@tknarr@mstdn.social
@tknarr@mstdn.social avatar

tknarr

@tknarr@mstdn.social

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lauren, to random
@lauren@mastodon.laurenweinstein.org avatar

Some new factors added to the Drake Equation are suggesting that the odds of intelligent life that we can communicate with in this Galaxy (keeping in mind the limited time during which such civilizations can actually communicate before one or the other or both collapse) is far lower than originally thought, and the odds that we are currently alone in this category here in the Milky Way are now significantly higher. This pretty well fits in with my thinking on this subject.

tknarr,
@tknarr@mstdn.social avatar

@lauren @heafnerj @timo21 Probably. But consider: how much deliberate transmitting are we doing? Our attempts have been mostly short-duration transmissions that can easily be missed if the receiving end is looking in the wrong direction at the time it arrives.

ElleGray, to random
@ElleGray@mstdn.social avatar

Omg any day now computers will be able to add

tknarr,
@tknarr@mstdn.social avatar

@ElleGray Next step: achieving the level of a 6-year-old and producing an embedding that can do addition to any arbitrary number of digits with perfect accuracy after being trained on only 2-digit addition.

glynmoody, to india
@glynmoody@mastodon.social avatar

elections: PM Narendra claims he has been chosen by God - https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/may/27/india-elections-pm-narendra-modi-claims-he-has-been-chosen-by-god haven't we all, mate, haven't we all....?

tknarr,
@tknarr@mstdn.social avatar

@glynmoody By which god, and for what?

mattwilcox, (edited ) to random
@mattwilcox@mstdn.social avatar

I am curious if the "announcment" feature Mastodon admins have access to is actually useful.

I suspect many people never see them. I think I've only ever seen it displayed in the "official" mastodon web UI. And never in any of the (many) apps I use.

Feel free to boost for reach.

tknarr,
@tknarr@mstdn.social avatar

@mattwilcox I use Tusky on my phone and it does show announcements, but not in the feed or as a tab. You have to open the menu by tapping your account icon and look for the "Announcements" item to get them.

lauren, to random
@lauren@mastodon.laurenweinstein.org avatar

The Biden/Trump debates will likely be broadcast live around the world on pretty much every suitable broadcast and news oriented channel. They are almost certainly going to be the most consequential presidential debates in history, eclipsing even the Kennedy/Nixon debates of 1960.

tknarr,
@tknarr@mstdn.social avatar

@lauren I don't think the debate will change the polls so much as solidify them. Trump's supporters have already proven invulnerable to facts. Broadcast live, though, Trump won't be able to edit things so he sounds coherent. Hearing him verbatim will, I think, solidify the undecideds behind Biden.

lauren, to random
@lauren@mastodon.laurenweinstein.org avatar

A similar dangerous push by Microsoft to listen in to phone calls.

I should point out that Microsoft several months ago announced a similar plan for listening in on phone calls looking for "suspicious interactions" which would be offered via phone carriers. As with the Google case, the ways in which such capabilities could be abused by government entities is immense. And once the service exists, authorities could order it secretly added to anyone's service and used to scan for whatever sorts of conversations or keywords they desired. This is a disastrous direction that these firms are moving in; there are almost no words to adequately explain the nightmare scenarios such systems could easily empower.

https://www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/microsoft-is-using-ai-to-stop-phone-scammers-from-tricking-you/

tknarr,
@tknarr@mstdn.social avatar

@lauren Wouldn't any of these run afoul of two-party consent laws in a lot of states?

tknarr,
@tknarr@mstdn.social avatar

@lauren Here in Washington State the law applies to intercepting or recording. On-device AI might be ok by that, but if any data goes off-device I think it could be considered interception by whoever the data's going to.

glynmoody, to Palestine
@glynmoody@mastodon.social avatar

There’s one thing standing in the way of a ceasefire: #Netanyahu’s refusal to compromise - https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/may/07/ceasefire-negotiations-gaza-netanyahu-hamas he doesn't want peace, he wants annihilation of palestinians and #palestine...

tknarr,
@tknarr@mstdn.social avatar

@glynmoody Netanyahu isn't going to budge. His policies, and his government's policies, on the subject haven't changed in my lifetime and aren't likely to.

