kefka_p

Seems like many are just feigning lack of awareness, imo. Casual observation shows a pattern of looking the other way when bad things are happening to people they don’t like.

Car rental agencies and airlines come to mind as well. I was almost unable to purchase a ticket for my better half after we got married as we were slow to process paperwork for name changes on our credit cards. We were able to clear the matter up, with some effort, but …

Trash mods really do hurt that place. I reported a physical assault, some punk kid with an airsoft taking potshots at pedestrians, to my local sub to warn others. Turned out the guy had been at it for weeks all over town.

Three months later, somebody didn’t like a political comment I made, went through my history, reported that earlier post, and voila. Banned for threatening violence because I warned people about a criminal’s behavior. Heh.

Not just silos, going through the Dakotas and Missouri put it fairly close to Ellsworth and Whiteman, as well.

That was a poor edit on my part. My apologies.

What I meant to say was the assertion that occasionally recommending YoungTurks somehow mitigates the right-leaning bias of the site, as suggested with the statement “then it's not really a significant force in this area” is false. The site has a demonstrable rightwing bias.

Elections can and are decided by a few thousand or few hundred votes in battlegrounds. As such, the argument that it’s of negligible effect rings false to me.

I don’t need to reword the findings to make them support my assertion.

Again those findings: “We also find that, *on average*, the YouTube recommendation algorithm pulls users slightly to the right of the political spectrum”.

The whole “on average” nullifies the notion that occasionally recommending Young Turks to kids watching Anime once in a while somehow makes up for the fact that they push OANN or Newsmax even harder. That’s like saying I took one step forward so you should ignore the two steps I took backward.

Also you are ignoring the implications further down the line. If YouTube pulls neutral to the right, then it likely pushes those already right even further in that direction.

Are you familiar with the concept of network effect?

> So the indoctrination isn’t obvious? So it’s subtle? That makes it more pernicious, in my eyes.

>> No, that is not what the study found

“In my eyes” isn’t analogous to “that’s what the study found”, FYI.

“Pulls users slightly to the right”

So the indoctrination isn’t obvious? So it’s subtle? That makes it more pernicious, in my eyes.

I never said anything about a vast majority. To indoctrinate doesn’t mean convert an entire population, or even a percentage thereof. On the contrary, it refers to a process of teaching a person or group (of any size) to accept a set of beliefs uncritically. It doesn’t specify what degree of beliefs have to change, nor how rapidly, or severely.

YT recommends Fox, Shapiro, et al to kids watching anime, to adults whose sole interests are cat videos and programming tutorials. A bit different than a librarian suggesting books one might like.

And what happens if the librarian sees I’ve been checking out the likes of Mein Kampf, and makes recommendations based on that? Does indoctrination through multiple channels cancel itself out, or some? I’m not sure what point you’re trying to make there but it sounds a lot like “bad things can happen in other places so it’s acceptable if YouTube does bad things too.

One should consider the effect on those already radicalized in addition to the indoctrination of the non-radicalized when seeking to understand the political ramifications of such bias in algorithms. It’s not like they exist in a vacuum, after all.

edit: Add to that, on the topic of librarians, the decentralized nature of libraries and librarians ensures any effect of a single librarian will be limited to a local area. Don’t think we can say the same for YouTube algorithms.

I was raised on tech. A third generation computer user, started writing software at seven under my father’s guidance. A Luddite I am not, but this doesn’t bode well for our future. YouTube is basically an indoctrination engine for white nationalism. It’s more or less what the right claims the American higher education system is for the left, only there’s no conspiracy fantasy to it.

https://www.theregister.com/2022/10/18/youtube_algorithm_con...

The number of man hours that would be necessary to plausibly fake even a short film in Photoshop, if I had to guess. It strikes me as analogous to owning sidearms versus BMGs and rocket launchers. One of these tools makes doing bad things far easier.

