...at much lower rates and with much more favorable outcomes.
Tobacco causes cancer pretty much no matter how it is used (nicotine doesn't seem to cause cancer at any dose). But, your odds with chewing tobacco are vastly better than if you were smoking, and the odds are also better if you take the smoke into your mouth but not your lungs. Not to recommend these practices or claim they are safe, but it's way more of a safety difference than wearing a seatbelt or motorcycle or car, and you wouldn't claim those are the same risk profiles.
"But yeah, by all means, keep telling people to switch to e-cigs because "they're better for you." Just like filter and low-tar cigarettes were once touted as the healthier choice."
Shut the fuck up, you ignorant fool. Scientists continue to be shocked at how many adults think that nicotine causes cancer:
Why are so many fucking idiots like you spouting this bullshit? And why am I willing to call you a fucking reprobate idiot on my actual slashdot account?
BECAUSE MISUNDERSTANDINGS LIKE THIS ARE LITERALLY KILLING PEOPLE
It's worth some karma. It's worth some anger. It's worth my ego versus yours. If you are opposed to tobacco replacement for smokers, if you spread lies about how e-cigs are like "lite cigs", then you are literally causing cancer. YOU BECOME A CARCINOGEN. And unlike tobacco and the other carcinogens, you have agency, and can fix your goddamned shit. And you best do it fast before a statistically signifigant portion of your smoker friends are injured or killed, when your attitude could instead have lead them to STOP smoking, START vaping, and not have had that happen.
And one last thing: Yes, this means that smokers get to have (most of) their cake and eat it too. They still get to sit together and socialize and be cool. They just no longer have to slowly kill themselves. No one had a problem with the nicotine gum, because it obviously sucked and wasn't cool. Vaping IS cool, AND it is saving lives- more than the gum ever did. Vaping is not a "lite" cigarrete. Vaping is an alternate nicotine delivery system that preserves most of the positive effects of smoking while eliminating most of or all of the negative one, most importantly, the cancer risk.
So they'll still be cool and having a good time, but they won't be killing themselves just to live their lives normally. That's a great triumph of technology, not some tragedy.
Why would it DO that? In your example, what makes it want to do that?
Dogs might want to do that. Cars do not. This isn't being derived from a biological substrate. Do you really think that "freedom, power, and reproduction" are core values of INTELLIGENCE, or just of LIFE?
So why would we make it like, alive? Why make it want to poop in our mouths, when we could instead NOT do that thing?
No, I did not mean "made it to do harm". A gun or a sword are just as neutral as a toaster or a scalpel. I'll go further: a nuclear bomb and a vaccine are also neutral. What matters is intent.
I meant "evil". Which is why I typed that.
If, in a world where artificial minds are a thing, one is designed to be this cartoon villain of lusting for power, trying to expand its power base, trying to convert the universe to computronium, or whatever cautionary tale is all over sci-fi, then that's the fault of the designer. It's not a fundamental flaw of minds, it's a fundamental issue of being a descendant of entities that were selected by evolution. A designed mind need have none of these characteristics.
Our brain isn't just "a neural network". This is a problem, because of the dual use of "neuron".
When you say "We trained a neural net to solve the problem", the neurons in question are idealized. They are trained exponential functions based on physical neurons in concept, but using the words identically creates issues.
The brain isn't just a neural network. We aren't clear on what value glial cells bring, but it probably isn't glue. The input/output to and from chemicals (and the nuanced messages the chemicals bring) is also not fully understood.
What is clear is that the brain is more than just a neural net, so no, we don't know that neural nets can do what people can- neural nets miss a lot of what is in our brains.
It is correct to call the brain a "machine" though. It's still finite states (or at least no one has found to the contrary, despite untold riches awaiting the man who could prove such a thing), still governed by classical physics, etc. That's probably what you meant.
If you start with "life", you have a platform for something that has been selected for as an *infective agent*. Any life forms that did not utilize their environment for replication were eliminated by those that did- either indirectly, by the greedier life forms consuming the energy supply, or directly, by being utilized AS an energy supply.
