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Comment Re:Correct. And oh, no. (Score 1) 50

We now live in a fully connected world where most users are connected through web browsers and are the intended victims.

This particular story is an exception to that. Remote software, accessed through a web browser, normally does not have read/write access to your local filesystem. But people are granting local filesystem access to proprietary AI services.

I think that granting such access is .. wow. I wouldn't do it, though I can see how if you use a specialized account for it, and if you're confident that your OS has no local user priv escalation bugs, it might be ok. In your sandbox you trust.

But GP's comment is about whose decision that is. If you use Linux, then it's your decision. If you use iOS, then it's Apple's decision. And MacOS is becoming less Linuxy and more iOSy every year. I think it makes plenty of sense for stories like this to result in people dumping MacOS for Linux. (But daaamn, their values surprise me. You wanna make your computer less secure instead of more? Oh well, like Rumsfeld said, freedom is untidy!)

Comment Re:Elections are cheap (Score 1) 36

No, if the state were renamed, it would be to Old America. NM might not be the true original, but if you look at it through the eyes of European colonization and continuous governance, then New Mexico has the best claim of the fifty. (Though if you take a less racist view, then I guess Alaska had the real OGs.)

Comment Excessive fine under 8A? (Score 3, Insightful) 36

Randi McGinn, a lawyer for New Mexico, said applying the full $5,000 penalty to the number of violations would create too large of a penalty under the US Constitution's protections on due process.

I ass/u/me this refers to the Eighth Amendment, but I don't remember seeing any monetary constants encoded within that text.

Google's telling me Meta is worth about $1.8 trillion so how would a mere $40B be "excessive?" It's only about 2% of their worth! Civil penalties in excess of 2% of someone's worth are routinely accepted as constitutional, aren't they? If this case were about me driving drunk and killing a whole family, I bet no one would flinch at the 8A implications of taking 2% (!?!) of my assets, and everyone would laugh at my lawyer if he brought up 8A for such an insignificant fine.

I understand why we have 8A, and everyone deserves mercy, but I don't see why Meta deserves exceptional mercy as a singular special case that we would be horrified to see applied anywhere else. Bringing up 8A for such a tiny fine would be giving Meta a very unique carve-out that we normally would not apply.

It may be that $5k is too much to charge criminals per act, in that each crime didn't really cause that much loss, but bringing up due process concerns seems like bullshit when the fine is already so small. NM and Meta had been trying to negotiate the cost of illegal business for years before negotiations failed and it went to trial. Meta decided to let a jury decide, and the jury's come up with a fairly tiny fraction of their assets.

If Meta thinks the price of illegal business is still too high, then they can lower the number of willful violations they commit per year, to optimize the advantage they gain from illegal actions at an affordable rate.

Geez, Zuck, just do less of it. If $40B seems like a lot, then maybe try only $10B worth of crime next time. What's the big deal? Live and learn. After this little fine you still have 98% of the company left to go on and incur the next wave of liabilities.

Comment Re:Correct. And oh, no. (Score 3, Interesting) 50

FWIW, I have two user accounts for different purposes. I once had three, but I stopped doing that one. My main user account has read access to the specialized one, but that one doesn't have any access permissions to the main one. It can be a bit of a nuisance, but it feels (and should be) a lot safer.

Comment Correct. And oh, no. (Score 4, Interesting) 50

This looks like the final cell-phonification of the Mac. I'm bummed.

But they're right - if you assume that a significant fraction of Mac users are going to install some sort of third-party interface with an LLM, it is either significantly extend and harden the security perimeter deeper into the OS or your customers will routinely have everything exfiled as a matter of course, and it would just be cheaper to make iCloud into an anonymous FTP site.

And given Zuckerbook's demonstrated willingness to brazenly, actively subvert OSes, I'm willing to bet they're going to go Russian on their subjects, er, customers, anyway. ("You probe with bayonets: if you find mush, you push.")

It will probably be what finally pushes me to a Linux laptop, though. I'm old, I spend a lot of time at the shell. I like Macs because they're great unix workstations, still. But I don't see how you can accommodate both people like me and people who need to be protected not only from themselves, but from Zuckerbook and worse.

And they're a much bigger market than people like me. And "AI is the Footure."

Comment Re:8-12 sea level rise in the contiguous US (Score 1) 73

There's the average rise, and then there's the rise at any one location. The aren't the same. I've heard (one source) that the ocean level near Greenland is actually lower. This was attributed to the loss of ice leading to less gravitational attraction. And the straits of Magellan have fierce tides, because of differing ocean heights.

Comment Re:No surprises (Score 1) 70

burn down institutions that actually work; they are too stupid to understand how they work.

Khrushchev would love that our government is full of people who disagree with the principle of Chesterton's Fence. It's appalling that "conservatives" have become so far to the left of "The Left."

Vote conservative: vote Democrat.

Comment Re:"Major redesign" (Score 2) 157

A very slight rounding is useful, as it makes the distinction between one tab and another easier to spot. Currently on my Firefox it's done by highlighting the active tab and putting a small icon at the start of the tab...which also wastes space, but differentiates tabs. (OTOH, the tab labels are already slightly rounded, but the "not currently selected tabs" are so greyed out that the tab margins are invisible. Not ideal. And if they do the same thing with the rounded tabs, there will be absolutely no advantage.)

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