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abhibeckert

@abhibeckert@lemmy.world

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X is becoming a 'ghost town' of bots as AI-generated spam content floods the internet — A sign of the scale is the thriving industry in bot-making (www.abc.net.au)

X is becoming a 'ghost town' of bots as AI-generated spam content floods the internet — A sign of the scale is the thriving industry in bot-making::The internet is filling up with machine-generated "zombie content" designed to game algorithms and scam humans. Experts call it the "great AI flood".

abhibeckert ,

The key is to start small - throw away money for the victim so they don’t think it through.

Then you progressively ask for larger amounts working the victim over with the sunk cost fallacy.

It doesn’t take much, the victim naturally doesn’t want to admit they fucked up, and you can reinforce that so they think they’re doing the right thing by investing more money.

Keep it up until they are bankrupt, then disappear.

People have invested years I their twitter profile. They don’t want to admit it was a total waste of time.

abhibeckert ,

It's not just about saving battery. Phone chips are fast but they lack appropriate cooling and overheat real fast if you try to take advantage of that performance for more tham a moment.

abhibeckert , (edited )

Raises hand — my phone is primarily for communicating with other people. When I want a computer, I have my desktop for that, or if it's too big to take with me then I'll have my laptop.

The only other thing it's commonly used for is music/podcasts. And once a week or so I'll take a photo.

Sure, I don't make as many voice calls as I used to, but text communication counts if you ask me - cell phones have had that feature since 1992.

abhibeckert ,

Can't you just drop a small anchor (on a decently large ship) and drag it along the sea floor? This type of attack doesn't submarines.

abhibeckert ,

That's silly. Safari is neither the worst browser nor the most popular one. IE was both of those things.

Maker uses Raspberry Pi and AI to block noisy neighbor's music by hacking nearby Bluetooth speakers (www.tomshardware.com)

Maker uses Raspberry Pi and AI to block noisy neighbor's music by hacking nearby Bluetooth speakers::Roni Bandini is using a Raspberry Pi to power his AI-driven assault against his neighbor's regular 9am reggaeton music.

abhibeckert , (edited )

Yeah it's really bad news.

And chances are it will be investigated pretty quickly... you're likely to cause problems for more than just the next door neighbour's music. A friend of mine is a cellular radio technician and is occasionally tasked with identifying signal problems. Usually it's unintentional - some electronic device that isn't working properly, and they have tools to find the source relatively quickly and and order the owner to turn off and repair/destroy whatever is causing problems.

He said when nobody is home in the building that appears to be broadcasting noise, he will call the utility company and have them shut off power to the building to try to stop whatever is broadcasting.

If it's intentional... cops will be called.

abhibeckert , (edited )

Within a week there had been a complaint filed against her for “vandalizing” someone’s door… by taping an apology note on there.

I've seen tape rip paint off when it's removed. The door has to be removed, sanded back (the entire door, not just where the tape was... because door paint fades and you can't match the color). A door needs three coats of hard wearing slow drying paint - has to dry overnight between coats... making it a four day job.

Worst of all, the door has to be horizontal while the paint dries - so that's four days with no front door. Not an option. They will usually just replace the door and that can cost thousands (but at least it won't leave you without a front door for days).

If you want to leave a note for someone - use the letterbox.

Good times.

Yeah see that shit just isn't worth it. I had a neighbour threaten to pour milk into a work colleague's car door once. Car doors are full of noise insulation material that would have soaked up the milk and gone mouldy/started to stink. Costs a fortune to fix that.

Best thing to do in my opinion is call the police, anonymously. If it's not worth a formal complaint then it's not worth complaining at all.

No, electric vehicle sales aren’t dropping. Here’s what’s really going on (www.cnn.com)

No, electric vehicle sales aren’t dropping. Here’s what’s really going on::Tesla has been slashing prices. Ford just cut the price of its Mustang Mach-E, too, plus it cut back production of its electric pickup. And General Motors is thinking about bringing back plug-in hybrids, arguably a step back from EVs.

abhibeckert , (edited )

Norway has a range of subsidies worth up to half the price of the vehicle and home upgrades plus tax exemptions worth another 25% on top of that.

Which can mean a brand new EV is the same price as an old secondhand ICE.

