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DeepSeaTortoise

229 karma · joined September 27, 2023

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DeepSeaTortoise··on Pope tells priests to use their brains, not AI, to write homilies
The Catholic Church was funding a lot of research for a long time. E.g the Elon Musk of his time, Galileo, was famously sponsored by it and when asked to contrast his theories against the established view, sperged out so hard against the people tasked with reviewing his publications, they tossed him under the carriage.
DeepSeaTortoise··on Germany's Merz calls for real names on the internet
Or at least never been on the receiving end of an oppressive regieme. Look at e.g. Germany. Plenty of ex-SED members are happy the relive the past.
DeepSeaTortoise··on Germany's Merz calls for real names on the internet
Dont mistake malice for incompetence.

Friendly reminder he EXPLICITLY ran on protecting debt-limits in the German constitution, got elected on those promises and then changed course literally on day 1 after being elected.

DeepSeaTortoise··on MaliciousCorgi: AI Extensions send your code to China
I'm honestly surprised this issue in general didn't cause nearly every company to immediately ban all AI.

Why do these companies put so much effort into fighting right to repair to avoid IP leaks any halfway serious company could reverse engineer in a week, but on the other hand encourage their employees to vibe all company secrets into the cloud?

DeepSeaTortoise··on Mobile carriers can get your GPS location
I'd be very interested in more info, but am going to doubt this for now. Usually just the intra-day deformations of the terrain between the towers through hydrological activity should far exceed what GNSS can achieve.

It is just VERY VERY hard to beat the predictability of orbits.

DeepSeaTortoise··on EU launches government satcom program in sovereignty push
As another EU citizen I'm strongly against it. There is a reason one of the 5Ds of the Potsdam Conference was "Decentralization".

This is just way too close to the nationalist-wing ideology of the 2nd International. Combine that with the overall strong shift left during the last 30 to 40 years and the staggering unawareness of the ideologies of the Internationals (beyond buzzwords) and you've put yourself on a path for repeated history.

DeepSeaTortoise··on FBI is investigating Minnesota Signal chats tracking ICE
It also applied to other things existing at that time, like warships, canister shot in cannons or machine guns.
DeepSeaTortoise··on To those who fired or didn't hire tech writers because of AI
I don't even think it'd be this direct except maybe in the begining.

You already can monitor things like heart rate via motion amplification and track how and when they go where. And probably many other minor factors I can't think about atm.

Gather up enough of those and you should be able to establish a very strong sidechannel into when a restaurant might have new items, its food quality and how it changes over time.

Like how long does a person of age range a, who entered on his own with heart rate x and left with heart rate y, stay if he liked the food vs him not liking the food. Or something like that...

In the end a few public cameras or other type of sensor might be all that's needed. Even if we were to fix our portable wiretaps, I dont think a global surveillance society is avoidable.

We need to built a society that can allow for a modern equivalent of privacy and rule of law within that reality. We might not be able to get away with going 5mph over the limit or accidentally keeping a pen anymore, but neither do we want speeding in our neighborhoods or all our pens gone. So what's the solution here? Random sampling who gets punished? Law breaking quotas? Increasing fines based on severity of the crime and assets and income? Figuring out how to measure intent? Replacing all punishments for minor crimes with corporal ones? idk

DeepSeaTortoise··on To those who fired or didn't hire tech writers because of AI
Why shouldn't AI be able to sufficiently model all of this in the not far future? Why shouldn't have it have sufficient access to new data and sensors to be able to collect information on its own, or at least the system that feeds it?

Not from a moral perspective of course, but the technical possibility. And the overton window has shifted already so far, the moral aspect might align soon, too.

IMO there is an entirely different problem, that's not going to go away just about ever, but could be solved right now easily. And whatever AI company does so first instantly wipes out all competition:

Accept full responsibility and liability for any damages caused by their model making wrong decisions and either not meeting a minimum quality standard or the agreed upon quality.

You know, just like the human it'd replace.

DeepSeaTortoise··on As AI gobbles up chips, prices for devices may rise
I guess so, but:

https://youtu.be/qqUgl6pFx8Q?si=x3CpsW9Aane7GHHV&t=1875

DeepSeaTortoise··on Show HN: My not-for-profit search engine with no ads, no AI, & all DDG bangs
> Wikipedia seems to do just fine without.

