Every time I do tech support for my family I get very angry about people who whine about lacking "tech literacy".
90% of the stuff I have to teach them is how to navigate manipulative software and dark patterns. This has nothing to do with tech, but with capitalism. Tech is not complicated, it is just made maximally confusing on purpose to remove agency.
Better tech ed won't fix this.
@eb "I never thought a sophisticated APT would backdoor *my* volunteer-maintained infrastructure that I got for free" sobs entire industry who voted for the "volunteer-maintained infrastructure that I get for free with no defense against sophisticated APTs" party
@timbray
It's a story about technical debt. The contradiction between "COBOL democratized coding. Companies could take everyday people and train them to be useful COBOL programmers in a few months" and "the bank no longer employs anyone who understands COBOL as well as Thomas does" is a stark reminder that coding isn't the hard part of software development.
@dangillmor
I understand how .zip domains can be abused, but isn't the result just an unwanted download?
What's the current state of browser vulnerability to unwanted clicks? URL obfuscation tricks are now so old and common that almost any attempt is going to get some clicks, regardless of a file extension.
@petealexharris @cstross It's true. A running joke amongst my peers is that any AI news headline can replace "AI" with "capitalism" and remain 100% true.
Copied from twit space:
—————————-
Man goes to doctor. Says he is CEO of AI startup but has no idea how to become profitable.
Doctor says solution is simple. Advanced model GPT-4 is in town. Ask it how to profit, and it will surely know the answer.
Man bursts into tears. “But doctor” he says “you are GPT-4”
—————————-
I don't think I _HAVE_ a like button. The star icon in my Mastodon instance is labeled "Favourite", which implies that it saves it for my own use, not that it is visible to anyone else.
Just this guy, you know?