The problem that needs correcting is educating the end-user. That's where the fix needs to happen. Yet again people are using a new technology and assuming that everything it provides is correct. Just because it's in a book, or on TV or the radio, doesn't mean that it's true or accurate. Just because you read something on the Internet doesn't mean it's true. Likewise, just because an AI chatbot said something doesn't mean it's true.

It's unfortunate that the young man mentioned in the article found a way to reinforce his delusions with AI. He just as easily could've found that reinforement in a book, a youtube video, or a song whose lyrics he thought were speaking directly to him and commanding him to do something.

These tools aren't perfect. Should AI provide more accurate output? Of course. We're in the early days of AI and over time these tools will converge towards correctness. There should also be more prominent warnings that the AI output may not be accurate. Like another poster said, the AI mathematically assembles sentences. It's up to the end-user to figure out if the result makes sense, integrate it with other information and assess it for accuracy.

Sentences such as "Tech companies have every incentive to encourage this confusion" only serve to reinforce the idea that end-users shouldn't need to think and everything should be handed to us perfect and without fault. I've never seen anyone involved with AI make that claim, yet people write article after article bashing on AI companies as if we were promised a tool without fault. It's getting tiresome.

Could you imagine visiting a web site only to have it tell you to disable your virus blocker to view the web page? Yet, web sites make the same requests of your "ad blocker" even though the end result is the same. They want you to disable your security protections and risk infection to view a web page.[1]

Sadly, I believe we've already lost this battle and are worse off for it.

1. https://www.networkworld.com/article/3021113/forbes-malware-...

ZFS on Linux is a kernel module. You may be thinking of ZFS-FUSE which runs in user space using FUSE, but I'm not sure if it's being maintained any more.

What I did was take the IANA IPv4 address space list[1] and add firewall rules to drop packets to port 22 coming from /8's that I would never connect from. I'm in the US, so it made sense for me to drop connections from subnets assigned to RIPE, APNIC, etc. It didn't eliminate the problem, but it reduced the connection attempts considerably.

1. https://www.iana.org/assignments/ipv4-address-space/ipv4-add...

Guidelines such as "throwaway accounts are ok for sensitive information, but please don't create accounts routinely" are naive. Non-sensitive information can reveal sensitive things when aggregated. We've all read articles about how anonymized data sets can still contain enough data to identify, or come close to identifying, individuals. I'm sure a number of those articles have been linked to from this web site. Practicing user account rotation is a useful tool for mitigating such risks.

Maybe it's time to rethink this particular site guideline. Let's not throw out the baby with the bathwater when it comes to users making contributions to the site.

I finally got tired of the emails, so I told the site I forgot the password, changed the password to something long and random, then deleted all the content. I remember having to do something unusual to delete the content, like spoof my useragent to pretend to be a mobile device, or something like that. I've never used Instagram before or since, but it really annoyed me that I have a problem due to their lax controls.

Instagram never should have activated the account and allowed any activity until the email address was verified, which I never did. If a big site like Instagram can't get this right, it doesn't surprise me that a small site like Goodreads can't either.

However, the last book I ordered from them was Python in a Nutshell about a year ago. It's an expensive book, so I was less willing to tolerate damage to a $50 book that I want to keep and use a lot. I had to return it twice to get one that wasn't beat all to hell. And even then I feel like I settled for something not in as good condition as I expected.

Amazon used to put books between two pieces of cardboard, shrinkwrap it, then put it in a box with padding. Books always arrived in good condition. Books in the padded envelope always arrive with crushed corners, and sometimes damage to the cover.

Let me direct you to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Chinese_milk_scandal.

If people are willing to poison milk with melanine to make a dollar, why wouldn't someone do the same to cat food? In fact, it's already happened: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_pet_food_recalls