Incentives like that are a lot easier your entire national population is smaller than some cities.

abhibeckert ,

That's because phones and airplanes were operating on the same frequency. They don't do that anymore... in part because there's a dozen phones on every flight that haven't been put in airplane mode.

abhibeckert ,

Meh - flights have USB ports now if your battery is low.

abhibeckert ,

On iPhone the airplane toggle is the cellular toggle. It leaves all your other radios active.

It also disables GPS but only because that doesn't work anyway in a fast moving faraday cage without cell tower triangulation.

If you want to disable wifi or bluetooth, those are separate toggles... and by default they just disconnect from your current wifi network and some of your bluetooth devices (your smart watch for example, will stay connected over bluetooth). The buttons are there to use if your wifi or bluetooth aren't working properly, which can always be fixed by just disconnecting rather than disabling the radio entirely.

abhibeckert , (edited )

Cell towers, without mountains/buildings blocking them, reach 10+ miles and airplanes don't fly that high... so you are within range of towers while flying unless you're over the ocean.

However, connecting to a tower that far away requires running the radio at maximum transmission power which absolutely kills your battery. Also the towers reject your phone's attempt to connect because they are programmed to ignore distant connections when they know a dozen other towers are within a few miles of that tower. If you're flying over remote areas where towers will accept any connection you might occasionally get enough signal to call 911 but i likely won't be a usable data connection due to how far away you are.

Wether it shows a connection or not, your phone is still reaching out trying to connect and doing handshakes with towers on the ground.

abhibeckert ,

That problem relates to landing an airplane with a 5G tower near the airport. Nothing to do with passenger phones.

And honestly it's a faulty radio in the airplane. They shouldn't be disrupted by 5G towers at all... but Boeing doesn't want to pay for replacement parts and neither do the airlines.

abhibeckert , (edited )

iPhones don't even turn wifi/bluetooth off when you toggle them specifically. They certainly don't disconnect in airplane mode.

The quick wifi/bluetooth buttons are to disconnect temporarily when you've got a bad connection. Or if your husband started the car but you're not in it, you're just nearby. They're not to turn the radios off.

abhibeckert ,

some future government that decided to go after, say, LGBT people

That's pretty hypothetical. Sure it's possible... but porn companies having the data is almost guaranteed to be bad news.

Some porn companies will sell the data to the highest bidder. And one of those bidders is going to be organise crime networks that will send an email threatening to share your viewing habits with your kids or your grandma - $1,000 and they'll delete the data - they promise. And then they'll be back six months later asking for $100k.

And the ones that won't sell it? They'll probably be targeted and compromised, with the same eventual outcome.

abhibeckert ,

That defence might help if you find yourself standing in front of a jury... but porn is legal so that's never going to happen.

But for blackmail? Presumption of innocence won't help you in the slightest.

abhibeckert ,

Reddit doesn't own that data. The community owns it.

Maybe there's something in the terms of service but that shouldn't hold water because nobody has ever read that document.

abhibeckert ,

Reddit used to be open source and the source is still on github as a read only archive.

AFAIK back then edit history was only kept briefly. Enough to roll back an accidental edit (if you have admin privileges anyway) but not far enough back to view old versions of posts.

Of course, they would have backups, and maybe the code has changed, but I wouldn't be surprised if it hasn't changed and those backups are impractical (slow/expensive) to access.

Keeping old revisions is a common practice but it's also expensive and in reddit's case totally unnecessary.

abhibeckert , (edited )

It's not about having FANG in your job history. It's about switching companies three times in three years.

Where I work, we tend to lose money on new hires for an average of the first six months. That's time where not only the new engineer isn't very productive, but other engineers on the same team aren't very productive. They're sinking time into difficult conversations like "yeah you need to go back and redo the last two weeks of work — it's perfectly good code, but you used library X, and we decided four years ago to is use library Y because X has this rare edge case issue when combined with library Z which we also use...".

If someone only works with us for a year... we haven't made enough of a profit to cover the losses in the first half of their employment with us. If you want to work for us, we're not going to force you into a multi-year contract but we do want to be as confident as possible that you're going to stay here long term.

I wouldn't turn someone down for changing jobs three times in three years... but I would definitely ask what happened. And they better answer with something that will happen at my company.

