Posts by Anna Nymous 133 publicly visible posts • joined 18 May 2024
Yes, yes they will. Because this protocol does "cryptographic signing" (big words) and "capturing intent" (more big words).
So yes, they will say "your intent was captured, and cryptographically signed, it was YOU who did this and we have the signatures to prove it, go pound sand".
> "Improve" one aspect always has repercussions weakening another aspect. Improve oxygen carrying capacity of blood, get more trombose.
I don't remember which book I read this in but a North Korean (who had defected) was explaining some unexpected effects of the famine there. IIRC, he said something to the effect of "the big, fit, muscly ones died first, because they needed more food (energy)".
Don't remember where I read this but someone once mentioned:
> No, tired of all CAPTCHAs, even the not boring ones. People get tracked around the web in the most detail possible, but they can't figure out who is a bot and who isn't? - AC
Someone is lying: either the advertisers which are claiming they know us better than we know ourselves, or the captcha peddlers who are just outsourcing classification work to humans... (or both)
You reminded me of a quote from - IIRC - Graham Greene: "Innocence always calls mutely for protection when we would be so much wiser to guard ourselves against it: innocence is like a dumb leper who has lost his bell, wandering the world, meaning no harm."
Not quite the same thing, but a good quote nonetheless.
> These drongos have such arrogance that I would not be surprised if they were to blasphemously claim they were constructing god in a machine.
If you listen to them, that is exactly what they are claiming. With themselves as the Priestly Class that should have the sole right to interpret the deity's words, and no one else allowed to question their interpretation.
You can see this in their pushing of "let us regulate ourselves" or their delusions of grandeur when they organize biosafety/biorisk summits.
All of it, ALL of it, reeks of "cede your agency to us, you are too stupid to understand this tool and you should therefore not even try; we, your new priests are the only ones who can meaningfully interface with this new deity"
This is not about technology, this is about power and submission. These people think they are better than you and seek to rule you.
I'll add to your recommendation for KeePassXC: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/keepassxc-browser/
For mobile, there's KeePassDX, which is compatible with KeePassXC.
The vault in which you store your credentials is just an encrypted file, so syncing it between devices is as simple as syncing any file.
Where did congress get this silly idea that it could do that?
Congress will bloody well learn its place and stop trying to add any hurdles - however small they may be - to the operations of its masters/owners.
Sounds like congress needs a good talking down to by its masters and I'm sure it'll get it in the near future.
</cynical>
A lot (if not the majority) of Open Source Software is hosted on Microsoft-owned GitHub (directly or indirectly), for free. This is because a lot of OSS is unfunded.
Microsoft is decrying that OSS is unfunded and is suggesting that OSS should be funded.
Because then OSS is no longer unfunded.
And then Microsoft can say "you have money now, you have to pay for GitHub, no more free for you".
So that Microsoft makes even more money, now also off of OSS.
This is about Microsoft getting more money. This is not about OSS getting funded.
> Also: people simply don't care. When you don't care about what car you drive, you go to a used car lot and just get whatever gets you from A to B, and this article posits that this option doesn't exist for Linux distros.
Isn't that what Linux Mint is for?
/s
(I kid, I love Linux Mint, it's a great and wonderful used car!)
> but how does one fund a universal backup system without whoring your users to every slimy advertising agency around
You... ask money for it? You seem to think that advertising..., I mean, theft is the only funding model, and I'm not sure why...
> Google wasn't interested in paying sites that they were giving publicity to
That's an interesting take on what happened. This particular wording makes it seem like we should all be happy to merely "work for exposure" rather than for currency... that everyone should be delighted to be featured on google's front page because of the infinite benevolence of that company. Observe how well this feudal lord treats its peasants, it gives them 'exposure', free publicity. Publicity doesn't pay the bills, buckaroo!
The reason for that act was not about _linking_ to news sites. It was about google demanding that it could use content from those news sites on its own page, so that click-throughs to the news site didn't even happen. It was about google asking for free stuff.
