Bruce Schneier: It’s easy to think of generative AI as a friend rather than a service, making us vulnerable to profit-seeking corporations. “AI models, controlled by large corporations, inherently prioritize profit over ethics.”

We have seen ”Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny,” and I have thoughts

It was very enjoyable. I see fans ranking it as third of the five Indy movies. I’ll go with that. They did a great job de-aging Harrison Ford for the opening sequence. Apparently this was a result of skilled direction as much a CGI; I noted they cut the camera away from Indy when he was about to do something too athletic, and then cut back to him when the athletic thing was complete.

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Life for the Lowest Class in Ancient Pompeii? It Was Awful. Excavations in the ancient ruins have unearthed a cramped space where enslaved workers and donkeys performed their grueling tasks.

Jim Geraghty at National Review: “Hunter Biden’s entire life, so far, has been a bold, defiant, shameless declaration that laws are for the little people, not for the Bidens.”

I will gladly support Joe Biden against any plausible Republican candidate. I think he’s done a pretty good job as President. Not great, but pretty good.

However, let’s not kid ourselves: If Hunter Biden came from a different family, he’d be doing prison time by now. And it remains to be seen how much Joe Biden knew.

Today I learned the tradition of eating jelly donuts to celebrate Hanukkah dates back to the 1920s in Israel.

The first record of donuts appears in a 1400s German cookbook.

I think this is the first year I’m hearing about jelly donuts and Hanukkah. We always had latkes when I was a kid.

Fantasy disguised as science fiction disguised as fantasy: Roger Zelazny’s “Lord of Light.” Jo Walton: “I have never liked Lord of Light. If I’ve ever been in a conversation with you and you’ve mentioned how great it is and I’ve nodded and smiled, I apologise.”

Making DevSecOps more than just lipstick on a pig. If your answer to implementing DevSecOps is dumping more responsibility on overworked developer teams, you’re doing it wrong. My latest.

Everyone and everything is pissing me off today.

Not you. You’re awesome.

The presidents of Harvard, MIT and the University of Pennsylvania said calls for genocide against Jewish people don’t violate their school policies. When I covered crime in New Jersey in the 1980s, making death threats was a crime. I assume that’s true today in most US jurisdictions—but not at Harvard, MIT and the University of Pennsylvania if you’re threatening Jews.

Back to Reddit

After a recent discussion with friendly fellow journalists, I started using Reddit again. I’d dumped Reddit after the whole dustup this summer between the Reddit CEO and the developer of the Apollo client. It left me feeling like the CEO was a petty jerk, and I didn’t want to support him. But after Friday I decided to give Reddit another try, and I find I like the discussion there. And call me a sucker but I like watching the karma points rack up.

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On a private discussion group, a friend asked what we use to clean our computer screens. I said I cover mine with peanut butter and let the dog lick them clean. I enjoy opportunities like that to share my deep technical knowledge with the less-informed.

I’m trying the Spark email app for Mac and iPhone. Impressive but confusing.

Lucid dream startup says you can work in your sleep.

Despite the linkbait headline, the article itself is very interesting and goes into claims by the startup that they’ve created technology to induce lucid dreaming at will.

What would be the ramifications of something like that, where most people were able to lucid dream at will? Would it be like the movie “Inception?”

The most popular articles on Wikipedia in 2023: ChatGPT is #1. The list also includes Taylor Swift, the Barbie movie and Matthew Perry. I’m interested to see how many listings are international, particularly Indian.

Jewish women’s advocates share graphic descriptions of Hamas’s brutal rape, mutilation and torture of Israeli women and girls. In the US and West, progressives march to support Palestinian victims—and rightly so—but are quiet when the victims are Jews.

Also: The World’s Feminists Need to Show Up for Israeli Victims: Solidarity for victims of sexual assault should trump other politics.

Facebook and Instagram’s recommendation systems are finding and promoting blatant pedophilia

WSJ: Meta Is Struggling to Boot Pedophiles Off Facebook and Instagram The headline and deck on this article are too kind to Meta. The companies do not seem to be “struggling” to get rid of this content. They don’t seem to be trying very hard at all. More from Casey Newton (paid sub required I think) who points out the difference between “Internet problems” and “platform problems.” “Internet problems” arise from the fact that we live in a world where evil exists, and will inevitably find its way onto the Internet.

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