TehPers

@TehPers@beehaw.org

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨"I didn’t fully appreciate the scope of it": a year on from taking over, Nexus Mods owners reflect on the challenges of their push to minimise modding hassle⁩ ⁨⁨12⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  Imagine if anyone could remove their contribution to the linux kernel at any point.

  There’s a reason people can’t remove their contributions to the kernel. Contributions to the Linux kernel are licensed as GPL which is not really revocable (GPL v3 clarifies this). You can’t change your mind because the license you grant for your contribution gives you no means to.

  User-generated content on websites like NexusMods have various licenses. To get around this, NexusMods explicitly states in the ToS that submitting UGC grants an irrevocable license to use that content, which is why they can say “no” to removing mods.

  However, this was not always the case. The license I granted when I submitted my first mod, for example, was not irrevocable. For me, this was irrelevant because my code was licensed under MIT anyway, but had I uploaded the mod with the expectation of being able to revoke the license at any time, I’d have been pissed if NexusMods decided to disregard my request to remove the mod.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Stop Talking To Me, Google Search⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  This is undecided by courts.

  From what I’ve found from some simple research, it’s possible that if it’s reproducing the same information as another user that the website is protected, possibly even if the LLM modified the exact presentation of that information.

  If it’s creating new claims, then I think it’d be likely that whoever is running the service would be liable. Who knows though, since they might just claim that the new claims are from its training data and therefore they are protected.

  In an ideal world, we’d just follow Germany’s example and hold the website liable for any new content generated by a LLM. Ideally, if you make shit up, you made the claim, and if you’re parroting a user, the user made the claim.

  I’d imagine due to current circumstances, the US would want to shield AI companies though because politicians want money and the SCOTUS is useless.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Stop Talking To Me, Google Search⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  This reminds me of Rossman’s praise for the AI overviews when it helpfully informed everyone that he has paid sponsors and his friend was a 9/11 terrorist. Except it wasn’t praise.

  The AI summary at the top is like asking a college freshman to summarize the latest research in a field. It’s accurate enough to be dangerous, but not accurate enough to be reliable.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Angry PlayStation Fans Propose PS5 Blackout in Protest of Sony's Disc Decision⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  It could. Allowing the licensee to transfer their license isn’t a wild concept. I could see the EU making a proposal (and eventual law) requiring licensors to allow licensees to transfer their licenses to some extent. It just needs enough momentum to force them to consider it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  This. A charge isn’t a conviction, though.

  Plausable deniability might help you here as long as you can think of a valid reason why you had that code on the note. It could be as simple as “this is the code I needed to remember for this one game” or something too. As long as you don’t tell them that the note contains the code to your phone, you can pretend the note contains a code of some other value instead later on and let them shoot themselves in the foot.

  As a general rule, most lawyers would tell you if you are under arrest to say nothing more than what you are required to by law. Since this is at a border, it gets weird, but that’s what makes this case unusual as well. Under normal circumstances, they might seize the phone as evidence, but saying nothing might result in them wiping the device themselves before they ever get a warrant for the passcode.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  He could just as easily argue he was forced to give the password under duress and accidentally gave them the wrong password.

  It’s not really a case of duress. Legal searches are also done under duress, and you can’t just argue to a judge “well I got nervous and shredded the documents”.

  What it really boils down to is whether border agents can search a phone without a warrant on entry, or whether the search was illegal. As part of it, they also need to decide whether a person has their Miranda rights during entry to a country. The answer, in my opinion, should be obvious (the alternative is you have no rights on entry), but with the current courts, who knows what they’ll decide.

  Also highly illegal.

  This is where the question about Miranda rights comes in, and whether the question of whether the constitution grants rights during entry comes in as well. If you have no rights, then it can be argued you have no right to demand a lawyer either.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  This case is really strange.

  The case raises questions about which constitutional rights apply at US borders, including international airports, where authorities have broader search powers.

  On the one hand, destroying evidence during an investigation or which someone believes might be linked to one is a generally bad idea. However, to me it seems like the border agents should have had no right to search the phone without a warrant. Seize maybe, but not search. If the search was illegal and the case dismissed (especially since Tunick was not read Miranda which seems to imply there was no arrest?), then I think it would be hard to argue that any evidence was destroyed because the investigation itself would have been performed illegally.

  In any case, doing this in a legal search of the phone (with a warrant) is most likely illegal.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨It’s Looking Like the Cybertruck Is the Biggest Flop in Automotive History⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Nah they’re ugly af.

  If you wrap them (like you should), then you can make them look cool though. Some of my favorites that I’ve seen are bright pink, yellow, and various wraps covered in decals.

