An AI-directed, self-propagating, and self-deleting stuxnet-type worm, modernized to 4 types of zero-day, to hunt down that image and only that image, no matter where it may hide?
That’s why you use nuclear bombs on all forms of storage, including papyrus and the fossil record. On the other hand, you don’t have to destroy them all, only the ones within the light bubble (the distance light could travel in the time since the event) of the taking of the picture.
Off-site storage and other services available through the internet. Usually it’s broken down into stuff like “software as a service” or “infrastructure as a service”, etc.
I think both android and iOS have a standard setting where the stuff in your images app is automatically stored in the(ir respective) cloud (storage).
People above 40 tend to switch it off (they also tend to backup to local devices).
Us olds remember a time when we owned things and didn’t just rent them from billionaires.
S.R.
In fairness, if what somebody needs is, say, a way to back up photos on their computer to somewhere else that they can then access at will without having to carry a storage device, using a bit of space on someone else’s computer is a good way to do that. Not every service you pay for rather than owning is a bad thing.
HueSatLight
Then it should be:
1. Opt-in
2. Limited in size
3. Data not owned by corporation. It’s not a service if they’re using your data.
Needfuldoer
So, iCloud?
Either that or go completely off the rails and build a 120+ TB storage server like I did. (Good for mass storage, but it’s not an offsite backup.)
considering she talks about “the cloud” as an undefined abstract concept and that it’s dorothy, i don’t think she is tech savvy enough to know what *she* means by that
I absolutely love panel 4.
Dorothy’s expression of relief and subtle happiness at having send the nude. Such adorable Sapphic vibes!
Amber’s extremely satisfied and somewhat evil smirk. She knows exactly what she is doing, and she’s loving every second of it.
The sliding timescale is rapidly getting to the point where these characters grew up with phones, where increased ease-of-use combined with deliberate obfuscation of the underlying systems mean that it’s easy for a layperson to be completely ignorant of how their machines function while still using them daily.
Taffy
Same thing that happened to cars and TVs, innit.
Clif
I was a software engineer for mumbledy years and I firmly believe they work by magic.
“a Gen-Z college student like Dotty is someone I expect to have a little more knowledge on how the internet works?”
In my experience modern students *don’t* have much knowledge about how the internet works. I start telling them the URL to my course website and more often than not they type it into a search bar instead of an address bar, and hit enter before I finish.
heh like, I guess maybe thus says something about where I live?
in CA, latest IT is really central to how a lot of stuff is done around here in education, business and government, what with Silicon Valley and surrounding culture
thus I take it that people over here on average know a little more about how these systems work than say, a state like Colorado or Kansas?
yak
I grew up & live in CA too, and I think not knowing very basic IT stuff is pretty par for the course everywhere. All those things were being slowly cut out of my school district (a relatively affluent one) by the time I graduated in 2017. They would send kids home with ipads, but those were almost exclusively used for google classroom or something.
We’re starting to see the effects now. Students coming out of high school have *way* less of a grasp on the basics of computer use than I and most of my peers did in college.
Even outside of coding, knowing my computer stuff was essential in productivity in school and special interests and projects and what even before the pandemic, it’s pivotal in how I make money at ALL as somebody disabled six ways to Sunday.
Back in computer lab in middle school we learned how to type via Jumpstart PC game, i stayed after-school to practice so much i was literally first in my class to get to the game’s win condition if only because of how badly I wanted to improve this skill for the sake of my future. Same goes for basically everything else I know about effective computer use, internet literacy, etc.
You tellin me schools cutting it out like THAT?
yak
I don’t think the elementary school I went to has a computer lab any more (my mom was a teacher there for years after I graduated). I learned to type in there. Again, replaced by ipads or maybe chromebooks. Not sure if my middle school ever had one. There were a few in my high school, one of them was reserved for the special institute of whatever for smart kids, one of them was in the library and we were rarely allowed in there, and one of them was used for the IT and programming electives that may or may not be taught any more since the guy teaching them retired. They also got rid of all shop classes and electronics classes. I was in the last electronics class at my school.
And yeah, public education is getting a lot worse. Literacy rates in the US have been dropping for years. It’s really bad.
Jeremiah
Computer and cellphone had become so easy to access and use that the regular people that don’t need to know them any deeper that surface level doesn’t actually have any motivation to learn about them. Why would you learn something more complicated when you are doing fine with the easier stuff? Unless you get interested in it yourself, you call for an expert if you have the money or look up videos for one specific problem you have and then stop there.
