Presumably, the point is to give uninspired programmers a few positive talking points during their next performance review with their non-technical manager.
Assuming that it will have a specific version identifier, this could have the side-effect of clearly identifying Chinese government computers, marking them as prime targets for their foes, but conversely also eliminating the risk of friendly-fire.
The U.S. “hybrid-electric car fleet” was not obtained without any government interference. There were tax credits and other incentives. For example, California encouraged buyers by granting access to carpool lanes to hybrid as well as electric vehicles. Gasoline taxation (by federal and state governments) also plays a significant role in fostering consumer desire for more fuel-efficient vehicles. Higher fuel economy standards, mandated by governments, have also played a role by preventing vehicle manufacturers from flooding the market with cheap gas guzzlers against which comparatively more expensive hybrid vehicles could not easily compete. If there had been no government involvement, if only the market had been speaking, we’d all be driving large yet inexpensive cars. And if foreign competition had been thwarted through protectionist policies, those cars would likely be sporting 1960’s technology (and fuel-efficiency) to boot, but that’s another story.
In regard to greenhouse gas emissions reduction, that hybrid-electric fleet is unfortunately still a drop in the bucket, for several reasons.
Transportation only contributes about 27% of airborne pollution contributing to climate change. The remaining 73% come from electric power generation, industrial production, commercial and residential activities and agriculture. (source: EPA) This is for U.S. emissions, by the way; globally, transportation only contributes about 14% of emissions. (source: IPCC, cited by EPA). Even within the U.S., figures vary significantly between states.
Further, light-duty vehicles contribute about 60% of transportation-related emissions. (source: EPA), therefore about 17% of total emissions (in the U.S.). The remainder of transportation-related emissions comes from medium- and heavy-duty road vehicles, as well as aircraft, trains, ships and boats, pipelines, etc. Those can be particularly noxious. For example, “aircraft not only emit 12 percent of CO2 emissions from U.S. transportation sources — they also emit nitrogen oxides other than nitrous oxide, causing warming when emitted at high elevation. And ships, besides releasing almost 3 percent of the world’s CO2 (about as much as all of Canada emits), are also a main source of nitrous oxide and black carbon (soot).” (source: Center for biological diversity).
Finally, the pool of hybrid-electric cars has been growing but it is still much too small (around 2% of passenger cars) to make a significant difference. (Actually, lower gasoline prices in 2014-2015 led to decreased sales of hybrid-electric cars; source: DOT/BTS). Not to mention that, in the end, it only improves fuel efficiency, but it is still largely relying on an internal combustion engine.
My point is this: with all the goodwill displayed by a small minority of pollution-conscious consumers, even if you discounted the governmental initiatives that actually convinced those consumers to adopt a hybrid-electric vehicle, the impact on greenhouse gas emissions is minimal. And it will remain so because the largest share of those emissions is caused by factors that are well outside the reach of consumers (commercial and industrial), factors that are controlled by cost considerations, and can only be durably and significantly modified by government regulations or incentives issued on a massive scale.
Time for crooks n' spooks around the world to stop looking for boring elementary software design or coding flaws, and turn their focus on the higher-learning discipline of how to influence AI systems to do one’s bidding.
Remember the good old days when phone books ruled the earth? *1 The intrusion! OMG -- people could actually see how to spell your full name! AND obtain your phone number! AND your actual physical address. OH, the HORROR!!
It’s true that we used to be more open to associating our names to where we’d live and what we’d do or say (no need for a nickname when writing to the editor of the local paper). The huge difference, however, is that such information was mostly available to our (relative) neighbours: people living close to us, who could know us and that we could know; and if one of them attempted something unsavoury, the neighbourhood cops would likely take care of it. Besides, any information was available on a relatively temporary basis: this week’s paper, this year’s phonebook (as evidence, look at how sensational old information occasionally gets digged out of forgotten archives, by complete chance).
Nowadays, on the other hand, whatever is published about you is persistently (and “searchably”) available to the entire planet. Potential readership ncludes the whole world’s pool of crooks (and not just today’s pool, tomorrow’s too), including a few that have the smarts, the technical means, the incentive (a mere thousand dollars goes a long way in many places) and the intent to harm you for profit (of various kinds: strategic, commercial, financial, etc.); who can use fairly massive computing power to cross-reference information obtained from many sources to build an actionable profile; and who can do all that from the comfort of their own parents’ basement, without fear of being caught, being often located in places that either support or turn a blind eye on their activities, or simply don’t have the means to find and prosecute them.
