Comment Re:The spammers LOVE money (Score 1) 18
Ignoring the problem has yet to make it go away.
And I strongly disagree that today's google sincerely cares about anything except getting more money.
Comment Re:I feel that this will improve education (Score 1) 15
Why did you quote "not simple". You made me think I had written that, and I certainly don't think so. Maybe you should have used bold for emphasis?
Comment Re:No surprise[s in today's SF?] (Score 1) 131
Now I think you're mostly referring to the publishers. Funny business that, even before Amazon tipped over the table. Most of the books they publish are failures that don't even recover the cost of the first print run. I've heard numbers from 80% to above 90%, but that was a while ago, and largely from a delivery driver who delivered fresh books while picking up the unsold ones. The profits were entirely from the bestsellers, and of course the publishers love opium-like books for that reason.
I acknowledge that things have probably changed now. I've already mentioned the Amazon problem, but I also think AI is offering new ways to assess which books might become bestsellers (resulting in fewer books making the first cut).
Comment Re:Friction free engine accelerating to infinity (Score 1) 106
I'm trusting Michael Lewis on this, but I don't think that applies to the members of the exchanges, and the high speed traders are members. The fees for trades are limited to the little suckers like you and me.
Well, also I've read some of the proposals for transaction fees, and none of them seem to make sense unless the current transactions are without fees.
Comment Re:The expert on meaningless garbage has spoken (Score 1) 15
Thank it for its cooperation?
Comment Re: Rust is NOT memory safe (Score 1) 141
Rust grew out of a Mozilla side project in 2006 and hit stable in 2015. Several years later, the White House and NSA promoted it because the huge number of memory CVE's are a problem for individuals, businesses, and national security alike. And they didn't promote just Rust, they promoted memory-safe languages in general.
If you're seeing shadowy evil agendas where there exist clear, objective, straightforward explanations then take a break and go touch grass.
Doublespeed Hack Reveals What Its AI-Generated Accounts Are Promoting (404media.co) 27
An anonymous reader quotes a report from 404 Media: Doublespeed, a startup backed by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) that uses a phone farm to manage at least hundreds of AI-generated social media accounts and promote products has been hacked. The hack reveals what products the AI-generated accounts are promoting, often without the required disclosure that these are advertisements, and allowed the hacker to take control of more than 1,000 smartphones that power the company. The hacker, who asked for anonymity because he feared retaliation from the company, said he reported the vulnerability to Doublespeed on October 31. At the time of writing, the hacker said he still has access to the company's backend, including the phone farm itself.
"I could see the phones in use, which manager (the PCs controlling the phones) they had, which TikTok accounts they were assigned, proxies in use (and their passwords), and pending tasks. As well as the link to control devices for each manager," the hacker told me. "I could have used their phones for compute resources, or maybe spam. Even if they're just phones, there are around 1100 of them, with proxy access, for free. I think I could have used the linked accounts by puppeting the phones or adding tasks, but haven't tried."
As I reported in October, Doublespeed raised $1 million from a16z as part of its "Speedrun" accelerator program, "a fastpaced, 12-week startup program that guides founders through every critical stage of their growth." Doublespeed uses generative AI to flood social media with accounts and posts to promote certain products on behalf of its clients. Social media companies attempt to detect and remove this type of astroturfing for violating their inauthentic behavior policies, which is why Doublespeed uses a bank of phones to emulate the behavior of real users. So-called "click farms" or "phone farms" often use hundreds of mobile phones to fake online engagement of reviews for the same reason. [...] I've seen TikTok accounts operated by Doublespeed promote language learning apps, dating apps, a Bible app, supplements, and a massager.
"I could see the phones in use, which manager (the PCs controlling the phones) they had, which TikTok accounts they were assigned, proxies in use (and their passwords), and pending tasks. As well as the link to control devices for each manager," the hacker told me. "I could have used their phones for compute resources, or maybe spam. Even if they're just phones, there are around 1100 of them, with proxy access, for free. I think I could have used the linked accounts by puppeting the phones or adding tasks, but haven't tried."
As I reported in October, Doublespeed raised $1 million from a16z as part of its "Speedrun" accelerator program, "a fastpaced, 12-week startup program that guides founders through every critical stage of their growth." Doublespeed uses generative AI to flood social media with accounts and posts to promote certain products on behalf of its clients. Social media companies attempt to detect and remove this type of astroturfing for violating their inauthentic behavior policies, which is why Doublespeed uses a bank of phones to emulate the behavior of real users. So-called "click farms" or "phone farms" often use hundreds of mobile phones to fake online engagement of reviews for the same reason. [...] I've seen TikTok accounts operated by Doublespeed promote language learning apps, dating apps, a Bible app, supplements, and a massager.
Comment Re: No cameras? (Score 3, Insightful) 59
Living in a fishbowl robs you of the ability to truly discover and become yourself. As such, public surveillance should be restricted to areas of high crime and critical infrastructure. Neither you nor the police are owed a 24/7 visual history of all locations in which a crime might occur.
Submission + - MIT Grieves Shooting Death of Renowned Director of Plasma Science Center (theguardian.com)
An anonymous reader writes: The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) community is grieving after the “shocking” shooting death of the director of its plasma science and fusion center, according to officials. Nuno FG Loureiro, 47, had been shot multiple times at his home in the affluent Boston suburb of Brookline on Monday night when police said they received a call to investigate. Emergency responders brought Loureiro to a hospital, and the award-winning scientist was pronounced dead there Tuesday morning, the Norfolk county district attorney’s office said in a statement.