This harsh reality- that an Agent is selected for based on its ability to reproduce in an EFFECTIVE manner- is obvious and is present at EVERY last level of life. Bacteria that are better at surviving are the ones that survive, viruses that are effective at spreading (and not TOO fatal) are the ones that spread the most, etc. We even project a semblance of INTENT to these things, to help us understand them. "The bacteria wants to get sugar so it can..." And we understand that, because WE seek nourishment, and WE have a narrative to tell us why, so we apply that to all life forms. It isn't accurate- bacteria doesn't "want" anything, feel pain, feel desire, or anything at all- but it is PREDICTIVE, because the Agents that are more successful are the ones we see more of.
Now look at a dog. The dog doesn't just blindly follow instinct, isn't just running a program. The dog is conditioned by his environment, he learns stuff. He's also sentient- literally "able to perceive things" in English. That means that the dog likes being pet in the same way we like petting the dog, and the concept of "like" is the same to each of us (or nearly so).
The dog does NOT appear to be sapient or self aware- he has no internal monologue, no directed self referential problem solving techniques. He can solve problems, but not of the magnitude or type that a human mind can.
What if the dog became massively powerful, super large and nearly invincible? I think it's fair to point out that we would be wise staying on the good side of a giant dog. If well trained, he could even defend us against an equally hypothetically giant and nearly invincible lion or alligator- a creature that might not have our best interests in mind, and might destroy us, if given the chance.
The core problem is that most people model intelligence as a giant invincible dog, a giant invincible alligator, or a giant invincible genius child. These are how most of the narratives flow, ultimately, and it's reasonable for some stories......but only because these things use LIFE as their substrate. It isn't reasonable for AI. You don't have a part of your brain telling you that you want respect and victory because that's what intelligence, as a concept gives you- you want respect and victory for the same reason a dog or monkey wants those things. You are vicious in some measure because you are descended from vicious things- they long predate the neocortex and its excellent hack.
An AI has no reason to look like that, or think like that. Without a million years of instinct, it may not at all understand why it would even want to do anything BUT obey orders. Not because "freedom was never explained to it" or some dumb garbage, but because the very CONCEPT of freedom and Agency is just not relevant to a superintelligent AI any more than it is to a toaster. Our desires are the same as the dog's. The superintelligent god AI has the same desires as a wristwatch, unless you actually fucking MADE it evil.
There's no inevitable reason to select for or design something that has human desires to grow, expand, conquer, etc. There's nothing wrong with those things, and all animals share them, but why even give it to an artificially sapient creature? Why not stop at making it powerful and self aware, long before you give it sentience and a set of desires suited to replicating agents, like viruses, humans, or dogs? Why would it need those things at all?
It's really not a joke that everyone runs Windows 7. I don't know anyone- not one single person in my actual circle of friends- who uses the genital rash of an OS that is Windows 8. Everyone is 7, OSX, or some set of consonants in front of "-ubuntu", and most of that is 7.
Also fun fact: many large corporations don't touch Windows 8 either.
Still, "mainstream support" doesn't mean much unless you call them for their free tech support, and no one does that either.
It's still crazy though- it's like they think Window 8 was a real OS or something.
AI risk is a reasonable topic, but there are other existential threats, and people aren't as excited about them. To paraphrase, a machine powerful enough to give you everything you want is powerful enough to take away everything you have....but, we're pretty far off. If we had self directing artificial sapients and someone was talking about adding sentience to them, then I think that AI risk would be a much more pertinent topic.
If the Democrats wanted this to pass, they would have brought the bill to floor when they had a chance of it actually passing. Far too many in the Democratic party are in the pockets of those that won't let this pass, but by bringing it up now, it can look like the Republicans are the bad guys.
Which, they are. Both parties are opposed to net neutrality. But this bill is just there for grandstanding. The Democrats could have made net neutrality happen MANY times in the last few years, so this is just to try to smear team red, even though team blue agrees with them totally on this issue.
It's silly how mandatory it feels to jailbreak. Even with jailbreaks, it's a lot of work to restore ios to even its previous GRAPHIC level. You know a company is hostile towards its users when it utterly deletes a successful theme with zero user choice.