Because donations are a system that works very much in their favor and not at all in favor of other types of projects. Look at the OpenSSL Software Foundation having received less than $2k in yearly donations during the leadup to heartbleed.

> Commercializing a product is a whole other field, and it's not reasonable to expect everyone to be good at that, and not reasonable to expect developers to all take on a second job of commercializing their hobby projects.

I very much want to disagree with you, but I do not know how. Achieving some commercial success if you do look for it where others with your skill set are successful is not too difficult (see the trades), but the whole point of such projects is the exact opposite: Doing things differently and pushing accepted boundaries to where you think they should be.

On the other hand I think that this is acceptable. As I wrote in another comment, the obligations in these projects mostly arise from what the developers wants to commit themselves to (or, sadly, do so mistakenly). It is very reasonable to e.g. not value the long term success of your project highly.

You might want to just share an idea, maybe someone else will carry on your project or maybe if in 5 years someone shows a picture of you proudly presenting your project, you're like "AI has gotten really impressive, if I didn't know better, I don't think I could tell that this is a fake". And if you're anything like me, strong commitments to internet strangers might be life-threatening. 2 out of 3 times a promise I made got upvoted, I got hit by a car within less than 48 hours of making it and not once otherwise. An up-arrow got just one pointy end, a GitHub star 5. I'm not taking chances.

DeepSeaTortoise··on Show HN: My not-for-profit search engine with no ads, no AI, & all DDG bangs
> I disagree that builders “owe” anyone anything

I disagree, but I think "owe" carries too much of a negative connotation. Through your project you enter both a relationship with yourself, having taken on a commitment to achieve what got you interested in starting your project in the first place, and the community (who also could be nobody but yourself) you want to benefit from your project, who want to rely on your project to some degree.

These relationships lead to obligations, few, if any, of them being legal or moral ones. Instead they are obligations put onto you by your own interests. You do not observe them because e.g. your project's community demands them (who, I'd like to point out again at this specific point, may still be nobody but yourself!), but because they are important to you. What is important to you can and will change, of course.

> I strongly disagree with goal of as much profit “as possible”.

TBH, I consider the "within the rules they think should be followed" part essential to the statement.

> obligation for maximal profits - something that I personally hold responsible for all the mass enshittification going on these days.

I'm not sure, but I don't think that's the case, sad enough, IMO the reason is to be found a bit to the opposite:

As a group, the people we're overall aligned with in our values (on this issue), having found fulfilling success in goals way less influential than money.

DeepSeaTortoise··on Show HN: My not-for-profit search engine with no ads, no AI, & all DDG bangs
I'm in no way an expert, but IMO there is a major misconception in the free-ish software community that profit should be at most secondary to offering a fair and as good as sustainably possible product.

I strongly disagree with this. IMO developers of free-ish as in freedom products OWE it, not only to themselves, but their community to be as profitable as possible within the rules they think that should be followed (and those that are mandatory ofc).

Profit is not only by far the strongest motivating factor for others to adopt your set of rules, but also a guarantee to your community that the product will still be around in a few years and not turn into a rug pull because its developer is burned out after working 80 hour weeks for months or even years for less than minimum wage. It is also something you can trade for your values, e.g. offering great working conditions to your employees or funding projects or lobbying for laws you think will benefit society.

DeepSeaTortoise··on As AI gobbles up chips, prices for devices may rise
What is the point of telemetry if your IDE launching in under 10s is considered the pinnacle of optimization?

That's like 100B+ instructions on a single core of your average superscalar CPU.

I can't wait for maps loading times being measured in percentage of trip time.

DeepSeaTortoise··on Adafruit: Arduino’s Rules Are ‘Incompatible With Open Source’
IMO too many people come to the conclusion that Qualcomm will in some way screw up the Arduino takeover at the expense of the community.

And I think these people are right, but that is not necessary a bad thing.

There is just about no reason a giant like Qualcomm would take over something like Arduino for any other purpose but to acquire resources (talent, customers, community, processes, documentation, ...) they can use to teach themselves how to become more open, to what degree they even want to and to have a trusted platform they can take their initial steps in and will get feedback from.

And the reality is, that someone with little experience will screw up badly, several times. I mean, look at the current state of the major silicon IP holders, the only reason they dont ship brain-chips with their NDAs that explode the moment you mention the wrong part number infornt of a competitor is because the NDAs for the documentation on how to install the brain-chips would get them stuck in recursion hell.