OTOH one thing left out is who's backing Hamas and Hezbollah. That also hasn't changed in my lifetime, all the way back to the PLO/PLA. The Arab states aren't going to budge either.

glynmoody, to Insurance
@glynmoody@mastodon.social avatar

Welcome To The Brave New World Of Vehicle Powered By - https://www.techdirt.com/2024/05/06/welcome-to-the-brave-new-world-of-vehicle-insurance-fraud-powered-by-shallowfakes/ just wait until they add

tknarr,
@tknarr@mstdn.social avatar

@glynmoody The insurance companies could always go back to having adjusters inspect the vehicle before processing the claim...

lauren, to random
@lauren@mastodon.laurenweinstein.org avatar

Appeals court rules authorities can force you to biometrically unlock; what does this mean for passkeys?

While there have been conflicting rulings on this issue, The U.S. court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit has just ruled that authorities can force you to unlock your devices that are locked using biometric authentication, in this case with a thumbprint.

The trend of court cases seems to be that forcing biometric unlocking is OK, but forcing you to reveal a password may not be in similar cases.

It's worth noting that since most passkey implementations require only the biometric unlock to become available, this would seem to give authorities full access to all accounts using such passkeys on the device. In contrast, if passkeys were not in use but passwords were saved in a password manager under a master password, access to those accounts would likely not be so easily obtained by authorities in such a situation.

Irrespective of whether or not you ever plan to be in such a situation, I still consider the single-layer biometric authentication model for passkeys to be risky, and this is another example why.

tknarr,
@tknarr@mstdn.social avatar

@lauren A hardware key with a required PIN would work though. They can make you turn over the key, but they can't force you to use the PIN.

We need to argue these cases based on the biometric not just being a key but testimonial as to ownership.

tknarr,
@tknarr@mstdn.social avatar

@lauren Also ownership is a good reason to use a SIM lock. That way the phone can't receive a call after being turned on until the PIN is entered (and they can't force you to disclose the PIN).

stux, to random
@stux@mstdn.social avatar

My niece sold her company and with that the website I build and host for her, since I made a loss on it I'm kinda happy it goes but ofc the people taking over chose a "web dev" company that can't costs too much..

...so I'm dealing with "web devs" that don't have a clue about SSH or CLI in general

Somehow they think the EPP code for the domain is hosted on the website itself :blobcatdizzy:

I'm sooo happy the internet made everyone an expert in web development :nkoFacepalm2:

tknarr,
@tknarr@mstdn.social avatar

@stux One hopes you're billing them at the "friends & family" rate (ie. 3x normal rates).

SteveBellovin, to random
@SteveBellovin@mastodon.lawprofs.org avatar

From a science fiction book written in 2014…
https://mastodon.social/@arstechnica/112298676107501073

tknarr,
@tknarr@mstdn.social avatar

@SteveBellovin Saberhagen's Berserkers. 1963.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berserker_(novel_series)

tknarr,
@tknarr@mstdn.social avatar

@SteveBellovin I think not so much "evil" as they were designed to do the job our military's wanting to do with AI-controlled drones like the AI-controlled F-16: kill the enemy. There was just a small bug in the definition of "enemy".

Free_Press, to news
@Free_Press@mstdn.social avatar

Calls for Netanyahu's Ouster Grow Around the World!

Tens of thousands of Israelis protest against Israel's far-right government!

Netanyahu marks six months of war, calls for unity: We must unite to repel attacks against us

https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/netanyahu-marks-six-months-of-war-calls-for-unity-we-must-unite-to-repel-attacks-against-us/

tknarr,
@tknarr@mstdn.social avatar

@Free_Press What I want to know is why, if he's so unpopular in Israel, the voters there keep voting for his party knowing they'll put him in charge?

timbray, to random
@timbray@cosocial.ca avatar

1/2 Looking at one of the #xz writeup, this struck my eye: “The release tarballs upstream publishes don't have the same code that GitHub has. This is common in C projects so that downstream consumers don't need to remember how to run autotools and autoconf.” Ah, GNU AutoHell, I remember it well. Tl;dr: With AutoHell, even if you're building for a 19-bit Multics variant from 1988, it’s got your back. Except for it’s just too hard to understand and use, thus the above.