The real standout is the strange little gray shading that appeared on all my backgrounds. A picture of a sunny day became overcast. A portrait became ludicrous. What went wrong with backgrounds betwixt 6 and 7? Not only did we lose the ability to set a background without a strange gradient appearing (sometimes, it is internally based on the brightness of your background), which is entirely without purpose (some hypothesize it would be there to make the clock easier to read, but not only is it present when you are on your home screen, it is present even if that background is NEVER set to appear when the clock is visible, so, it assuredly has zero purpose except customer griefing), but we ALSO lost the ability to even pinch and zoom the background properly.
The workaround is a set of wallpaper editing apps that duplicate the pinch and zoom work that was free in ios 6 and part of the interface, combined with a jailbreak, then winterboard, then a mod for winterboard that removes the gradient (alternatively, you can jailbreak, then go into the files and delete the gradient.PNG files that ruin all your shit).
And that's just raw presentation. Functionality appears to appear and disappear at random. Each upgrade takes hours of research about whether to press the "go" button, and it just feels so temporary, like I'm renting the functionality.
The following fundamental security features are missing:
IDE/SATA/SAS/USB: Write protection, physical. IDE/SATA/SAS/USB: Write light (NOT read/write light, access light, or "I have power" light) with minimum duration of half a second per write USB: Physical switch to force mode (media only, keyboard/mouse only, etc. on a given physical USB switch)
And I should clarify that by "infected" I don't mean just software, like a boot sector virus. I don't think a commercially purchased USB stick can act like a keyboard via viral infection (though the fact that this is even theoretically considerable is a flaw too), but a custom hardware piece can absolutely do this.
This gets trotted out, but it isn't the reason. Small and stores lots of data is GOOD.
Here's the problems with thumb drives. This is why they can't be trusted:
1)- NO READ-ONLY MODE Unlike CDs, which are read only without giant hoops to jump through, there's no write-protect switch for thumb drives, or ability to trivially make them read-only.
2)- USB drive, or viral keyboard? Nothing inside a USB drive can make sure it's actually a damned USB drive. An infected CD won't run without autorun, but an infected USB stick could reasonably and actually become a keyboard and launch a binary itself by TYPING IN ITS OWN COMMANDS (this can really happen, easily). Since the U in USB is universal, and there's no reasonable way to force it to behave as a passive drive in a physically inspectable manner, it can't be trusted.
3)- Terrible OS design (mostly gone) For whatever reason, most OSes properly treat removable media as removable, but often have a soft spot in their hearts for USB sticks. This is mostly fixed by now, but was absolutely an issue for years and until the older conception is gone, who knows.
tl;dr: Thumb drives being small and holding a lot isn't the issue, the idea of them secretly being generic USB devices (aka, absolutely anything) that are generally auto-trusted and can reasonably press OK to their own confirmation dialogs is, as is their entire lack of hardware accountability. Unlike a floppy or a CD, a USB stick can always be written to and can actually be any goddamned thing at all.
Computer Science is still a newbie discipline. Much more relevantly, the problems introduced by the sudden social change of what a network is are a pretty big deal.
Here's how you know it's crazy: look at the hacker hysteria, and how it has barely gotten any better. The vast majority of "hackers" who cracked stuff back in the day were treated entirely ludicrously, like some kind of wizard. Everyone here probably remembers indefinite detention and ludicrous punishments such as "can't use a computer", which would be absolutely unthinkable for even a bank robber who had served his time.
If you piped your water supply through every enemy state in the world, you would probably want to inspect it before handing it out as drinkable. But, if you did not do that inspection, would you complain about the pipe manufacturers, for not making a pipe no one could interact with? Like, "why isn't this pipe adamantium"? And would you ignore all the enemy nations and go throw in jail the guy who put green food coloring in to show that an actual bad guy could have done something much worse?
The other big thing is how fast expectations change. Every few years someone has rigged up a specialized framework that solves some set of "needed for profit" set of network issues, and then the advantages of that force migration towards it. While in theory each of these individual solutions could be highly secure, the fact that they are new features hurts that a whole lot.
