MountingSuspicion
@MountingSuspicion@reddthat.com
- Comment on Microsoft Windows 365 goes down the day after Microsoft celebrates 'reimagining the PC as a cloud service that streams a Cloud PC' 4 days ago:
Why did you need a shitty AI image for this?
- Comment on Giving University Exams in the Age of Chatbots 4 days ago:
That was an interesting read, but I am not convinced that they understand the “problem” they are trying to address. That would also explain the vagueness of the title. Clearly they think something needs to change because of AI, but they have not explained why, or defined what, or the parameters for a positive change. It makes it feel arbitrary.
At one point he suggests that telling people who are taking the exam after you what specifically is on the exam is not cheating, though his students seemed to think it is. If telling people is encouraged then people taking the test first just have a more difficult task and their results are more likely to reflect their knowledge of the subject. At that point just give people the exam questions early. I had a professor that would give out a study guide and would exclusively pull exam questions from the study guide with the numbers changed. It was basically homework, but you were guaranteed to have seen everything on the exam already and that was such a great way to ensure 1) people fully understood the scope of the test 2) relieve stress about testing. If they don’t see a problem with only certain people knowing exact questions and answers ahead of time, then I’m not sure they understand what cheating is.
Unrelated, but they also blame outlook for why young people hate email. I had to use outlook for a bit and it does suck, but my hatred for email is unrelated.
I’m glad they are experimenting with different methods for testing, but without really knowing more about the class itself this comes off as though this is just a filler class in a degree program and that the test doesn’t really matter because their understanding of the subject doesn’t really matter. In another blog he refers to the article about how AI failed at running a vending machine which was making the rounds a bit ago. In it he laments that we’re going to have to “prepare for that stupid world” where AI is everywhere. If you think we can still fight that, I don’t think accepting AI as a suitable exam tool is the way to do it, even if you make students acknowledge hallucinations. At that point you’re normalizing it. 2/60 is actually not bad for using AI, as he said there will always be those students, but the blog makes me question the content of the class more than anything else.
- Comment on Verizon carriers start switching to 365-day device unlock policy, up from 60 days 1 week ago:
They should be banned from having any unlocking restrictions after they were found to have violated the initial FCC mandates placed on them. Absolutely disgraceful. No accountability.
- Comment on Sorry Dave, I’m afraid I can’t do that! PCs refuse to shut down after Microsoft patch 1 week ago:
Linux is currently easier to use than Windows. Claim in dispute
People who think otherwise are Windows users who think different equals worse. In this case different is worse. If you’re used to a restaurant that serves carrots and I serve you peas you can argue that it’s not worse it’s just different. If you’re used to a restaurant that serves carrots and I tell you I don’t know what carrots are and I don’t have any alternative suggestions, but if you can find a store that provides what you’re talking about, appropriately transport that to my location and teach me how to cook them I will do that, then I think it’s fair to say I’m just a worse restaurant. What’s not comparable is easy of use. If you don’t understand how a lack of plug and play affects ease of use then there’s nothing I can say that will fundamentally bridge that gap.
- Comment on Sorry Dave, I’m afraid I can’t do that! PCs refuse to shut down after Microsoft patch 1 week ago:
I’m not the person you’re responding to, but if I have headphones or speakers or a mouse that aren’t plug and play on Linux which is what I’m used to on windows, I think it’s fair to say that my experience with Linux is less easy than with windows. The average user is not going to consider that a hardware issue, and it isn’t a hardware issue. If it’s a driver issue, I’d call that a software issue. Im glad to hear your grandma is not having issues with Linux, but as a Linux user I have to agree with the other commenter. A not insignificant amount of people will run up against some issues with Linux that the average user is likely not equipped to solve. I’m not saying that it means Linux is bad, but it really isn’t helpful to act like that’s a complete fabrication.
- Comment on Hooded Horse ban AI-generated art in their games: "all this thing has done is made our lives more difficult" 2 weeks ago:
I don’t think training on all public information is super ethical regardless, but to the extent that others may support it, I understand that SO may be seen as fair game. To my knowledge though, all the big AIs I’m aware of have been trained on GitHub regardless of any individual projects license.
It’s not about proving individual code theft, it’s about recognizing the model itself is built from theft. Just because an AI image output might not resemble any preexisting piece of art doesn’t mean it isn’t based on theft. Can I ask what you used that was trained on just a projects documentation? Considering the amount of data usually needed for coherent output, I would be surprised if it did not need some additional data.
- Comment on Hooded Horse ban AI-generated art in their games: "all this thing has done is made our lives more difficult" 2 weeks ago:
If you acknowledge the problem with theft from artists, do you not acknowledge there’s a problem with theft from coders? Code intended to be fully open source with licenses requiring derivatives to be open source is now being served up for closed source uses at the press of a button with no acknowledgement.
