[Newfie]

Batters can't run out on a slide rule. Carry one of them buggers also.

[dolanbaker]

Here's one man who believes that it's better to get off the world now, before all the jobs are gone!
http://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-us-can ... vival-camp
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'W')hy one man left Silicon Valley and set up a survival camp

Former Facebook employee Antonio García Martínez has worked in Silicon Valley for many years and believes technology is evolving so fast it could disrupt the world's order. He has bought a plot of land on an island near Seattle as a place to escape if the world were to revolt against technology.

[onlooker]

No, I think rather it is somebody is who has been looking keenly at the underlying overshoot of humanity with respect to its planetary environment and has not been too blinded with techno optimism to realize that instead of some Star Trek type future,our species seems more headed for a long fall off its perch of hubris.

[evilgenius]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('pstarr', 'A')nyone interested in the future of the internet needs to watch this season's Netflix series 'Silicon Valley'. Seriously it is the most important computer discussion in the last few decades

Pied Piper's New Internet Isn't Just Possible—It's Almost Here | WIRED

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '
')On HBO's Silicon Valley, startups promise to "change the world" by tackling silly, often nonexistent problems. But this season, the show's characters are tackling a project that really could make a difference. In their latest pivot, Richard Hendricks and the Pied Piper gang are trying to create a new internet that cuts out intermediaries like Facebook, Google, and the fictional Hooli. Their idea: Use a peer-to-peer network built atop every smartphone on the planet, effectively rendering huge data centers full of servers unnecessary.

"If we could do it, we could build a completely decentralized version of our current internet," Hendricks says. "With no firewalls, no tolls, no government regulation, no spying. Information would be totally free in every sense of the word."

But wait: Isn't the internet already a decentralized network that no one owns? In theory, yes. In practice . . .

[MD]

Not concerned at all. We're engineering our replacement. It's the natural order of things. forget all the matrix like scenarios where humans are used as batteries or whatnot. Those are ridiculous fantasies. As are any star wars/star trek futures.

Simply put: we will either succeed in propagating the next generation of life, or we will fail. I have no idea which nor do I care.

My recently born grand-kids might care, and I am worried for them, but there is little I can do to help them. They will have to figure it out, while my children, the millennials , hold the cards. God help them all. I won't live to see the outcome. Wish i could, but I won't. Thus is life. No one gets out alive.

[EnergyUnlimited]

As per privacy online.
Why not to?
1. Replace Windows XX with any of available Linux distributions.
2. Tape across your webcam with electric tape.
3. Disable your laptop mic and speakers with physical on/off switch (yes, it can be done, I have succeeded)
Would it ensure your privacy online in all aspects? No!
Would it prevent 90+% of possible spying on your private life? Yes!

Also why not to?
Leave your mobile phone at home while going on meeting with:
1. Prostitute
2. Drug dealer
3. Alex Jones
4. Someone who looks like a Muslim
etc.

So easy... and so much privacy protected.

Also why not to?
Dedicate one single room at your home to be absolutely electronics free.

[EnergyUnlimited]

Few words for those who believe computers will take over the world:
"France does not need wise peoples"

Loss of jobs and livelihoods due to AI may at some point produce violent mob rebellion where all geeks or AI experts became to be targets together with infrastructure they have built.
Then all bets are off.

[Newfie]

It's not so much that they take over the world, they take over you!

We get enamored of the damn things. We watch them incessantly at work and at home and on dinner dates with our Wife and family.

They take over our own personal world.

[KaiserJeep]

The peer-to-peer networking idea is a total bust. The bandwidth of individual devices is insufficient, and such a network would freeze into total uselessness once a critical number of devices are networked. Peer-to-peer networking is great at a single site with a few dozen devices at most.

The major telecommunications companies own the major backbone nodes and fiber optic trunklines that make the internet work, and you are already at their mercy. Annoy your network provider, and your transactions will dry up in a matter of minutes, and you will be out of business in days. Then you have a difficult and expensive lawsuit lasting for years to prove that they violated net neutrality.

