thesmokingman

thesmokingman , 5 months ago to Technology in The Cult of AI. How one writer's trip to an annual tech conference left him with a sinking feeling about the future

Right! Without free will the only meaning you have is whatever you were preordained to have. Even your sense of meaning is just a predefined firing of neurons set into motion when it all began. This conversation, my response to you, your response to me, it’s all just something we have no control over unless our brains were wired back when to believe that infinitely small sub(infinite)atomic particles colliding is any form of meaning.

thesmokingman , 5 months ago to Technology in The Cult of AI. How one writer's trip to an annual tech conference left him with a sinking feeling about the future

That’s fair. With that line of logic, the author had to say what he said so there’s no value behind criticizing him. Granted you had to criticize him because you have no free will either. The conversation is completely meaningless because all of this is just preprogrammed action.

thesmokingman , 5 months ago to Technology in The Cult of AI. How one writer's trip to an annual tech conference left him with a sinking feeling about the future

So are you suggesting that humans “[lack] agency [and] the ability to make dynamic decisions?” Your point is that humans are just AI and, if we’re going from this quote, we can’t have agency if we are the same.

thesmokingman , 5 months ago to Technology in Ex-CIA computer engineer gets 40 years in prison for giving spy agency hacking secrets to WikiLeaks

Apologies. I copied the quote from his Wikipedia article. The other sentences I left out included him potentially assaulting a drunk roommate and the decade+ of evidence covering his interest in CSAM. That really changes your context quite a bit, no?

Still waiting for you to produce evidence of his defense about it all being the CIA. You’re really focused on the poor wording of a single news report covering his case and you’re missing the preponderance of evidence.

Edit: you really defended someone who claimed that CSAM was a victimless crime. What the fuck.

thesmokingman , 5 months ago to Technology in Ex-CIA computer engineer gets 40 years in prison for giving spy agency hacking secrets to WikiLeaks

That was never part of his defense. Do you think the CIA colluded with him and his lawyer to accept responsibility for the material the CIA planted to sandbag his sentence? I feel like an innocent person would be screaming that. Hell, even possibly innocent/possibly guilty folks do.

Edit: here’s a quote about the material you’re defending:

Schulte called the child pornography he was accused of possessing a "victimless crime"

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/06/13/the-surreal-case-of-a-cia-hackers-revenge

thesmokingman , 5 months ago to Technology in Ex-CIA computer engineer gets 40 years in prison for giving spy agency hacking secrets to WikiLeaks

Whether or not you think he should be jailed for leaking CIA secrets, the dude had child porn. He deserved a serious sentence because he expressed zero remorse for that. Along those lines he couldn’t even fucking pretend to have leaked the state secrets for any other reason than the CIA was a shitty place to work. You gotta play the fucking game if you’re gonna fuck with the government. You can’t just be a crusty old coder.

thesmokingman , 5 months ago to Technology in The Cult of AI. How one writer's trip to an annual tech conference left him with a sinking feeling about the future

I’m not sure how you get this from the article, though. Evans has no doubt it’s possible; like anyone with any knowledge of the state of AI he also knows that’s really fucking far away and just science fiction today. On the other hand, if you’re going to reduce things to the absurd level comment chain OP did, I suppose the future is now because judicial AI is just as racist as cops.

thesmokingman , 5 months ago to Privacy in Hacker, or clever method to boost statistics for Q3? You decide.

From a conspiracy standpoint, so what?

• Numbers for the console that tracks these things go up, making the security features trend higher internally. Net win for user security.
• Total logins goes up. This is a meaningless metric that doesn’t affect value to anyone but the most ignorant shareholder. Nothing changes for Twitter.
• Links clicked through Twitter’s tracker goes up. Since the target and originator is a single user, this increases nothing. From a shareholder perspective, again, a worthless metric.
• Twitter gains session data. Unless the user deletes Twitter while logging in, this is an intentional choice by the user to use the platform and give that data. Possible win for Twitter but it’s a win the user agreed to because their data is the product.

“Numbers go up” doesn’t really work here. Fidelity isn’t going to upgrade Twitter’s value from any of this. Even if we assume it’s a drummed up attempt, it gains Twitter nothing we don’t agree to give Twitter by using the platform.

thesmokingman , 5 months ago to Privacy in Hacker, or clever method to boost statistics for Q3? You decide.

Speaking as a security professional, this is pretty standard practice for a solid user experience. I’m rather surprised someone in a privacy community would take umbrage at this because security and privacy are closely linked. When someone attempts to steal your account, do you not want an alert?

The easiest way to get rid of this email is to delete your Twitter account.

thesmokingman , 5 months ago to Technology in Tech Employee Who Went Viral for Filming Her Firing Has No Regrets

You should always have an understanding of recording consent laws in your state/country and if you live somewhere with one party consent, you should always secretly record HR conversations. Just as long as it’s not obvious you can do a lot of things with your phone. Company policy might ding you for exercising your rights; that’s their right. If you’re building a case against the company that should be the least of your worries. Know your rights and more importantly pretend you don’t know them.

thesmokingman , 6 months ago to 196 in Rule

The reason this is a meme is not Star Citizen but rather the article. That’s it. That’s the whole article. It just links to a couple of tweets.

Edit: I forgot the second paragraph:

Star Citizen, which remains in alpha, has crowdfunded over $650 million from fans since 2012.

Tweets have more characters than this has words.

thesmokingman , 6 months ago to 196 in Gmail serving straight up malware rule

They are in all categories now