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phatfish

2,050 karma · joined December 20, 2013

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phatfish··on DeepSeek v4
The US supports the genocide in Gaza, it supports the bombing of Lebanon. The US itself has now started (another) war and bombed Iran.

China is repressing the Uyghur and threatening Taiwan. I don't agree with these actions but is really "orders of magnitude" worse than the destruction the US facilitates in the Middle East?

With Trump they are now openly hostile to European democracies, and ICE and doing their best at repression within the US.

phatfish··on DeepSeek v4
You let Trump and all the tech-bro shitheads win with that attitude unfortunately. Democracy is an ongoing battle.
phatfish··on The Onion to Take over InfoWars
Surely he just waits for the Trump pardon in 2028? Or is this something he can't be pardoned for?
phatfish··on College instructor turns to typewriters to curb AI-written work
That is great for core principles. But languages and development environments have since assumed everyone has access to then internet. Meaning more "stuff" is the solution to problems (massive standard libraries or community created ones) rather that elegent language solutions.

The internet enabled all the complexity we have today. LLMs will have a similar effect, but instead of engineers actually having to understand the system (even in it's complexity) they will just be querying the oracle to build things or solve problems.

When the oracle can't help (or maybe refuses to) is when it gets interesting.

phatfish··on An open letter to the UK Government on digital privacy
Age restrictions are popular. Billion dollar corporations won't protect their users well-being if it means even a small drop in share price and exec bonuses, we know this from past behaviour.

I don't want my children's attention stolen and for them to be radicalised by social media. Yes, I am aware that parents need to put in work, which I do. But fighting against billion dollar corporations is a losing battle unless numbers are on your side.

The only way to the pendulum swings in favour of common people is with the help of government. I know is an unpopular opinion, but I trust a Labour government in the UK more than Meta and Tiktok, that's for sure.

If VPN providers are enabling age restrictions to be bypassed then sorry, either they play nice or they get blocked as well.

Everything else aside from age restrictions (and the accompanying social media ban) I am broadly sympathetic with, and I wouldn't deny age restrictions are being used as a way to get more access to private data that should be accepted.

If there was a way to pick out the overreach I would support that, but in general I will vote for age restrictions and social media bans.

phatfish··on OpenAI backs Illinois bill that would limit when AI labs can be held liable
Google and other search engines link (after the AI response and ads) to information hosted somewhere created/published by someone who is usually not Google.

OpenAI et al are creating the information and publishing/delivering it to you. Seems like a more direct facilitation.

Of course, after all knowledge is centralised in an OpenAI deatacenter I'm sure they will be happy to deal fairly with the liabilities /s.

phatfish··on Veracrypt project update
What does democracy have to do with electronic encryption? Democracy existed before computers.

There are legitimate reasons for governments to intercept information, with the correct oversight -- enforced legally in an "checks and balances" manner. The fact that there is a breakdown of trust between government and people won't be solved with more encryption.

phatfish··on German implementation of eIDAS will require an Apple/Google account to function
I'm not. Parents are very much in favour of restrictions on what can be accessed online.

Parents can't control what their children are doing 24/7, and neither should they. But they should expect a society where children are protected from billion dollar corporations stealing their attention and radicalising them, at least until they are old enough to leave mandatory schooling.

There are many "real world" age restrictions that exist, and we have decided those are of benefit to society in general. The "online world" is no different.

If we can't have age restrictions online then they should just be abolished in the real world as well, in the name of preserving "privacy and freedom". The online world doesn't exist in isolation like it did in the 90s and 00s.

phatfish··on NHS staff refusing to use FDP over Palantir ethical concerns
You call 111 if you don't want to bother the 999 guys. 111 will tell you what you need to do, including "go to A&E".

What is wrong with going to A&E for an (as you said yourself) emergency?

A pharmacist dispenses medications and should know about their safe usage. They won't tell you how to bandage a wound.

phatfish··on Slovenian officials blame Israeli firm Black Cube for trying to manipulate vote
It's the ONLY thing that Russia has the resources to do. Apart from fighting their smaller neighbour to a standstill.
phatfish··on Slovenian officials blame Israeli firm Black Cube for trying to manipulate vote
Or maybe 1900+ years of acting a certain way?
phatfish··on Goodbye to Sora
It depends how it is used. If it is an assist which generates sounds/samples that a musician can edit themselves, that seems fine. But spewing out a final form track from a prompt would just be slop.

Integrating AI with existing tools to improve productivity is harder and requires effort and investment...

phatfish··on Blocking Internet Archive Won't Stop AI, but Will Erase Web's Historical Record
Isn't the non-LLM generated text becoming more valuable for training as the web at large is flooded with slop?

Preventing new human generated text from being used by AI firms (without consent) seems like a valid strategy.

phatfish··on How BYD got EV chargers to work almost as fast as gas pumps
Maybe, but BMW are at least trying. https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/electric-cars/electric-3-...

