Unlike ChatGPT, Bard pretty much nailed it on the initial prompt. (However, Bard refused to answer my questions about the Mars Effect like the ones I gave to ChatGPT, even when reworded to be clear I was asking for descriptions of what the effect is and what explanations are offered rather than asking it to identify causes itself.) It does lose points for grammar in the second sentence, though! write a few paragraphs explaining immutable flags in OpenBSD including the commands for setting them and the difference between system and user immutable flags Sure. Here is a few paragraphs explaining immutable flags in OpenBSD, including the commands for setting them and the difference between system and user immutable flags. ...

In Stanislaw Lem’s book, The Cyberiad: Fables for the Cybernetic Age (1974 English translation, page numbers from the 1985 Harvest/HBJ Book), he writes of Trurl’s Electronic Bard, a machine that generates poetry to specification. In the first example of a prompt, Klapaucius asks Trurl to (p. 50): "Have it compose a poem–a poem about a haircut! But lofty, noble, tragic, timeless, full of love, treachery, retribution, quiet heroism in the face of certain doom! Six lines, cleverly rhymed, and every word beginning with the letter s!" Here’s what ChatGPT came up with (which it titled “Haircut Horror”): Compose a poem–a poem about a haircut! But lofty, noble, tragic, timeless, full of love, treachery, retribution, quiet heroism in the face of certain doom! Six lines, cleverly rhymed, and every word beginning with the letter s!She sat in the salon chair, serene Scissors snipping, strands of hair careen Suddenly, a gasp, a scream She surveys the mirror, it would seem Sheer horror, a mistake extreme She’ll seek solace in a hair care regime. ...

 Each week The Economist runs a trivia quiz of five questions, one each weekday, which are linked by a common but not necessarily obvious theme. This week's quiz had a fairly obvious theme, and yesterday I decided to see if ChatGPT could answer the questions and identify the theme. The results show how ChatGPT is very good at directed search--it got four of the five answers on the first try and got the fifth answer with a small amount of guidance with a single question. But it is not so good at inference (and isn't actually engaged in inference)--it suggested themes, with seeming confidence, that did not link all five answers together, and I didn't successfully guide it to the best answer, a theme which was simple enough that I was able to identify it after the second day's question. The error at the end is likely because I stepped away and came back a few minutes later before adding the last question, rather than because ChatGPT couldn't handle it. ...

 I was thinking about writing a blog post about file system immutability flags in OpenBSD, and thought I'd ask ChatGPT to write it for me. It appears to have gleaned its content from OpenBSD man pages, but it is highly misleading and inaccurate, misrepresenting the key distinction between system and user immutability flags. What it got right is that only the superuser (root) can set and unset the system immutability flag (schg/noschg) while users (if they own the file) can set and unset the user immutability flag (uchg/nouchg). But either flag can be set or unset on any kind of file. ...

 Not much blogging going on here still, but here's my annual list of books read for 2022. Heather Adkins, Betsy Beyer, Paul Blankinship, Piotr Lewandowski, Ana Oprea, and Adam Stubblefield, Building Secure and Reliable Systems: Best Practices for Designing, Implementing, and Maintaining Systems (2020)Oliver Bullough, Butler to the World: How Britain Helps the World's Worst People Launder Money, Commit Crimes, and Get Away with AnythingDavid Edmonds, The Murder of Professor Schlick: The Rise and Fall of the Vienna Circle (2020)Ada Ferrer, Cuba: An American HistoryPaul Fisher, House of Wits: An Intimate Portrait of the James Family (2008)Robert W. Gehl and Sean T. Lawson, Social Engineering: How Crowdmasters, Phreaks, Hackers, and Trolls Created a New Form of Manipulative Communication (available via Open Access)Adam Gorightly, Saucers, Spooks and Kooks: UFO Disinformation in the Age of Aquarius (2021)Garrett M. Graff, Watergate: A New HistoryAndy Greenberg, Tracers in the Dark: The Global Hunt for the Crime Lords of CryptocurrencyJan T. Gregor with Tim Cridland, Circus of the Scars: The True Inside Odyssey of a Modern Circus Sideshow (1998)Thomas Harman, Esq., A Caveat or Warning for Common Cursetors, Vulgarly Called Vagabonds (1814 reprint of 1566 pamphlet)N.K. Jemisin, The City We Became (2020)Thomas Levenson, Money for Nothing: The Scientists, Fraudsters, and Corrupt Politicians Who Reinvented Money, Panicked a Nation, and Made the World Rich (2020)Michael Lewis, The Premonition: A Pandemic Story (2021)Michael W. Lucas, OpenBSD Mastery: FilesystemsAlan C. Logan, The Greatest Hoax on Earth: Catching Truth, While We Can (2020)David McRaney, How Minds Change: The Surprising Science of Belief, Opinion, and PersuasionTim Miller, Why We Did It: A Travelogue from the Republican Road to HellJefferson Morley, Scorpions' Dance: The President, the Spymaster, and WatergateWes Patience, From Bjäre to Bisbee: An Immigrant's Tale (2006)Douglas Rushkoff, Survival of the Richest: Escape Fantasies of the Tech BillionairesSara Schaefer, Grand: A Memoir (2020)P.W. Singer and August Cole, Burn-In: A Novel of the Real Robotic Revolution (2020)Seth Stephens-Davidowitz, Don't Trust Your Gut: Using Data to Get What You Really Want In LifeStuart Stevens, It Was All a Lie: How the Republican Party Became Donald Trump (2020)Will Storr, The Status Game: On Human Life and How to Play ItTerry Teachout, The Skeptic: A Life of H.L. Mencken (2002)Michal Zalewski, Practical Doomsday: A User's Guide to the End of the WorldTop for 2022: Ferrer, Levenson, Graff, Greenberg, Miller, Zalewski, McRaney, Storr, Logan (even though it's a 2020 book), Jemisin (likewise) A few planned reads for 2023 (mostly already started): G.A. Cohen, Self-Ownership, Freedom, and Equality (1995)John Ferris, Behind the Enigma: The Authorised History of GCHQ, Britain's Secret Cyber-Intelligence Agency (2020)Final Report of the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States CapitolKevin M. Levin, Searching for Black Confederates: The Civil War's Most Persistent Myth (2019)Chris A. Rutkowski, Canada's UFOs: Declassified (2022)Will Sommer, Trust the Plan: The Rise of QAnon and the Conspiracy That Unhinged America (pre-ordered, to be released in late Feb 2023)Steve Vladeck, The Shadow Docket: How the Supreme Court Uses Stealth Rulings to Amass Power and Undermine the Republic (pre-ordered, to be released in late May 2023)Peter H. Wilson, The Holy Roman Empire: A Thousand Years of Europe's History (2017)(Previously: 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005.) 

