It's clearly going to take the tech industry a while to understand that the "AI" brand is well and truly toxic

If you have a software or feature, sell it on what it does for people. If it's actually useful, then calling it "AI" will just make people assume it's yet another money-grabbing con.

Especially if you aren't using an LLM or diffusion model and instead are just using a non-generative ML model. Why willingly adopt all that negative baggage when you don't have to?

"A software engineer’s earnest effort to steer his new DJI robot vacuum with a video game controller inadvertently granted him a sneak peak into thousands of people’s homes.

While building his own remote-control app, Sammy Azdoufal reportedly used an AI coding assistant to help reverse-engineer how the robot communicated with DJI’s remote cloud servers. But he soon discovered that the same credentials that allowed him to see and control his own device also provided access to live camera feeds, microphone audio, maps, and status data from nearly 7,000 other vacuums across 24 countries. The backend security bug effectively exposed an army of internet-connected robots that, in the wrong hands, could have turned into surveillance tools, all without their owners ever knowing.

Luckily, Azdoufal chose not to exploit that. Instead, he shared his findings with The Verge, which quickly contacted DJI to report the flaw. While DJI tells Popular Science the issue has been “resolved,” the dramatic episode underscores warnings from cybersecurity experts who have long-warned that internet-connected robots and other smart home devices present attractive targets for hackers."

https://www.popsci.com/technology/robot-vacuum-army/

#AI #IoT #CyberSecurity #DJII #RobotVaccum

The nice thing that happened in class today:

Grade 5 students solve a puzzle where they put cuneiform numbers in order (there is no guidance, just work with the symbols, how do you order them?)

I told them they are like archeologists cracking a code. They did it!

"But where is zero?"
"It wasn't invented yet." I said this seriously. I mean ... it's true.

Later that day the same student asked if it was a joke. I got to tell them no! Zero had to be invented. Everything had to be invented!

“Academia is like a pie-eating contest where the reward is more pie.”

How have I never heard this phrase before? And what a perfect summary of academia!

#ProfLife

https://www.chronicle.com/article/feeling-anxious-youre-not-the-only-one/

Oh is this the new scam
Are we gonna see a million of these a day now

Obviously, this is a phishing attack, but well, maybe it's less obvious to some. If you see a post like this, it's phishing.

I have to say that icon for the "mastodon support desk headset" is kinda funny tho

The dinosaurs did not "Rule the Earth".

They were just alive.

Stop giving them credit for administrative skills they likely did not have.