Daily Archives: 2026-08-26

Article note: Sooo, what's the completely privacy breaking loophole? Interception requests can hold the key after the next time a routine process silently and automatically queries the key from the user?

Article note: The "If the AI optimists(? maximalists?) are right and it's going to do all the labor" conversation is always bizarre, because all the answers are horrific. Plus, you can never tell if the ulterior motive is just spurring more FOMO investment in AI to keep the bubble going, or any sort of actual humanist interest. The Jackpot (Gibson, 2014) model of slow civilizational collapse from bad resource stewardship while the oligarchs fight over the remnants is not a win condition. The Iron Heel (London, 1908) model of "Mass poverty except a tiny band of ascendant extractive oligarchs." followed by "We get fully automated luxury communism by eventually violently reverting centuries of extractive, wealth concentrating tendencies" is not a win condition. The Diamond Age (Stephenson, 1995) model of "The low barrier to automated coercion and violence ruins everything for everyone" is not a win condition. We can't (to mix metaphors) put the torment nexus back in the bag, but the discussions (especially inside socially acceptable parameters) are never productive.