Comment by hypfer

16 hours ago

Don't get your hopes up.

What you're saying only applies to what is out there right now. New stuff will eventually just be locked down more.

It's of course still huge to be able to do this with all tech up until this cut-off point. Eventually though, LLMs will have to break SOTA cryptography to keep doing this, and if they should ever manage to do that, there will be a rough awakening for the world that runs on that not being possible.

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Also, for every IoT device we can own, some non-IT people will be facing abuse through the same means.

Devices aren't just locked down to tether us to clouds, but also so that bad actors do not have free reign. Now they kinda do.

We should keep in mind that not everyone wins here. In fact, only a minority does.

lol - if hackers hacking devices encouraged device vendors to secure their shit, we wouldn't be in this mess.

Generally, I'm with you, but over the past decades I often saw companies being lazy about their software. So I think chances are good that we can make use of this situation. Not long ago, you had to accept certain decisions or servers going down with leaving devices useless. I'm hopeful that more stuff can have a 2nd/better life in our hands.

  • I like being able to have all this access, of course, but I'm not sure if "we" all truly have the character to be good stewards of this.

    Or rather I am sure that we do not.

    OTOH, maybe it needs events like these to build character. It just will suck for whoever turns out to be the collateral.

    • That's the downside of the medal, but let's face it. A tool is a tool. You can forge helpful stuff or weapons, but this is not the fault of the tool itself. So we're currently at the stage where we were on the internet 30 years ago. Let's see where this leads too.

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