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I'm really hoping that if it comes to pass, millions of AI-based hacking agents running amok on the internet, exploiting every single thing they can find, will at long last finally cause companies to get their shit together and secure their systems.

Imagine if your neighborhood had a million autonomous door-opening drones randomly flying around identifying doors and entering them. It wouldn't take long for everyone to lock their doors.

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I don't disagree with you. But let's expand.. Imagine every neighborhood had autonomous brick throwing drones randomly smashing windows. Imagine every neighborhood had autonomous flame throwing drones randomly setting fires. Imagine every neighborhood and autonomous gun shooting drones randomly killing. Imagine every neighborhood and autonomous grenade lobbing drones randomly blowing up walls.

You can not defend everything. At some point you have to realize the world works because not every exploitable thing is exploited and we live in a civil society (most of us anyway).

I get it, the internet makes things different. But your analogy doesn't work You can not build a building that can not be destroyed.


"Every neighbourhood" is still a local problem, and can be solved locally. A grenade-lobbing device in australia can not reach 1 Microsoft Way, Redmond with multiple hits per second, nor do we have the resources to produce such artillery at the rate of multiple per second. Any analogy that you want to extend into the real world has to acknowledge these real-world limitations in more than just a footnote, or it's not a useful simile.

My hope and what I see happening is that the major players in the software space are frantically patching as many bugs as they can right now to keep ahead of attackers, and we come out the other end with incredibly robust software.

All the unsupported iot stuff will be obliterated by malicious bots, but the next generation of iot will be both more robust and less directly exposed to the internet. Like how Matter devices sit behind a hub rather than directly connecting to the internet.


>Imagine if your neighborhood had a million autonomous door-opening drones randomly flying around identifying doors and entering them. It wouldn't take long for everyone to lock their doors.

Pretty interesting example, because I'd like to live in a society where I don't have to lock my doors, because it's safe and I trust people around me. Releasing drone police randomly opening doors in the name of security sounds like a strict downgrade, not "a good thing because people will learn".


Recommend you unironically disconnect from the Internet.

and don’t live in a city.


I don't fully understand what you suggest. I live in a big city. It's very safe here - I am not afraid of walking alone in the night, neither is my wife. Theft is a problem, but not huge - I leave my bike unchained when going into a store, and chained outside overnight, for example. I lost my LED bike lights twice though, weird thing to steal but I guess they're very easy to detach. I also leave my apartment door unlocked when I'm inside, including overnight.

Of course, as you said, in a city I will never feel safe enough to leave a door unlocked when leaving my apartment - big cities are big, and even 0.1% of bad apples may spoil things for everyone. But wanting a safer and more high-trust society sounds like a good thing, right? How would disconnecting from the internet help me.


I just figured you might do something that gets you closer to the things you want,

while still living in the real world.

I don’t really “hope and dream” for stuff like feeling safe.

Especially when it can be had for so much less than the not-feeling-safe options.

(and yes, people randomly taking my things makes me feel unsafe.)

Disconnecting from the Internet makes it harder for people to break into your hardware.

> Releasing drone police randomly opening doors in the name of security sounds like a strict downgrade

This is happening on the Internet hourly, and it’s not the police. Well, sometimes. But mostly not.




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