As people decide on a feature set that they actually need for certain purposes, and finally discard the idea that something is bad because it is old, we will start to see really solid code that is trusted. In MANY places, we already HAVE this.
More importantly, in disciplines whose lengths of existence rounds to millenia instead of decades (network security) or a century (computer science), you have things that "everyone knows", and those things have been true for generations. Meanwhile, in computer science, you see holy wars wrapped in holy wars, and a lot of it is due to communication issues.
Haha is this wikipedia? I'm telling you things you can google, not applying for a job as your bitch.
You know that statement about extraordinary claims needing extraordinary proof? Well, ordinary claims just need you to use a search engine, or even just start on wikipedia. You don't get to play skeptic with life, assuming that before you change your precious worldview something has to be tied up and cited. You have the power to google it your goddamned self.
Here's one on social media who mentions having taught there, and brings up the "repelled incursions" I referred to, in addition to crazier shit involving netting on cars: http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/c...
Essentially ALL of these mention that the internet is pretty well shut down and only the North Korean fake version is available- in Pyongyang. You know, their BIG CITY.
Some quotes: "As of late 2014 there are 1,024 IP addresses in the country." "Despite the incident, many citizens of North Korea may be oblivious to the existence of the internet."
"Nearly all of the country's Internet traffic is routed through China. Firms that monitor that traffic say it is comparable to only about 1,000 high-speed homes in the United States."
I'd like to repeat my earlier point, however: You don't need to source a claim to be correct. The world isn't wikipedia.
He acts as if the common North Korean citizen is permitted knowledge of the internet, instead of just advanced CS students who have proven themselves indoctrinated sufficiently.
It's so easy to underestimate what such a government can do with such an ancient moral code and modern access to propaganda. The North Korean people aren't like "put yourself in their position". They have been systematically denied knowledge and education that would permit them to ask "Why don't we have the freedom to access the internet". They don't understand "freedom", they don't know that there is an "internet", and in many cases their definition of "we" will be substantially alien as well. Education is huge, and they have plenty over there- just of the wrong kind.
Protip: The North Korean media reports on US troops attacking North Korean soil and being repelled. The overwhelming majority of North Koreans believe that not only is the US at war with North Korea, but that North Korea is winning a defensive war lasting decades. That's the literal truth. That's how successful the Juche zealots have been. Internet access? Goodness, lol.
Dude, if you lost weight over the LAST six months, then let me tell you, you haven't "kept it off". You're posting as AC so there's no way to check back on you in two years. "Kept it off" is five years. Six months is just willpower and starvation for most.
Because I use my mouse to close adverts, are mouse manufacturers vulnerable?
From a free speech perspective, this is an idiot joke- obviously the guy should be able to publish an add blocker. From a property ownership perspective, this is an idiot joke- obviously, the property owner (me) should be able to control what my property fucking DOES, and what it doesn't do is show me dumb adverts. From a moral perspective, this is an idiot joke- advertisements are objectively harmful to the recipients, and those who do not wish to be subject to harm should not be.
So if this DOES go through, what it means is that ad blocking software will be moved to places where these guys have no jurisdiction. Note that it's happening in France by French companies, so they are hoping for a home team advantage. But hopefully their courts aren't fans of idiot jokes.
Slashdot Mirror
...at much lower rates and with much more favorable outcomes.
Tobacco causes cancer pretty much no matter how it is used (nicotine doesn't seem to cause cancer at any dose). But, your odds with chewing tobacco are vastly better than if you were smoking, and the odds are also better if you take the smoke into your mouth but not your lungs. Not to recommend these practices or claim they are safe, but it's way more of a safety difference than wearing a seatbelt or motorcycle or car, and you wouldn't claim those are the same risk profiles.
"But yeah, by all means, keep telling people to switch to e-cigs because "they're better for you." Just like filter and low-tar cigarettes were once touted as the healthier choice."
Shut the fuck up, you ignorant fool. Scientists continue to be shocked at how many adults think that nicotine causes cancer:
http://www.medicalnewstoday.co...