Jeremiah
You assuming that more regular people know about something because it greatly affect their life when they can pay someone to know it for them is quite adorable.
Once again I see capitalism marginalizing the need for an informed public, alongside much else needed for democratic society to function. ?
Michael Steamweed
Not just the forces of capitalism. Also the forces of voters and the politicians they put or allow into office. More than half of USA states require standardized testing at the budgetary expense of enrichment courses like typing, electives, arts, finances, computing, etc. Schools are starving and have no choice but to emphasize testing and deemphasize everything else.
Yumi
And what’s super fun is that a lot of those standardized tests are administered on a computer! Let’s not teach kids how to type and then assess them based on typed responses.
it’s fucking actually ALLOWED to be that children in this country are bereft of the skills they will need to navigate the Information Age, the future world they will inherit???
this is BEYOND concerning. the way things are done in US education right now just about borders on SERIAL NEGLECT X-X
Michael Steamweed
Politicians, the for-profit testing companies, and their pet voters not only allow it, but require it. This is purposeful. The term you want is “abuse”, not “neglect”.
Gen Z is apparently faaar less tech savvy then we think they are. They know how to *use* things, but knowing *how* they work is a blind side to them.
Dotty is basically a normy, she probably knows that everything online stays online, but doesn’t understand how it stays there, or where it goes. Amber is a tech nerd, she knows the secret things.
Mark
I’ve reluctantly concluded that the average person wants the world to be inexplicable magic that just does stuff. I have no idea how one can live like that.
thejeff
Most of the world is incomprehensible magic that just does stuff. There’s no other way to deal with it. There’s so much out there that it takes a decade or more of study to learn the basics of one part of the magic and even that just reveals how much you don’t know about everything surrounding it.
Nymph
This. The amount of doom-rattling happening because an 18/19yo might not know every aspect of how the internet or her phone works is so weird to me.
It’s okay for people not to know everything. It’s okay for people not to know the things you personally find interesting or necessary. Phones work until they don’t, and there are people who know how/why/when to repair them if they don’t. Same thing for my car, my toaster, my television, etc.
236 thoughts on “Ipso facto”
NGPZ
XD
*plays “pa$$ the time” by Bronze on hacked muzak*</a
IntangibleMatter
I miss Inside Job 🙁
Ana Chronistic
unless you hit literally every single computer in existence with a simultaneous EMP maybe
Clif
That … might work.
Doctor_Who
Great, now she’s going to go back to planning to become president so she can gain access to the world’s largest nuclear arsenal and do that.
You know how a lot of superheroes end up creating their own nemesis? Amber just created God Empress Dorothy.
DJTsurugi
the beginning of her villain arc. ~<3
Weatherheight
As Amazi-Girl’s Arch-Nemesis!
Nah, too tropy.
IntangibleMatter
You clearly underestimate the power of Amber.
Michael Steamweed
An AI-directed, self-propagating, and self-deleting stuxnet-type worm, modernized to 4 types of zero-day, to hunt down that image and only that image, no matter where it may hide?
Yeah, give Amber a week or so to write it.
Jamie
I mean, Hardison wrote several, so.
Nono
And phones, and tablets, and smartwatches, and gotta take into account people could have just screenshotted and then printed it out…
Hexx
EMPs don’t affect non magnetic backup media, such as compact disk or Bluray..
Regret
That’s why you use nuclear bombs on all forms of storage, including papyrus and the fossil record. On the other hand, you don’t have to destroy them all, only the ones within the light bubble (the distance light could travel in the time since the event) of the taking of the picture.
Ana Chronistic
exactly, nobody has made a Blu-Ray of that photo
YET
The Lurker
ooopsy! part of my DoA backups!
Deanatay
Dorothy: So, you’re saying the only way to delete a photo off the cloud is to…
*ominous clouds gather, thunder in distance, Dotty’s glasses go Gendo*
D: DESTROY. THE. INTERNETZ.
Ana Chronistic
HACK THE PLANET
Mollyscribbles
Dorothy, I don’t know what you expected.
NGPZ
so like, what does “the cloud” even mean here.
by itself it literally just means “the internet”
CrazyJ
Off-site storage and other services available through the internet. Usually it’s broken down into stuff like “software as a service” or “infrastructure as a service”, etc.
Stanistani
The cloud is just somebody else’s computer. Usually *many* of someone else’s computers.
