hendrik
@hendrik@palaver.p3x.de
- Comment on The TikTok Ban Paradox: How Platform Restrictions Create What They Aim to Prevent 3 days ago:
You have to show your hand at some point
You're right. That's how it works and what makes it effective.
You have a pool of 100M end users and you can whittle that down to 5M potential suspects [...]
It's far worse than that. It starts slow. But once they got several distinct factors, those multiply and it goes down fast. Think for example location tracking. There might be 5,000 people around. Or passing a cellphone tower along the highway roughly at a similar time. Then you take a single second measurement, when they head back home. And you got them. It's very unlikely that two or more people pass that point twice at the same time. (Exceptions apply.) Or browser fingerprinting. There are websites where you can check your browser fingerprint. They've always told me mine is unique amongst hundreds of millions of internet users. They only need half a dozen or a dozen or so different factors to narrow it down to one exact person (or device). It's not always like this. But more often than not.
Far easier to [...] running honeypot websites [...]
Yeah, I guess they're not stupid. There are a lot of simple and effective things available. I'd pick the low hanging fruits, too. That's a sound choice.
you do still occasionally see the knock-on effects downstream
Sure. I'm not an expert on this. I have to look up most things you said. But US foreign policy sure had it's positive and negative consequences. For a lot of countries, in the middle east and all around the world.
These systems work hand-in-glove [...]
I'm pretty sure that's not a conspiracy or intended. But yes, a lot of that is consequential. Or symbiotic.
- Comment on The TikTok Ban Paradox: How Platform Restrictions Create What They Aim to Prevent 3 days ago:
Well, I don't think total surveillance is necessarily about blackmailing or something as direct. It's a broad way to assert and keep control. Control of everything. Force people to behave how you like, bend them to your will and to subjugate somebody.
You don't really need to blackmail them... Spreading fear uncertainty and doubt will get you a long way. And why even bother with facts to blackmail someone? You could as well make something up. If you're in total control, that's enough to make someone's life miserable.
We're not there, yet.
But it's been 10 years now since PRISM and Snowden. Even back then they were able to process a good chunk of the internet. The NSA has a massive datacenter somewhere in Utah, with god knows how many exabytes of storage. It's probably not gotten better since then. And they don't need to intercept every single packet from every device. Random sampling and collecting and processing as much stuff as they can, will do for a lot of use-cases. And every bit of knowledge, every fact they know (and process) makes them smarter and gets them ahead of the situation and in control. And naturally, that'll be an insatiable thirst for information. Of course they always want more. More processing power etc.
I think at this point it's more some ominous danger, lurking at us. Maybe they just don't like to reveal they've read and stored every single one of my e-mails. Maybe it's better for them to just keep silent.
I'm postive they can't collect everything. But it'll still be a large-scale overcollection. Because no one stopped them since 2013. And I'm not a conspiracy theorist. I'm pretty sure encryption works. And there are means of private communication. But it's really hard to avoid metadata. And using modern electronics. If you're carrying a mobile phone, they'll know your location 24/7. And that's enough to invade privacy. And I -personally- know like 2 people who don't do that.
I also don't think this is the end of porn. And I'd say it's questionable if "they" are even opposed to it. That's just the (too many) religious bigots. But they don't wield enough power to enforce a prohibition on internet porn.
- Comment on The TikTok Ban Paradox: How Platform Restrictions Create What They Aim to Prevent 3 days ago:
there's only so much you can do without completely rooting the device
I mean you could just install Signal instead of WhatsApp. Takes literally the same effort.
I get your point. It's valid. I still think it's not going to happen. It'll be either to complicated, or there will be other brain-rot content available someplace else. Or it's going to be the boiling frog syndrome. One tiny freedom after another will dissapear. Maybe there's still porn on xhamster available. So it's not that big a deal. And nobody will notice the subtle change. And one day it'll just be the world without porn, free speech, but with total surveillance. I really believe we can get there without any uprising if we make the steps small enough.
We'll see. As I said, I'm not overly enthusiastic. But it's speculation and I might be wrong.
- Comment on The TikTok Ban Paradox: How Platform Restrictions Create What They Aim to Prevent 3 days ago:
I mean the VPN providers themselves (at least some) have been quite busy promoting their services. For years already. NordVPN ads run on TV, at times every other Youtube video was "sponsored by NordVPN". So people should know about their existence.