Another analogy. Say somebody makes some hacking kit. Say it uses zero day exploits to compromise Windows, Mac, and Linux. Would any of us take issue with that? Would it be a different story if it was made into a push-button tool like WinNuke was in the 1990s? Or automated to the extent that somebody who can make a word doc could employ it against your systems? Is there really no feasible line of distinction here, in your eyes?

Whoa, whoa, I never claimed the technology was the “debil”. I merely asked for examples of viable, moral, unique uses of this tech.

I’ve only had time for a cursory glance at this writing, but let me thank you for sounding the horn on the on Web 3.0. It was bad enough adding Ajax calls to websites and calling it Web 2.0. At least that had something to do with http, ECMA script, html, and web-related tech.

#2 sounds really interesting! I’m not sure of the psychological ramifications, but I can’t imagine they’d be different than any other sort of prosthesis save for an inability to actually touch it.

I could see it being used in AR to conceal identity to facilitate more equitable medical outcomes, I suppose.

Thank you again for the input! I was honestly at a loss for positive applications outside of financial gain.

I haven’t seen any ads driven by deepfake, or at least I don’t think I have. That advertising bit does sound rather obnoxious though!

That is pretty neat, any sort of art does add cultural and social utility to a degree. Thanks for the heads up, because just about every mention I’ve seen published on the topic is more or less a horror story. I wasn’t being facetious in my query. Thanks again for the input!

First let me thank you for a thoughtful riposte! I do appreciate that. My question was an honest one and I imagine, not the easiest to conceive an answer to. I genuinely appreciate your taking the time to share your thoughts.

With that said almost every use-case cited was financial or monetary gain whereas I enquired about social utility and value.

That dishonesty ie creation of a fake avatar is cited as being of social utility strikes me as a reach. I don’t see how adding more dishonesty and facades to the world adds social value, but then I may just be of limited imagination.

Can anybody demonstrate a legitimate use of deepfake software? Has it ever been used to facilitate a socially positive or desirable outcome? While I recognize my experiences are far from definitive, I hazard most would be hard pressed to name anything positive that came out of deepfake technology.

edit: I’ll take your knee-jerk DV, and any others, as an admission of an inability to speak to positive utility of this technology.

I recently realized you can bypass cookie auth requests by toggling reader. Led me to wonder what the EU plans on doing to enforce compliance if JavaScript isn’t enabled, for example. Kind of makes the legal obligations of sites more or less impossible to fulfill under some limited circumstances.

I’m rarely impressed anymore for whatever reasons, but even in the midst of a miserable bout of viral induced malady, I have to stand in awe of this.

I can’t even fathom the skill required to move a piece of equipment that large in a straight line let alone produce precise graphics with its flight path.

Sometimes people are pretty cool.

The microkernel would like a word with you, good sir. As would the Unix toolchain, the Google suite, iWork, and Microsoft Office. If it was modular, you wouldn’t need separate apps per se.

On the other side of the multiple app token, Microsoft doesn’t build out PowerPoint, Word, and Excel as a single monolithic Office app.

And I’m pretty sure that’s among the most commercially successful consumer software in the history of computing.

Streaming functionality isn’t chat, though. AMD gives you the option to not install streaming functionality when you install their drivers and I’m pretty sure they target gamers too.

It reminds me of the age of Windows bloatware.

Trying to pile all the ingredients on a single piece of bread does not a good sandwich make. On the contrary, it leaves me with an impression that they have to rely on the brand recognition and snowball effect of previous products.

I would probably hold their software in higher regard if it wasn’t just one monolithic multi-tool. They don’t even have to push multiple apps, but could use a modular architecture at the app level with plug-ins to support non-core functionality.

I must be having a hard time waking up today, or something, because I can’t wrap my brain around why a chat app would need 3D acceleration.

The first chat sites on the web e.g. Bianca’s, Poolside, and Talker were built using more primitive versions of the same interface tools used by electron and while they didn’t have the functionality of video and audio chats, they also didn’t break your GPU driver.

I miss the Unix philosophy at times.

A four year accredited program ensures students take four years worth of course credits. If programs reduced requirements merely for knowledge rather than demonstration of an ability to act on that knowledge, it would likely reduce the value of accreditation. My first guess, anyways.