This particular case seems, I agree, much less than terrifying, and your other points (what else was done?) are well-taken! But at the same time, we should not necessarily diminish the importance of privacy concerns by drawing comparisons to what we could afford to do thirty years ago.
Monitoring is just the boring half of the automated process. Employees who fail to perform will be directly disciplined by an avatar of Vice-President Dalek, a special AI embodied in one of Knightscope’s model K12 (H.R. Edition).
Malwarebytes wrote: “This was probably some kind of kill switch... UPDATE: The second argument to InternetOpenA is 1 (INTERNET_OPEN_TYPE_DIRECT), so the worm will still work on any system that requires a proxy to access the Internet, which is the case on the majority of corporate networks.”
This reminds me of a field-test, ten years ago, where researchers had volunteers follow a scent trail on all fours. It turns out that most did surprisingly well, even getting better at it with repetition. So we, humans, are actually pretty good at this. It’s just that we’re no longer quite comfortable putting (and keeping) our noses smack against the ground to take a really good whiff of whatever was down there.
In the end, they do say that “dogs are still better at picking up the whiff of a particular person from a discarded item of clothing”. Still, I bet that with some serious training and dedication to the job, gifted people (perhaps like those employed as “noses” in the perfume industry) would probably do better than expected.
Having a unit of measurement named after you by the scientific community is quite enough honour and respect, and it sure beats having a corporation trying to make an extra buck by exploiting your name (and posthumous fame) for an ephemeral product line, without your consent.
Besides, do you really think that the marketing oils at Nvidia sat in a conference room asking themselves: “Guys, what deserving hero could we possibly honour with this product?”, rather than: “What name is likely to strike a fancy within our target demographics? Lightning? Magnetos? Hey, how about Tesla? Yeah, it worked for Musk!”
This is all cogent, because RCM is a New Jersey corporation.
You are probably thinking of another company, RCM Technologies, located in Pennsauken (New Jersey). There are other unrelated companies with similar names, including a River City Media located in Portland (Oregon).
The spam operation operated by Matt Ferris and Alvin Slocombe seems run from Washington state, along with other companies that they have registered there under names like “Acetech USA”, “Cyber World Internet Services” and others, according to SpamHaus.
Slashdot Mirror
Presumably, the point is to give uninspired programmers a few positive talking points during their next performance review with their non-technical manager.
Assuming that it will have a specific version identifier, this could have the side-effect of clearly identifying Chinese government computers, marking them as prime targets for their foes, but conversely also eliminating the risk of friendly-fire.
The U.S. “hybrid-electric car fleet” was not obtained without any government interference. There were tax credits and other incentives. For example, California encouraged buyers by granting access to carpool lanes to hybrid as well as electric vehicles. Gasoline taxation (by federal and state governments) also plays a significant role in fostering consumer desire for more fuel-efficient vehicles. Higher fuel economy standards, mandated by governments, have also played a role by preventing vehicle manufacturers from flooding the market with cheap gas guzzlers against which comparatively more expensive hybrid vehicles could not easily compete. If there had been no government involvement, if only the market had been speaking, we’d all be driving large yet inexpensive cars. And if foreign competition had been thwarted through protectionist policies, those cars would likely be sporting 1960’s technology (and fuel-efficiency) to boot, but that’s another story.
In regard to greenhouse gas emissions reduction, that hybrid-electric fleet is unfortunately still a drop in the bucket, for several reasons.
Transportation only contributes about 27% of airborne pollution contributing to climate change. The remaining 73% come from electric power generation, industrial production, commercial and residential activities and agriculture. (source: EPA) This is for U.S. emissions, by the way; globally, transportation only contributes about 14% of emissions. (source: IPCC, cited by EPA). Even within the U.S., figures vary significantly between states.
Further, light-duty vehicles contribute about 60% of transportation-related emissions. (source: EPA), therefore about 17% of total emissions (in the U.S.). The remainder of transportation-related emissions comes from medium- and heavy-duty road vehicles, as well as aircraft, trains, ships and boats, pipelines, etc. Those can be particularly noxious. For example, “aircraft not only emit 12 percent of CO2 emissions from U.S. transportation sources — they also emit nitrogen oxides other than nitrous oxide, causing warming when emitted at high elevation. And ships, besides releasing almost 3 percent of the world’s CO2 (about as much as all of Canada emits), are also a main source of nitrous oxide and black carbon (soot).” (source: Center for biological diversity).
