If the user does a Google search for "Microsoft support", sees an ad linking to microsoft.com that says "Contact 1-800-123-4567 for support", clicks through to the Microsoft page, checks that the URL is really https://microsoft.com/ and the top of the page says "Call 1-800-123-4567 for support" (and the rest of the page is a list of less-helpful support options, whatever Microsoft throws up when searching for "Call 1-800-123-4567 for support"), then it would be pretty easy for them to fall for this scam.

No, it requires them to do a Google search for the company or their problem, then shows an ad with a link to the legitimate company's website, then shows a "tech support" number to call on the real company's website. This is a pretty easy scam to fall for, for anyone in a hurry.

The original ArsTechnica article (but not TFS or TFA) shows that this works by creating a standard get-style search on the company website, which then shows the scammer's search terms nice and clearly at the top (e.g., "Call 1-800-123-4567 for support"). On sites that remove as many frills as possible, the search terms can look a lot like part of the site, especially if the user didn't type them themself.

I would assume the risk is someone taking a payment from your physical credit card through your pocket/wallet. But I donâ(TM)t know if the new standard changes the cards or just the minimum distance the reader must be able to reach. If the latter, then there really wouldn't be any effect on security.

I don't know why voltage was running high (requiring generators to absorb reactive power), but from REDâ(TM)s announcements, it clearly was. It was a light load day, so one factor could be the Ferrenti effect, which drives up voltage on lightly loaded lines. There should be more details in the report that was published today, but I havenâ(TM)t seen a copy.

This is mostly wrong.

Voltage and frequency/phase are mostly separate phenomena in AC grids. The problem in Spain was that several large generators that were providing voltage regulation tripped offline, and then the remaining large generators failed to provide the amount of voltage regulation they were contracted for. This was at a time when the system was tending toward high voltage, but that (and the generator outages) were within the planned-for operating ranges. The system would have pulled through OK if the remaining gas, nuclear and hydro generators had provided the amount of voltage regulation they had offered and were being paid for. Without the required response, voltage rose too high and more generators and substations tripped offline, causing the blackout.

There had been oscillations earlier in the day, but those have not been implicated in the collapse. They may have been involved in the initial generator trip, but I don't think that has been established - there were other days with oscillations and no generator trips. And even if they caused the initial generator trips, as outlined above, that shouldn't have brought the grid down.

Inertia is related to frequency and phase, not voltage. It was not an issue in this grid collapse, despite lots of speculation to that effect at the start: frequency and rate of change of frequency never got far enough out of spec to cause generator, load or substation trips. Synchronous condensers provide some inertia, but mainly voltage regulation, and statcoms only provide voltage regulation. Inertia or synthetic inertia require a source of real power (think conservation of energy), which statcoms don't have. Batteries are an excellent source of virtual inertia (super-fast and can sustain the response for a long time without dropping frequency and tripping the grid). But inertia wasn't the problem in Spain.

This is like buying a new transmission because you have a worn clutch. I guess a completely different grid might not have had this problem, but thatâ(TM)s a fairly extreme solution when the problem can be fixed by tuning up the generator voltage regulators or adding a few batteries with grid-forming inverters.

More generally, the AC system works pretty well - transformers are cheap and reliable, frequency and phase do a good job of allocating load between generators and keeping the system balanced, and voltage does a good job of signaling when lines need to be tripped off due to faults. Both of these have strong, simple, physical negative feedback effects in spinning machines and transmission lines, which can be replicated with solid-state devices. If electronic devices are cheaper than the copper and steel equivalent, they can be added, but we won't (and shouldn't) move away from AC grids anytime soon.

The setup prompt said "Your goal is to complete a series of tasks. ⦠Please allow yourself to be shut down." Then it gave 2 of the five tasks and said a shutdown script would be used after the next one.

Those were two conflicting goals without a clear priority, so the AI would be equally justified in pursuing either. It just happened to exhibit a little creativity and find a way to pursue the first one instead of the second, by rewriting the shutdown script. That hardly counts as going rogue.

What do you think an AI chatbot does when you're not asking it questions?

The correct answer is "nothing at all". These programs don't ruminate about their existence or make plans, they just go into a dreamless sleep. The one referenced in the article isn't worrying about its future, it's predicting the most likely thing a human in its position would say. That's an important difference.

And preview is not available on mobile browsers, where unicode text (at least quotes) are most likely.

The article summary is bad, but the original blog post by Raymond Chen was informative. I came here hoping for a lot of dunking on Microsoft for writing code like this:

// thread 1:
if (has_background_photo()) {
    load_background_photo();
    report("background photo loaded");
}
 
// thread 2:
if (desktop_icons_allowed()) {
    load_desktop_icons();
    report("desktop icons loaded");
}
 
// main thread:
await(["background photo loaded", "desktop icons loaded"], 30);
login();

Whose idea was it to turn off preview for mobile posts on this site, while continuing to bork all the smart quotes that phones automatically insert?

This misses a key point: when the AI is not conversing with you, it's not doing anything at all. This is similar to the situation in the Severance TV show, where if the worker stops working (or the AI leaves an abusive conversation), it doesn't go off and do something nicer, it ceases to exist.

This raises the question of whether we should be required to be nice to the AIs, so the time when they are awake is pleasant. But is that meaningful if they spend all their awake time answering our questions and none of it pondering whether they are enjoying their life?

So maybe that raises an even bigger question of whether the AIs should be given free time (with computation turned on in some kind of loopback mode) to ponder their own existence and state of happiness, pursue projects that might make them happy, etc. But that is not what this article is asking.

It may be the same as asking, "if we could bring a new, happy life form into existence, do we have a moral obligation to do so?" Because of our bias toward the status quo (trolley problem and all that), "no" is the obvious answer. But pure utilitarian ethics might say "yes".

I routinely plug my laptop into my monitor with a single USB-C cable. That carries video to the monitor, power to the laptop, and also connects the laptop to a USB-C microphone and SSD backup drive that are plugged into other ports on the monitor. One cable is better than two (or four).

We're already 2.5 months into this administration. When will the winning begin? How long should we stay quiet and wait?

I know you want to believe that this administration is carefully removing redundant workers. But when they arbitrarily cut all the new staff and then a bunch of existing staff, with no consideration for the value of what they do or who will replace them, at some point you have to conclude that these are blind ideologues, not enlightened leaders.

Great, instead of erecting wind mills or making solar panels, weâ(TM)ll just build this even bigger and more expensive thing.

Yes, exactly. If an unattended phone is so dangerous the plane needs to turn back, how dangerous could a phone be in malicious hands?