irotsoma

@irotsoma@piefed.blahaj.zone

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Mark Cuban says Facebook knowingly runs AI deepfake scam ads as Meta docs reveal $16 billion in fraud-linked revenue⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  That’s totally disingenuous. The scale is totally different. Removing enough money for tens or hundreds of thousands people to have comfortable lives with maybe a year or two of forcing others to overwork themselves for your vision and then not only hoarding it for the rest of your life, but using it to fund further exploitation by “investing” that money in those exploitative companies to exploit more and more. Comparing that to wanting to survive and being forced to purchase food and shelter using money you spent your entire lifetime overworking for from those exploitative companies is a totally different thing in so, so many ways.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨World's Biggest Battery-Electric Ferry Enters Commercial Service⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Cool hope Washington State can get some of these instead of the hybrids they’ve planning to acquire.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Mark Cuban says Facebook knowingly runs AI deepfake scam ads as Meta docs reveal $16 billion in fraud-linked revenue⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Right, and yahoo exploited people to get that money. Are you saying that his work on that site was more of a contribution to society than the entire lifetimes of thousands of tech workers, a few of which probably actually designed and built the site?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Mark Cuban says Facebook knowingly runs AI deepfake scam ads as Meta docs reveal $16 billion in fraud-linked revenue⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  But that’s not how he got his billions, and he’s not contributing anything back really, he’s just accepting a little less profit than he could. A serial killer with human body part trophies in their basement doesn’t suddenly become a good person if they save a cat from a tree.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Mark Cuban says Facebook knowingly runs AI deepfake scam ads as Meta docs reveal $16 billion in fraud-linked revenue⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Doesn’t matter. There is no amount of work or contribution to society a single person could perform in a single lifetime that would be worth anywhere near $1 billion. Maybe it was another person or company who did the exploitation itself, but he knowingly profited from that.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Mark Cuban says Facebook knowingly runs AI deepfake scam ads as Meta docs reveal $16 billion in fraud-linked revenue⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Just less evil. There is no way to ethically acquire that amount of money. Most people don’t truly understand how much money $1 billion USD actually is. And the only way to achieve it is to exploit others, make money off of investing in the exploitation, etc.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Trump Phone Durability Test⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Definitely no surprises there except that they even bothered to add that plastic camera plateau and move the flash a tiny bit. Wouldn’t have been surprised if they were just overstock or refurbished phones that were just painted. I bet they spent an extra $.01 per phone to have a Chinese factory make that change.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨‘Pure arrogance’: anger in Finland as Google illegally fells 250,000 trees for datacentre⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Pretending you don’t understand the law and taking a fine is way better for them than allowing the environmental study to show how much damage they were about to cause. Sucks that governments use piddling fines as “punishment” rather than arresting the executives who knowingly ordered disobeying the laws and sanctioning the company so they can never build in their country again.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Meta ordered to pay $25 billion to New Mexico after jury finds company misled consumers about data privacy⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  It will get reduced. It was already reduced from $219 billion to $25 billion. It will get cut down or thrown out in appeal, but even if it was $25 billion, they made way more than that in profit specifically due to misleading people on privacy all these years. And this won’t stop them from doing it in the future, it’s just a cost of doing business for these companies not anything that’s enough to change behavior.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨US being left behind in EV charging speeds as China goes sub-5 min to 70%⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  …on purpose. The current administration and companies that control most politicians, are heavily funded by or invested in the oil industry.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨DoorDash Spent $1.4 Million Trying to Stop Mamdani From Becoming Mayor. Now We Know Why.⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Yeah, a symptom of late stage capitalism that large companies no longer compete by improving their product or service, but by manipulating the regulatory environment and/or competition, through collusion, legal attacks, or acquisition. It’s much less risky of an investment for larger companies post-mass-consolidation.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Garbage Trucks Now Have AI Cameras To Score Your House and Clock Code Violations⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Yeah and it’s not that I’m blaming the workers, far from it. The issue is the contractors create such strick timelines and quotas so they can pay them as little as possible that they don’t have time to do any of the stuff that government workers did have time for a couple of decades ago. If the companies are going to hold homeowners responsible for so many nitpicky things so they can charge them more, then they better hold themselves as responsible and do the full job that we pay for through taxes and garbage bills.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Garbage Trucks Now Have AI Cameras To Score Your House and Clock Code Violations⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Then they better freaking make the garbage contractors do the rest of their job, not just the pickups, but also keeping things tidy. They make and leave behind such a mess. When they used to be government employees they were actually “sanitation workers” and responsible for more than just collection, or at least would clean up the messes they made and were sure to fully empty the bins every time.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Boston drops Flock after outside agencies gained access to vehicle data⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m not going to subscribe to read the article, but I’d be willing to bet they’ll just replace then with another, just as bad company like other cities have done. Flock will likely eventually buy up those companies and rename themselves. That’s how it usually goes.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨VC isn’t VC anymore — understanding the rise of Cancer Capital⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Yeah, but it’s nothing new. VCs have been used for nefarious purposes for ages. For example, there are documentaries about how they’re often used by competing companies to buy up a company that’s foundering (sometimes due to the actions of said competitors), split off a few valuable assets to give to the competing company, and dump the rest onto taxpayers to deal with in bankruptcy.

