BluSyn

I would expect a strictly mapped system would perform significantly worse in an area like SF, where roads and obstacles frequently change. Human drivers are not rigid, they are adaptable, so building rigid AV systems is doomed to fail outside perfect conditions.

If you actually read the white paper on Apple's CSAM system, you'd know it is far more than just a boolean flag away. The system was specifically designed to prevent the kind of abuse everyone is worried about. I've been looking into the system deeply, and I fail to see how it could be co-opted for nefarious purposes without a complete redesign. Even in the most optimal attacks setup by a security researcher, I can't see how it gets anywhere near the worst-case scenario.

The worry seems to boil down to; "they could CHANGE it in the future". If the concern is about the potential for a future system, then such concerns are infinite, since infinite new systems could always be proposed or deployed. I would rather conserve my outrage for that moment, rather than be the boy who cried wolf.

Though this certainly isn't an argument for apathy. I think the amount of push-back Apple is getting is probably healthy, even if it's hyperbolic.

The content isn't banned from the phone, just iCloud.

A list of banned content already exists on Facebook servers, and we have no way of auditing if that list only includes CP. Where's all the outrage over that?

I've heard all the arguments. I've had this conversation 10 times now, I already know what all the replies will say. I'll save you all the time, you can downvote me here.

Here's how the conversation goes:

Android User: "With Android I could just turn off Google Cloud"

iOS User: "Apple also only scans as part of iCloud upload process also. So just disable iCloud Photos"

Android User: "But that's a slippery slope! They COULD scan all content of the phone with no effort!"

iOS User: "But they're not currently, and don't plan to. Doing it locally makes it some-what auditable. Also their system as designed would only work for data uploaded to iCloud."

Android User: "So you TRUST Apple to just not add that capability later!? What if a government forces them to?"

iOS User: "So you trust Google not to aswell? If any Government forces Apple to add this on-device, they would certainly require the same of Android"

Android User: "But Apple COULD add it more easily, because this is clearly a backdoor!"

iOS User: "I don't think that word means what you think it means"

I'm certain 99% of those who switch to Android over this recent drama will un-ironically backup their photos in Google Cloud. Which, FYI, Google already does the same thing Apple is proposing, and has been for years.

I think it's also related to automation in manufacturing. I imagine Tesla gets lots of sales people trying to pitch "ML-enhanced manufacturing solution".

Many repetitive tasks are better suited to a simple heuristic. In those scenarios using ML as a solution is like building a rocket to fly from SF to LA. In many cases, heuristics are both simpler and the best solution to a problem, but many companies are falling into the hype trap and using ML to solve problems where it's actually complete overkill or unnecessary.

It is clearly a future product idea simply designed to inspire robotics experts to join the company. Not many other places (eg, Boston Dynamics) have access to custom designed ML hardware. So they are saying: if you want to build the robots of the future, this is the company to join.

I don't understand how that's "BS"? They're not marketing this to consumers.

It is optional to use iCloud Photos. There's no indication you get arrested if they find something, it isn't reported directly to FBI. Apple will just disable your account, and there is an appeals process to restore it if they made a mistake.

There's more nuance here beyond the clickbait headlines.

Thanks for stating a well-reasoned comment on this issue. I think far more people are in this camp than are willing to admit on social media. The voices of hyperbole have drowned out the conversation rendering all nuance meaningless.

It's relevant as under 13 all online activity can legally be monitored by a parent/guardian. 13-17 it's a gray area.

Some countries have adulthood set at age 20. All the numbers are arbitrary in some sense, but local laws have to dictate that.

13 isn't an arbitrary cut-off. It's established as law in the US under COPPA. Similar to how 18 is the cut off for the other features. Other countries may have different age ranges according to local laws.

I understand the hesitation here, but fundamentally this is like trying to close pandoras box. If something is technically possible to do AND governments demand it be done, it will be done. If not by Apple, by someone else.

Rather than complain about it, I am interested in what alternative solutions exist, or how concerns regarding privacy and abuse of this system could be mitigated.

The root cause will be great of great interest; I hope we get to find out publicly. These battery systems are still new, but even so they have many layers of safety systems designed to prevent thermal runaway.

As I understand, phantom breaking is a result of inconsistent sensor inputs from forward radar, specifically with things like highway underpasses. This is one of the reasons Tesla is moving to a full vision stack. Currently the new vision-only update is only out to FSD beta testers. Hopefully the phantom breaking issue will go away once highway autopilot is updated.

Data > anecdote.

Regulators look at data.

Details of the specific exploit:

> After several validation checks to ensure the device being exploited was a real device, the final payload would be served to exploit CVE- 2021-1879. This exploit would turn off Same-Origin-Policy protections in order to collect authentication cookies from several popular websites, including Google, Microsoft, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Yahoo and send them via WebSocket to an attacker-controlled IP. The victim would need to have a session open on these websites from Safari for cookies to be successfully exfiltrated. There was no sandbox escape or implant delivered via this exploit. The exploit targeted iOS versions 12.4 through 13.7. This type of attack, described by Amy Burnett in Forget the Sandbox Escape: Abusing Browsers from Code Execution, is mitigated in browsers with Site Isolation enabled, such as Chrome or Firefox.

