Nobody Cares: Technology-only Edition

[Free]

Enjoy talking to your new voice-controlled smart bidet

Alexa, clean my butt.

www.theverge.com

For most people, flushing $10,000 down the drain for an entire smart toilet is a bit much. But if you’ve always wanted a fancy toilet, Kohler is kicking off CES 2024 with a more accessible option. The $2,149 PureWash E930 is a voice-controlled bidet seat that lets you transform your existing toilet into a much smarter one. As in, you can now boss your toilet around.

Another grievance for the eventual robots overlords in the coming apocalypse.

 

[Isabeau]

I think there are people who need to buy every new thing, no matter how ridiculous.

 

[Noodles]

I wonder if the company records the chat logs.

"Oh, oh, yes toilet-sama, spray me right there... spray me more... oh yeah, spray me harder!"

 

[Essence Lumin]

I think there are people who need to buy every new thing, no matter how ridiculous.

If that doesn't suit your fancy you could get an Xbox series s toaster. It will even burn the Xbox logo into your toast.

Yes, the Xbox Toaster Is Real and You Can Buy It at Walmart

X marks the toast with this Walmart-exclusive kitchen appliance.

www.cnet.com

 

[Isabeau]

How about this low-tech towel ball?

Amazon.ca

 

[Casey Pelous]

I wonder if the company records the chat logs.

Kohler: "No! No, no no no no! Our customers' privacy is our highest company value."

Translation: "Yes."

 

[Govi]

Enjoy talking to your new voice-controlled smart bidet

Alexa, clean my butt.

www.theverge.com

Another grievance for the eventual robots overlords in the coming apocalypse.

You: "Toto, initiate cleaning"
Your teenage child: "What?? Oh. Mom, stop talking to the Toto and use the remote control. We can all hear you."
You: "'All?' Who's out there?!"

 

[Argent Stonecutter]

Good for you! You’ve decided to clean the elevator.

 

[Govi]

 

[Innula Zenovka]

The Garden of Forking Paths | Brian Klaas | Substack

Wandering around an infinitely complex, ever-changing world. Click to read The Garden of Forking Paths, by Brian Klaas, a Substack publication.

www.forkingpaths.co

Evernote link

 

[Essence Lumin]

The Garden of Forking Paths | Brian Klaas | Substack

Wandering around an infinitely complex, ever-changing world. Click to read The Garden of Forking Paths, by Brian Klaas, a Substack publication.

www.forkingpaths.co

Evernote link

That was an interesting article. One sentence seems more than questionable to me.

Today, roughly 99 percent of the traffic on the internet is carried by about 500 submarine cables, the invisible backbone of our digital world.

I am certain that the majority of my internet usage remains in the US. While I don't want to appear US centric I can't imagine that only 1% of internet traffic stays above water.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

That was an interesting article. One sentence seems more than questionable to me.



I am certain that the majority of my internet usage remains in the US. While I don't want to appear US centric I can't imagine that only 1% of internet traffic stays above water.

Yes, but you need also consider the amount of internet traffic generated by domestic US users vs the amount generated by international financial institutions every day.

The European Union Agency for Cybersecurity (ENISA) said last year that

More than 97% of the world’s internet traffic passes through subsea cables at some point. Subsea cables are a vital component of the global internet infrastructure, and it is critical to protect them from cyberattacks, physical attacks and other threats.

Dive into the Deep Sea: A View of the Subsea Cable Ecosystem | ENISA

ENISA is the EU agency dedicated to enhancing cybersecurity in Europe. They offer guidance, tools, and resources to safeguard citizens and businesses from cyber threats.

www.enisa.europa.eu

A couple of years previously, the Atlantic Council said

The vast majority of intercontinental global Internet traffic—upwards of 95 percent—travels over undersea cables that run across the ocean floor.

Cyber defense across the ocean floor: The geopolitics of submarine cable security

The construction of new submarine cables is a key part of the constantly changing physical topology of the Internet worldwide.

www.atlanticcouncil.org

 

[Essence Lumin]

"The vast majority of intercontinental global Internet traffic—upwards of 95 percent—travels over undersea cables that run across the ocean floor."

The important keyword there is intercontinental which did not appear in the article I posted about.

 

[Free]

lol.gif

 

[Bartholomew Gallacher]

Sabine Hossenfelder is talking about a relatively young branch of computer sciences - neuromorphic engineering and their CPUs. These CPUs are still silicon based, but are designed after how a human brain works, roughly told.

Commonly AI's neural networks run in software, but here they are supposed to run in hardware instead, giving them a significant boost in terms of performance and complexity as goal.

 

[Khamon]

It is an old argument. Adherents have been pursuing the goal for decades. Neural net hardware is only just becoming slightly feasible to demonstrate an appreciable result.

 

[Essence Lumin]

Hans Reiser developed ReiserFS as a filesystem for linux then in 2008 murdered his wife. He is the only person I can recall with such a technical background with such violence. Here he gives a long technical explanation about his choices with the filesystem - and not anything about his wife which he considers inappropriate for the letter. So bizarre but to me an interesting read into a distorted personality.

Hans Reiser on ReiserFS deprecation - Fredrick R. Brennan

 

[Free]

 

[Free]

The toothbrushes are secure. For now...

No, 3 million electric toothbrushes were not used in a DDoS attack

A widely reported story that 3 million electric toothbrushes were hacked with malware to conduct distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks is likely a hypothetical scenario instead of an actual attack.

www.bleepingcomputer.com

A widely reported story that 3 million electric toothbrushes were hacked with malware to conduct distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks is likely a hypothetical scenario instead of an actual attack.

Last week, Swiss news site Aargauer Zeitung published a story stating that an employee of cybersecurity firm Fortinet said 3 million electric toothbrushes had been infected with Java malware to conduct DDoS attacks against a Swiss company.

"The electric toothbrush is programmed with Java, and criminals have unnoticed installed malware on it - like on 3 million other toothbrushes," reads the article.

"One command is enough and the remote-controlled toothbrushes simultaneously access the website of a Swiss company. The site collapses and is paralyzed for four hours. Millions of dollars in damage is caused."

The story is dramatic and definitely newsworthy, if accurate, and began sweeping through other technology news sites yesterday, with numerous publications covering the alleged attack without verifying the story.

However, there is one problem with the story—there is no record that this attack ever happened.

 

[Noodles]

Wouldn't that have been a DDS attack?