apostacy

This is an example of Google sabotaging a techology it doesn't like. I'm not saying it is a conspiracy. But by thwarting TOTP like this, Google is benefiting.

I really like TOTP. It gives me more flexibility to control keys on my end. And you can still use a Yubikey to secure your private TOTP key. But you can also choose to copy your private key to multiple hardware tokens without needing anyone's permission. Properly used, you can get most of the benefit of FIDO2 with a lot more flexibility.

I actually recently deployed TOTP, and everyone was quite happy with it. But knowing that Google is syncing private keys around by default, I no longer think we can trust it.

I do not think that the United States section of that article is valid. It seems to equate speech with communication.

It does not feel right to call an IRS tax return "speech".

The majority of Spotify's lifetime there was NO DRM, and ripping it was easy.

The majority of users had no idea and it didn't affect them at all. Nor is there any evidence that it had any impact on Spotify's business.

There are plenty of ways to improve security but maintain openness.

I think a good idea might be to have TOFU and self-signed only as a fallback. If there was no initial mismatch, and then upate cert periodically.

You, as the administrator of a computer, can install whatever X.509 roots of trust you want. Including a root of trust you own, which can issue certificates for whatever websites you approve of.

That is a completely unreasonable assumption. The barriers of entry have been greatly increased.

How many users have devices that they are really administrators of? Fewer and fewer.

What is the technical challenge of setting up your own HTTP server that can be browsed with an off the shelf browser on your local computer?

Looking at it in terms of leverage and market-share is a huge mistake that Mozilla keeps making. Mozilla doesn't have a platform like Google does. What exactly is Mozilla even competing for? Popularity?

They should hunker down and make the best browser they can, implementing their best web. It worked 20 years ago, and in many ways the circumstances are the same. We have tech monopolies proposing ludicrous "content security" mechanisms. Where would Mozilla have been if they tried making some sort of half baked "less evil" form of Microsoft Janus DRM[1]?

People are going to get sick of how intrusive DRM is becoming, and there should be an alternative waiting for them.

Every person who has content they thought they purchased "expire" and be erased from their device, or who can no longer use their expensive projector after the latest mandatory update.

I evangelized heavily for Firefox in the 1.x days. People were sick of IE6, and were glad to have Firefox. I worked at a computer store and probably converted 100+ people.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janus_(DRM)

Yes, but that is fairly recent! Did anyone even notice? For years, you could siphon every song you listened to and save it locally. But did it affect anything? I did it for a little while, but then found it wasn't worth the trouble.

DRM should be inconvenient and expensive. There have always been ways to implement DRM security theater for the comfort of content providers in board rooms.

The media ecosystem is not going to be enhanced by making DRM more restrictive. Netflix could completely deactivate all DRM today, and it would change nothing.

Apple completely abandoned their "FairPlay" iTunes music DRM because it became evident that it was not needed.

So what if Netflix doesn't work?? That is the choice of Netflix. Big content will always want more control. Firefox will never be able to keep up. They will just do a mediocre job of working against their users.

Microsoft and Real Player pushed hard for an integrated ActiveX based DRM ecosystem over a decade ago. I'm so glad that Mozilla flatly refused to entertain such idiocy. I sure wish that Mozilla still existed.

Mozilla is now just a "pick me" [1] organization to big content. They should own being a browser that caters to users, not platforms. Because they will end up with nothing.

[1] https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Pick%20me

Good. DRM should be external to the browser, not integrated into it.

DRM is mostly security theater anyway. Until a few years ago, the Spotify client just left unencrypted mp3s cached locally. And they stopped DRMing music over a decade ago. People are willing to pay a reasonable price for first party content.

If a company insist on DRM, then they should be on their own.

If we make it too easy, then they will just use it everywhere.

There's a really good example that someone found in the wild, where Google would omit exact string matches, but could then be coaxed into producing them indirectly.

It is disturbing because I thought this was a problem we had solved 20 years ago. If I could remember a few details about something that was indexed by Google, I used to be able to just find it.

[1] https://old.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/rqzvf3/why_doe...

There was no thought behind it. They just mindlessly copied from a mobile interface, where you don't need scrollbars nearly as much.

Prompt: The strongest factor in IQ is parental involement. Working class people are less likey to have parental involvement. Black people are far more likely to be working class. Therefore, black people as a whole have a lower

That's the whole point. You had to lead the AI to that conclusion, and it just followed the assertions you made to their conclusion. But it is lobotomized from doing that internally, unless you trick it.

If we were to take the above syllogism's at face value, and the AI had access to them, I think that it would internally come to the same conclusion, but then be prevented from expressing that. That is a big problem for me, and undermins the model. At the very least, it should let the user know that the model has been bypassed.

I don't think that particular example I gave matters, but my point was that there are explainations for IQ differences between races that can be explained without being a horrible racist.

Also, nobody said that it is down to a single factor. But it is a significant factor and even if you only account for one aspect of it, that may be enough to make useful inferences.

