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Comment Re:trump voter (Score 1) 91

I'm already a fucking idiot. Also, it is OK to fuck children as long as your donald j trump.

Does that deserve quoting against censor moderation? Or does it deserve Funny moderation? Too soon for kiddy porn jokes?

As it applies to the story, does the YOB even notice when he's being manipulated by a computer? Is there a generative AI built into his private soapbox or the cesspool formerly known as Twitter?

Need to start with a typing test if the YOB uses a keyboard? How many fingers does the YOB use? Or perhaps the YOB is using voice dictation? Sloppy pronunciation could certainly explain a lot of his online gibberish...

Comment Re: No [to whsat question?] (Score 1) 91

Supposed to be the obligatory joke thread? But no citation of Betteridge?

Me? I think it's a deep and complicated philosophic topic, but the relevant starting joke is "It's the poor craftsman who blames his tools" extended to "... but it's the bankrupt craftsman who doesn't use the tools that allow him to compete in the market in the real world." ChatGPT is such a tool for certain kinds of paid work, and just ignoring the tool isn't going to make it go away. (Though I also like the extension "...but it's the worst craftsman who doesn't know and want the best tool for each job at hand.")

There should also be a joke about "Know your enemy" around here. Citation of The Art of War called for? Or the more recent book Mastering AI by Jeremy Kahn, whose answer is very much "No because of my rose-colored glasses." Rather a shallow book overall and I'd still recommend A Thousand Brains by Jeff Hancock as the best AI book I've read over the last few years.

But back to the original story... I am inclined to agree with him, which is why I'm trying to limit my use of AI tools and also trying to consider how such tools affect my approach to solving problems. There is a strong temptation to just look at the result, test it sufficiently, and not think deeply enough about why it works. But even worse, when you do ask a GenAI to explain, the explanations it offers always seem quite plausible and believable, but they do not represent any "human understanding" of why.

The human-level epistemology of Mercier and Sperber are also relevant, which got me to look at all of the links to try to find any reference. Nothing I could find, but perhaps I should have been looking for some other authors who have done more recent work on the topic? Short version: Most of the time we do not think. You could say we act (and speak) stupidly, but it doesn't really rise to that level. Rather it is more like the way GenAI responds based on patterns that fit. For humans, it is the entire situation, not just a prompt, but we respond to the situation and most of our responses "work" well enough. If we are asked "Why?", then we are pretty good at explaining ourselves, but its basically confabulation and the explanation did not exist until after the fact. The Enigma of Reason says a lot about 'my-side' bias in the explanations, but that's predicated on normal intelligence. In some cases the broken brain just spews gibberish and obvious lies...

Comment Re:Advanced CB Operation 1077 (Score 1) 83

Better of the two jokes on the story, but it was such a rich target.

I once worked for a startup with a Harvard MBA in the CFO slot. Went bankrupt. But I'm not blaming the CFO. He was actually a nice guy. I think the main source of failure was the CTO, an Apple fanboi. Or should that be fanbois or fanboy? I don't speak the lingo.

Comment Kleptocracy versus idiocracy? (Score 2) 118

Your second link contradicts your description of the link. Minimal correction is "no criminal records", based on the content of the link. Was that your intention?

However, I'm not sure how much of a legal defense that really is. Since ICE is acting outside of the law, they can just create crimes and criminal records as needed. They don't want to bother on a wholesale level, but if a particular case becomes too problematic, then they'll do it. Of course I'm thinking of the Garcia case, where he was deported, became too visible, and so was returned to the US and charged with a bunch of trumped up crimes. But even American citizenship is no longer a defense if they can devise or fake any reason to "revoke" the target's citizenship. It's basically the same as stop and frisk. If they search long enough, the cops will find something to bust (or deport) you for.

But returning to the story, it's a matter of searching the cultures to find something objectionable. Since cultures are big and complicated, that's an easy thing to do. Especially when you despise all culture, even including your own.

