Posts by Suburban Inmate 547 publicly visible posts • joined 8 Dec 2007
The troubling aspect is that this depth and breadth of analytical capabilities naturally lends itself towards pre-crime prosecutions. The current stage of collapse of the USA is an example of how regimes can and will go after those who dare to dissent.
With something like this, it becomes trivial to simply query the characteristics of individuals from parsing their language, tone, shares, etc.
I don't run, but have been known to ride my bicycle.
I find that 55% Hemp / 45% Cotton blend tee shirts are great for staying cool, and don't cling like a shower curtain when drenched, unlike cotton and synthetics. THTC is my go-to brand - organic, ethical, carbon neutral, etc.
Private individual speaking: I know I'll probably have to take a look at W11 for my next build, and I've not even bothered to check compatibility on this ancient FX8350 potato, but if Windows 11 isn't free then I simply have no incentive yet.
By free I mean free like W10 was when I last installed it: install shady W8.1, free W10 upgrade, done. Not elegant, but not a penny to Redmond. I'm one of those really really irritating "consumers" with a long memory.
Now, can someone far cleverer than I tell me WTF the OS alone needs so much RAM for these days? I do tend to trim a bit of fat by disabling background spyware and never-used bloatware and junk, but still...
I think what many of the replies here have overlooked is the massive potential to mind-bogglingly overcharge us the taxpayers for a new system, and then the accompanying mind-boggling overcharging for training, maintenance, and the remedial overhauls every now and then when word gets around that it's a broken sack of buggy bollocks.
FailBook and the other big ASNs are powerful enough not to need to give a toss. They don't care about users and accounts the same way powerful regimes don't have to care about human rights or international law.
Both WasteBook and the Xitter are plagued with rampant spammers and scammers so obvious that I could probably bash out some code in qBasic to flag at least half of it, even after 20 years away from coding. Their systems are perfectly capable of recognising the crud; they have no trouble "de-boosting" user content that displeases The Party™. Likewise they could flag accounts that have been taken over. For instance when a ton of content gets deleted, completely new person in the profile pic, change in writing style, and pictures that are obviously screencaps from grumble vids or show up on Google reverse image search and/or TinEye.
Presumably he means terror attacks by their competitors, rather than their own.
Anti-"terror" laws, as widely predicted, have come to be used against unauthorised democracy, including legitimate journalism.
Now our most private data can be trawled and analysed to neutralise or manipulate dissent at source.
I've been with the "not BT" provider in its various guises since long before the UK had broadband. Generally happy, though when I lived at one place the broadband kept cutting out, but a phone call would get me a small refund.
The key thing to remember is to phone Virgin Media and order a cancellation when the price is about to skyrocket after the introductory offer. They'll offer some sort of discount but don't take the bait, go ahead and cancel. They'll call you back with a proper offer within days!
I pay £22/month for 250Mbit down & 25Mbit up, which serves me fine, plus a land line I'll never use. It would have been an eye-watering £64/month!
I remember having an LG G3 phone a few years back. If memory serves, the final software update basically totalled the thing, rendering it all but unusable. My work has moments where a quick and responsive phone is £$$£ntial.
I now have a Motorola G9 Power, and carry my old G7 Power as a backup. The latest updates were barely 2 years after release, which is woeful. The G9's camera app is now badly crippled.
I'll be sorting out decent community AOSP if/when I have a chance.
I'll likely never buy a brand new phone again.
I think China is pretty much beta testing that sort of utopia.
If you think that's a bad thing, you are wrong and a disruptive influence.
If you are wrong, you will be corrected by any means necessary.
(Or maybe disappeared to slavery in Rwanda. We're still working out the details.)
I welcome this. Not from any position of business expertise, or any personal interests, but because a certain level of plurality at the top is essential in my opinion.
Monopolies, duopolies, and cosy little (big) cartels don't serve us great unwashed or our businesses. Competition leads to more innovation and differentiation. If the few biggest players are just Borg-ing up others... Where's the fun in that?
Or am I just an idealistic old-ish curmudgeon?