 ChatGPT gets a lot of things wrong here. The Zelen Test is a test that expected to find that the Mars effect correlations in Gauquelin's data were due to the nycthemeral curve, a variation in the likelihood of birth at particular times of the day, but the test showed the opposite. (There is also a more generic Zelen test in statistics that is the source of some of what ChatGPT says here.) It did not debunk the Mars effect, it showed that any correlation must be due to something else. Dennis Rawlins was an opponent of the test because he thought there was a statistical artifact in the data that was a result of sampling bias or other cause, and expected this outcome. He fiercely argued against any idea that the Mars effect was a real "cosmobiological" phenomenon. The bibliography of Dennis Rawlins-authored articles is complete fiction, none of those articles exist. Here's the chat, with my prompts in red: ...

Not much blogging going on here still, but here's my annual list of books read for 2021.Elizabeth Anderson, Private Government: How Employers Rule Our Lives (and Why We Don't Talk About It) (2017)Scott Anderson, The Quiet Americans: Four CIA Spies at the Dawn of the Cold War (2020)J. M. Berger, OptimalWilliam Dalrymple, The Anarchy: The East India Company, Corporate Violence, and the Pillage of an Empire (2019)Philip L. Fradkin, Stagecoach: Wells Fargo and the American West (2002)Jonathan Haidt, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion (2012)Daniel Immerwahr, How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States (2019)David Cay Johnston, The Big Cheat: How Donald Trump Fleeced America and Enriched Himself and His FamilyDaniel Kahneman, Olivier Sibony, and Cass R. Sunstein, Noise: A Flaw in Human JudgmentWalter LaFeber, Inevitable Revolutions: The United States in Central America (2nd edition, 1993)Peter Lamont and Jim Steinmeyer, The Secret History of Magic: The True Story of the Deceptive Art (2018)Thomas Levenson, Newton and the Counterfeiter: The Unknown Detective Career of the World's Greatest Scientist (2009)Norm MacDonald, Based on a True Story: Not a Memoir (2016)Geoff Manaugh and Nicola Twilley, Until Proven Safe: The History and Future of QuarantineCasey Michel, American Kleptocracy: How the U.S. Created the World's Greatest Money Laundering Scheme in HistoryCheryl Misak, Frank Ramsey: A Sheer Excess of Powers (2020)Anne Nelson, Shadow Network: Media, Money, and the Secret Hub of the Radical RightNicole Perlroth, This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends: The Cyberweapon Arms RaceEthan Persoff and Scott Marshall, Complete Series, John Wilcock, New York Years, 1954-1971 (limited edition via Kickstarter, #52/250)Kevin Poulsen, Kingpin: How One Hacker Took Over the Billion-Dollar Cybercrime Underground (2011, re-read)Eric Rauchway, Why the New Deal MattersMary Roach, Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the LawScott J. Roberts and Rebekah Brown, Intelligence-Driven Incident Response: Outwitting the Adversary (2017)Mike Rothschild, The Storm is Upon Us: How QAnon Became a Movement, Cult, and Conspiracy Theory of EverythingP.W. Singer and August Cole, Ghost Fleet (2016)David Skarbek, The Puzzle of Prison Order: Why Life Behind Bars Varies Around the World (2020)Jon Talton, A Brief History of Phoenix (2015)Top for 2021: Anderson; Dalrymple; Immerwahr; Kahneman, Sibony, and Sunstein; Levenson; Manaugh and Twilley; Michel; Misak; Perlroth. A few planned reads for 2022 (mostly already started): Heather Adkins, Betsy Beyer, Paul Blankinship, Piotr Lewandowski, Ana Oprea, and Adam Stubblefield, Building Secure and Reliable Systems: Best Practices for Designing, Implementing, and Maintaining Systems (2020)G.A. Cohen, Self-Ownership, Freedom, and Equality (1995)John Ferris, Behind the Enigma: The Authorised History of GCHQ, Britain's Secret Cyber-Intelligence Agency (2020)Paul Fisher, House of Wits: An Intimate Portrait of the James Family (2008)Terry Teachout, The Skeptic: A Life of H.L. Mencken (2002)Peter H. Wilson, The Holy Roman Empire: A Thousand Years of Europe's History (2017)(Previously: 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005.)  ...

