Mod parent funnier. But the story had room for more than one Funny comment, so as usual I'm disappointed...

Also rather funny was the book Chaos Monkeys about the internals of the process. Interesting self-contradictions as he flips back and forth between abusing personal information he gathers online, trying to reassure readers that the personal information is used "safely", and the financial shenanigans driving the whole mess forward. There are times when you can try to evade accusations of self-contradictions by saying you've learned stuff and changed your mind, but it's much harder for an author who is writing a book. The state of the book at the time of publication is basically a frozen thing and the contradictions should have been resolved.

But the joke I was looking for was about who elected (and will elect) whom in these days of applied psychology destroying human freedom and the meaning of elections. In the form of a mystery novel the detective sometimes starts by asking "Who benefited?" (Certainly not Europe. Too soon to say China?)

And yet my mind is still boggled by the idea that there are people who voted for the YOB six times, counting primaries. Fool me one is supposed to be a mistake, twice is a shame, but six times?

Thanks for the tips. At first I thought you were referring to the 2023 book by Connie Willis. My local library system actually has two copies of that one and I'm going to take a look at it. (The library seems to think she's named Willis Connie?) Because of the date, it might be linked to the older movie?

I'm pretty sure there was also an old English book with a similar title, too, but your Wikipedia link is actually about a movie from Korea and I couldn't find any book reference there. Haven't seen the movie and unlikely to (though I recently saw a few minutes of a recent Men in Black film on TV). I don't see many movies these decades.

That's supposed to be the perfect state for Buddhist meditation and the path to true zen.

(But what's AC's excuse for possibly living that way? Or just another AI sock puppet?)

(And of course I'm reading another book on the topic. Oh wait, I see there are two of them. Maybe three?)

So you don't believe Epstein was an alien, eh? No one's told you about the REAL conspiracy?

I think you should have been modified Funny rather than insightful. Even funnier with some tail-wagging-dog angle about the let's-not-call-it a war in Iran.

Got me to look at AC. Unthanks, even if there might have been an atom of substance in there somewhere. Feeding the sock puppets and trolls is one of those tricks that never works.

(Like solutions that will never happen because Slashdot lacks a financial model that can support improvements, be they ever so evolutionary. Increasingly clear to me that part of the website I am looking for would involve a different kind of financial model... Slashdot is just one of those ancient portable nuisance things?)

Now to look for the obvious joke about the distractive motivation...

How do you complain about dupe without saying dupe (or duplicate)? Citing FP and this thread. But at least FP got a Funny, even if'n I can't understand why.

But is it possible that some serious topics will evolve and develop in ways that justify discussions that extend longer than the one-day lifetime of a Slashdot story? Naw, that can't possibly be it.

Of course I shall now diverge. This time I'm wondering about the source of this vulnerability. So far I haven't spotted any insight into causes here on ye ancient Slashdot of olde. And I think I'd be at risk of a heart attack if I saw something that might be a constructive solution here.

So what's the Subject about? I'm wondering how many of the recent vulnerabilities were discovered with AI tools, perhaps virtually flying swarms of virtual chaos monkeys over and through the code and systems.

(You'll probably be relieved to know that there is no real relationship to the book Chaos Monkeys by Antonio Martinez, where the term is just used to justify a cute drawing of a monkey on the cover. That and the eye-catching orange cover must explain the claim of "bestseller" since the real pitch should be "Facebook" which is barely mentioned on the back cover. Mostly reading it for the yuks and yucks.)

"the problem is not the AI, but data leaving the device."

I give you MS Recall.

"It doesn't leave the device!"

But it is available for any other process to send it off device.

if you think google isn't main-lining AI usage in Chrome, even local, you're delusional.

In Chrome, Settings->System then toggle off the Local AI option and it won't be reinstalled.

At least on Windows. I'm wondering if the file is on Android Chrome as well....

I have done none of those things and it was still on my machine.

So I now see that I was mistaken to think I was mistaken and therefore mistaken in thanking you [Mean Variance]. The spelling error came from the "reply" that already earned the NAK.

Thanks for calling the typo to my attention. Seems to be the sort that should have been caught by the spelling checker, so either I was in a flippant mood or a hurry.

Curious that Slashdot didn't call this discussion to my attention. Only comment I saw was the one that I gave the NAK to.

However other replies don't merit much more of a substantive response. Obviously I was treating the distribution of intelligence as normal and it appears that Slashdot has become an abnormal environment. Along with most of the Internet?

Perhaps another memory glitch, but I think there was a time when that could have earned a Funny mod.

Mod parent funny.

Also funny that I don't really blame the google for going all EVIL on us? If the once-proud google doesn't grow like a cancer then they will get eaten by a bigger and meaner corporate cancer. Small honest profits are no excuse and no defense against a suitably leveraged buyout.

yeah, I think I had an original Pixel, 3a, 6a and now 8pro. Won't say I run them into the ground, but long enough that a multi version upgrade is down to under 400 bucks.

and a rugged case always b/c dropsie's