Notices by Marcus Hutchins :verified: (malwaretech@infosec.exchange), page 5

For anyone unaware, Google Chrome is currently rolling out an update that track your interests based on browsing history, then share them with 3rd party websites. The notification page makes it sound like they added a new privacy feature, but in actuality they automatically enrolled you into their tracking system and you have to go and manually opt out.

I'm so confused when people try to get me to invest in their generative AI company. Like, the entire concept of generative AI does not work on the most basic fundamental level. The whole appeal is that it's cheaper than paying an actual human to do it. But, to even be mediocre at any given task the model must be train on millions of data points from people who are actually good at said task. It works (temporarily) because the internet has been free and open for all of its existence, providing these companies with infinite training data at zero cost. But why would researchers and creators continue publishing their work on the open internet under a licensing model that allows someone else to profit while directly undermining their career? ChatGPT has already started to degrade as a result of being given internet access. What do we think happens when all the high quality data points start getting paywalled or licensed out of reach?

Idk about anyone else, but I think any company whose product can only be sustained by maintaining the largest most blatant intellectual property heist in the history of everything ever is maybe not a good business.

@AstroKatie I think the big hangup is that people want a centralized platform as that's what they're used to, but too many popped up at once prevent any one of them from gaining critical mass. Ideally someone needed to just stick to what works and make a clone as close to Twitter as possible for the mid term, but everyone tried to reinvent the wheel.

@AstroKatie I think Spoutible had the right idea with offering to let people transfer their legacy verification, but they were far too late to market and also launching without a mobile app is an instant death sentence in 2023.

Browser extension for hiding tweets from Twitter Blue users is now available on the extension store.

Chrome: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/blueliteblocker/gimbefnamedicgajjballjjhanhnpjce
Firefox: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/blueliteblocker/

The US' main saving grace is the fact that most of their fascists are completely fucking inept. Trump was hands down the most useless president in history, and DeSantis is currently going to war with the company that maintains the sole reason anyone even comes to his state.

When ever I criticize Elongated Muskrat the best his fans can come up with is “so you hate free speech?” Which is hilarious because firstly, speech is exponentially less free post Phony Stark. And secondly, yes, I do actually. The American idea of free speech is the most logically incoherent concept I’ve ever come across. “We must let people openly be Nazis because if we limit free speech in any way (other than libel, slander, copyright violation, sedition, NDAs, obscenity, threats, fraud, TikTok, violating classification, or protesting in places we don’t like) then it’s a slippery slope towards Fascism (or communism as we like to call it because the right in far-right extremism stands for constitutional right).

The fact that in the UK you can pay taxes by QR code is making me miss living in a developed country just a little.

ADHD

If you type "Donald" into Bing's AI image generator, it gets confused between Donald Trump and Donald Duck, giving you this nightmare fuel

@GossiTheDog @evacide Yeah It's 100% just an economic thing. Same as chip export ban.

@evacide I didn't even make it that far. I'm still stuck on wondering why the so called 'land of the free' that cares so much about free speech that they enable literal Nazis is talking about engaging in censorship of an entire social media platform.

@evacide No I get that, but since when did the US give a fuck about that? Can't do gun control, can't reign in white supremacists, but can ban an entire social media platform because they need to "save the kids" or some shit.

I'm still baffled by the fact that working class conservatives exist. How do you look at a system where you have to basically be a millionaire to retire, can't afford a home, can't build wealth because interest rates don't keep up with inflation and people blow up the economy every couple of years, then be like "yes, this is it".

@gcampax Evidence where?

Apparently I accidentally reinvented the Chinese Room thought experiment whilst trying to explain to someone why ChatGPT doesn't actually "understand" language.

My scenario was: say you downloaded every question from the Chinese version of Quora. For each thread, you create a folder. The folder's label is the thread title (the question). Each page of the folder is a user's reply to the thread (the answer). You ask native Chinese speakers to write letters to you containing their questions. You respond to their letters by comparing the symbols in the letter to the folder labels, then send back a random page from the corresponding folder. The Chinese speakers are convinced you are fluent in Chinese and all-knowing. Are you?

Born too late to be a philosopher, too early to experience AGI, but just in time to shitpost on social media.

I recently found out that for the price of my LA apartment I can get a massive house in the Vegas suburbs. I absolutely hated suburban life growing up, but now I travel a lot. I've noticed that when I get home from travel I typically go into introvert mode and don't really leave the house much until it's time to travel again. So I'm wondering if I can get away with using all the home space to always have lots to do inside, then defer all social activities to when I travel. Has anyone who enjoys big city life managed to pull this off and not hate it? ?

We thought the internet would advance civilization by providing instantaneous access to all of human knowledge. Instead it enabled the loudest most wrong people on the planet to build a world in which facts are subjective.