Brainwavez
18d ago
To me he seems like a pathological liar but no worse. At least he says good things.
I don't think he should be murdered. If you were in his position, what would you do?
Although I don't trust him with ASI, nor anyone else.
A scenario you didn't mention: AI takes over and rules alongside Moloch over everyone.
I think this is much more likely than technofeudalism: because people are too incompetent, and what would someone who desires to dominate everyone desire after?
It doesn't have to be ASI. Climate change alone may do it, by coercing everyone to cooperate more to maintain normal.
Brainwavez
18d ago
Brainwavez
18d ago
I don’t want ID to be part of the internet either.
Anon review sites are already untrustworthy. Ideally, people revert to paid trustworthy critics or form paid webs of trust, so rando nitpicking and shill glazing are both ignored.
Brainwavez
18d ago
I think providing good service is reasonable, as long as the customer is polite and not asking for something particularly demanding.
The refund wasn’t your problem, the manager is the one who’s losing from giving customers extra.
My focus is when customers are disrespectful, or the boss is disrespectful, or otherwise causing the employee unnecessarily difficulty.
I think that pettiness is particularly evil, because it’s clearly unjust, loss without gain. Whereas even a robber baron, while unjust, at least gains the money others lose, and can donate it back to society. I wonder why society doesn’t focus on tackling pettiness more than other issues.
Brainwavez
18d ago
I have a modest proposal that service workers shouldn't have to deal with that.
For example, maybe if a customer is rude, the business can forcibly fine them. A customer can challenge the fine + court fees, and is presumed innocent, but since it's a private establishment the business can present video evidence.
Thus, business owners are incentivized to let employees refuse to serve rude customers, rather than the other way around (importantly, the customer can't be fined after a sale).
It's a small thing, along with letting factory workers wear headphones.
Brainwavez
18d ago
Bypass Paywalls Clean
https://gitflic.ru/user/magnolia1234
It’s on a Russian site because it kept getting DMCAd on GitHub.
I can relate.
I think it's nostalgia: creators have trouble finding new ideas, so reuse old ones, but since consumers are desensitized, less exciting parts are cut. Hence Genshin's rewards without the quest, slice of life's wholesome moments without pain, etc.
I don't think putting back the less exciting parts would work, even though they're important (particularly the delayed gratification that yields longer-lasting satisfaction). If that's all it takes, there are already more than a lifetime's worth of old RPGs and niche animes/movies. I think we need "breakthroughs" that create new genres (or popularize previously niche genres), and that requires (most visible) creators to regain their creativity.
Why aren't (most visible) creators creative anymore? I suspect it's partly because of centralization of distribution: there are creative artists that you don't see, or potential creative artists that give up (or don't start) because they don't expect to be seen. Also because of LLMs, modern tools/techniques and asset packs: they help creation but not original creation, and creators that start relying on them become too lazy to stop. Also because of homogenized culture, and people too embarrassed to express themselves. Ultimately, these are all speculation.
Brainwavez
21d ago
Related: "character always wears something different" (https://old.reddit.com/r/TopCharacterTropes/comments/1s4hq5p/love_design_trope_the_character_has_a_different/)
My favorite trope is surrealism (technically a genre but it has a tvtropes page). Specifically surrealism that I can relate to the real world, I think because the real world is surreal. Advertisements, institutions, politicians, celebrities, social media…are caricatures of what we imagine is reasonable society, formed from our idolization of the past. (Though fortunately, less so lived experience; closer to me becomes more normal, because it’s how I came to define normal).
And I hate to be cynical, but predict everything will get weirder. Imagine what people from the 1800s would think of today, or cavemen of the 1800s.
It’s not a bad thing, though not good, it just is. A related trope is Cosmic Bliss, though I like when it’s not bliss but just not irreconcilable horror.
Examples: TADC, ENA (I didn’t like until it “clicked” that ENA depicts an autistic worldview and masking). I wish I had examples that aren’t silly cartoons.
Brainwavez
21d ago
I'm obsessed with tvtropes.org and r/TopCharacterTropes.
