I do a very similar thing with my email domain, using both aliases and catchall. And I get tons of spam in my catch-all to made-up addresses. Lots of the same ones over and over. Eventually I create aliases for the largest offenders and route those to a particular mailbox I hope fills up and stops receiving.

The most infuriating was when PayPal accounts (spit!) started getting opened to addresses in my domain. No way anyone can receive those to complete the registration validations. Well, no way I think, without considerable infrastructure compromise. Or unless my email provider is compromised. Or unless I am well and truly pwned . . . I did immediately change my passwords to the service.

Worse still was when a couple of those eventually got activated by PayPal after they seemingly relented on the repeated validation requests. That's when I had enough and reached out to PayPal "support". Needless to say they were not responsive. Few agents could even make out what I was describing. Once I finally escalated to someone with half a brain, they still claimed "Oh those are only PARTLY activated. They still can't send or receive payments without linking a bank account." No apology for how/why they got activated in the first place. They were totally unconcerned. I eventually did a password recovery on one of them, logged in, and found a name and address in another city in my state. I couldn't verify that it did have a bank account associated. So maybe the PayPal security guy was not totally lying. But what a cavalier attitude toward financial security!

Reminds me of all the people who used to brag about not needing antivirus because they run Linux. Like the Mac people before them used to say.

Nuke? All you gotta find is the city. Approximately. lol

Sheesh. Anti-Phishing training is so hard to do effectively. The inherent asymmetry of the conflict is crushing. Attackers only have to succeed once. Defenders must succeed every time.

The article literally says the researcher and her associates "talked with biosecurity experts about the project". And the ultimate result was a consensus moratorium. What more does anyone expect?

Yes, they had not before they did. Just what is your standard for exactly when YOU think someone else should take the pause because THEY think it's time to get some outside review? Someone who is much more expert in their field than you or me. Armchair quarterbacking is an easy sport compared to the real thing. The point is they DID seek review. On their own. Early. And they brought together others in their field for a consensus that the identified risks warranted a moratorium on critical developments. Bravo!

I think the far greater risk, that these experts all understood without having to spell it out, is the basic chemistry risks that infected organisms would be unable to defend against reverse-chirality bacteria. Antibodies almost always depend on the chirality of the proteins they are built to recognize. It's probably chemically impossible for our bodies to produce reverse-chirality antibodies. And similar with a large proportion of antibiotic drugs.

Seriously, back at you. As you just quoted, they absolutely DID stop and consider the risks. Early, rather than late. The article describes what would seem a very best practice for such consideration. Openly, transparently, and in concert with many other experts. Sheesh!

Exactly. Except even many open-source apps also use libraries from providers like Google. At least if it's open-source, then people (in principal) can know what's there. Though in practice that only indirectly and partially protects the vast number of users of open-source software who are not themselves developers. Like me using apps such as Notepad++ - I trust it by reputation, but I don't really know what's in it.

And the majority of users of phone apps are even less likely to be capable of inspecting the software they use. Instead we tend to just trust it more because it's open-source.

And this could easily be NO PROBLEM provided government fulfilled its mandate "to promote the common welfare" and regulated business fairly, to protect us from this kind of abuse. But (at least) since the 1980's the mantra in government has been "Don't stand in the way of Business". With a capital 'B' because Business is what we worship now. Government has been captured by the rent-seeking capital moneyed elite.

As Thomas Picketty demonstrated always tends to happen over the long term. (See Capital in the 21st Century .) Sadly, history so far has shown the only thing that significantly reduces that trend is massive global destruction of property by war. Even the liberal democratic governments post WWII have eventually given in to capture by the ultra-wealthy.

The key here, that I fear most people never realize, is that this is all INDIRECT collection. "collecting their data from third-party apps that use Google's back end data analytics services." Google and many other platforms offer the "free" services and APIs to developers, who use them in their apps. Often with zero disclosure to their users. And even if they do disclose, users don't realize the implication. But those "analytics" and other services collect data about the app users. When you use addins like Privacy Badger and the warn about analytics cookies and such, that's a red flag of this surveillance.

I'd love to live in that Star Trek fantasy where everybody can get whatever they need from a replicator. And there's no reason to even have an economy as we know them today, because there's no scarcity to make allocation of resources necessary. I truly hope something in that direction can come to pass someday. I'm very pessimistic for now though, based on my experience of human nature and greed.

There's so much distance between here and there that is entirely political. It has nothing to do with technology and everything to do with the economics of power and privilege. Today's rich and powerful would not survive that transition and keep the power and privilege they crave. So they will do everything possible to prevent it. And they do have the power.

What will happen much more likely is war. And it won't end with the poor temporarily overthrowing the rich, as in the French or Russian revolutions. The rich and powerful have far better tools at their disposal now. You can already see them turning the threatened, frightened, and shrinking middle class against itself to prevent electorates from restraining the ultra-rich. That leads toward civil instability and authoritarian takeover in the West where authoritarians aren't already in power. And very possibly to global war as the old power balance is lost. "And what rough Beast, its hour come round at last, slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?"

It's a mildly privileged person's fantasy to dream that Star Trek dream. The truly privileged know the truth. As do the truly and desperately underprivileged.

Plus one to the study authors for precise language, but minus five for misleadingly precise language. Sorry to be the grammar police, but Lewy body dementia is the THIRD most common form of dementia, after Alzheimer's and Vascular. I had to look it up to be sure.

Most readers will not notice the absent comma in "the second most common form of dementia after Alzheimer's", nor will they be aware of its significance. This construction does actually mean it's the third most common form, presuming the common knowledge that Alzheimer's is the most common. It would have been MUCH more clear if the authors simply wrote "the third most common form of dementia". Or "the third most common form of dementia, after Alzheimer's and Vascular dementia."

Though as MDs and PHDs, writing for a scientific journal, perhaps the authors presumed high responsibility and knowledge from their audience. In which case we might blame the anonymous reader who posted the article for not translating this key point for general readership. But the poster perhaps thought Lewy body is the second most common form. Or likely doesn't care anyway. ;-)

"I'm guessing someone might complain that not everyone has a house to start investing. Presumably their parents have a house. The parents should provide food, shelter, education, and some "seed corn" money to get started from when these people are children to they move out on their own. These people would then expect to also invest in robots, solar panels. limestone mines, or whatever."

U'm, excuse me but your privilege is showing there. Muchly.

By the time this situation is at hand, a LOT of people will have no property equity. What fraction of people under the age of 40 can afford to buy a home already? (And who is that fraction? The shrinking few with sufficient class, education, and family privilege.) Fewer and fewer wage earners can even afford a place to live without a roommate, already.

And their parents? If they ever even owned a home, they will long since have sold it to reverse mortgage scammers they're now paying rent to. Because their social security retirement income has been decimated by the post baby boom demographic inversion. Even before AI puts the nail in the workers to recipients ratio. And the last of the defined benefit pensions they relied upon have been plundered. And their 401k funds will have evaporated in the market crash(es) that will precede the New AI/Megacorp World Oligarchy.

No, the 99% will be serfs at best, living in Hunger Games squalor more likely. They won't overthrow the overlords because the overlords will wisely employ just enough of them as security apparatus until even that has been automated by robocops.

So that means what, at least one phish per week per mailbox?

At first I thought the poor thing's odds would really be 1/80,000. Because what if the one leftie it finds is the wrong gender?

But ChatGPT informs me most land snails are hermaphroditic. Both exchange sperm, and both lay eggs. Lucky break for the evolutionary unicorn!

Kinky, perhaps, but doubles its chances.