jdashg (u/jdashg) - Readit News

jdashg commented on Meta accessed women's health data from Flo app without consent, says court malwarebytes.com/blog/new... · Posted by u/amarcheschi

dehrmann · 10 days ago

Not at Facebook, but I used to work on an ML system that took well-defined and free-form JSON data and ran ML on it. Both were used in training and classification. Unless a human looked, we had no idea what those custom fields were. We also had customers lie about what the fields represent for valid and less valid reasons.

Without knowing how it works at Facebook, it's quite possible the data points got slurped in, the models found meaning in the data and acted on it, and no human knew anything about it.

jdashg · 9 days ago

How it happened internally is irrelevant to whether Facebook is responsible. Deploying systems they do not properly control or understand does not shield against legal or normal responsibilities!

There is a trail of people who signed off on this implementation. It is the fault of one or more people, not machines.

jdashg commented on Ask HN: How do you tune your personality to get better at interviews? · Posted by u/_swfb

merth · 10 days ago

Because of these "digital footprint checks" now nobody can truly say what they want online. Either you have to put on a fake persona or just go completely silent. It’s self-censorship in disguise. Dead Internet Theory confirmed.

jdashg · 9 days ago

Once upon a time, we were told not to share our real name or personal info online with strangers. That remains wisdom!

jdashg commented on Visa and Mastercard: The global payment duopoly (2024) quartr.com/insights/edge/... · Posted by u/bilekas

greenavocado · a month ago

This is the wrong question to ask. The right question to ask is what is preventing other payment processors from seamlessly getting in front of the customer, at every retail location, and online? If other payment processors existed and were allowed to flourish, we would not give a damn if these two blocked 90% of transaction types. Instead, something is suffocating innovation and personal freedom.

jdashg · a month ago

Network effects and moats, sadly.

jdashg commented on A.I. is prompting an evolution, not extinction, for coders nytimes.com/2025/02/20/bu... · Posted by u/mikhael

jdashg · 6 months ago

I always thought hacking scenes in sci-fi were unrealistic, but if you're cooking up AI-fortified code lasagna at your endpoints, there are going to be a mishmash of vulnerabilities: Expert robust thought will be spread very thin by the velocity that systemic forces push developers to.

jdashg commented on C++ String Conversion: Exploring std:from_chars in C++17 to C++26 cppstories.com/2018/12/fr... · Posted by u/jandeboevrie

nmeofthestate · 10 months ago

A pointer parameter can be null and it doesn't make sense for this parameter to be null, so IMO a reference is the better choice here.

A non-const reference is just as clear a signal that the parameter may be modified as a non-const pointer. If there's no modification const ref should be used.

jdashg · 10 months ago

It's about clarity of intent at the call site. Passing by mutable ref looks like `foo`, same as passing by value, but passing mutability of a value by pointer is textually readably different: `&foo`. That's the purpose of the pass by pointer style.

You could choose to textually "tag" passing by mutable ref by passing `&foo` but this can rub people the wrong way, just like chaining pointer outvars with `&out_foo`.

jdashg commented on From GLSL to WGSL: the future of shaders on the Web (2021) dmnsgn.me/blog/from-glsl-... · Posted by u/rossant

jsheard · a year ago

> All around change for the sake of change.

More like change for the sake of politics, Apple didn't want to use any Khronos IP so the WebGPU committee had to work backwards to justify inventing something new from scratch, despite the feedback from potential users being overwhelmingly against doing that.

Then after sending the spec on a multi-year sidequest to develop a shader language from scratch, Apple still hasn't actually shipped WebGPU in Safari, despite Google managing to ship it across multiple platforms over a year ago. Apple only needs to support Metal.

jdashg · 10 months ago

> the WebGPU committee had to work backwards to justify

Do you mean to allege "[the Apple delegates to] the WebGPU committee"? Because the committee as a whole has a ton of public minutes that show how strident the opposition to this was. (Probably filed under "This is not a place of honor" :)) I don't even want to re-read what I said at the time. No one involved, literally no one, is happy about that chapter, believe me. We are happy to be shipping something, though.

jdashg commented on From GLSL to WGSL: the future of shaders on the Web (2021) dmnsgn.me/blog/from-glsl-... · Posted by u/rossant

vetinari · a year ago

Google and Mozilla are also pretty slow. Google still doesn't support it on more than some SoCs on their own Android, leaving the bulk of the market unsupported, never mind Linux. Mozilla also got lost somewhere.

jdashg · 10 months ago

It is not easy to write a safe and robust intermediate graphics driver from scratch that is secure and runs everywhere, even as the spec continues to change in response to implementation experience.

jdashg commented on US couple blocked from suing Uber after crash: daughter agreed Uber Eats terms theguardian.com/us-news/2... · Posted by u/ggm

al_borland · a year ago

I’m not even sure why the issue is around arbitration. I just pulled up there TOS[0], and in section 8 is has verbiage that frees them from any and all liability. IANAL, but this seems like pretty standard stuff I’d expect from any car service, where they aren’t responsible for injury or death.

> UBER SHALL NOT BE LIABLE FOR … PERSONAL INJURY OR DEATH … RESULTING FROM ANY USE OF THE SERVICES, REGARDLESS OF THE NEGLIGENCE

Arbitration or in a court, where is their case when this is in the TOS?

[0] https://www.uber.com/legal/en/document/?name=general-terms-o...

jdashg · a year ago

TOSs aren't nearly as binding as you would think, particularly if a reasonable person would click "agree" yet not at least roughly understand the terms. A general "You release the company from even negligent liability" is just sovereign-citizen-like wishful thinking. This is part of why they include this classic:

> If any provision of these Terms is held to be invalid or unenforceable, such provision shall be struck and the remaining provisions shall be enforced to the fullest extent under law.

jdashg commented on USPS' long-awaited new mail truck makes its debut to rave reviews from carriers apnews.com/article/postal... · Posted by u/achristmascarl

ortusdux · a year ago

Here is the original environmental impact study from USPS - https://uspsngdveis.com/documents/USPS%20NGDV%20Draft%20EIS....

"14.7 miles per gallon (mpg) (without air conditioning) 8.6 mpg (with air conditioning)"

The same document estimates off the shelf commercial right hand drive vehicles averaging 6.3 mpg if used fleet-wide.

jdashg · a year ago

Same MPG but now with AC is a huge win!

jdashg commented on Why VR Games Still Haven't Taken Off spectrum.ieee.org/vr-game... · Posted by u/WaitWaitWha

grumbel · a year ago

Meta is working on that with their Codec Avatars[1], but since their focus is on affordable self contained VR headsets, and PCVR support is all but abandoned, they'll likely remain R&D experiments for quite a few more years. They just don't have enough compute in their current hardware offering.

Apple with their VisionPro is quite a bit further along and their Persona[2] are available to consumer, though the price tag of the device puts it out of reach for almost everybody.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SDxMZ9zjqMs

[2] https://youtu.be/H3PB2zA6Q-c?si=E_OU1WeF4tsqhpTR&t=288

jdashg · a year ago

I'm too much of a transhumanist to understand why, when you can choose to look like anything you could imagine, you would choose to look like your default human self!