My personal experience with A.I

[oldgeek]

I say, " I'm a novice " in these threads a lot.

I do this for 2 main seasons.

1, I did 20 years in prison so technology has advanced quite a bit in those 20 years.

And 2, I want I don't want anyone mistakenly thinking that what I'm saying is correct everytime no matter what and there's no other way of doing something.

I know very little about computer technology and AI in general.

So I have a question.
Before I went to prison I had a friend that had built himself a home server.

If we was able to build our own servers at our houses, would it work to circumvent the cloud and other things that we have to use in today's society?

There's my question I look forward to everybody's replies, Thank you.

With a home server, one is more in control of one's data. Email could be set up too. Remote access also. Just need a panic button for when the Feds come knocking politely.

 

[ShhhhhDougsHere]

@oldgeek Thank you for your reply and your knowledge.

I do know enough about technology to know what you're saying about the panic button.

The friend that had the server Tower before I went to prison talked about that as well.
He had an electromagnet set up next to his server Tower that he could turn on and wipe everything with.

 

[ShhhhhDougsHere]

I realized my post earlier post number 90 in this thread needed edited so I done so.
It reads better now.

 

[85_Ranger4x4]

If one needs a kill switch on your server you are probably are doing something you really shouldn't be doing anyway.

I get tired of dealing with the little hard drives doing video editing from our trips.

 

[ShhhhhDougsHere]

I agree @85_Ranger4x4 if a person needs evasive measures to wipe what's on the server Tower out they are doing stuff they should not be doing.

 

[pentode]

Well, as a strong believer in privacy and someone who's concerned about the levels of surveillance on us from both governments and corporations, I think there are lots of good reasons to not want to share your personal info with the feds or anyone else. The problem is, giving up a little bit of privacy is a slippery slope... It never stays at "a little bit of surveillance". Anyway, that's a rant for another day I guess...

You can run your own servers to do stuff like email, home security, personal blogs/websites, media streaming, pretty much anything you can do in "the cloud." It's a fair amount more work and often things aren't quite as slick as the commercial products, but then how much do you really want to share with Zack anyway?

 

[ShhhhhDougsHere]

I understand and agree to your point of view as well @pentode .
I believe that there is things that are completely legal and above board that I would not want to share with " Big Brother " as they say.

I think that I would have a totally different offline device for that stuff.

However I believe that most of the stuff that is completely legal and above board that I would like to keep to myself is already known by " Big Brother " as they say.

Doing 20 years in prison has given me a different perspective on life than a lot of people have.

I believe that no matter what a person thinks that they're completely in control of their life but they're really not.

" Big Brother " as they say is more in control of what's going on than anyone truly knows except for " Big Brother " as they say themself.

 

[ShhhhhDougsHere]

I edited my last post in this thread post number 97 in this thread.
It's now easier to understand and read.

 

[oldgeek]

I had thought that the NSA could offer backup services as it is said they have all the data anyway, why not run a sideline business?

 

[Shran]

In theory it is great.

For example the one cloud/sync thing I deal with at work works great... until the guy on the other end updates the sync and then the thing is down for two days until it finishes its update. I finally got him convinced to not screw with it until a weekend.

I really want to just setup a local cloud thing at our house. I get so sick of portable hard drive issues it would be nice to just do away with them.

Look into a home NAS device (Network Attached Storage.) Basically just a little file server that anyone can access. Another good option is just a crappy old laptop - do a Windows file share on it. Small, takes very little power and inexpensive.

I use an old micro tower PC that runs Windows Server 2008 for my file server, DHCP, DNS, and as a domain controller. I just have a 1TB external drive plugged into that one. Then I have an even older PC running Windows Server 2000 for a backup file server, it has a 1TB RAID array. That setup would be way overkill for just about anyone on here but it's kinda cool.

Semi related note, "the cloud" is just servers in another location. That's literally all it is, the consumer gave up a physical machine on site in trade for a machine in a data center somewhere.

 

[sgtsandman]

I had thought that the NSA could offer backup services as it is said they have all the data anyway, why not run a sideline business?

But then, they would have to admit what they really have.

One could say the same with all the commercial enterprises that sell and collect information on people. It's probably not as extensive or sensitive as the government's collection, but it's there.

 

[pentode]

I always try to avoid sounding like an alarmist whackjob kook, but I think it's safest to start with the assumption that they both know everything. When you combine credit card transactions with location data and the various "oops, we accidentally left the microphones on, sorry, that was just supposed to be for in house testing", Flock cameras with "oops, yeah, we actually do facial recognition, not just plates," the amount these data aggregators know about us already is arguably way too much.

I was going to apologize for drifting off the AI topic, but actually, AI/ML is what's driving the processing of these massive amounts of data. They can just as easily consume all the data about you and figure out exactly what you're up to as they can find a tiny tumor in a million CT scans.

/tinfoil hat ON

 

[rumblecloud]

I always try to avoid sounding like an alarmist whackjob kook, but I think it's safest to start with the assumption that they both know everything. When you combine credit card transactions with location data and the various "oops, we accidentally left the microphones on, sorry, that was just supposed to be for in house testing", Flock cameras with "oops, yeah, we actually do facial recognition, not just plates," the amount these data aggregators know about us already is arguably way too much.

I was going to apologize for drifting off the AI topic, but actually, AI/ML is what's driving the processing of these massive amounts of data. They can just as easily consume all the data about you and figure out exactly what you're up to as they can find a tiny tumor in a million CT scans.

/tinfoil hat ON

Since we're already off topic...
I've hung up my tinfoil hat long ago. It's in a box in the barn along with Orwell's 1984 and a VHS tape of Minority Report.

My experience with data collection began in advertising in the early 90s with some of the early ISPs, search engines, etc. There is no point in trying to keep anything that you do online "private." We sliced and diced stuff before the gov ever thought about it. I would argue we (advertisers) taught them how to do it.

THEY already know everything they need to know about you. Safety in numbers. Stay in the middle of the pack and don't wander out into the fringe areas - if that makes any sense.

 

[oldgeek]

I always try to avoid sounding like an alarmist whackjob kook, but I think it's safest to start with the assumption that they both know everything. When you combine credit card transactions with location data and the various "oops, we accidentally left the microphones on, sorry, that was just supposed to be for in house testing", Flock cameras with "oops, yeah, we actually do facial recognition, not just plates," the amount these data aggregators know about us already is arguably way too much.

I was going to apologize for drifting off the AI topic, but actually, AI/ML is what's driving the processing of these massive amounts of data. They can just as easily consume all the data about you and figure out exactly what you're up to as they can find a tiny tumor in a million CT scans.

/tinfoil hat ON

Must be safe.