One day, Alice was at her computer, pondering a tricky programming problem.
Seeing her, Bob remarked: "Poor Alice. If only you knew to pay subscription to AI companies, you wouldn't have to program."
Alice responded: "Poor Bob. If only you knew how to program, you wouldn't have to pay subscription to AI companies."
(With apologies to Diogenes the Cynic.
Though I think he would see a little of himself in Alice.)
@alice seems to me you dodged a bullet. ;)
@datarama I mean, if he can't even figure out how to have a private conversation 💁🏼♀️
@alice (BTW, back when I was in uni, the eavesdropper was traditionally named Trudy. I've actually never heard "Eve" for that part until today!)
@datarama really? I've heard Trudy before, but we always used Eve (and sometimes Mallory).
Ooo, I found the article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_and_Bob
@alice Trudy for "Intruder". :-) I have heard Mallory, but never Eve.
Elsethread, I mentioned an anecdote: A long time ago I needed to buy some time to gather my thoughts during an exam about applied cryptography, so when I drew that diagram I introduced them as Anthon and Berg, with Toms listening in.
(Anthon Berg and Toms are Danish chocolate brands. :-) And I did get some time to gather my thoughts while the examiners laughed.)
@alice (I'm guessing in the updated diogenes-ism, Trudy would be a loud AI bro barging in to tell Alice that she should just be running a local model?)
@datarama totally 😂
Though I also feel like Trudy would be touting the latest version of Grok 😋
@alice Of the three, I think I can guess their social media habits too: Alice is on fedi, Bob uses Bluesky and Trudy is still on Twitter.
@datarama I know for a fact that Eve isn't on any of those, but does indeed browse my public timeline while not logged in.
(I keep asking her when she'll join my server, but she's too shy to do it)
@AdmiralMemo yeah, Eve is typically the person-in-the-middle or eavesdropper character.
@desantis @alice @hype The wider group of Egernia (including blue-tongues, monkeytails, Great Desert skinks and several others) from Oceania is a bit of an outlier among skinks: They grow *a lot* larger than any other skink species, most of whom are tiny.
(Northern blue-tongues like Igor is the second-largest species of skink in the world, second only to the monkeytail skink.)
@desantis @alice @hype Footnote: I don't think anybody actually knows how old blue-tongues can get. Care guides used to say 10-15 years, now they say 20-30, and I've personally met a 34-year-old blue-tongue (this was a few years ago, and I have no idea if she's still alive.)
But we've since learned that in the wild, the closely related shingleback skinks live for a lot longer than anyone thought. Some were tagged for a 1982 study to track their migration habits, and some of those *still pop up today*. All the ones that got tagged back then were adults, so they're probably well into their 50s at this point.
