thesmokingman

thesmokingman , 2 days ago to Privacy in ACLU suspects warrantless surveillance in neo-Nazi’s prosecution

It doesn’t sound like you have a good grasp on the differences between this case and Ross Ulbricht.

thesmokingman , 3 days ago to Privacy in ACLU suspects warrantless surveillance in neo-Nazi’s prosecution

I wasn’t aware Silk Road was taken down via FISA. I’ve read all of the long form accounts of it that I’m aware of and I don’t remember FISA being mentioned at all. Can you share a source?

thesmokingman , 17 days ago to Free and Open Source Software in Signal on Linux

All of these packaging systems have plenty of tutorials. Speaking from experience, many maintainers were not developers when they started maintaining packages for distros other than the official distros. I have worked with several maintainers who do work in tech and know socially several who had no background. This could be a great place for you to start!

You bother because FOSS is as much paying it forward as it is getting shit for free.

thesmokingman , 17 days ago to Free and Open Source Software in Signal on Linux

I mean it’s FOSS. Have you considered opening a PR to contribute what’s missing? You can be the change you want to see. I wouldn’t normally comment something like this. Your emphasis on “still” raised my hackles a little bit and led me to ask why you still haven’t made your own.

thesmokingman , 20 days ago to Technology in Turkish student creates custom AI device for cheating university exam, gets arrested

As soon as I read about the shoe cell modem, I thought Eudaemons. It’s rad Ars called that out too!

thesmokingman , 20 days ago to Technology in Lynn Conway, leading computer scientist and transgender pioneer, dies at 85

If you’re writing a grant illustrating its military applications I don’t really care what else you want to use it for. Looks like we disagree about intention so have fun with that.

thesmokingman , 21 days ago to Technology in Lynn Conway, leading computer scientist and transgender pioneer, dies at 85

Did man write grants to show how said fire had military applications? If so, how dare they! If not your straw man is kinda lacking.

thesmokingman , 21 days ago to Technology in Lynn Conway, leading computer scientist and transgender pioneer, dies at 85

If you’ve read stuff like Hackers by Levy or Where Wizards Stay Up Late by Hafner, there’s a very happy, “look at this cool shit we built” attitude to everything (both books are fantastic and worth the read). Levy’s Crypto begins to dance around some of the dangers when he writes about Diffie-Hellman. MIT AI especially has its roots in this gnarly defense world even though it’s usually portrayed as anything but. The amount of computing used for RAND to support the war in Vietnam is terrible.

thesmokingman , 21 days ago to Technology in Lynn Conway, leading computer scientist and transgender pioneer, dies at 85

These are great questions! Rather than pull individual citations, I’ll point you at these books

• Surveillance Valley by Yasha Levine
• The Pentagon’s Brain by Annie Jacobson
• The Imagineers of War by Sharon Weinberg

Your last point, suggesting that it’s possible to take DARPA money without intentionally developing weapons, is part of the whitewashing we’ve done of computing that’s incredibly wrong. Make no mistake, I am directly saying a majority of computing pioneers in the US are trash people while respecting their achievements. Their work was done explicitly under the knowledge it was for military purposes. Levine has a few great anecdotes about engineers watching protestors and asking for extra security.

Your example of Berners-Lee is an interesting one. He’s trash for modern opinions. I don’t know much about the military history, if any, of CERN, so I don’t know their culpability. Conway took DARPA money and architected DARPA projects. That’s her culpability, unless you’re able to show she was coerced and didn’t know about the widely discussed military connections scientists had to know to write their grants for funding?

Edit: fixed the Weinberger link

thesmokingman , 21 days ago to Technology in Lynn Conway, leading computer scientist and transgender pioneer, dies at 85

Fantastic! She was a huge part of the military-industrial complex in computing and her entire work has to be viewed through that lens. While her contributions to the field are numerous and incredibly meaningful, she also wanted to help the military develop machine intelligence and is every explicit way connected to modern conflicts where military misuses AI to murder children.

thesmokingman , 21 days ago to 196 in Sorry, them's the rules

He is a nightlife commissioner which is not a title I’d heard before

thesmokingman , 22 days ago to Technology in Apple refuses to call Apple Intelligence 'AI'

I agree with you. I think the responses to your comment are missing a few key points

• Calling an Apple product something weird with “i” or “Apple” is Jobsian slavish devotion to branding
• Under Tim Cook, innovation has arguably stagnated (see comparisons to Ballmer
• Cook has not leveraged the value of Apple’s innovation successfully eg Apple Silicon being limited to Apple devices vs PowerPC days, the Vision Pro being horrible, the recent hilarious iPad creativity crusher ad.
• A company with Apple’s market cap can do dumb shit and still appear valuable just because they have Apple’s market cap.

I read OP as “names are dumb and this is just Apple trying to be different in the same way everyone else is.” I think all of that is true and I think it’s valid criticism of the product. My last point about Apple’s value is probably the most important. They can do a lot of dumb shit before it matters.

thesmokingman , 22 days ago to Technology in Raspberry Pi becomes a public company

I’d argue it was taken from us several years ago when Raspberry made the decision to prioritize business customers over education and hobby during the chip shortages.

thesmokingman , 22 days ago to Technology in Raspberry Pi becomes a public company

If you were able to buy one at the beginning of the pandemic it was great. If you weren’t, then the 4 was annoying as fuck because it was impossible to purchase at anything less than 3X MSRP.

thesmokingman , 23 days ago to 196 in pee(1) rule

Link for the lazy