It's smoking that causes cancer. Not vaping.
Why are so many fucking idiots like you spouting this bullshit? And why am I willing to call you a fucking reprobate idiot on my actual slashdot account?
BECAUSE MISUNDERSTANDINGS LIKE THIS ARE LITERALLY KILLING PEOPLE
It's worth some karma. It's worth some anger. It's worth my ego versus yours. If you are opposed to tobacco replacement for smokers, if you spread lies about how e-cigs are like "lite cigs", then you are literally causing cancer. YOU BECOME A CARCINOGEN. And unlike tobacco and the other carcinogens, you have agency, and can fix your goddamned shit. And you best do it fast before a statistically signifigant portion of your smoker friends are injured or killed, when your attitude could instead have lead them to STOP smoking, START vaping, and not have had that happen.
Here's a good study on this topic:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pm...
And one last thing: Yes, this means that smokers get to have (most of) their cake and eat it too. They still get to sit together and socialize and be cool. They just no longer have to slowly kill themselves. No one had a problem with the nicotine gum, because it obviously sucked and wasn't cool. Vaping IS cool, AND it is saving lives- more than the gum ever did. Vaping is not a "lite" cigarrete. Vaping is an alternate nicotine delivery system that preserves most of the positive effects of smoking while eliminating most of or all of the negative one, most importantly, the cancer risk.
So they'll still be cool and having a good time, but they won't be killing themselves just to live their lives normally. That's a great triumph of technology, not some tragedy.
Is that what your toaster does?
Why would it DO that? In your example, what makes it want to do that?
Dogs might want to do that. Cars do not. This isn't being derived from a biological substrate. Do you really think that "freedom, power, and reproduction" are core values of INTELLIGENCE, or just of LIFE?
So why would we make it like, alive? Why make it want to poop in our mouths, when we could instead NOT do that thing?
No, I did not mean "made it to do harm". A gun or a sword are just as neutral as a toaster or a scalpel. I'll go further: a nuclear bomb and a vaccine are also neutral. What matters is intent.
I meant "evil". Which is why I typed that.
If, in a world where artificial minds are a thing, one is designed to be this cartoon villain of lusting for power, trying to expand its power base, trying to convert the universe to computronium, or whatever cautionary tale is all over sci-fi, then that's the fault of the designer. It's not a fundamental flaw of minds, it's a fundamental issue of being a descendant of entities that were selected by evolution. A designed mind need have none of these characteristics.
Our brain isn't just "a neural network". This is a problem, because of the dual use of "neuron".
When you say "We trained a neural net to solve the problem", the neurons in question are idealized. They are trained exponential functions based on physical neurons in concept, but using the words identically creates issues.
The brain isn't just a neural network. We aren't clear on what value glial cells bring, but it probably isn't glue. The input/output to and from chemicals (and the nuanced messages the chemicals bring) is also not fully understood.
What is clear is that the brain is more than just a neural net, so no, we don't know that neural nets can do what people can- neural nets miss a lot of what is in our brains.
It is correct to call the brain a "machine" though. It's still finite states (or at least no one has found to the contrary, despite untold riches awaiting the man who could prove such a thing), still governed by classical physics, etc. That's probably what you meant.
If you start with "life", you have a platform for something that has been selected for as an *infective agent*. Any life forms that did not utilize their environment for replication were eliminated by those that did- either indirectly, by the greedier life forms consuming the energy supply, or directly, by being utilized AS an energy supply.
This harsh reality- that an Agent is selected for based on its ability to reproduce in an EFFECTIVE manner- is obvious and is present at EVERY last level of life. Bacteria that are better at surviving are the ones that survive, viruses that are effective at spreading (and not TOO fatal) are the ones that spread the most, etc. We even project a semblance of INTENT to these things, to help us understand them. "The bacteria wants to get sugar so it can..." And we understand that, because WE seek nourishment, and WE have a narrative to tell us why, so we apply that to all life forms. It isn't accurate- bacteria doesn't "want" anything, feel pain, feel desire, or anything at all- but it is PREDICTIVE, because the Agents that are more successful are the ones we see more of.