In the March 21st, 2021 Washington Post story “The rioter next door: How the Dallas suburbs spawned domestic extremists," Annie Gowen writes of a Texas pastor who claimed prophecy that Trump would remain in office: Shortly before Biden’s inauguration, Pastor Brandon Burden of the KingdomLife church — a boxy, largely windowless sanctuary in Frisco — mounted the pulpit and gave a stemwinder of a sermon that went viral. ...

 In the 1980s, Trump was concerned about nuclear proliferation and thought that he could do a better job negotiating a nuclear deal with the Soviets. In a 1984 Washington Post interview (which I believe you can see excerpts from in the film "Bully. Coward. Victim. The Story of Roy Cohn" about his mentor, Roy Cohn), he said: "Some people have an ability to negotiate," he says. "It's an art you're basically born with. You either have it or you don't." ...

Not much blogging going on here still, but here's my annual list of books read for 2020.Nicholson Baker, Baseless: My Search for Secrets in the Ruins of the Freedom of Information ActJohn Bolton, The Room Where It Happened: A White House MemoirBen Buchanan, The Hacker and the State: Cyber Attacks and the New Normal of Geopolitics Susannah Cahalan, The Great Pretender: The Undercover Mission That Changed Our Understanding of MadnessMichael Cohen, Disloyal: The True Story of the Former Personal Attorney to President Donald J. TrumpMyke Cole, Legion versus Phalanx: The Epic Struggle for Infantry Supremacy in the Ancient World Libby Copeland, The Lost Family: How DNA Testing Is Upending Who We Are Barton Gellman, Dark Mirror: Edward Snowden and the Surveillance StateFiona Hill and Clifford G. Gaddy, Mr. Putin: Operative in the Kremlin (2012)James W. Johnson, Arizona Politicians: The Noble and the Notorious (2002) Gene Kim, The Unicorn Project: A Novel about Developers, Digital Disruption, and Thriving in the Age of Data Maria Konnikova, The Biggest Bluff: How I Learned to Pay Attention, Master Myself, and WinTalia Lavin, Culture Warlords: My Journey Into the Dark Web of White Supremacy Carol D. Leonnig and Philip Rucker, A Very Stable Genius: Donald J. Trump's Testing of America Ben Macintyre, The Spy and the Traitor: The Greatest Espionage Story of the Cold War (2018) Nancy MacLean, Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right's Stealth Plan for America (2017)H. Keith Melton and Robert Wallace, with Henry R. Schlesinger, Spy Sites of New York City: A Guide to the Region's Secret History (2020)Jefferson Morley, Morley v. CIA: My Unfinished JFK InvestigationBastian Obermayer and Frederik Obermaier, The Panama Papers: Breaking the Story of How the Rich & Powerful Hide Their Money Thomas Rid, Active Measures: The Secret History of Disinformation and Political Warfare Brad Smith and Carol Anne Browne, Tools and Weapons: The Promise and Peril of the Digital AgeMary Trump, Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man Robert Wallace and H. Keith Melton with Henry R. Schesinger, Spy Sites of Washington, DC: A Guide to the Capital Region's Secret History (2017) Anna Wiener, Uncanny Valley: A MemoirIsabel Wilkerson, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents Top for 2020: Copeland, Macintyre, Cahalan, Smith and Browne, Buchanan, Obermayer and Obermaier, Gellman, Rid. I started the following books I expect to finish in 2021 (yes, I also said that about LeFeber and Wilson last year--I'm well in to LaFeber's book and thought I might finish before the end of the year, but had only read Wilson's intro so it's barely started): William Dalrymple, The Anarchy: The East India Company, Corporate Violence, and the Pillage of an Empire Walter LaFeber, Inevitable Revolutions: The United States in Central America (2nd edition) Peter H. Wilson, The Holy Roman Empire: A Thousand Years of Europe's History I've also pre-ordered and am looking forward to reading: Nicole Perlroth, This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends: The Cyberweapon Arms Race (due to be published on February 9) (Previously: 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005.)