“Temu is designed to make this expansive access undetected, even by sophisticated users,” Griffin’s complaint said. “Once installed, Temu can recompile itself and change properties, including overriding the data privacy settings users believe they have in place.”

That’s just nuts

But a human can synthesize all those works and transform them into something new. All the AI is doing is regurgitating stuff it has heard before. I don’t want to try to put a bot on the same level as human creativity.

I still like print media. My local paper is shit, though. I don’t mind paying for an online subscription to some of the major paywalled media sites, though.

If something is worth knowing, it’s worth having a journalist distill it down to the main points. I can’t stand TV news anymore, because it is all 10 seconds sound bites sandwiched in between long stretches of nothing going on.

tardigrade-playing-violin.jpg

The worst thing that ever happened to Crypto was the price rising so high. It made idiots billionaires overnight, and then these idiots thought that made them smart. Now they spend all their time going to Blockchain conferences and patting themselves on the back for being so revolutionary when in reality they just got lucky.

I’m particularly concerned about companies who have effectively outsourced their tech support to Social Media.

I am a Google Fi subscriber, and their customer support is so abysmal that a Google employee started up a “Reddit Request” system for Redditors to use to escalate support requests.

When I quit Reddit in a huff over the APIcalypse, the main thing that led me to not delete my account was the notion that if I ever had issues with Fi, and didn’t have an active Reddit account with sufficient karma to be believed, my issue may never get enough attention to be fixed.

Interesting. I will have to do some more experiments later to see where they will let me order that. Thanks for confirming it’s not just me, though. I wa suspicious that there was some sort of cheesy conspiracy going on.

Weird. I don’t see that “American Cheese” line at all. Maybe it’s a NY thing.

Where are you located? I am in the US. I downloaded and logged into the App again (just in case something changed) and I see no option to add cheese to a hamburger happy meal. I can pick a hamburger meal and “customize”, and add everything else – even a second hamburger patty if I wanted – but no cheese.

Maybe it’s just with my local McD?

I can’t use the mobile app because my kid wants a cheeseburger happy meal and it’s impossible to order on the app. Try it! It won’t let you at all.

Technically, cheeseburger happy meals are no longer on the menu because they’ve decided it has too many calories. If you go there and ask for one, of course, they will add a slice of cheese to a hamburger happy meal. But using the app to order one is a bridge too far, I guess.

When it comes down to it, though, we shouldn’t eat that crap anyway.

Live Long and Prosper

Smishing is a phishing cybersecurity attack carried out over mobile text messaging. It’s also known as SMS phishing.

I had never heard that term before. Is it just a UKism, or am I one of today’s lucky 10,000?

V’ger has evolved

In order for an AI to pass the Turing test, it must be able to talk to someone and fool them into thinking that they are talking to a human.

So, passing the Turing Test either means the AI are getting smarter, or that humans are getting dumber.

I am so looking forward to asking Elon for his long-form birth certificate

I have that textbook in a box somewhere

I have no sympathy for him, if he is a crypto developer he knows how important those private keys are. And he also knows people scrape public areas all the time looking for keys just like that. The whole point of crypto is to be immutable, so that money is simply lost to him now.

He seems to know how much of a dumb mistake that was, although his description of himself was a bit more colorful.

They dont steal your ID by cloning your passport, they steal it by getting just enough Personally Identifying Information to be able to start up credit cards and other loans that are tied to your credit history, without your knowledge. By the time you find out, they’ve run all the credit lines to the max and then you have to go around to all those companies and prove you didn’t make all those charges. Then you have to get all of your account numbers changed, because you don’t necessarily know what the hacker has compromised.

Most of the information necessary for opening accounts is on your driver’s’ license. Pretty much the only thing it is missing is your SSN. And in some cases, a valid state license number can be used in place of that

Let me guess, you’ve never had your identity stolen, have you?

It’s less about verifying ID, and more about trusting them to be responsible with the documents.

If they have a human assess the ID right away, and delete the file once that person’s identity has been assessed, that’s probably safe. But let’s face it, they probably store it somewhere, and when they inevitably get hacked now everyone’s driver’s license (with their state ID number, address, and DoB) is for sale on the dark web. There is enough info on your State Drivers’ License to open credit accounts, particularly if you forge some documents as well.