A couple of times on this site I’ve mentioned some of the garbage that some ip address spit at my wee server. It’s interesting and frustrating especially when you think about how much people do or do not care.
Admittedly the people at AWS on occasion have constructively addressed the odd concern (but they do require lots of information inducing your time zone preferred type of porridge etc) But on the whole if you make a complaint to an ISP about the scanning or bs coming from an IP address you often never get a response.
So one approach is to just set up firewall rules and hope that the Aholes don’t come back via another address, but this does become a vexatious game of Whac-A-Mole.
It is useful in that it on a day to day level can bring awareness to how much junk is rattling at your front doors. I remember telling a manager once about the number daily number attacks and he went rather pale in the face.
I hope that someone can find sshfail as a useful tool, even if it does turn managers pale.
A couple of the publicly accessible AI’s that I’ve been tinkering with will not quote sources and will not tell you much if anything with regards what they have been trained on. But there is now this very interesting development that the Guardian have reported on which is that Sarah Silverman is current sueing OpenAI and Meta claiming AI training infringed copyright
I’m going to be holding on to my pop corn real tight as this works it’s way thru the courts, and the big wigs in silicon valley work out what to do and how to do it. I told you 2023 was going to be a very interesting year for AI.
My server hasn’t been working too well over the last 24 hours due to it becoming a bit of a snow flake, that and the fact the the plumber always has leaky pipes! Not to mention that I was running a rather old version of Debian.
What’s a snow flake server you may ask? It’s what all system admins should avoid! It’s a server that does all sorts of things (often rather well) and as such is a precious little snow flake! The problem with this is that the server will not, or is not, easy to manage or update or improve due to lack of documentation, configuration issues, and / or as was my issue- software and hardware conflicts.
There are a number of ways to manage machine production and developer working environments. These include approaches such as blue green servers, machine imaging with products like puppet and Ansible. As well as a VM approach with products like Vagrant or a software container product like Docker.
Whats also interesting is that with good old fashioned tools like password less key managed ssh access, and shell scripting you can control a lot of the process that the above products like to take claim for.
I’m going to think quite a bit about this snowflake problem some more in the coming weeks. I shall probably write more about how I, as someone with a “production server” and a number of other needs keeps all the ducks on the wall. The end result is that I hope I can create a machine from scratch in a very short space of time. Or at least learn a few things.
So I’ll start with a spoiler alert. If you haven’t seen the Ridley Scott movies “Prometheus” or “Alien: Covenant” you may like to stop reading now!
One of the things that I liked about Prometheus was that Ridley Scott starts to look at the concept of “Bad robot” and by the time we get to “Alien: Covenant” we are talking about a megalomaniacal monster who, because he has access to so much knowledge and power compared to these lesser humans, makes the decision that we are not worthy – of existence!
This of course evolves into a plot that will have you sitting on the edge of your seat right to the moment you leave the theatre. Your brain will still be doing back flicks many hours or days later. The technical ramifications of the plot twists are brilliant.
These movies got me thinking about AI and robotics and Arther C Clarke’s “Three Laws of Robotics“. I have always thought that these laws have influenced a lot of science fiction writing, in that the Robot is usually a force of good. When I think of my own existence as an IT person and someone rather fond of cables & chips… and software. The concept of an AI gone wrong upsets me. This is because we are human and we are all flawed on some level but we also have hope. But the cynic in me asks “So how the heck could we create an AI and not get it wrong?”
As a byproduct of watching these movies, I went searching for more information about humanity and AI. Whereupon I came across this interesting interview between two of the the biggest supporters / brains in the business of the development of AI… “Marvin Minskey & Ray Kurzweil“.
The late Mr Minskey is arguably the grandaddy of AI. He’s interesting – but also I feel he could be considered some what of an intellectual snob. I would not want him programming an AI.
But you might say – Robots, Artificial intelligence. That could never happen! Well lets just look at the facts shall we! The common knowledge game of Jeopardy back in 2011 yep a computer beat 2 of the best humans in the world at this game.
There is of course our diminished skill with regards the game of Chess, and the even more complex game of Go , The Physical presence of an AI may be expressed in a robotic format such as this…
We might also take into consideration related developments in robotics (not jus the type that walk) including improvements in things like Brain surgery . I shudder to think what the military are up to, but this is something we need to think about.
Additional issues are that the AI will presumably design the next generation of AI! It’s a very deep rabit hole.
If someone ever does get round to creating an AI we would need a management and review process. In addition to programmers who can create something with the wisdom and compassion of Buddha and the patience of a Saint.
We need to think about this, talk about this, a lot. Not to mention act carefully!
A couple of times on this site I’ve mentioned some of the garbage that some ip address spit at my wee server. It’s interesting and frustrating especially when you think about how much people do or do not care.
