The too-cool-for-school crowd decided that the thing to do for private messaging would be use WhatsApp.
Yeah, about that.
Your messages are not irretrievable. Sorry, Hunter. No, Mister Lawyer, it’s not illegal. If the intended recipient got them, and stoed them somewhere accessible, they’re there to be snarfed.
CyberSekurity r hard.
Even if E2E encryption works, they do get stored.
Though it’s not straightforward, you can export ALL messages, and the contents contained therein.
These are not forever private if they’re stored somewhere locally.
If you’re trying to use them to avoid records being kept, that’s your issue.
But the significance of it is from The Hitchhikers Guide series. The entire purpose “Deep Thought,” Planet Earth, itself, was to determine the meaning of Live, The Universe, and Everything.
After millions of years of work, it finished its research, and returned the answer — 42
I was reminded of this by reading this from Reason. The author who’d come in planning to write about the Dutch guilds as early versions of capitalist cooperation, asked several of the commonly-used AI instances when capitalism started.
All provided different answers, but none touched on what he wanted to write about.
I asked Microsoft Bing: “When was capitalism invented?” Bing said: “1776.”
An answer longer than 42, certainly, but still not correct.
It made me think of my time in college. There was a final in Business Law. One of the questions was pretty straightforward, and I eagerly went to work on it.
I used probably four Blue Books writing my response. Just me and my blue-black inked fountain pen.
I left the exam feeling great about what I’d written.
Being that it was finals, I didn’t see the professor in-person again. She did send me my grade via whatever messaging system the university was using in the dark basically pre-web days of the Internets.
Her response was something along the lines of “Well-reasoned using tort law. You should have used the UCC. C.“
I ended up with a B in the class, but it certainly didn’t give me the relaxing summer I’d been expecting; it still stings today about a quarter-century later.
But it ties back into the AI discussion because I think the author really showed the limitations.
So I wonder if there’s going to need to be two additional questions when you suspect someone’s used AI to do research.
While AI tools did you use?
Which questions did you ask? Verbatim. Justify how/why you chose those questions.
Bubuhbut they’re takin’ our jerbs!
No, there’s ways to use the tools. You just have to be savvy enough to ask the right questions, use multiple tools, and draw conclusions based on the varying results you collected.
This is not a one-shot effort.
But it also speaks to things like the scientific method where you publish everything you did so that others can reproduce your work.
THAT’S PROPRITERY INFORMATION.
No. No it’s not.
That sound you just heard was the sound of thousands of 80s and 90s MBAs’ heads exploding.
At the same time, so you’ve got pics of your boobies on the Intertubes, okay. You haven’t shown those to me willingly, so I’m going to ignore them. You’re human; you’ve got them.
That they’re up there has no bearing on how I view you.
And no amount of litigation is going to make them go away. Very few things actually ever get deleted.
You can find pretty much anything.
I’m sure there’s shit I said on Usenet, or on mailing lists when I was a teenager that I no longer thing. Whatever.
“I really don’t remember that,” is an acceptable answer if someone asks.
That’s true for an asshole missive, or pics of your tits.
If it was last week, that might be a different story, but you have to allow people to present themselves for what they are now, not what they were.
Does that make me a bit inconsistent considering how I treat some commercial companies? Yeah. But I do treat individuals differently.
But the main message is that, no, everything doesn’t actually get deleted.
I understand this is a problem for those who want to carefully-tailor narratives; we have always been at war with Oceana.
But I do take extensive notes, hide things in places where they’re not easily-found.
But very little of it actually goes away.
Today is Fathers’ Day. I phoned my well-into-his-nineties’ grandfather, and texted my father-in-law.
Going to see my dad’s headstone is something I really don’t have the stamina for, unfortunately.
I’ve been following along with the news, especially the backlash retailers are experiencing with “Pride,” loosely after my apartment was flooded again at 0230EDT last Thursday morning.
I think things are kinda-sorta getting back together. We’ve got a lot of stuff that we’ve got to have hauled out, but we’re back home since Wednesday. Big thanks to my MIL for coming up to help with the cleanup and reorganization.
In amongst the chaos at home, I did watch the last episode of Vice News Tonight. I will have trouble missing it. They didn’t really say anything about that being the last episode. The episode, itself, focused on some guy who died in Mississippi under suspicious circumstances. Was he lynched? Um…he was not hanged publicly for the public to see. Nobody quite understands the circumstances of his death. But, that the Podunk law enforcement agencies haven’t spent considerable time and effort trying to find who lynched him means that he was killed like it’s still 1963. Nothing’s changed. (And that’s why it’s important that the cheerleaders for the party of Jim Eastland must come down to set things straight….)
I was more bummed about Kennedy’s departure from FOX Business. It was fascinating to see her transition from the token Republican on MTV to a Libertarian stalwart. In spite of her too-frequent dalliances with the NeoHips, I will miss her show.
But back to the not paying too-close attention to the news, there’s been a bit of controversy over Twitter’s brief cancellation of What IS A Woman?. While I’m happy Elon Musk overrode his employees’ inclination to bury it, it’s still something I really just don’t care to watch.