Pretty much already is. Not this specific AI (probably) but wastebook does already read and classify text in images.
Instead of trusting an encryption/-ed app alone, add another layer by using an air-gapped offline PGP box either end. Bit of a faff, but worth it compared to a decade in the clink, no?
Things could be streamlined fairly simply too, such as using something akin to acoustic coupling to transfer messages, or a USB stick for heavy loads.
Good point, some treat their finances like that, but personally I'd have a budget in mind and get the best performance I could for the money.
I wouldn't mind paying a few hundred for good headphones if I had that budget. I would mind looking like an iPrat at any price though, if I'm honest.
Telling us it can survive a 6 foot drop doesn't really tell us anything without knowing the testing method.
I can tell you that my modest Motorola Moto G7 Power that I use for work has survived such drops to hard surfaces, aided by its bezel, discreet-ish factory fitted clear silicone (or whatever) case, and a £1.50 toughened glass screen protector.
I'm pretty much the same, but I'm at the final stage (I think) of the final boss (I think) and yes it's a bloody handful (skullful?) to keep track of all the resource management stuff when some arsehole Summoner is flooding the place until you find the git, but just whack it on easy and it's OK. Not easy, but OK.
Feelings set 0: Naughty, fraud is bad, breaking laws is bad, some of that money probably ended up funding genuinely nasty people and activities. (unless he really operated alone and wasn't involved in nastiness)
Feelings set 1: You magnificent bastard!
Agreed! While it's not for the masses, there's always the likes of Lineage OS etc. for us techie types.
Until it went buggerup Monday evening with the usual screen crapouts, I was running an LG G3 as my daily driver and for work.
The 'latest' stock from LG was a completely knackered heap of unusable turds. Lineage gave it life and usefulness again, but jeebus it was a ball ache just to get the bootloader unlocked.
I tried out an app, briefly, with newly minted credentials (email, etc) on my personal 'droid. It wanted permission for contacts, but I specifically told it in the app I did not want it to use them to search for other users.
Who did it suggest as fellow users? Why, only a bunch of folk lifted from my phone numbers, and others linked to them!
It was called "Face Book" I think.
The point of this legislation isn't to wipe out strong crypto to thwart all those naughty 'terrorists'. The point is to make fishing expeditions routine and automated ("How did you know I'd be at this protest?"), and to make those using proper encryption stand out more.
After all, if you're making an effort about privacy, you must have something to hide from the regime our kind and beneficent government, right?
Ballsups happen to even the biggest firms, granted, but nobody should be surprised by the nature of their response; it's not like wastebook has to bother being accountable or responsible now that it's a global behemoth.
The odd benefit fiddler is nothing compared to the harm of having almost any government employed/contracted numpty permitted to go trawling people's online business on the flimsiest of excuses.
Remember when the regime had to call privacy invasions "anti terrorism" to foist more snooping on us?
Frankly, if someone needs emergency care then just bloody treat them and be done with it, like we already do.
For non-emergency stuff, why not simply furnish hospitals with a list of people eligible to go on their books, to be checked internally? No surveillance potential, of course, nor can anything even be gleaned from such a list as it covers everyone, everywhere. Also good for citizens and visitors on their own insurance. Exceptions can be handled as and when, as appropriate.
With info being sent to the regime* how long before they're catching Murderers? Fraudsters? Non-violent x/y/z-phobic gobshites? Ganja growers? People with unauthorised opinions? This is a one-way street no matter how slow we're going on any given day.
If this was really about money they'd simply enforce existing tax law and close loopholes. But turkeys, Christmas, etc.
* /reɪˈʒiːm/ noun
1. a government, especially an authoritarian one.
I live in a basic old terraced house in SE London, the type where the kitchen with a bedroom above sticks out the back, leaving a sort of dingy alcove.
With my LG G3 on my desk, by the rear window that looks out to the alcove next to the kitchen, I can still get music on my old 8 quid bluetooth headset on the front porch. About 15m and 2 or 3 brick walls.
I imagine a decent antenna and circuitry could at least double that to the middle of the road.
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