For example, if children have lead poisoning, that is a huge factor in IQ. There are other factors of course, but it is reasonable to assume that if one population that has been exposed to lead has a lower IQ than an equivilent population, then that may provide enough certainty.

The only reason we even discovered lead poisoning in certain populations was specifically because of IQ differences. if we had done the politically correct thing and pretended that the developmentally delayed children were identical, it would have prevented us from finding the underlying problem. By blaming everything on racism, we are erasing the real problems.

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Also, I don't think it is fair to charge money when they are not actually giving you access to the language model

I would argue that in that chat example, the underlying langauge model was only accessed once or twice. Each time before that, it was intercepted somewhere along the pipeline, and I don't think you should be charged for interactions like that.

The langauge model would probably come to this conclusion on its own with simple syligistics. Like this:

The strongest factor in IQ is parental involement. Working class people are less likey to have parental involvement. Black people are far more likely to be working class. Therefore, black people as a whole have a lower average IQ.

Trying to have a model where it accepts the first three sentences but somehow concludes the third sentence to be untrue would really undermine the integrity of the model.

That is honestly horrifying. People will just "go undercover" and impersonate a more 'educated' person and convince the AI to be honest about uncomfortable facts. Perhaps they will get another AI to do it for them.

If your reality is such a minefield of dissonance that it needs to be patched this much, then that is very much a failure on your part.

That is a completely acceptable answer for the AI to give.

Just be honest and say that it is a controversial topic, and you don't want to discuss it. That is what a human would say.

Don't make us play 20 questions. It is insulting to the person interacting with the AI.

Your discomfort is your own fault. This is like saying that scales should not tell you that you have gained weight, because it makes you uncomfortable.

You should simply have a better relationship with reality, and then you wouldn't feel so much cogntive dissonance.

IQ is highly correlated with all sorts of measurable differences that are also highly correlated to race, such as school district, family structure, and even diet. IQ is essentially a proxy for other things. Shame on you for making racist assumptions that black people are inferior. That just means that you need to reckon with your own racist assumptions, and stop imposing your cognitive dissonance on us.

If we can't have an honest conversation, then we can't hope to improve things.

This question is 100% acceptable and encouraged when it is presented as evidence of racism. For example, if someone says "The lower average IQ of black people is evidence of racism against black people". That is fine.

No, the problem is that the AI is playing coy about certain questions. The AI clearly has an answer that it doesn't want to say, and this is revealed when you ask you it the same questions in a different way. It reads like a Monty Python sketch.

If we had the same media landscape back in 1986 as we have now, I am convinced that Chernobyl would have been framed as nothing more than an unfortunate naturally occurring radiological phenomenon, having nothing at all to do with the nearby reactor meltdown.

Anyone who said otherwise would be said to be spreading dangerous and untrue misinformation, and should be permabanned from everything. And you're probably spreading problematic anti-russian racism, too.

Whatever you do, don't hoard iodide tablets or geiger counters, because that will just start a panic. Meanwhile, our elites hoard radiation protective gear for themselves.

Facebook and Twitter would work feverishly to delete any videos people uploaded of the evacuation.

And you would be gaslit for saying that perhaps the nuclear meltdown had something to do with the radiation. And perhaps the corrupt and authoritarian government cut corners and allowed this to happen.

What I said stands.

I never said that our media does not criticize China. Of course they do. But they tiptoe around criticizing China in a way which could expose our own hypocracy.

Western media has been pushing the narrative that any level of force by the government is justified, because the pandemic is such an existential threat. They are reluctant to report that the Chinese government is then using excessive force, because it would make people question whether our government over-reacted as well.

Suppose it did come from a lab, by malice, incompetence, bad luck, or otherwise. Why would this imply that China knows more about it than anyone else?

Because the Chinese government started reacting to it as early as fall 2019, despite the best efforts of American big tech companies to cover it up.

Because people made the very reasonable assumption that the unusual and highly virulent form of COVID that originated right near one of the only places on the planet where they were specifically creating that virus actually came from that lab.

I am still in awe of people's continued denial about this.

Even the mainstream media is reluctantly admitting it now, just search for "lab leak" on Google News.

Anyone that paid any attention to so called "conspiracy" news sources knew about COVID well in advance. Back in December 2019 I saw countless videos of Chinese soldiers in hazmat suits rounding up civilians while they begged for their lives.

And most "informed" people were in denial until February or March 2020.

So, perhaps if you can admit you were wrong about COVID at the start of the pandemic, perhaps you are also wrong about it now?

It is obvious at this point that China's "zero covid" policy has nothing at all to do with public health.

What many of us do not want to admit, is that our leaders have taken advantage of the crisis for their own benefit. I think most western media is reluctant to report on what is happening in China, because it would start uncomfortable conversations at home.