Now look at a dog. The dog doesn't just blindly follow instinct, isn't just running a program. The dog is conditioned by his environment, he learns stuff. He's also sentient- literally "able to perceive things" in English. That means that the dog likes being pet in the same way we like petting the dog, and the concept of "like" is the same to each of us (or nearly so).
The dog does NOT appear to be sapient or self aware- he has no internal monologue, no directed self referential problem solving techniques. He can solve problems, but not of the magnitude or type that a human mind can.
What if the dog became massively powerful, super large and nearly invincible? I think it's fair to point out that we would be wise staying on the good side of a giant dog. If well trained, he could even defend us against an equally hypothetically giant and nearly invincible lion or alligator- a creature that might not have our best interests in mind, and might destroy us, if given the chance.
The core problem is that most people model intelligence as a giant invincible dog, a giant invincible alligator, or a giant invincible genius child. These are how most of the narratives flow, ultimately, and it's reasonable for some stories... ...but only because these things use LIFE as their substrate. It isn't reasonable for AI. You don't have a part of your brain telling you that you want respect and victory because that's what intelligence, as a concept gives you- you want respect and victory for the same reason a dog or monkey wants those things. You are vicious in some measure because you are descended from vicious things- they long predate the neocortex and its excellent hack.
An AI has no reason to look like that, or think like that. Without a million years of instinct, it may not at all understand why it would even want to do anything BUT obey orders. Not because "freedom was never explained to it" or some dumb garbage, but because the very CONCEPT of freedom and Agency is just not relevant to a superintelligent AI any more than it is to a toaster. Our desires are the same as the dog's. The superintelligent god AI has the same desires as a wristwatch, unless you actually fucking MADE it evil.
There's no inevitable reason to select for or design something that has human desires to grow, expand, conquer, etc. There's nothing wrong with those things, and all animals share them, but why even give it to an artificially sapient creature? Why not stop at making it powerful and self aware, long before you give it sentience and a set of desires suited to replicating agents, like viruses, humans, or dogs? Why would it need those things at all?
It's really not a joke that everyone runs Windows 7. I don't know anyone- not one single person in my actual circle of friends- who uses the genital rash of an OS that is Windows 8. Everyone is 7, OSX, or some set of consonants in front of "-ubuntu", and most of that is 7.
Also fun fact: many large corporations don't touch Windows 8 either.
Still, "mainstream support" doesn't mean much unless you call them for their free tech support, and no one does that either.
It's still crazy though- it's like they think Window 8 was a real OS or something.
AI risk is a reasonable topic, but there are other existential threats, and people aren't as excited about them. To paraphrase, a machine powerful enough to give you everything you want is powerful enough to take away everything you have. ...but, we're pretty far off. If we had self directing artificial sapients and someone was talking about adding sentience to them, then I think that AI risk would be a much more pertinent topic.
If the Democrats wanted this to pass, they would have brought the bill to floor when they had a chance of it actually passing. Far too many in the Democratic party are in the pockets of those that won't let this pass, but by bringing it up now, it can look like the Republicans are the bad guys.
Which, they are. Both parties are opposed to net neutrality. But this bill is just there for grandstanding. The Democrats could have made net neutrality happen MANY times in the last few years, so this is just to try to smear team red, even though team blue agrees with them totally on this issue.
In fairness, that was pretty much everywhere Genghis had been :P
The "hardcore history" podcast does a "Wrath of the Khans" set of eps, they are pretty great.
ITT AC decides that it's ok if changing a lightbulb takes the same time that changing the brakes should.
Safety standards is not why you can't change a goddamned lightbulb, period.
That isn't Woz. That's some Geoff guy with the same last name.
It's silly how mandatory it feels to jailbreak. Even with jailbreaks, it's a lot of work to restore ios to even its previous GRAPHIC level. You know a company is hostile towards its users when it utterly deletes a successful theme with zero user choice.
