General_Effort
@General_Effort@lemmy.world
- Comment on An Alarming Number of Gen Z Ai Users Think It's Conscious 2 days ago:
In fairness, the word “conscious” has a range of meanings. For some, it is synonymous with certain religious ideas. They would be alarmed by the “heresy”. For others, it is synonymous to claiming that some entity is entitled to the same fundamental rights as a human being. Those would be quite alarmed by the social implications. Few people use the term in a strictly empiricist sense.
- Comment on An Alarming Number of Gen Z Ai Users Think It's Conscious 2 days ago:
Good question. Over the years, I’ve read a number of arguments about consciousness, or more precisely against machine consciousness. One thing that’s striking is that the authors never apply the same logic to themselves or humans in general. It’s like they completely lack self-awareness. If I took the whole “p-zombie” idea seriously, I’d look for such p-zombies. And these philosophers would be my first candidates.
- Comment on An Alarming Number of Gen Z Ai Users Think It's Conscious 2 days ago:
Yes, that’s the point. You’d think they could have, at least, looked into a dictionary at some point in the last 2 years. But nope, everyone is else is wrong. A round of applause for the paragons of human intelligence.
- Comment on An Alarming Number of Gen Z Ai Users Think It's Conscious 2 days ago:
Not sure what’s alarming about that. It’s a bit early to worry about an AI Dred Scott, no?
- Comment on In heat 4 days ago:
In short: BONK
It probably thought you were Elon Musk.
- Submitted 6 days ago to [deleted] | 20 comments
- Comment on [deleted] 6 days ago:
- Comment on Perfect Easter cookie for Christians 1 week ago:
That took me way too long.
- Comment on The TAKE IT DOWN Act Is Poised To Become Law. But Will It Provide Justice To Victims? 1 week ago:
No. Not imagery and not intimate as defined.
- Comment on 4chan hacked and taken offline. Hacker reopens /qa/ and leaks all admins emails. 1 week ago:
- Comment on Will the tariffs lead to a recession? 2 weeks ago:
There’s a few billionaire numptie
Like who?
- Comment on How wil people react if Trump is right about Tariffs? 2 weeks ago:
That would certainly be quite surprising. The expression of Trump being right is flexible enough to be interpreted in various ways.
The only plausible way would be if he achieves some largely meaningless concessions and the media spins it as a win. But if the American electorate gets the idea that the US can get free stuff by throwing a fit, then any agreement is not worth the paper it is written on.
Well, I guess that’s the answer. If Trump achieves anything positive with this, then the reaction with be self-destructive.
Do you have any particular scenario in mind that ends with Trump being vindicated?
- Comment on From a purely political perspective, if you oppose the US tariffs as a US resident, should you buy or avoid buying products subject to tariffs? 2 weeks ago:
I don’t think you have the choice. Products that aren’t imported are made with parts that are imported. In fact, there will be products that have several layers of products in them, for example cars. Parts are made, assembled into bigger parts and ever bigger pats, and may cross the mexican or canadian border each time.
These tariffs are a monumental act of economic self harm. That’s what the stock market is saying. Stocks have (rational) value because you are entitled to a share of future profits. The stock market crashing tells you that the pros expects that a lot of value is not going to be created. Trillions of dollars will not be paid out to stock-owners, and further trillions will not be paid out as wages. The real wealth that is the other side of that money - all these new goods, cars, phones, TVs, dishwashers … - will not exist in the USA.
So, don’t worry about hitting them in the wallet.
If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a ball sack—for ever.
Maybe watch out for products from Russia and Belarus, as they are not included in the tariffs. This may start a new era of economic cooperation; putting the US in USSR. Ironically, Russia is still hit hard because of oil taking a nosedive.
- Comment on The Llama 4 herd: The beginning of a new era of natively multimodal AI innovation. 2 weeks ago:
That’s a lot of parameters. Wow. I didn’t know they’d go this big.
- Comment on The fediverse has a bullying problem 2 weeks ago:
I think I can contribute something to the “privacy” aspect. But I’ll say first that I have noticed the same thing. There are some toxic behaviors that feel more common in these circles than what I have experienced elsewhere.
There is a lot of confusion around European data protection rights and privacy. EG the GDPR is often wrongly called a privacy regulation. In reality, privacy and EU data protection rights are entirely separate.