  Without wrapping them, they look like scrap metal on wheels.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Forgot your Google password? Now you can log in with a selfie.⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Your phone stores the code on the device and does facial recognition locally. Apps on your phone only receive that data if they explicitly request your camera and perform the recognition themselves.

  This is vastly different than sending Google a video of your face that they save locally and use to analyze future selfie videos.

  But assuringly its just an encrypted passcode created with an algorithm using measured face data.

  From the article:

  Selfie videos can be used for login purposes, to verify your age for accessing certain account features, and to create an AI avatar.

  It’s not just an encrypted passcode.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Once Unimaginable, Publishers Are Preparing to Opt Out of Google Search⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  While I agree with your points and sentiment, the US civil rights laws (including the Civil Rights Act) are being continuously torn apart by billionaires and religious lunatics, so maybe not the best example.

  Regardless, there are plenty of examples of laws succeeding in bettering the status quo going even as far back as Babylon.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨PlayStation 5 Bounty for Alternate OS installation⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  “yeah, we know how to jailbrake your console, take that sony! Oh, but don’t worry, we won’t release this hack nor collaborate in any way to provide this feature to other people”

  That this makes no sense is the whole point. The goal is to show how little sense this makes. It’s fine for you to break a digital lock yourself, but illegal for you to show others how to do it.

  The goal isn’t to jailbreak the PS5. It’s to show that DMCA §1201 makes no sense.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨SpaceX stock drops to a new low and loses $1 trillion in value in a month⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  If you’re in a position to dictate what shareholders get, you have no real reason to go public. Just keep it privately owned.

  You go public to raise funds. The least reasonable thing to do to someone is ask them for money with a pinky promise that they might make a profit. Usually, those people are going to want something in return, like a say in how their money is spent.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨China bans AI “boyfriends” and “girlfriends” over addiction and birth rate concerns⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  From what I can see (and via translation), their published reasoning is, among other reasons, to protect national security and social interests.

  So what are the risks that China is worried about to social interests? Well, we can find that in their AI Safety Governance Framework. Jumping specifically to the risks regarding anthropomorphic AIs (ethical risks):

  (d) Addiction and dependence on anthropomorphic interaction

  AI products based on anthropomorphic interaction foster users’ emotional dependence and influence their behavior, creating ethical risks.

  They conveniently list some of their concerned outcomes from influencing their behavior, including disrupting conventional views on childbirth:

  (e) Challenges to existing social order

  The development and application of AI brings profound changes to production tools and relations, accelerating the restructuring of traditional industries, disrupting conventional views on employment, childbirth, and education, and challenging the established social order.

  So did China ban these AIs over birth rates? It seems to have been part of the discussion, at the very least. Like all things in life, it requires more nuance than just “birth rates” to explain. However, the concerns stated by Matt Sheehan (who seems to be the source for the “birth rates” claim that the news outlets are going with) provides more nuance in his explanation as well:

  “They don’t like the idea of a large portion of their population being in deep emotional relationships with chatbots that could take them out of the marriage market, that could have negative psychological impacts on them, that could lead to addiction, dependency and a whole bunch of other social ills,” said Matt Sheehan, who studies Chinese AI at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a think tank.

  ---

  All this to say that yes, the explanation that it’s about birth rates is an easy to consume concept for Western audiences.

  But also, yes it’s a true concern that the Chinese government has specifically linked to anthropomorphic AIs.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨China bans AI “boyfriends” and “girlfriends” over addiction and birth rate concerns⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  So… China didn’t ban relationship bots? Or are you saying that the article is written in a way to condemn China’s decision to ban them?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Android Developer Verification: Threat masquerading as Protection⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  What? You don’t normally call capitalists “Tankie”. That would be a weird insult for one, to say the least. Usually that term is reserved for a certain kind of pro-authoritarian “communist” (in quotes of course because I don’t believe it’s actual communism).

  Anyway, not sure what any of this has to do with the post. What a weird comment thread…

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  My favorite quote from a post-surgery instruction packet (which required not smoking due to the location of the operation) was something along the lines of:

  Can I start smoking again?

  You have been nicotine-free for 10 weeks. You do not need to start smoking again.

  If you’ve been locked out of your Twitter account and haven’t had access to it for a while because of that, then you’ve already gone that long without it. You don’t need to go back.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨LastPass notifies users of yet another data breach⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I also should correct myself - it’s not C(n, k), it’s P(n, k) (which is n! / (n-k)!). It’s been a minute since I took a statistics class lol.

  In any case, it’s a lot of entropy with just a few words.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨LastPass notifies users of yet another data breach⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  The entropy stems from the words, not characters. With random words and no repetition, you have C(n, k) combinations (or n^k with repetition), where n is your dictionary size and k is the number of words you chain together. These passwords tend to be longer, but not by much. A big enough dictionary can yield some pretty high entropy with only a few words.