_Another_ interpretation one could come up with is that google deliberately de-prioritized those sites to 'teach them a lesson'.
But now I'm being "mean", aren't I? Google would never pull dirty tricks like that. Their search results are totally, completely organic and objective and not influenced by humans _at all_.
The point here is not that news sites need google. The point here is that google is your new daddy, and you'll bloody well do what it says you'll do, or else...
What this tells you that there is too much power in the hands of a single entity. Canada should have gone further and blocked google wholesale.
You're right that mail is a commodity, but standards are what make things work. Standards are even more important for commodities than they are for niche products. No-one cares about niche product, but commodities, those gotta work!
Unless of course you like that suddenly all of your electrical socket would output 330 volts at 240Hz because 'electricity is a commodity', instead of whatever they are producing right now (and more importantly, what all your devices expect).
Maybe you'd like to also replace what traffic lights look like? Instead of a vertical red/orange/green, we'll have blue, pink, white, and violet and combine them to signal different things you MUST to do at the intersection. I can't tell you what each combination of those colors will mean though, because that's my proprietary intellectual priority that I'm strongly guarding so it'll suck to be you when you get ticketed.
If you really must have that chainsaw in the hands of that individual, then this is actually exactly the project you'd want that chainsaw applied to... It has been a failure from the get go.
Icon is One Rich Asshole Called Larry Ellison going through the government's jacket to fish out the wallet to empty it.
What exactly is the point of "being polite to a hammer", even if it "costs me nothing"? Do you say "start, please" when you turn your car on, do you ask it "oh, what's wrong, are you not feeling it today, do you want to talk about it" when it gives you grief? Why not, it doesn't cost you anything... Why are you discriminating in your politeness against some objects or actions but not others? Where is that line for you?
There is no point in using these politeness constructs with devices or objects, because they are just objects. Objects don't have feelings, emotions, inner worlds, consciousness, etc. You are not causing harm to them (nor to yourself) by not being polite. I would actually opine that one would be causing harm to themselves and those around them when one is polite to these objects, because one then treats or starts treating an object like a human with all the rights and privileges that come with it. That is the danger point: these things in their current incarnation do not deserve those rights, privileges, etc. because they aren't human.
I find it deeply troubling that objects are being personified, and I don't think this is a thing we should encourage others to do!
Once you start attributing person-hood, or intentions, or feelings to an object that is created to deceive you (and I stand by my analysis that the current crop of AI has the explicit intention to deceive you; it has been/is being created by it's masters in such a way to make you believe that you are interacting with a human/human-like thing when what you are interacting with is not that - this is a hill my enemies will die on) you erode defenses you have against being manipulated by these things. These things are explicitly created to manipulate you - case in point, they're already succeeding in making some of us think of them as worthy of pleas, deference, emotional consideration, and other rights and privileges we grant people.
Computers, nor cars, nor ships, nor hammers actively try to deceive you into making you believe they are human when they aren't. They are objects. These AI things are also just objects. Objects are not a thing to say please or thank you to. To that same effect, I find it curious when people say "thank you" to amazon's eves-dropping device. It's not a human, it doesn't have feelings, it doesn't feel bad when you don't say thank you, it doesn't feel bad when you don't order two tons of creamed corn even though it suggested that to you. It's there to get your money, nothing more. It doesn't work for you, it works for it's owners. Once you attribute emotions, feelings, consciousness, etc to these things, you open yourself up to manipulation and blackmail by these devices and objects out of fear of causing it emotional harm by not giving in. That way madness - and ruin - lies.
I'm not going to tell you what to do or what not to do. All we're doing here is exchanging ideas, but I will not grant person-hood, nor recognize that these objects of the current crop have any type of humanity or consciousness. These things are not worthy of our pleas or politeness.
I don't think it's the 'reasonably civilized' folk that are being polite to these tools. Civility can be misplaced. Civility is not always the right course of action. I think those using misplaced civility are those who do not understand that these tools are merely tools, I think it's the ones that have been duped by these tools that do that who are 'civil' to these objects... What's the point of civility towards a shredder when you've just fallen into one that is switched to the 'on' state?
