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ratelimitsteve

630 karma · joined July 30, 2025

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ratelimitsteve··on Police officer arrested after tracking ex-girlfriend on Flock over 2k times
The aristocrats have had to split their treasure with the thugs since the beginning of time and this represents a very real chance to keep huge swaths of that treasure for themselves. Finally they can automate away doing violence against anyone who threatens the social order when it used to be an unavoidable cost of doing business.
ratelimitsteve··on “It works better in the app”
a native app's job isn't to parallel the web app's feature set. a native app's job is to get you to accidentally opt in to all sorts of invasive surveillance and allow for a constant stream of attempts to grab your attention.
ratelimitsteve··on Humanity has the debate about AI consciousness backwards
>If nuclear energy can’t arise from abstract relationships, why would consciousness or anything else?

because consciousness is a function of intangible relationships and energy is not.

ratelimitsteve··on Humanity has the debate about AI consciousness backwards
I will indeed hold that, and it was my point to go to against post you were replying to and bolster your position. They try to make a point about modeling but they back it up by talking about virtually modeling real, physical processes. If I model a hurricane with a computer nothing gets wet. If I model a hurricane with giant fans and sprinklers then things do get wet and, if I'm able to achieve a certain level of fidelity with my giant fans and sprinklers then whether or not i've made a hurricane is a rather arbitrary distinction as your living room is several blocks from where it was yesterday regardless of whether it was put there by a real hurricane or a mere model.
ratelimitsteve··on Humanity has the debate about AI consciousness backwards
This. There are plenty of people who believe to the bottoms of their hearts that inanimate things have a consciousness. If consciousness is the belief of consciousness, then those things are conscious. But for each person who believes they are, at least one person does not believe that they are. So those things also lack belief, and are therefore not conscious. Unless the author wants to propose some idea of consciousness by plurality, where if more people think a thing thinks than don't. But that would mean that a thing's consciousness can come and go without anything about the actual thing changing at all.

Realistically this article is just trying to make it seem that believing something is the same as it being true and that's patently absurd, but it makes people feel good to think it.

ratelimitsteve··on Humanity has the debate about AI consciousness backwards
I'd argue that if it encrypts and decrypts, then you've built an enigma machine, not modeled it.
ratelimitsteve··on Humanity has the debate about AI consciousness backwards
Well, this certainly makes arguing against AI's consciousness much easier. I'm happy assuming that conclusion and then logicking my way back to the premise, though it's obv philosophically unsound.
ratelimitsteve··on Software engineering is about managing complexity
I came to the opposite conclusion using similar logic. If software is just bits being fed into the machine then there is no limit to the number of bits or the complexity of their arrangement beyond the feed rate of the machine. The bits that make up software do not have any weight to them. There is a strong limit to how much concrete and steel you can add to a bridge. There is a limit to how many neutrons you can shove into the nucleus of an atom, or how many carbon rings you can chain together. Software is unique in that it escapes almost the entirety of physics as a limiter to what can be done, being really only subject to the speed of light as a limit to the rate at which things can be done.
ratelimitsteve··on Corporate political donations shatter record at $646M so far for US midterms
Corporations are only people when it comes to rights and profits. When it comes to responsibilities they revert to being nebulous entities whose behaviors are emergent phenomena that no one can actually be held accountable for. Or, to borrow the old maxim, "Corporations aren't people until Texas executes one."
ratelimitsteve··on Corporate political donations shatter record at $646M so far for US midterms
What's really interesting is when you look at how much good they could do without ever actually affecting their lifestyle at all. What actually is $100 million to a trillionaire? What could he do with 1,000,000,000,000 that he can't do with 999,900,000,000?
ratelimitsteve··on Software engineering is about managing complexity
This. Software hypothetically can permit unlimited complexity. There are only so many ways you can try to build a bridge such that it won't collapse. There are an infinite number of ways that a set of instructions can reach a desired state given enough time, processing and memory resources. This, combined with our relative naivete in how to design and build software that does not approach infinite complexity compared to other engineering disciplines means that the primary thing about building software is managing complexity.
ratelimitsteve··on Software engineering is about managing complexity
We built houses before we had nailguns but now that we have them they're pretty essential to building a house.
ratelimitsteve··on Anthropic tells staff to work from home due to possible security team strike
just because AI is really good at being wrong doesn't mean that people aren't themselves capable of being wrong manually. Do I think someone may have consulted AI? Almost certainly, in fact I'd guess that there's an internal policy document somewhere saying that they have to consult AI before making choices like this. Do I think that good old fashioned human incompetence and baseless speculation are at the heart of this? also yes.
ratelimitsteve··on Anthropic tells staff to work from home due to possible security team strike
well, coffee seems to be the only thing left that isn't riddled with parasites and broken glass so it works out about even
ratelimitsteve··on SSH Sshfighter.com
I'm such a sucker for terminal games, especially the idea that you can exploit screen refreshes for rudimentary animation. There used to be a game called Paintball Net that was a top-down, real time paintball match simulator. It had a GUI client, but you could also just fire up telnet to connect and it would paint the state of the game one screen at a time as fast as your little 33kb dial up modem could handle.
ratelimitsteve··on Anthropic tells staff to work from home due to possible security team strike
a week of wfh from a company that's equipped to support remote work anyway and only wants in-office 25% of the time hardly qualifies as "insane overreaction". I'd says it's probably more along the lines of "a single email".
ratelimitsteve··on Starbase, LA
well, let's see what actually gets done. or even started.
ratelimitsteve··on Anthropic tells staff to work from home due to possible security team strike
IDK what I would do if I was working and couldn't hear my coworker loudly "spontaneously collaborating" on the phone with the contractor installing his kitchen floor. At least I have an hour commute each way, $25/day in parking costs and another $20/day in food costs to comfort me.
ratelimitsteve··on Anthropic tells staff to work from home due to possible security team strike
It's possible that they just took the state of contract negotiations as an implicit threat of a strike without waiting for the union to explicitly announce the threat.
ratelimitsteve··on A For-Profit Hospital Slashed Costs. Then a Patient Froze to Death on Its Roof
The part where they blatantly lied to the patient's family, saying they found their loved one's body at a Dollar General down the road, then in the parking lot, then finally admitting that they were on the roof after gaining access to a secure area because the door was propped open, that's the part that to my mind should result in the harshest criminal charges.

