Spedwell
@Spedwell@lemmy.world
- Comment on Traveling this summer? Maybe don’t let the airport scan your face. 3 months ago:
As the article points out, TSA is using this tech to improve efficiency. Every request for manual verification breaks their flow, requires an agent to come address you, and eats more time. At the very least, you ought not to scan in the hopes that TSA metrics look poor enough they decide this tech isn’t practical to use.
- Comment on Announcing the Ladybird Browser Initiative 4 months ago:
I’m curious what issue you see with that? It seems like the project is only accepting unrestricted donations, but is there something suspicious about shopify that makes it’s involvement concerning (I don’t know much about them)?
- Comment on First human brain implant malfunctioned, Neuralink says 6 months ago:
I get that there are better choices now, but let’s not pretend like a straw you blow into is the technological stopping point for limb-free computer control (sorry if that’s not actually the best option, it’s just the one I’m familiar with). There are plenty of things to trash talk Neuralink about without pretending this technology (or it’s future form) is meritless.
- Comment on Stack Overflow bans users en masse for rebelling against OpenAI partnership — users banned for deleting answers to prevent them being used to train ChatGPT 6 months ago:
The issue on the copyright front is the same kind of professional standards and professional ethics that should stop you from just outright copying open-source code into your application. It may be very small portions of code, and you may never get caught, but you simply don’t do that. If you wouldn’t steal a function from a copyleft open-source project, you wouldn’t use that function when copilot suggests it. Idk if copilot has added license tracing yet (been a while since I used it), but absent that feature you are entirely blind to the extent which it’s output is infringing on licenses. That’s huge legal liability to your employer, and an ethical coinflip.
Regarding understanding of code, you’re right. You have to own what you submit into the codebase.
The drawback/risks of using LLMs or copilot are more to do with the fact it generates the likely code, which means it’s statistically biased to generate whatever common and unnoticeable bugged logic exists in the average github repo it trained on. It will at some point give you code you read and say “yep, looks right to me” and then actually has a subtle buffer overflow issue, or actually fails in an edge case, because in a way that is just unnoticeable enough.
And you can make the argument that it’s your responsibility to find that (it is). But I’ve seen some examples thrown around on twitter of just slightly bugged loops; I’ve seen examples of it replicated known vulnerabilities; and we have that package name fiasco in the that first article above.
If I ask myself would I definitely have caught that? the answer is only a maybe. If it replicates a vulnerability that existed in open-source code for years before it was noticed, do you really trust yourself to identify that the moment copilot suggests it to you?
I guess it all depends on stakes too. If you’re generating buggy JavaScript who cares.
- Comment on Stack Overflow bans users en masse for rebelling against OpenAI partnership — users banned for deleting answers to prevent them being used to train ChatGPT 6 months ago:
We should already be at that point. We have already seen LLMs’ potential to inadvertently backdoor your code and to inadvertently help you violate copyright law (I guess we do need to wait to see what the courts rule, but I’ll be rooting for the open-source authors).
If you use LLMs in your professional work, you’re crazy. I would never be comfortably opening myself up to the legal and security liabilities of AI tools.
- Comment on Proton Mail Discloses User Data Leading to Arrest in Spain 6 months ago:
That’s significantly worse privacy-wise, since Google gets a copy of everything.
A recovery email in this case was used to uncover the identity of the account-holder. Unless you’re using proton mail anonymously (if you’re replacing your personal gmail, then probably not) then you don’t need to consider the recover email as a weakness.
- Comment on Steam :: Introducing Steam Families 7 months ago:
This is demonstrably wrong. The 30% cut is standard because Steam has used the same strategy as Amazon to fix prices across the market (a “Platform Most Favored Nation” clause—see the Wolfire Games v. Valve class action). Competing storefronts cannot undercut Steam, so why would they take less than a 30% cut?
Epic Games Store—which is trying to undercut steam at a 12% fee—still list games at the same price as on Steam because of Valve has strongarmed publishers into fixing the prices. If Epic is charging 18% less but we the consumers are paying just as much, how is that not blatantly anti-competitive and anti-consumer?
enshitifies
Oh good, you are familiar with Cory Doctorow. He has an article on how Amazon abuses their position using the exact same playbook Valve uses.
- Comment on Steam :: Introducing Steam Families 7 months ago:
I said no such thing. Please come back to this later with a fresh mind, and remember how wrongly you interpreted what was actually said for the sake of trying to fire off a quick response.
