6502 @mavica_again@computerfairi.es

So today some of the worst people on earth using the most environmentally destructive tools on earth brought down a huge part of the internet by exploiting a potential problem found many years ago in PHP which was previously not practical for anyone to exploit.

It only became "practical" to exploit this problem because "AI" came along to automate the boring and repetitive work required to do so. Absurd amounts of computing power were applied specifically to break into other peoples' websites.

Now the same people who are behind this are trying to pretend that they're heroes for finding an exploit.

"AI uncovers critical vulnerabilities", their headline reads. But the vulnerability was only made to be critical by the very same people as hide behind that headline.

Many thousands of websites are offline, many people are losing money, many thousands of people are working hard to try to patch or work around the problem, many small guys are finding it almost impossible to patch, and we're all supposed to be thankful to OpenAI and others involved ? Nah. Fuck off.

Everything about "AI" involves a lot of externalized costs, but I've still yet to see even a single positive thing that has been achieved by "AI". That has definitely not changed today.
#php2shell #php #fuckai #openai

there's a disingenuous argument i see go completely unchallenged all the time, which is "this <computer thing> deserves to be respected and celebrated, because it underpins the entire world and you wouldn't have {products, services, entertainment, electricity, food, etc} without it". like, we had supermarkets before SQL. we had maps before Google Maps. the world functioned successfully, it just wasn't on Computer. now it *needs* Computer, when it didn't before. strange to brag about that, really

the main thing that's good about the web as a medium, imo, is that you can just chuck something into a directory and then it will appear in web browsers around the world. you can edit the file and hit save and refresh. the magic that you feel is the core of the entire thing. and as far as i've seen, Web Development, as a discipline, has focused for the last few decades on systematically destroying that magic

the peace you disturb while standing up for yourself is worth disturbing.
the bridges you burn while fighting for your life are worth burning.

my zine grows more and more true by the day. i will only ever be friends with computers

https://maple.pet/blog/why-am-i-a-robot

computers are deeply, intimately personal to me, and i feel fucking desolate right now

reflecting on this, this goes beyond just retrocomputing as a hobby. some of these people i've known for over a decade and have had to cut ties with because of AI deepthroating unveiling red flags i should've seen years ago. a huge chunk of my social life (whatever left is of it after years of sexual harassment and DARVO targeted at me) is just gone. i am so tired

people i used to respect are either using AI for their projects or praising projects that do and this is the loneliest i've felt in the retrocomputing hobby