THE RUSSIAN THING
I have been watching this with considerable interest (as I’ve pointed out several times) and I’ve been asked recently -whats changed? whats different? and what do we really KNOW.
These are interesting questions – but fundamentally I’m still convinced that Russia had NOTHING to do with the hacks.
Not because they might have wanted to do mischief. Heck I’m sure they do. But because THEY WOULD NOT HAVE LEFT ANY INCRIMINATING EVIDENCE.
I cant say it too strongly. I’ve MET Russian hackers plenty good enough to cover their tracks. Completely. YOU WOULD NEVER KNOW they had visited!
But – I hear you say ‘there are IPs coming from Kiev’ – alas (and here I speak authoritatively) that means NOTHING.
Check out hidemyass.com. They gave me a free account to play with their system. What does it do you ask. Its an IP Proxy service. I can log into their site and through their site I can log into anything else (your server for example) and I can pick where I want to be from. Sweden? South Africa? or maybe Kiev?
ANYTHING I do during that session will appear to be done by an IP address in – wherever I wish it to be from. YOU COULD NOT TELL THE DIFFERENCE.
So say a Chinese hacker uses it to appear to be logging in from a Russian Address. And – oh – leaves FINGERPRINTS. Case closed!
Not so fast. Case collapses like a house of cards.
BUT – you say – 17 agencies have agreed! Nonsense, only 3 agencies have agreed (one far from enthusiastically) and the fourth agency was the DNI Clapper (one person).
BUT – you say – they have seen the evidence!
Oddly – not so. the DNC Server has NOT BEEN EXAMINED BY ANY OF THESE AGENCIES! And the FBI never requested access! How odd is this?
But – you say – they have… no – all they have done is examine a report issued by a company CrowdStrike – that was hired by the DNC to investigate the hack.
They are – to put it simply – opining on the CrowdStrike report. They HAVE NEVER TOUCHED THE SERVER itself.
You can read more in a story from The Hill – http://thehill.com/policy/national-security/312767-fbi-never-examined-hacked-dnc-servers-report
But – but – but – face it – this case is ludicrous.
WHY didnt the DNC allow the server to be examined? well thats a very different question, isnt it?
What we have here is folks giving their opinions without examining the evidence all based on a single third party’s report and THEY were the only ones to actually examine the server.
This is hardly the basis for any of the confident statements you’ve been reading is it?
In MY opinion you surely cant go blaming a superpower like Russia of this (they still have nukes remember?) – without CAST IRON PROOF.
And I’ve certainly not seen anything resembling this proof. Not even close!
Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Jobs in the future
We are getting VERY close to a true AI system folks. And the implications are rather huge.
No I’m not talking about Watson – I’m far from impressed by it. A true AI system.
And I can tell you where it will start (been saying this for years btw) – as a help desk.
And it will speak to you. Properly. Answer all your questions – and it will speak with an Indian Accent!
(not being racist btw – it would sound that way because YOU will be much more accepting of it!)
You wont be able to trick it with ‘are you a computer?’ and it will do its job happily, 24 hours per day, 365 days a year.
And it will displace many many thousands who now are working on this kind of job.
And it will be licensed to every company on the planet to do a job that is both thankless – and not much appreciated by the
callers! and ALL help desks will be run by it. Airlines. Banks. Brokerages. Credit Cards. Computer firms.
This alone will displace MANY MANY workers world wide.
And this will only expand. This system will learn and grow. Once they have broken the back of the Understanding English problem (which Watson has demonstrated well by the way)
And they can understand what you are really asking about – this AI will impact our lives in countless ways. AND with a foreign accent they will seem -just like the folks
on the other end of those phone calls now anyway!
This AI will be able to adapt to – online medical diagnosis. With an accuracy humans will be hard pressed to match. There go humans on the Poison help lines.
911 Callers will be talking to an AI. which – by the way – wont put them on hold or laugh at their situations.
Suicide prevention lines will be staffed by a friendly AI. And it may detect YOUR accent and put on a good Southern Drawl or a NorthEast twang – to make you feel better at home.
Calling in spanish? The AI will switch seamlessly to a spanish language after listening to your question. And you will be HELPED.
24 hours per day. 365 days per year.
Countless jobs will be replaced by this AI. Mostly low end service jobs, but many millions of jobs will be redundant.
Its something to think about! What do you think?
DEMISE OF WINDOWS 8
Well – not quite. But Microsoft HAS announced there will be no futher SECURITY FIXES for windows 8 – while there will continue to be updates
For windows 7 and 10!
Its time to ditch windows 8 folks.
For the time being, Windows 10 is doing a FREE upgrade from 8 and 8.1. If you need help with it come by. Its a 95% chance of success by the way!
OLD MACS
I’ve had several older macs walk into the shop for service! Including a Performa 200 (just after the original mac classic)
Customer needs the hard drive removed and off we go! Of course it requires a LONG Torx screwdriver which is hard to get your hands on!
But these are still cute. I remember turing a number of them into aquariums! No – not the software kind. The real kind!
ADOPTION CORNER
Up for adoption a nice 2015 Mac Air, A Retina 13 2013 Macbook pro, A 2010 27in Imac, and various others!
And I even have a 2011 17in Macbook pro – IMHO the best macbook apple ever build (on which this is being written!)
Also a Great Lenovo Android tabled – with build in DLP projector! It projects brightly onto a wall whats on the screen!
And a VERY nice HP newer envy model.
A nice HP 13in X360 convertible!
And many more!
All with 6 month warranties.