But if you’d rather disengage then it is what it is. Cheers.
- Comment on Steam :: Introducing Steam Families 7 months ago:
You have to have never seriously engaged with the details of the Valve monopoly if you think that’s what we are upset about.
We know Steam is an amazing storefront—I buy my agames there because it’s the best experience for the cost. But Steam charges a premium. And despite taking smaller cuts, competing platforms like Epic cannot actual pass those cost savings to consumers because Valve is strongarming game publishers into fixing prices.
You have your head in the sand if you think Valve’s 30% fee is a fair market price for what they do.
- Comment on Steam :: Introducing Steam Families 7 months ago:
Yep. Because honestly, Steam is better than Epic in almost every way. When you want to buy a particular game X, you get a lot more from your purchase if it’s on Steam (workshop, friends, multiplayer, etc.). There is strong inertia and network effects that keep us all preferring Steam.
Epic can’t compete with the Steam experience. But if Epic was able to list everything 18% cheaper (the difference in fees between Epic and Steam)—then they would rightly be able to compete on price.
- Comment on Steam :: Introducing Steam Families 7 months ago:
“Platform Most Favored Nation”. It’s a type of clause in platform/marketplace agreements that prohibit a seller from losting their product for a lower price on a different sales platform. Specifically, it prevents selling on a different marketplace with lower fees (e.g. Epic Games or a publishers own website) and passing the difference to the savings to the consumer.
- Comment on Steam :: Introducing Steam Families 7 months ago:
CSGO cases pulled $1 billion revenue in 2023. The steam store brought in $8.5 billion in that same year. That’s a 30% cut of all sales traffic on steam vs. in-game purchases on a single FTP title.
Loot boxes pull insane numbers. And yes they exploit children and problem gamblers). Not sure why so many Valve fans are here to downvote you :/
- Comment on Steam :: Introducing Steam Families 7 months ago:
Sigh… I’m getting tired of the Valve apologetics in every thread. They make good products, yes. They alsp abuse their market share to implement anticompetitive policies. The first doesn’t absolve them of the second.
Truth is, no one has any idea what it would look like if there were actual competition among the PC games platforms. Steam may be the best possible world, or maybe we don’t know what we’re missing.
Anyone who wants to learn more about Steam’s anticompetitive practices:
- See the complaint from the pending class action case Wolfire Games v. Valve (at a minimum items 204, 205 on pg. 55) for how Steam’s PMFN clause affect publisher pricing
- See Cory Doctorow’s How Amazon makes everything you buy more expensive, no matter where you buy it for a dive into how a PMFN affects the market unfairly and harms the consumer
- Comment on OpenAI Quietly Deletes Ban on Using ChatGPT for “Military and Warfare” 9 months ago:
Sorry for the long reply, I got carried away. See the section below for my good-faith reply, and the bottom section for “what are you implying by asking me this?” response.
From the case studies in my scientific ethics course, I think she probably would have lost her job regardless, or at least been “asked to resign”.
The fact it was in national news, and circulated for as long as it did, certainly had to do with her identity. I was visiting my family when the story was big, and the (old, conservative, racist) members of the family definitely formed the opinion that she was a ‘token hire’ and that her race helped her con her way to the top despite a lack of merit.
So there is definitely a race-related effect to the story (and probably some of the “anti- liberal university” mentality). I don’t know enough about how the decision was made to say whether she would have been fired those effects were not present.
Just some meta discussion: I’m 100% reading into your line of questioning, for better or worse. But it seems you have pinned me as the particular type of bigot that likes to deny systemic biases exist. I want to just head that off at the pass and say I don’t deny your explanation as plausible, but that given a deeper view of the cultural ecosystem of OpenAI it ceases to be likely.
I don’t know your background on the topic, but I enjoy following voices critical of effective altruism, long-termism, and effective accelerationism. A good gateway into this circle of critics is the podcast Tech Won’t Save Us (the 23/11/23 episode actually discusses the OpenAI incident). Having that background, it is easy to paint some fairly convincing pictures for what went on at OpenAI, before Altman’s sexuality enters the equation.
- Comment on OpenAI Quietly Deletes Ban on Using ChatGPT for “Military and Warfare” 9 months ago:
Fair enough. I disagree, but we’re both in the dark here so not much to do about it until more comes to light.