  I’ve had passwords as limiting as 16 characters for some services (unfortunately)…

  16 characters is hardly enough for random characters unless you include Unicode (which rarely works for those same services that usually have shitty implementations).

  Not much can be done there, sadly. You’re lucky if they even hash their passwords anyway - you’ll probably just get your password emailed to you if you click “forgot password” like it’s 2003.

  I would never, ever want my users relying on their brain…

  I never would either. People should just use a password manager. I was just mentioning an alternative that generated more memorable passphrases, but I wouldn’t advocate for it over random high-entropy strings saved in a password manager.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨LastPass notifies users of yet another data breach⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  You can actually generate high entropy passphrases by chaining random words together. You just need to make sure the phrases are actually random and not just whatever comes to your head at the moment.

  Naturally, words help with memorization, but memorizing hundreds of these is impractical at best, especially because long-term memory for infrequently used accounts is subject to “bit rot”.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨LastPass notifies users of yet another data breach⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  They are free…

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨DuckDuckGo’s AI Feature Is Telling Users That Trump Died of Rabies Earlier This Month⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m not sure where you live, but here in the US, bats tend to be one of the biggest carriers of rabies alongside various animals that depend on the state. You can actually look up which animals are the primary carriers within a state (if you’re here). Outside of the US, naturally it varies from country to country, but you’d still be looking at bats, plus potentially stray dogs and such. It’ll take some effort, but you should eventually be able to find a carrier.

  ---

  I would expect with the nondeterminism and the regular evolution of search results that reproducing the output would be difficult even if DDG didn’t make a patch already. It’s really easy to get these “AI overviews” to make up random shit, though. All you have to do is search normally about a topic that the model wasn’t trained on, and there’s a good chance it’s making shit up, even if only in part of the answer.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨LastPass notifies users of yet another data breach⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I have over 300 different passwords for different accounts. I’m not remembering that many passwords.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Bill that would mandate AI chip location tracking gains industry support⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  The Chinese splice 4090 dies onto boards with 48GB VRAM on them. I don’t think this will be very hard for them to circumvent.

  Rather, I’m hoping whatever “safeguard” they implement accidentally causes some fuse to pop in all the unmodded chips, turning all but the Chinese “black market” ones into paper weights. Maybe that’s what it takes for this idiocy to end.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Meta Pauses Employee-Tracking Program Following Internal Data Leak⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  “We will only re-enable MCI when we are confident in the effectiveness of our data protection controls,” Kasriel said.

  This should have been an obvious concern from the start. All the data would go to Meta, who are known to be the most reliable, privacy-focused data stewards in the world.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨US AI stock sell-off shakes markets from Wall Street to Asia⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Not financial advice of course, but I don’t know anyone who has wanted to touch the bubble at all. I also don’t know anyone who could invest billions into the industry either, so maybe it’s just a matter of greed clouding judgement here (“maybe” is pulling a lot of weight because we all know the reason is greed).

  The whole thing reeks of crypto scams, just on a higher scale. With companies investing in each other circularly to pump their valuations, we’re just waiting to see who tries to cash out first.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Samsung's SSD warranty policy scammed me so I'm taking them to court.⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  FYI Rossman has videos on his own stance on influencers and whether he considers himself one. You can just search his channel for “influencer”. It comes up a bit too in his videos on Linus Sebastian.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Judge Learns Lawyers on Both Sides of Case Used AI, Cancels Trial, Kicks Everyone Off the Case⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  To make things even more confusing:

  The case in question involved a contractual dispute between lawyer Tom Withers and the city of Aberdeen, Mississippi, over apparently unpaid legal fees (Withers was not representing himself and was not sanctioned by the court).

  This case is comedy at its finest.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨GOG apologizes for emailing Nazi runes to its followers⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  I also would find it difficult to believe that a Polish company’s public stance is in support of the Nazis.

  What they sent is obviously unacceptable, and shit should happen so they never make that mistake again. But it’s hard to jump to the assumption that it was intentional based on one instance. If it’s a pattern, then I’m more interested to see evidence of that.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Any good indie games on steam? Can be any genre.⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Months is an understatement. Just remember to eat, drink water, and sleep now and then. It helps to keep a window nearby so you can track when it’s day/night as well.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Searching for 'Disregard' Breaks Google AI overviews; Similar command phrases, including "ignore," "quit," "skip," and "stop,"; "look" and "forget" are also prompting chatbot-like responses.⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Normally, yes. That always seems to be one of the results.

  I specifically forced it to do a quick answer, and it still gave me a definition. Interestingly, for “disregard”, it also covered a bit about the Google nonsense results after defining the word.