Finally, the pool of hybrid-electric cars has been growing but it is still much too small (around 2% of passenger cars) to make a significant difference. (Actually, lower gasoline prices in 2014-2015 led to decreased sales of hybrid-electric cars; source: DOT/BTS). Not to mention that, in the end, it only improves fuel efficiency, but it is still largely relying on an internal combustion engine.
My point is this: with all the goodwill displayed by a small minority of pollution-conscious consumers, even if you discounted the governmental initiatives that actually convinced those consumers to adopt a hybrid-electric vehicle, the impact on greenhouse gas emissions is minimal. And it will remain so because the largest share of those emissions is caused by factors that are well outside the reach of consumers (commercial and industrial), factors that are controlled by cost considerations, and can only be durably and significantly modified by government regulations or incentives issued on a massive scale.
Time for crooks n' spooks around the world to stop looking for boring elementary software design or coding flaws, and turn their focus on the higher-learning discipline of how to influence AI systems to do one’s bidding.
Remember the good old days when phone books ruled the earth? *1 The intrusion! OMG -- people could actually see how to spell your full name! AND obtain your phone number! AND your actual physical address. OH, the HORROR!!
It’s true that we used to be more open to associating our names to where we’d live and what we’d do or say (no need for a nickname when writing to the editor of the local paper). The huge difference, however, is that such information was mostly available to our (relative) neighbours: people living close to us, who could know us and that we could know; and if one of them attempted something unsavoury, the neighbourhood cops would likely take care of it. Besides, any information was available on a relatively temporary basis: this week’s paper, this year’s phonebook (as evidence, look at how sensational old information occasionally gets digged out of forgotten archives, by complete chance).
Nowadays, on the other hand, whatever is published about you is persistently (and “searchably”) available to the entire planet. Potential readership ncludes the whole world’s pool of crooks (and not just today’s pool, tomorrow’s too), including a few that have the smarts, the technical means, the incentive (a mere thousand dollars goes a long way in many places) and the intent to harm you for profit (of various kinds: strategic, commercial, financial, etc.); who can use fairly massive computing power to cross-reference information obtained from many sources to build an actionable profile; and who can do all that from the comfort of their own parents’ basement, without fear of being caught, being often located in places that either support or turn a blind eye on their activities, or simply don’t have the means to find and prosecute them.
This particular case seems, I agree, much less than terrifying, and your other points (what else was done?) are well-taken! But at the same time, we should not necessarily diminish the importance of privacy concerns by drawing comparisons to what we could afford to do thirty years ago.
Monitoring is just the boring half of the automated process. Employees who fail to perform will be directly disciplined by an avatar of Vice-President Dalek, a special AI embodied in one of Knightscope’s model K12 (H.R. Edition).
Malwarebytes wrote: “This was probably some kind of kill switch... UPDATE: The second argument to InternetOpenA is 1 (INTERNET_OPEN_TYPE_DIRECT), so the worm will still work on any system that requires a proxy to access the Internet, which is the case on the majority of corporate networks.”
This reminds me of a field-test, ten years ago, where researchers had volunteers follow a scent trail on all fours. It turns out that most did surprisingly well, even getting better at it with repetition. So we, humans, are actually pretty good at this. It’s just that we’re no longer quite comfortable putting (and keeping) our noses smack against the ground to take a really good whiff of whatever was down there.
See this article (from 2006) in Nature: People track scents in same way as dogs.
In the end, they do say that “dogs are still better at picking up the whiff of a particular person from a discarded item of clothing”. Still, I bet that with some serious training and dedication to the job, gifted people (perhaps like those employed as “noses” in the perfume industry) would probably do better than expected.
Having a unit of measurement named after you by the scientific community is quite enough honour and respect, and it sure beats having a corporation trying to make an extra buck by exploiting your name (and posthumous fame) for an ephemeral product line, without your consent.
Besides, do you really think that the marketing oils at Nvidia sat in a conference room asking themselves: “Guys, what deserving hero could we possibly honour with this product?”, rather than: “What name is likely to strike a fancy within our target demographics? Lightning? Magnetos? Hey, how about Tesla? Yeah, it worked for Musk!”
This is all cogent, because RCM is a New Jersey corporation.
You are probably thinking of another company, RCM Technologies, located in Pennsauken (New Jersey). There are other unrelated companies with similar names, including a River City Media located in Portland (Oregon).
The spam operation operated by Matt Ferris and Alvin Slocombe seems run from Washington state, along with other companies that they have registered there under names like “Acetech USA”, “Cyber World Internet Services” and others, according to SpamHaus.