I was an IT Specialist for 35 years.
NGPZ
so basically the internet used to store your files non-locally
still doesn’t let us know what Dotty means by “THE cloud”
i dont even know if she got iphone or android XD
Tan
Dorothy is asking how to delete all copies of the images stored non-locally anywhere besides her phone and/or Joyce’s phone.
Which, as Amber said, is impossible (or at least impossible to guarantee)
NGPZ
… I’m guessing on a texting app? via direct message?
HueSatLight
Giant corporate warehouses filled with servers, storing your data for their use, wasting electricity and water.
Needfuldoer
This is the only answer. “The cloud” is just a datacenter somewhere, owned by one company and rented to you by a different company.
If your data exists on a device you don’t own and have physical custody of, you don’t own your data.
Corronchilejano
Even better, sometimes it’s three datacenters in different locations. You know, for nude redundancy.
Dday
The cloud is a big computer someone glued a bunch of cotton balls onto.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ntPxdWAWq8
CJ
I think both android and iOS have a standard setting where the stuff in your images app is automatically stored in the(ir respective) cloud (storage).
People above 40 tend to switch it off (they also tend to backup to local devices).
Hof1991
Us olds remember a time when we owned things and didn’t just rent them from billionaires.
S.R.
In fairness, if what somebody needs is, say, a way to back up photos on their computer to somewhere else that they can then access at will without having to carry a storage device, using a bit of space on someone else’s computer is a good way to do that. Not every service you pay for rather than owning is a bad thing.
HueSatLight
Then it should be:
1. Opt-in
2. Limited in size
3. Data not owned by corporation. It’s not a service if they’re using your data.
Needfuldoer
So, iCloud?
Either that or go completely off the rails and build a 120+ TB storage server like I did. (Good for mass storage, but it’s not an offsite backup.)
lur
considering she talks about “the cloud” as an undefined abstract concept and that it’s dorothy, i don’t think she is tech savvy enough to know what *she* means by that
NGPZ
heh XD
Thag Simmons
Amber playing the role of Evil Vizier in this scenario.
Thag Simmons
“My liege, she means you harm!”
Florence
*whispering in her ear*
“Thats what a person who means to do you harm would say”
Rowan
And she rocks it! I hope she considers playing DnD some time in her life.
Dara
panel 3 is so many things <3
Clif
A killing blow to the rumor that the comic is being renamed Smarting of Age?
Rowan
Panel 3 & 4 are some of my favourite Dorothy expressions. She’s truly allowing herself to roll with it and make some potential mistakes.
clif
Potential?
Rose by Any other Name
I absolutely love panel 4.
Dorothy’s expression of relief and subtle happiness at having send the nude. Such adorable Sapphic vibes!
Amber’s extremely satisfied and somewhat evil smirk. She knows exactly what she is doing, and she’s loving every second of it.
Osopescado
“Ahhhhh tits.”
Rose by Any other Name
“Celebrated everywhere for their excellence.”
Queezle
You could have led with that Amber
Taffy
And ruin the bit?
NGPZ
it’s weird like,
a Gen-Z college student like Dotty is someone I expect to have a little more knowledge on how the internet works?
unless this comic really is gonna go into horny manga territory XD
Thag Simmons
The sliding timescale is rapidly getting to the point where these characters grew up with phones, where increased ease-of-use combined with deliberate obfuscation of the underlying systems mean that it’s easy for a layperson to be completely ignorant of how their machines function while still using them daily.
Taffy
Same thing that happened to cars and TVs, innit.
Clif
I was a software engineer for mumbledy years and I firmly believe they work by magic.
Michael Steamweed
Quantum magics with equations!
NGPZ
it’s weird cuz for me like,
I am especially compelled know at least the basics behind how appliances i use every like toasters and freezers work and headphones work?
same goes for how the internet gets a comic strip from the server to my screen, how video games work internally, etc
if only because physics, electronics and tech have been some of my longest held hyperfixations ever XD
Thag Simmons
If tech/electronics is a passion of yours, you may be falling into the average familiarity trap
Jeremiah
Can confirm, I have absolutely no idea how any of the stuff I use on my phone or computer actually works.
AbacusWizard
“a Gen-Z college student like Dotty is someone I expect to have a little more knowledge on how the internet works?”
In my experience modern students *don’t* have much knowledge about how the internet works. I start telling them the URL to my course website and more often than not they type it into a search bar instead of an address bar, and hit enter before I finish.
