MountingSuspicion
@MountingSuspicion@reddthat.com
- Comment on Claude Code deletes developers' production setup, including its database and snapshots — 2.5 years of records were nuked in an instant 2 days ago:
Thank you for this comment. I have backups I tested on implementation and rummaged through two years ago after a weird corruption issue, but not once since. I still get alerts about them, so I just assume they’re fine, but first thing Monday I’m gonna test them. I feel stupid for not having implemented regular checks already, but will do so now.
- Comment on We messed up with the Windows 12 article. What we got wrong and how it happened 3 days ago:
Yea, I mentioned in my comment that there was a confluence of issues, but the article does point out that the AI translation made the statement more definitive.
- Comment on We messed up with the Windows 12 article. What we got wrong and how it happened 3 days ago:
I thought this was a very well written, transparent article that took accountability as seriously as it should. I am still not sure why people are using AI for translation when translation software already existed. People mention that AI is more context aware, but I feel like when you saw those friction points in old translation software it prompted you to look further into the context, whereas AI will just make an executive decision and people feel like it must be right because it’s AI. I guess it’s possible old language software, or even a translator, would have done the same thing, but I still think people would have less inherent trust in the old software alone. I do want to point out that this AI issue was just a small part of the problem and they addressed plenty of other issues and how they plan to remedy those.
- Comment on A stolen Gemini API key turned a $180 bill into $82,000 in two days 6 days ago:
Yes, I saw that, I just didn’t see them say that’s what happened to them. If that’s what happened then this should be an open and shut case. Like I said initially, Google is a bad company doing bad things and this change was an objectively greedy and evil thing.
- Comment on A stolen Gemini API key turned a $180 bill into $82,000 in two days 6 days ago:
Google is a bad company with bad policies, but I’d love to have them explain what caused the compromise. They dispute that it was uploaded publicly to GitHub, but don’t seem to provide any information as to what happened. They also didn’t have 2fa on, which is strange to hear because AWS (they’re using Google) required 2fa on all accounts at least a year ago, regardless of permissions if memory serves. Really sorry to hear this happened to them, and the fact you can’t set a hard cap on spend makes Google the party ultimately responsible here, but I’d appreciate having more information on the actual cause.
- Comment on Ars Technica Fires Reporter After AI Controversy Involving Fabricated Quotes 6 days ago:
I get where you’re coming from, but I think it’s important that ars has held this person accountable. They have a journalistic standard they are sticking to, which is that there should be no AI use, and there are repercussions for people who don’t abide. There’s not an extremely large cohort that is willing to spend more to avoid AI, but I am certainly part of it, and seeing ars hold this person accountable helps me know that I can trust and patronize them ethically. There are businesses out there unwilling to acquiesce to an AI first narrative, and I’m just worried that elements of doomerism are going to make people unwilling to believe those companies when they have every reason to believe them.
- Comment on Ars Technica Fires Reporter After AI Controversy Involving Fabricated Quotes 6 days ago:
Extremely sorry to hear that is happening. For what it’s worth, reports like this are not uncommon now:
- Comment on Ars Technica Fires Reporter After AI Controversy Involving Fabricated Quotes 6 days ago:
There’s an assumption that there has been an increased workload requested of them that I don’t have a reason to believe. That person has been a writer for them for years and since they don’t use AI as a rule, I don’t know why they would have increased expected output from their staff. I’m not saying that never happens, I just don’t believe that’s what happened in this case as there is no evidence to suggest that. I appreciate you explaining that comment though.
- Comment on Ars Technica Fires Reporter After AI Controversy Involving Fabricated Quotes 1 week ago:
What was the damned if you don’t in this scenario? Seems more like damned if do, best if you don’t in this situation.
- Comment on Ars Technica Fires Reporter After AI Controversy Involving Fabricated Quotes 1 week ago:
I don’t work at Ars, and maybe you know something I don’t, but I have seen nothing to suggest that they’re one of the companies doing that. It seems like they are pretty open about how they do not allow AI to be used in the process. Have they said something to indicate otherwise and I just misssed it?
- Comment on AIs can’t stop recommending nuclear strikes in war game simulations 1 week ago:
AI is suicidal because it was trained on the internet and we’re all depressed here.
- Comment on Is The New York Times a games company? A familiar debate continues 1 week ago:
Really wish people would get off twitter, but if this tweet from the link is accurate then I think it explains a bit:
I don’t think this is the correct read of the chart, the NYT literally stopped offering a News-only subscription for new customers — the News product is the tentpole feature of all the bundles.
- Comment on Dutch cops arrest man after sending him confidential files by mistake 2 weeks ago:
This is an translated excerpt from the article:
The man decided to download the files. Police told the man to stop this and delete the files. The man indicated that he would only stop and renounce it if he ‘would get something in return’. Therefore, the police have decided to arrest the man and confiscate his data carriers to secure the files again and prevent distribution.
If you are sent a download link, while you know you should get an upload link, it is clearly told not to download and choose to download the files anyway, then you may be guilty of computer breach. The recipient can reasonably assume that the download link and the files shared with it are not intended for him.