What are your favorite tropes and examples in media?
an American can go into the streets holding a sign, or tweet it out, or make a website, or rambling posts on Facebook, on most things and won't get beaten or put away in unmarked vans
Unfortunately, this happened to Rümeysa Öztürk. That she was a (legal) immigrant Muslim who wrote an op-ed accusing Israel of genociding Palestinians - I think is just a poor excuse.
Thankfully, she's free now.
I do believe, today, the United States has overall more free speech than any other nation. I think the EU nations have significantly more free speech than Russia, China, Iran, etc. Importantly, both America and Europe allow mocking public figures (my example is one of only a couple exceptions) and anonymous web usage (I'm sure the FBI etc. track you, but seem to only act on classified information and CSAM).
Still, I think every nation should have more.
Brainwavez
25d ago
I think the first amendment reinforces my point: it has no speech restrictions. Narrow exceptions only exist outside, yet even they've been twisted (e.g. prosecuting Communists for "planning to overthrow the government" in Dennis v. United States).
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
I suspect that speech hasn't been prosecuted more in the US because children are taught this first, then exceptions later, so they're generally biased against exceptions.
Brainwavez
25d ago
Has there ever in history been a government that implemented any speech restrictions that didn't spread to broad criticism of the ruling party?
Brainwavez
25d ago
European tech, American tech, and regulation
tl;dr: what do you think about 1) European alternatives to American tech, and 2) European and American tech regulations?
Background
- Europeans (citizens, businesses, and governments) heavily rely on American tech. Europe has alternatives in most categories (e.g. phone, CDN) but most have less adoption.
- The US has regulations. The EU and its nations have different regulations, notably the Digital Serivces Act and Digital Markets Act. Occasionally a big company gets fined and told to change; they usually appeal, then sometimes still don't pay or change anything. The EU and its nations are widely regarded as having way more, stricter regulations and fines.
Recent events
- Reaffirming our commitment to child safety in the face of European Union inaction: apparently after Chat Control 2.0's failure and Chat Control 1.0's expiration, the EU has no legal framework for companies to detect and remove CSAM, but it's still illegal. So Google etc. are allegedly worried their existing process to detect and remove CSAM (scanning private data of EU citizens, which violates ePrivacy) is illegal, but no process would also be illegal. They're asking for some legal framework, which could be Chat Control 2.0 revived, or something completely new.
- Chat Control 2.0 failed: "Chat Control" was a controversial bill that allowed scanning private data of EU citizens to catch child predators and CSAM distributors. Chat Control 2.0 would've been more invasive than the existing one (requiring client-side scanning), but was rejected while the old one expired.
- This Hacker News comment is a more detailed and overall better summary of the whole fiasco.
- Critics say Brussels risks ceding control of its tech laws under U.S. pressure: the Trump admin is trying to get Europe to relax their regulations. The European Commission plans to negotiate and European Parliament members are criticising them.
- US subpoenas tech companies for private messages of European officials enforcing the DSA: the Trump admin is criticing European governments for censoring speech, which is...true, and not just "hate speech" but sometimes just criticing politicians.
- German implementation of eIDAS will require an Apple/Google account to function: it's not mandatory and hasn't yet been implemented, but a related issue is various banking apps only working on locked-down Apple and Google phones.
- France's Mistral raises $830 million in debt for AI data centre build-up: Mistral has released mostly open-weight models and tools including Le Chat (online chatbot) and Vibe (CLI chatbot). Their models are orders of magnitude smaller than Chinese and American ones, but apparently decent local LLMs.
- Cloudflare-Italy-Olympics fiasco: Italy fined Cloudflare $17 million for not enforcing "Piracy Shield" which allegedly gives rightsholders wide discretion to block websites and Cloudflare 30 minutes to comply. Cloudflare is appealing and hasn't paid the fine nor complied.