And just as little experience Qualcomm has at making open source a successful business strategy, Arduino has just as little experience at being a corporate Godzilla trying to carefully pet the egg they just adopted. And let's be real: Open source projects OWE it to their community to be financially successful, because it's that financial success that guarantees that the project CAN STAY open and wont force its core maintainers into choosing between their commitment to their community and a fulfilling lifestyle, although for someone like Qualcomm this success can probably be something else but financial in nature (acquiring talent, their products becoming a preferred choice, schools teaching students using Qualcomm products, whatever).

Both Arduino and Qualcomm will end up outside of their domain and it'd be surprising if this would not result in major mistakes being made.

.

Qualcomm has to evaluate whether their new talent at Arduino is doing a good job and are suddenly looking at a giant dumpster fire, wondering what could have possibly caused this since their lawyers aren't even half-done sticking on the "by Qualcomm" labels yet.

Right now, instead of trying to pressure Qualcomm into making commitments they do not understand, the community should try to adopt the role of a stakeholder, who prioritizes a long and healthy relationship with a currently struggling contractor over getting the desired product at a reasonable timeline.

The community needs to make a cold day in hell happen, calm down, get together and formalize what they think they liked about Arduino up until now, the fundamental requirements that need to be retained or even developed and what would be nice to have.

DeepSeaTortoise··on VPN location claims don't match real traffic exits
Wearing a mask in public while wearing your unique style of clothing, BUT you may be able to exit your apartment building through the service entrance if your landlord is into spelunking and replaced the front door with a nutty putty cave imitation.

I cannot overstate how much of a pain it was to share 51Gbps of peering with 40M other homes and 60M mobile customers. Luckily they now have made generous upgrades, shoving an additional 15M to 20M customers through a whopping 371Gbps.

Unless of course the network your traffic is headed to has deep, widely open and sufficiently climatized pockets.

DeepSeaTortoise··on Self-hosting my photos with Immich
Regarding NixOS, I'm mostly afraid of them going on a user purge after their developer purge. You just never know who this group of people will come after next, especially after they started defining "Fascism" as "anyone asking for how they define Fascism".

And the jump of getting rid of people you hate who contribute to your project and you can do little harm to, to getting rid of people you hate who are of no use to you and you can do genuine damage to (e.g. by installing a tor exit node) is a step down if you think you could get away with it.

DeepSeaTortoise··on India orders smartphone makers to preload state-owned cyber safety app
Discouraging higher education, IMO, isn't a bad thing. Academia is too much of a walled garden that is too easy to enter.

This resulted in higher ed becoming a defacto requirement for many professions that could have been open to professionally trained or experienced people. Employers need to draw their baseline requirements somewhere and if expensive credentials are too ubiquitous, it's understandable they rather select from those who achieved them than from those who didn't (or couldn't afford to).

And it's frankly disgusting how many doors remain closed to yourself unless you got access to an .edu email. More people with academic interests not having acquired one might open the door to many more who discovered their academic interests later in life but can no longer find a way to enter that garden.

DeepSeaTortoise··on Influential study on glyphosate safety retracted 25 years after publication
Unless you mow your grass too low. Always assume the old rule of "your grass reaches just as far underground as it reaches up in the air" still holds.

Also if you mow your grass drastically shorter or you let it grow for a long time before mowing, do not fail to fertilize it from above right or soon after, start aggressively plucking the leaves of weeds (or other selective methods of fighting them) for a few weeks and (optimally, but highly recommended) verticulate it no sooner than 1 week after cutting. Also time it well to grant your lawn at least 3 weeks of ideal growing weather and climate (It won't die because of a week or two of awful weather, but you'll have A LOT more work fighting weeds ahead of yourself).

DeepSeaTortoise··on Influential study on glyphosate safety retracted 25 years after publication
You can also use just heat. Like a long propane torch or one of the newer electric infrared ones. It doesn't need a lot of heat, a short burn (like a bit less than a second) is perfectly sufficient to make them wilt within a few days.

Weeds are the flora equivalent of VC-hype-startups. All growth, no substance and no plan B. They pop-up everywhere, with seemingly infinite growth resources and hope you'll despair and do nothing.

Just going around plucking leaves from everything that looks like you won't like it for a few weeks twice a year works wonders.

Basically regulatory capture for your lawn. No need to help along your darlings (in the beginning), just make everyone else play with stupid rules. And once things start going down the drain, it's time for subsidies (fertilizer) and public contracts (pre-germination).

