the repetitive tasks that turn any job into a grind are prime candidates

The problem is, this varies from person to person. My team divvies (or did, I quit not too long ago) up tasks based on what different people enjoy doing more, and no executive would have any clue which repeating tasks are repetitive (in a derogatory way), and which ones are just us doing our job. I like doing network traffic analysis. My coworker likes container hardening. Both of those could be automated, but that would remove something we enjoy from each of our respective jobs.

A big move in recent AI company rhetoric is that AI will “do analyses”, and people will “make decisions”, but how on earth are you going to keep up the technical understanding needed to make a decision, without doing the analyses?

An AI saying, “I think this is malicious, what do you want to do?” isn’t a real decision if the person answering can’t verify or repudiate the analysis.

There are an awful lot of unsubstantiated claims being made in this thread, especially wrt what these supposed maga-bot/trolls all claim or do.

If the post contained any actual examples of comments that OP believes are either bots or trolls, it might be possible to actually analyze whether their assumptions and claims have validity.

As it stands, however, making broad insinuations about the ill intentions of anyone who disagrees with you is not very Nice, and is certainly not Assuming Good Faith.

The mods here are very active, and very capable. We don’t need people starting witch hunts here to “root out the fake Leftists”, and based on OP and some others’ reactions in this thread, that’s clearly what’s happening here.

Its not an empty panic if you actually have real reasons why its harmful.

Every panic has ‘reasons’ why something is harmful. Whether they are valid reasons, proportional reasons, or reasons that matter, is up for interpretation.

First you’d need laws in place that determine how the social media algorithms should work, then we can talk.

Yes, then we can talk about banning systems that remain harmful despite corporate influence being removed. You’re still just arguing (by analogy) to ban kids from places where smoking adverts are until we fix the adverts.

companies ARE making it harmful, so it IS harmful

No, companies didn’t make social media harmful, they made specific aspects of social media harmful. You need to actually approach this with nuance and precision if you want to fix the root cause.

That, and there are various other reasons why its harmful

Every reason that’s been cited in studies for social media being harmful to kids (algorithmic steering towards harmful content, influencer impact on self-image in kids, etc) is a result of companies seeking profits by targeting kids. There are other harms as well, such as astroturfing campaigns, but those are non-unique to social media, and can’t be protected against by banning it.

Let me ask you upfront, do you believe that children ideally should not have access to the internet apart from school purposes (even if you would not mandate a ban)?

This is the newest ‘think of the children’ panic.

Yes, social media is harmful because companies are making it harmful. It’s not social media that’s the root cause, and wherever kids go next those companies will follow and pollute unless stopped. Social Isolation is not “safety”, it’s damaging as well, and social media is one of the last, freely-accessible social spaces kids have.

We didn’t solve smoking adverts for kids by banning kids from going places where the adverts were, we banned the adverts and penalized the companies doing them.

Let people who can’t afford housing run the country

They will never let that happen. There are more than enough rich kid millennials to fill congress a hundred times over.

We have to do this through shows of popular support, because apart from the few genuinely good people that manage to overcome the system to get elected, congresspersons are never going to as a whole be reflective of the average American.

This got me curious, so I started digging into their documentation. It looks like you can currently stand up the appview backend as a local dev environment, but making it actually run as an alternative instance doesn’t appear to be possible (which is why no one is doing it).

There is only one instance, which is the company’s, because the company has not released the server software. It’s completely centralized.

That’s not what the current PR lays out, and I’m not going to give them preemptive credit for future maybes. Right now they’re just X v2.

Once they actually release the server software for self-hosting, i.e. once the app is actually at all even a little decentralized, and not just selling themselves on a feature that doesn’t exist, we can see how much decentralization the trusted reviewers have.

This neither centralizes nor decentralizes. It’s exactly just as centralized as before (which, as they are one company, is total).

Whether Bluesky issues a checkmark, or whether Bluesky tells someone else that they are trusted (by Bluesky), and thus can also issue them, Bluesky is the one who is in control of checkmarks.

Unless Bsky sets up some kind of decentralized council that they don’t control to manage this list, it’s just a form of deputization , and deputies are all subordinate to the ‘sheriff’.

Grants of revocable authority are not decentralization.

set of trusted authorities

Sounds like centralization to me. Who decides whether to vest authority in this group? Who selects the members of this group?

Unless there is some method for each host/ user to nominate members and it changes dynamically based on total votes at any given time, you’ve just permanently entrenched centralized authority in your (supposedly moving to) ‘decentralized’ app.

Takedown resistance is a natural consequence of decentralization, but it’s not decentralization itself.

Technical means to evade takedown like you’re describing also tend to add complexity which reduces usability, whereas language support reduces complexity for speakers of the supported languages.

I think this scoring system is a little haphazard, and should probably be divided into multiple separate, parallel scores. Takedown resistance needs its own score, based on ability to integrate with anonymization tools, ownership of codebase, accessibility and security of dependencies, etc.