Without the burial, there’s nothing subversive about trying to find it. I simply don’t care about the movie, or its producer.
But with the controversies about what Target has done with transgender swimwear, too, it’s something I care very little about. While I think what they’ve done is a bad business decision, there’s very little for me to do about it aside from shopping there even less than I do now.
If that makes me a bigot, great. What was your name again? Where do you like do you work? Where to you like to shop? Great. I’ll make sure I avoid those places, too.
But that’s about all I’m going to say about it.
See the title. I have the right not to participate. I have the right to deny you my business.
I’m not going to proclaim loudly either of those choices.
If you think that makes me a bad person, again, Whatever.
I’ve been listening to things on Substack this morning. I do really appreciate the text-to-speech feature. Reading things is very difficult with my vision the way it is
Latest listen? Justin Amash’s birthday wish to F.A. Hayek. I appreciate the sentiments, but it doesn’t square well at all with the MiCaucs; laws are just to be ignored when they don’t suit whatever whim you’ve got at the moment.
And this is why the Libertarian Party of Virginia is gone.
Working within the system of laws is too mard, for Morans, we won, so GTFO.
.
If a law, or regulation tracing to it, is unjust change it. You can’t just ignore it.
Okay, CATO, we get that the Jones Act is stupid. Help someone on the Hill to pass a bill to repeal it. (Full disclosure on this — I do donate money to CATO…)
But beyond the justification of laws and regulations, the permanence is the problem.
Like the blessed Assault Weapons Ban, or the Bush Tax Cuts, sunset them. They address a particular problem for a fixed amount of time. If they’re still needed, pass a new law that does the same thing.
Been thinking a lot lately about Eddie Willers. (Cliffs Notes version…)
I started down this line of thinking after listening to an episode of Your Welcome where the guest posited that every single person can be best at one thing, and that it’s a good thing to promote that.
Mmm….not sure I agree. Can you be proficient enough at one thing to make yourself useful to someone else in furtherance of another goal? It Doesn’t Take A Hero. (Yes, the sorts of high school side reading that stem from being the son of an Army officer…)
Your abilities also change over time. Mine have been significantly affected (negatively) by my medical condition. So maybe I’m not what I was meant to be, what I’m best at, but I can still do various things, and derive a sense of accomplishment from doing those things that maybe aren’t my forte. But no matter what you end up doing, do it as well as you can, nad get the rewards from that.
And try to enjoy those rewards. (One of the places I really fall down; I beat myself for accolades…)
Back to Eddie, however — he’s not one of the bad guys, even if it’s not one of the incredible protagonists. He’s not stupid. I mean, in the early aughts, he might have driven a Dodge Stratus.
But that’s not the temperament he had in the book, or the movie(s).
He was always loyal to a goal set by someone else. I think there’s something admirable about that…even if he wasn’t doing the single thing at which he was best.
Last few days has been spent watching the fallout from the Libertarian Party’s epic rally next weekend in DC. The new chairwoman, who I sort of supported heading into the LP convention last summer has, and continues, to oversee the entire party drifting past the point of embarrassing its members to embarrassing everyone who’s ever associated with them.
But one of the featured speakers, who’s since bowed out, is a dude who was trying to pick up young teenage girls on Yahoo Messenger. LMGTFY isn’t working anymore, but considering how old the story is, I’ll link the BBC story directly.
I try to stop paying attention, but things drift across my attention from time to time, and I dig in more.
One of the people I’ve been paying attention to lately is Kyle Orton. No, not the former NFL Quarterback, and inspiration for my college friend’s fantasy team name, “Orton hears a boo.”
A bit intersting, but I’m having trouble maintaining focus. One of the talks about disinformation amplification was interesting. I’m hoping it’s posted online soon so Justin can view it for Fact Check This. The speaker didn’t touch too much on how the sketchy information actually feeds into the fact check sites.
Missing Context!!1!
The talk on reporting requirements (and the enabling legislation) was interesting.
Just reporting things a) may not be feasible in the arbitrary timelines, b) might actually negatively affect security, c) doesn’t fit nicely with existing bureaucracy, and; d) might not really tell anyone anything worthwhile.
It’s a shame, and has given me a new perspective on this. The hard-and-fast deadlines really might not do any good. Hmmmm…
But I keep getting distracted by other things.
First, and probably most predictably, was the latest The Fifth Column.
Major takeaways? 1. I had the same thoughts as Moynihan on the San Francisco reparations to black residents; OJ deserves reparations for discrimination he faced in his native city grown u0. 2. The anti-war advocates are proving, once again, that they’re full of shit.
That last bit goes to the disinformation talk I watched. “The Usual Suspects” seem to actually get wrapped into these Russian disinformation campaigns. The one “expert” who’s gotten quite a bit of traction among Libertarian circles the past few years, actually cited something because it had Edward S. Herman’s blessing.
Who’s that? The guy who, with Chomsky, denied the Cambodian genocide. Distortions At Fourth Hand
The are not credible people.
They spent years saying the Russians weren’t going to invade Ukraine.
Then when it happens, it’s because Nazis.
