Posts by Catkin 681 publicly visible posts • joined 8 Feb 2023
To add, the nuances are important for everyone. For example, if your unambiguous assertion applied universally in enshrined law, it would be impossible to point out lying corporations or biased media because any critique would either be libellous (due to not having a geniue source) or an infringement of copyright.
It's important to consider broader outcomes rather than cheering for a blanket legal precedent or act that stops one thing you disapprove of.
Thanks, I wasn't aware of the newspapers one as far as their broad search, only the Google News issues. Interestingly, Field vs Google (as well as Perfect 10 vs Amazon/Google & Birgit Clark vs Google but those relates to images) went the other way with the former actually finding that it was legitimate to both index and cache, as well as serve up the cache to the public.
For reference, the Wikipedia payments are not for appearing in the search results but in the summarising block of text that appears to the right of some searches.
The NHS is uninterested in your private test because it's unvalidated (by them) and lacks traceability. It may well work but they can't distinguish it from the negative result of the pregnancy test someone else pissed on in the mistaken belief that one line means no Covid.
>An average of 64.8% of healthcare data was restored after paying the ransom.
>This is above the average of 60.6% across all industry verticals.
https://www.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/2022-retrospective-and-2023-look-ahead.pdf
Please do let me know if you open a casino, I'm feeling lucky.
Statistics aside, I was more explaining that hospitals do continue to deliver care during a ransomware attack, it's just that their capacity is compromised.
It seems all well and good on the surface to put healthcare professionals in front of a patient and SCREAM AT THEM to DO MEDICINE but the reality is that, outside of emergency care, it can be more harmful than helpful to go plunging in without access to medical histories. Funnily enough, if you take some time to actually read published papers on the impact of ransomware on hospitals, this is exactly how they played it, irregardless of whether payment was made to the ransomware slingers; priority was given to essential treatments and the extra resources needed to deliver these was temporarily allocated from elective work. It's almost as if, in this area, people with knowledge and experience in medicine were employed to direct the response.
Billing is the least of their concerns, as far as sitting idle to avoid delivering *gasp* free healthcare. Indeed, it is in the interests of a for-profit hospital to keep delivering care because that is the source of their revenue. It's trivial to record treatments given and financially rinse patients later compared to the intricacies of actually delivering that care.
You seem to have spied a high horse in the profiteering of hospitals but, in this instance, it is actually one of the rocking variety. Populist rhetoric and healthcare don't really mix.
I've been pleased by how cheaply a decent performance gain can be pulled out of these things. Having used them for travel, replacing the thermal paste/pad with something better can in itself make them capable of actually chilling a drink. Perhaps any quality increase would be difficult to advertise against the background of the rubbish ones. I also experimented with a CPU cooler which worked well but fabricating a mounting solution proved beyond my abilities and workshop equipment. I wonder if I should have another go with a 3D printer.
The other issue with them is, unlike a compressor, as soon as the power is removed, the heat sinks act to very quickly transfer energy back into the enclosure. I think the best solution is top mounting as in an electric cool box so convection at least helps.
You can read the UK government evaluation and statistics here:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/nicotine-vaping-in-england-2022-evidence-update/nicotine-vaping-in-england-2022-evidence-update-main-findings
In short, the risks appear to be significantly smaller than smoking and the majority of vapers are ex-smokers (or those still currently smoking). They're also the most successful method for smoking cessation. The 'ooh it contains chemicals' line isn't particularly scientific.
The publication also mentions that there's little evidence of harm (when measured by biomarkers) for second hand electronic cigarette vapour exposure.
Why make (refillable) vapes prescription-only? It doesn't make sense for a harm reduction product to have barriers to entry or put a cost on the NHS when people can do it off their own backs. They should definitely be funded as part of harm reduction as requested but it seems wasteful and onerous to put the entire burden on the health service.
