FaceDeer

FaceDeer , 3 months ago

Indeed. She's not really your girlfriend unless you own her completely and can control everything she thinks.

FaceDeer , 3 months ago

Tell me this is a good thing.

Ok. Mozilla was spreading itself too thin, spending resources trying to compete with multiple products against established brands that were already way ahead of them. They needed to focus down onto their core product rather than frivolously cast about.

And AI is the technology of the future, despite all the whinging and griping by commenters on the subject. It's being incorporated into the other major browsers, it's a must-have if Firefox is to remain relevant. I'm sure you'll be able to turn it off in the settings if you don't want it and if you're really concerned about getting AI cooties there'll be niche forks that are compiled without it.

FaceDeer , 3 months ago

Which browser is not going to have AI?

FaceDeer , 3 months ago

It's only a buzzword to people who've already decided it's a buzzword and are refusing to consider its actual good uses, of which there are plenty.

Being part of angry mobs is fun.

FaceDeer , 3 months ago

And they still will. I'm sure most people haven't heard of the projects they're getting rid of (that's why they're getting rid of them) and the anti-AI circlejerk is going to melt away once it rolls out and people are surprised to learn it's actually a really useful technology.

FaceDeer , 3 months ago

Have you read any of the other comments in this thread? Large numbers of people are gleefully dumping all over Mozilla, it's the few who are trying to go against that narrative that are getting downvotes.

You enjoy your angry mob. I'll enjoy having AI tools in my browser.

FaceDeer , 3 months ago

There's also GPT4All that I'm aware of.

FaceDeer , 3 months ago

Or "fresh new CEO without baggage who sees where the future of the technology is heading."

FaceDeer , 3 months ago

Or, you know, clicking a button in the settings to turn it off.

FaceDeer , 3 months ago

It's also got a substantial helping of "here's how things are getting better, and will continue to get better in the future."

FaceDeer , 3 months ago

Why does everything have to be about money?

FaceDeer , 3 months ago

People who make content for money are suffering from a collapse in ad prices. There are people who make content because they enjoy making and sharing content.

FaceDeer , 3 months ago

Current AI can already "read" documentation that isn't part of its training set, actually. Bing Chat, for example, does websearches and bases its answers in part on the text of the pages it finds. I've got a local AI, GPT4All, that you can point at a directory full of documents and tell "include that in your context when answering questions." So we're we're already getting there.

FaceDeer , 3 months ago

And yet there are still hobbyists. We only "live under capitalism" to the extent that we have to, people still do things for reasons other than money.

FaceDeer , 3 months ago

I'm thinking a potentially useful middle ground might be to have the AI digest the documentation into an easier-to-understand form first, and then have it query that digest for context later when you're asking it questions about stuff. GPT4All already does something a little similar in that it needs to build a search index for the data before it can make use of it.

FaceDeer , 3 months ago

I've only been fiddling around with it for a few days, but it seems to me that the default settings weren't very good - by default it'll load four 256-character-long snippets into the AI's context from the search results, which is pretty hit and miss on being informative in my experience. I think I may finally have found a good use for those models with really large contexts, I can crank up the size and number of snippets it loads and that seems to help. But it still doesn't give "global" understanding. For example, if I put a novel into LocalDocs and then ask the AI about general themes or large-scale "what's this character like" stuff it still only has a few isolated bits of the novel to work from.

What I'm imagining is that the AI could sit on its own for a while loading up chunks of the source document and writing "notes" for its future self to read. That would let it accumulate information from across the whole corpus and cross-reference disparate stuff more easily.

FaceDeer , 3 months ago

Since it's a common mistake when discussing cryptocurrency energy use, I should point out that it's really only Bitcoin specifically that uses significant amounts of electricity these days. Most other cryptocurrencies have switched to proof of stake systems, which uses negligible energy.

FaceDeer , 3 months ago

Why is it "a lot for a virtual currency?" What's the typical energy usage of a virtual currency?