As happens so often on this forum, people are obsessing over a form of doom already in the past. The Internet has never been fair, free, or even-handed. Nor is it improving.

[Newfie]

Here is an article about how Sweden is becoming a cashless society.

http://www.bbc.com/news/business-41095004

It's all great as long as the infrastructure is up.

[onlooker]

This thread cannot be complete without emphasizing the concern that with more and more being computerized it increases the vulnerabilities of countries and societies not just to hacking but to cyberwarre as this article very poignantly explains. WWIII if it does take place will probably be a cyberwar.
http://theweek.com/articles/441194/why- ... t-internet

[KaiserJeep]

Once again, the Forum is going over the top obsessing on a form of Doom already in the past. The Internet is already a toxic environment. Anybody who had any negotiable cash or other assets has already been compromised by the Equifax data leaks. Government and major business networks are already being attacked on a regular basis. Malicious cyberware is already present and sometimes you buy it in shiny new plastic-wrapped software packages, or download it from seemingly genuine major software company websites with valid security certificates.

You have but two viable alternatives. One is to give up all Internet access. The second is to attempt to stay ahead of the thieves. Choose, because anything else makes you a victim in short order. My own scheme is to never leave any assets exposed on the web, never banking online, and never paying bills online. I have one credit card for web use and it has a low credit limit and is changed annually.

Cyberwar has been ongoing for years. Even though they try to scare you with tales of Chinese and Russian cyberwar agencies, the criminals are whom you should be worrying about.

[onlooker]

While I acknowledge your expertise on this matter Kaiser, I think we are talking apples and oranges. While individually, certainly the threat is probably more immediate and probable from criminal/hackers, as a whole society we cannot discount the dangers of all out cyberwar between large countries. As we head down the road of resources shortages and ever more strains on societies, we will all be more playing a zero sum game. Key resources, key localities and fierce competition in the goal to avert total disaster could be the trigger that ignites overt hostilities between countries. And yes overpopulation is a factor. If the US believed eliminating many millions of Chinese can alleviate population and environmental pressures then perhaps they along with allies could launch a preemptive cyberstrike on China. So in summary, the world will be in more fierce competition because survival could be at stake and so this competiton could lead to war and I am simply pointing out that the battlefront can logically take place in cyberspace given that electronic computerized systems are becoming indispensable to maintaining a functioning society that is attending to the well being of its citizens.

[KaiserJeep]

OL, I'm not going to advocate a pre-emptive cyberwar with China or anybody else. I can say that what I observed was the government giving guidance to harden infrastructure, not make it more vulnerable. My company sold strong encryption and services to implement system security, as add-ons to every product line. I believe the vulnerability lessens as time passes, not that we are in increasing danger, popular literature to the contrary.

[Cog]

Some more thoughts on Equifax. Trying to figure out who has standing to sue them. The three credit bureaus collect data send to them from the various bankers, finance companies, and essentially anyone who lends money. The credit bureaus collate all the data and sell the credit reports back to the lenders so that a lender can assess credit risk.

I have not checked to see whether my name was among the 112 million but since I have no business relationship with Equifax, they have no responsibility to protect my information. In other words I have no standing to file a lawsuit. Such is going to be the case for most of those 112 million people. The lenders don't really care because they suffer no damage from the release of this private information. They still get their contracted credit reports regardless.

The only people who would have standing would be those who have a credit monitoring service contract with Experian. But even here you would have to prove that the hacked data was directly used to harm you. Difficult matter to prove that it came from the Experian hack and not somewhere else. I'm thinking Experian lawyers have told the company that their exposure to lawsuits is a lot less than people think. Thus the rise of their stock price yesterday.

Remember the massive and intentional fraud that Wells Fargo committed with fake bank accounts? That did result in actual damages occurring to people's credit. Wells Fargo stock price suffered a downturn at first but went right back up and no one went to jail over it.

[evilgenius]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('pstarr', '
')Tnx for that evilgenius. Two questions: what is the alternative to asynchronous data transfer? And you mention the registration of "everything" with data servers. But isn't the point to replace data servers?