At least the Chinese tech will be available to European consumers, nothing says insecure like pretending a competitor doesn't exist.

phatfish··on Super Micro Shares Plunge 25% After Co-Founder Charged in $2.5B Smuggling Plot
External factors can be a quick recovery. Internal factors are often a long road. Accounting and corruption failures sounds internal to me.
phatfish··on Having Kids (2019)
Badly behaved kids I am more understanding of now (at least the younger ones). But there are defintely easy ways out of problems some parents take that are not good for children.
phatfish··on Having Kids (2019)
The reason isn't because it is more difficult or people enjoy having kids less (like the parent). Its because children used to be a way to provide security for your family and community. More hands to help or sent off to earn money younger for example.

Now with smaller family units and less community interaction they represent a risk to security, mainly financially.

phatfish··on Google details new 24-hour process to sideload unverified Android apps
Pretty sure this would be the only way the rest of the world (except China) dumps US tech services, so it sounds great.
phatfish··on US national debt surges past $39 Trillion
Well, as long as you bomb countries on the other side of the world. Someone else (the long suffering US allies) can deal with all the displaced peoples then.
phatfish··on Iran war energy shock sparks global push to reduce fossil fuel dependence
Yup, its interesting that a community supposedly of "engineers" are happy to claim expert knowledge of domains in which they have no experience.
phatfish··on Microsoft's 'unhackable' Xbox One has been hacked by 'Bliss'
Microsoft are in a tough spot (as far as Xbox hardware goes at least). PlayStation is selling much better on the console side, and Valve with the Steam install base has a good shot at making a non-Windows OS a serious platform for gaming.

Their hand was forced in the end. They have to consolidate PC and Xbox users to compete.

The idea of a machine with a locked down mode that can boot legacy Xbox titles and probably run competitive games with very little chance for cheating is interesting. But given Microsoft's track record with consumer devices I await to be convinced.

Valve should be worried if they do turn out something good, maybe this will mean the Steam machines are pushed more aggressively price wise. We can hope...

phatfish··on Qatar helium shutdown puts chip supply chain on a two-week clock
I thought Vance was the actual isolationist America first guy? Not Trump kind who's opinion changes based which authoritarian he last had a phone call with.

In this specific case maybe Vance is least worst option.

phatfish··on Qatar helium shutdown puts chip supply chain on a two-week clock
There are far more pressing changes needed, like reducing the impact of vote buying (reasonable spending limits for political campaigns, and the lobbying problem) and a voting system that doesn't inevitably reduce down to two sides.

If people still elevate the worst candidate to POTUS after that, then blaming the voter might be in order.

phatfish··on Iran-backed hackers claim wiper attack on medtech firm Stryker
Bombing the crap out of their country doesn't help normal Irianians though. It only helps Isreal. The Isrealies want a broken Iran in chaos, and the nasty Islamic Theocracy would prefer a bit of destruction to being overthrown by organized internal resistance.

The Iranian regime was on it's way out. A government can't survive killing that many of its own people. But as has been shown many times, the average person will choose opressive order over chaos.

The Iranian people were dangerously close to taking their country back, Isreal made sure that won't happen.

phatfish··on Microsoft Authenticator to nuke Entra creds on rooted and jailbroken phones
Curious how severe their root detection will be. I have a cheap China phone with LineageOS installed, but it's not running rooted. Will be nasty if they flag all 3rd party ROMs as "insecure".

My banks app works fine, but i have had one financial app refuse to install.

phatfish··on Meta acquires Moltbook
I had never heard of the thing and checked it out. It appears to be an industrial scale slop generation machine. Exactly what you would expect if LLMs were let loose to recreate Reddit and introspect on their current context and SOUL.md or the other nonsense that OpenClaw can be customised with.

Not much human content that i could see, probably even the Crypto grifters got bored with it after a couple of days.

The "acquisition" must have given guys that made the thing some favourable terms, and it was a condition for them to even consider working at Meta. Because there is no way a global top 10 market cap company announces this deal willingly.

phatfish··on How Big Diaper absorbs billions of extra dollars from American parents
I assumed the environmental angle was the reduction in waste going to landfill with all the extra plastic generated, by the diaper and the small bags that are usually used to reduce smell and keep things clean during changing.

The energy saving would not be as clear to me, but i wouldn't be surprised if reusable were a better choice there as well, just not as clear cut.

The amount of waste generated by disposable diapers was a concern, and we tried reusable ones. But they leaked often, the absorption material in disposable ones is way better than the cotton pads you get with reusable ones.

I would be happy with a middle ground. Reusable outer "pants" and a disposable insert designed well to work with the reusable part, as plastic free as possible.

phatfish··on Something is afoot in the land of Qwen
If China was serious about a military solution for Taiwan they would be invading right now while the US is unloading into the desert.
phatfish··on Something is afoot in the land of Qwen
It seems to me your argument is in bad faith because (taking the parents analysis at face value) you created a straw man "social credit score" that doesn't exist. But there ARE masked goons roving Minnesota.
phatfish··on Google ends its 30 percent app store fee and welcomes third-party app stores
Maybe they audit you when something smells funny and it becomes worth it for them? Microsoft don't set EY (other hired gun auditers may apply) on every small company to check they are activating Windows correctly.
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