In the Charter of fundamental rights of the European Union, you will find privacy in Article 7 and data protection in Article 8.
spoiler
Article 7 Respect for private and family life Everyone has the right to respect for his or her private and family life, home and communications. Article 8 Protection of personal data 1. Everyone has the right to the protection of personal data concerning him or her. 2. Such data must be processed fairly for specified purposes and on the basis of the consent of the person concerned or some other legitimate basis laid down by law. Everyone has the right of access to data which has been collected concerning him or her, and the right to have it rectified. 3. Compliance with these rules shall be subject to control by an independent authority.
EU data protection works similar to copyright in that you have rights over data. Personal data is defined as any data that is “directly or indirectly related” to you (GDPR). It does not matter if the data is public or private, sensitive or banal. It doesn’t even matter if the data can be connected to your real identity. That’s quite unlike what one would think of as privacy.
So, it does not matter if people expected their communications to be secure or not. “Reasonable expectation of privacy” is a concept in US law.
Comments, posts and DMs are personal data because they are connected to a user who is a person. If any other person is mentioned, then this mention is their personal data. You could even argue that some post or comment also becomes someone else’s personal data when they reply to it. Such texts cease to be personal data only when the connection is irreversibly broken. As long as the connection can be restored, it remains personal data, even if that requires access to information that isn’t readily available.
When a DM is sent to some unauthorized recipient, that is literally a violation of the senders fundamental rights. In truth, this is relatively serious compared to some other stuff that causes outrage or gets the authorities involved.
It might have been legally required to notify the authorities of such a data breach within 72 hours.
- Comment on Instagram Is Full Of Openly Available AI-Generated Child Abuse Content. 2 weeks ago:
Look again. The explanation is that these images simply don’t look like any kind of CSAM. The whole story looks like some sort of scam to me.
- Comment on Instagram Is Full Of Openly Available AI-Generated Child Abuse Content. 2 weeks ago:
When I saw this, 2 questions came to mind: How come that this isn’t immediately reported? Why would anyone upload illegal material to a platform that tracks as thoroughly as Meta’s do?
The answer is:
All of those accounts followed the same visual pattern: blonde characters with voluptuous bodies and ample breasts, blue eyes, and childlike faces.
The 1 question that came to mind upon reading this is: What?
- Comment on SoA day of action following allegations of Meta’s mass theft of authors’ work 3 weeks ago:
Yeah, that’s another one of the deliberately deceptive talking points being spread.
First of all, average people did this. The dataset Books3 was created by a jobless individual named Shawn Presser using one of Aaron’s scripts. Later he shared it with Meta. What makes the difference for Shawn is that the legal department of Meta stands between him and the copyright industry. As far as I can tell, Shawn is way more average than Aaron in that he doesn’t rub shoulders with the likes of Sam Altman.
It’s interesting how this talking point works. Someone shills for the copyright industry against the interests of the average person. And the justification is that the copyright industry persecuted Aaron Swartz. That doesn’t make sense, does it?
- Comment on SoA day of action following allegations of Meta’s mass theft of authors’ work 3 weeks ago:
I don’t see how this fair use case is different from those in the past. There’s a tech company defending. Organizations like the EFF or the Internet Archive issue supporting statements.
I don’t see the hypocrisy. The content industry is suing tech companies now just like they have in the past, and just like they sue individuals now and in the past.
If I had to guess at the cause of the difference, I’d say that there is a lot of money being spent on social media PR. But perhaps it also is a result of the right-ward shift of society. I wonder how much that has to do with propaganda by the content industry.
- Comment on 3 weeks ago:
Trademarks have valid uses but they, too, are perverted. Think about luxury goods. The purpose of the brand name is simply to signal that the owner is able to afford the brand. These brands have nothing to do with consumer protection.
I consider them parasitic. Whatever utility someone gets from signalling with an exclusive brand is provided by society, not the company.
- Comment on 3 weeks ago:
The public domain is not just useful but unavoidable and necessary.
You could imagine a world where all available physical matter is owned property. But intellectual property is an arbitrary legal creation. It is not finite.
EG Trademark law. Only the owner of a mark may use it to trade. The mark proclaims who is responsible for a product. If there were no unowned trademarks, you could not start a business without first paying off some owner. This would clearly be economically disastrous. So having unused, potential trademarks is necessary.
EG Patent law. Only the patent owner may use a certain invention; some trick of doing something. The patent is published so that others may learn from it and perhaps come up with other ways of achieving the same end. After (usually) 20 years, everyone may use the invention. Scientific theories, mathematical theorems, and other such things are always public domain.