The nasty thing it subtly suggests is that 'success' is, in aggregate, showing exactly the same patterns of employment as men (or white men if we're talking about racial demographics). For instance, the largest source of the "gender pay gap" in unmarried single individuals comes down to working hours; I don't know if men choosing to burn up their free time in ruthless pursuit of money should be considered mark of personal achievement.
Political commentary of old:
-a well synthesised, accessible explanation of how current events tie into past decisions and potential future outcomes
Current political commentary:
-why it's good that the good guy is doing something the bad guy previously did (rare, since it requires acknowledgement)
-why it's bad that the bad guy is doing something the good guy previously did
-why it's bad that the bad guy is doing something we previously vigorously supported but the good guy didn't do
-puff piece on the entirely synthetic social life of the good guy
It strikes me that expiring, restricted use financial tokens would empower any oppressive government to starve out opposition. Naturally, it would be presented as a simply wonderful way to ensure no one ever goes hungry or homeless because a portion of their "money" can only be spent on approved essentials but exerting control over savings and discretionary funding hamstrings political organisation.
"Better" still, a blockchain system or any centrally controlled token system would allow the flow of money to be tracked in such detail that anyone financially associating with the politically undesirable can be swiftly identified and locked down. For example, a protest group might be identified and a trigger set if it detects attempts at travel towards any geographical centre (through geolocation of purchases) to mysteriously lock their tokens for anything that might help the protest happen. In essence, unpersoning becomes as easy as tripping an algorithm.
I don't predict this definitely will happen, it's more that it would empower any government that wants to to do it.
Worse, there's no objective way to know exactly what is being scanned for. They might promise you that it's only things you shouldn't personally worry about but, unless you can generate a match, it's not possible to independently verify the contents of the hash list. It could be a photo, picking a completely hypothetical and random example, of a politician enjoying a party when they're not supposed to be. Then, by looking at the creation date, the photo could be tracked back to whoever leaked it to the press.
The big factor is how efficient your gas plant is. The UK averages around 49% thermal efficiency for its gas power plants (through heat recovery) which is rather good, compared to straight gas turbine generation (around 30%):
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/electricity-chapter-5-digest-of-united-kingdom-energy-statistics-dukes (DUKES5.10)
A report from around 2014 mentions that national transmission losses are 8%
https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201415/cmselect/cmenergy/386/38607.html
Therefore, the heat pump needs to hit a CoP of 2.2 to break even with a gas boiler. This is quite achievable but does fall when the temperature drops (for air source, ground source does much better and is less subject to atmospheric temperatures).
The other factor for the end user is the cost of electricity vs gas. If you're on mains gas, you're looking at around 3.5-4.5x more for a kWh of electricity than a kWh of gas but those off the gas network suffer from a much smaller difference. Basically, at the moment, if you're have mains gas, you either don't care about paying more (before even considering the cost of installation), you are very wealthy and can afford a ground source heat pump or you're banking on that window closing over the lifespan of the heat pump.
Personally, I believe the government shouldn't have limited heat pump subsidies to heating-only systems based on water radiators. If people could get air conditioning into the deal, they'd probably have been more enticed.
It's a reasonable point, sorry for causing confusion, I wasn't questioning it in itself. I just don't think that the specific moral and legal rights of authors pertain to this point because, whether the source is an LLM or the drunken ramblings of a madman who believes they definitely read an unpublished manuscript by a given author, the issue would be with explicitly claiming it to be the work of that author; as far as I'm aware, "in the style of" isn't protected.
There is a limited legal right for the author to maintain control over how that material is portrayed. If, for example, it were heavily edited without their consent, even by the legal holder of the publishing rights, it could not be presented as wholly the work of the original author.
The comment you replied to did seem to overstate this right but I may not be aware of certain specifics (and am awaiting clarification from them).
I appreciate the analysis but I'm not sure it pertains to my question. If the AI is asked to write the aforementioned novel, it should be fairly clear to the end user that this is not an original work of Mr Block, simply based on the source. This sounds like a moron in a hurry argument (assuming you mean that the public might be fooled).