DeepSeaTortoise··on Influential study on glyphosate safety retracted 25 years after publication
Don't spray herbicides everywhere (unless you're certain that's what you want or need).

Instead, just spray each weed a little bit, right above where the leaves connect to the stem.

DeepSeaTortoise··on Search tool that only returns content created before ChatGPT's public release
Every foundation needs some time to settle.

- Sir, this is an elevator.

DeepSeaTortoise··on India orders smartphone makers to preload state-owned cyber safety app
IMO the goal is a bit different. It'd be just way too much data to track people successfully, even with on-device filtering, especially because everyone with ill intentions would just use non-backdoored devices for their malicious activities.

A much more achievable goal is digging up dirt on specific people and opponents. In the end governments can struggle to justify how they got their hands on info about an affair you had or that you shocked dogs ~~on stream~~.

Such device backdoors are just a get-out-court-free card and a way for the media to justify not asking any serious questions.

DeepSeaTortoise··on India orders smartphone makers to preload state-owned cyber safety app
Require all people who received higher education to work for their country first for 15 to 20 years.

There's no point in being able to buy an outrageously fancy toilet with remittances if there's no sewer to hook it up to.

DeepSeaTortoise··on Unpowered SSDs slowly lose data
IMO it's exactly the right layer, just like for ECC memory.

There's a lot of potential for errors when the storage controller processes and turns the data into analog magic to transmit it.

In practice, this is a solved problem, but only until someone makes a mistake, then there will be a lot of trouble debugging it between the manufacturer certainly denying their mistake and people getting caught up on the usual suspects.

Doing all the ECC stuff right on the CPU gives you all the benefits against bitrot and resilience against all errors in transmission for free.

And if all things go just right we might even be getting better instruction support for ECC stuff. That'd be a nice bonus

DeepSeaTortoise··on Unpowered SSDs slowly lose data
You can still do this for boot code if the error isn't significant enough to make all of the boot fail. The "fixing it by plugging it in somewhere else" could then also be simple enough to the point of being fully automated.

ZFS has "copies=2", but iirc there are no filesystems with support for single disk erasure codes, which is a huge shame because these can be several orders of magnitude more robust compared to a simple copy for the same space.

DeepSeaTortoise··on California invests in battery energy storage, leaving rolling blackouts behind
Kind of my fault, I specifically thought only about the powerplant + fuel part.

Of course nuclear is much more complex as a whole, because it comes with at least two, sometimes three different business sections attached by default: Production and sale of rare isotopes, on-site laboratories and research and recycling of spent fuel.

It's hard to beat gas. The small double digit MW plant in my town literally has only one on-site full-time employee. My guess the only reason the FTE hits even 60 (didn't check) is because there are so many small installations.

Coal has a lot of fuel processing on-site just for its own demand, the mostly very sensible environmental regulations add a lot of complexity to processing the flue gasses and this adds A LOT of moving parts.

Nuclear can be built simple enough that people are literally thinking about dropping it down a mile deep hole, barely the width of a US-standard human. On the "hands off" scale it can't beat gas, barely anything but solar, geothermal and nuclear thermal electric can, but it could beat coal and hydro and possibly even wind via scale. Just how often should one have to send a report to some oversight body on the number of functional overhead lights and whether the change in microclimate didn't displace any rare insect species before one can say: "You didn't read the last 20, you're not getting another one."

DeepSeaTortoise··on California invests in battery energy storage, leaving rolling blackouts behind
The only reason nuclear is more expensive than any alternative are absurd regulations, reporting duties, the practice of financing these projects on borrowed money with high interests and that many of the companies running these projects are career parking spots and accelerators for the social circles around politicians and the bureaucratic aristocracy.

Complexity-wise they're about halfway between gas and coal.

DeepSeaTortoise··on Journalists turn in access badges, exit Pentagon rather than agreeing new rules
The rules were updated on Oct6 to allow media outlets to report using any information even if classified and unapproved for release, as long as they didn't solicit it or were given it with the premise that it won't be released.

So if they were to be approached by a whistleblower or happened to hear the right conversation or find the right documents, it'd be fair game.

DeepSeaTortoise··on Journalists turn in access badges, exit Pentagon rather than agreeing new rules
There is an updated draft of the rules from october 6th that rectifies this and some other prior issues.

I'm honestly not sure which rules the media outlets actually want changed.

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