  So, sure, these are another example of how the VC process is being used nefariously against the original purpose of such organizations, but they aren’t small exceptions to the rule. The system was always designed to do these nefarious things under the guise of “investment”. Without an overhaul so that these organizations are legally required to show how they use their money so that both investors and the public are able to see it, it’s not corruption of a process, it’s standard use of a process designed to mask corruption.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Waymo pulls over, calls cops on riders with a ghost gun⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Yeah, “AI” is not intelligent enough to even come close to being able to recognize a problematic situation. Just like smart glasses have people doing a lot of the work behind what the glasses recognize or airport xray scanners have a person likely in another country looking at your fully naked bodies to indicate to the security people to let you go or do further patdowns.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Flock is canceled—and its competitors are profiting⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Yeah, need to find a way to go after the government to stop using the tech rather than going after a single company. Eventually, Flock will just go bankrupt, the pieces will get bought up and either sold to a competitor or the VC that buys them will change the name and start a new company that’s basically the same and the executives from Flock will join that or go to competitors. There’s not much use attacking a single company these days. But it is good that attention is being brought to the technology in use and how the government is using it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Adobe to offer free access to AI tools in Saudi Arabia in $4 billion deal⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I mean all of their products are subscription based and this is only a 1 year subscription. They’re just giving away a free trial to open up a new market is all. Not really big news. If they were making it free for the life of the product, that might be a bigger deal.

  But yeah, also F* SA.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Employee revolt and failing agents forced Meta to scrap its AI layoff plan⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Wish my company held off. So few with any experience left and “AI” not only isn’t going to replace an experienced engineer, only junior ones really, but the things I work on are proprietary and so “AI” has no way to understand them much less interact with them or deal with the proprietary devops, upgrades, migrations, etc. There’s basically 4 people left doing the jobs that used to belong to 20. Sure “AI” is a useful timesaver oncenin a while, but it can’t replace thinking, actually intelligent people, much less all of their experience that’s not documented anywhere for “AI” to even learn it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨As Ubuntu embraces AI, Debian discusses banning all AI-generated code⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Yeah and when teachers or employers use it to reject things outright, it’s really dumb. But if it’s presented as a probability to the user rather than a binary like most LLM results are presented to users, then it is useful. If something has a high probability of being LLM generated then it can cast suspicion and investigation can happen. Unlike how things like facial recognition are used to prove guilt without any investigation when the probability of a match is low, but no better matches were found and the police aren’t told it’s low probability because then the product would look useless in solving crimes for them which is what they want in a product, not an investigation tool. That’s not what they were sold.

  Point being. It’s a tool. It’s a metric. And used as such it can be helpful if all of a developer’s contributions get flagged as high probability, then looking more closely at the code can be warranted. If only LLMs themselves were configured to tell the user how probable that their answer is correct, it wouldn’t even be an issue needing investigation.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨As Ubuntu embraces AI, Debian discusses banning all AI-generated code⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  There are “signatures” that can be detected in code just like universities detect it in student work, online stores detect it in reviews they compensate people for, and some employers detect it in resumes and cover letters.

  That said it doesn’t detect it all, and it does rely on the developer to be honest. But it’s also a good indicator when reviewers post questions to the developer and they can’t answer them because they don’t understand the code and things like that. Also, if the developer did not follow coding standards, which LLMs can sometimes have trouble with. And there’s always been malicious code submissions in open source software, so there are other ways.

  Anyway, it’s more of a policy discussion at this point, and why LLM generated code is bad. I use them for manipulating data, figuring out syntax, and getting examples, but there are always problems with anything they generate, so I never would allow one to write any production bound code. I see use in the technology, but it’s not creative and it doesn’t understand what it’s writing so it can’t write code with consequences in mind. So it can write Jr level code, but not solid code, at least not without being properly trained on only well written code, and that proper training would be too expensive for an LLM company to actually do it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Amazon shuts down Mechanical Turk: Why Jeff Bezos once called it ‘artificial artificial intelligence’⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Yeah, gotta keep your employees poor so they can’t afford to leave no matter how badly they’re treated.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Amazon shuts down Mechanical Turk: Why Jeff Bezos once called it ‘artificial artificial intelligence’⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Too bad LLM “AI” can’t pick up the slack which is the whole reason it was still around and so active.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨U.S. Citizen Who Deleted Phone’s Data Says His Prosecution Puts Privacy at Risk⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Oh, yeah, but at least the courts would intervene back then. Now many of the courts have been corrupted and the ones that haven’t are bound by precedent which the supreme court no longer obeys and courts above them that are corrupted. So these specific interpretations are becoming more and more common and not just against poor people who can’t afford lawyers.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Ads and tracking infiltrated TVs. Now they're coming for monitors.⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I got a smart TV because the dumb ones were more expensive. But I’d never do that with a monitor. A monitor is not meant to be interacted with directly. Just display what the computer says to display. The computer is all that should be running software besides basic firmware for adjusting overall settings like brightness and contrast which computer OSes don’t have enough information to do most of the time. But that’s it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨U.S. Citizen Who Deleted Phone’s Data Says His Prosecution Puts Privacy at Risk⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  The current administration has stated that even for US Citizens, border entry suspends all constitutional rights. They’ve also said they believe this applies to allow warrantless searches within 100 miles of a border, which includes most major US cities, thus allowing ICE to search and kidnap basically anyone, not just immigrants. And they have stated that searching an electronic device is not a “search” as mentioned in the 4th Amendment and so you can’t refuse to unlock the device or “destroy evidence”. And that once you give them that access, that you have also “freely given” them access to your private social media, bank, etc., records and so those no longer require a warrant to access. And it’s “gun to the head” tactics because they also believe they can detain you indefinitely in the 100 mile zone without a lawyer or any other usual rights, because you aren’t being arrested, just an extended interview or whatever they call it. All in the name of terrorism prevention, of course.

