The IggBlog

The voodoo section of the supermarket creeps me the fuck out. I’m nit even talking about Agatha’s Creepy Corner Market, I’m talking Stop and Shop. This is the part of the meat section with all the crazy random animal parts that one would have an easier time finding an application for in black magic than in food preparation. A sampling of what was there today next to my beloved bacon: pig tails, split pig feet, beef marrow chunks, chicken feet, cow tongue (yes, really), pig spinal cord (nerves, not bones), etc. I guess one could argue that stuff like this is perfectly fine if you’re brewing up a stock or something… but I think my stock can do without chicken feet and pig tails, I’ll add a dash more chipotle powder to mask the delicate missing flavors. Besides, I don’t want to go snapping up all the ingredients for someone’s love potion or effigy dolls and have them use yucky chicken breast or filet mignon instead. No pics for this post, you’re welcome.

Originally published at The IggBlog. You can comment here or there.

“By 2047 the Air Force says unmanned aircraft with blazing artificial intelligence systems could fly over a target and determine whether or not to unleash lethal weapons –without human intervention.”

Full article: Clicky
Source document: Clicky (warning, it’s a PDF)

Are you fucking with me? Really? In what distorted reality is this a good idea? Machines break. Usually when machines break, they do it in such a way that halts their operation. But sometimes it “degrades” their operation in such a way that it operates outside of its normal parameters. Machines can also be tampered with… I mean, there’s no way they’d let these things loose without a way to communicate with them. If you can talk to it, chances are you can tamper with it remotely with malicious intent. There’s no way to completely 100% safeguard against that.

The argument could be made that humans break too… But humans CAN’T FLY OR MOUNT DOZENS OF MISSILES. We’re slow, soft, landbound, and can be stopped pretty easily with a pistol. Autonamous flying killer drones sophisticated enough to make kill/dont kill decisions on its own, and “the [ability] to swarm multiple drones on a single target” aren’t something that should be left up to machine logic. Thought engines are notorious for false positives. And once you refine them sufficiently in a lab environment, they get tons more in the wild. I can’t think of a way that developing a machine like this behind close doors, then bringing it to production wouldn’t be grossly irresponsible. I’m not saying “look at how many movies are about AI type machines going rogue!!!”. I’m saying that there’s pretty much no machine that’s been released into the wild that hasn’t been cracked and remotely exploited by someone with malicious intent given a reasonable period of time. And if there’s anything that internet badguys have proven it’s that they’re better at getting into the military’s electronic systems than the military has been at keeping them out.

Originally published at The IggBlog. You can comment here or >there.

Simply Orange: Because orange juice has become so goddamn complicated. I find that when I wake up in the morning I almost want to skip breakfast entirely because of “the juice issue”. Things used to be so easy… cereal, coffee, orange juice, perhaps some toast if I’m feeling naughty. But then orange juice got ugly. It started making things way more of a chore than they had to be. And so confusing too… I mean, who could even figure that crazy stuff out? I never thought something as straight forward as orange juice would turn into such a shitstorm of micromanagement.

Then BAM, out of fucking nowhere comes Simply Orange. All the sudden breakfast is easy again. No more of those orange juice related morning issues that we blindly started accepting as a part of life. I’m ready to start living again.

Originally published at The IggBlog. You can comment here or >there.