So far as I can see, it's no big secret that Putin would like to destabilize the EU, especially NATO countries, because a weak EU/NATO means it's easier for him to implement his long-term agenda.
I am reminded of a story I heard years ago (which may or may not be true) about a Russian woman who received a letter in the mail from a tampon manufacturer (retail store, maybe?) concerned that her tampon purchasing had increased of late, and how they were expressing concern about her health. According to the story there was quite a controversy about this invasion of this Russian womans' privacy. You speak of the young-and-dumb welcoming such technological invasion of their privacy (privacy that they apparently don't value at all, thanks so much to social medias' indoctrination); let's see how long that lasts when young women are getting similar messages in their email from Walmart or Amazon or whoever about their most-personal-of-personal-hygiene purchases. Might just wake them up.
Of course if we find ourselves living in a world where such nonsense as this Walmart thing is allowed to happen, then it's way too late to do anything. To that end, such nonsense as this needs to be stomped on vigorously until it's the consistency of roadkill.
I do not shop at Walmart, ever, for a variety of reasons. Even suggesting such a thing ensures that I will never set foot in a Walmart, EVER. Seriously, who the hell do they think they are!?
Both the OP and the Slashdot editors don't know a damn thing about what The Andromeda Strain was about; it was about an alien organism, not anything Earth-evolved that was buried under ice.
But the 'sky doesn't fall' every single decade or so, and we (thankfully!) don't have World Wars every decade or so either.
Also if alarmist types are going to be alarmist about something, why right now is it automation technology and not Islamic State assholes? They're doing FAR more overall damage in the world right now than anything else, stirring shit up all over the place, emboldening mentally ill people by giving them a 'cause' to use as an outlet for their mental-illness-inspired drive to be violent, and destroying things all over the place. Or is it a case of 'that is not happening here, so why should we care'?
I'm not sexist; I am saying that your typical skinhead/neo-nazi type is more likely to be sexist, as demonstrated by how much more willing they are to bully/harass/attack a woman than they are a man. Ironically this actually just reveals how cowardly they really are, as with most bullies.
I don't have any respect for the strong physicaly attacking/subjugating/bullying the weak, regardless of gender, but women tend to be physically weaker than men, which makes it all the more repugnant so far as I'm concerned; if that makes me 'sexist' in someone's opinion, then so be it.
Of course even so-called 'cable TV' is just streaming data, not pure RF signals in the sense that OTA broadcasts are. It's the only way they can jam so many hundreds of shitty channels nobody watches onto the same coax.
Falling for the 'Internet streaming video' meme
That's pretty much what it is; I agree with you. Just shifting the fees from one thing to another. I'll stick with my antenna, CableCos, kthxbye.
Freedom of speech means "freedom of speech you don't like". Sound like Cloudflare is a champion of free speech (as if we didn't already know that from keeping torrent sites alive). Good on em.
'Freedom of speech' is fine, but you're still responsible for what comes out of your piehole. If someone is going around saying "I hate N I G G E R S and J E W S and S P I C S and I think they all should be KILLED", sure, that's someone exercising their First Amendment right to freedom of speech -- however: When I or a hundred other someones get in that guys' face to tell him what an asshole he is, and how he should shut the fuck up, that's also our First Amendment right to freedom of speech. On the other hand: Saying you're going to "take revenge on people who complain" about your neo-nazi website is not 'freedom of speech' anymore, it's issuing a threat, however vague. The mildest word I have for such behavior is 'cowardly', especially when who you're vaguely threatening IS A WOMAN.
So, to summarize:
* 'Freedom of Speech' is a fine thing indeed.
* However: You're still RESPONSIBLE for what it is you USE your First Amendment right to say.
* Your 'First Amendment rights' do not include threatening people, even in the vaguest ways.
I'd have to say that there are more than one flaw in this tactic.
For one, it relies on the general public valuing their online privacy in the first place, which so-called 'social media' has been indoctrinating them against for a long time now, especially Milennials.
Next, it relies on the general public even understanding the issue from a technical perspective; at best they probably think clearing their browser history is enough to protect them from nosy ISPs.
Finally, it also relies on how they prioritize one issue over another. Does the general public really take the Internet all that seriously, compared to other issues that their elected representatives have a hand in? They may think so-and-so does a great job, for instance, keeping education funded in their state, or keeping crime under control, so they don't really care about this 'internet' thing so much.