I’m trying to imagine a scenario where having needed to hire 500 people, personally

It takes, what, 10 minutes to read a resume? 30 minutes interview someone? Lets round that up to one hour to cover discussing two promising candidates with a colleague... it's still only 500 hours of work. Or 12 weeks. Obviously you also need to read all the resumes and do interviews with people who were turned down but over an entire career working in HR for a large company... 500 people isn't that many at all.

abhibeckert ,

If you legit have an offer from a different company take it.

No way. You might walk through the door at the other company, realise it's a horrible place to work, and hand in your resignation at lunch time.

Take the pay rise. If they fire you a month later, you'll at least get a big severance package to cover your living expenses while you look for a new job. If you quit, then quit again, you're going to be delivering pizza's or something while you look for a decent paying job.

abhibeckert , (edited )

I'm hoping for something like:

  • 2024: Elon is found guilty of failing to uphold the obligations imposed on Twitter back in their 2011 lawsuit around misuse of information; Former Twitter staff are found to have heroically attempted to follow the law but were fired for doing so; Elon is ordered to sell X
  • 2025: Mastodon buys it for five million dollars; Elon is forced to sell all his shares in Tesla/SpaceX to pay a $200b fine to the FTC (his net worth is $201b, so he'd still be filthy rich - important to make the fine actually payable so he can't declare bankruptcy);
  • late 2025: Mastodon rebrands X to Twitter which becomes just another Fediverse instance. One that is popular among high profile celebrities who can pay a fee to have their identity verified. One where posting discriminatory content gets you banned, permanently. Anyone who retweets your post is also banned for a month.
  • 2026: FTC sets gets to use all $200 billion on their own budget in order to hire more staff and do their job properly going forward
  • 2027 into the foreseeable future: every company in America suddenly starts pro-actively obeying FTC regulations instead of waiting for enforcement actions that almost never happen due to a lack of funding.
abhibeckert , (edited )

isn’t this kind of like Netflix offering shares to the subscribers who stream the most

Not really, because a Netflix subscriber is purely a consumer of content. Someone who posts on Reddit is contributing real value which can be profited from.

A better comparison is the difference between a "Bank" and a "Credit Union". A bank has customers and shareholders. The shareholders profit by selling services to customers. With a Credit Union your customers are your shareholders.

Credit Unions don't sell services... they use the account holders money to pay for services which provided to account holders. They also use the account holder's money to invest and earn profits. Those profits are returned (in full, minus operational costs) to the account holders in the form of interest rates based on the amount of money in each account (banks do that too, but credit unions usually have better interest rates). PS: if you have an account with a bank, you should probably consider closing it and find a good Credit Union... especially in the modern world where transactions are online and you don't have as much need for cash/etc (banks tend to have more branches).

It seems like Reddit is planning to be somewhere in between. With shareholders, and customers, and "customers who are also shareholders". Maybe it's something the we should consider over here in the fediverse... because I certainly don't trust reddit's leadership to do anything good with the content I provided for them (which is why I deleted it...)

abhibeckert , (edited )

Since you're a Mac person, I think you should put MacOS on it. iCloud. Time Machine. AirDrop. Bonjour (zeroconf networking). HomeKit. Etc etc. Those are totally worth having and they are all free except iCloud (which is the the best family photo storage/sync/backup platform and totally worth paying for in my opinion).

For software that needs Linux or just runs better on Linux, use Docker. But you will probably need more RAM, because Docker on a Mac runs a Linux Virtual Machine. You'll essentially be running MacOS and Linux side by side — I personally allocate half my RAM to Docker on my Mac... wether or not 4GB for each OS is enough obviously depends what software you run but it's likely to be cutting it pretty tight).

You can use OpenCore Legacy Patcher to run a modern version of MacOS on old hardware (Apple sets hardware support cut offs based on the minimum specs that hardware was sold in, and your Mac Mini has a faster CPU than the minimum, you've upgraded the storage, and you can upgrade the RAM).

But the biggest reason to go with MacOS is you own a Mac Studio which is far better than your Mac Mini for all the same tasks. One day, you're going to upgrade your main computer and downgrade the Mac Studio to all the tasks your Mac Mini was doing. And booting Linux on the Mac Studio isn't likely to be a good option in the foreseeable future. Linux running inside Docker on a MacOS host though? That works wonderfully. Even with x86 software on an ARM Mac.