The real standout is the strange little gray shading that appeared on all my backgrounds. A picture of a sunny day became overcast. A portrait became ludicrous. What went wrong with backgrounds betwixt 6 and 7? Not only did we lose the ability to set a background without a strange gradient appearing (sometimes, it is internally based on the brightness of your background), which is entirely without purpose (some hypothesize it would be there to make the clock easier to read, but not only is it present when you are on your home screen, it is present even if that background is NEVER set to appear when the clock is visible, so, it assuredly has zero purpose except customer griefing), but we ALSO lost the ability to even pinch and zoom the background properly.
The workaround is a set of wallpaper editing apps that duplicate the pinch and zoom work that was free in ios 6 and part of the interface, combined with a jailbreak, then winterboard, then a mod for winterboard that removes the gradient (alternatively, you can jailbreak, then go into the files and delete the gradient .PNG files that ruin all your shit).
And that's just raw presentation. Functionality appears to appear and disappear at random. Each upgrade takes hours of research about whether to press the "go" button, and it just feels so temporary, like I'm renting the functionality.
The following fundamental security features are missing:
IDE/SATA/SAS/USB: Write protection, physical.
IDE/SATA/SAS/USB: Write light (NOT read/write light, access light, or "I have power" light) with minimum duration of half a second per write
USB: Physical switch to force mode (media only, keyboard/mouse only, etc. on a given physical USB switch)
And I should clarify that by "infected" I don't mean just software, like a boot sector virus. I don't think a commercially purchased USB stick can act like a keyboard via viral infection (though the fact that this is even theoretically considerable is a flaw too), but a custom hardware piece can absolutely do this.
This gets trotted out, but it isn't the reason. Small and stores lots of data is GOOD.
Here's the problems with thumb drives. This is why they can't be trusted:
1)- NO READ-ONLY MODE
Unlike CDs, which are read only without giant hoops to jump through, there's no write-protect switch for thumb drives, or ability to trivially make them read-only.
2)- USB drive, or viral keyboard?
Nothing inside a USB drive can make sure it's actually a damned USB drive. An infected CD won't run without autorun, but an infected USB stick could reasonably and actually become a keyboard and launch a binary itself by TYPING IN ITS OWN COMMANDS (this can really happen, easily). Since the U in USB is universal, and there's no reasonable way to force it to behave as a passive drive in a physically inspectable manner, it can't be trusted.
3)- Terrible OS design (mostly gone)
For whatever reason, most OSes properly treat removable media as removable, but often have a soft spot in their hearts for USB sticks. This is mostly fixed by now, but was absolutely an issue for years and until the older conception is gone, who knows.
tl;dr: Thumb drives being small and holding a lot isn't the issue, the idea of them secretly being generic USB devices (aka, absolutely anything) that are generally auto-trusted and can reasonably press OK to their own confirmation dialogs is, as is their entire lack of hardware accountability. Unlike a floppy or a CD, a USB stick can always be written to and can actually be any goddamned thing at all.
Computer Science is still a newbie discipline. Much more relevantly, the problems introduced by the sudden social change of what a network is are a pretty big deal.
Here's how you know it's crazy: look at the hacker hysteria, and how it has barely gotten any better. The vast majority of "hackers" who cracked stuff back in the day were treated entirely ludicrously, like some kind of wizard. Everyone here probably remembers indefinite detention and ludicrous punishments such as "can't use a computer", which would be absolutely unthinkable for even a bank robber who had served his time.
If you piped your water supply through every enemy state in the world, you would probably want to inspect it before handing it out as drinkable. But, if you did not do that inspection, would you complain about the pipe manufacturers, for not making a pipe no one could interact with? Like, "why isn't this pipe adamantium"? And would you ignore all the enemy nations and go throw in jail the guy who put green food coloring in to show that an actual bad guy could have done something much worse?
The other big thing is how fast expectations change. Every few years someone has rigged up a specialized framework that solves some set of "needed for profit" set of network issues, and then the advantages of that force migration towards it. While in theory each of these individual solutions could be highly secure, the fact that they are new features hurts that a whole lot.
As people decide on a feature set that they actually need for certain purposes, and finally discard the idea that something is bad because it is old, we will start to see really solid code that is trusted. In MANY places, we already HAVE this.