Still, it's better that they do something rather than just sit back and do nothing. There's always a chance that people will prove me wrong, and I'd be fine with that in this case. Otherwise, the way things are going, the Internet is going to become unusable. As-is, since this whole issue came up, I've started using Tor for everything, which is not all that great to start with, and am considering migrating away from Comcasts' email and using Proton Mail for everything instead, so that Comcast gets basically nothing from me. However it's not beyond the realm of possibility at this point that jackass corporations like Comcast might change their terms of service some time in the future to make it against their rules to use Tor.
See, you're saying pretty much the same things I've said on this same subject in the past, using different words, but of course the typical garden-variety neckbearded troll of/. will come down on you like a ton of bricks, claiming it's going to 'create a utopia for everyone', 'no one will have to work anymore', and their perennial favorite, 'Universal Basic Income will free everyone and allow them to follow their dreams', among other nonsensical things.
A few points I'd like to add to the discussion:
1. If, indeed, automation and so-called (inaccurately named) 'AI' puts huge swaths of people out of work, permanently? There will, indeed, be a palpable risk of civil war. You can't just throw people away and expect them to lie down and die. People will fight for their survival in any way they can -- even if that means blowing everything up in the process. You can't expect desperate people to think or act rationally. Have people's kids starving to death? That makes them that much more desperate, and therefore that much more irrational.
2. The above having been said: The government, at least here in the U.S. (I hope!) wouldn't allow such a situation to devolve to the point of there actually being a Civil War over it. Additionally, while I think many corporations and much of the '1%' don't give a damn about anyone other than themselves and their 'people', I do hold a spark of hope that there are responsible, humanistic corporations and '1%-ers' out there who do give a damn about more than just themselves and their profits, and therefore don't want to see the whole planet go to Hell in a handbasket.
3. I'm over 50 years old now. I've seen enough of Life in that amount of time, seen enough things change, and listened to enough people older than myself to know that shit happens; it's happened before, it's happening now, and it'll happen again -- and every single time things change, a huge swath of people turn into Chicken Little, running around in a panic screaming about how The Sky Is Falling. Spoiler Alert: THE SKY NEVER ACTUALLY FALLS. They always say 'Oh, well, it's DIFFERENT this time, $CHANGE changes everything, the sky will DEFINITELY fall this time!', too, but the sky never actually falls. Our One Job: IGNORE as much of this alarmist bullshit as possible, and CARRY ON.
4. Similar to the above, there's ALWAYS jackasses who are trying to bring about the Apocalypse. It's an unfortunate game of Whack-A-Mole that Humanity has to perpetually play with itself, and it's not going to ever stop. We find the jackasses trying to blow up the whole planet and we whack them in the head. Then move on to find the next jackass. And so on. Forever. Maybe, just maybe, one day we'll evolve this and other defects out of our poor caveman brains. Until then, it's Whack-A-Mole. But it's OK. It gives the LEOs something to do other than find new and innovative ways to write you traffic tickets.
Any of that make you feel better about things, friend? I hope so.
That's the Age of the Internet we're now entering: The Nostalgia Age, when we look back at how great it used to be during it's Golden Age, before the fucktarded politicians, corrupt governments, greedy corporations, and criminal organizations ruined it for everyone. We've reached Peak Internet; it's all downhill from here, the Internet we knew is like a massive oak tree that's rotting and dead on the inside. Wonder what'll be the next big thing, and how many years it'll last before it gets all fucked up, too?
Too young and dumb to know any better. Plus, in a scholastic setting, where they're limited to start with -- bonus points! The word I want to use here is 'indoctrination'. Just Say No, everyone; think of the children!
While I have enough of an understanding of the contributions to physics that Stephen Hawking has made, and therefore would weigh his opinions on things a bit more than the average man-on-the-street, I'm not gawking in awe at him due to media hype that has always surrounded him -- which, again, is why I think so many people would have so much blind faith in what the man says; the power of the media is undeniable, that's been proven over and over again, but mainly for people who, somehow, don't seem to be capable of thinking critically; 'believe half of what you see and none of what you hear' is, I believe, the old saying, and it continues to be sage advice. Also doesn't help that Dr. Hawking is saying things that are re-inforcing the media hype.
You're completely right, friend, you've got your facts straight; don't let the trolls around here get to you. Congratulations for not falling for all the media hype.