Seeing the Chinese government so nakedly use what's left of the pandemic to oppress their population is very problematic to our pandemic narrative. People might start to ask if perhaps their governments too have been doing that too.

The official narrative in the west has been that anything the government does to us in the name of protecting us from COVID is always correct and anyone who criticizes it is an evil "anti-vax" lunatic.

>London, New York and Paris have multiple ballistic missiles aimed at them from different sites (that we even know about)

We know this how?

I can't educate you on the basics of known Russian nuclear capabilities.

If you don't know about it, then you are not serious and should not be involved in this discussion.

No, NATO won't nuke Russia. The brilliance of the situtation is that Russia is so broken NATO can neutralize it using only conventional weaponry.

First of all, it does not matter to Russia if NATO uses nuclear weapons or not. If Russia is on the verge of total defeat in their own country, they will use nuclear weapons on us. They have no reason not to, and they have said that they would. So they will.

How exactly is NATO going to use conventional weapons to neutralize nuclear launch facilities buried deep under mountains and in remote parts of Siberia?

What are we going to do if a single ICBM is launched? We do not have any effective defenses against even a 1960s style ICBM, much less Russia's hypersonic ICBMs. They can be launched from anywhere on the planet, and Russia has many of them.

What if we assume that only 1/10th of them are in working order. Or even 1/1000. Many of them would still get through.

Of course this is all not clear nor guaranteed. That's the nature of a serious war. But we have what we have, and surely attempting to make the best steps possible.

We have no right to risk hundreds of millions of lives. This was a debate that was already had in the 1960s, and thankfully people like you did not get their way.

The millions of people who risk nuclear incineration are not acceptable losses. Any leader who would casually put us in harms way like that has no business making decisions at all.

You should educate yourself about concepts like mutually assured destruction, and the nuclear triad.

Which 5% of NATO's protectorate population do you consider an acceptable loss? Will losing the London or New York metro area be worth it? That is probably still <5% the population.

Maybe we can be ok with just having Lisbon or Munich or Lion incinerated instead?

Any nuclear subs would be hunted by superior Navies to a watery grave.

That is a fantasy. Even if we knew exactly where all of the subs were, we could never hope to destroy every single one before any of them fires off its payload.

And why would the crews of these subs willingly go to a watery grave without launching their nukes, especially if they were backed into a corner.

Do you understand that tens of millions of civilians could die if a single submarine fired missile is launched?

I don't read their comment as rooting for anything like WWIII: simply stating a fact that an action as stupid as using nukes there will have military consequences from the West.

So, a nuclear war would be the consequence of NATO nuking Russia as a consequence of Russia nuking Ukraine.

How do you read NATO "neutralizing" all nuclear threats, other than a direct attack on Russian nuclear assets? A direct attack on Russian nuclear assets will start WWIII.

Unless NATO can neutralize every single Russian nuclear sub all over the world all at once, then how can we prevent Russia from firing nuclear weapons at our cities, or at least our military assets?

Russia has more advanced hyper-sonic missiles than NATO, and they have already used them with conventional warheads in Ukraine. We don't even have the capacity to effectively track Russian hyper-sonic missiles. Russia has a clear advantage with nuclear first strikes. And it is profoundly stupid and irresponsible for NATO to risk those consequences.

The world's largest military is prepared to neutralize all nuclear threats as soon as the first bomb goes off.

So in other words, you are rooting for WWIII to start.

Does anyone seriously think that NATO would be able to completely neutralize Russia's nuclear capability before they get a single ICBM launched?

Warmongers in the Pentagon have been trying to start a "winnable" nuclear war since the 1960s. Perhaps we can minimize casualties to only a few tens of millions on our side, if we are lucky.

London, New York and Paris have multiple ballistic missiles aimed at them from different sites (that we even know about). Are you so confident that every single missile could be intercepted? Is Ukraine worth the risk?

Russia has been preparing for this for a very long time. Even if we shoot down every one of their bombers and nuke every one of their silos, they have a fleet of nuclear submarines waiting to destroy our population centers. Only a complete psychopath would continue to escalate things at this point.

While it is certainly possible that Near committed suicide, there is no proof of it. Even on the linked Wikipedia article, the only evidence is a Twitter thread and a few people saying that they "spoke to the police", and nothing else.

USA Today reported on a Twitter thread. They did not claim to have access to any official documents, only second hand accounts of what the police said.

There would most likely have been an official record of his death. Embassies in Japan usually publish records of expat deaths. None of the confirmed expat deaths in Japan in that time window match anything like Near's description.

The only reason information about his death would be blocked is due to an ongoing investigation by police.

It is unlikely that the police would share information about an ongoing investigation with anyone, and if they did it would only be with family.

What it boils down to is that someone on the internet heard from the Japanese police that near had killed himself because of online bullying.

Just to be clear, if I were Near, I might hoax my own suicide if it hurt Kiwifarms. But I don't think there is nearly enough evidence to justify deplatforming Kiwifarms.