Over the past few months, more than a few Google Doodles have simply been Gemini search prompts. This was extremely underwhelming as I usually expect a fun game or some kind of clever hack to ensue. I was also rather irate that Google could simply insert some false prompt into my Gemini conversation history. "I did not say that!"
Furthermore, it led me to muse whether "Prompt Gemini for <xxx>" was a thing that any URL could do? If I went to a random malicious website, could they prompt Gemini to do something for me? If Gemini was hooked up to my Gmail, could a malicious prompt delete all my email, and all it would take is a misclick? Chilling.
What is the age of a script that I wrote to be triggered by cron? What is the age of a script that my 10-year-old son wrote to be triggered in his dad's crontab?
If I do "sudo -l" to my son's account, what is the age of the user performing actions? If my son writes a set-user-ID program and I run it, what is the user's age now?
Most pirates are careful to strip out any copyright notices, but if Franklin did not consider themselves as pirates, then obviously the smart move is to retain the notice intact, because that is giving proper attribution. That seems like a good and ethical choice, considering the landscape at the time.
I live in a unique community which is sandwiched between a public-transit light rail line, and a freight line as well.
The light rail can run a frequency of 12-20 minutes in each direction. The freight's schedule: who really knows?
But the freight train is generally inhibited from sounding its horn or bells near residential neighborhoods. So, unless I am really paying attention while awake, I cannot detect it passing by, no matter the size.
The light rail is audible from where I sit, usually, but only just. It toots the horn mostly as it passes, but it's not disruptive or annoying to me, anyway. I sort of enjoy the white noise it all makes. There are cars that do a lot worse.
I think that the architecture here is helpful, too. The buildings are clustered around a central courtyard, and really insulated from the road noise. At any given time, there may be folks splashing in the pool, or running the jets on the hot tub, anyway.
The light rail stations are a major convenience to living here, and the train noise is absolutely the least of our worries!
The USA's westward expansion was indeed facilitated by the timely development of railroads, and so many of the cities were built around the ability to haul freight and service depots along the rail lines, much like ancient cities sprang up alongside rivers and bays because of boat shipping.
However, the United States is also a nation built upon the motor vehicle, and our much-vaunted freeway system here was built deliberately as a national defense measure that could easily move materiel and troops between cities and states, in the event of a domestic invasion or future wars on our own soil. The freeways enjoyed deep investments also due to commercial utility, and again, many cities and habitations sprang up at the nexus of various freeways, as truck-based shipping could service them as well.
I think one of the main obstacles to rail lines in the United States is our car-centrism, and many motorists of any socio-economic class really, really hate trains and public transit of any kind, and any other type of transport that may impinge on their freedom to drive wherever they want on as many highways as possible.
Therefore it is extraordinarily difficult for railways to get good rights-of-way. Amtrak is a redheaded stepchild. Commuter rail may be better respected in places where it was established, like the Eastern Seaboard, but if I asked any voter or motorist here, they would be voting against any sort of rail project whatsoever.
I sincerely doubt that pilots decide "when to eject a passenger". Mostly it would be the cabin crew: the flight attendants are 100% in charge of flight safety, and they would be managing relationships with passengers, and they would be the ones to make the call. It would ultimately be them calling some kind of law enforcement. If an Air Marshal is onboard already, obviously they would be on the front line as well.
Furthermore, the concept of "ejecting a passenger" from a flight would mostly not be something you do while in the air, unless you're nuts. Ejecting a passenger is either done before takeoff, or your crew decides to divert the flight, or continue to the destination and have law enforcement waiting on the tarmac.
Naturally, pilots get involved when it's a question of where to fly the plane and when to divert, but ultimately the cabin crew is also involved in those decisions about problem passengers.
The Pilot in Command has ultimate legal responsibility over the operation of the flight, ICAO conventions explicitly state this. Whilst in practice the cabin crew will be the ones dealing with the passenger(s) and supplying information to the PIC , it won’t be them making the final decision.
Pretty sure ejection here is meant as shorthand for "Transfer the passenger to an entity on the ground to proceed from there" whether that entity is emergency medical services or law enforcement is secondary.
You're Absolutely Right! Your original summary is not just insightful — you've cleanly delved into the best parts! What else can you share with us tonight?
From my youth, I was infected with the desire to graduate college at all costs. I was adopted, and I was told that both of my birth-parents were college graduates (I later validated this as truth!) My adoptive parents were also both college graduates, though my mother chose against a career or employment in favor of motherhood, and active volunteering in church and civic spheres.
My sister and I were both groomed to go to college. We attended the standard college prep high schools. The choices were laid before us. Mom told me definitely not to attend UC Berkeley (because of the hippies and anti-war protests.) So, I chose UCSD and my parents basically handled all the paperwork; I sat down to write an essay, and I was totally in.
However, mental illness ruled my life and I dropped out of classes. An excuse by my therapist got me restarted but not for very long before the second dropout. I tried community college for a semester and earned one more good grade (in C programming). I started work, foolishly believing that would go better than college! My life fell apart around me and college remained unfinished for decades.
Finally by 2017 I was stable enough to consider college again. Of course I should have understood that my career was not a thing, and at that point, college was the frivolous pipe-dream of an aging guy unable to really support himself. Nonetheless, I did the FAFSA, and Uncle Sam paid for the rest of my college bills.
I again dropped out, for reasons of being less-than-stable, but I had managed to earn 3 CompTIA certifications and I also landed a very nice job, which I held for over 4 years. None of those would've been possible without the drive to finish college.
Ultimately, the community college found a way to "graduate me" and award me a certificate of completion (instead of the Associate's in Applied Science which I was pursuing.) My "graduation ceremony" occurred in the US Postal Service station. Receiving that certificate was 100% a surprise, but a Pyrrhic victory.
At this point, I achieved my "bucket list" of graduating college, but I have 0 career prospects, and the certificate means 0 to my former or prospective employers (the certifications also meant nothing to them!)
So what did Uncle Sam really pay for? My personal satisfaction? Just to funnel more taxpayer money to the college system? I am fine with that, I suppose.
But it just goes to show that far more families push their children to attend college, and the expectations are set too high, when many kids growing up really need some vocational skills and real-life street smarts to survive in this world. Tuition prices have been jacked-up absurdly by the proliferation of scholarships and grants. "Diversity" means any view except conservatives or Christians. We are in need of a reckoning, especially for land-grant and "Ivy League" institutions.
Furthermore, it led me to muse whether "Prompt Gemini for <xxx>" was a thing that any URL could do? If I went to a random malicious website, could they prompt Gemini to do something for me? If Gemini was hooked up to my Gmail, could a malicious prompt delete all my email, and all it would take is a misclick? Chilling.
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