Yes, you might well talk people into investing a little for a node on your mesh network. But just like Bitcoin, it would almost immediately be corrupted into something used to commit crimes. First and foremost it would end up being like another Darknet for pedophiles to traffick in child porn. Right on the heels of that would be filesharing of all kinds, heavily in movies and TV shows. Before too long someone would start setting up servers and it's subversion into a full-on Darknet would be complete; you'd have illegal drugs and other contraband, and crime-for-hire freely available. This would exist for a while before law enforcement got wind of it, and people would start being rounded up and their nodes confiscated, starting with the pedophiles and drug dealers; some outraged politicians would pass legislation making it illegal, or there would be application of existing laws to shut the whole thing down as illegal, and it would all fall apart. Corporations would back all this police action because a free mesh network would cut into their profits anyway.
That's all it is, really. The media latched on to the term 'AI' and ran with it, and with the fantasy misrepresentation of what 'AI' is in TV shows and movies, most people are uninformed/uneducated enough to actually believe that the media hype is real. Add to that more media hype about some corner cases like computers beating chess masters and winning at poker, plus gods-be-damned Google and their adding fuel to the media-hype fire (because, frankly, they want to make back a profit on the millions they've spent so far on their half-assed so-called 'self driving cars') and you have the average, undereducated-in-tech citizen believing nonsense like this; there are probably more people than I'd like to believe who think their so-called 'self driving car' is going to have full-on conversations with them while it drives them places. Ain't happening, people, none of it.
Scan through comments See mainly comments about growing penises as replacements or for gender reassignment
Seriously, Slashdotters? With how much technology like this could improve the quality of life for so many, this is the first thing you think of? Shame on all of you.
Why don't you put your solar panels 1 meter from the sun surface and see how that goes.
Because unless someone comes up with cheap room-temperature superconductors, the line loss over ~93 million miles will likely more than cancel out the increase in energy density. You'd be better off building a gigantic solar-pumped MASER and beaming the power directly back to collector arrays on Earth.
Anonymous Cowards confirmed for not understanding Ohms' Law
Slashdot Mirror
So far as I can see, it's no big secret that Putin would like to destabilize the EU, especially NATO countries, because a weak EU/NATO means it's easier for him to implement his long-term agenda.
I am reminded of a story I heard years ago (which may or may not be true) about a Russian woman who received a letter in the mail from a tampon manufacturer (retail store, maybe?) concerned that her tampon purchasing had increased of late, and how they were expressing concern about her health. According to the story there was quite a controversy about this invasion of this Russian womans' privacy. You speak of the young-and-dumb welcoming such technological invasion of their privacy (privacy that they apparently don't value at all, thanks so much to social medias' indoctrination); let's see how long that lasts when young women are getting similar messages in their email from Walmart or Amazon or whoever about their most-personal-of-personal-hygiene purchases. Might just wake them up.
Of course if we find ourselves living in a world where such nonsense as this Walmart thing is allowed to happen, then it's way too late to do anything. To that end, such nonsense as this needs to be stomped on vigorously until it's the consistency of roadkill.
We want to track EVERYTHING YOU DO IN YOUR HOME
Memo to Walmart: Go to hell!!!
I do not shop at Walmart, ever, for a variety of reasons. Even suggesting such a thing ensures that I will never set foot in a Walmart, EVER. Seriously, who the hell do they think they are!?
Also stop using your ISP-provided email and use something like Proton Mail. Let's see how much they can monetize ZERO data.
Both the OP and the Slashdot editors don't know a damn thing about what The Andromeda Strain was about; it was about an alien organism, not anything Earth-evolved that was buried under ice.
That's what this sounds like. I feel sorry for you Brits. Your government is going downhill even faster than ours is, which is saying something.
But the 'sky doesn't fall' every single decade or so, and we (thankfully!) don't have World Wars every decade or so either.
Also if alarmist types are going to be alarmist about something, why right now is it automation technology and not Islamic State assholes? They're doing FAR more overall damage in the world right now than anything else, stirring shit up all over the place, emboldening mentally ill people by giving them a 'cause' to use as an outlet for their mental-illness-inspired drive to be violent, and destroying things all over the place. Or is it a case of 'that is not happening here, so why should we care'?
Please don't conflate the whole gun control debate with healthcare, okay? Those are two separate issues entirely.
I'm not sexist; I am saying that your typical skinhead/neo-nazi type is more likely to be sexist, as demonstrated by how much more willing they are to bully/harass/attack a woman than they are a man. Ironically this actually just reveals how cowardly they really are, as with most bullies.
I don't have any respect for the strong physicaly attacking/subjugating/bullying the weak, regardless of gender, but women tend to be physically weaker than men, which makes it all the more repugnant so far as I'm concerned; if that makes me 'sexist' in someone's opinion, then so be it.
