Seriously, root is needed for software installation and updates (and not always even that) and that should be IT. Done. finito.

Yeah, individuals may have root access (but in corporate situations, even THAT has some limits to it - e.g., I can't see the that the 'spyware' I know is on my work machine actually exists. I know it does (because, for example, it is blocking me from screen-sharing to my AppleTV even off the firewall)).

But on a shared machine like old-school Unix minicomputers, that stuff is off-limits except to admins. This actually proves why that was the case - individual users can't be trusted with 'root'. And now we know that extends to non-sentient 'users'.

So this may prove that the bots are going to abuse their powers and therefore shouldn't be given any...but it also proves that the admins of these boxes that the bots are running on have about as much concern for real security as they ever did...which is to say, next to none until the exploitation is already out there.

This is a task that only required standard 'user' access - get the original software, get the dev tools needed for the new language, and have the tools for running the original to check parity), and that's it. They needed nothing more. They didn't need root, they didn't need email, they didn't need the ability to write commits to the others' repos. They needed the tools to do the job, nothing more.

Just like real users.

From what I can see from reading TFA, Europe has not one, but two problems, both climate related. One, of course, is the heat. The other, that nobody here is talking about, is a massive drought. I'll bet that we're reading about crop failures and famines later this year.

"NOAA" sounds like a Biblical character, the kind that would build an ark to save the believers when the global deluge hits. So it should be right up the MAGA alley. Then again, how would the deluge come about if you don't believe in global warming?

Maybe they could call it 20 minutes into the future" .

Freenet is also based on middle-out compression.

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.

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.

From what I've heard, viola players often die young, so they never have time to develop Alzheimer's. Their main cause of death seems to be violins.

Scheduling and file management — apparently, kids these days need a heavy AI box for basic computing tasks we've been doing for over half a century. I keep seeing quite a lot of "AI solutions" to other basic automation tasks, probably because the typical Windows/Mac user has no idea how to automate things beyond interactive clicking.

This is Microsoft so it's more like Suxxxmaxxxing.

How about copyright strikes on neighbours and car drivers that play music loud enough for me to hear it? I'd be happy with that, and the necessary technology has been around for much longer (a couple of decades for musical pattern recognition).

...to make new factories.

Like imagine if it were possible to create new semiconductor factories, making chips en masse, -- you could perhaps do it in a BIIIG state with a lot of land. You could have a factory with like 100 million square feet. Wouldn't that be something?

Maybe we should have more factories.

If only there were a price incentive to do so.

indeed. this is more akin to the more abusive ideas proposed for the PATRIOT act but not implemented. In what we got, they could ask the phone companies and 'cloud' (we didn't call it that at the time) companies for all the info on a specific person without a specific warrant on the person themself. And yeah that was bad enough to be sure, especially because the company that turned over the data didn't have to tell you they did it (all part of trying to catch them without them knowing they're being caught, of course).

This 'dump' is more a case of "we can ask for EVERYTHING on your servers"...without telling anybody that their data was included.

I got a 'cold call' from what was actually a legit AI bot just a week ago (from a financial services company serving the loan for some home improvements).

stupid thing never understood "let me talk to a human" no matter how many times i tried.

it was legit, but i just gave up, hung up, called the same number back, and hitting the '0' operator, got a human who handled the situation in a matter of minutes, no frustration involved.

The key thing is the bot cold-called ME but wouldn't provide ANY verifying information that it was what it claimed to be. They have an account # for me, but they wouldn't tell ME it to confirm they were who they were and my account was what they expected to see. Not even something like "last 4 digits".

I mean, they ask US for last 4 digits of something but they won't do the same for us in return?

THIS IS A DAMN PROBLEM, because yeah, we need to have a way to trust that bot-calls from AI are who they say they are, because it is REALLY F'ING EASY to program a bot to do the psychic equiv of a 'cold read' as part of social engineering a scam.