Perhaps not directly but it would be reasonable to extrapolate that the Bard in Asimov's Someday impacted a range of authors that include sci-fi writers. It's rather reminiscent of an LLM: feed it a range of written material and out pops an endless stream of stories. Admittedly, the Bard he describes also has predefined story formulae.
Could you please explain (or link to an article, legal paragraph or judgement that you agree with, if it saves time) how you believe moral an legal rights pertain to analysis of a work in an LLM? My understanding of that legal principle is that it would only apply if an LLM or individual were presenting the new works as the output of the original author; saying that it's 'in their style' would constitute an opinion.
For example Postmodern Jukebox is a musical group that performs covers of one song in the style of another (including specific artists); that's not to argue the legalities of the cover itself, this is with regard to their use of the concept of 'in the style' when describing their songs.
I've found myself wishing for a new boss a couple of times in my life because their pattern recognition is oddly acute when it suits them. They notice my habit of, when asked for an opinion that may save my bacon down the road, I offer to email it for ease of review. If this works out in my favour (but not theirs) a few too many times, some have sneakily offered to 'save me the trouble' of typing it out.
Tip: if someone is offering to 'save you the trouble' of putting things in writing by deflecting to a quick chat, a quick written summary ("in case you forgot to mention" something) can neuter their gambit.
It would take a lot more energy to get it to that higher orbit than to re-enter, it would put a large amount of mass into a position where a single impact would generate debris over a huge orbital range* and, with a controlled re-entry, it's reasonably easy to ensure that anything large enough to reach the ground goes into the ocean; the issues come when effective control is lost.
*in a low orbit, almost all impacts result in at least half the debris re-entering faster than on an undisturbed orbit while, in a graveyard orbit, that could potentially mess up the extremely valuable GEO patch and put debris deep down into low orbit with a much higher velocity. In both cases, re-circularising at lower/higher orbits than the impact altitude is impossible from a single impact but they cross over more readily. With the ISS where it is, debris from an impact will still always suffer from some appreciable drag and, with smaller particles, the drag/mass ratio becomes much higher than the original station.
The target is fuel contained within a hohlraum. During ICF, the inner walls of the hohlraum are hit with the laser, which then generates X-rays that crush the fuel itself. Potentially, laminar flow could be used to encapsulate the fuel within the driving material but it doesn't seem like it would be terribly easy to then form it into a hollow tube which doesn't collapse (unless a third liquid could be injected to hold the shape, though this would have to not interact with any of the involved radiation).
Sorry, by 'blind spot' I meant one that hadn't been tested, rather than a loophole. IANAL either but cases like this worry me because of the broad powers they might grant to companies with a long history of abusing those powers. I only lean slightly towards the model trainers on the basis that, if copyright holders get additional (excessive) rights, it will be almost impossible to roll those back, while a 'no comment' from the judicial system leaves room in the future for some clearer thinking.
I recommend reading the CDPA 1988. The work has been made available to the public, regardless of watermarks. Therefore, it comes down to whether the output (the trained model) is infringing. There is a blind spot in the act, wherein decompilation of computer programs is permitted (providing it is to a lower level language) but no provision either way is made for the output of analysis. That's not to say it's necessarily in the clear, more that a legal precedent or relevant legislative addendum has not been made at this time.
WRT payment, that is immaterial unless there is a dispute as to the existence of a contract (hence the use of token sums in some cases) in the first place. What matters is the contents of any contract and whether it is enforceable under the law. Your basic legal rights cannot be waived by any contract you're signing. In your example, you're free to take a private copy of the material you're criticising for the purposes of personal reference, provided that, as you said, you're not reproducing it in your final work.
I understand that it seems simple common sense but the legal nuances are as important as the broad strokes. I'm not sure if you remember but it wasn't that long ago that copyright robber barons tried their level best (and, in some areas, succeeded for a time) at preventing individuals from recording live broadcasts for personal use.
Wouldn't that be a legal dispute between Getty and the school, independent of the output of any given art student? That is, the infringement that might occur would be down to how the school presented images owned by Getty to their students.
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