I run x86 Linux on my Arm Mac in Docker by the way. It's not as fast as ARM Linux software on the same hardware... but it is way faster than x86 software on 2012 x86 hardware. Which is to say, could be better but totally good enough.

abhibeckert ,

The 2012 Mac mini didn’t have a discrete GPU iirc, just the built in HD 4000

I just looked it up - your memory is correct. Only the 2011 models had a discrete GPU (and only on certain models).

But the HD 4000 is still a GPU and it will be faster than the CPU at certain tasks such as video processing in Plex (I'm guessing that's what OP cares about?)

abhibeckert , (edited )

I’m betting they are following the letter of the law perfectly

Have you read the law, or is that just a blind bet? Spoiler, here's a quote from the legislation (Article 5, item 4):

The gatekeeper shall allow business users, free of charge, to communicate and promote offers, including under different conditions, to end users acquired via its core platform service or through other channels, and to conclude contracts with those end users, regardless of whether, for that purpose, they use the core platform services of the gatekeeper.

I bolded the most obvious point - Apple is charging a core technology fee (50 cents per user per year) even though the letter of the law is "free of charge".

More broadly, there's a fundamental problem that apps distributed are required to be submitted to Apple for approval even if they're distributed out side the store. Apple says they will check less things, but obviously they are still checking some things and will still reject some apps. Developers are also required to a "core platform service" operated by Apple in order to do that submission and pay those fees. Apple can't require that, as I read the legislation they have to allow developers to distribute apps without using or agreeing to any terms with Apple.

The legislation does allow Apple to block apps that are malware/etc - but the company is going far beyond that.

They likely had their lawyers pour over things to make sure they are exploiting every possible loophole.

I don't think that's what has happened. Apple has one of the best legal teams int he world, there's no way they missed that "free of charge" requirement. I think they had their lawyers poor over things to find some way to avoid complying with the law in a way that will require years of ongoing investigations and lawsuits between Apple and the EU. Meanwhile the status quo continues and all apps go through the App Store.

abhibeckert , (edited )

... sure ... but you don't prepare a kid for racism with a sheltered upbringing in a pretend world where discrimination doesn't exist. You point out bad behaviour and tell them why it's not OK.

My son is three years old, he has two close friends - one is an ethnic minority (you could live an entire year in my city without even walking past a single person of their ethnic background on the street). His other close friend is a girl. My kid is already witnessing (but not understanding) discrimination against both of his two closest friends in the playground and we're doing what we can to help him navigate that. Things like "I don't like him he looks funny" and "she's a girl, she can't ride a bicycle".

Large Language Model training is exactly the same - you need to include discrimination in your training set. That's a necessary step to train a model that doesn't discriminate. Reddit has worse discrimination than some other place and that's a good thing.

The worst behaviour is easier to recognise and can help you learn to recognise more subtle discrimination such as "I don't want to play with that kid" which is not an obviously discriminatory statement, but definitely could be discrimination (and you should probably investigate before agreeing with the person).

Mark Zuckerberg: Tech layoffs in 2024 have been a natural response to pandemic-era over hiring (www.itpro.com)

Mark Zuckerberg: Tech layoffs in 2024 have been a natural response to pandemic-era over hiring::Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg believes companies are still readjusting to pandemic-era hiring tactics amid a flurry of layoffs across the industry.

abhibeckert ,

You can't fire someone just because they made a mistake. Especially this kind of mistake - it's easy to look back in hindsight but back then, looking into the future, it was impossible to know how covid would affect the economy.

I also think Mark is wrong. This isn't just about covid - it's also about climate change, and Russia's war. Two more things that in hindsight have had very clear consequences but where it's nearly impossible to predict he future.

We know climate change is bad, we know pandemics are bad, we certainly know war is bad... but how bad will they be? You can only work with rough estimates.

abhibeckert ,

very generous severance packages

Zuckerberg has done that - 16 weeks severance for every year you've worked there. If you're a ten year employee, your severance package is three years pay.

