ricecake

I believe their point was that even encrypted messages convey data. So if you have a record of all the encrypted messages, you can still tell who was talking, when they were talking, and approximately how much they said, even if you can't read the messages.

If you wait until someone is gone and then loudly raid their house, you don't need to read their messages to guess the content of what they send to people as soon as they find out. Now you know who else you want to target, despite not being able to read a single message.

This type of metadata analysis is able to reveal a lot about what's being communicated. It's why private communication should be ephemeral, so that only what's directly intercepted can be scrutinized.

I hardly think the scene in the movie with people openly weeping and retching seeing footage from the bombings is part of the movie "glossing over" the human effects of the bombs. It's just not what the movie was about.

As for the general public, you can't just expect people to never have a sense of humor about something ever for all time, particularly when it's something that can occupy a significant and impactful sense of brain space.
It's how people relieve some of the emotional tension of a heavy topic. It's why we had COVID jokes and memes, and it's why in the past you saw a lot more nuke humor. There was an omnipresent specter of "there's a weapon that can kill everyone, it can kill us at any moment, we keep building more, and I'm utterly powerless in the face of this fact".

Laughing at the juxtaposition of Oppenheimer and the aesthetic that barbie presents requires an understanding of the horror of what the man ultimately produced.

Big difference is that a human can be yelled at and told what to do, and we currently don't have a good way for someone to do that with an autonomous vehicle.

Brian Acton is the only billionaire I can think of that hasn't been a net negative.

Co-founded WhatsApp, which became popular with few employees. Sold the service at a reasonable rate.
Sold the business for a stupid large sum of money, and generously compensated employees as part of the buyout.
Left the buying company, Facebook, rather than do actions he considered unethical, at great personal expense ($800M).

Proceeded to cofound signal, which is an open, and privacy focused messaging system which he has basically bankrolled while it finds financial stability.

He also has been steadily giving away most of his money to charitable causes.

Billionaires are bad because they get that way by exploiting some combination of workers, customers or society.
In the extremely unlikely circumstance where a handful of people make something fairly priced that nearly everybody wants, and then uses the wealth for good, there's nothing intrinsically wrong with being that person.
Selling messaging to a few billion people for $1 a lifetime is a way to do that.

I mean, if they want to make it more enticing, go for it. Just leave me the option to not be enticed.

My workplace lets everyone work from home or an office as they see fit. Some people need different things to work best. Some people miss the face-to-face that they used to get in the office, so management put together monthly "we're catering lunch, and teams are encouraged to plan whatever activities they think might work better in office for this day, but make sure it's optional".

So once a month I go and get some free food, and we do some face to face planning which benefits a bit from being together, and last month the team hung out and chatted for a bit after work, which was nice.

If management wants people in office, I'd much rather they try to make that happen by making being in office worth it, as opposed to telling people they have to or else. Carrot > stick.

Look at their actions, not their words specifically.

It's a culture where being unkind is particularly unacceptable, not specifically where you're not allowed to be honest or forthright.

You're allowed to not like someone, but telling someone you dislike them is needlessly unkind, so you just politely decline to interact with them.
You'd "hate to intrude", or "be a bother". If it's pushed, you'll "consider it and let them know".

Negative things just have to be conveyed in the kindest way possible, not that they can't be conveyed.

Imagine being able to recall the important parts of a movie, it's overall feel, and significant themes and attributes after only watching it one time.

That's significantly closer to what current AI models do. It's not copyright infringement that there are significant chunks of some movies that I can play back in my head precisely. First because memory being owned by someone else is a horrifying thought, and second because it's not a distributable copy.

Copies that were freely shared for the purpose of letting anyone look at them.

Do you think it's copyright infringement to go to a website?

Typically, ephemeral copies that aren't kept for a substantial period of time aren't considered copyright violations, otherwise viewing a website would be a copyright violation for every image appearing on that site.

Downloading a freely published image to run an algorithm on it and then deleting it without distribution is basically the canonical example of ephemeral.

Keep in mind that a lot of the "bad" of today is just people noticing the bad that's been there all along.

People still make fun colorful content, and we make more of that now than we did in the 90s.
It's just that the hateful angry people didn't have Internet access then, and they do now.

It wasn't considered okay to talk about a lot of problems at the time, and it is now.

The Internet of the 90s is incompatible with billions of people using it.
Once you make Internet access less something that only a small group of relatively privileged people have access to, and less are interested in, and something that a more representative sample of the world can use and want to use, you find out that people more often prioritize sex, cats, banal updates on their friends and family, gossip, and to get it in a easy to absorb package.

Statistically you're unlikely to have lasting issues as a result of getting them removed. It's a very common outpatient procedure.