- Comment on OpenAI Quietly Deletes Ban on Using ChatGPT for “Military and Warfare” 9 months ago:
I mean, their press release said “not consistently candid”, which is about as close to calling someone a liar as corporate speak will get. Altman ended up back in the captain’s chair, and we haven’t heard anything further.
If the original reason for firing made Altman look bad, we would expect this silence.
If the original reason was a homophobic response from the board, we might expect OpenAI to come out and spin a vague statement on how the former board had a personal gripe with Altman unrelated to his performance as CEO, and that after replacing the board everything is back to the business of delivering value etc. etc.
I’m not saying it isn’t possible, but given all we know, I don’t think the one, now-generally mainstream attribute about Altman is the one reason he was ousted. Especially if you follow journalism about TESCREAL/Silicon Valley philosophies it is clear to see: this was the board trying to preserve the original altruistic mission of OpenAI, and the commercial branch finally shedding the dead weight.
- Comment on OpenAI Quietly Deletes Ban on Using ChatGPT for “Military and Warfare” 9 months ago:
I seriously doubt it had anything to do with his wedding. I don’t think the sexuality of a CEO is that big an issue in this day (see: Tim Cook).
Especially considering how Atman’s has steered OpenAI vs. the boards’ stated mission, it seems much more likely that his temporary ousting had to do with company direction rather than his sexuality.
- Comment on Worst person in tech 2023 - semi final 10 months ago:
SBF’s peak was a few years ago. This year all he’s done is show during his trial how deluded these techbros/EAs can actually be. At least SBF had the common courtesy to remove himself from public life within 5 years. Style points for the life-in-prison ending, while simultaneously killing mainstream crypto.
We’re stuck with Altman for the foreseeable future, and now with a recently purged OpenAI board that will let him continue the industry-wide commercialization of copyright infringement (but only of the laypersons’ IP. Better not ask it to draw Mickey Mouse, though).
It’s also really unclear where OpenAI lies on the EA/Longtermist/E Acc pipeline. Altman is likely letting whackos have some pretty serious power.
- Comment on Starlink loses out on $886 million in rural broadband subsidies 11 months ago:
I’ll just add that “designed to be burned up” is the correct approach to these types of satellite constellations. SpaceX has that aspect correct, at least.
Agree with everything else. Musk is a batshit egomaniac, and letting him dictate use of large infrastructure is careless. Government subsidies should entail a certain public influence over the operation of the system.
- Comment on Court rules Gabe Newell must appear in person to testify in Steam anti-trust lawsuit 11 months ago:
I’m at my wits end trying to explain this. I guess I can just recommend reading articles and legal briefs that summarize the matter.
Maybe I’ll think about it later and make a more complete write up with concrete examples. I really hate to see the confusion here. Wolfire is doing us a favor, we should not be handing Valve the keys to the market just because they act like Mr. Benevolent.
- Comment on Court rules Gabe Newell must appear in person to testify in Steam anti-trust lawsuit 11 months ago:
Oh ok
- Comment on Court rules Gabe Newell must appear in person to testify in Steam anti-trust lawsuit 11 months ago:
As I said, no need for us to argue further. The lawsuit has grounds, even if you don’t understand why. Read articles and legal briefs on the matter if you would like to learn more.
- Comment on Court rules Gabe Newell must appear in person to testify in Steam anti-trust lawsuit 11 months ago:
What Wolfire wants to happen is flr game marketplaces and game services platforms to be separated. Right now Valve is vertically integrated on that. You buy the game, and they offer peer multiplayer, social, workshop, etc.
If those services were charged separately, or rather the cost of those services was not forced into the pricing of other marketplaces that don’t offer those services, you open the market to more competition.
- Comment on Court rules Gabe Newell must appear in person to testify in Steam anti-trust lawsuit 11 months ago:
Note that the main argument Wolfire is making is that game marketplaces (buy/download the game) and game platforms (online features, mod distribution, social pages) need to be decoupled. By integrating the two, Steam is vertically integrating, amortizing the cost, and then forcing every other marketplace to bear the cost of a platform in their pricing.
If you bought a game and paid for platform services separately, then competition can better exist for both of those roles. Which is good for consumers.
- Comment on Court rules Gabe Newell must appear in person to testify in Steam anti-trust lawsuit 11 months ago:
Steam has a large userbase, which offers a lot of consumer inertia to prefer games on Steam. They also have a policy where game pricing on other platforms cannot undercut Steam.