The internet is the successor to cable tv.
Of course even so-called 'cable TV' is just streaming data, not pure RF signals in the sense that OTA broadcasts are. It's the only way they can jam so many hundreds of shitty channels nobody watches onto the same coax.
Falling for the 'Internet streaming video' meme
That's pretty much what it is; I agree with you. Just shifting the fees from one thing to another. I'll stick with my antenna, CableCos, kthxbye.
Freedom of speech means "freedom of speech you don't like". Sound like Cloudflare is a champion of free speech (as if we didn't already know that from keeping torrent sites alive). Good on em.
'Freedom of speech' is fine, but you're still responsible for what comes out of your piehole. If someone is going around saying "I hate N I G G E R S and J E W S and S P I C S and I think they all should be KILLED", sure, that's someone exercising their First Amendment right to freedom of speech -- however: When I or a hundred other someones get in that guys' face to tell him what an asshole he is, and how he should shut the fuck up, that's also our First Amendment right to freedom of speech. On the other hand: Saying you're going to "take revenge on people who complain" about your neo-nazi website is not 'freedom of speech' anymore, it's issuing a threat, however vague. The mildest word I have for such behavior is 'cowardly', especially when who you're vaguely threatening IS A WOMAN.
So, to summarize:
* 'Freedom of Speech' is a fine thing indeed.
* However: You're still RESPONSIBLE for what it is you USE your First Amendment right to say.
* Your 'First Amendment rights' do not include threatening people, even in the vaguest ways.
I'd have to say that there are more than one flaw in this tactic.
For one, it relies on the general public valuing their online privacy in the first place, which so-called 'social media' has been indoctrinating them against for a long time now, especially Milennials.
Next, it relies on the general public even understanding the issue from a technical perspective; at best they probably think clearing their browser history is enough to protect them from nosy ISPs.
Finally, it also relies on how they prioritize one issue over another. Does the general public really take the Internet all that seriously, compared to other issues that their elected representatives have a hand in? They may think so-and-so does a great job, for instance, keeping education funded in their state, or keeping crime under control, so they don't really care about this 'internet' thing so much.
Still, it's better that they do something rather than just sit back and do nothing. There's always a chance that people will prove me wrong, and I'd be fine with that in this case. Otherwise, the way things are going, the Internet is going to become unusable. As-is, since this whole issue came up, I've started using Tor for everything, which is not all that great to start with, and am considering migrating away from Comcasts' email and using Proton Mail for everything instead, so that Comcast gets basically nothing from me. However it's not beyond the realm of possibility at this point that jackass corporations like Comcast might change their terms of service some time in the future to make it against their rules to use Tor.
See, you're saying pretty much the same things I've said on this same subject in the past, using different words, but of course the typical garden-variety neckbearded troll of /. will come down on you like a ton of bricks, claiming it's going to 'create a utopia for everyone', 'no one will have to work anymore', and their perennial favorite, 'Universal Basic Income will free everyone and allow them to follow their dreams', among other nonsensical things.
A few points I'd like to add to the discussion:
1. If, indeed, automation and so-called (inaccurately named) 'AI' puts huge swaths of people out of work, permanently? There will, indeed, be a palpable risk of civil war. You can't just throw people away and expect them to lie down and die. People will fight for their survival in any way they can -- even if that means blowing everything up in the process. You can't expect desperate people to think or act rationally. Have people's kids starving to death? That makes them that much more desperate, and therefore that much more irrational.
2. The above having been said: The government, at least here in the U.S. (I hope!) wouldn't allow such a situation to devolve to the point of there actually being a Civil War over it. Additionally, while I think many corporations and much of the '1%' don't give a damn about anyone other than themselves and their 'people', I do hold a spark of hope that there are responsible, humanistic corporations and '1%-ers' out there who do give a damn about more than just themselves and their profits, and therefore don't want to see the whole planet go to Hell in a handbasket.
3. I'm over 50 years old now. I've seen enough of Life in that amount of time, seen enough things change, and listened to enough people older than myself to know that shit happens; it's happened before, it's happening now, and it'll happen again -- and every single time things change, a huge swath of people turn into Chicken Little, running around in a panic screaming about how The Sky Is Falling. Spoiler Alert: THE SKY NEVER ACTUALLY FALLS. They always say 'Oh, well, it's DIFFERENT this time, $CHANGE changes everything, the sky will DEFINITELY fall this time!', too, but the sky never actually falls. Our One Job: IGNORE as much of this alarmist bullshit as possible, and CARRY ON.