When you go in, they'll likely give you nitrous oxide, which will make you relax a little, and they'll let you sit and breathe it for a few minutes. I'd recommend bringing headphones since some nice music will help.
Then they'll give you an IV that will make you not worry and likely barely remember what comes next. Basically a big dose of super valium.
Then they'll give you some pain killers and local anesthetic and remove the teeth.

Your memory and orientation will start to come back in about an hour, by which time hopefully the person who transported you has gotten you home. You will not be able to care for yourself during the intervening time. You will be uncoordinated and of poor judgement.

When you get home it's best to try to sleep until the meds that the dentist gave you wear off, or just watch TV. Take ibuprofen or Tylenol mostly, but an occasional opioid will help since there is some pain that the antiinflammatories don't help with as much, although they take care of most of it.
Soft foods for a few days, and no straws.

All in all, you should be back to normal within two weeks, and you'll get to feel nice and excited to eat something crunchy or chewy.

If you've had pain associated with your wisdom teeth, I'd recommend going forward as scheduled. The pain may have gone away temporarily, but it'll come back.
I let mine go too long, and one of the wisdom teeth cracked open because of pressure on it from another tooth, which also damaged that tooth which was fortunately able to be repaired.
The pain from waiting for outstripped the discomfort of the procedure.

Some of the vehicles don't have anyone in them.

https://missionlocal.org/2023/05/waymo-cruise-fire-department-police-san-francisco/

One of the incidents in question.

Depends on your level of security consciousness. If you're relying on security identifiers or apis that need an "intact" system, it certainly can be a security issue if you can't rely of those.

That being said, it's not exactly a plausible risk for most people or apps.

The results were fine, but the work to get there was quite bad quite often.

UX polish is one of those things that just isn't as fun to do, and isn't as rewarding either. So pumping a bunch of money into it is going to go a long way towards making all the other hard work come out better.

Not your fault, but it hardly hurts you if your coworker is being asked to work an hour more than you are.

In some ways, it helps you because you would be more valuable, because you cost less.

So, a lot of the replies are highlighting how this is "nightmare fuel".
I'll try to provide insight into the "not nightmare" parts.

The proposal is for how to share this information between parties, and they call out that they're specifically envisioning it being between the operating system and the website. This makes it browser agnostic in principle.

Most security exploits happen either because the users computer is compromised, or a sensitive resource, like a bank, can't tell if they're actually talking to the user.
This provides a mechanism where the website can tell that the computer it's talking to is actually the one running the website, and not just some intermediate, and it can also tell if the end computer is compromised without having access to the computer directly.

The people who are claiming that this provides a mechanism for user tracking or leaks your browsing history to arrestors are perhaps overreacting a bit.

I work in the software security sector, specifically with device management systems that are intended to ensure that websites are only accessed by machines managed by the company, and that they meet the configuration guidelines of the company for a computer accessing their secure resources.

This is basically a generalization of already existing functionality built into Mac, windows, Android and iPhones.

Could this be used for no good? Sure. Probably will be.
But that doesn't mean that there aren't legitimate uses for something like this and the authors are openly evil.
This is a draft of a proposal, under discussion before preliminary conversations happen with the browser community.

With the spiderman games, I almost always swing around instead of using fast travel. I'll do the little tricks and stuff too.

They did such a good job making the basic traversal mechanism satisfying that it's almost weird they included fast travel.

I'm not sure I agree with your mortgage insurance example.

The problem isn't record keeping, but answering the question "if you use an asset as collateral for a loan to purchase that asset, what happens to the loan if the purchase is invalidated"?

Block chain might make title searches easier, but it wont have any impact whatsoever on the existence of a legal system that can independently audit and invalidate contracts after the fact.

The asset isn't digital, so ownership can't be enforced digitally.
The current system is a pile of digital databases and paper records that need to be checked before sales can happen. Actual questions or disputes are handled by the courts. Block chain can't change that, only change the underlying way we store the data.

The question to me is how you define what the AI is doing in a way that isn't hilariously overbroad to the point of saying "Disney can copyright the style of having big eyes and ears", or "computers can't analyze images".

Any law expanding copyright protections will be 90% used by large IP holders to prevent small creators from doing anything.

What exactly should be protected that isn't?

It might have none, or it might turn out to have some unexpected application way down the line.

The fun part about basic mathematics research is that sometimes it suddenly just perfectly solves some other problem hundreds of years later.

Like that time in the 1800s a guy figured out a solution to a 350 year old problem, and then in the 90s we realized that it was a description of particle physics and all the math had just been sitting there waiting.