For what it’s worth, I think AI would be much better in a post scarcity moneyless society, but so long as people need to be paid for their work I find it hard to use ethically. The time it might take individuals to do the things offloaded to AI might mean a company would need to hire an additional person if they were not using AI. If AI were not trained unethically then I’d view it as a productivity tool and so be it, but because it has stolen for its training data it’s hard for me to view it as a neutral tool.
- Comment on Librarians Are Tired of Being Accused of Hiding Secret Books That Were Made Up by AI 4 weeks ago:
I believe I got into a conversation on Lemmy where I was saying that there should be a big persistent warning banner stuck on every single AI chat app that “the following information has no relation to reality” or some other thing. The other person kept insisting it was not needed. I’m not saying it would stop all of these events, but it couldn’t hurt.
- Comment on Dell and Lenovo may limit mid-range laptops to 8GB DDR5 RAM in response to rising memory prices 5 weeks ago:
Not the person you’re responding to, but “most likely, we already need to do a lot of optimization work in early access that we didn’t necessarily want to do at that point” indicates to me that optimization was not a top priority. It’s not unusual for people to optimize after a proof of concept or something, but I imagine in gaming (I don’t do game dev admittedly) you don’t want that too late in the process. If they’re not planning on having it in early access, then their early consistent user base will be more worried about other things. If min spec is 8 then people with 4 won’t get it or won’t complain about poor performance because technically it’s their machine that’s the issue. Lack of complaints about that and feedback about other things further shifts the priority away from optimization. Plus, anyone who’s worked in dev spaces or probably any kind of deliverable knows that there are things that just don’t happen despite your best intentions. Things like optimization are the first to go in the dev space, so by openly admitting to putting it off, it does feel like an admission of “we were probably just not going to get around to it”. In my experience, the further out you plan to optimize, the more man hours you end up wasting, so I don’t see a company investing heavily in that at any point, but doing so post early launch seems wasteful if they legitimately cared about it.
- Comment on Dell and Lenovo may limit mid-range laptops to 8GB DDR5 RAM in response to rising memory prices 5 weeks ago:
“Oh don’t worry, you won’t have to actually load spreadsheets anymore, just give our AI full access to your files and it will do whatever you ask :)”
Ideally, you’re correct though and companies start investing in optimization. I don’t see it going that way, but a girl can dream.
- Comment on Dell and Lenovo may limit mid-range laptops to 8GB DDR5 RAM in response to rising memory prices 5 weeks ago:
As a dirty commie, I agree, but unfortunately under capitalism it is just an avenue for exploitation. Large companies are deciding what we can or cannot have access to and setting the price for it in a manner completely divorced from what they’re offering.
- Comment on Dell and Lenovo may limit mid-range laptops to 8GB DDR5 RAM in response to rising memory prices 5 weeks ago:
Or more realistically be used as an excuse for always online cloud based services a la office 365. “We would let you download the app, but most users don’t have the computing power so instead we’ll just make this a helpful subscription!”
- Comment on AI-generated code contains more bugs and errors than human output 5 weeks ago:
I think one of the big issues is it often makes nonhuman errors. Sometimes I forget a semicolon or there’s a typo, but I’m well equipped to handle that. In fact, most programs can actually catch that kind of issue already. AI is more likely to generate code that’s hard to follow and therefore harder to check. It makes debugging more difficult.
- Comment on Apple hit with $115M fine for “extremely burdensome” App Store privacy policy 5 weeks ago:
You are suggesting a user configurable setting, but that’s exactly what they had. Apple had a user wide setting, and then individual apps could ask to override that setting. I have personalized ads off in my general settings, and though I would never turn them on, if for whatever reason I did want to, the best way to get me to do that would be to ask in the specific app I wanted to give access to that. Absolutely no way I would change my overall settings just for the benefit of one app. Others have noted that a second layer of consent was only needed if you did not use the Apple provided ad option, because Apple already has your opt in/out on file. I hope this causes Apple to also display the pop-up for those using Apple ad options. Most people probably just agreed to the tracking when setting up their phone, so forcing Apple to show the pop-up even if an app is using Apple as their ad distributor is ideal in my opinion. Users will be much more likely to opt out even if their overall setting is opt in. This will ideally make Apple and non-Apple advertising options on an even playing field and is better for users. If anything, it’s probably worse for developers because had they just chosen to use Apple ads before they were probably more likely to get targeted ads from the user since Apple would bypass the pop-up.