For this to be effective you would need to be logged in to your accounts on Safari, rather than just logged in through the respective app (FB for example). So this would have limited effectiveness. Also if you browse with Safari in Private mode it probably wouldn't have worked at all.

There are fundamental engineering trade-offs here. The amount of effort required to secure a device AND make it accessible to "tinkerers" would be an effort worthy of an MIT research lab. It's not trivial, and a huge security risk to satisfy 0.01% of the user base. Especially when such users will likely just buy an open source device anyways. Seems like a huge waste of effort to me.

Using "security" in air quotes diminishes the significant effort Apple and others put into making devices secure, and this does have fundamental trade-offs for the end-user. Some of us actually care a great deal about security, and appreciate the trade-offs and effort put in to making that happen.

I sympathize with the tinkerer mindset, but this mindset exposes serious lack of empathy in exposing REAL risk to REAL people by allowing anybody to hack devices simply to satisfy 0.01% of users who want to run a custom bootloader. This is not a valid engineering trade-off for a "trillion dollar company". The world doesn't revolve around you. There are other products on the market for tinkerers that don't involve exposing everyone from your grandma to politicians to serious security and privacy breaches.

My (limited) understanding is Andrew Lee has been a large source of donations to Freenode for many years. As well as a significant benefactor to open source projects and founder of privacy focused services (PIA being one). So this ownership change may be simply an extension of that charity into a formal business arrangement.

I don't know the particulars behind-the-scenes, just trying to not immediately assume the worst.

"Energy used / total value secured" is a better measurement. "Double-spend prevented" isn't calculable.

Important to remember that the energy used on mining both secures current and *PAST* transactions, that's the entire point of the blockchain. I think "total value secured" captures this point.

I find it frustrating that crypto-currencies are judged by their energy usage, meanwhile traditional fiat currencies are secured by massive banking industries, governments, and militaries. The total energy required to maintain a secure and stable fiat currency is likely orders of magnitude greater than that of Bitcoin today. The problem is one is easier to calculate, so it generates easy headlines from lazy journalists.

Fundamentally energy usage isn't a worthy argument for or against a currency. It's the wrong measurement to use. It seems to be the go-to straw-man argument for those who already made up their minds about cryptocurrency before hand.

Yes, Proof-of-Stake exists, but notably it does not exist at a reasonable scale yet. If it could work as well as Proof-of-Work then it eventually would displace it. All attempts so far have not lived up to their hype.

I recommend following the FSD beta drivers on YouTube. If you’ve at all been following the progress, I think you’d be impressed what is already possible. I’ve see no major corner cases that require hardware changes yet. It’s all software now.

I’m looking forward to so many on hackernews eating their hat a year from now.

So your claim is any driverless system that needs training or data gathering by a driver can never achieve level 5?

I mean this is obviously spurious bordering on ridiculous at this point.

I swear this whole comment section is being over-run by agents of disinformation or luddites. Not sure which is worse.

The Beta program is Level 2, this is well known already. It’s intended to collect data amongst volunteers, not as a final end consumer product. The end goal for FSD that most paid for is for Level 5. Not sure why this is confusing. The 10k FSD “add on” is NOT for the Beta they are planning to offer soon, but the final post-beta release, which will be Level 5. The information sent to regulators is for the BETA they are hoping to release in the next month or so. I don’t know why the press in general can’t seem to acknowledge the difference here.

Tesla needs to explain better, but given the intentional mis understanding by journalists lately, I sense they feel silence is better than being taken out of context yet again.

This might be something Github can do for you manually. I've requested similar things before through support email as one-off fixes, and they were able to accommodate.

I was thinking the same thing.

This example is less about the potential negatives side-affects of meditation, and more about the care one should take when getting off serious medications. Most retreat centers (and other "guides") usually suggest several weeks or more of no medication before going on your "journey". The side affects of getting off medications, especially ones she apparently was taking for years, can not be underestimated in this story.

It's also clear she was prone to emotional instability before the retreat, and like any treatment -- pharmaceutical or otherwise -- it can have side-affects that need to be managed, dosages that need to be tweaked, etc.

This story also ignores the 90+% of people who have profound experiences on these Vipassana retreats. Just know what you are getting into, and know it can be very very intense even for those who have practiced meditation for years.

For me this boils down to "don't let perfect be the enemy of good".

No system -- no matter if it's crypto, status-quo finance, gold-backed currency, pure capitalist/socialist/whatever -- will ever satisfy someone's desire for "perfection", so alternates will always be proposed and created. Bike-shedding over which is better will continue forever until the sun explodes.

Everything is a set of trade-offs, and competition between these various systems is the best way to weed out the "not good enough" from the "good enough". That's all we can ever hope for.

"Accidentally"

If you pay attention it's been created by a carefully constructed narrative by certain media outlets. The switch to anti-tech and anti-billionaire biases was surprisingly swift, and few seemed to even notice. Add to that the complete removal of nuance from news reports, and any platforms (eg, Clubhouse / Podcasts) that attempt to add in nuance are either ignored/treated as fringe, or out-right demonized.