That might just be a growing up near water thing. I think that on average, Canadians live closer to larger bodies of water than Americans do, since more than half are within day trip distance of the great lakes waterway, and then there's Halifax and Vancouver.

Growing up in a place with water, basically everyone I know also has at least a passing knowledge of recreational small watercraft.

You said it yourself. You're drawing Micky mouse in a new pose, so you're copying Mickey mouse.

Drawing a cartoon in the style of Mickey mouse isn't the same thing.

You can't have a copyright on "big oversized smile, exaggerated posture, large facial features, oversized feet and hands, rounded contours and a smooth style of motion".

Where do you see it telling you you need precise location to see emergency alerts?

Your phone has two sets of things that could be called "emergency alerts". One is the emergency alert system that's controlled by the government and managed by your phone company. That one doesn't require precise location.
The other is "crisis alerts" which is Google basically running a search for crisis near you and then telling you. This one may require more precise location.

It's entirely possible for your phone to just not get the cell network based alert. You can be connected to a tower outside of the alert area while someone right next to you is connected to one inside. Or you can just not get it because cell communications are imperfect. The issuer will typically resend several times to try to ensure it gets through to people, but it's not perfect.

That's an interesting perspective, regarding the question of not just "where you are", but also "how you got there" being something that can factor into what you see as part of your identity.

Closest thing I have is with weight gain and loss. When I get back down to my target weight, I'll still have stretch marks that'll show that I at one point was much larger. If I could just "be" my target weight without the physical evidence of the past, I'd opt for that path, so it's interesting to me to consider that someone might take a different view. :)

We mostly know how they made theirs, and could make our own version of it, but we optimize for different things.
The Romans optimized for "that's cement and it works well", because they didn't have anything close to the level of chemical understanding we do now.
We optimize for strength and predictability. Ours can hold a higher load and will likely need repairing about when we predict.

Roman concrete can sometimes, in certain circumstances and with variable effectiveness, repair certain types of damage by chemically interacting with the environment. So maybe it crumbles in a decade or maybe it lasts a millennium.

Article basically points at some researchers who are looking to see if they can bring that healing capability to modern concrete in a predictable and more versatile fashion.

There's nothing stopping someone from licensing their art in a fashion that prohibits their use in that fashion.
No one has created that license that I know of, but there are software licenses that do similar things, so it's hardly an unprecedented notion.

The fact of the matter is that before people didn't think it was necessary to have specific usage licenses attached to art because no one got funny feelings from people creating derivative works from them.

FDA approval is contingent on so many factors that even if it was entirely open source, including all hardware design and the instructions for assembly, maintenance, and manufature it would be entirely plausible for it to lose approval if the company responsible for continued development went bankrupt.

Without approval, no reputable surgeon will do anything beyond remove it.

A device not having a clear and unambiguously documented path for addressing defects found in the future is more than sufficient reason to lose approval.

Where I live basically every location is some combination of "French, native American, English, Scandinavian", "pronounced natively or not", and "spelled like it's pronounced or not".

The fun ones are the English pronunciation of the French transliteration of the native word.

Michigan already has universal mail in voting for anyone who wants it without cause.
It's nice. You sign up to get sent a ballot for every election if you want, and they just send you one for every election you get to vote in.

Changes the torque and the application of said torque for each bolt. As in "tool head has 5° of give until in place, then in ramps torque to 5nM over half a second, and holds for 1 second and then ramps to zero over .1 seconds", and then something different for the next bolt. Then it logs that it did this for each bolt.
The tool can also be used to measure and correct the bolts as part of an inspection phase, and log the results of that inspection.
Finally, it tracks usage of the tool and can log that it needs maintenance or isn't working correctly even if it's just a subtle failure.

I guess I don't see how a surgeon being unwilling to do maintenance on a non-FDA approved medical device is fucked up.
If it fails to meet the criteria for being safely used in a medical context, it's irresponsible to try to maintain it.

In my experience it's perfectly common.

This is already a thing we need to deal with, security wise. An application making use of encryption doesn't know the condition of what it views as ram, and it could very well be transferred to a durable medium due to memory pressure. Same thing with hibernation as opposed to suspension.

Depending on your application and how sensitive it is, there are different steps you can take to deal with stuff like that.

If you have an unutilized asset, there's pressure to get rid of it for the cost savings.
If you sell your asset at a loss, it looks bad for you and the company. Same for paying cancelation fees.

If you legitimately think that you're going to need that space in the future, for example because you think that we'll find an equilibrium between "everyone work from office" and where we are now, and that we're trending towards an organic level of office need/desire higher than we're at now, you might see selling now as the first step to needing to buy again later, likely for higher than you sold for. So you try to "mandate" the equilibrium that you expect so you're not in a position to have to explain why you're holding onto a dead and losing value property.

