According to C-Net, the next Windows update may delete your documents folder.
 

https://www.cnet.com/news/windows-10-october-2018-update-may-delete-personal-files-during-some-upgrades/[/url][/QUOTE]

If it wasn't official enough that C-Net said it, Linus has a video about it!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vo8TXGcMxS4

C-Nete talked about the different ways that you could spend money to back up your data.

I copied everything to a new folder named Dox.

Windows updates has always been among the main sources of lost/corrupted data.

Heck, I've had windows upgrades where I was prompted if I wanted to save personal data, I say yes, and then it proceeds to not only erase personal data, but also remove all non-standard programs. It essentially just installed a fresh copy of Windows rather than upgrade the service pack release.

People should be backing up important data anyhow. This is nothing new since the invention of software.

Via Slashdot:

Microsoft Pulls Windows 10 October Update (zdnet.com) 71
Posted by msmash on Saturday October 06, 2018 @09:08AM from the steer-clear dept.

But my favorite story [above that] is the Banksy painting:

Banksy Artwork Self-Destructs At Auction Right After Being Sold For $1.3 Million
Posted by EditorDavid on Saturday October 06, 2018 @11:34AM from the bad-investments dept.

Presumably, now it's worth more. :)

Who knew that was top secret?!

Awesome! Reminds me of the excellent movie (haven't read the book) Thomas Crown Affair.

I never understood art prices. I can get a very good replica of any famous art piece, at a fraction of the price, and it will contain 99.9% of the beauty of the original.

I wonder if the science part of the mind is at odds with the artistic part, because I've always been drawn to science / utility, and took little interest in art.

Banksy!

There's art, and there's pointed social commentary on the economics of collecting it. Imagine the massive cognitive dissonance that must have been in that room.

Sirens of the Lambs:

http://i1.mirror.co.uk/incoming/arti...estockjpeg.jpg
http://i1.mirror.co.uk/incoming/arti...estockjpeg.jpg

It's simply conspicuous consumption, plus "outsiders" with lots of money wanting to buy acceptance into the social circles in which collecting expensive stuff is considered important. And then of course there's the "Emperor's New Clothes" effect: as with "Banksy", once something becomes validated by critics and people paying large amounts of money, no one dares to say it's crap. See e.g. The $12 Million Stuffed Shark: The Curious Economics of Contemporary Art

WRT the self-destructing "art", I can just see the horde of hungry lawyers now...

There's a knack to it. Pay enough to make people think it's worth a lot, but not so much that you don't make a profit when you sell it on. As long as you flip it before the speculation bubble bursts.

99.9% of the price of art, or of collector cars, is in the provenance. The fact that they're rare, or original. The fact that if they're destroyed, they can't be replaced. No one is making any more original Ferrari 250GTOs. Van Gogh is no longer making new paintings.

As such, paying a million bucks for a Banksy PRINT, which can be replicated... while the artist is still alive... is faintly ridiculous.

Wouldn't be surprised if the auction itself was a set up.

I understand scarcity and rarity. Always wanted a Delorean, but then they are fairly terrible cars, so I never bought one. I'm more sympathetic towards car collectors because they can't be reproduced as easily as taking a flatbed scanner, creating a high quality digital reproduction, and then hitting print on a high quality printer.

Star Trek seemed to imply that once replicators could make anything abundant, humans would just automatically cooperate. As long as there is such a thing as an original Picasso, there will be envy.

People always envy what isn't theirs, even if it isn't any better.

In unrelated news, we somehow broke our toilet seat last week--the seat itself, not the plastic hardware! Apparently it is just particle board with a plastic coating. I asked my brother politely to replace it and he figured it out! All that I did was hand him a screwdriver!

I periodically mention people acting like there is something wrong with me doing my own repairs. Look at this madness: https://porch.com/project-cost/cost-...-a-toilet-seat

Apparently $133 is a reasonable price to have a professional do the job for you! If my brother can figure it out, there is hardly any excuse for the rest of us!

In unrelated news, if you don't close both the seat and lid when you flush, an aerosol fecal plume arises from the center of the gyre.

You would think they would design toilets to seal better. The only features that I saw were a nightlight (Great for emergencies) and anti-slam. Perhaps the sound of the toilet seat closing would disturb someone more than the flush, but none of those seemed to deserve my money.

[citation needed] :confused:

That age-old debate (seat up/down)? Both wrong.

With paintings, there's a textural aspect you don't appreciate until you see the original up-close.

That can't be reproduced by a scanner, although unless you're an expert, discerning between the strokes and style of a master and talented forger is very difficult.

Sounds like a job for a generative adversarial neural network.

Neural networks are already there.

https://www.iflscience.com/technolog...not-humanmade/

And this is more than just a little creepy:

Text to Image

That is sooo tempting. I want to type something in but as soon as I do, do I still own the idea? I poked around for a terms of service or privacy policy and hit an expired security certificate. Apparently it runs on https://runwayapp.ai which is still in alpha, as they're signing up beta testers.

It sounds like the best thing since waving your hands in the air.

Maybe I'll try a nonsense phrase.