rdtsc

Thanks for the context. I knew a little how people could review their own Stasi file but wonder how easily was for them to discover the mapping from the agent code names to people's names.

I found this blog https://zipser2018feb.wordpress.com/under-surveillance/ from someone who reviewed their Stasi file. They were visiting professor of German from University of Delaware. As a visitor from the "capitalist West" of course they had file on him.

He did discover the names of some of this informants https://zipser2018feb.wordpress.com/my-stasi-file/

> The file reveals that there were nine unofficial collaborators of one sort or another who reported on my GDR-related activities and gathered information on me for the Stasi. Three were writers: IME “Dichter” (Poet), Paul Wiens, a well-known, well-connected poet and communist party loyalist [...] Two informants were good acquaintances, a married couple I got to know while living in East Berlin: IMV “Kurt” and IMV “Julia.” [...] There is evidence that two American Germanists, “unofficial sources,” informed the Stasi about my GDR-related activities in the United States. Although they are unnamed, I was able to identify them from the information provided. The file also contains four surveillance reports (one stretching over a three-day period), which were authorized by the Ministry for State Security and prepared by Stasi operatives. In these I have a code name: “Adler,” eagle, the bird of prey.

Thank you, Ned!

> But pyon can’t see the forest for the trees. Experts have spent a lot of time and energy learning what they know. They love their knowledge.

Discernment and seeing the forest for the trees is part of being an expert, too.

~~Just out of curiosity what did pyon really say? I couldn't find the comment any longer (assuming they'd be attached to https://nedbatchelder.com/text/slowsgrows). If we're gonna throw stones at anonymous cowards, as it were, let us evaluate what they said perhaps. Did Ned feel embarrassed and scrubbed the comment section?~~

EDIT: Ned fixed the comments. Thank you, Ned!

>> You want an executive to issue a press release about how dysfunctional and bureaucratic their company is and that’s why it’s so hard for users to actually use these new models?

> is intentionally assigning beliefs to me purely from your own imagination without any connection to reality.

No, that part is asking a question. I assumed you misquoted that part and meant something else. Nobody is assigning you beliefs. The normal response to someone asking a question is saying something like "yes, that is exactly the proof I would expect" or "no, I would like an insider to come forward and give an account of X,Y,Z". You did neither and instead started with insults

> This is sub-grade-school levels of memory and reading comprehension.

Huh... you don't say

In this case it's a EU company serving either an EU built model or a Chinese model. For the Chinese models they are not forwarding the requests to China, the model is still running in EU.

They can use the model and the data and requests all stay in the EU region. As opposed to sending to Anthropic, Microsoft or Google. Granted, those companies can assert that data will stay in the EU region too, but they'd have to be believed, which, some may find tricky lately.

> The Germans knew to identify ex Stasi and their informants so they know who to beware of.

I thought it was quite the opposite: there were so many informants and records were shredded that it wasn't that easy to figure out. What was the mechanism for this identification? A public database records lookup?

> Your comment is exceptionally low effort by the standards of sarcasm. llama-3-8b-level, in that it's trivial, uninteresting, unamusing, uninformative, not clever, and incorrect.

Ok. Well, I found it amusing and interesting.

> You did, in the comment that I quoted from you immediately before my statement.

You still haven't quoted them. Just vague references and a lot of angry words.

> We've established that you have either a severe lack of reading comprehension or are maliciously lying, given that someone with rather below average intelligence would be able to tell that your comment assigns a belief to me that I never held, by reading the two sentences immediately adjacent to each other.

You still haven't quoted anything are just continuing with more insults.

> Most HN readers are capable of this reading comprehension, so anyone reading this thread will be able to tell that you're wrong,

Yes they are and it would look rather embarrassing for some of us... but I can't stop you ;-)

> but since they introduced 3rd party models, added more features (now Responses API etc.) and improved their own model, we are quite happy-

Yeah, serving GLM is a pretty good play on their side. I know they have been criticized for it ("so, you're just reselling GLM...") but it seems practical as in it helps EU companies use it.

> Your sarcasm is as low-effort as your original post.

Putting too much effort into sarcasm doesn't work well usually; it works because it's low effort.

> is intentionally assigning beliefs to me ...Anyone with a functioning brain can see ...caught by their parents eating a cookie, who claim that they're not eating a cookie...

Who is assigning what beliefs to you? What cookies? Not sure what you're after here but sounds like you're a bit upset.

Uh, proof needed for this outlandish claim

You want an executive to issue a press release about how dysfunctional and bureaucratic their company is and that’s why it’s so hard for users to actually use these new models?