Executives spend a lot of time talking to people and having meetings. The job selects for people who thrive on and value face to face communication. Naturally, they overestimate how much that social aspect of the job is true for everyone else, so they estimate that the equilibrium will have a lot more office time than other people would.
To make it worse, the more power you have to influence that decision, the more likely you are to have a similar bias.

This isn't an excuse of course, since you can overcome that bias simply by telling teams to discuss what their ideal working arrangement would be, and then running a survey. Now you have data, and you can use it to try to scale offices to what you actually want.

In this case however, Janelle Shane is actually quite well aware of how different types of AI works. She writes about them, how they work and their various limitations.

Her blog is just focused on cases of them acting oddly, or not how you would expect , or just "funny".

I feel like how you're describing it makes it sound more complicated than it is.

All employees are required to make minimum wage.
If your tips don't take you over minimum wage, your employer has to pay the difference.

So tips given before you get to minimum wage just reduce how much your boss needs to spend to make up the difference. Once you get there, your boss has to pay you at least some very small quantity and the tips increase your take-home

It's a stupid system and exploitative, but it's not as "wink wink nudge nudge" as you made it sound.

That's sorta the point of it.
I can recreate the phrase "apple pie" in any number of styles and fonts using my hands and a writing tool. Would you say that I "contain" the phrase "apple pie"? Where is the letter 'p' in my brain?

Specifically, the AI contains the relationship between sets of words, and sets of relationships between lines, contrasts and colors.
From there, it knows how to take a set of words, and make an image that proportionally replicates those line pattern and color relationships.

You can probably replicate the Getty images watermark close enough for it to be recognizable, but you don't contain a copy of it in the sense that people typically mean.
Likewise, because you can recognize the artist who produced a piece, you contain an awareness of that same relationship between color, contrast and line that the AI does. I could show you a Picasso you were unfamiliar with, and you'd likely know it was him based on the style.
You've been "trained" on his works, so you have internalized many of the key markers of his style. That doesn't mean you "contain" his works.

Oh, it's definitely interesting.
I think people here just got rubbed the wrong way because these articles often make it seem like Roman concrete is better than ours, rather than "look what they accidentally did occasionally".

We can make self healing concrete today, we just usually opt not to, because the downsides or unpredictable nature makes it unsuitable for the significant cost increase.
The phrase "the bridge is infested with bacterial spore colonies" isn't one that makes engineers happy.

Sure, I suppose. Or just don't expand the system until there's some measure of system in place to keep the AI cars from fucking around in emergency situations.

So, I think the thing to do is to let workers talk frankly with their immediate supervisor and they're team mates, and then let people decide for themselves where they would work best from. Weirdly, most people don't go to work with the intent to do a bad job and can be trusted to make that choice for themselves.

That being said, there are some legitimate reasons why some people want a return to office that extend beyond the "butts in seats means productivity" and "people will realize I'm not providing value if we work from home" that a lot of people jump to immediately.

Some professions benefit a lot from face to face communication and coordination. The job can be done remotely, but it's a lot more work. Because rather than accidentally coordinating, you have to be deliberate with every interaction. Wfh has led to a lot less idea spread between teams in those areas, and often there's little idea about how to promote "so I was talking with Jan on the other team, and we had this idea..." Outside of making it so people can randomly talk to one another.

Some businesses have significant investments in their office space. If they're not using it the pressure to divest from an unneeded asset is strong. Because everyone has this pressure, they might lose significant money selling at a loss, or as a penalty for breaking the lease.
If they believe that the wfh trend will slow and possibly reverse to some degree, then they don't want to sell when it's cheap and be forced to buy when it's expensive again. This is often coupled with the previous point.

The final reason has to do with attachment and people. When people don't see each other, they're less attached to one another. If your job is just a place you quietly work and get paid, there's less human connection stopping you from jumping ship immediately.
You are also slower to adopt the company culture, which aside from bullshit buzzword stuff actually has value as the set of poorly defined social contracts about how the company interacts with customers, and generally "does stuff". The actual company culture that makes you know that project plans go in spread sheets, the project proposal in a text document, and how people expect the documentation wiki to be formatted. What style of gif to use to get a chuckle and make people remember the important bit.
It also creates some difficulties for new entrants to the workforce. A lot of people with little or no office experience have reported a much harder time getting situated without people nearby to lend a hand. That process is much harder if there aren't people nearby, so some people want to encourage more people to come back to let that work better.

In the end, these aren't enough for me to think we should be forcing people back, but they're worth considering and talking about as a company or team.

Heh, well as a nice twist, the will of the Ohio populace is that the constitution is not intended to be the "supreme will" of the people.