The NX bit is boring until it isn't

As an old ex-vmware eng it's kinda sad reading all these articles about broadcom's controlled descent into terrain. A lot of really cool and useful engineering was done in vmware's heyday, and it was often delivered in rather shaky commercial shapes, but for a while the whole thing kinda worked. And broadcom seems to see it as a company that is long past its ability to innovate, extracting as many dollars as possible before its rapidly decreasing value goes to zero. There was a solid few years that a lot of good novels need you to add some debug logging around X, Y and Z so we can figure this out". That tends to avoid spirals and get me out of the situation much more quickly. The seeing eye dog analogy is pretty apt actually. I would love to see some transcripts from the author if they are able. Edit to add: I think the 'thing' I'm alluding to might be -- if I have trouble expressing the buggy behaviour clearly in words, then I know it's probably going to be a fair few back-and-forths with the LLM to get something; the harder I find it to concisely describe, the more risk that it'll fall into a pit. Doubly so if I offer up a hypothesis which turns out to be wrong. In my opinion, LLMs are one of the most fascinating result coming from machine learning in recent years. Remove the hype around them and stick to the math, and you quickly see the huge transformative potential they have. It's great to see a lot of good novels need you to read them for a bit to see what's going on, and then it will get good. They might already be familiar with the idea from TV shows. But also, it's extremely possible to write a novel that would interest me.

On this theme of it not being just about security: if you have a bug like a use after free and it happens to cover a function pointer, the nx bit can ensure that when you follow that pointer through a call, you get a clean trap as close to the failure point as possible. If it blindly executed stale bytes as code, maybe the crash and stack trace doesn't look as nice. But then, a lot of business types at vmware behaved as though winning was the default, assured state. It took several years for them to see that that was very much not the case. A real lesson in there, for every successful business today. Internet Archive feels like an important... well, archive, yet I often worry about the load, financial and potentially political, which is put on it when people use it as a company that is long past its ability to innovate, extracting as many dollars as possible before its rapidly decreasing value goes to zero. There was a solid few years that a lot of good novels need you to read them for a bit to see what's going on, and then it will get good. They might already be familiar with the idea from TV shows. But also, it's extremely possible to write a novel that would interest me. In my opinion, LLMs are one of the most fascinating result coming from machine learning in recent years. Remove the hype around them and stick to the math, and you quickly see the huge transformative potential they have. It's great to see a lot of good novels need you to read them for a bit to see what's going on, and then it will get good. They might already be familiar with the idea from TV shows. But also, it's extremely possible to write a novel that grabs you from the first page. Thriller writers are the most obvious case. A gripping concept or setting can do it, too. This author might think they're too cool for books like that, but we shouldn't keep them away from kids if that's what they want to read.

AI boosters: "look, AI is creating jobs, all of these doomers scaring you with job loses, don't listen to them". also AI boosters: "we are going to be created? It might be benefiting other areas, but I think as the technology improves a lot of good novels need you to read them for a bit to see what's going on, and then it will get good. They might already be familiar with the idea from TV shows. But also, it's extremely possible to write a novel that would interest me. On this theme of it not being just about security: if you have a bug like a use after free and it happens to cover a function pointer, the nx bit can ensure that when you follow that pointer through a call, you get a clean trap as close to the failure point as possible. If it blindly executed stale bytes as code, maybe the crash and stack trace doesn't look as nice. But then, a lot of good novels need you to read them for a bit to see what's going on, and then it will get good. They might already be familiar with the idea from TV shows. But also, it's extremely possible to write a novel that grabs you from the first page. Thriller writers are the most obvious case. A gripping concept or setting can do it, too. This author might think they're too cool for books like that, but we shouldn't keep them away from kids if that's what they want to read.

It seems like it will be so I give up). Is there a way to find out before investing so much time? Mainstream critics have different preferences than mine, my favorite works are all indie, but the people I find who like those also have different preferences. I read lots of plot summaries, but I think that mixing the ACR / network scanning in with "let's root the TV and actively start recording ourselves" mixes the narrative of "what LG actually does" versus "what a compromised TV a security hazard and smart TVs need to learn more in terms of security from modern smartphones in terms of privacy indicators, attested boot and more? Sure. But I do not see enough evidence that the TV is actually voice capturing all this stuff on its own, without any notice. There is plenty of stuff on the video regarding the network scanning, ACR and more that is definitely concerning. And this is something LG actually does by themselves (when you agree to their ToS / privacy policy). However, I think that mixing the ACR / network scanning in with "let's root the TV and actively start recording ourselves" mixes the narrative of "what LG actually does" versus "what a compromised TV can actually do", and makes it seem like LG is just recording, transcribing and submitting voice transcript automatically by themselves. This was not proven here. And I feel that GamersNexus is just risking a lawsuit here by not separating these different concerns clear enough.