  Since they have corrupted the Supreme Court, this has been mostly upheld in various court cases so far. But any legal scholar will tell you it’s nonsense. But that doesn’t matter to authoritarians. They don’t work within the law.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The FTC is cracking down on companies that charge you a "personalized price"⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Disclosure isn’t “cracking down”. I think it’s becoming common knowledge anyway or the FTC would never even go that far, especially the current administration.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Take-Two files subpoenas asking Microsoft and Discord for records in hunt for GTA 6 leaker⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Instead of spending money on improving the product or mitigating the impact technologically.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨One In Five Drivers Switches Off The Safety Tech Meant To Save Their Lives⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  For me at least, and I love cool tech, so it has to be broken or too costly (in terms of money or privacy) for me not to use it:

  Adaptive cruise control: I live in a medium sized city and there’s rarely a case where I don’t have to be extremely quick to react to people who are aggressive and dangerous, so I need to change speed way too often for it to be useful. But even driving outside the city it’s rare that there are any significant stretches of road where there aren’t people camping in the left lane and causing lots of big groups of cars piling up together. And many highways don’t have enough long stretches of straight road. So it’s rare to be able to drive long enough stretches where I’m of constantly turning it off and on.

  Lane keeping: mine only works over 45 and so only on highways outside the city mostly or for short stretches inside the city. I do turn it on most of the time. But it has one really major flaw. If you’re driving in the right lane and come to an exit and there’s even the slightest bend in the road, it’s about a 50/50 chance that it’s not going to try to pull me off the exit and scream at me when I stop it from doing that. Also, the safety feature that determines the person has their hands on the wheel gets tripped if you hold the wheel in one place for too long. In the places I most would find it useful like long stretches of straight highway, it’s constantly complaining and shutting itself off thinking I’m not holding the wheel just because I’m going straight the whole time.

  Automatic braking: mine doesn’t actually brake, just screams at you and flashed a huge warning. Problem is it triggers when someone is turning and will be out of my way significantly before I get there because I don’t tailgate, so there’s no need to slow. Or it will suddenly trigger when there’s an odd narrow shadow across the road from something above the road like a pedestrian bridge, and it mistakes that for a car or something. Haven’t figured that one out. It’s not too common, but the fact that the car has both camera and radar my wild guess is on hotter days, the areas of asfalt in the shade are giving off less heat and possibly the air above has slightly different density than the areas in the sun. Wild guess though, but if the car did have auto braking, it would be braking randomly for no reason and causing accidents or near accidents too often.

  Voice assistants: screw LLMs

  Augmented reality: I don’t have that, but I might understand that being a distraction. I’m ADHD so I’m not sure how that would affect my distraction especially commuting when I’m too tired or not enough stimulants in my system.

  Massaging seats seem possibly distracting or too relaxing which then causes distraction. I don’t have it, but font blame buying a car with some feature and not using it since a lot of cars have packages of features and it might not be an option to not have that but still have some other useful feature like heated seats. I do love my heated seats in winter so if it was both or neither I’d choose both and ignore the massage feature.

  Remote start: I’d be afraid of opening it up to theft vulnerabilities and I don’t like wasting gas and generating pollution for some minor convenience.

  Backup cameras: I use mine in the daylight, but there’s no night vision so the quality is really poor at night if there’s not street lighting or if there’s too much glare from a bright light, basically useless in a lot of conditions.

  Driving Mode: I think this refers to the modes that change the sensitivity of brakes, acceleration, power steering, struts, etc. My partner’s car has 3 modes and I can definitely see switching being distracting. It would be like getting used to driving three different cars. Just choose one and use that. Might be useful if it’s an off road mode that increases the shock absorption and gives more torque while off road and gives more “feel of the road” while on well paves roads.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Scientist says RAM pricing has risen to normalized 2007 levels, AI shortage undid 20 years of progress in a matter of months — memory prices had been falling exponentially for decades⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  And it’s all fake since neither the demand nor the supply exists, it’s all future promises to buy/sell what get manufactured. As soon as the data centers collapse and cancel their orders, the prices will plummet if no new fad takes it’s place. One of many ripples this bubble pop is going to trigger since so much is based on lies and promises not supply and demand.