NGPZ
heh like, I guess maybe thus says something about where I live?
in CA, latest IT is really central to how a lot of stuff is done around here in education, business and government, what with Silicon Valley and surrounding culture
thus I take it that people over here on average know a little more about how these systems work than say, a state like Colorado or Kansas?
yak
I grew up & live in CA too, and I think not knowing very basic IT stuff is pretty par for the course everywhere. All those things were being slowly cut out of my school district (a relatively affluent one) by the time I graduated in 2017. They would send kids home with ipads, but those were almost exclusively used for google classroom or something.
We’re starting to see the effects now. Students coming out of high school have *way* less of a grasp on the basics of computer use than I and most of my peers did in college.
NGPZ
That’s…. really concerning to me?
Even outside of coding, knowing my computer stuff was essential in productivity in school and special interests and projects and what even before the pandemic, it’s pivotal in how I make money at ALL as somebody disabled six ways to Sunday.
Back in computer lab in middle school we learned how to type via Jumpstart PC game, i stayed after-school to practice so much i was literally first in my class to get to the game’s win condition if only because of how badly I wanted to improve this skill for the sake of my future. Same goes for basically everything else I know about effective computer use, internet literacy, etc.
You tellin me schools cutting it out like THAT?
yak
I don’t think the elementary school I went to has a computer lab any more (my mom was a teacher there for years after I graduated). I learned to type in there. Again, replaced by ipads or maybe chromebooks. Not sure if my middle school ever had one. There were a few in my high school, one of them was reserved for the special institute of whatever for smart kids, one of them was in the library and we were rarely allowed in there, and one of them was used for the IT and programming electives that may or may not be taught any more since the guy teaching them retired. They also got rid of all shop classes and electronics classes. I was in the last electronics class at my school.
And yeah, public education is getting a lot worse. Literacy rates in the US have been dropping for years. It’s really bad.
Jeremiah
Computer and cellphone had become so easy to access and use that the regular people that don’t need to know them any deeper that surface level doesn’t actually have any motivation to learn about them. Why would you learn something more complicated when you are doing fine with the easier stuff? Unless you get interested in it yourself, you call for an expert if you have the money or look up videos for one specific problem you have and then stop there.
Jeremiah
You assuming that more regular people know about something because it greatly affect their life when they can pay someone to know it for them is quite adorable.
NGPZ
Once again I see capitalism marginalizing the need for an informed public, alongside much else needed for democratic society to function. ?
Michael Steamweed
Not just the forces of capitalism. Also the forces of voters and the politicians they put or allow into office. More than half of USA states require standardized testing at the budgetary expense of enrichment courses like typing, electives, arts, finances, computing, etc. Schools are starving and have no choice but to emphasize testing and deemphasize everything else.
Yumi
And what’s super fun is that a lot of those standardized tests are administered on a computer! Let’s not teach kids how to type and then assess them based on typed responses.
NGPZ
it’s fucking actually ALLOWED to be that children in this country are bereft of the skills they will need to navigate the Information Age, the future world they will inherit???
this is BEYOND concerning. the way things are done in US education right now just about borders on SERIAL NEGLECT X-X
Michael Steamweed
Politicians, the for-profit testing companies, and their pet voters not only allow it, but require it. This is purposeful. The term you want is “abuse”, not “neglect”.
GholaHalleck
Gen Z is apparently faaar less tech savvy then we think they are. They know how to *use* things, but knowing *how* they work is a blind side to them.
Dotty is basically a normy, she probably knows that everything online stays online, but doesn’t understand how it stays there, or where it goes. Amber is a tech nerd, she knows the secret things.
Mark
I’ve reluctantly concluded that the average person wants the world to be inexplicable magic that just does stuff. I have no idea how one can live like that.
thejeff
Most of the world is incomprehensible magic that just does stuff. There’s no other way to deal with it. There’s so much out there that it takes a decade or more of study to learn the basics of one part of the magic and even that just reveals how much you don’t know about everything surrounding it.
Nymph
This. The amount of doom-rattling happening because an 18/19yo might not know every aspect of how the internet or her phone works is so weird to me.
It’s okay for people not to know everything. It’s okay for people not to know the things you personally find interesting or necessary. Phones work until they don’t, and there are people who know how/why/when to repair them if they don’t. Same thing for my car, my toaster, my television, etc.