When I was a junior dev back in the 90’s one of my primary tasks was to tackle customer bug reports. Basically grunt work. I doubt AI tools could do that kind of task very well, unless the bug was something like a buffer overflow. I would think it would be terrible when it involves business logic flow.

It’s also worth mentioning that the Russian/Korean border is tucked into the farthest corner of China’s border. So any travel from the DPRK to places like Moscow or Ukraine is a pretty long, circuitous route.

It’s still a very good idea for any country to keep close tabs on an adversary. Complacency never benefits anybody. And the South Koreans will be better at translating, especially when it comes to any slang, regional dialects, etc.

Trump was in the Oval Office? I seem to recall mostly seeing photos of him at his various golf courses when he was president….

I’m roughly half his age and I’m hoping to finally see our first female president. I can only imagine how thrilled he’d be to see it happen.

Yeah, but money laundering with a 50-80% loss isn’t all that great.

Same. I’m one and done with my Model Y.

Ugh. I didn’t realize that & haven’t checked out their site in ages…

I just searched for their app in the Apple App Store and it looks like there are at least a few competitors out there now, so if you’re interested in something like this then I’d suggest shopping around to see what alternatives are available.

ANI and CallerID serve two very different purposes. Suppose you managed the telephones for something like an insurance company, where you have lots of customers calling in, but also have lots of employees calling out. You want the Caller ID on your customers phones to show the main # for your company whenever you call them, so it would show something like 1-212-555-1000.

Because the company has a lot of employees, it has 100 individual phone lines, so 100 agents can be on calls at the same time. The phone company actually allocates 100 numbers in that case, and those numbers could be very different than the above -1000 number. So the numbers 1-212-555-7000 through 1-212-555-7099 all belong to the company. Each time an employee makes a call their telephone system finds any one of those numbers between -7000 and -7099 that isnt in use and uses it. The call is billed to that specific number, and the bills for all 100 lines are combined & billed to the company at the end of the month.

If the company couldn’t configure its phones to display 1-212-555-1000 as the Caller ID then customers would see random numbers in the range of -7000 to -7099 any time the company called them.

I’ve never personally used it, but https://www.trapcall.com is a service that can reportedly unmask spoofed/blocked numbers and provide you with the actual number a person is calling from.

I did computer telephony work many years ago and have a general understanding of how this works. Caller ID is trivial to spoof, but there’s an underlying protocol called Automatic Number Identification (ANI) that was historically used for long distance billing when those calls were billed by the minute. Since it involves billing it can’t be spoofed by the caller, and the telephone companies are careful to ensure it’s accurate. What Trapcall apparently does is replace the spoofed Caller ID with the ANI.

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Play paintball.

I started playing back in the 80’s when I was in college and everybody used paint guns that could only hold about 15 rounds, and fired one at a time.

I’m way too old to run around in the woods like I did 40 years ago, and the game has completely changed as well. People have guns that can hold hundreds of paintballs and shoot incredibly fast, so the whole strategy is unlike it was. I just don’t find modern paintball enjoyable at all.

Something something Gods wrath…

Guess I won’t vote for Biden next month then.

If you mailed in a ballot then there should be a way to confirm it was received, but there should NOT be a way to see who you voted for. Just like they can confirm that you voted in person, but again can not tell who you voted for when you showed up to vote.

Typically when you vote by mail you receive a ballot plus two envelopes. You fill out the ballot and put it in the inner envelope that should contain no markings as to whose ballot it belongs to. This is put inside the second envelope that should have your contact information (my state uses a barcode for this) and that you have to sign.

When the city/town clerk receives the ballot they look up your voter registration & confirm the signature on file matches the signature on the envelope. They then check off in their records that you voted by mail on that day. They take the inner envelope out of the outer envelope and add it to the other pile of envelopes they’ve received. At some later point they open those envelopes and count the ballots, but have no way of associating a given ballot back with the person who mailed it in.

If you then try to go vote in person on Election Day (or somebody tries to impersonate you) then their records will show you already voted and you won’t be allowed to vote again.

I recall when I bought my first hybrid that the dealer said there were something like 15 different computers controlling things, from the ICE engine to the transmission to the charging of the battery, etc. They weren’t networked together.

I also once ran afoul of a software bug in the ECU of a Honda CR/V. That’s the embedded system that manages the whole operation of the engine - from fuel injection to timing to emissions etc. As they progress through model years they use different ECUs that require different software. Even though I work in IT, I wouldn’t feel comfortable trying to update it myself, given the different models, firmware revisions, etc. I was more than happy to take that car to a dealer to have them confirm my car had buggy software and to upgrade it to the right new version.

NHTSA are the ones who investigate safety issues and issue recall notices. Once they have done that then the manufacturer has very specific legal requirements to follow. Hiding data from them would eventually come to light, and that would be very bad. Look at the diesel emissions scandal for one example. Volkswagen payed billions in fines for that, and a dozen or so employees including the CEO have been indicted. A few have pled guilty and been sentenced to jail.

I’ve had software recalls for Toyotas and Hondas, both of which involved physical recall paperwork and required me to visit a dealer to install the new software.

Just because a software recall can be remedied over the air it doesn’t make it any less of a recall. As others have said, there’s a legal definition to a recall. They are issued by the NHTSA and require specific legal responses from the manufacturer.

And then when you have an emergency the response is along the lines of:

“Thank you for requesting to speak with a rider support agent. All agents are currently busy assisting other Waymo customers, but the next available agent will assist you as soon as possible. There are currently 32 other customers in front of you. Thank you for your patience.”

How soon until we see something like the end of the movie Starship Troopers, where the latest batch of recruits appears to be about 13 years old?