Fault tolerance was how Next branded it, IIRC. If an instance of a long running process doesn’t communicate with an external monitor, then it’s assumed to have hung or crashed at which point it is restarted by the external tool. Or at least that’s how things were done in the early/mid 90s. Like techniques are employed by Node apps these days, and undoubtedly many others.

I wrote a few CGI applications for Schotton’s MacHTTP and the WebStar server on MacOS 7. Back before the days of OpenTransport!

Yes, I’m old.

You didn’t have to hard-code database credentials into your app, though. That’s a design flaw, not a requirement of CGI.

Who passes non-sanitized or otherwise untrusted input to executables, any more than is necessary? Why do you (seem to) believe modern approaches to dynamism are immune when the bulk of user input still comes from HTML forms? How do modern web applications avoid input from untrusted sources?

Same applies to the directory layout of servers they were hosted on. That’s more a lack of server admin competence than a fault of CGI. Was far easier than configuring Tomcat to safely host Java web apps. I recall it being far easier to configure than WebObjects, PHP, Rails, etc.

CGI programs were far from the only form of web application effected by local security implementations. In my experience common gateway interface applications consist of fewer files than something written against Spring, WebObjects, or 99% of server side web app frameworks. Fewer files means less system configuration and less attack surface, no?

As to forking leading to DDOS, that was something that could happen to any forking server, which was pretty much all servers when CGI first came into existence. FastCGI helped address that issue.

I don’t know anything about an AppStore alternative but I do seem to recall a presentation or two mentioning using Dashboard widgets as a route for development.

Addressable, at cost. VR requires pretty high-end hardware in most cases. Telerobotics doesn't sound inexpensive, either. Surely solutions can be found to various problems, but that doesn't unto itself make something a sound decision. Just because one can doesn't mean one should.

Rural telephone service and electricity both required subsidization by those who've opted to lead more practical lives i.e. lives where phone and electricity and other various utilities don't have to be directly subsidized by others.

Is it fair to force people who make reasoned and informed decisions about their own lives and where they live to pay for the decisions of those who prefer the country life?

I'm not advocating forcing people to move, under any circumstances.

Insofar as telecommuting for education, I'd wager connectivity leaves something to be desired in some rural areas. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for distance education.

That said, some skills are best taught in a hands-on fashion. Add to that such learning approaches are more easily adapted to by some than others.

> That's what I did when I supported myself at a minimum wage canvassing job that really sucked.

Good on you, mate. I've had similar experiences myself.

> Why are they only worth helping if they live in cities?

Whoa, whoa, whoa. That's reading a bit much into what I'd said. I don't think I said anything that could even remotely merit such an interpretation.

There is, of course, a spatial proximity of learning centers to population centers but that is just a byproduct of practicality.

> I doubt very much you'd make the same statement [about social support systems coming up short] about the urban poor.

Is there some reason you think I wouldn't make similar assertions about the urban poor? If people live in systemic poverty, then their social support networks have largely failed them. I would argue such a point remains true regardless of a person's origin.

I think perhaps you've misread tone. I was born and raised in a rural resource community, one of the most remote in the U.S. I'm not anti-rural, by any measure.

As somebody who has been on both relatively low and high ends of the earning spectrum, I'd say that the vague promise of a better job is far better than some of the alternatives. Very little is stopping these people who live minutes away from the "Paris of Appalachia" from pursuing education and improving their chances elsewhere in a manner they couldn't reproduce even in the presence of their "entire social support" systems, which I might add seem to be coming up short in the first place.

Surely the military tilts right; I've seen numbers from 60/40 to 70/30, but there are quite a few staunch liberals in their ranks. It may seem naive, but I'd offer that these people are sworn to uphold the constitution.

I would trust five military men over five civilians when it came to protecting my rights.

I don't think anti-war qualifies as anti-military. In fact, anti-war is a pro-military position. As the old saying goes: "The soldier above all others prays for peace, for it is the soldier who must suffer and bear the deepest wounds and scars of war."