• 0 Posts
  • 39 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
cake
Cake day: June 18th, 2023

help-circle
  • Crypto is doing kind-of ok. But what about other blockchain apps and startups, or blockchain integrations into every tech imaginable? There were so many popping up, just like there are with AI now. Business models and use-cases that are based solely on the hype of the tech in question, without any consideration about whether it’s actually a good fit for the tech. That is the point, and what it has common with AI and other “buzzwords”.


  • I’m not sure about other countries, but here in Czech we actually have a mandatory subscription, that’s absolutely bullshit.

    So far, the law is that if you own any TV or radio, you have to pay monthly fee for public service broadcasters (national Czech TV). It’s bullshit, the channels are full of ads anyway, and the shows they run and create is insultingly bad. Sure, it is important to have public service broadcasters that are not dependent on the state (because state-owned TV is reeaallly bad idea), but FFS can they just reduce costs and stick to news, instead of doing another stupid series, and stop forcing us to pay for something I don’t care about or use?

    You could just not pay the fee, if you state you don’t have a TV capable of receiving it (which I don’t). But now, they are changing the law that everyone who has any kind of internet-capable device has to pay the monthly fee, while also rising prices to something like 6 EUR per month. Fuck that and fuck them.


  • I suppose it’s written in a way to sound way worse and alarming than it actually is, due to the upcoming elections. It sounds almost unreal, i mean “EU secret plan to ban any kind of encryption or privacy” can’t be reallistically happening, right?

    I know about Chatcontrol, so I wouldn’t be surprised, but this article sounds pretty overblown, to the point of sounding more like a wild conspiracy theory. Does anyone have more resources or info about this, that don’t read like an election ad?

    I’m not trying to dismiss or disrespect the author, and I trust that it was written with best intentions, but it’s a really worrying topic about which I’d like to get more information about.

    However, thanks for bringing it up, I contacted our local Pirate party about the topic, because they don’t have anything related to crime prevention vs. privacy in their programe. I suppose that I know what the answer would be, but getting a confirmation before I vote for them would definitely be nice.







  • I think that EEE would not be as impactfull here - I mean, at this stage, without Meta and already at small numbers, if they went through the EEE cycle we’d probably just be in the same position. Meta people came, and then left, nothing really changes. The people who are here are already decided to avoid Meta and other platforms, and they already have features Fediverse doesn’t.

    My issue is that by Federating, Meta is stealing and monetizing our content we post here, to fill their bullshit Threads with content, which its severely lacking. I hate that and don’t want that in the slightest.




  • If you use nvidia, make sure to choose a distro that deals with their drivers by default. I havent manage to get Nvidia drivers and ingame cutscenes to work on Fedora, but after switching to Nobara all is well now. (And switching to KDE on X11, since wayland was freezing occasionally and some apps wouldnt work)

    Aside from HDR, I still havent managed to get HDR working and its starting to look like it wont really be possible. And Unity. Unity simply doesnt work both in a VM and on Linux, so I annoyongly still have to dualboot.

    Other than that, ive switched around two months ago, and aside from the first pains caused by me choosing Fedora instead of Nobara, everything mostly works without issues.


  • I see. IIRC from school, “factor” actually has a definition - it’s either something you have (keycard, phone), something you are (biometrics) or something you know (password).

    For authentication to be truly an effective MFA, it would have to require at least two of those factors. And that’s also why I.e email isn’t really a MFA.

    So, I guess it boils down to where are you storing your passwords. If they are also in the password manager, then, its only 1FA, because knowing your password manager password is enough to defeat it. (Or, if someone finds a zeroday in the pass manager).




  • You are probably right, it wasn’t really a great example. I think that’s probably because Russia is already deep into dictatorship and indoctrination, so the fear-inspired loyalty is deep enough for them to not really need an AI autonomous weapons to do whatever evil they need.

    But the point I was trying to make is that with AI weapons, it’s definitely easier in a more stable and democratic army to get there and cause massive amount of damages, stage a coup or just do domestic terrorism, because you don’t need to convince large amount of people to fight for you. You just need a few who can operate the swarm, and getting loyalty of few people is way easier than convincing an entire army.

    The same can be said about weapons of mass destruction, but most of them are also really difficult to get, and pretty hard to operate - or you can be easily stopped. If you unleash a swarm of murderous autonomous drones, it will not be pretty. And that’s why I hope they will get treated with the same level of respect as nukes do, and not used as a part of common conventional warfare.


  • That is true, and not exactly what I was getting at. I was more talking about stuff like coups or domestic terrorism, where you can cause a way more wast amount of damage if you have autonomous AI weapons.

    Also, there was that one time in the cold war (I think) where the Russian guy refused to launch a nuke, and it turned out it was a false alarm, which has probably saved the world.

    Should i.e. Putin decide to hold onto his power at all costs and started leveling cities in Russia, where most people don’t agree with him, you’d probably get a lot of people in the army who wouldn’t be OK with that. Maybe, I don’t know. But should he have an army of autonomous AI weapons, all he needs is a few guys who do, and know how to launch it.


  • I disagree with this. There is one glaring issue with AI-powered weapons, in comparison to other traditional ones - the skill ceiling required to make massive damages at scale.

    Sure, you can probably level a whole town if you get your hands on some kind of advanced artillery. But it’s still vastly more complex machine, that probably requires extensive training just to operate. You need an army for that, and army is made of people who will hopefully tell you “No, we’re not doing that”, if your request is not reasonable. And if you somehow try to do it yourself, good luck getting more than a few shots out before someone notices and tries to stop you.

    If you have an army of hundreds or thousands of AI powered suicide drones, where you just slap an explosive on them, set a target and the whole fleet will start running, you only need one person with a computer. And once you send the fleet, it’s vastly more difficult to stop it. Hell, you probably don’t event need to physically get to the drones, if you can hack into the system that controls them.

    And that’s the biggest issue with any AI-powered weapon, and a reason why they shouldn’t exist.