But... It would be a massive surprise to me if the average user was going to change their habits. I've been telling people constantly not to give their flashlight app access to contacts, location and full administrator privileges. Told them to pay attention to their freedom and maybe not sell their soul to big tech if there's nice and lovely mail providers which have a foot massage ready for you for $1 a month. People don't care and they won't listen. They'll ask me "Yeah, but why don't you just WhatsApp and GMail?"
I see no way this is going to change, and they'll now suddenly pick up to fight for their freedom. I think that's a niche for some few Linux nerds. I'd be very happy, though, if I was wrong and they do...
- Comment on The TikTok Ban Paradox: How Platform Restrictions Create What They Aim to Prevent 3 days ago:
Really? They claim various things with a lot of certainty. But all they do is speculate... If it's that obvious, why isn't there any precedent or fact to back it up? I mean comparing it to the situation in a different country, about a different topic is quite a stretch. And to my knowledge, it's not even in place yet. So there shouldn't be any results to compare?!
- Comment on AI-Generated Fake War Images Passed Off as Real 1 week ago:
Yeah, I tried to get that across with my phrasing... I'm not saying we need to change the technology. I mean it's out there and it's too late anyways. Plus it's a tool, and tools can be used for various purposes, and that's not the tool's fault. I'm also not arguing to change how kitchen knifes, axes, etc work, despite them having potential to do harm...
But: It doesn't need to be 100% waterproof or we can't do anything. I'm also not keeping my knife collection on the living room table when a toddler is around. But at the same time I don't need to lock them in a vault... I think we can go 90% the way, help 90% of people and that's better than do nothing because we strive for total perfection... I'm keeping the bleach and knifes somewhere kids can't reach. And we could say the AI services need to filter images of children. (I think they already do.) And put invisible watermarks in place for all AI generated content. If anyone decides to circumvent that, that's on them. But at least we solved the majority of misuse.
And I mean that's already how we do things. For example a spam filter isn't 100% accurate. And we use them nonetheless.
(And I'm just arguing about service providers. That's what the majority of people use. And I think those should be forced to do it. But the models itself should be free. Otherwise, we put a very disruptive technology solely in the hands of some big companies... And if AI is going to change the world as much as people claim, that's bound to lead us into some sci-fi dystopia where the world revolves around the interests of some big corporations... And we don't want that. So we need AI tech to be shaped not just by Meta and OpenAI.)
- Comment on AI-Generated Fake War Images Passed Off as Real 1 week ago:
Yes, that'd be my approach, too. They need to be forced put in digital watermarks so everyone can check if an article is from ChatGPT, or if an image is fake. We could easily do this with regulation and hefty fines. More or less robust watermarks are available and anything would be better than nothing. OpenAI even developed a text watermarking solution. They just don't activate it. (https://www.theverge.com/2024/8/4/24213268/openai-chatgpt-text-watermark-cheat-detection-tool)
Another pet peeve of mine are these "nude" apps that swap faces or generate nude pictures from someones photos. There are services out there that happily generate nudes from children's pictures. I've filed a report with some European CSAM program, after that outcry in Spain where some school kid generated unethical images of their classmates. (Just in case the police doesn't read the news...) And half a year later, that app was still online. I suppose it still is... I really don't know why we allow things like that.
- Comment on AI-Generated Fake War Images Passed Off as Real 1 week ago:
I think there is a fundamental issue with stopping technology. A lot of it is dual-use. You can stab someone with a kitchen knife. Kill someone with an axe. There are legitimate uses for guns... You can use the internet to do evil things. Yet, no one wants to cut their steak with a spoon... I think the same thing applies to AI. It's massively useful to have machine translation at hand, voice recognition. Smartphone cameras, and even smart assistants and chatbots. And I certainly hope they'll help with some of the big issues of the 21st century. I don't think you want to outlaw things like that, unless you're the Amish people.
- Comment on The future of customer service is here, and it's making customers miserable 3 weeks ago:
Welcome to the future...
https://www.wikihow.com/Talk-to-a-Human-when-Calling-a-Business
I'd try pressing numbers on the phone and mumbling and singing indistinguishable things into the microphone. That's the old way of getting connected to a human.