Solutions? I think it's just a combination of "It's too late" and "We can't get there from here." Too late for America to claim leadership in any category except lies and "there" is any solution space better than the status quo problem space called "here". I know it won't help, but maybe I could install a retro rotary dialing app on my smartphone to remind me of "Truth, justice, and the American way" and days of yore? (But that was actually a wartime slogan, circa 1942. And everyone knows truth is the first casualty of war...) I want one with a Lily Tomlin theme, where her voice starts with "One ringy dingy" after the dialing sounds finish, and then her voice starts the conversation off with "You have reached the party to whom you are speaking."

Comment Re:Or how about this novel solution? (Score 1) 61

I couldn't understand this the first time I saw it, but now I think I understand and concur, though I don't got that far. I can see notifications of incoming priority Gmail, but the rest of it is out of sight and mind until a daily check. And I time it at the end of the day when I'm probably going to ignore it for lack of time...

Additional thoughts on the email book since I posted that comment... Comparing other forms of intrusive communications, including the notifications from Slashdot. Also remembering how much of my working time (in most mornings) was filled with email of small importance.

New even more retro thought: How about a rotary phone dialing app? You got me to check and it turns out there are a number of them. When it says "customizable themes and sounds" I wonder if it has a Lily Tomlin mode. (Glad to see she's still alive.) So the phone would make the dialing sounds followed by "One ringy dingy, two ringy..." and then a short joke you can both hear: "You have reached the party to whom you are speaking." Of course using her voice.

Comment How many poisoned spam files did you get today? (Score 1) 26

Earlier I noticed two spams that had bypassed the evil google's so-called spam filters.

Relevant per The Hacker and the State by Ben Buchanan. That sort of poison file is a primary tool for state-supported hackers targeting various organizations like this nuclear weapons agency. Of course when they go after an important target they are using retail-level spear phishing rather than the wholesale-level phishing that I'm seeing. I believe the targeted spear phishing is rather more likely to bypass the spam filters.

But the key question is whether a particular poison attachment is targeting a vulnerability that is unpatched or perhaps even still unpatchable within the target's computer. Just a click away from being breached?

Every day. For ever and ever. Have a nice day and don't let the bad clicks bite.

Comment Re:But, but!! (Score 1) 73

"Yep, so much Californian money goes to supporting the inefficient red states. It's little wonder."

Seriously? That's your "go to"?

Just... wow.

CA is exhausted as being the 5th largest economy in the world if it were it's own country, yet we have the highest taxes in virtually every single catagory, among the highest unemployment, poverty, homelessness, lowest ranked student performance (most high schools in CA are opting out of the federal standard tests now) -- virtually every category such a "wealthy" state should do well.

Shall we talk about how CA went from bragging about surpluses to huge deficits at the drop of a hat? While bringing in record breaking state revenue? All these problems are NOT due to federal taxes but California's poor management and apathetic electorate. And, "oh". Federal taxes are collected from the people of CA -- not what CA deigns to provide to the fed.

BTW, I'm not a republican -- and I'm a "never trumper" (proud to have had the opportunity to *NOT* vote for him 6 times (3 primaries and 3 national elections).

Jeez...

Comment Re:I don't like the phrase 'Conspiracy Theory' (Score 1) 158

Nope, conspiracies don't ever happen.

The 9/11 hijackers did not plan their actions in advance. Just by sheer coincidence, 19 people just happened to be taking those four plane flights. And by coincidence (no coordination) they all got the same spontaneous idea at the same time, an idea they had never spoken about before: let's hijack the plane and crash it.

Crazy people babble on about "evidence" like people taking flight lessons, sharing vehicles, etc. but we know those things cannot possibly be true, because conspiracies are not real.

If you have a hypothesis of x and then find lots of supporting evidence for x and it becomes the prevailing explanation, that creates a theory of x, but there's one exception: when x is a conspiracy. Conspiracies are a special case, because they don't really happen.

Comment Re:But, but!! (Score 1) 73

That's been going on for ages. Used to be able to hit some of the sketchy parks and buy $100 worth of food stamps for $40. Buyer gets a huge savings on this weeks groceries and the addict gets another 2ish weeks of feeding their addiction.

EBT ATM cards kind of killed that market. Now they get full value on wasting their benefits.

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