Local access can be very tough to beat from a security standpoint. Air gapping solves your network access problem, but we're talking about an edge case for sitting down at the console and doing bad things. Mostly we're concerned about network access because that's where the action is, unless you have a special case in which case you're working hard.

"The only defense is secure software engineering"

There is no 'only' defense. Indeed, programming skill and attention to detail will, by itself, fail. The reality of Internet, computer, and software security is that it requires significant and continuous research and testing, not just programming skill and code quality. And it starts at the hardware level.

And, in closing, I predict we will never achieve mostly total security. Too many risks, too many bad actors. We will, perhaps, raise the bar so that the bad actors will require resources beyond the reach of even dedicated individuals. What's that saying, there's always someone faster than you on the road...

AI allows drawing conclusions from mass movement information, it is beyond just someone's location, it would allow predicting market moves based on movement of groups of people.

This is not just about following any one person, this is about information movement, following a group of people who work on the same project for example to understand when they are going towards the same site / goal. This is beyond dangerous.

Me too. Made an opening source door library and a couple of applications like ANSI colours supporting chat as an example of it, even started developing an open source BBS software, but at some point everyone moved to www, so that project was never finished.

Rewriting legacy code in itself makes sense if the idea is to extend and improve the project, add new features, increase functionality. For this purpose, however, you need a person with access to all of the documentation and understanding of why the code exists, not a person who can ask an LLM to rewrite the code simply by using the existing code base as the documentation base. Before rewriting the code what needs to be done is documentation needs to be created (if it doesn't exist) and business requirements need to be collected, basically normal business analysis and product management, once you have that you can hand it over to a developer.

Starting with a developer is probably a recipe for failure in this case.

- lets just make sure we get behind it during the other 99.9% of the time..

I am against government involvement in any construction or any planning of infrastructure whatsoever. I am against government as a general principle. People taking care of themselves is the basis for all humam civilization in the first place.

I loved that book but it was a thick one and a long time ago, so I don't remember that specifically. But I believe you.

I am reminded of Ted K's writings - specifically on the enablement-virtuous-cycle between tech level, state control, authortarianism, etc.

The replacement of uniform broadcast media with "decentralized" culture and media has thrown a wrench in things. The tech we had in the 50s-80s enabed one form of mass control. The changing tech broke those specific mechanisms, but the System responded.

The fight over control of twitter was actually like trying to re-litigate WW1 The dying princes of the dying imperial system were all trying to install their preferred ruler; not realizing that decentralization had already won.

People will occupy twitter if they can, but holding that territory was already non-essential by the time it changed hands.

The system response has certainly not let go of trying to reclaim overt control over all top-100 information warfare tiles on the board, but has invested in subterfuge and compartmentalization as well.

If the system cannot control a single monoculture, it is also happy to have significant influence over 100 microcultures that are functionally disjoint with non-porous boundaries.

Ted K would say that America has become functionally ungovernable. I agree. We have much evidence of being a failed state. Now, if you shut off the internet and the news, and just went about your life, you might not see any evidence of it. But we are sort of like an observer on the ground, watching a plane fly overhead at FL350. The plane's engines are out because it is out of gas. From the ground, to us, it looks fine. It looks like every other plane. It will stay up there, really high, for a good long while. It will have passed out of our view by the time it has lost enough altitude to notice.

But the plane is doomed. The people onboard know. The people with the right sensors know.

America is like that plane. It is going to fall out of the sky. But most observers don't know that yet.

Internet censorship won't restart the engines. That doesn't mean they won't keep trying anyway.

Let me guess: "This, Jen, is the Internet".

Wait, you believe that government builds sewer pipes, gas systems, plumbing, roads? All of these things were and are built by private companies and should be built by private companies, not governments. Nothing should be done or built by governments, there shouldn't be any government employees, all government employees should be fired, all government regulation need to be abolished. People will rebuild everything, there shouldn't be even such things as government enforced zoning laws.

Tivo broke Civilization.

The olds will remember.

In the early 80s, every American watched the same TV programs at the same time. LIve, broadcast TV. It was the national American culture. Everyone at work and at school the next morning talked about their shared experience and varying reactions to the BroadCast that The Party had shown them the prior night.

Cable TV - by offering a few more channels - had _some_ impact on the "breakup" of America.

But it was Tivo - mass-scale consumer time shifting. Americans no longer watched all the same propaganda at the same time.

The monoculture started to crack.

The rest of it is downstream from there. The bigs tried to retain their control of culture and opinion, but it became too fragmented and too decentralized. They couldn't.

Nobody is mad about the internet. They are mad they don't control the internet.

Ah, so the republican voters will happily pay additional taxes to service the record debt the orange shitgibbon created? Nice.

Nobody should be working for any government, givernment jobs should be stigmatized, people working for government should be stigmatized, gobernments shouldn't have employees. People working for governments should be scared that other normal people will find out.