Em Adespoton

Spot-on.

I spend a lot of time training people how to properly review code, and the only real way to get good at it is by writing and reviewing a lot of code.

With an LLM, it trains on a lot of code, but it does no review per-se… unlike other ML systems, there’s no negative and positive feedback systems in place to improve quality.

Unfortunately, AI is now equated with LLM and diffusion models instead of machine learning in general.

The phone isn’t going to end up in China from people passing them hand to hand; they’re going to be collected somewhere and bundled for shipping in an EM-protected covering of some sort. The record of the route they took right up until they go silent will be available for every phone. Looking at an aggregate map of this data should give the police a pretty good idea of what’s going on.

I suspect the difficulty is that the police need to get a data release from each individual involved and then get Google/Apple and/or the owners to voluntarily share the historical location data with the police… which most people aren’t willing to do out of an abundance of caution.

Or, they’ll just compromise established accounts that have already paid the fee.

GPTs are designed with translation in mind, so I could see it being extremely useful in providing me instruction on a topic in a non-English native language.

But they haven’t been around long enough for the novelty factor to wear off.

It’s like computers in the 1980s… people played Oregon Trail on them, but they didn’t really help much with general education.

Fast forward to today, and computers are the core of many facets of education, allowing students to learn knowledge and skills that they’d otherwise have no access to.

GPTs will eventually go the same way.

…one step at a time.

Wait… Star Wars has feet?

Let’s re-title that to “Owners are losing access to smartphone app updates and product features when companies go bust”

It’s exactly how Cloud SaaS is designed. It was a bad idea to do it with your smoke detector and smart lock, and it’s still a bad idea with automobiles.

That last bit is correct. The privacy commissioners are under-resourced and a large number of businesses are not actually compliant with the GDPR. Only a few highly visible infractions get addressed, and even with those the final result is not fixing the infractions and paying the fine; usually a small payment is made along with an agreement that the party will behave better in the future.

Ah, so you went for a phone battery in the end.

That allows it to block those annoying cookie banners without you clicking accept.

I use a different plugin that lets me set my own preferences about how sites should use cookies, and then it strips those banners and applies MY settings.

The thing about those cookie banners is that if you choose to reject all cookies, then no cookie is set to tell the site that you reject all cookies, so the banner will be back on your next visit.

I just imagined what would happen to their GPUs if bricks were used :D

A privacy policy can be “we don’t collect your data.”

They appear to have Experian or TransUnion data which provides multiple records for a single individual. If they pulled in records from multiple sources, (eg, all the credit agencies), then the number of records per person would balloon rapidly.

The worrying thing is that if these are timestamped, that set of data can tell an awful lot about a person that’s useful for identity theft.

If they have my data and it includes a SSN, I can guarantee it’s not accurate.

I use a mix: I’ve got hardcoded hosts files, default third party DNS provider, DoH providers (different for each browser), a PiHole, and a VPN-based DNS resolver that I can run on a per-app basis.

This way, I don’t trust a single provider to handle all my DNS traffic.

SSO can be fine, it all depends on how it is implemented. If you run your own OIDS or manage your own FIDO2 keys manually, SSO works great; it means that every time you access an online account, a different challenge/response is sent, but you only have to manage a single account on your end. This means less data to be stolen, and if implemented correctly, a sso-backed login attempt in a new context will require further action, preventing someone from just stealing your cookies/certificates and having full access to all your accounts.

The problem is that so much SSO junk is intentionally mis-implemented to include third parties in the process where there’s no need for them to be. Avoid those where appropriate.

I’d also highly recommend reading https://endsoftwarepatents.org/2023/04/googles-decision-to-deprecate-jpeg-xl-emphasizes-the-need-for-browser-choice-and-free-formats/ — more than features and future proofing, the big issue here is patents. Google controls the patents for AVIF.

Then again, I use HEIF, which is alternately patent encumbered, and default to PNG and SVG for web-facing graphics.

Big question is: who’s storing the email, you or them? Your mail clients handle POP3 and IMAP as well as SMIME and GPG so the server doesn’t have to have any special features itself.

Since you want something your wife can manage, stay away from the forwarders. Whatever you choose, check Spamhaus and SURBL to see if the provider has a history of getting on their lists.

Make sure you select one that can stay in business providing email service, so you don’t have to worry about the company collapsing/being bought out/pushing ads/selling PII/bundling mail with some more lucrative service.

Color blindness perpetuates structural racism. On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a goldfish.

There’s the cultural issues, but those aren’t limited to African Americans vs White Americans on the Internet.

Your rules should apply to everyone, including those two groups. The trickier part is dealing with privilege.

I’ve used Mac OS since 1988, BSD/UNIX since 1990, Linux since 1993 and Windows since 1995.

Due to my expertise with all these operating systems, I make enough money to have a life.

I predominantly use Apple hardware, partly because I can easily run all these OSes on it.

With an Epson, HP, Lexmark or Brother printer?

I sense another meme coming on….