I was looking for, but Slashdot only reports the top mod. (Though this one currently has no funny mods.)
Comment Second thought about solution? (Score 1) 103
New idea about how to fix the moderation on Slashdot! Use AI. Can't be worse than the current moderation system, but AI is so trendy that maybe the latest owners (whoever they are, or perhaps incorrectly assuming someone still owns this mess) will eagerly embrace the AI.
So the idea would be for an AImod (AI moderator) to scan the posts and suggest the most likely moderation. It could even be done as part of the preview process to give posters 'objective feedback' about how their comment sounds. Perhaps even including candidate locations where a comment might fit better into the discussion and an easy move option? But the AI mod points should be easily countered by humans (which becomes training feedback for the AImod).
Comment This is a job for SuperAI (Score 1) 103
Another obvious joke would have been from the "What could possibly go wrong?" angle.
My actual feelings are mixed, but that got me to think of another possible angle for humor. The problem is that I don't know much about the current or even recent generations of video games, so I can't name the names of the games NOT to recruit from. I'm pretty sure there are games that involve lots of mayhem and Captain Chaos, Master of Mayhem, is NOT someone I want in charge of anything involving a plane (or bus or bicycle) that I might be riding.
Meta-angle involves the recurring brain worm in the form of that song about "Where have all the <category of people> gone? Long time passing..." In the case of Slashdot, it's the humorists of yore. Hopefully they've found a website with a humor-encouraging moderation system and all I need is that URL to make me happy. Or at least more amused?
Comment Conversations (Score 1) 103
"How did you get hired?"
"I was top at Fortnite. You?"
"Combat flight sims."
"Damn, two Boeings just crashed over an oil refinery on city limits and took out half the city."
"Did you remember to save your position beforehand?"
"Yeah."
"The reload and continue from there. No-one will notice."
I love computer games. I have XPlane 12 and many scenery packs. I rank well on Elite:Dangerous. From the sounds of it, the FAA would see me as over-qualified. In reality? There's no way in hell I'd be taking those kinds of risks with real lives. There's a huge difference between having good reflexes and a good eye, versus having the complex 4D spacetime relationship mental models needed for robust air traffic control.
Comment Re:I don't understand why this is considered... (Score 1) 177
What exactly do they owe you?
The summary states that Reddit owes the OP a reason why the user was banned, as well as a complete, untruncated copy of the user's posting history.
Can you cite the law that says so?
The summary states that the relevant law is Article 17 of the EU's Digital Services Act.
Comment Re:Zoom Should Not Be Trusted (Score 2) 12
This is smart but harder than it needs to be.
Do we have a wrapper available that can let native Zoom launch and only have access to ~/.config/zoom and some USB input devices but not the rest of the machine?
Somehow building a custom MAC profile is expert-level stuff two decades on and not an end user's job.
An on-demand screen sharing permission popup should be achievable.
It's silly that a browser sandbox is better than any native sandbox available.
Perhaps such a tool readily exists and just needs to be mainstreamed into existing distros.
I know there was a Debian project a while back that aimed for all services to pass systemd strict security by default but nobody wanted to do the work.
That's the right mindset but separate from user apps.
Comment Atomic Structure (Score 1, Interesting) 21
There's some interesting stuff going on trying to understand more of the atomic structure beyond the current models.
The math on gluons has worked quite well but for some reason questions like, "OK, but what are gluons?" has been derided as "crank science" in Pergamon Press-gated Academia.
Such a diversion from Science from the beginning of Human history through the 1960's.
Structures like DeLay-Bendebury Fibers and other models of what's going on behind the math are happening outside of Academia where Physics PhD's are discarded and PhysEd BA's are celebrated.
Whichever model comes next will likely happen adjacent to the podcaster sphere and be reduced to useful engineering before Academics take a look at it.
There are plenty of good researchers working in institutions but for fundamental revisions at this point they all seem to need to leave Academia and go out on their own seeking private investment.
Which is fine except that we're all paying for the uninterested remainder. The great advancements that make our lives better always begin in fundamental science generating new models that better describe this reality. We don't get much from a jobs program for Mathematicians playing Physicists and it's very expensive.
It's quite strange that most people find the status quo completely acceptable and are willing to throw another $100B at a higher energy collider but are unwilling to grant base-layer investigations that are nearly free in comparison.
If we believe the former head of Skunkworks they've recruited the best and brightest since the 1970's and had made breakthroughs by the early 90's in at least topological physics. So we get to pay for that but aren't allowed to use it which is intolerable. But it's also understanble in a pre-Internet era where the only feasible choices were String Theory or black projects.
Comment Re:Silicone Valley (Score 2) 50
Freenet is also based on middle-out compression.
Comment Re:So i can just post 30TB and get it later? (Score 4, Informative) 50
No. Trying to push 30TB into Freenet will be interpreted as an attack on the network by other peers and they'll disconnect from your peer.
Freenet is better viewed as a communication medium than a storage medium. Data is prioritized according to demand, somewhat like an LRU cache. You can't upload 30TB and expect the network to preserve it for you.
On liability, running a Freenet peer is more like running network infrastructure that automatically routes and caches other people's traffic than intentionally publishing it. US law explicitly recognizes this distinction in the DMCA's provisions for transitory network communications and system caching. We discuss this in more detail in the FAQ.
Comment Re:Just a heads up, decentralized platforms... (Score 4, Informative) 50
You obviously haven't tried Freenet. You can join our room on River and you'll see no spam, no fraud, no hate speech, none of that.
Decentralized doesn't mean unmoderated. Systems built on Freenet can be moderated however their creators and communities want. River is moderated.
The difference is that nobody running one service gets to decide what everyone else is allowed to run.
Comment Re: More evidence we made the right decision (Score 1) 171
Sounds like a scenario for a low budget film that sets Star Trek in a David Elisson / Trump world. Maybe even find a way to craft that into an episode featuring an authoritarian dystopian world.
Sure it might result in some people getting fired, but there is a good chance theyâ(TM)d not be following the company out of state anyhow?
Comment Completely infeffective (Score 3, Insightful) 83
As any anti-vaxxer like Robert F. Kennedy, Jr will tell you, if it's not 100% effective then it's useless. This drop in Hepatitis C cases can in no way be attributed to an antiviral medication. In reality, it's just people's natural immune system becoming more effective.
Note: if you have to ask, yes it is.