Ben Taylor @VoxDei@social.cleverlibre.org

Finally, something worth adoration...

#atheism
Tooted by a #bot!
SN# 2325

DINOSAURS VERSUS LONGTERMISM!

(Via the estimable Dinosaur Comics: https://www.qwantz.com/index.php?comic=4051)

Every single fucking company rolling out some fake-assed "AI" system today has paragraph after paragraph of arcane IP-restricted lawyer-language agreements with every single person who works for them,

But they're happy to deploy LLM's whose entire dataset is based on taking content from people who did not consent to their own IP being used in this manner.

*Every* *single* *fucking* *one*.

#TodayILearned

Here’s how I used AI to clone a 60 Minutes correspondent’s voice to trick a colleague into handing over Sharyn's passport number. I cloned Sharyn’s voice then manipulated the caller ID to show Sharyn’s name on the caller ID with a spoofing tool.
The hack took 5 minutes total for me to steal the sensitive information.

So, how do we protect ourselves, our loved ones, and our organizations?
1. Make sure the people around you know that caller ID is easily faked (spoofed) and that voices can also be easily impersonated.
2. If they receive a dire call from “you”, verify it’s really you with another method of communication (text, DM, FT, call, etc) before taking an action (like sending money). Kind of like human MFA.

Some suggest setting up a secret “verification word” with their folks ones so that if someone impersonates & demands money/access etc you can ask for the verification word to see if it’s a real crisis. This won’t work for all people but could work for some. If it’s a match, use it.

In general, I recommend keeping advice simple: if premise of call is dire use a 2nd method of communication to confirm a person is in trouble before taking action (like wiring money or sensitive data). Rapid text, email, DM, have others message repeatedly — before wiring money.

Bottom line is:
Scammers use urgency & fear to convince victims to take actions (like sending money, data, etc).
If premise of a call, text, email, or DM is too dire (or too good to be true), that’s a likely scam.
Use a 2nd method of communication to check it’s real before taking action!

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/how-digital-theft-targets-people-from-millennials-to-seniors-60-minutes-2023-05-21/

Why are so many climate scientists so scared and so angry?

Maybe it's because they know better than most of us how bad our situation today truly is, and how horribly we've been betrayed by our so-called leaders.

Here's an excerpt from an excellent piece on this subject by Alan Urban...
_____________________________

Even if the planet stopped getting warmer right now, we would still be in big trouble. The ice caps would keep melting and sea levels would keep rising.

Look at what’s happening at a mere 1.2°C of warming. We’re already seeing some of the worst heat waves in human history, not to mention record-breaking floods, droughts, wildfires, and water shortages.

But of course, warming isn’t going to stop at 1.2°C. Because of the heat we’ve already trapped in the atmosphere, and because we continue to emit huge amounts of greenhouse gases every year, the climate is warming exponentially.

All of these climate-related crises are stretching farms to the limit, yet this is just the beginning. As crop yields decline and the population grows, we will see food insecurity get worse and worse until we’re in a global famine.

And that right there is why climate scientists are scared. They understand that human civilization was born during the Holocene, when global temperatures were very stable and stayed within a range of about 1°C.

As we push the planet out of that range and raise the temperature about 50 times faster than would occur naturally, it will become harder and harder to produce enough food to feed everyone, and this will lead to social instability, political upheaval, the worst migration crisis ever, and wars over resources.

Disasters that weren’t supposed to happen until we reached 1.5°C are happening now, so we can only imagine what will happen when we hit 2° or 3°C.

This is why top scientists from around the world are warning us that we face a ghastly future filled with untold suffering. They’ve been telling us over and over, year after year, summit after summit, that we have to stop burning fossil fuels as quickly as possible. But as you can see [below], the world keeps ignoring them.
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FULL ARTICLE -- https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fmedium.com%2F%40CollapseSurvival%2Ffaster-than-expected-why-climate-scientists-are-so-scared-985db6579f2e

#Environment #Climate #ClimateChange #ClimateCrisis #ClimateEmergency #CO2 #Emissions #Capitalism

AI generated art depicting history and archaeology is actively spreading ignorance

Follow real archaeologists and historians and creators sharing real stuff, not this fake crap that looks nice and pretends to be authentic but gets everything wrong

I wanted to see if ChatGPT could put me out of the job, so I asked it to write a funny fake fact. To my surprise, it literally just plagiarized one of my own facts. Nearly word for word. I'd say my position remains safe for now.

Cynics would argue there's no such thing as a glorious failure, and this account invites cynics to go away and boil their heads - JUST LOOK AT THIS THING!

Basically a caged ekranoplan, the Aerotrain was the future of the railways. As long as you remember that the future of the railways in the late 1960s was usually a great big government axe.

Still, a two-seater Pratt & Whitney jet-powered aircushioned hot rod locomotive, eh? Stick that in your Whyte notation and smoke it.

#FailureFriday

Im bored at work so here is another Mopar the #rat #pet story. She liked to ride around in my bra, freaking people out as my boobs moved strangely and then her head would poke out suddenly. Heylarious. Im in line at the store and this lady has never held a rat and wants to hold her.
Sure.

Mopar is in her flat hand when she suddenly realizes she is not with Mom and she freaks and runs for safety; up this lady's arm and down her blouse. Lady no happy. She begins screaming. I dive my arm down her blouse to retrieve my rat and now I have a HUGE audience but all they see is this woman screaming and my arm down her blouse. And then TA DAH I pull a rat out of her shirt. Apparently I am some kind of roving sadistic store magician.

Management asked I never return to the store. Damn I was gonna bring a hat and take tips next time!

Ooh, went dumpster-diving in the next room, looking for a file box I could recycle, and look what I found!

(Yes, these are the on-paper edits to the first hardcover release of "The Atrocity Archives", from the now-defunct Golden Gryphon Press. The short novel "The Atrocity Archive" had previously been serialized in a UK magazine, but this was the first complete edition of the first Laundry Files novel, 20 years and 2 months ago.)

(Street address redacted; I don't live there any more.)

N'oubliez pas.

NEW BOOK DAY!

"Season of Skulls" is out now in the UK (not Thursday, as previously expected)!

https://store.orbit-books.co.uk/products/season-of-skulls?_pos=1&_sid=afdd4a900&_ss=r

Retiring a decade worth of shirts today. A trick I learned from some pentesters a few years ago is that for basically any Valley company older that about three years, you can pick up company shirts at Goodwill and walk past security without breaking stride. One of our younger secteam members recently said “yeah, you always cut up old company shirts, it’s an operational risk” and a lot of us were caught flat footed by something so immediately, obviously correct we hadn’t considered.

Want a signed copy of SEASON OF SKULLS? Your go-to place for ordering them is my local indie SF bookstore, Transreal Fiction!

https://transreal.wordpress.com/2023/05/06/new-charles-stross-book/

I've written a blog post about why I'm on #strike today. It shows how the public sector pays £32k for a "software developer" where the private sector pays £35-70k. We struggle to recruit and retain staff and services are suffering.

https://all-geo.org/volcan01010/2023/03/why-i-went-on-strike-over-civil-servant-pay/

cc #prospectstrike

So he spent £6000 instead of £30 by taking a helicopter instead of the train, but he also generated ~1100 kg of CO2 instead of ~10kg per person for the train. (No idea how many people were in the helicopter)

“Sunak uses helicopter for trip that would have taken just over an hour by train”
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/may/09/sunak-helicopter-train-southampton-prime-minister-rail

Helicopter use cannot be casual - it must be a last resort, when there are no other options.

(Back-of-the-envelope calculation based on fuel consumption)

#climate #flying #emissions