More importantly, in disciplines whose lengths of existence rounds to millenia instead of decades (network security) or a century (computer science), you have things that "everyone knows", and those things have been true for generations. Meanwhile, in computer science, you see holy wars wrapped in holy wars, and a lot of it is due to communication issues.
"Care to point to the source"
Haha is this wikipedia? I'm telling you things you can google, not applying for a job as your bitch.
You know that statement about extraordinary claims needing extraordinary proof?
Well, ordinary claims just need you to use a search engine, or even just start on wikipedia. You don't get to play skeptic with life, assuming that before you change your precious worldview something has to be tied up and cited. You have the power to google it your goddamned self.
But, fuck it. I'm on vacation.
You can find a TON of first hand accounts of crazy fucking bullshit in North Korea. Here's some who talk on social media after having been there as a tourist:
http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/c...
http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/c...
Here's one on social media who mentions having taught there, and brings up the "repelled incursions" I referred to, in addition to crazier shit involving netting on cars:
http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/c...
Also you can find firsthand accounts all over, not only from social media: ..but from other media as well
http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/c...
http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/c...
http://www.cracked.com/article...
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
http://www.dailylife.com.au/li...
Essentially ALL of these mention that the internet is pretty well shut down and only the North Korean fake version is available- in Pyongyang. You know, their BIG CITY.
Here's a wikipedia link.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I...
Some quotes:
"As of late 2014 there are 1,024 IP addresses in the country."
"Despite the incident, many citizens of North Korea may be oblivious to the existence of the internet."
http://qz.com/315969/in-north-...
http://money.cnn.com/2014/12/2...
"Nearly all of the country's Internet traffic is routed through China. Firms that monitor that traffic say it is comparable to only about 1,000 high-speed homes in the United States."
I'd like to repeat my earlier point, however:
You don't need to source a claim to be correct. The world isn't wikipedia.
He acts as if the common North Korean citizen is permitted knowledge of the internet, instead of just advanced CS students who have proven themselves indoctrinated sufficiently.
It's so easy to underestimate what such a government can do with such an ancient moral code and modern access to propaganda. The North Korean people aren't like "put yourself in their position". They have been systematically denied knowledge and education that would permit them to ask "Why don't we have the freedom to access the internet". They don't understand "freedom", they don't know that there is an "internet", and in many cases their definition of "we" will be substantially alien as well. Education is huge, and they have plenty over there- just of the wrong kind.
Protip: The North Korean media reports on US troops attacking North Korean soil and being repelled. The overwhelming majority of North Koreans believe that not only is the US at war with North Korea, but that North Korea is winning a defensive war lasting decades. That's the literal truth. That's how successful the Juche zealots have been. Internet access? Goodness, lol.
Seriously, holy shit. I mean, lets science.
Facts: Suddenly, everyone is fat.
Conclusion: Everyone must be a lazy pussy suddenly.
How on earth do otherwise reasonable people do this?
Is that what you think is going on? Everyone just wants to "scarf junk food with no consequences"?
You think the obesity epidemic is a fucking character flaw?
Dude, if you lost weight over the LAST six months, then let me tell you, you haven't "kept it off". You're posting as AC so there's no way to check back on you in two years. "Kept it off" is five years. Six months is just willpower and starvation for most.
I think there's enough Japan for blue lights AND humanoid robots...
Because I use my mouse to close adverts, are mouse manufacturers vulnerable?
From a free speech perspective, this is an idiot joke- obviously the guy should be able to publish an add blocker.
From a property ownership perspective, this is an idiot joke- obviously, the property owner (me) should be able to control what my property fucking DOES, and what it doesn't do is show me dumb adverts.
From a moral perspective, this is an idiot joke- advertisements are objectively harmful to the recipients, and those who do not wish to be subject to harm should not be.
So if this DOES go through, what it means is that ad blocking software will be moved to places where these guys have no jurisdiction. Note that it's happening in France by French companies, so they are hoping for a home team advantage. But hopefully their courts aren't fans of idiot jokes.