They’re also the ones who said that the US dollar was going to collapse because of the Federal Reserve’s money printing.
And nothing about the collapse of the Euro. LP National will tell you that’s also because of the Federal Reserve.
Countries whose currencies are backed by hard assets will be fine. Like Iran. Their currency is doing great. Please don’t check other news sites, and just go to AntiWar.com. (And I feel filthy for even opening that site….)
Time to watch the closing plenary, and football. Me and the micro-dog.
I really haven’t written much here lately. Variety of reasons for that, but there’ll probably be more to come.
After Robby Soave’s findings about what Meta (read: FB, IG) did in the early months of the Biden Administration is very, very, very disturbing. (Story in case the Tweet thread disappears…) The Livestream is here.
After listening to the livestream, I’m a bit more sanguine. My initial reaction after seeing things unfolding earlier today was to return to my frequent instinct, and just leave.
I’ve paid for BlazeTV for a very long time. Somewhere my MIL has a photo of Glenn hugging a very fat me at a promotion where I’d gotten his phone working after I’d left the radio stations. My replacement at the stations and I got the job done….then he and Stu caught us smoking on the loading dock on the way out of the show. To be young and healthy…
Back on topic, after the “just leave” instinct kicked in big time when I noticed the order-taking from the government (the CDC).
Big tech shouldn’t be seeking direction. Even more, however, government shouldn’t be offering it. Even more importantly, government shouldn’t be giving it.
Speaks a bit to the difference between Rawlsian positive rights, and Lockian negative rights.
But a restriction on government kind of falls into the latter category. With the conclusion that government doesn’t work, you stop looking for it to succeed or fail at anything.
It’s there. It’s always going to be there. And, aside from breaking things, and killing people, it’s not going to ever do anything well.
As a consumer, you minimize your exposure to companies who seek government-like power. As a citizen, you try to restrain government whenever, wherever you can.
And you minimize where you can’t.
Sadly, I need to use some of the commercial tools. I’ll miss IG, but it’s going in the box again. So be it.
Tomorrow, Satureday, and Sunday, I’ll be trying to catch some talks from Shmoocon. I was really physically-exhausted after last year’s foray.
I’m also not spreading around as much cash between inflation, job uncertainty, and probably losing a not-insignificant amount of money dealing with a crypto company who’s likely reeling from FTX, etc..
Or people just forget. Popping in on my podcast feeds lately has been Andrew Heaton’s The Political Orphanage.
Specifically, he interviewed the guests from the SoHo Forum Debate I attended last fall.
One of my randomly-consumed podcasts is The Political Orphange by Andrew Heaton.
Recently, he’s interviewed the participants in the debate. Krystol first, then Horton.
I found myself disagreeing with Krystol a lot more in Andrew’s interview. My disagreements really stem from Krystol’s view, that really is from the Cold War, that we need to have things spread all around the world in order to be effective taking out threats.
Things change. I’ve written about this in relation to the changes that have taken place on the battlefield, the Army getting rid of its MASH units.
The US can project foreign policy even without a large presence on the ground. See: Ayman al-Zawahiri or Solelimani..
(Aside: this came up in my podcast feed as I’m writing this.)
War has changed. The folks who’ve taken over the Libertarian Party are stuck in the early 1970s.
My tweet response to Heaton as I was listening to the Horton interview:
As I’ve said here before, for the AntiWar crowd, everything is still the LBJ Daisy ad. Still. Forever.
So I stared digging yesterday on some of the shit that’s come out of the NeoHippie crowd, things I’d forgotten about.
I wrote this back in 2005:
On Orkut I feel like I’m really in the minority in the American Politics community (if you don’t have an Orkut account, and want one, drop me an e-mail). There are so many confirmed Socialists…and those who sincerely believe that the United States was worse than the Soviet Union. I thought those people had really dried up. Now I’m being assaulted by quotes from that Khmer Rouge apologist, Noam Chomsky. It’s really disheartening to see that people still are busy denying what happened in the Evil Empire. Even more disturbing is that it’s still going on today. What’s more disturbing, and perhaps this speaks to blogs, too, is what people use as evidence for their arguments. I really try to guard against using what I’d consider to be overly-biased sources, yet, these folks have no qualms about doing it. I don’t know if it’s because they are so blinded by their agendas that any evidence is fine, or if they just haven’t ever had to write scholarly papers. All I can say is it’s really disappointing.
For reference, Orkut was Google’s first social networking site. I had a link to a New York Times article that’s gone away. (Even if the link still worked, I’m sure it’d be paywalled, so pretty much useless.
How did these people come back from the obscurity they so richly deserved?
And they’re running hte Libertarian Party now.
Maybe having a comic from New Jersey as your presidential nominee is deserved.
But the bigger issue is the same as it always was: not everything bad in the world is because of something the US did. That’s the undying principle for these experts reembraced by the LP.
I could be upset about it, but I’ll do what I tend to do, and leave.
When it comes to voting, I’ll do what I have been doing my entire adult life — vote against the worst candidate. For the past tew election cycles, that’s normally been the Libertarian. I’m less convinced that that’ll be the case in 2024. Good job. You broke it, you bought it.