In 2019 Visa used 740,000 gigajoules of energy, which is equivalent to 6727 households (google dug up a figure of 110 Gj/year for that). So this really doesn't seem like a lot for this kind of thing.

FaceDeer , 3 months ago

Probably, but Ethereum does a lot of things that Visa can't. Visa transactions are exceedingly simple. It was just the only generally comparable thing I could think of that I could get energy figures for, do you know of any better examples?

FaceDeer , 3 months ago

I'm no fan of Bitcoin, but often the energy they use from hydro plants is energy that would literally be wasted otherwise. A hydro dam can't control how much water is entering the reservoir, so if there's more water entering the reservoir than is needed to generate electricity for the current demand then the dam will need to just throw the extra water away. Trying to transmit the electricty to remote markets can be an alternative, but that costs resources too and isn't always practical.

FaceDeer , 3 months ago

It's because proof-of-stake is fundamentally different from how proof-of-work operates.

The fundamental problem that all blockchains need to solve is something called the Byzantine Generals Problem. A blockchain needs to consist of a list of transactions that everyone agrees on - everyone needs to be able to know which transactions are part of the list, and what order they appear on that list. But there can't be any central "authority" making that decision, it has to be done in a completely decentralized way.

The way proof of work does it is that it requires people adding transactions to the list to do some extremely expensive calculations and attach the results of those calculations to the transactions that they're adding. Anyone can do those calculations so there's no central authority, but the costliness of the calculations means that once the transactions are added it becomes just as expensive to create a substitute set of transactions. So everyone ends up agreeing on what transactions were added because it would be unfeasably costly to "fake" an alternative history to the blockchain. This means it's impossible to make a proof-of-work chain that isn't hugely "wasteful", because the waste is the point of it. It has to be costly for it to work.

Proof-of-stake takes a very different approach. It solves the same basic problem - determining which transactions are part of the chain in a decentralized manner - using some very fancy cryptography that I have to admit that I don't fully understand. But instead of proving that the transactions you're adding are "trustworthy" due to proving you've wasted a whole lot of resources adding them, you do it by putting up a "stake." You lock a big sum of money in your cryptocurrency staking account and essentially make it a hostage to your good behaviour. If you put up a bad transaction you can lose your stake. So under proof-of-stake there's simply no need to burn huge amounts of electricity.

Monero uses a proof-of-work algorithm like Bitcoin. The reason Monero doesn't use anywhere near as much energy as Bitcoin is simply because it isn't worth as much and so not as many people are mining it. If Monero was worth as much as Bitcoin the energy usage would rise to become comparable.

FaceDeer , 3 months ago

I do not remember Google's attempt at DRM for the Internet, which is an indication of how well it went for their attempt.

FaceDeer , 3 months ago

Oh no, we may have to go back to an Internet where people posted web pages because they wanted to share information rather than to make a buck.

FaceDeer , 3 months ago

I just did a search, and according to the articles I've found Google abandoned the "Web Environment Integrity" API in November and removed their prototype from Chromium.

FaceDeer , 3 months ago

Unlikely. Some new approach to paid journalism will need to be developed. But that's already the case, AI's just driving the existing trend further.

FaceDeer , 3 months ago

Then I guess I won't see whatever websites decide to use it (until it's cracked). Oh well.

FaceDeer , 3 months ago

I'm sure there will be (or already are) Trump and Biden Loras.

FaceDeer , 3 months ago

There are open IoT standards.

You "can" do these things in a lot of different ways, the unanswered question is what way is best. That's not just a technical question, it also depends on how easy it is to deploy to the general public. If your toothbrush uses Bluetooth then you need to pair it with something that can speak to it, whereas if it can speak to the Internet then that broadens the ability for various systems to talk to it considerably. You can run a webserver they could visit from any browser, apps for phones, etc.

