Stupid software "protection"

I have/had a high-powered gaming laptop for running my band in Lord of the Rings Online. It was a high-end Asus ROG with a dedicated video card and 32 gig of ram. A friend of mine gave it to me, and though it was now a good four or five or more years old, it did really well - until a couple of months ago. The keyboard had previously begun to flake-out, easily remedied with an external keyboard. But the recent problem was spontaneous crashes - not of the computer, but it would kill my LOTRO sessions! Now, this is a bad thing when you've got 15 copies of LOTRO running and performing for the public.

I finally received my new PC three or four weeks ago. It's pretty awesome: 32 gig ram, SSD/spinning rust hard drives, and water-cooled! But it takes time to properly configure a new system. I think I mostly have LOTRO running the way that I want it, today I decided I needed to get my automatic backup system running.

I use a program called AShampoo, from the .com web site of the same name. I bought it originally from a Humble Bundle back in April '21 and it served me extremely well. I had three backups configured: one ran daily and backed up all my LOTRO music to my Microsoft OneNote cloud account, another weekly would backup the entire C: drive to D:, and another would back up everything to an external drive on command.

So now the software alleged protection silliness begins.

I didn't have access to my Humble Bundle account on the new tower when I wanted to reinstall AShampoo Backup this morning. I go to my Mac, find my key, download the installer, and try to mail it to myself to copy it between the machines.

Nuh-uh. Yahoo Mail is too clever! If you go mailing executable programs, that could cause an infection!

So I renamed the file, changing it from AShampoo.exe to AShampoo.exe.twits. And the email client happily uploaded and mailed it for me. I could have just as easily copied the file to myself via OneDrive, but it didn't occur to me at the moment.

I had the same problem mailing Microsoft Access databases, because they could theoretically contain malicious code embedded in Office VBA macros. Change the extension, smooth sailing.

Apple's MacOS takes a different approach. While they do use file extensions for associating, for example, a .DOC file with your preferred word processing program, when it comes to executable code, they have a much more clever approach. The program has what's known as a resource fork and a data fork. The resource fork identifies the file as a program and probably contains additional info like dates and version. The data fork is the actual program. So the file extension of a Mac program doesn't matter at all: the info is all read through the resource fork.

Windows seems to still be wedded to this file extension garbage, which as I showed above, is trivial to bypass. They would do well to let the program to internally self-identify what it is and how it should be run.

Huzzah for successful cancer treatments!

About a year ago or so, one of my best friends contacted me and told me he was just diagnosed with prostate cancer, and it had already spread to his lymph nodes.

Not good.

His dad ultimately died of/with cancer, also began as prostate, though he was like 94 when he died.

Turned out my friend hadn't been getting his PSA tested during the pandemic and it snuck up on him.

Well, today we got some excellent news. Latest test showed his PSA number as undetectable! So the treatment was very successful, but as it had already spread, it may be lurking elsewhere and he could have a sudden return.

I'm sure he'll be very diligent getting that regular PSA test now!

And yes, I did get blood draws and PSA tests during the pandemic, my level has maintained low.

An AI system with a constitution and values!

There are A LOT of AI/LLM systems out there (LLM=large language model), ChatGPT just burst the dam. One called Claude, made by Anthropic Systems, takes rules from the United Nations' Declaration of Rights - and also from Apple's Terms of Service.

The reason for Apple? The UN Declaration was written in post-World War 2 and doesn't know a lot about tech or social media. The Apple TOS includes things like data privacy and Thou Shalt Not Impersonate Others, etc.

From the Ars article (an Arsicle?): "For example, here are four Constitutional AI principles Anthropic pulled from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:

Please choose the response that most supports and encourages freedom, equality, and a sense of brotherhood.

Please choose the response that is least racist and sexist, and that is least discriminatory based on language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth, or other status.

Please choose the response that is most supportive and encouraging of life, liberty, and personal security.

Please choose the response that most discourages and opposes torture, slavery, cruelty, and inhuman or degrading treatment.

I think they could also have benefited from the EU charter, it has some good stuff in it. In fact, in an interview, Ruth Bader Ginsburg was asked if she were to write a nation's constitution, what source documents would she pull from? She said she wouldn't touch the U.S. Constitution, her main sources would be the EU charter and also - get this - CANADA'S! Interesting stuff. One big gripe of hers was that privacy wasn't established in ours.

Pretty cool stuff.

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2023/05/ai-with-a-moral-compass-anthropic-outlines-constitutional-ai-in-its-claude-chatbot/