#infosec

tknarr,
@tknarr@mstdn.social avatar

@lauren @jbqueru @timbray I disagree. The same sort of long game can be played with proprietary software, with even less chance of detection. We'll never know if any were detected and removed, and any outside researchers who try to find them will face the software vendor's legal team trying to stop them. That's an even worse situation.

tknarr,
@tknarr@mstdn.social avatar

@jbqueru @lauren @timbray I think open-source projects are going to adapt in a hurry. One obvious thing is making binary blobs verboten except under special circumstances where provenance can be verified. You need binary data for tests? Generate it as part of the tests. Another is obsoleting gibberish build scripts, if you need autotools scripts then generate them during the build

lauren, (edited ) to random
@lauren@mastodon.laurenweinstein.org avatar

My most used UNIX/Linux tools for the last, oh, half century or so, are probably:

ls
mv
rm
cat
more
grep
find ...

and a host of others. If anyone told me way at the start that we'd still be using these today, I'd have told them they were totally nuts.

tknarr,
@tknarr@mstdn.social avatar

@lauren Wrenches (box- and open-end). Screwdrivers. Half the contents of a decent toolbox. How long have they been around in essentially their current form? Good tools don't become obsolete.

lauren, (edited ) to Youtube
@lauren@mastodon.laurenweinstein.org avatar

I've never been able to get anyone at #YouTube to admit this, and #Google has denied to me that it happens, but I am absolutely certain that there is "leakage" of videos via Suggestions among different accounts in a shared YouTube Premium Family Plan. That is, the videos/channels that one person watches (on their own Google account) may show up as Suggestions for another person in the plan (on a different Google account).

The symptom is when you start seeing videos suggested on a topic you would not ordinarily view, then discover that another person on the plan was recently watching those videos on their own account.

This is not necessarily a big deal, but would seem to have notable privacy aspects and is somewhat creepy.

tknarr,
@tknarr@mstdn.social avatar

@lauren Probably the system seeing that people in that scenario are likely to watch things other people in the group have and applying that to content. Not leakage so much as deliberate creepiness.

tknarr,
@tknarr@mstdn.social avatar

@lauren Yep. That's probably what it saw a correlation for, so that's what it recommends: exact videos rather than categories. Leakage implies accident, this is intended behavior.

tknarr, to random
@tknarr@mstdn.social avatar

What I find amusing about the GOP's response to the Alabama "embryos are children" ruling is that it's a direct consequence of their position on abortion. This is exactly what they want, yet they want no part of it because of how bad it hurts them politically.

lauren, to random
@lauren@mastodon.laurenweinstein.org avatar

Oh yeah, count me OUT! - What could go wrong? - Chrome devs working on automatic micropayments to websites without user interactions directly from wallets. - https://www.theregister.com/2024/02/13/google_micropayments_plan/ - Also, scroll down for the comments on Slashdot: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/24/02/13/2244212/chrome-engine-devs-experiment-with-automatic-browser-micropayments

tknarr,
@tknarr@mstdn.social avatar

@lauren Only if I can see exactly what I'll be charged before I hit the page. And only if it accounts for that whole "pre-load pages linked from this page to speed up browsing" thing, and a process to dispute payments and to blacklist sites. IOW, snowball's chance in Gehenna.

glynmoody, to Israel
@glynmoody@mastodon.social avatar

Netanyahu orders Israeli military to prepare Rafah evacuation ahead of expected invasion - https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2024/feb/09/middle-east-crisis-israel-gaza-war-hamas-updates?page=with:block-65c638fa8f08acd3f3b02728#block-65c638fa8f08acd3f3b02728 to where, precisely - outer space? #israel #gaza

tknarr,
@tknarr@mstdn.social avatar

@glynmoody To where? Ismailia would make a likely destination. I wouldn't put it beyond him to be aiming for a repeat of the 6-Day War. The only question will be "Before or after the West Bank?".

More unnerving question: when will the Arab states decide that proxies won't cut it anymore?

glynmoody, to random
@glynmoody@mastodon.social avatar

Special counsel delivers Trump a Biden attack line on a silver platter - https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/feb/08/biden-classified-documents-report-trump-campaign a bit rich given #trump's repeated incoherence over the years... dems need to fight back and get dirty with this

tknarr,
@tknarr@mstdn.social avatar

@glynmoody Yeah, but they won't. The Democrats are too nice for that. What annoys me is that I see worse memory lapses on a daily basis at work from people in their late 20s and early 30s.

lauren, to random
@lauren@mastodon.laurenweinstein.org avatar

I suspect VR headset manufacturers with pass-through capabilities are going to have to try find ways to minimize or ideally prevent drivers wearing them while driving. It's not going to be easy to do this while not preventing passengers from wearing them, but the specter of a driver going literally blind instantly when a headset crashes or pass-through is otherwise disabled is nightmarish. #Apple #Meta

tknarr,
@tknarr@mstdn.social avatar

@lauren I know. The whole isea behind AR is that it doesn't use a closed headset, it overlays on the real world.

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