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Comment Re:Correct. And oh, no. (Score 1) 46

We now live in a fully connected world where most users are connected through web browsers and are the intended victims.

This particular story is an exception to that. Remote software, accessed through a web browser, normally does not have read/write access to your local filesystem. But people are granting local filesystem access to proprietary AI services.

I think that granting such access is .. wow. I wouldn't do it, though I can see how if you use a specialized account for it, and if you're confident that your OS has no local user priv escalation bugs, it might be ok. In your sandbox you trust.

But GP's comment is about whose decision that is. If you use Linux, then it's your decision. If you use iOS, then it's Apple's decision. And MacOS is becoming less Linuxy and more iOSy every year. I think it makes plenty of sense for stories like this to result in people dumping MacOS for Linux. (But daaamn, their values surprise me. You wanna make your computer less secure instead of more? Oh well, like Rumsfeld said, freedom is untidy!)

Comment Re:Elections are cheap (Score 1) 36

No, if the state were renamed, it would be to Old America. NM might not be the true original, but if you look at it through the eyes of European colonization and continuous governance, then New Mexico has the best claim of the fifty. (Though if you take a less racist view, then I guess Alaska had the real OGs.)

Comment Excessive fine under 8A? (Score 3, Insightful) 36

Randi McGinn, a lawyer for New Mexico, said applying the full $5,000 penalty to the number of violations would create too large of a penalty under the US Constitution's protections on due process.

I ass/u/me this refers to the Eighth Amendment, but I don't remember seeing any monetary constants encoded within that text.

Google's telling me Meta is worth about $1.8 trillion so how would a mere $40B be "excessive?" It's only about 2% of their worth! Civil penalties in excess of 2% of someone's worth are routinely accepted as constitutional, aren't they? If this case were about me driving drunk and killing a whole family, I bet no one would flinch at the 8A implications of taking 2% (!?!) of my assets, and everyone would laugh at my lawyer if he brought up 8A for such an insignificant fine.

I understand why we have 8A, and everyone deserves mercy, but I don't see why Meta deserves exceptional mercy as a singular special case that we would be horrified to see applied anywhere else. Bringing up 8A for such a tiny fine would be giving Meta a very unique carve-out that we normally would not apply.

It may be that $5k is too much to charge criminals per act, in that each crime didn't really cause that much loss, but bringing up due process concerns seems like bullshit when the fine is already so small. NM and Meta had been trying to negotiate the cost of illegal business for years before negotiations failed and it went to trial. Meta decided to let a jury decide, and the jury's come up with a fairly tiny fraction of their assets.

If Meta thinks the price of illegal business is still too high, then they can lower the number of willful violations they commit per year, to optimize the advantage they gain from illegal actions at an affordable rate.

Geez, Zuck, just do less of it. If $40B seems like a lot, then maybe try only $10B worth of crime next time. What's the big deal? Live and learn. After this little fine you still have 98% of the company left to go on and incur the next wave of liabilities.

Comment Re:No surprises (Score 1) 70

burn down institutions that actually work; they are too stupid to understand how they work.

Khrushchev would love that our government is full of people who disagree with the principle of Chesterton's Fence. It's appalling that "conservatives" have become so far to the left of "The Left."

Vote conservative: vote Democrat.

Comment Re:"reached orbit" is a misnomer (Score 1) 73

Exactly. You can test each component on the ground like NASA does but it's very expensive and very slow. I think the "test flight hardware by flying it" philosophy practiced by SpaceX is superior for actually producing results in a timely and cost-efficient manner.

One result of this is that a single SLS engine probably costs more than an entire Starship/Super Heavy stack. Even the ones that were taken off Space Shuttles and refurbished.

Yep, even the "expendable" version (the RS-25E) is hugely expensive. From wiki:

On 1 May 2020, NASA awarded a contract extension to manufacture 18 additional RS-25 engines, with associated services, for $1.79 billion

So these engines are costing the taxpayer 100 million EACH, the 4 of them needed for an SLS booster is 400 million. And this is for the less-capable expendable version, which was supposed to be cheaper than the original. All to just manufacture an engine that has already been designed and has been optimized for decades, no research and development required. Meanwhile SpaceX is producing hundreds of Raptor engines, which they had to develop from scratch, and doing it at a much lower cost. As a bonus, the Raptor is a reusable engine so they don't need to make a new set for each rocket they need to fly (presuming their reuse plans come to fruition).

Comment Re:I've literally seen it done (Score 2) 79

Our walmart installed these price-as-you-go tags a while ago and I have literally seen them change as I walk up to them, and then change again as I walk away. The trick to get them not to change is to be holding your phone at them - the store's AI won't change the tags if it thinks you're filming them.

My Walmart is worse than that. They didn't have any price tags at all. Just video screens with AI avatars of a guy in baggy pants sitting cross-legged on a rug.

When I walk by, he says "Look at my cotton swabs! I offer you the best cotton swabs in the land!"

I say: "Well, how much to they cost?"

He squints at me, looks me up and down for a long while, then says: "For you........ I give to you seven hundred and fifty swabs for two pieces of silver only. Believe me when I say you will search this entire kingdom and not find a better deal!"

Comment sigh (Score 0) 48

> These levels may further drop because Heninger's team did all the coding by hand and used no AI or GPUs in performing the forgeries.

Using a GPU doesn't change the number of bits of useful encryption you have. Whoever wrote this has no understanding of what they're talking about.

Comment Re: Which is it? (Score 1) 128

I just wanted to let you know that you have successfully driven me off of /., after some 25 years.

Not just you, obviously, the site has been in steep decline for a long time, but you were such a huge asshole that you managed to be the last straw. So, congrats for that. I won't be back.

Comment Re:You are right (Score 1) 183

Use them?! First: why would I want to be locked into Meta's proprietary APIs? And second: it doesn't even include a near-infrared swimsuits mode. I can't believe they omitted such a basic feature. (Zuck, you call these perv glasses!?!)

Besides, from a style perspective, they just aren't nearly gargoylie enough. Whatever perv glasses I buy will have erect antenna(s) (not integrated into the frame), much larger aperture cameras for astronomy, and lots of blinkenlights (including a cool-looking Locutus-style laser). It doesn't surprise me at all, that the more style-conscious sex isn't buying them.

Meta's specific product is ridiculous. But I nevertheless defend the overall tech.

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