I will continue to try to educate people of why they shouldn't grant person-hood or humanity to these tools.
I reject the premise that AI has worries, desires, emotions, etc. It's not a being. It's a model of probabilistic weights.
Do not grant these things personhood. Don't say thank you to it, don't say please - unless you like saying "please" to your hammer as well. These things are tools.
Turning that setting to on leaves a massive trail from you behind. Every cert your encounter will be checked against OCSP, which means whichever server or set thereof you designated to be used for that now sees every single domain you visit and when you visit it.
Why do you even think you need OCSP?
Oh but no... their MBA's have told them that people LOOOOVE ads, and they also LOOOVE missing functionality, and LOOOOOVE new versions of windows. They even made a presentation about it where they sliced and diced the data just so to even provide 'evidence' of it ("99% of the users we interviewed and retained for this sample said they wanted more ads, the remaining 1% were mutes who could actually say it because they're mute, but they indicated the same by pointing at the words 'we love it and want more' written on a blank piece of paper with out any other choice available to them").
I mean, why else would they shove those down everyone's throat? It must be because they are convinced people love that type of change.
> Pi Hole is your friend. I don't know if it would kill Microsoft ads out of the box, but certainly could be configured thus.
Depends on how they implemented it. All PiHole does is return 0.0.0.0 as the IP address for any domain on its list of domains to block. Normal systems look at that response and go "ok, I guess that must have been a user error in the domain, no biggie, let's just go to the next thing on my list of stuff to do".
So if these ads are implemented to deal with that properly then it may be fine and you'd see nothing. But if they implemented it where if ads don't display, the software refuses to work (think: the app keeps internal record of how many ads it's served you and if you don't meet a min-bar, the app refuses to work), well, that's a different matter.
Again, depending on how they implement it, it may put this product in a CPU death loop where every time it gets a 0.0.0.0 response for domain resolution, it immediately tries the next domain to pull instead of backing off. This could lead to your CPU maxing out because of the tight loop...
But that doesn't solve the problem of it only allowing you to save to OneDrive. You still can't save to your own machine with this edition as planned.
> I'm not sure what demographic would choose to use an ad-infested version of MSOffice that can only save to OneDrive instead of LO, but it can't be too big.
You'd be surprised. I know I am continually surprised at the amount of abuse people allow themselves to be subjected to when it comes to advertisement.
MSO is what they know. It has the buttons where their users have been trained to look for the buttons. People _HATE_ change, even if it's just moving a button 20 pixels to the left. (Remember the amount of whining emanated - and continues to emanate - from some folks because Firefox made a change to its UI a while back?)
Things need to be broken the same way they are broken in MSO for people to consider the software 'working' - as contradictory as this may sound. MSFT isn't even compatible with its own Office Open XML spec. LibreOffice is more compatible (with higher fidelity) than Office itself. This is by design: it lets them cripple things deliberately to keep people on their software. People still consider MS Office as the 'standard' and even though it may be broken, people expect the thing to be broken in the same way MSO is broken.
It's a python-esque (the serpent kind, not the language) approach: every time the user exhales, constrict a little tighter, ratchet the pressure up and never unsqueeze, because ... money.
> I have no problem if ads are used to support a free version.
I do. People shouldn't be using a defective product. They should switch to LibreOffice or other open alternatives.
Advertisement is theft. Theft of your attention, your privacy, of your security, of your bandwidth, your CPU cycles and thus electricity, your peace of mind.
A pox upon it!
You make a good point, but I'll expand on this a bit...
None of the things where you mention and say "look how that went" were unfit for purpose. In fact, those things you refer to offered actual meaningful improvements. Legit improvements.
AI is different. It doesn't actually work - not as advertised and not in actuality. Some people call it "hallucinations", but that's not what those are. It's buggy in a way that can't be fixed. Even generally speaking, it doesn't actually work, it's unfit for purpose.