Even if you were only hired a year ago, you're going to have months at full pay to find another job.

prohibitions on raising workload on other employees

Pretty sure Facebook is one of those workplaces where you just work "all day". It's not really possible to increase someone's workload. And with a severance package as generous as the one they're doing, I can't imagine why anyone would fire someone who is actually needed.

AI hiring tools may be filtering out the best job applicants (www.bbc.com)

an AI resume screener had been trained on CVs of employees already at the firm, giving people extra marks if they listed "baseball" or "basketball" – hobbies that were linked to more successful staff, often men. Those who mentioned "softball" – typically women – were downgraded....

abhibeckert ,

McDonalds isn’t going anywhere, no matter how bad their hiring practices get.

I disagree. Screwing up your hiring process is a Darwin Award level mistake for a company. McDonalds is very very good at hiring people and a big part of that is their willingness to hire people who aren't good enough and then giving those people the training they need to succeed at work.

Choosing not to hire someone because they like baseball is insane and there's no way that would fly at McDonalds.

abhibeckert , (edited )

I dunno what country you're in, but in my country you are required by law to have a valid reason to reject a job candidate. That reason can be pretty simple, such as "your application was not as strong as other candidates" but you need to be able to back that claim up if you're challenged (and you can be challenged on it).

The recommended approach is to have a list of selection criteria, and carefully consider each one then write it down and keep a record of the decision for a while, incase you end up on the wrong end of a discrimination lawsuit. Candidates have the right to ask why they were unsuccessful (and they should ask - to find out what they can do better to improve their chances next time. As a hiring manager I would note down anyone who asks and consider offering them a job in the future, bypassing the normal recruitment process).

I rank each criteria from one to ten, then disregard the worst scoring candidates until I have a short list that I can compare directly (at that point, I wouldn't worry too much about numbers. You are allowed to say "you were a great candidate, but we had multiple great candidates and had to pick one. Sorry".

If your selection criteria includes "they need to wear nice clothes" then you're treading on very dangerous territory and could be breaking the law. The damages here are commonly six months pay at the salary of the position they applied for, and can also include a court order for you not to be involved in the hiring process going forward.

It's perfectly reasonable to require someone to dress well if they have a customer facing role... but that requirement should be implemented at work and not during the job interview. I'm well aware that a lot of hiring managers rely heavily on these things to make their decision but they should not be doing that. It's not as bad as picking someone because they're a straight white male candidate (which is also very common), but it's still a bad policy.

abhibeckert , (edited )

Please tell me the country where declining to offer that candidate a job would be illegal.

Australia. It's not clearly illegal but it's dangerous territory. Candidates have a general right to be treated as equals and you need to reject someone for reasons that are relevant to the job position.

Something that can easily be changed, like a shirt, might not be OK. ANZ bank (a massive bank with several hundred billion dollars in assets they manage), for example, requires customer facing staff to wear a branded uniform but back at the office? You can wear whatever you want. When they changed their dress code years ago to no-longer require a suit/tie the CEO deliberately wore ugly clothes for a while to set an example.

Obviously no candidates are expected to turn up to an interview in their uniform - they don't have a uniform yet. And if someone can wear a Marilyn Manson shirt in the office, then why not also at the interview?

The bank I'm with is even more relaxed - even customer facing staff can wear anything they want. Sure, if it's offensive they'll be told to wear something else, but that's a conversation I'd be having with the candidate rather than a reason to reject their application. I might reject them if I don't like their response.

abhibeckert ,

This isn't the only fine though. It's one of several they've been hit by in recent years and more might be coming. They are also getting bigger over time.

abhibeckert ,

OpenAI runs on Azure, which is carbon neutral.

OpenAI collapses media reality with Sora AI video generator | If trusting video from anonymous sources on social media was a bad idea before, it's an even worse idea now (arstechnica.com)

OpenAI collapses media reality with Sora AI video generator | If trusting video from anonymous sources on social media was a bad idea before, it's an even worse idea now::Hello, cultural singularity—soon, every video you see online could be completely fake.

abhibeckert ,

OpenAI’s take is someone will create this technology - it might as well be them since their motivation is relatively pure. OpenAI is a non profit and they do work hard to minimise the damage their tech can cause. Which is why this video generation feature has not been launched yet.

abhibeckert ,

TLDR: a year ago AI video was garbage. Today it’s almost as good as one that would cost a few hundred thousand dollars to pay a human production team to make (according to someone who’s professional work is creating those videos).