This model is not for you or me. This model is for Google AI engineers to put on their perf review at the end of the year. How you find or not find it, it doesn't matter. It goes into the "designed and developed Gemini 4 Carbon Ultra Pro" paragraph and people get a promotion, get to keep their jobs and hope to not get replaced by Gemini 4 Carbon next year.

> Have you ever tried dragging that monitor and all those cables and peripherals into a Starbucks and camping there for 7 hours? This is a freelancer’s dream machine

For sure and you get a nice workout hauling a full desktop computer around to coffee shops. A fun conversation starter too, I bet!

If you bring in a color printer and photo scanner, you can really get some work done. Just need to grab another table to fit it all. I am sure nobody would mind.

A little hard to explain it to the shareholders. Yeah that expensive investment research project? A total fake out to mislead our competitors. We actually bought snacks and drinks for everyone with that money!

> This isn't to say that installing solar panels on your house is a bad idea - they normally pay for themselves after something like 10 years from memory

I am with you, this would be better on a town or regional basis instead of on everyone’s roof. Our houses already have wires going to them and I can’t imagine my particular roof or garage is the best place to put panels and batteries. But I understand it’s a political / administrative issue which may well be not solvable easily in many places.

Unless there are enough marks for everyone to scam. Then the focus is to extract the money instead of investing in crushing the competition.

That's a pretty good point. We kept hearing these rumors for a while now and all the usual suspects keep saying "we don't listen to your microphone on your phone" but yeah nobody expects the TV and fridge to do it, so maybe that's how it happens and people are not crazy.

> Daft Punk is two artists.

Were two artists. That’s what makes this weird. It’s DaftAI(tm) or other such junk more likely.

TV sort of means different things to different people. To some it means cable, so giving up TV means switching to subscription channels. To others giving up TV means dropping subscription channels (Prime, HBO etc) but maybe watching youtube videos on the TV. But then would watching the same youtube videos on your phone count as watching "TV"? It sucks just as much time and attention, and it's even worse because now it is always in your pocket. I, for example, watch Amazon prime videos on my laptop while I do other stuff and I still feel like I am watching "TV" even though it's not on the actual TV

> fear not, here's a complete bypass of their 1fa otp login system. they encrypt OTPs to a public key and issue those behind cloudflare turnstile. this key to be precise:

Paste from mastodon:

> fear not, here's a complete bypass of their 1fa otp login system. they encrypt OTPs to a public key and issue those behind cloudflare turnstile. this key to be precise:

We deeply and sincerely apologize for getting caught and not being able to cover it up.

This becomes an inverse Russian roulette: only one of six chambers is not loaded.

Waiting for a release like "... the level of social media amplification around this incident has brought scrutiny that is out of proportion to OTP 1FA place in our business. In view of this, after detailed deliberations our board has concluded that withdrawing from global OTP 1FA is the right decision for eMudhra and its shareholders"

It shows maliciousness (we can bully this smaller player for a win) and/or total incompetence (we don't even understand how internet works, but we'll issue rulings anyway).

> However, the level of social media amplification around this incident has brought scrutiny that is out of proportion to SSL/TLS’s place in our business

Scrutiny is inversely proportional to bit complexity of the private keys they used. Without a failure to apologize or expose how it happened: a human mistake, process mistake, etc. this looks pretty bad on them.

> eMudhra’s global SSL/TLS infrastructure runs separately from its other operations. The company’s Global digital signature certificate (DSC), eSign, and other signing services, including those in India, its enterprise PKI Solutions (emCA, CertiNext platforms), emSigner eSignature Suite, and its identity and authentication solutions (SecurePass, emAS) are not affected and continue to operate as normal

Anyone relying on them with anything related to security or trust is playing Russian roulette at this point.

> As the state struggles being ranked 47 in education

That's wild. I would have never guessed Oregon to be that low somehow. I could have seen some poor southern states maybe or West Virginia.

Wonder what data you found? I found https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/public-scho... and it's 40th with a downtrend. Not sure how reliable that is though.

I wouldn't overthink it. It's "parody German": a hot dog slinger but "Germanized", if you will, to be funny

> When he was a standup comic in Los Angeles, Omapod host Tony Bock used to do a bit about the name. “Just saying ‘Der Viener Schlinger’ on a comedy stage gets a laugh, whether you’re in Nebraska or not,” he told me. “There’s something quintessentially Nebraskan about mustering the courage to solve the problem we faced before the advent of this invention: the inability to ‘schling’ the wieners.”

Maybe that is the mojo, spending 250M and making something ugly. It’s like a rich person buying a banana stuck to the wall as art for $1M. They are showing the world they can do it not that they think the banana is delicious or pretty.

> where the host hands them out and takes your phone as collateral or locks them up in some way

can't tell if it's a joke or not, if not, i'd turn right back and walk away