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thefurdrake commented on OpenAI drops ban on military tools to partner with The Pentagon   semafor.com/article/01/16... · Posted by u/mfiguiere
Narishma · 2 years ago
Let's just hope it doesn't turn into the Horizon- or Terminator-type of AI powered drones.
thefurdrake · 2 years ago
This is feeling somewhat inevitable.

There are a nonzero number of highly-intelligent individuals capable of developing weapons tech AND AI/ML who are also 100% Dead Certain nothing could go wrong because they're super clever and would never fuck up and create skynet.

... I don't think it'll be a skynet situation, though. Less global domination and more "Someone activated the autonomous systems and [lost control, had control subverted, entered the wrong command, deployed ansible wrong, uploaded CCID ssh key to github], and now we have lingering munitions and angry turrets everywhere". What we have brewing is what happens when you upgrade "Minefield" on the tech tree too far.

thefurdrake commented on GTA 5 actor goes nuclear on AI company that made a voice chatbot of him   pcgamer.com/gta-5-actor-g... · Posted by u/pavel_lishin
seoulmetro · 2 years ago
This is how industrial factories work though. Instead of things like pottery, food and such being crafted it's now just bog standard and crappy. There are benefits in bog standard and crappy though.
thefurdrake · 2 years ago
There are no benefits to bog-standard, crappy replacements for genuine human-crafted creative products.

Period.

These tools should be applied to solving real problems. Instead, they're being used to solve nonproblems like "how can creatively-bankrupt but affluent parasites extract more money from human creativity while paying as few other human beings as possible?".

It's gross, and it's also pathetic, because the models aren't even /there/ yet. They're certainly gonna get there, but I can't help but feel my future is being robbed at the behest of people who want to remove humans from humanity, rather than remove humans from mundanity, and all we're going to end up with is a pile of statistically-average mediocrity.

thefurdrake commented on YouTube did not slow down adblock users. Adblock devs admit to problem   neowin.net/news/adblock-g... · Posted by u/TechSquidTV
Workaccount2 · 2 years ago
Youtube gets hate literally because they have tolerated ad-block for so many years. People are pissed that YouTube is getting sick of serving them free content.
thefurdrake · 2 years ago
Yeah, sorry, this feels like a strawman. The adblock issue is only the most recent and exciting of the multitudinous pile of suck Youtube has been generating the last 5 years or so.

The content discovery genuinely sucks. Being forcefed tiktok cancer content (shorts) and needing to install plugins to remove that shit from /my/ browsing experience is asinine. I just checked Blocktube, too: I have 1012 blocked channels, and the list constantly grows, because their "algorithm" is less competent than their search function somehow, and I'm constantly shown bullshit I'm not interested in. If blocktube couldn't programmatically block all videos with <1k views or <120 seconds of content, that blocklist would be at least twice as large.

So what is this delightful, friendly, relaxing experience worth to me?

Zero. $0. Nil. Nul. Null. 0. False.

I will pay them nothing and continue using their resources to the detriment of the multinational megacorp until it becomes more difficult than `yt-dlp $url`, after which I will replace their valueless time-wasting experience with something else.

Because their product (trying to recreate cable television) has no value beyond wasting my time.

And to head off the "But muh creators" argument:

I don't care. Between having to install plugins to remove ads AND being forced to constantly watched 2+minute inline sponsorship ads (which I tolerate a single time, after which they're skipped; I already know about the product and I'm not interested), I just don't care anymore. I will not be advertised to constantly. I will not comply. I haven't watched cable TV since 2006, and I'm not about to start now.

thefurdrake commented on Reddit must share IP addresses of piracy-discussing users, film studios say   arstechnica.com/tech-poli... · Posted by u/isaacfrond
i8comments · 2 years ago
There is already illegal speech.
thefurdrake · 2 years ago
And discussing piracy isn't it.
thefurdrake commented on US to hospitals: Meet security standards or no federal money   theregister.com/2024/01/1... · Posted by u/elorant
BillyTheMage · 2 years ago
How bad is it working in InfoSec for a hospital? Anyone have experience?
thefurdrake · 2 years ago
Egregiously bad. Remember wannacry?
thefurdrake commented on GTA 5 actor goes nuclear on AI company that made a voice chatbot of him   pcgamer.com/gta-5-actor-g... · Posted by u/pavel_lishin
yifanl · 2 years ago
I'm resigned that it was all inevitable, but also just upset that we spent all this effort learning to automate away the parts of life that are actually interesting first.

How did people decide that writing and art and music and theatre were the things that we needed to automate out? Especially with these fields, it's not even about removing drudgery - the very process of creating is the interesting part!

thefurdrake · 2 years ago
It has also been super gross to me to watch these infant technologies be thrown at removing humans from creative tasks. The whole point was supposed to be to automate the mundane, boring bullshit so we could do more things involving higher thought, not less.
thefurdrake commented on Verizon to keep charging controversial fee despite $100M settlement   arstechnica.com/tech-poli... · Posted by u/kurthr
toast0 · 2 years ago
Zip codes aren't specific enough to determine tax rates. Zip codes are assigned by the post office to facilitate delivery of mail, not to determine which taxing districts an address belongs in. You really need the whole address sometimes. Because the city name on the mailing address often indicates the city, but not always. And some taxing districts don't follow city boundaries anyway. And you need a process to handle exceptions, because boundaries are complex and sometimes mistakes are made.
thefurdrake · 2 years ago
Fair enough! However...

I'm still not seeing why that experience requires an account, so while this response is academically interesting, it doesn't actually address the purpose of my comment. Any reason why these calculations can't be performed without an account? Any reason why needing to enter the street address is functionally different from needing to enter the zipcode for this functionality, or were you just attempting to add detail/nuance?

thefurdrake commented on Verizon to keep charging controversial fee despite $100M settlement   arstechnica.com/tech-poli... · Posted by u/kurthr
jjeaff · 2 years ago
I agree that taxes need to be applied separately so the public knows how much they are paying in taxes. Also, if you required including the tax, it would not be possible for most sites to advertise any prices without the user creating an account, providing their shipping address and logging in, since tax rates vary by country, county, even municipality.
thefurdrake · 2 years ago
Please explain in excruciating detail the need for an account to provide a single input box for zip code to just calculate fees? I need a serious breakdown of the logic behind this position, because from where I'm sitting, it seems to me like you could determine someone's "country, county, even municipality" with that single piece of data and no more.
thefurdrake commented on LG washing machine sending 3.7GB of data a day   tomshardware.com/networki... · Posted by u/monkburger
cyclotron3k · 2 years ago
Yes, but if it's behind a NAT gateway, how is it going to get the initial infection? I know there are ways, but realistically none of them make sense in this context.
thefurdrake · 2 years ago
Yeah, you'd need someone on the network to be doing something like browsing the internet and coming across a malicious website capable of making requests to other nodes on the local network, or downloading something that gives an attacker userspace access to scan the local network.

Those situations strike me as super rare, unlikely, and unrealistic, too.

thefurdrake commented on Open-Source AI Is Uniquely Dangerous   spectrum.ieee.org/open-so... · Posted by u/redbell
thefurdrake · 2 years ago
"Unsecured AI" is the "Ghost Gun" of AI control now, I guess? We're inventing new terms for the AI models people can run on their own without the involvement of a megacorp? Nice narrative.

Sorry, IEEE, but just putting a disclaimer about it being a guest post doesn't reduce the amount of respect I've lost for you.

u/thefurdrake

KarmaCake day724December 15, 2022View Original