It’s not quite there - hands glitch out occasionally. Sometimes animation doesn’t quite line up right (e.g. walking might skip a step) but it’s 99% there and and the improvements over the last 12 months are astounding. That last 1% surely won’t take long to close.

There was a landscape drone video from a helicopter that looked absolutely real.

Note this is not publicly available yet - OpenAI said they are still working on safety features to reduce the risk of it being used to create content that they want no part in.

abhibeckert ,

The difference is it costs billions of dollars to run a company manufacturing printers and it’s easy for law enforcement to pressure them into not printing money.

It costs nothing to produce an AI image, you can run this stuff on a cheap gaming PC or laptop.

And you can do it with open source software. If the software has restrictions on creating abusive material, you can find a fork with that feature disabled. If it has stenography, you can find one with that disabled too.

You can tag an image to prove a certain person (or camera) took a photo. You can’t stop people from removing that.

abhibeckert , (edited )

Um… the Taylor Swift porn deepfakes were Dall-e.

Sure - they try to prevent that stuff, but it’s hardly perfect. And not all bullying is easily spotted. Imagine a deepfake of a kid sending a text message, but the bubbles are green. Or maybe they’re smiling at someone they hate.

Also, stable diffusion is more than good enough for this stuff. It’s free and any decent gaming laptop can run that. Takes mine 20 seconds to produce a decent deepfake… I’ve used it to touch up my own photos.

abhibeckert ,

The EU could force Apple to sell their iPhone business. That's listed as the maximum penalty for a DMA violation for companies that "systematically" fail to open up their platform.

abhibeckert ,

Is this a sleazy thing to do? Yup

That makes it illegal. The DMA explicitly requires gatekeepers be "proactive" (that's their words) towards opening up their platform. Removing features just in the EU is the opposite of that.

abhibeckert ,

is that one word or 7?

It's a word, with a formal dictionary definition: "the technique or practice of responding to an accusation or difficult question by making a counter-accusation or raising a different issue".

It has it's origins in politics.

abhibeckert ,

It's more than that - for example in Safari after seven days with a bookmark, all data the website stores on device is deleted.

With a PWA saved to your home screen, your data is kept until you delete the icon from your home screen.

Also, PWAs don't have a browser toolbar.

abhibeckert ,

Most native apps are trash too.

andrew , to Technology
@andrew@andrew.masto.host avatar

Bose introduces their new Ultra Open Earbuds. “Their cuff-like fit leaves your ears totally open so you can still hear the world around you”

https://www.bose.com/p/earbuds/bose-ultra-open-earbuds/ULT-HEADPHONEOPN.html

@technology

abhibeckert ,

Sure but "almost always" is not "always". Maybe don't judge these until you've heard them?

abhibeckert ,

wearing earphones while walking outside is a niche usage

Speak for yourself, I do it three or so hours a day.

Indoors or in a car... that's where I never wear earphones. I prefer speakers for that.

abhibeckert ,

Huh? If I wear headphones outside, they will literally be drenched in sweat when I take them off. And you can't exactly put headphones in a washing machine to remove sweat from the foam padding either. They'll start to stink in no time.

abhibeckert ,

US: “Human rights? What are those? Are they in the constitution?”

There actually are strong privacy rights written into the constitution. Unfortunately they don't fit well with modern data collection creating loopholes big enough to drive a truck through.

And nothing is being done to close those loopholes. In fact the opposite... end to end encryption, for example, would close most of the loopholes. Legislators are using "think of the children!" arguments to try to stop companies from upgrading services to use E2EE.

Is there a term for being right and then your opposition getting taught a lesson proving you were right? EPA calls off cyber regulations for water sector. (cyberscoop.com)

On July 25, 2023, the states of Missouri, Arkansas, and Iowa, along with intervenors American Water Works Association and National Rural Water Association, petitioned the Eighth Circuit to review the EPA’s new rule. This rule requires states to review and report cybersecurity threats to their public water systems (PWS)....

abhibeckert ,

The term you're looking for is "vindication".

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