I think that's where the difference of opinion lies: a bunch of folks (especially here on el reg) think that the thing just plain doesn't work and is nothing more than snake oil. If it worked, if it actually did the thing, then sure, I'd be all for it. But I have yet to see compelling evidence of it actually working in a way that adds meaningful value.
So yes, let's see how it goes. It's too bad that the price of finding this out will be so great, especially if it turns out not to work...
> If nobody wants the product despite ridiculous amounts of marketing, then stop making it.
You gotta learn how to think like an MBA. You're not doing it right... The thinking goes like this:
"If nobody wants the product, despite ridiculous amounts of marketing, then obviously the customer is wrong. How they fail to see our genius is beyond us, but clearly they fail at it. Besides, my bonus depends on me being able to flog this thing of. So we will force the customer to pay for it and make it ridiculously hard to avoid paying for it. We'll roll it into the basic packages as a necessary dependency that everyone has to buy anyway and jack the cost of those things up for everyone claiming 'added and crucial functionality'."
That's how these creatures think...
> Not really, apprentices do not scale as fast as AI, they need rest, fall ill and threaten to unionize.
Not even just that, they demand these things called "wages", because they insist that they need to buy food and have housing. How dare they even demand such luxuries...
#include "Monthy Python - Four Yorkshiremen"
> I don't know if "deliberate enfeeblement" is accurate but...
How about "Learned Helplessness"?
And rat out on you to you health insurance so that they can jack up your insurance premium, all without telling you the reason why (and get a cut in exchange for providing such a valued service to their "partner"), you mean?
What? You thought you would be the one receiving your diagnostic results? That's funny!!!
The current crop of AI has only a single purpose: deception.
GenAI's explicit purpose is to deceive you, to make you think a human was involved when none was.
And deception is not exactly the behavior of honest folk.
The argument for "scale" ("but we can do so much more with AI, that's why we use, not to deceive you") falls flat on its face. If that were genuine, then they'd make it abundantly clear that the thing you're interacting with is a machine. But they don't, they hide that, and work very hard at hidden this from you. This is exactly what this article is about: trying to be the best at impersonating someone else to a believable level.
Machines should identify themselves as machines, so that those forced to interact with them know exactly how much the other side of the line values them. "Your call is very important to us"??? Bah, lies!
> You won't win a fight against big corporations, so embrace what they do.
No! That is how authoritarians and fascists get into power. Our liberties are interconnected, and to sell out ones own liberties is to sell out everyone else's liberties.
This mentality is wrong and there is no compromise on this. No!
To rephrase your question: "Why do companies get away with stuff an individual would not get away with?"
It is irrelevant whether or not it is "too hard" to untangle the unlicensed content from their models, its infeasibility should not factor into the decision at all. Either they can continue to use their model, provided they can remove all unlicensed content in its entirety as well as from any up- or downstream data sets they use, and provide third-party verified proof they did so, or if they can't do the complete aforementioned, then they can't use any product(s) derived from the illicitly used materials. It's that simple.
If we were serious about holding people accountable (but we'd have to be a nation of laws for that, and we aren't), then there would be actual repercussions and accountability for the officers of the company. Isn't that why they are paid the big bucks, because they are 'responsible' or something? If you want to play CEO or be some other senior officer of the company or hold effective power over direction and activities of the company, that's great, but that comes with strings attached: you will be personally liable for the activities of the company. Let's see how much law breaking still happens if we remove that immunity...
Similarly, if "companies are people", let's start executing some of them: corporate death for the entities and prohibitions for any of its officers on being an officer of any company, or have effective control over the direction of a company.
But now watch the courts kowtow to these perpetrators and not only placate them, but ask them for their own suggestions regarding "how would you, as the person being told to appear in front of the court today, like to go about rectifying things? Oh, you suggest a pinky promise to not do it again but keep what you have? That should do, of course...". Anything suggested by these perpetrators as reparations should be immediately dismissed as not enough, because nothing they will suggest would move the needle one angstrom.
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