It won't though. Because someone made money, and money is the only legal, moral or ethical force in our society today.

ratelimitsteve··on Felony charges for citizen deleting phone data at US Border
the best decoy is a cheap burner phone that you only use for travel purposes
ratelimitsteve··on Felony charges for citizen deleting phone data at US Border
I've worked with Cellebrite, the industry standard in IT forensics for unlocking and imaging phones. It just runs a series of known exploits. PIN lock, data encryption and regular updates will beat it most of the time.
ratelimitsteve··on Felony charges for citizen deleting phone data at US Border
tfw face when I leave my phone on the table and go to the restaurant bathroom only to return to a brand new squeaky clean factory reset
ratelimitsteve··on Felony charges for citizen deleting phone data at US Border
>What is the difference between giving them a password which wipes the phone and giving them a password which opens a blank phone?

They don't get any indication that there was data there to be deleted, and you don't just factory reset but flash w an image of a clean phone that's been used. It has apps, it has accounts, it looks to the untrained eye (because that's who's looking at it) like a phone that was used normally by someone who has done nothing wrong.

ratelimitsteve··on Felony charges for citizen deleting phone data at US Border
I mean, you could ship your real phone to w/e destination ahead of you and bring a $50 burner to the border. If you're a person of interest this won't work because they can monitor you and the destination but if you're a regular schmuck then a burner that never touches your private data or accounts and has a bunch of dummy stuff on it will get you past the border goons.
ratelimitsteve··on Grand jury declines to indict Ohio man charged with destroying Flock camera
simple assault or disorderly conduct
ratelimitsteve··on Grand jury declines to indict Ohio man charged with destroying Flock camera
don't stand next to the reflecting pool, you'll get arrested because the president is embarrassed by his own incompetence
ratelimitsteve··on Grand jury declines to indict Ohio man charged with destroying Flock camera
you can indict a ham sandwich if you don't try to convince a grand jury that a mustard stain is terrorism. the grand jury found that throwing a sandwich at someone doesn't rise to the level of assault. what dude did was never contested, and they would have gotten a conviction if they charged appropriately, but instead they tried to "make an example" of him and instead they got made an example of.
ratelimitsteve··on Grand jury declines to indict Ohio man charged with destroying Flock camera
The state will try again until they get the result that they have determined is correct.
ratelimitsteve··on Israeli military admits to firing on car carrying 5-year-old Hind Rajab
oh I know, i'm just here to make sure I collect my fair share of downvotes-without-replies in exchange for stating basic facts that aren't in contention. baselessly flagging posts is another thing they do to prevent discussion concerning the most moral army in the world.
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