The landscape has changed a lot.

When I first was trying to get into Linux 15-20 years ago, this is pretty much how it was. I can remember being very frustrated that very few people I encountered seemed to be willing to assist at an entry level; there was all this presumed knowledge which I didn’t have (and if I’d had it, I wouldn’t have been looking for help in the first place).

Today there is a lot more entry-level help and assistance. There are more user-friendly distros and a lot more information online that is accessible to the average user who hasn’t memorised every GNU/Linux man page.

That said, there are still situations where getting help or advice is a real challenge.

Oh, that is painfully accurate for some sites…

Local news reports that the food bowl is half empty, whilst the supply of cat toys has not been refreshed in days.

That vase didn’t knock itself off the mantel, did it?

I would tend to agree with the other comments - media center device hooked up to the TV if you can’t fix the internal display.

There are two major problems here:

• OpenAI took months to realise that their agent had hacked Medicare
• Services Australia had no idea they’d been breached until OpenAI informed them

On top of that, the time it took for the notice to go through the channels here in Australia was ridiculous.

“Rebuild trust”? I didn’t trust OpenAI in the first place.

Like a few other commenters, I had never even thought that taking your phone into the shower was a thing until I saw this post.

Just… why? Why risk it? Your average smart phone is anywhere from $500 to over $1000, so what’s so important that you’re deliberately exposing it to water and the risk of dropping it (especially if you’re using shampoo, conditioner, soap or any other bathroom product designed to act as a cleaning agent)? Surely whatever it is can wait however long it is you’re showering for?

Personally, I wouldn’t want a friend/relative/whatever phoning me or answering the phone if they were in the shower or using the bathroom.

I can understand one of the other comments about using it to listen to podcasts/music/videos/etc., and at least in that case the phone is presumably far enough away (and not being regularly accessed) that it’s at lower risk. Fair enough – I sometimes do that whilst washing dishes. Still, I think I’d struggle trying to listen to something whilst actively showering – too much other noise.

Precisely. That was my first thought when I read the reporting, and unfortunately I’m not surprised.

Both Coalition and Labor governments have generally been inept on cybersecurity and reliability for decades. The Coalition themselves have repeatedly undermined our cybersecurity; the worst example I can think of is The Assistance and Access Act 2018, which they rushed through whilst in government (and to my disgust, the ALP gave in and let them pass it):

https://www.homeaffairs.gov.au/about-us/our-portfolios/national-security/lawful-access-telecommunications/data-encryption https://fee.org/articles/australia-s-unprecedented-encryption-law-is-a-threat-to-global-privacy/

This over-reaching legislation hasn’t even been used very much, raising the obvious question of why it was even necessary in the first place? https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2024/apr/29/australias-big-encryption-busting-laws-have-done-little-more-than-give-authorities-the-power-to-ask-nicely

Exactly. Case in point: https://lemmy.zip/post/71167170

Honestly, I’m surprised this isn’t common behaviour with all Smart TVs these days. It is trivial to probe a LAN network.

Christian nationalist Doug Wilson wants tax rates to be determined by the Bible: “I would like Divine Law to have something to say about the marginal tax rates … because when the state claims a tithe, they’re claiming equality with God.”

Somebody needs to read their Bible.

Then they sent to Him some of the Pharisees and the Herodians, to catch Him in His words. When they had come, they said to Him, “Teacher, we know that You are true, and care about no one; for You do not regard the person of men, but teach the way of God in truth. Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar, or not? Shall we pay, or shall we not pay?” But He, knowing their hypocrisy, said to them, “Why do you test Me? Bring Me a denarius that I may see it.” So they brought it. And He said to them, “Whose image and inscription is this?” They said to Him, “Caesar’s.” And Jesus answered and said to them, “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.”

Mark 12:13-16 (NKJV). There are other passages about submitting to earthly governments as well where they do not contravene the law of God.

Don’t forget the snakes, or the blue-ringed octopus, or a number of rather nasty jellyfish…

Does Trump have any brass instrument investments? This feels like an episode of The Goon Show… (In “Lurgi Strikes Britain”, the fictional Lurgi/Lurgy illness is used to boost sales of brass band instruments, which supposedly protect against the disease.)

Shame it got removed…

I’m so sorry. That’s awful.

100%. I buy physical copies of the books I want to read, because odds are I’ll probably keep them and read them again in future. The ebooks I have are files I have been able to download and store on my system (and backed up), so they can’t be edited or deleted.

I will always prefer a physical release for a film or TV show over digital-only. Not only do I not have to pay a subscription (and then worry that it’s going to get edited or removed), but I get sound+video quality that exceeds what’s possible on streaming at present. Plus there’s just something nice about having your favourite movies and shows sitting on your shelf to remind you that it’s there and something you enjoy, rather than a purely digital library that isn’t as tangible or immediately visible.

It’s deeply frustrating, too, when there are shows that you just can’t buy at all. A few times in the past two years there’s been a show on one of our free-to-air TV networks and their online streaming video service that I’ve enjoyed, but they’re only there for a limited time and then gone. Can you buy them on disc or even digital only? No. They are almost as ephemeral as TV from the 1960s when shows were made to be shown once, maybe repeated a few times before rights expired, then gone (sometimes forever, if you didn’t have space in your archives).

I don’t think their test system was directly connected to the Internet. OpenAI’s post said this:

With this access, our models performed a series of privilege escalation and lateral movement actions in our research testing environment until the models reached a node with Internet access.

The way I read it, the AI agent (using multiple models) escaped the sandbox, traversed the LAN in their R&D environment, gained access to the gateway and from there, the Internet. That’s not as simple as just escaping a container, VM or firewall on the host machine and bingo, you have Internet. I’m mildly impressed by that.

The concerning aspect of all this is that this is a perfect example of misalignment, which has been warned about. In order to reach its goals, instead of pursing it legitimately, the AI agent sought a shortcut and attacked Huggingface.

Thanks for sharing. I would definitely be interested in a write-up on how you solved the DNS+certificate problem please, as this is a problem I’ve run into on my self-hosting journey.

For certain cats, shelters do more harm than good, unfortunately. One of mine was a stray and we went through the formal process of taking her to the local shelter (pound) to confirm she didn’t have an owner and get her checked out, etc., stating that we clearly wanted to adopt her if she had no owner. She went backward in the shelter (they flagged her as having “behavioural issues” - she initially started to warm to staff, but then became very withdrawn and defensive after they tried to wash her chin and stayed that way, apparently). She steadily recovered when we brought her home (no doubt being in a familiar place helped), although it took years for her to get used to strangers and her to stop responding to a couple of trauma triggers we were able to identify (I don’t know what happened to her in her first few years of life).

To this day we’re not sure whether they would have tried to adopt her out if we hadn’t been so keen to take her. She has never been hostile towards us and her default is to run and hide if anything disturbs her (so on the rare occasion I get scratched if something startles her whilst she’s on my lap or I’m holding her).

I wish you all the best with Maylin and hope that, with time, she’ll improve.