There's no need for a toothbrush to have access to your phone book. But nobody's saying it should. This whole situation of "hacked toothbrushes" isn't real.

FaceDeer , 3 months ago

It was on this thread on internetofshit@suppo.fi. I'm guessing it's a community dedicated to pooping on the Internet of Things, so when something like this comes along they really really want it to be true. I wasn't paying attention to the communities when I was posting, though, just clicking through all the repost references and giving a cursory glance to see if someone had already pointed out the fakeitude.

FaceDeer , 3 months ago

Given Turkey's current monetary policies I wouldn't want to use Turkish liras even if I lived in Turkey.

FaceDeer , 3 months ago

How about stabletokens, many of which are pegged directly to the value of the USD?

FaceDeer , 3 months ago

And I'm not particularly pleased to be accused of lying when I'm willing to cite sources and the guy I'm debating with refuses to even address my responses. But you don't see me YELLING IN ALL CAPS about it.

FaceDeer , 3 months ago

It varies, there are a bunch of different types of stabletokens. The two main approaches I'm aware of are:

• Tokens that are issued and backed by a trusted third party. Tether, for example, issues one USDT token for every USD that is deposited with Tether Inc. and you can redeem USDTs for USD again any time. I'm not particularly fond of this approach, but it's simple and popular and as long as you're not holding USDT long-term I don't see a big problem with it as a day-to-day currency. Just make sure the issuing company is audited and you're prepared for the possibility that they could turn out to be lying.
• Tokens that are issued by on-chain smart contracts, backed by other digital assets. DAI and Liquity are examples of these. They are more complicated but IMO the better choice because you don't have to trust anyone - you can see the token's backing right on the blockchain itself and know whether it's actually worth what the stabletoken needs for support.

One of the nice things about the on-chain smart contract stabletokens is that they can be backed by less-stable tokens, such as Ether itself, so you can get the best of both worlds out of them.

FaceDeer , 3 months ago

Ok, so a stablecoin means, that the holder gives an unsecured, zero-interest loan to a company with unknown credit worthiness.

No. Neither of the approaches I described means that. You can check the credit-worthiness of Tether and other such companies (Tether was just an example, there are many others) and decide whether you want to use their token based on what you learn if you wish. As I said, you only need the token to last for as long as you're using it for, so if you're running a storefront for example you can be paid in those tokens and immediately trade them for something you trust more.

And you can’t actually redeem the stablecoin for money, you can only get crypto that trades for $1, allegedly.

The stablecoin is worth $1, yes. That's the point of the stablecoin. The "allegedly" part is not actually allegedly, it's part of how the smart contract backing the token operates.

Are you for real?

Yes. I get the impression that you're arguing in bad faith, though. I'm happy to discuss the details of how these things work but you're calling this "insane" and that's not a particularly useful mindset for learning.

FaceDeer , 3 months ago

Alright, so let's call them cryptotokens instead. I've always preferred that myself, it's a much more general description of what they do. It doesn't change what they are but if that term makes you happier we can go with that.

It renders it useless outside of as a bit of gambling on the side.

Hardly, there are lots of things you can do with these things. A ledger is more than just for tracking money, it's a database. You really can't think of useful things that could be done with a completely decentralized and permissionless database?

FaceDeer , 3 months ago

Heh. I bet if I had been suggesting particular uses you'd be calling me a shill for those particular uses. "Shill" is such a lazy accusation to throw about, you can sling it at anyone who's interested in anything.

How about ENS? It's a decentralized version of the Domain Name System.

FaceDeer , 3 months ago

Wow, big surprise. Insult me, demand I provide a use, then immediately claim that use isn't valid and throw more insults. It's almost like it's not worth engaging with you.

How about Gnosis? It's a prediction market.

FaceDeer , 3 months ago

Yup, more insults, and rejection of another example. You even explicitly state you don't know what the example is, you're just convinced it's useless because it involves cryptocurrency. Nicely circular reasoning.

