So why did you propagate the AC's vacuous Subject.

Lots of reasons to dislike what "China" is doing. More complicated to figure out which are government activities and which aren't... Also reasons to admire some of the things "China" is doing.

But the Chinese perspective is long.

Modded funny? Why? Were you going for funny? If so, could you explain the joke? If not, maybe you can speculate why it was so modded?

Pretty rare to see anything actually funny on Slashdot these years. I check most of the "active" stories.

Interesting FP branch, but I think it mostly missed the boat. I think it's mostly about the money and that's how we got fscked.

There was a kind of "golden age" of journalism, but I would argue that was an aberration linked to a weird financial model. Started with radio where the frequencies created a temporary monopoly and the government licensed the monopoly with mandates for "free" news. That created the illusion that news could be separated from who was paying for it. Two interesting contrasts: (1) In newspapers before radio the ads were fully visible so the readers could assess the money flows. (2) TV started with the radio model of journalism, but cable and the Internet broke the funding model.

I largely blame "60 Minutes" for the first successful "for-profit" model of journalism. CNN showed where that leads and FAUX figured out how to disguise the real advertisers behind fake ones...

I used to fantasize about solution-oriented journalism as a new funding approach, but now I think "We can't get there from here", where "here" is any substantially better state of journalism.

Mod grandparent funny, though the parent Subject seems better for the joke? Generally misfiring of the Funny on Slashdot these years?

On the story, I think the "use" should be in the more active sense, but 'I don't have to work no more' [sic], so that part of the story flies over my head, but I sometimes find AI a useful tool and use it accordingly. About two days ago an ancient website crashed and I couldn't get some information I wanted. So I used an AI to quickly create a little tool to generate the information locally. For what it's worth, the new local version runs faster than the website version, though I see the website has recovered again...

I actually tried to create the tool myself, but my first attempt failed, so I invoked the AI. It's response clarified the security risk of my initial solution approach, so I can't complain about the AI's recommended approach.

Sure it's legal. Just read about it in the newspaper. You still subscribe to a newspaper, right?

No dead tree? Okay, so look it up on your smartphone. Oh wait. You don't have the right smartphone. Yet.

I would like to see some historical research correlating mentions of national leaders with various job-related metrics and divided up by geography.

Easy example: Little Kim gets LOTS of extremely favorable public mentions in North Korea. From near zero to HUGE in a few days (when he became established as the successor)--and at some point his mentions will approach zero again. But outside of North Korea? Not so many and not so favorable. Ever.

The YOB case is (relatively) interesting because he had quite a lot of name recognition even before 2015. Media and even book references that still surprise me. Like ghosts from the past? (To be compared with books written before and after perpetual September? Circa 1995?)

My reaction to the story was "Tell us something we didn't know." News is supposed to have some element of novelty in it. You know, novelty as in new.

However, I think the phishing scams disguised as fake upgrades are more annoying, and probably more dangerous, since the sucker is primed to expect something to get installed. As regards this story I thought there might be an element of novelty in it. Perhaps a new scammer's pitch to enter your credit card number to validate the unsubscribe request? Something along those lines.

Solutions time? Why do I persist in hoping the direction of criminal change in the Web can be shifted?

I keep imagining a website that helps potential suckers aggregate the targeting data so the scammers can be found and stopped more quickly. Hopefully definitively, too, as in throw them into that lovely prison in El Salvador. Get some good out of it?

So now to flog that dead horse!

The basic idea would be an iterative website where you would paste the scam and then help parse the meaning to guide the response. Of course these days it would be enhanced with AI, but the key idea is that each iteration would clarify what is going on and what should be done about it. Per this specific story, that so-called unsubscribe link would be studied to see how malicious it is and the human being in the loop would confirm the threat or provide feedback about what the website got wrong. And of course the website would be amalgamating the results to provide stats that guide the prioritization of the responses. A dangerous new threat that is producing lots of reports needs to be dealt with ASAP, though I doubt the "new threat" of this story would merit much priority.

More details available if someone is interested. NOT a new idea. Or let's hear your better solution approach. I'm sure you have a big wad of better ideas stuffed in a pocket somewhere.

(But actually my primary focus right now was provoked by that awful book Science Fictions by Stuart Ritchie... Linkage is complicated, but now I want to see some exploratory research on how much and in what ways each nation's top leader is mentioned in the media over time. Easy example: Little Kim of North Korea. LOTS of favorable coverage inside and not much mention outside, with what there is being not so favorable. Any leads?)

Kind of a new Slashdot effect? I think I'm actually seeing some evidence of higher than usual mortality among old websites and I've been wondering if the cause might be AI spiders seeking more training data. Latest victim might be Tripod? But that one was already a ghost zombie website...

Again with the missed opportunities for humor, but too late to even contribute to the discussion... My time is too slow for Slashdot time?

There was so much potential in the idea of the Navy invading the contractor to get the ovens fixed.

Not getting why this was modded funny rather than sad?

Mostly the ACK, but thanks for the food for thought. But I keep thinking they should get a better financial model that could support some actual improvements...

Thanks for clarifying. His description did not ring that bell--but I rarely see it. Perhaps my timezone is out of sync?

Well played sir. Could only be funnier if it were signed by an AI.

Is that a joke based on reading the article? You should know that never happens around here... Or maybe not, looking at the UID.

However the story has big potential for funny, so I'll check for details at 11.

Anecdotal evidence: In my dotage I often take a morning nap and it doesn't seem to affect me whether or not I drink coffee with breakfast. But I may have some kind of REM sleep disorder...