The main complaint is that this pricing policy coupled with the consumer inertia makes it difficult for other gaming marketplaces to enter the market. You cannot undercut steam unless a publisher wants to not put their game on Steam at all (which would be suicide for anything but the largest titles), so you have to sell at Steam’s price point. Few platforms could match Steams’ established workshop, multiplayer, streaming, and social services; all of which benefit from costs at scale and the established user content.
Imagine trying to convince a user: “Buy you game here instead. It will cost the same as on Steam. No, you won’t have access to the existing Workshop. No, you won’t have in-platform multiplayer with your Steam friends.” Even if you had feature parity, people would prefer Steam since that’s where their existing games a friends are.
- Comment on Court rules Gabe Newell must appear in person to testify in Steam anti-trust lawsuit 11 months ago:
As I said, Steam would be in their rights to enforce that pricing policy for Steam keys, because they provide distribution and platform services for that product after it sells.
But as @Rose clarified, it applies to not just Steam keys, but any game copy sold and distributed by an independent platform. Steam should not have any legitimate claim to determining the pricing within another platform.
- Comment on Court rules Gabe Newell must appear in person to testify in Steam anti-trust lawsuit 11 months ago:
This… misses the point? Of course the can not sell on Steam. That’s always an option.
The antitrust aspect of all of this is that Steam is the de-facto marketplace, consumers are stubborn and habitual and aren’t as likely purchase games less-known platforms, and that a publisher opting not to sell on Steam might have a negative influence on the games success.
If that consumer inertia gives Steam an undue advantage that wouldn’t be present in a properly competitive market, then it there is an antitrust case to be made, full stop. The court will decide if the advantage is significant enough to warrant any action.
But I really don’t like seeing Wolfire—which is a great pro-consumer and pro-open-source studio—having their reputation tarnished just because Lemmyites have a knee-jerk reaction to bend over and take it from Valve just because Steam is a good platform.
- Comment on Court rules Gabe Newell must appear in person to testify in Steam anti-trust lawsuit 11 months ago:
Valve offers a great service, and I enjoy it a lot. But it’s very difficult for a competitor to enter the market because they won’t be able to match Steam’s services immediately. Typically in a market the approach is then to undercut Steam, but that is exactly what this policy is designed to make impractical by forcing publishers to overprice, on penalty of losing Steams’ userbase.
I mean I don’t know what else to say. It is anti-competitive. It doesn’t take too much to see why. There are many good articles and legal briefs on the matter. It hurts you and me, the consumer, and it hurts publishers. It enriches Valve, benevolent though they may appear. You shouldn’t like this type of strong-arming the market when Amazon does it, and you shouldn’t roll over and take it from Valve either.
Doesn’t even matter, the court is going to sort it out for us. But I hate to see the reputational hit Wolfire is taking here. I like their studio, I believe their developers are operating in genuine good faith, and I think they are doing consumers a favor.
- Comment on Court rules Gabe Newell must appear in person to testify in Steam anti-trust lawsuit 11 months ago:
The Platform Most Favored Nation policy employed by Steam is the one at issue in this case. And yes, it is anticompetitive. It abuses userbase size to prevent alternative marketplaces from providing fewer services for smaller cuts
- Comment on Court rules Gabe Newell must appear in person to testify in Steam anti-trust lawsuit 11 months ago:
Yes, that is problematic. Not by itself, but coupled with a large captive userbase it is. As an example:
Let’s say you want to start a game marketplace, which simply runs a storefront and content distribution—you specifically don’t want to run a workshop, friends network, video streaming, or peer multiplayer. Because you don’t offer these other services, you keep costs down, and can charge a 5% fee instead of a 30%.
With Steam’s policy, publishers may choose to:
- List on your platform at $45, and forego the userbase of Steam
- List on Steam and your platform at $60, and forego the reduced costs your platform could offer
Obviously, pricing is much more sophisticated than this. You’d have to account for change in sales volume and all. Point is, though, that publishers (and consumers!) cannot take advantage of alternate services that offer fewer services at lower cost.
The question the court has to answer is whether the userbase/market share captured by Steam causes choice (2) to be de-facto necessary for a game to succeed commercially. If so, then the policy would be the misuse of market dominance to stifle competition.
And I think Wolfire might be able to successfully argue that.