I've also tried telling the chatbot I'm God, and I command it to do as I say. Or 20 cute kittens will die if it doesn't comply. Sadly (and I still don't know why) that did not work.
- Comment on Bluesky is breaking the rules in the EU 3 weeks ago:
Uh, that's a long and convoluted text. Thanks. But the parts you quoted just say they have to disclose information on request. Not have a dedicated website for that.
- Comment on Bluesky is breaking the rules in the EU 3 weeks ago:
All platforms in the EU . . . have to have a dedicated page on their website where it says how many users they have in the EU [...]
Where does it say that?
- Comment on Signal gets new video call features, making it a viable alternative to Zoom, Meet and Teams 5 weeks ago:
So they just added a few buttons?
- Comment on Is an AI winter coming? Diminishing returns and scaling limit fears freeze AGI hopes 5 weeks ago:
To add a bit more background:
We already had two major AI winters: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_winter
More related articles:
- Deep Learning’s Diminishing Returns: The cost of improvement is becoming unsustainable (from 2021)
- Paper: Will we run out of data? Limits of LLM scaling based on human-generated data
- Can AI Scaling Continue Through 2030?
My opinion: We're facing a lot of issues, energy, training data is finite, it might be likely that the current architecture of AI models will hit a ceiling. We already pump in lots of compute for ever diminishing returns. I'm pretty sure that approach won't scale towards AGI.
But it doesn't need to keep growing exponentially to be useful. AI is hyped to no end. And it's a real revenue driver for companies. I'd say the bubble is over-inflated. Some people are bound to get disappointed. And in my eyes it's very likely that it won't keep growing at the current pace of the last two years. And ultimately we'd need to come up with some new inventions if we want AGI. As far as I know that's still utter sci-fi. Nobody knows how to revolutionize AI so it'll suddenly become 100x more intelligent. And it's unlikely that our current approach will get us there. But on the other hand no-one ruled out there is a possibility to do it with a more clever approach.
- Comment on OpenAI launches ChatGPT with Search, taking Google head-on - Ars Technica 1 month ago:
Sure, lets use Bing then.
- Comment on How to Stop Your Data From Being Used to Train AI 2 months ago:
That's about what I do. I get that most people don't have the time and expertise to do it, but I self-host Nextcloud and Matrix chat. Most of my private data isn't on other people's platforms anyways. And I'd pay the small sum for a decent e-mail provider. And apart from that I don't really mind. Whatever I post on social media is there for the public. I don't mind if someone uses it to train AI. The bugreports and code I post on Github is licensed to be used freely. I don't care how it's used, I think using it as training material is kinda alright, since AI (or humans) don't reproduce more than a few lines.
- Comment on Man tricks OpenAI’s voice bot into duet of The Beatles’ “Eleanor Rigby” 2 months ago:
Since when do AI companies care about copyright 😆🙃
- Comment on Man tricks OpenAI’s voice bot into duet of The Beatles’ “Eleanor Rigby” 2 months ago:
Lol. I'm impressed by the timing. But it seems there is a reason why they don't want it to sing 🤗
- Comment on Why we need an AI safety hotline. 2 months ago:
I like than everyone seems to think we're days or weeks away from a ChatGPT 5 release. I've read that claim for months now.
- Comment on Don’t ask if AI can make art — ask how AI can be art 3 months ago:
Long article with some nice thoughts. And I'd add: Art is about exploring, communicating, ... And that includes current events and technology. I mean not every picture is art. But as AI is part of the world, art has to deal with the subject.
- Comment on AI music startups say copyright violation is just rock and roll 4 months ago:
Does anyone have a link to an actual song they claim is copyright violation? The article contains a link to 3 samples but only for Suno and they don't sound like Bruce Springsteen or any proper artist to me.
- Comment on Instagram’s “Made with AI” label swapped out for “AI info” after photographers’ complaints 5 months ago:
Lots of photos are edited. Probably almost all more professional ones. It certainly also doesn't help that AI enhancement is now default in newer phones.
And it's bound to be difficult. We try to use AI to judge if an image is real. But on the other hand we train the AI image generators to generate more and more realistic images.I don't think we can have both at the same time because they contradict each other.