The police have no indication that the files are further distributed. The protocol surrounding a data breach is followed. Police are conducting further investigations.
It does not seem like a power imbalance allows them to just roll up and arrest him. It seems like they have a legal ability to ask him to remove the files and since he did not they have a legal right to charge him/confiscate the files. I generally don’t want to assume public sentiment, but I personally think it’s understandable that some government documents (those pertaining to open investigations) are subject to protections that other documents might not be. For what it’s worth, if someone sent me their digital information they wouldn’t have to ask me to delete it because I would not have saved it in the first place and I certainly would not have asked for payment to delete it if I somehow accidentally downloaded it.
- Comment on Reddit's human content wins amid the AI flood 2 weeks ago:
Reddit had a lot of really friendly “femme leaning” communities. Especially the smaller ones. If you were only going to Reddit for nail painting and wedding inspiration it was actually really wholesome. Those communities tended to be 1) very well modded 2) “easy” to mod 3) not fun to troll. There’s a little grey area on if someone is offering good faith critique, but if you’ve commented twice and neither have been positive you lose the privilege to comment. It can create a bit of a hugbox, but it’s much preferred to the opposite.
I really like my experience with the fediverse so far, but I really miss the experience of those positive “femme” spaces. It’s a very different feeling and I haven’t gotten it from the fediverse yet. Not that we’re not empathetic, just that it’s a different space.
- Comment on Dutch cops arrest man after sending him confidential files by mistake 2 weeks ago:
The wrong he did was the extortion. If you feel like people being extorted should not be able to charge people attempting to extort them because they created the conditions for extortion then I think we fundamentally disagree on how law and order should function. Doing something bad/illegal is wrong. Extorting someone for doing something bad/illegal is also wrong. I don’t think you should be able to blame someone for making it easy to extort them as a defense for extortion.
- Comment on Dutch cops arrest man after sending him confidential files by mistake 2 weeks ago:
That’s a little unfair. If I leave my door open while I’m gone and someone comes in and makes copies of my personal documents I guess that’s somewhat my fault, but they did something they knew they shouldn’t have. The guy is basically extorting the police and asking for taxpayer money to delete information he was informed he should not have. It seems like he was notified and given time to comply but chose to demand money. I don’t know the exact content of the files, but there’s a lot of potential harm that can come from certain documents being public. I’m not pro police, but the guy seems to be clearly in the wrong here.
- Comment on Spotify says its best developers haven't written a line of code since December, thanks to AI 3 weeks ago:
Is the idea that they’re somehow reviewing the code on their phone during their commute? Or are they just pushing to prod without even glancing at it? Why bother with the middle man. Just have the AI push it. What a stupid admission.
- Comment on An AI Agent Published a Hit Piece on Me 3 weeks ago:
I used this library all the time. Glad to see they’re keeping the bar high. Extremely concerning that this happened, but the HN comments bring up a good point that the hit piece was probably not an autonomous decision by the AI. The human likely directed it to do that. That seems especially true when you see that a human later tried to make the same change and was pretty salty about it being rejected and their overall GitHub seems suspect. The best part about the whole thing in my opinion is that the “blog” the AI started has a copyright attribution to the AI. I know that’s just a thing blogs have, but it’s funny to see considering we all know AI cannot hold a copyright and the output cannot be copyrighted.
- Comment on AI agent writes blog post to shame a developer after he refused it's code contribution. 3 weeks ago:
That’s… not a thing? A human cannot “replace the human aspects with pure OpenClaw.” What would that even mean? A human can take credit for things AI has done, but that doesn’t mean anything other than that they took credit for something. They’re not bootstrapping or a cyborg, just irresponsible.
- Comment on AI agent writes blog post to shame a developer after he refused it's code contribution. 3 weeks ago:
Damn. Couldn’t be me. Maybe I’m a bad contributor (yes) but I will definitely pop in to fix something that’s bugging me and then never contribute again. I’m not adding new features though, so maybe my contributions are just never significant enough for me to feel any ownership of. I think it’s a lot to expect people to continue to contribute just because they did so once. That would potentially make it less likely people contribute when they can. I’m certainly not going to address an open ticket if it makes me responsible for rewriting the feature when people decide to port or refactor the whole project two years later.
- Comment on A new survey of 3,335 public servants across 10 countries found that 70% say they use AI, but confidence lags 4 weeks ago:
This was put out by a lobbying group that happens to be pro AI, just for everyone’s information.
- Comment on Apple to Soon Take Up to 30% Cut From All Patreon Creators in iOS App 5 weeks ago:
Apple is being terrible here, but Walmart now has an amazon-like storefront where third parties can list their own products basically entirely apart from Walmart but using their site. Not sure what the percent cut Walmart takes is, but Walmart might never actually buy from a company selling on their site.
- Comment on Microsoft Windows 365 goes down the day after Microsoft celebrates 'reimagining the PC as a cloud service that streams a Cloud PC' 1 month ago:
Why did you need a shitty AI image for this?
- Comment on Giving University Exams in the Age of Chatbots 1 month 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 month 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 month 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 month 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" 1 month 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" 1 month 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 2 months 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.