If you have to feed the sock puppets, do you have to propagate the vacuous Subject? What was your main point again?

I want my main point to focus on a little anecdote about breaking google security using the WiFi linkage. I sure hope I'm not publicizing a little known attack vector, but...

My phone has metered 5G data so I use a lot of public Wi-Fi when I'm traveling. Separate problem that a large fraction of that data is for ads that I never wanted and merely ignore. I basically regard public Wi-Fi as untrustworthy no matter what it says about the connection status, but that's a no-brainer that comes free with all the disclaimers when you connect. However I tend to trust municipal Wi-Fi networks more since they are supposed to be into public service.

So a couple of months ago I was in a different area and decided to connect to a municipal Wi-Fi network. Wide variation in the login procedures is also a problem, but this particular network seemed to offer Google account linkage as an easy alternative and I was in a bit of a hurry, so I tried that option.

Still not sure how it was done, but it wound up resetting my Google Account in the process. I sure hope it was just incompetence in a subcontractor because that's just par for most government courses these years. Several days of struggle to get the account back to normal--except for one Chromebook that is still in some kind of abnormal state. Probably yet another gaping security hole here, but the only advice I can get from the google is to give it a factory reset. With regards to the story, access to my phone number was a key in the reconstruction process, but still isn't helping with the sick Chromebook.

Per force I've spent a lot of time trying to understand what the google thinks security is about. Wasted time. I have no idea. However the dark hackers are strongly motivated to study this stuff in great detail, and they are masters of finding the weak links in various chains of security. Microsoft set yet another record for patches this month. And I'm sure it's purely coincidental, but local TV has been going down lists of all the major corporations that have announced breaches and exfiltration of piles of personal data.

Have a nice day? Only if you're a bad guy, it appears. And a lot of the blame should go to the google. No evil? In a flying pig's...

What's the price going to be tomorrow, after Big AI gets a government moat?

Fascist states tend to become highly obsessed with vitality and manhood. But wars haven't been won on muscle and bravado for a long time... things like logistics, intelligence, and combined arms are way more important.

Of course, fighting a religion or ideology is another matter. The military can only set you back there. You're better off using cultural weapons (good will, propaganda, trade/wealth, etc).

Small tidbit of good news to share on the Musk front. More and more Tesla owners are becoming ashamed of the brand and taking the hood logos off their cars. There are not that many of them around here, but they are fairly distinctive, so I had been noticing them, but recently I've been noticing the lack of hood ornaments. Have to get behind the car to see the brand, but that's often difficult because it's just indented letters in dark plastic back there.

Michael Lewis just did another book on why government shouldn't be run for profit. This one is called Blockers and I'm looking forward to reading it... (I've already read 14 of his books.)

Why limit it to 157? There is a CONSTANT flow of changes. I have no idea when they made the UI change in the default save folder that is a major inconvenience to some of my work that goes through Firefox. Except now I want to get Firefox out of it...

I think Mozilla is not understanding their own users and it goes back to a crazy business model. It sure seems they are trying to compete directly against profit-driven browsers, but Mozilla is supposed to be some sort of charity. The people who are still clinging to Firefox mostly don't want the latest bells and whistles or they would get on a different train.

Whenever I hear about a new Firefox version, my first reaction is annoyance. What new problems or bugs am I being exposed to?

But the bottom line reaction is worse: "I did not donate money for that", which is true, but kind of a feint. The correct form of the statement is: "If Mozilla had asked me to donate money for that feature, then I would have said no." But they never asked and therefore I believe I will never donate.

Actually, if they had a donation drive on the theme of "If we get x amount of money from donors, then this version of Firefox will be stable for 6 months", then I might consider helping them reach that goal. Ain't gonna happen.

Sadly good point.

Mostly I just wanted the excuse for the attempted Subjective joke, but...

Considering the secondary effects seemed to be the most interesting of the early comments, though it mostly made me wonder about Xi's take on the situation. On the one hand, Xi wants to keep the invasion option open just in case Taiwan tries to declare independence... On the second hand, kinetic military strikes on data centers is a bigger threat to countries with lots of data centers, which mostly means the US and China...

So back to the effects on spammers? I would think the big spammers would prefer to run independently rather than rely on any data center?

Well now I think you're claiming that advertising doesn't work to create demand, but I think that is the main function of most advertising these years. Especially in cases where the underlying good or service has little intrinsic value.

So from that perspective, I wonder how you decided the movie wasn't of interest to you. If you watch lots of movies, then it becomes interesting that you decided against seeing this one, whereas if you almost never watch movies (which is my situation) then it's a completely different thing.

A related question is whether you use Facebook, and if so, how much. I actually think it is probable that Zuck would consider it a bad thing if this movie was popular and that Facebook is a great tool to make that happen. In a worst case scenario, maybe you were manipulated to have a negative opinion without ever noticing how your strings were getting pulled.

What publicity I saw about the movie was mostly limited to an interview with Sorkin and some snippets. I thought what I saw was quite unpersuasive, and as much as I dislike all things Meta, I did not notice any developing interest in watching the movie.

Would have been a better FP than the AI thing. Yeah, I know I tend to tangents, but there's such a thing as too tangential...

Your brevity makes your intention unclear, so I better start by explaining how I'm reading it. I think you're saying the movie was too anticlimactic because we already knew this. Also you are indicating that you believe this is the main theme of the movie. Does that mean you've actually seen it?

My take is different, though I'm actually going to bring AI back into it, but hopefully with better justification. I'm coming from the perspective of marketing based on applied psychology. I think the same techniques that they use to persuade you to buy scented soaps and watch movies they recommend can be applied in reverse to deter you from buying scented soaps or from watching movies they prefer you don't see. I actually saw bits of an interview with Sorkin where he was asked about advertising the movie on Facebook, but I think whatever advertising he purchased could easily be countered by (AI-empowered) algorithmic counter-advertising. I actually believe Facebook has the capability to do it on a personalized basis, with two obvious angles of attack.

On the first angle, if someone has just seen an ad for the movie, then Facebook can respond by following that with some kind of diversionary content. I doubt they want to be so direct and clumsy as to attack the movie directly, so it would be something that is calculated to be of higher "engagement" to that particular person. This is a retail level of manipulation. The second angle is wholesale, but for now I've decided to leave that as an exercise for the interested reader. On today's Slashdot?

Disclaimer needed: Though I was an old user of Facebook with one of the original university-linked accounts, my feelings for the website went monotonically downhill over time. At some point, probably before 2020, I decided it was a waste of time and I deliberately limited my Facebook usage to five minutes per day, which was quite sufficient. Then in 2022 my Facebook account was targeted for destruction. Facebook declined to say why, though I still suspect that it was somehow politically motivated. Perhaps even a political assassination?

That was the angle I was looking for in the discussion. Whenever I think about Patel in charge, this ol' classic video comes to mind: https://youtu.be/MdnH6m054as?s... So now I'm wondering about whether this guy had the right political connections separate from the connections he may have had to the criminals...

On the other hand, it is true that the weakest link in any chain of security is likely to be a human being... However the way the FBI works now, I'm back to wondering if perhaps he was just the easiest human target for the blame? Without regard to his own politics.

Solving the problems? Perish such thoughts! It's just my twisted imagination that going after the spammers could reduce the volume of phishing garbage and make it easier to find and arrest the residual bad guys. Follow the money and stop it from reaching the crooks, and I still believe most of the professional crooks are rational enough to move along. No, I don't think any spammer is capable of becoming a decent human being, but at least they may become motivated to move under less visible rocks...