I think this scoring system is missing Language Support as an important aspect of decentralization.

Centralization happens not just through commercial hosting (centralization of ownership), but even through self-hosters being in relatively centralized locations, limited jurisdictions, etc: an app with 300 self-hosted instances all located in one city (or even just all within 5 Eyes countries) is much easier to shut down than an app with those 300 spread across the globe, and language support is important to help facilitate that level of decentralization.

Not that unusual, unfortunately. The infosec community relies on researchers publishing PoC exploits in order for people to determine whether they’re affected or not by a given vulnerability, but that trust in PoCs can obviously be exploited.

Not everyone has the time or knowledge to develop their own PoCs, but you should definitely not use one if you can’t understand the PoC, which is unfortunately rather common.

Good writeup!

Definitely never good to run PoCs sight unseen; mostly not because of this kind of situation, but even just because different PoCs will have different results, and you need to know what to expect.

Also, if you see any level of obfuscation in PoC code, it’s more than likely malicious.

Gentle reminder that actions should not be discussed with strangers, and elevated actions should never be discussed online/ digitally at all.

Inside China, such a network of large-scale AGI [Artificial Generative Intelligence] systems could autonomously improve repression

Wooooow.

AGI stands for Artificial GENERAL Intelligence not generative. Nice attempt to muddy the waters to confuse and scare people, given that much writing on AGI will talk about how dangerous it is.

“The terrorists are in possession of an A-Bomb [Asbestos Bomb]!”

Either this opinion author has no clue, or this is very deliberate misinformation.

Also: This ‘College Protester’ Isn’t Real. It’s an AI-Powered Undercover Bot for Cops So using ML to police citizens is literally already here.

Pretty sure I did nothing of the sort. When did I do that? Quote me.

Sure:

this precise suspicious hyper-criticism of anything in the left that seems to be helping but doesn’t pass some weird purity test (or even, as in this case, maybe doesn’t pass some weird purity test, just based on no knowledge at all) does a lot of damage

So you literally referred to me saying I’d reserve judgement as “hyper-criticism” (when I in fact had at no point offered any criticism of him). If that’s not unwavering and unquestioning, I don’t know what is.

Why are you comitted to shitting on him preemptively

Pretty sure I did nothing of the sort. Unless you just think that being cautious of someone based on their associations is “shitting on” them, in which case that’s a ‘you’ problem.

… which is a load of puckey. He was elected by the full membership of the Democratic Party.

Yes, the full membership of the Democratic Party that has been doing almost nothing whatsoever to counter Trump, the same full membership of the Democratic Party that kowtowed to Biden deciding he was the best candidate instead of having a primary, and lost us 2024. That same full membership is exactly why I’m cautious. As you said,

I won’t say you’re in any way wrong to be suspicious of anything DNC-related.

Which is obviously not true, seeing as when I was, you then accused me of being “hyper-critic[al]”.

At this point, it feels like arguing for the sake of arguing, because my second comment, after you came right out of the gate accusing me of being a right-wing stooge, clearly stated:

If he’s not that, I support him fully!

clarifying that “reserving judgement” meant I was/am perfectly open to him actually being good, and supporting him!

But that was apparently not good enough for you.

So no one is allowed to “pop up” and start to try to make progress. Otherwise, they’re “splintering.” Got it.

You’re the one who claimed that a splintering was occurring. I pointed out that there is a unified effort already happening.

Quick question: What is he doing, as the main topic of the article you’re posting under?

He is making claims about his future actions. Nothing less, and nothing more.

Now, I am very interested in why you seem dead-set on immediately and unwaveringly and unquestioningly trusting him, to the point you’re framing me saying “let’s see if his actions match his words” as an unacceptable attack or evidence of malfeasance, all while repeatedly mischaracterizing what I’ve said? Because at this point you’re starting to look like you’re pushing an agenda.

this precise suspicious hyper-criticism of anything in the left that seems to be helping but doesn’t pass some weird purity test… does a lot of damage. It’s a good way to splinter and diffuse progress and put up obstacles to people who are trying to accomplish something.

Right now, Sanders and AOC are making a lot of progress, and they’re the ones I trust to be pushing for the changes to the party that we need. If anyone is splintering or diffusing progress, it would be someone other than them popping up and trying to do their own thing. If Sanders or AOC endorse Hogg, I would trust their opinion.

Put it this way: If one mid-level priest said he wanted to do something about pedophilia in the Catholic Church, that would be good.

I’m not sure why you’re trying to downplay Hogg’s position in the DNC; he’s literally the second-highest ranked person. And like I said, if he does push for progressives, that would be good.

I could actually see Boasberg charging Rubio or others with contempt, but I don’t think it gets any further than that. Either Trump will just immediately pardon them, or SCOTUS will order an injunction, and rule that official duties are protected from findings of contempt, etc.

If SCOTUS sees that the administration is just ignoring a finding of contempt, they may also put an injunction just to cover up the disregard publicly, so they don’t have to address the situation.