ohhnoodont

> There was never any plausible explanation for why this wouldn’t happen. There was never any practical mechanism to prevent someone from saving a conversation and using it to train their own model.

At this point it may not even be happening intentionally given the quantity of LLM-generated content that is appearing online and is likely being re-ingested by models.

> else we'll be expecting to explain Shakespeare's plays using physics.

This is just a data problem though. From the perspective of a deterministic universe, creative works theoretically can be explained as a physics outcome (ignoring the impact of potential quantum randomness).

> How about the part where children cannot legally create accounts of their own, on computers that they own?

Where is that actually stated in any law being discussed? If a parent gives a child a device with admin access, that’s their choice to do so. But it also makes sense that we, the minds behind all of this technology, also provide parents with the most basic of tools to restrict a child’s access online and hold accountable companies that knowingly serve adult content to children. That’s all the CA law does AFAIK.

Sure, my generation was raised on 4chan. But I can understand why parents today may want the tools to limit that.

How is that dumb? It seems reasonable and pragmatic. If the current status quo is ID uploads and face scans, this seems like the better approach. It shifts the responsibility back to parents. All adult service operators have to do is filter requests with the underage HTTP header set.

Same. I used to be ride-or-die for my Thinkpad Trackpoint™ keyboards, I even had an external USB one. Eventually I started to feel the RSI in the top of my hand. Haven't had any issues with a Macbook trackpad.

There are plenty of 8GB M1 Airs that many people will likely still be using 10 years from now. For 90%+ of users a laptop is just a web browser machine.

I loved gen 1 pokemon as a kid in the 90s. But today I sometimes feel like our culture is locked in time. Walking into a toy store is somewhat depressing - everything looks exactly the same as it did when I was a kid! It’s been 30+ years, kids should have way cooler toys and IPs.

The average consumer is also very happy to take recommendations from the tech-literate people in their life. I would love if there was a budget-friendly, privacy-preserving phone I could recommend to everyone.

I agree. I feel the flow of having browsers send some flag to sites is the most privacy-preserving approach to this whole topic. The system owner creates a “child” account that has the flag set by the OS and prevents the execution of unsanctioned software.

This puts the responsibility back on parents to do the bare minimum required in moderating their child’s activities.

Last week if you are using a VPN + a browser that limits fingerprinting, you were likely to see error messages accessing HN.

Glad I'm not crazy for running agentic tools in an isolated VM.

What does squirreling it away mean though? A pile of cash instead of investments? The reality is that you don’t get to throw in the towel.

I’m glad that someone has built this and made it their personal crusade, but this is a problem that I can’t relate to having. I find it far more uncomfortable/intimate to sleep next to someone (even if in separate beds) than to shower or use the toilet in front off someone. Snoring, farting, dream talking, morning erections, etc.

Somehow I seem to be in the minority with this opinion. But if we’re sharing a room we’re probably pretty comfortable with each other.

Couples that poop together stay together.

I’ve actually ended otherwise decent relationships early because the other person was way too coy/upset with bodily functions like farting and pooping. If we’er sleeping together I expect us to be farting together. And if we are living together I expect us to be using the toilet in front of each other. Anything less is both inconvenient and reflective of deep personality conflicts that will never be resolved.

The first tier ($4/month) only works for up to 25 aliases. Depending on how many of your aliases have leaked, you may have to pay a lot to perform that check.

I wish HIBP had a solution for those of us who are individuals but use domain catchall forwarding as our method for separating accounts.

It feels good to see adobe@mydomain.com, newrelic@mydomain.com, internetarchive@mydomain.com, etc. there but not any of the addresses I use for normal communication.

If you use this approach, once 10 of your aliases are in the HIBP database you will need to pay for a subscription to see breaches for your domain (and even then the $40/year tier is only good for 25 aliases).

I wish HIBP had a solution for those of us who are individuals but use a domain catchall to manage online accounts.

> the senior cowboy coder (who just went into retirement)

They just went into retirement?

I've seen coworkers at Big Tech Co™ make huge security blunders despite attending prestigious universities (Berkeley, Stanford, etc) and having 5+ years of industry experience. No LLM slop required. Just rushing to meet deadlines while requirements shift rapidly enough that details get overlooked.

What software are you using for virtualization? I wasn't impressed with the Apple Silicon options last time I looked.

I think we may just be bumping into cultural differences here. I grew up in a household were being naked around family members was common. I spend time in clothing-optional spaces. I rarely draw the blinds on my windows, etc. I'm not concerned with what other people think in this way and such images could never be used to extort me. Consider the case of Germany - people there are extremely concerned about their privacy and data protection. At the same time public nudity is an entrenched cultural norm.

It's also known that people are not very good at assessing risk. People are more word about dying at the hands of a serial killer than they are of dying in a car crash or slipping in the shower. I feel you're underplaying the psychological harm of having all of your data crawled through by a creep (that would include all of your photos, sites visited, messages sent, everything).

All I can really say is that if someone gained access to my machine, the camera would be the least of my concerns. That's true in nearly every context (psychological, financial, physical, etc).

My point is that the threat model is backwards. The threat associated with a camera is the least severe compared to anything else a malicious person could do with access to your computer. Recored conversations, chats and email, browsing history, etc are all much more likely to result in harm if leaked than a recording of you innocently in your home.

> Nobody but Abby and Ben care if Ben is caught admitting he cheated on Abby.

That destroys families, standing within a community, and very often careers.

This raises a different but related question. In what world should a victim of a crime be extorted for doing innocent things in their home. If a peeping tom took a photo though a window, could that be used to extort someone?

When people are extorted for these kinds of things it's usually catfishing that leads to sexual acts being recorded. That's not related to cybersecurity.

Obviously the camera is also 'disabled' when the lid is closed regardless of the controlling circuitry. So while that's a good feature, it's not relevant.

Yup it's wild to me how much anxiety there is about cameras while no mind is given to microphones. Conversations are much more privileged than potentially seeing me in my underwear.

That said the most sensitive information is what we already willingly transmit: search queries, interactions, etc. We feed these systems with so much data that they arguably learn things about us that we're not even consciously aware of.

Covering your camera with tape seems like a totally backwards assessment of privacy risk.

There seems to be widespread anxiety regarding cameras, but hardly anyone ever talks about microphones. Are conversations not much more privileged information than potentially seeing someone in their underwear?

> I want AI to do my laundry and dishes

Machines for those tasks are already commonplace. Is loading/unloading them really that much effort?

There are ways to address this problem, but in any case this is still ultimately a very good problem for property owners to have. Their property value has increased dramatically. Being forced to move is inconvenient, but you do so with a large bag of cash.

It's the case for all large tech companies. Headcount increases in software engineering projects result in diminishing returns per-individual, but the increase is still there (if managed correctly). For example a 100 person team may not be 10x as productive as a 10 person team, but they may be 5x as productive. A 1000 person team may only be 3x as productive as 100. And so on until you have many thousands of engineers that can slowly move mountains and maintain massively complex and interwoven systems.

Given that your article (from 2022) states Hertz will pay $168 million to people accused of stealing cars, it seems pretty unlikely Hertz is still making that mistake. Seems totally safe to me. Have there been any recent instances of this?