Month: March 2023

Creepy tech

A few things are converging for me:

1. Social media is creepy.
2. ChatGPT is disturbing.
3. Boston Dynamics robots are uncanny.

With SM we have levels of interaction and of data trust. Filtering for us with giant mind bubbles. (Is filtering worse than fake news?)

ChatGPT is swallowing search now.

BD robots are moving from unsettling to accepted as human.

Like writing on a church wall, signs and symbols of tech are requiring a reckoning. These things are coalescing around Kurzweil’s singularity. Maybe not a correct timeline, but the merging is happening organically and is palpable. Can you feel it?

Family in the West

Why on Earth is the family reviled by those on the Left? Most of us did have a mother or father or both. And isn’t having both parents the ideal?

It’s a peculiar self-hatred. I am not consciously repeating what any pundit has said, just natural questions. I would like to have a present father. I adore my mother. So divorcing the self from nature seems to be un-human.

Working…

Substrate

Digital imagination. An oxymoronic relationship.
Our foundational 1s and 0s are substrate for analog.
I’ve found this an intriguing fact.
Digital machines can only give pseudo-random numbers.
The digital is machine, the analog is human.
We rely on the machine to support our imagination.

Working…

Human future, machine’s backward march

I’ve been wondering how transexual can lead to transhuman. It would seem that a person must lose connection with his sense of self. There is some evidence that the first happens as a social contagion, but transhuman is the complete dissociation from self.

With this, does the scripture “they know not what they do” apply to dissociation?

As the self dissolves further into mechanism, the human dissolves. At what point does life become extinguished? When does soul disappear and sin not imparted? Does the human still live?

Transhumanism is not a hopeful sign of man’s progress, despite its adherents and champions. The questions and unknowable answers are greater than genuine progress.

More infectious enthusiasm from Neil DeGrasse Tyson

Tyson says we are part of this universe, we are one with it, but that more important than either of those two statements is his belief that the universe is in us.

I won’t say this is New Age, but it is interesting that a lauded scientist makes an almost spiritual statement about a material universe. He does say that though he doesn’t like labels, he would be most close to an agnostic.

In his two short books “Letters from an Astrophysicist” and “Astrophysics for People in a Hurry” he contends that we have a duty to our fellow man. As good as that sounds, I don’t know from where he draws that idea. But it sounds religious to me.

Tyson is a darling of secularists and in some ways, rightly so. He’s bright, seems personable, and brings a lightheartedness to a dense topic. I’d love to have a couple of beers with him and learn.

Protecting your PC using Malwarebytes

It used to be that antivirus tools focused on Trojans, worms, and viruses. This AV software relied on strong signature-based detection and regularly-updated signatures. Newer AV software has added behavior-based protection against unknown threats.

Antimalware software now also focuses on exploit tools and off-the-cyber-shelf software used by malicious long-term threat actors (Advanced Persistent Threats) to maintain access over time and continue their exploit.

Continue reading “Protecting your PC using Malwarebytes”

Stability

Write a constitution, and you generally have a more stable government.

Once you have it, defy it, and your actions are evident. The constitution is a witness against you. It looms large. The nation’s citizens are its citizens.

Its footprint shadows you. Now that the government is intended secure, culture and society thrive.

Those protected under the constitution can prosper, in wealth, mind, spirit. The pursuit of happiness is given to them to work out.

Poverty emerges in those countries without such a support. The weak have no place to rest. They are subject to violence and theft.

And so here: we hold these truths to be self-evident.

It is/is not written

It’s irksome, the idea that destiny is written. It’s a great thing if you have faith enough. He promised the work would be completed. It is written.

Yet, if we sin and fall into judgment, is that written?

So that is a known problem.

I aspire. I hope. Let that not die.

But is the history of ideas written, ideas that can contradict Him? We open our mouths, and we contradict.

It becomes difficult to function if you think too much. And I know my thinking. To be free of that kind of thinking.

Let go. Let go my soul.

“Bring him my ring and coat.” Let me glorify your name.

Ransomware Timeline

Utilities and infrastructure, government agencies, hospitals and healthcare institutions, schools, food production and distribution industries–even ferry service to Martha’s Vineyard, all have been attacked by cybercriminals using ransomware, probably now the most used kind of exploit of network systems.

“Even as we speak there are thousands of attacks on all aspects of the energy sector and the private sector generally…it’s happening all the time,” said Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm to CNN. Continue reading “Ransomware Timeline”