The Boston Globe reported speaking with a neighbor of Loureiro who heard gunshots, found the academic lying on his back in the foyer of their building and then called for help alongside the victim’s wife. The statement from the Norfolk district attorney’s office said an investigation into Loureiro’s slaying remained ongoing later Tuesday. But the agency did not immediately release any details about a possible suspect or motive in the killing, which gained widespread attention across academic circles, the US and in Loureiro’s native Portugal.
Portugal’s minster of foreign affairs announced Loureiro’s death in a public hearing Tuesday, as CNN reported. Separately, MIT president Sally Kornbluth issued a university-wide letter expressing “great sadness” over the death of Loureiro, whose survivors include his wife. “This shocking loss for our community comes in a period of disturbing violence in many other places,” said Kornbluth’s letter, released after a weekend marred by deadly mass shootings at Brown University in Rhode Island – about 50 miles away from MIT – as well as on Australia’s Bondi Beach. The letter concluded by providing a list of mental health resources, saying: “It’s entirely natural to feel the need for comfort and support.”
The Boston Globe reported speaking with a neighbor of Loureiro who heard gunshots, found the academic lying on his back in the foyer of their building and then called for help alongside the victim’s wife. The statement from the Norfolk district attorney’s office said an investigation into Loureiro’s slaying remained ongoing later Tuesday. But the agency did not immediately release any details about a possible suspect or motive in the killing, which gained widespread attention across academic circles, the US and in Loureiro’s native Portugal.
Portugal’s minster of foreign affairs announced Loureiro’s death in a public hearing Tuesday, as CNN reported. Separately, MIT president Sally Kornbluth issued a university-wide letter expressing “great sadness” over the death of Loureiro, whose survivors include his wife. “This shocking loss for our community comes in a period of disturbing violence in many other places,” said Kornbluth’s letter, released after a weekend marred by deadly mass shootings at Brown University in Rhode Island – about 50 miles away from MIT – as well as on Australia’s Bondi Beach. The letter concluded by providing a list of mental health resources, saying: “It’s entirely natural to feel the need for comfort and support.”
Submission + - Isaacman confirmed for NASA head (politico.com)
schwit1 writes: The Senate on Wednesday approved Jared Isaacman for the top job at NASA — an unprecedented comeback after President Donald Trump yanked his nomination this spring.
Trump renominated Isaacman for NASA administrator in November, after pulling his original nomination in May. He cited Isaacman’s relationship with SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, with whom Trump had just had a falling out, as the rationale for his decision.
Isaacman’s surprise rebound followed months of political jockeying and help from high-profile figures in Trump’s orbit.
Trump renominated Isaacman for NASA administrator in November, after pulling his original nomination in May. He cited Isaacman’s relationship with SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, with whom Trump had just had a falling out, as the rationale for his decision.
Isaacman’s surprise rebound followed months of political jockeying and help from high-profile figures in Trump’s orbit.
Comment But is this Korean company more evil than Amazon? (Score 1) 32
Fishing for Funny in the dark. Pretty sure I didn't get there, but also expressing my disappointment than no one else got there first.
Getting away from funny, but 'modern capitalism' is supposed to be based on a kind of adversarial model. The companies want to sell us as much stuff as possible with the highest profits, while we are supposed to be trying to find the best values to force the companies to offer better products at lower prices. But the powers are not balanced in this 'game'. Individuals are acting alone and mostly in ignorance, while the companies continue to become larger and increasingly powerful. From this perspective, collecting customer information is like ammunition for tomorrow's attacks on the customers' credit cards.
Comment Slashdot needs a long-term discussion mechanism (Score 1) 32
Some stories are worth more discussion than the standard scrolling time allows... I think Slashdot should allow for some stories to move down the front page more slowly than others.
Comment Re:I said it before and I'll say it again (Score 1) 56
The worst case scenarios are going to happen. Or worse.
Quoted against the censor trolls. My degree of concurrence is complex. Goes back to Fermi...
Comment The spammers LOVE money (Score 2) 18
Seems obvious enough that the phishing website will ask for the google login information if that is the target of the phishing scam. Possibly disguised as one of those authorization requests to link and login from the google account?
Pretty sure I've seen a bunch of these, but not a significant fraction of the phishing spam I receive each day. I'd estimate that about three to five false negatives slip through on a daily basis, though the false positives have been mostly eliminated. I'm "tracking" about five email systems and it is interesting to see the differences in the volumes and kinds of spam targeted at each email system, but mostly I only use one of them. Microsoft's Outlook had a major spam storm a few days ago...
I still think the best way to address the spam scam problem is to go after the money, but that would call for working with the potential victims and no one (running a major email system) cares that much about the peasants (like you and me). I can't yet decide if the "countermeasure" described in this story is more or less laughable than average. But I'm predicting the spam will continue apace.
Browser Extensions With 8 Million Users Collect Extended AI Conversations (arstechnica.com) 12
An anonymous reader shares a report: Browser extensions with more than 8 million installs are harvesting complete and extended conversations from users' AI conversations and selling them for marketing purposes, according to data collected from the Google and Microsoft pages hosting them.
Security firm Koi discovered the eight extensions, which as of late Tuesday night remained available in both Google's and Microsoft's extension stores. Seven of them carry "Featured" badges, which are endorsements meant to signal that the companies have determined the extensions meet their quality standards. The free extensions provide functions such as VPN routing to safeguard online privacy and ad blocking for ad-free browsing. All provide assurances that user data remains anonymous and isnâ(TM)t shared for purposes other than their described use.
Security firm Koi discovered the eight extensions, which as of late Tuesday night remained available in both Google's and Microsoft's extension stores. Seven of them carry "Featured" badges, which are endorsements meant to signal that the companies have determined the extensions meet their quality standards. The free extensions provide functions such as VPN routing to safeguard online privacy and ad blocking for ad-free browsing. All provide assurances that user data remains anonymous and isnâ(TM)t shared for purposes other than their described use.
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