If patents were broader and/or lasted for longer, you’d eventually not be able to do much business without having to pay off some owner. The owners could basically demand a tax on any kind of economic activity and deny consent for anything that might threaten their status. Progress would grind to a halt. It would be a new kind of feudalism.
So, a public domain is not just useful but absolutely necessary to our civilization.
Anything could be made into intellectual property. For example tax farming in ancient Rome and elsewhere. Monarchs granted special privileges, such as granting the East India Company a monopoly on trade. Or they might grant some person the monopoly on opening coffee houses in the country or a certain city. A title of nobility could be seen as a kind of intellectual property. Such titles were traded in a limited way. Anything that can be allowed or forbidden by the government could be turned into intellectual property.
- Comment on SoA day of action following allegations of Meta’s mass theft of authors’ work 3 weeks ago:
A dbzer0 user agitating against Fair Use? You a narc or something?
- Comment on 3 weeks ago:
That’s not correct. There are other forms of IP besides copyright, such as trademarks, patents, or even trade secrets.
What you are saying is somewhat true for US copyrights (and patents) per the copyright clause in the US Constitution. But mind that typically copyrights are owned by the employer of the creator, who may be a writer, even a programmer, photographer, or any other such professional who may not be considered an “artist”.
You would probably not consider yourself an artist for writing comments here, but you get copyright nevertheless.
European copyright has a very different philosophy behind it, which does not consider the public at all. It’s quite harmful to the public, actually.
- Comment on Implementing a spellchecker on 64 kB of RAM back in the 1970s led to a compression algorithm that's technically unbeaten and part of it is still in use today 3 weeks ago:
nes game programmers
Were these guys even Real Programmers?
Here’s a great talk about a guy who worked on a 1982 game for the Atari 2600, a game console first released in 1977. It’s a fascinating insight into the early evolution of computing. They didn’t work around limitations. They used a machine to do whatever it could. If anyone has ever wondered by what standard C is a high-level language, this is for you. Or if you want to know how we ever could have developed something to connect the abstract logic of some algorithm with some glowing pixels on a screen.
Pitfall Classic Postmortem With David Crane Panel at GDC 2011 (Atari 2600)
There’s an ancient myth that a god created the first pair of tongs. Tongs need to be forged in a smithy. Obviously, you need tongs for that.
- Comment on Are color palettes subject to copyright protection? 3 weeks ago:
Generally no, but I wouldn’t rule out that it might be possible in a limited way in very specific circumstances. You wouldn’t be able to stop others from using certain colors.
A specific color scheme might also be used as a trademark.
- Comment on To Curb Online Sexual Abuse of Children, Experts Look to AI: Researchers in Norway and the U.S. are training artificial intelligence to address cybergrooming. Will it work? 3 weeks ago:
I guess most people don’t get how terrifyingly dystopian this is.
In the EU, there is a serious push to make this mandatory.
- Comment on OCDSB seeking court order in bid to unmask anonymous 'redditor'. 4 weeks ago:
How dare you accuse me of being of the same caliber as Qanon. You don’t know me.
I know that you recklessly spread disinformation and react to proposed facts with hostility rather than curiosity. I don’t know more about the qanon people either.
- Comment on OCDSB seeking court order in bid to unmask anonymous 'redditor'. 4 weeks ago:
Yes, but that’s not the only reason. It’s also done to track users; specifically to detect ban evasion and such things. Detecting DDoS attacks or scrapers might also be a purpose. Your instance only gives the first as a purpose, though. EU sites are legally required, per GDPR, to disclose such things.
I don’t know how I should reply to this level of aggressive ignorance and willful disinformation in a way that does not appear arrogant.
- Comment on OCDSB seeking court order in bid to unmask anonymous 'redditor'. 4 weeks ago:
Yes, which is why I think a company like Reddit plausibly holds less information than an Australian Lemmy instance.
- Comment on OCDSB seeking court order in bid to unmask anonymous 'redditor'. 4 weeks ago:
If identifying-information-storage was so vital, logless VPNs wouldn’t exist.
I see no technical reason why a VPN would need to store outgoing connections. I would be surprised if they didn’t store incoming connections, but I don’t actually know.
Anyway, just don’t make stuff up. You’re not making the world a better place. You ever heard of these Qanon guys? They made up a lot of shit and they didn’t make the world a better place.
