I think they want us to spend all day in meetings, and let AI do the coding for us. They want us to do the dishes while AI creates the art, as it were.
2 Likes
My company somehow did this working with Microsoft (M365). It is pretty useful to find stuff across multiple sharepoint sites, network folders.
FYI: It is airgapped
1 Like
Itâs a slippery slope. I spent last evening iterating task statements with co-pilot, to write a C++ OpenGL rendering application for B-rep meshes (.stl, etc.) Pretty helpful; I think it could have written the whole thing with a properly crafted task statement. Instead, I iterated through segments of the problem and had to do a lot of massaging to integrate it.
Thing is, the bot wanted to continue development along what it probably thinks is a CAD solution, and Iâm decidedly headed to another way. Ok, not too different from dealing with a headstrong person, except I donât have to worry about HR if I get snippy with it. 
So, I used it to expedite a solution to some of the mechanics I didnât want to make a sub-hobby of. It wouldnât be too hard to let it do the whole thing, but for me thatâs not the point.
2 Likes
Yeah, ouch. FWIW, in my prior comment, I meant literally air-gapped, not the illusion being peddled now.
2 Likes
No, it is not, it can never be.
Air-gapped means that thereâs an actual gap between things, and since this is running on Microsoftâs computers, that can never be the case. Your data lives with Microsoft. And donât get me started on this âon prem Azureâ nonsense, thatâs paying even more money to run somebody elseâs computers in your own datacenter⌠but still connected to the mother ship.
Airgapped means that something runs on a computer that is not connected to anything else. Not the local network, and most certainly not the wider internet.
Letâs try and give a little pushback to the hollowing out of definitions just because it suits some bigtech corpâs marketing team, yeah?
4 Likes
One time a co-worker imparted a nugget of wisdom on us lesser idiots: âThe most secure server is one that doesnât serve.â
To which I responded that a server that doesnât serve isnât actually a server, which got him riled up for the rest of the day.
3 Likes
You made an assumption without any data. Who said it is running in Microsoft servers? Who said the data lives with Microsoft?
three young women, two children and an older young woman (in full muslim cover) came up to me on our local beach the other day and asked me to take their picture.
I snapped them, and they went away happy.
I processed the pictures in darktable, and thought about posting them on photo forums.
Then I thought about stuff weâve probably all seen about why parents should not post their children pics on social media. I thought, it doesnât matter how innocent and honest we (in the forums I frequent) are. Stuff gets scraped. Even before AI, which just laps everything up. I thought, what if these pics got into wrong hands, got morphed.
I have no idea what the paranoia/actual-risk is. The risk might be tiny. But I decided that I was not prepared to take it with pics of children I didnât even know, and who were not consenting to publication.
India is still fairly easy going. Last time I was in UK, at my best-friendâs place, my best-friend-in-law warned me to never photograph children, eg in the beach. (or anywhere). She is a keen nature and landscape photographer. I said, âEven you, as a woman?â She said, âEven me.â
That is what the world had come to about 7 years ago. Before AI.
5 Likes
Regardless of social media, bad actors, AI etc., here in Switzerland the law is pretty clear: everyone owns their own image, and you cannot post online a photo in which a person is recognizable unless you have explicit consent to do so (special conditions apply, e.g., for public figures in public places).
While this is obviously very limiting (not only for street photography, but also for, say, wedding and event photography) it kind of makes sense if you think about it (because of social media, bad actors, AI etc).
4 Likes
Itâs M365, which is cloud. If youâre opting for the on-prem version, that means Azure on-prem, which is still MS.
What am I missing or wrong about, in your view?
It does. How does this work for things like those weddings and events? Is there some mechanism in place to quickly gather consent from attendants?
1 Like
This is interesting. How is ârecognizableâ defined? Or is the law ambiguous on that (ieâŚleaving it to a judge to determine)?
You must get explicit consent from all the attendants whose photos you want to publish on, say, your website, social media or print material. For group photos, it is enough to inform them that it will be published and how, and they can object if they have any problem with that.
It is the act of publishing that is potentially litigable, not the act of taking the photo. So if you share the photos with the bride and groom and then they post them it is no longer your problem.
The definition is pretty conservative, and itâs especially broad for children. Along the lines of âsomeone who knows that person would be able to understand that itâs themâ.
Here there is a short summary of the legal framework if you are interested:
The following passage allows for street photography as long as the people are not the main subject of the photo:
Consent does not need to be obtained when photos are taken openly in public spaces, and if the people in the image are not the main focus, e.g. passers-by at a tourist attraction. In these cases, it is sufficient if an image is deleted at the request of the person(s) photographed (the request can be made immediately or at any later time) or if the photograph is not subsequently published. In this case, the people concerned do not have to be contacted and provided with further information.
5 Likes
The way I heard it was, âThe only really secure computer is in the middle of a pit full of concrete.â I guess thatâs true!
1 Like
I think here in the US what people want is maximum freedom to take photos of other people in public spaces, and maximum freedom to deny others from taking our photos in those same spaces. Itâs contradictory and naturally leads to conflict. And really that mentality isnât just limited to photography, itâs anything really.
I could walk down the street and photograph kids walking to the elementary school and would be within my rights, but I would definitely be seen as a creep. Many of those same parents who would view me as a creep will happily post photos of their children on social media without a second thought.
Here in the US we have people who are âfirst amendment auditorsâ who basically push the boundaries of this stuff by filming government buildings. They will often have the police called on them because someone walking around a government building for hours filming who knows what is seen as suspicious (and here in the US, that seems like a reasonable assumption).
But the reality is we live in a surveillance state and are being filmed constantly. I donât know how many Ring and other security cameras are in my neighborhood capturing me from the sidewalk, and those companies love to partner with police organizations and of course thereâs been data leaks as well.
Itâs quite obvious that the legal rights and societal expectations do not line up very well, and that boundary is very unclear.
5 Likes
Law varies by country. That is especially strict.
As I understand the law in Britain (and USA?) anyone in public is fair game. Permission is only necessary for commercial use.
(IANAL⌠and the people I photograph are on stage. Not only do almost all of them want to be photographed, but if I donât put the pics on Instagram etc, they will. (mostly, I donât: Iâm lazy. I leave it to them!))
I am shy about photographing strangers, eg in the street.
One of my friends, when doing volunteer IT work for our former high-school, often says when people thank him: Iâm donating my compensation to the âFoundation For Userless Serversâ. 
1 Like
There was that one case where one of our tools randomly got a Windows update from Windows 10 to 11 overnight â in a supposedly âair-gappedâ semiconductor fab. We reinstalled 10 on the next day. Everything was turned off. Updating blocked locally. Updatingpolicy set through the domain. Windows Update service blocked in the firewall. No internet access. And yet, it happened again!
We later learned, that one tool in the fab at one point had been updated to 11. And while none of the tools did have active internet access, this one tool distributed its update to others, and caused tens of thousands of moneys of downtime.
Truly, a marvel of technology.
5 Likes
[tinfoil hat]
This seems like functionality many state/near-state actors would be happy to pay MS to include in Windows.
[ /tinfoil hat]
2 Likes
Even stuxnet creators would be envious of microsoftâs skill to distribute their windows updates
2 Likes