The cops had it. They SHOULD have looked at it because only a complete moron goes charging in with guns without doing what they can to verify that there even is a problem. They had the key to that right there in their hands. They could have looked at the picture and understood that there never was a gun there. They hassled that kid and even endangered him (since THEY had guns and had their fingers poised on the panic button so to speak). The greatest danger to the school at that moment was panicky unthinking armed cops.

And yes, the cops depend on trust. That's what keeps a whole neighborhood from saying "I didn't see nothing!" and slamming the door in their faces. That's what makes people give them a call when they know something relevant. The last thing the police need is whole neighborhoods assuming the person they're after is an innocent victim.

My employers recently signed up for a ChatGPT account and I've been seeing how it can help me.

I remain responsible for the big picture, for actually making apps that work on iOS and Android. I've found ChatGPT helpful for refining details. It saves sifting through years worth of Stack Overflow postings. It's a handy tool, but it won't replace me any time soon.

If you say "Chat GPT" in French it sounds like "chat j'ai pété" ("cat I farted"). I guess I need to get out more...

...laura

And of course the massive cost of training the AI that they'll be wanting to recoup.

Only in the sense that the possibility of an active shooter cannot be fully eliminated anywhere or any time. Might as well go door to door in the whole town expecting an active shooter. They had no report of shots fired, they had a report of a suspected gun on the campus. They had a picture of the kid holding a bag of doritos mis-identified as a gun.

The police cannot be effective if they are universally mis-trusted. Might as well disband at that point.

They had the picture with them when they went to arrest the kid. There was no active threat. Even a glance at the photo would have revealed the truth. Then there's the bonus of not having yet another law abiding citizen one day instructing his children "Don't EVER trust the cops".

Apparently the best adjective to describe current police operations is "Keystone".

How will it stack up against an actual junior when they start at least trying to break even on the cost? Those megawatts aren't free.

Or just have the leader of the squad that's about to go threaten a kid over a bag of Doritos give the photo a look first. It pays for itself by leaving the squad free to pursue something more relevant and worthwhile. The 30 seconds it would take to look at the picture isn't even enough time to get to their cars.

Sure, but that's beyond dumb. Any moron knows the difference between a hand with a finger extended holding a bag or Doritos and a gun.

As punishment, they should be required to report to the front of the cafeteria and be paddled by the student in front of the entire student body.

The local news can make a day of it.

Today it works, tomorrow it's outdated and bit rotten. Next week it'll cost $2000 to replace it because automotive parts have crazy mark-ups (the replacement will also be bit-roten because the manufacturer lost interest).

So get a second phone/infotainment unit and keep it mounted in the car and connected by USB. Replacing that will be a lot cheaper than replacing current built in infotainment units.

Before flash was even practical, computers kept BIOS on true ROM and used a small persistent storage commonly called CMOS for configuration. It could be a pain because the button battery that maintained it could die.

These days, you could use a small flash for configuration and a larger one with write disabled in hardware for the boot code.

On the other hand, by far the greatest threat to your laptop is someone wanting to steal it outright and sell it off. They're not going to bother with anything on it, just blow it away with a bootleg copy of Windows and call it a day.

The people looking to profit from information on your laptop will do it from half a world away while you are using it.

This can be used to regain access to laptop you won that has been hijacked by DRM you don't want. Since it requires physical possession of the laptop, it doesn't pose much risk to the end user.

I just disable secure boot. If the device leaves my control long enough for someone to do something with it, it has to be treated as potentially compromised with or without secure boot. Why create an additional recovery roadblock for myself? Security is a funny thing if you think about it carefully enough.

Always lock your car so when someone steals your $5 flashlight they also break your $500 window. Always install security lights so criminals can see what they're doing when they break in.

So the faster we help them develop, the slower the world population climbs.

Let's face it, many evangelical Christians have voted for an administration that would instantly deport Jesus to El Salvador if he appeared today.