Technology out of control, NASA's free software, botnets, ransomware, AI's PR problems, and more!
Gather round, children, and hear the tale of how complex interdependencies and connected systems brought down the world. (I stole the spirit of this from a tweet that I couldn't find. Credit to ether of reality.)
NASA! Free! Software! And even some for data and image processing!
A review of the various bad things that can happen with botnets.
Long story short - AI sounds scary and frightening, when really a better term might be like "computer assistance" or "algorithmic knowledge" or "hyper specific problem solving with computer programs (HSPSCP)". OK, HSPSCP sounds like a highly restricted drug.
In case you're wondering who the big players are, this is a point-by-point source for lots of links and quick info about what's going on in space (and with the little humans thinking about it on earth).
This isn't a story - it's literally a step-by-step tutorial on how to do this. In case you're into that sort of thing, or just interested in how people do it.
Retrotech history with some neat interactive visualizations about teletext and the future it foretold.
A pretty cool thoughtpiece on what ransomware could be if ransomware developers decided to be much meaner and enterprise-y.