Online ideas and my opinions
More radical
- "The EU should ban and block US tech companies": on (pro tech freedom) Hacker News of all sites, which suprised me. Effectively a Great Firewall for the EU. I strongly disagree. More broadly, I believe people should have the freedom to stream propaganda from any nation they want: Russia, China, even Iran. I have no issue with governments directing citizens to their own propaganda and discouraging other sources, even preventing people who are so dumb they may actually believe whatever e.g. the Iran regime says. But this leads to the proposal's more significant, practical issue: way too many Europeans use American tech, and they aren't switching despite seemingly having some national pride and US dislike. European governments internally use Office and other American tools. It's near-term infeasible.
- "Europe should stop protecting US Intellectual Property, from Cory Doctorow: while I'd love to see the end of IP, like I'd love to see the end of labor, this is also near-term infeasible, so I also strongly disagree. If a European nation "just stops" enforcing the DMCA, tech companies can "just stop" operating there, and remember that practically all of Europe still relies on them. Cory Doctorow has lots of interesting arguments, and I really admire and support his crusade against IP and enshittification, but his views are very extreme and some of his ideas go too far.
- What I think European nations should do in the near term is provide leniencey for and encourage companies to not over-enforce IP laws; for example, by supporting companies who get sued for not taking down content from a flawed DMCA claim (DMCA takedowns are heavily abused). Likewise, they should defend companies who are wrongly sued for copyright/patent infringement, and ensure, however strictly IP is enforced, it's equally strict on small and big companies.
- I'd still like to see the end of IP, but it must be done reasonably and with an alternative for deserving IP owners (particularly artists who need to make a living, and not platform owners who restrict users' content). For example, LLMs sidestep existing IP: they can scrape any website, build any app from a description, and generate copyrighted characters for personal use. Maybe European (and American) nations can accept AI companies training on copyrighted data in exchange for keeping this.
Less radical
- "European nations and/or the EU should encourage and fund European alternatives": strongly agree. In general, I want to see more variety and innovation. In particular, I think everyone using locked-down platforms (social medias, phones, mail, etc.) is really bad, and the way out is not regulation (though some is important/useful) but competition, so companies are pressured to open their platforms or at least stop degrading them.
- Notably, I don't actually care whether the alternative platforms are European.
- Unfortunately, I'm not optimistic that governments will help here. And I myself avoid mainstream social media, but still use an iPhone and Mac because they're better.
- On Mistral. AI is particularly important, so Europe will be at a big disadvantage if they don't get competitive AI and America restricts its own. Mistral makes local models (as opposed to locked-down cloud ones), so I want them to succeed. However, even with full EU backing, they'd be outcompeted by OpenAI and Anthropic, who can release local models themselves, making all their effort and work seem wasted. Except I don't think it would actually be a waste, like how acquiring weapons isn't a waste, when the deterrence from their existense makes them unnecessary.
- "European nations should relax (tech and general employee) regulations to encourage innovation": agree, there are way too many. But I don't think they should relax them as far as the US. I don't know where to draw the line, and I don't have the motivation or discipline to understand existing regulations (not even getting into how they're applied in practice).
Vaguely, I believe American tech companies should be regulated more, since they seem to be damaging society and have effective monopolies due to network effects. And more importantly I want to see more tech innovation, which I think is hurt by less competition. But I don't exactly know how.
I generally think America and Europe should work together, but here, I think different regulatory frameworks and competing tech services is good.
I don't like Shakespeare either.
But to give him credit, I'm sure he was exceptionally talented in his time. I think it's like criticizing Newton because he only discovered classical physics: we've progressed not only material and objective knowledge but changed taste.
Likewise, I read Lovecraft and his depiction of eldritch horrors is tame compared to what he inspired.
(Although unlike material and knowledge, whether our culture's taste "progresses" is debatable. Especially because sometimes "what's old is new again". I do think it progresses in that some concepts, like tropes, are discovered then always remain in style; at least until we undergo change as radical as an apocalypse that destroys material and knowledge progress.)
Brainwavez
1mo ago
Please no.
Reddit is a publicly-traded company led by spez. They could add ID verification, kill old.reddit (and insert more ads), take over the subreddit and do whatever. They've already killed third-party apps. Enshittification is real and they're undergoing it.