4. Similar to the above, there's ALWAYS jackasses who are trying to bring about the Apocalypse. It's an unfortunate game of Whack-A-Mole that Humanity has to perpetually play with itself, and it's not going to ever stop. We find the jackasses trying to blow up the whole planet and we whack them in the head. Then move on to find the next jackass. And so on. Forever. Maybe, just maybe, one day we'll evolve this and other defects out of our poor caveman brains. Until then, it's Whack-A-Mole. But it's OK. It gives the LEOs something to do other than find new and innovative ways to write you traffic tickets.
Any of that make you feel better about things, friend? I hope so.
That's the Age of the Internet we're now entering: The Nostalgia Age, when we look back at how great it used to be during it's Golden Age, before the fucktarded politicians, corrupt governments, greedy corporations, and criminal organizations ruined it for everyone. We've reached Peak Internet; it's all downhill from here, the Internet we knew is like a massive oak tree that's rotting and dead on the inside. Wonder what'll be the next big thing, and how many years it'll last before it gets all fucked up, too?
Too young and dumb to know any better. Plus, in a scholastic setting, where they're limited to start with -- bonus points! The word I want to use here is 'indoctrination'. Just Say No, everyone; think of the children!
You thought Wikipedia vandalism was bad? Just wait until you see this when the Communist Chinese government gets done vandalizing reality.
Quit being oblique and say what you really mean.
While I have enough of an understanding of the contributions to physics that Stephen Hawking has made, and therefore would weigh his opinions on things a bit more than the average man-on-the-street, I'm not gawking in awe at him due to media hype that has always surrounded him -- which, again, is why I think so many people would have so much blind faith in what the man says; the power of the media is undeniable, that's been proven over and over again, but mainly for people who, somehow, don't seem to be capable of thinking critically; 'believe half of what you see and none of what you hear' is, I believe, the old saying, and it continues to be sage advice. Also doesn't help that Dr. Hawking is saying things that are re-inforcing the media hype.
You're completely right, friend, you've got your facts straight; don't let the trolls around here get to you. Congratulations for not falling for all the media hype.
Is it even possible to "bully" a machine?
No, it is not. They are using that word in a weak attempt to elicit an emotional response from people.
Yes, you might well talk people into investing a little for a node on your mesh network. But just like Bitcoin, it would almost immediately be corrupted into something used to commit crimes. First and foremost it would end up being like another Darknet for pedophiles to traffick in child porn. Right on the heels of that would be filesharing of all kinds, heavily in movies and TV shows. Before too long someone would start setting up servers and it's subversion into a full-on Darknet would be complete; you'd have illegal drugs and other contraband, and crime-for-hire freely available. This would exist for a while before law enforcement got wind of it, and people would start being rounded up and their nodes confiscated, starting with the pedophiles and drug dealers; some outraged politicians would pass legislation making it illegal, or there would be application of existing laws to shut the whole thing down as illegal, and it would all fall apart. Corporations would back all this police action because a free mesh network would cut into their profits anyway.
That's all it is, really. The media latched on to the term 'AI' and ran with it, and with the fantasy misrepresentation of what 'AI' is in TV shows and movies, most people are uninformed/uneducated enough to actually believe that the media hype is real. Add to that more media hype about some corner cases like computers beating chess masters and winning at poker, plus gods-be-damned Google and their adding fuel to the media-hype fire (because, frankly, they want to make back a profit on the millions they've spent so far on their half-assed so-called 'self driving cars') and you have the average, undereducated-in-tech citizen believing nonsense like this; there are probably more people than I'd like to believe who think their so-called 'self driving car' is going to have full-on conversations with them while it drives them places. Ain't happening, people, none of it.
Scan through comments
See mainly comments about growing penises as replacements or for gender reassignment
Seriously, Slashdotters? With how much technology like this could improve the quality of life for so many, this is the first thing you think of? Shame on all of you.
LOL if they can.. but I still won't have one, regardless.
Why don't you put your solar panels 1 meter from the sun surface and see how that goes.
Because unless someone comes up with cheap room-temperature superconductors, the line loss over ~93 million miles will likely more than cancel out the increase in energy density. You'd be better off building a gigantic solar-pumped MASER and beaming the power directly back to collector arrays on Earth.
Anonymous Cowards confirmed for not understanding Ohms' Law