- Comment on Apple announces more ads are coming to App Store search results 5 weeks ago:
The “auction” is not a realtime auction that you might be used to IRL or anything, and these brands likely have AI already doing that. They likely have certain bid strategies and ad budgets. So they may be willing to pay up to $X to be in that spot for a user with demographic/behavior profile A and pay up to $Y for a user with profile B then the have an overall budget for that ad spot of $Q per day. All of those parameters are likely set by a specialized AI that monitors bid strategy over time. The AI might see that users with profile B download the app via the ad more often so they will spend more to capture that audience. It’s possible companies have their own internal strategies, but most ad platforms have at least some of that analysis built in and will regularly offer recommendations based on the data and have had that available for years.
- Comment on [deleted] 1 month ago:
Yes, thank you! My timing was wrong (I’m getting old lol), but this was the exact thing being discussed. Glad other people were able to find the info.
- Comment on [deleted] 1 month ago:
Yes! Thank you for the link! I can’t guarantee it but this seems like the exact thing we had been chatting about. The age puts it in time to have made the rounds but still be tech relevant at around the time of discussion.
- Comment on [deleted] 1 month ago:
Yea. I didn’t call it AI because I’m not sure the exact method of generation. It may have been AI or maybe some other generation method.
- Comment on [deleted] 1 month ago:
I may be hallucinating now, but I swear I remember nearly a decade ago there was a paper or articles about how CG PCBs were using some electrical tricks that were non standard to minimize space or something. The design purposefully had arcs or short circuits or something. Maybe it was a temperature thing? I did a more than cursory search and couldn’t find much, but I vividly remember having conversations about it. Anyone remember anything like that?
- Comment on YSK: Your library card is probably a golden ticket to free streaming, e-books, and audiobooks. 1 month ago:
I have a lot of users tagged as AI/uses AI, but I don’t have this one. Did you have them tagged from before or are there obvious AI signs I’m missing in the post?
- Comment on Google's Agentic AI wipes user's entire HDD without permission in catastrophic failure 1 month ago:
Lol. Thank you. I had definitely just added necromancer by Gordon R Dickson to my list instead so that info really helps. I don’t read a lot of cyberpunk, so looking forward to something a little different.
- Comment on Google's Agentic AI wipes user's entire HDD without permission in catastrophic failure 1 month ago:
Awesome! Thank you!
- Comment on Google's Agentic AI wipes user's entire HDD without permission in catastrophic failure 1 month ago:
Not me having already just added Necromancer by Gordon R Dickson to my to read list. Thank you!
- Comment on Google's Agentic AI wipes user's entire HDD without permission in catastrophic failure 1 month ago:
That’s helpful, thank you! I play a lot of ttrpgs so searching just “necromancer” was not yielding much so I just added “show” to the search. Will have to check this out.
- Comment on Google's Agentic AI wipes user's entire HDD without permission in catastrophic failure 1 month ago:
I looked it up and all that’s coming up is an upcoming Apple TV show called neuromamcer. Would you mind sharing where to watch necromancer?
- Comment on Google's Agentic AI wipes user's entire HDD without permission in catastrophic failure 1 month ago:
Not exactly the same, but pantheon on Netflix is in a similar vein.
- Comment on AI Slop Recipes Are Taking Over the Internet — And Thanksgiving Dinner | Food bloggers see traffic dip as home cooks turn to AI, inspired by impossible pictures 2 months ago:
This is such a beautiful comment. Feels like what the internet was made for. The holidays have me all emotional, but this just was so sweet. Thank you very much for sharing! I will probably not make this for a while, since holiday plans/family visiting/cooking for out of town picky eaters/etc etc. but it might be my first dish of the new year. Legitimately very excited to try this. Thank you again for sharing.
- Comment on AI Slop Recipes Are Taking Over the Internet — And Thanksgiving Dinner | Food bloggers see traffic dip as home cooks turn to AI, inspired by impossible pictures 2 months ago:
I can’t open this site so it might already mention this, but I went to a website that had specific buttons to have 4 different AIs offer their input on the recipe. Obviously I clicked off immediately, but that’s an insane thing to do. The whole point of a recipe is that an “expert” or at least a real human being with tastebuds presumably made this and thought it was good enough to share. I don’t want the general statistical average of every soup recipe. I want one specific recipe and for it to be cohesive and good. Some breads have rosemary in them. Some have raisins. Some have poppy seeds. I don’t need something that doesn’t understand the difference between poppy seed bread and cinnamon raisin bread telling me about poppy seed raisin bread. I know that’s not exactly how it works, but still. It’s incredible to me that people would do that.
- Comment on ProtonMail Logged IP Address of French Activist; Should You Be Worried About Your Privacy? 2 months ago:
I have added the text and a generic online summary below, but generally the issue is that judges are becoming more and more lenient and are unwilling to put their foot down when there are requests that are actual overreach. This is for a variety of reasons, and the law might need to be more clear/strict, but according to the letter and interpretation of the law they need to be specific about what they are looking for and it should minimize intrusion in general. Judges have just stopped caring in many cases, and of course the people carrying them out are trigger happy jackboots.