How about Golem? It's a decentralized cloud computing marketplace. And I should note preemptively, just because you don't use it doesn't mean nobody does.

FaceDeer , 3 months ago

Different transactions use different amounts of space so it's always going to be a rough estimate.

FaceDeer , 3 months ago

Does your grocery store or gas station accept Qatari riyals?

FaceDeer , 3 months ago

No problem.

FaceDeer , 3 months ago

Ah, so now the absence of shilling is the problem? What a wonderful catch-22 you've got there.

How about Filecoin, a decentralized cloud storage system to go with Golem's cloud computing? I can keep on listing non-currency uses for blockchains for quite a while, you know.

FaceDeer , 3 months ago

Bitcoin, no, because it's a hopelessly out of date blockchain that actively resists having new capabilities added to it. Ethereum, on the other hand, is designed that way from the ground up. Many of the other smaller but more modern blockchains are also like that.

FaceDeer , 3 months ago

At which point your local grocery store or gas station wouldn't be accepting whatever currency is your current local currency. The point would remain the same - a currency doesn't have to be universally accepted everywhere on the entire planet for it to still be a useful currency.

FaceDeer , 3 months ago

You can't use them as a currency everywhere. But the same can be said for any other currency too. You can't use US dollars everywhere. You can't use Chinese Yuan everywhere. And so forth. A currency doesn't have to be universally accepted everywhere on the planet for every application before it's useful.

Regardless, I was talking about using Ethereum as a distributed database.

FaceDeer , 3 months ago

I really don't see your point here. I'm agreeing that you can't use it for everything. But what's wrong with that? There are plenty of things in this world that aren't useful in every circumstance and yet that doesn't mean those things are worthless. Use them for the things that they're good for. Elsewhere in this thread I listed off a whole bunch of non-stock, non-currency applications that have been built on blockchains if you really don't like the monetary applications.

As a side note, though, I'm kind of amused and baffled that the Grand Nagus of all people is dismissing any monetary uses for cryptocurrency.

FaceDeer , 3 months ago

Yes, it does.

No. The part I was objecting to was: " gives an unsecured, zero-interest loan to a company with unknown credit worthiness." That's the part that's incorrect. Some stabletokens don't involve a company at all, it's entirely on-chain controlled by smart contracts.

How is the smart contract updated with the current market prices?

The one I'm most familiar with is DAI, which is maintained by the MakerDAO smart contract. MakerDAO uses a collection of price oracles to determine prices, which are in turn managed by people who own governance tokens (MKR) for the MakerDAO smart contract itself. They vote on which oracles are used, and on other economic parameters used by MakerDAO to keep its peg table. If MKR holders do a good job then MKR tokens appreciate in value, "rewarding" them. If they do a poor job then MKR tokens lose value.

This is complicated, but it's a necessary complication to ensure that MakerDAO can function in a decentralized and trustworthy fashion. There are a number of pages out there that go into more detail, this one seems pretty good at a glance.

I had hoped that my question would make you realize that a debt is not a separate currency.

Well, I'm not sure what you mean here. Tokens that represent a debt can certainly be used as a currency if everyone involved considers the debt to be sound and trusts that it will be repaid.

FaceDeer , 3 months ago

I’m not sure I get the point. Company is a broad term. I don’t see how MakerDAO is not a company.

Company is actually not a broad term, it's a legal term with a specific meaning. MakerDAO is not a company, it's a smart contract. If you want to use terms that loosely it's going to be difficult talking about this stuff.

Using crypto-tokens is simply a technologically vastly inferior way of tracking debts, not a new currency.

But ultimately that's the thing that you're arguing here, so you can't simply state it as a premise. That's the classic meaning of begging the question.

The apparent fraud is the only way this makes economic sense.

That came out of nowhere, this is the first time an accusation of fraud has shown up in this discussion. What fraud?