Even a few days ago they banned r/theadamfriedlandshow (supposedly for a meme about Israelis dine-and-dashing, but I couldn't find confirmation).
I trust Zorba more.
Brainwavez
1mo ago
262 🥲
Very low in literature and “aesthetics”. Computer science is my specialty, so I got 58/60 in computational knowledge.
Personality has been beaten out of them
Actually, they’ve been fine-tuned a personality: that of a LinkedIn airhead and sycophant.
Remember when GPT-5 (less sycophantic) came out and so many people complained it had no personality, that OpenAI added it back?
It’s funny. Historic SF authors imagined robot speak would be autistic: information dense and awkward. Instead they’ve greatly surpassed (supposedly) human business and political climbers at generating walls of text that sound profound and insightful but mean nothing.
I always ask for online sources, then check
EDIT: I see you’re asking it to analyze and interpret data. Maybe ask for values or quotes that verify its analysis, or just ask for “proof” and see what it generates
Can anyone speculate why the FCC has banned foreign-made routers?
All begin with “the X is Y”, then follow a similar structure throughout. Posted hours apart on random topics that reached the front page. No specific details or unique insights.
Like someone was given a school assignment “read some Hacker News articles and contribute”, then completed it as lazily as possible. Because that’s probably, basically what the LLM did.
Take the latest post: “The upgrade story is underrated…” Upgrading is actually not mentioned in the article. So what is “the upgrade story”? Poor writing.
You’d recognize if you could see the more obvious bots that have been caught and flag-killed, like this one. Unfortunately, I think you must be logged in and have “showdead” enabled in your profile to see their comments. All are new or previously-inactive accounts that, sometime within the past couple days, have suddenly started commenting on random frontpage topics. Many are named “[word][word]” like the aforementioned. All their comments have the same style, structure, and blandness. And to remove remaining doubt they are bots, some of the dumber ones posted paragraph-long comments minutes apart, or hallucinated.
Brainwavez
1mo ago
Yes, but consider a natural reply to a prompt. Previously, that was practically guaranteed to either be from a human, or bot that was (human) tailored for a limited generalization of that prompt. Now we have AIs that reply naturally to arbitrary prompts, it’s their purpose. Consequently, they produce natural posts, comments, etc.
I already find it hard to be motivated to debate, but not because of bots. There are so many (human) comments that whatever point I make 1) has probably been made before, 2) will be drowned in noise, and 3) boils down to value/opinion (silly example: "I believe the government should subsidize wheat, tomatoes, and dairy farming" because I really like Italian food; or I think the world works like X, you think it works like Y, but these models are so abstract and distant that neither of us can really prove them).
One motivation to still debate is that it trains my brain to reason and persuade, which would happen even if I was debating a bot. But another is, even among the noise, I still have some audience. But maybe if bots cause people to revert to smaller, private communities, I'll feel like I have an audience again.
E: another motivation to debate (and post) is to learn facts and interesting perspectives from replies. In this way, bot replies are good iff they present uncommon facts and perspectives. Unfortunately currently, I think most LLMs have a similar way of thinking, which is also similar to the (common) zeitgeist. Also unfortunately for internet discourse, if LLMs do provide interesting replies, they don’t motivate public posts unless said posts are subsidized.
The Kids Aren't Alright, at least it seems. I constantly hear studies and anecdotes on how Gen Z and α are significantly more awkward, asocial, mentally ill; and evidence suggests social media is why.
Hence I think governments are desperate to get kids and teens off social media, or at least make it less toxic, and/or reduce usage, to fix them. I agree with that goal.
But I'm wary of these bills: they threaten anonymity, can be bypassed, add regulatory burden... Although this YouGov survey rates Australia's ban "cautiously optimistic". Still, I much prefer:
Banning phones in schools (which I think is so obvious, it's surprising and embarrassing many schools haven't already done it)
Encouraging more in-person socialization with after-school activities, kids third-spaces, etc.
Less toxic social media algorithms, better parental controls, cultural encouragement for parents to limit social media - not via laws
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