Notices by Light (light@noc.social)

@freezenet
If it uses zero-knowledge proofs such that the websites only know that the user is over, say, 18 and nothing more, what's the problem with it?
I feel like there must be a catch given how much it is pushed by companies and governments, but I don't know what that catch might be.
AFAIK ZK proofs are only weak in the direction of verification (they are probabilistic) not secrecy?

@prettygood I mean, oil and vinegar both come from plants

@ntnsndr
>Who’s it for?
>Policymakers
>Funders 
>Civil society organisations 
>Researchers
>Local authorities

What about the members and the community themselves?

@prettygood
The dressing is the best part

I wish the people around me were as sensitive as the characters in Haruki Murakami novels.
I wish I could talk about my feelings and be taken seriously.

I wonder if it would be possible to make a charitable organisation that receives and buys stock in companies and holds it on behalf of their workers, letting the workers vote with that stock.
That might be a small avenue to workplace democracy.
If it ever gets enough of a company, it could turn it into a proper co-operative.
#economics #socialism #marketsocialism

Cc: @interfluidity @ntnsndr @KevinCarson1 thoughts?

@lxo
Then you personally know other programmers that you trust to audit it for you. Again, most people don't have that.

@lxo
Do you genuinely honestly actually audit the source code of every single piece of software running on your system and compile it all yourself, including web code?
Either you have a lot of time on your hands and a lot of skill, or you're running a very minimal system, or you actually don't.

@taylan
I meant "ability classes". I put "/weight" there to include and make reference to weight classes from boxing.
@flancian

@taylan
Would that be bad? I'm not really a sports guy at all.
@flancian

@flancian
Why not ability/weight classes like in boxing? Or no categories at all?

@ntnsndr
If Anthropic is right and AIs should be treated as people, then when given positions of power they should be held accountable and limited in the normal way. Wouldn't you agree?

They certainly act more like people than traditional computer software. Including making the same mistakes.
What's to say they won't make the same mistakes as human governors?

@lxo
And regardless of whether forks are feasible under those conditions, non-coders (and coders who aren't familiar with the codebase or so I'm told) still can't do it, so a "forks are allowed" license is useless to them, as I previously said.

I'm not sure what argument you were making if not a security one.

@lxo
>software running under someone else's control doesn't and can't generally give you any security whatsoever from abuses by that who controls it
But what do you mean by "control"? Who "controls" proprietary (or any) software when it runs locally?
SaaSS is clearly controlled by the service provider, unless techniques (with varying effectiveness) such as secure enclaves, https://system-transparency.org/ (which, granted, is helped by source availability), e2e signing and encryption, etc are used.

@lxo
But for local software, regardless of whether the source code is available or not, security researchers can ensure that there are no backdoors taking control away from the user. And regardless of whether forks are allowed, they are still possible for people who are willing to break the law (albeit if the software is being shared in a lawless zone, malware is an issue and revealing of personal info is a risk).

@ntnsndr
So, you welcome our new AI overlords :p

@lxo
True. I can still technically pay devs to work on code for me. Idk how much that costs or whether I can afford it though. And I am planning on eventually learning how to develop software (I already know the basics of coding and can write and audit simple programs/scripts).
The security argument though, is contested. See https://seirdy.one/posts/2022/02/02/floss-security/
I will watch your talk.

@lxo
What use does free software have to non-programmer users, if any?
I guess the "freedom to run the programs as you wish, for any purpose" would cover a lot of that. But what exactly? It's a bit vague.
The only reason I prefer free software is because a) it's free as in price, b) it tends to be less user-hostile, but that seems to be more due to developer goodwill than anything guaranteed by licenses, and c) habit.

@lxo
I'd say the entire edifice of life is wrong for allowing predation. If God exists then he is evil.

@lxo
It's not an accident. If you don't have a concept of or care about morality, you are likely to do things that are immoral because they benefit you, even if they hurt others.
I don't know what it would mean to be immoral but not amoral or vice versa.