Buongiorno, frendz. Musique, avec Lydia Képinski, Junto Club, puzzled.

News:

• Future of robotics and artificial intelligence: The seven deadly sins of predicting the future of AI, rigorous down-to-earth debunking of pie-in-the-sky AI projections. Long read, but much recommended. Via The Exponential.
• ACM / Moshe Y. Vardi: What the industrial revolution really tells us about the future of automation and work, via The Exponential.

  We should listen not only to economists when it comes to predicting the future of work; we should listen also to historians, who often bring a deeper historical perspective to their predictions. Automation will significantly change many people's lives in ways that may be painful and enduring.

  • Which links to Yuval Noah Harari: The meaning of life in a world without work, 👍 framing of religion as virtual reality / gaming.

    Economically redundant people might spend increasing amounts of time within 3D virtual reality worlds, which would provide them with far more excitement and emotional engagement than the “real world” outside. This, in fact, is a very old solution. For thousands of years, billions of people have found meaning in playing virtual reality games. In the past, we have called these virtual reality games “religions”.

    What is a religion if not a big virtual reality game played by millions of people together? Religions such as Islam and Christianity invent imaginary laws, such as “don’t eat pork”, “repeat the same prayers a set number of times each day”, “don’t have sex with somebody from your own gender” and so forth. These laws exist only in the human imagination. No natural law requires the repetition of magical formulas, and no natural law forbids homosexuality or eating pork. Muslims and Christians go through life trying to gain points in their favorite virtual reality game. If you pray every day, you get points. If you forget to pray, you lose points. If by the end of your life you gain enough points, then after you die you go to the next level of the game (aka heaven).

• John Lanchester: You are the product, on facebook. 👍.
• djb: The qmail security guarantee: "Why is qmail secure?" , via cron.weekly.

  • Programs and files are not addresses. Don't treat them as addresses.
  • Do as little as possible in setuid programs.
  • Do as little as possible as root.
  • Move separate functions into mutually untrusting programs.
  • Don't parse.
  • Keep it simple, stupid.
  • Write bug-free code.

• [fr] Le Monde : Révolte des premiers de la classe, via Nouveau Projet.
• Christian Grobmeier : Rules of a zen programmer.
• Linus Torvalds: The king of geeks (and dad of 3), fun read, via cron.weekly.
• Kottke: A metaphor for 2017. This is fine truly is the meme this year deserves.
• Google's Street View cars are now giant, mobile 3D scanners, via [fr] Nitot.
• Firmware update addresses vulnerabilities in cardiac pacemakers, aaAAAaah.
• NN: Flat UI elements attract less attention and cause uncertainty, via HN.
• David Cain: The case for not knowing what time it is.
• Good SMBCs this week, on the real meaning of art, and outsourcing.
• Y - Yves Saint Laurent, being an AI researcher is now sexy enough for a perfume company to do an ad with one.
• 💩😷⚠ Donaldese:
  • [fr] Le gouvernement américain exige les données de 1,3 million d'opposants potentiels, WTF. Via [fr] Nitot.
  • NYT / Paul Krugman: The very bad economics of killing DACA.
  • What people mean when they say all white people are racist, on institutional / systemic racism vs. individual racism. Via kottke.
  • Vincente for Presidente.