From Cornell law school: Amdt4.5.4 Particularity Requirement Fourth Amendment:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
“The requirement that warrants shall particularly describe the things to be seized makes general searches under them impossible and prevents the seizure of one thing under a warrant describing another. As to what is to be taken, nothing is left to the discretion of the officer executing the warrant.” 1 This requirement thus acts to limit the scope of the search, as the executing officers should be limited to looking in places where the described object could be expected to be found.2 The purpose of the particularity requirement extends beyond prevention of general searches; it also assures the person whose property is being searched of the lawful authority of the executing officer and of the limits of his power to search. It follows, therefore, that the warrant itself must describe with particularity the items to be seized, or that such itemization must appear in documents incorporated by reference in the warrant and actually shown to the person whose property is to be searched.3
Footnotes 1 Marron v. United States, 275 U.S. 192, 196 (1927). See Stanford v. Texas, 379 U.S. 476 (1965). Of course, police who are lawfully on the premises pursuant to a warrant may seize evidence of crime in “plain view” even if that evidence is not described in the warrant. Coolidge v. New Hampshire, 403 U.S. 443, 464–71 (1971). back 2 In Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 17–19, (1968), the Court wrote: “This Court has held in the past that a search which is reasonable at its inception may violate the Fourth Amendment by virtue of its intolerable intensity and scope. Kremen v. United States, 353 U.S. 346 (1957); Go-Bart Importing Co. v. United States, 282 U.S. 344, 356–58 (1931); see United States v. Di Re, 332 U.S. 581, 586–87 (1948). The scope of the search must be ‘strictly tied to and justified by’ the circumstances which rendered its initiation permissible. Warden v. Hayden, 387 U.S. 294, 310 (1967) (Fortas, J., concurring); see, e.g., Preston v. United States, 376 U.S. 364, 367–368 (1964); Agnello v. United States, 269 U.S. 20, 30–31 (1925).” See also Andresen v. Maryland, 427 U.S. 463, 470–82 (1976), and id. at 484, 492–93 (Brennan, J., dissenting). In Stanley v. Georgia, 394 U.S. 557, 569 (1969), Justices Potter Stewart, William Brennan, and Byron White would have based the decision on the principle that a valid warrant for gambling paraphernalia did not authorize police upon discovering motion picture films in the course of the search to project the films to learn their contents. back 3 Groh v. Ramirez, 540 U.S. 551 (2004) (a search based on a warrant that did not describe the items to be seized was “plainly invalid” ; particularity contained in supporting documents not cross-referenced by the warrant and not accompanying the warrant is insufficient); United States v. Grubbs, 547 U.S. 90, 97, 99 (2006) (because the language of the Fourth Amendment “specifies only two matters that must be ‘particularly describ[ed]’ in the warrant: ‘the place to be searched’ and ‘the persons or things to be seized[,]’ . . . the Fourth Amendment does not require that the triggering condition for an anticipatory warrant be set forth in the warrant itself.” back
Here’s so generic information about the above: Requirements for a Valid Search Warrant
The police who submit an affidavit supporting a warrant must attach a sworn, detailed statement. The officer must then appear before a neutral judge or magistrate. The judge will check to see if the officer has probable cause to execute the search.
In Carroll v. United States, the U.S. Supreme Court held that probable cause exists when a police officer has facts and circumstances that provide a reasonably trustworthy basis to believe a suspect has committed or is about to commit a crime.
If the police request a search warrant to search a location, the police must provide probable cause that evidence of a crime exists at that location. The officer must also state, with specificity, the items they are looking for.
Reasonableness Requirement
Even if the police have a warrant, their search must still be reasonable. Although the facts of the case dealt with a warrantless seizure, the court in Brinegar v. United States reiterated that the presence of a warrant does not give the police the power to conduct an unreasonable search.
The police officer’s search must be reasonable, or the prosecutor won’t be able to use the evidence they find in court. For example, if the police are looking for a large suitcase that contains drugs, it wouldn’t be reasonable for them to look in your bedroom drawers. A large suitcase or duffel bag could not fit in a nightstand drawer.
- Comment on ProtonMail Logged IP Address of French Activist; Should You Be Worried About Your Privacy? 2 months ago:
I don’t think the concept is inherently flawed, but the execution is obviously terribly flawed. If several people credibly report seeing someone burry a body in their yard, the description of which corresponds to a missing person, I understand how getting a warrant to at least visually inspect their property would be necessary to fully investigate this claim. I don’t think this requires the kind of force we often see, but I don’t see people offering alternatives to warrants in general. I understand that privacy is a fundamental right, but presumably that’s where a judge would come in to decide if there was probable cause to partially suspend that right.
I am open and interested in hearing alternatives, but I do not see them posed. I think what underlies the system would function fine with a less militarized group enforcing it.