cantrevealname

hace 2 mesesdiscuss

> not with even with your computer would I run VeraCrypt

This has got to be the most surprising encryption-related comment I've ever read from you. Please tell us what you're thinking about VeraCrypt. What would you say about TrueCrypt v7.1a, the last known good release?

cantrevealname

hace 3 mesesdiscuss

> TD Bank

Quite the opposite in the case of TD Bank. They sued Plaid in 2020. “The bank said in the court filings that the Plaid interface dupes consumers into believing they are entering personal information into TD Bank’s trusted platform.” (They settled in 2021 without explaining the terms of settlement.)

https://financialpost.com/news/fp-street/td-bank-files-lawsu...

cantrevealname

hace 3 mesesdiscuss

To everyone who doesn’t know how Plaid works: You give your banking username and password directly to Plaid, and it keeps it (so it can continue to login).

I don’t understand how anyone is OK with this. It goes against every security principle and it’s against the terms and conditions of every bank.

I realize that almost no bank provides a secure and proper API to get info and/or to transfer funds, but Plaid’s solution is a disaster waiting to happen.

cantrevealname

hace 3 mesesdiscuss

I agree with construction and auto repair, but why psychology and psychiatry? If there's anything that's perfect for LLMs, it self-diagnosis and self-treatment by chatting with them. Other than prescribing drugs, an AI system could do everything a psychologist or psychiatrist does.

The only significant barrier is that it's not condoned by the medical establishment and by law (which I imagine will indeed take a few years to work around).

cantrevealname

hace 9 mesesdiscuss

I also tried some searches and couldn't find anything except references to this very Hacker News question.

I'm going to nominate this as a candidate for the Mandela Effect (or at least that things can truly disappear from the web without a trace). I'm curious if anyone else here on HN actually remembers seeing this site at one time?

cantrevealname

hace 9 mesesdiscuss

> "Everyone knows. But if we filtered it all out properly, our revenue would drop 40% overnight, and investors would have a meltdown."

The word "revenue" above doesn't sound right. Did you mean "ad impressions", "clicks", "visits", or something else?

If the bot traffic is giving you 40% more revenue, well that's excellent news, right? If it's revenue, then keep doing it.

cantrevealname

hace 9 mesesdiscuss

When AI ends up running everything essential to survival and society, it’ll be preposterous to even suggest pulling the plug just because it does something bad.

Can you imagine the chaos of completely turning off GPS or Gmail today? Now imagine pulling the plug on something in the near future that controls all electric power distribution, banking communications, and Internet routing.

cantrevealname

hace 9 mesesdiscuss

This sci-fi thing goes as far back as the 1983 movie WarGames, where they wanted to pull the plug on a rogue computer, but there was a reason you couldn’t do that:

McKittrick: General, the machine has locked us out. It's sending random numbers to the silos.

Pat Healy: Codes. To launch the missiles.

General Beringer: Just unplug the goddamn thing! Jesus Christ!

McKittrick: That won't work, General. It would interpret a shutdown as the destruction of NORAD. The computers in the silos would carry out their last instructions. They'd launch.

cantrevealname

hace 10 mesesdiscuss

What you say is true.

But I find it funny that we can prevent expensive highly-targeted individual bugging by using a ubiquitous worldwide realtime tracking and surveillance system (a smartphone!).

cantrevealname

hace 10 mesesdiscuss

Let's think about possible applications of audio-video recorders camouflaged to look like something in the form factor of credit cards:

- Induce your target to apply for a certain credit/debit card, gym/movie/gallery/store membership, airline pass, then mail them a bugged card

- Blindly mail a $100 gift card to your target along with a plausible sounding cover letter about why they are receiving it

- Give your target a badge to wear when they are visiting your office so you can hear and see what they do when they're not in your presence

- Leave your bugged card on the table while having dinner with your targets at a restaurant to hear the conversation while you go to the restroom

- Substitute one of the targets legitimate cards with a bugged card via covert entry at the target's home or office

- Obtain the cooperation of the target's employer or health club to swap their usual ID card for a bugged ID card

- With the cooperation of the target's bank or credit card issuer or insurance provider, send the target a replacement card or "upgrade" card which is now bugged

- Issue a bugged driver's license whenever the target goes to renew their license. Or send them a fine by mail to force them to visit the driver licensing office and then invent a reason to reissue the target's driver's license when they visit

- Whenever someone applies for or renews a Global Entry, Sentri, or Nexus card, issue a bugged card if they are on the target list

cantrevealname

hace 10 mesesdiscuss

Before the Berlin Wall fell, East Germany, the communist side, was the German Democratic Republic.

(West Germany was the Federal Republic of Germany.)

cantrevealname

hace 10 mesesdiscuss

The 20 countries that Anthropic won't do business with:

  Afghanistan
  Belarus
  Central African Republic
  China
  Congo, Democratic Republic of 
  Cuba
  Eritrea
  Ethiopia
  Iran
  Libya
  Mali
  Myanmar
  Nicaragua
  North Korea
  Russia
  Somalia
  Sudan
  Syria
  Venezuela
  Yemen

I took their list here[1] and diff'ed it with Wikipedia's list of sovereign states.

They don't accept the Democratic Republic of Congo, but the Republic of Congo is OK. There are indeed two Congos with ridiculously similar names, and apparently the one that calls itself democratic is the bad one.

Anthropic is fine with Taiwan.

[1] https://www.anthropic.com/supported-countries (They give two lists, one for API and another for Claude.ai, but the lists are identical.)

cantrevealname

hace 11 mesesdiscuss

> All of this software, from the individual processes to the OS itself, were the work of a single software developer. They left AECL in 1986, and no one has ever revealed their identity.

I bet some readers are thinking that the developer that caused this tragedy retired with the millions he earned, maybe sailed his yacht to his Caribbean mansion. But the $300K FAANG salaries and multi-million stock options for senior developers represents the last decade or two. In the 1980's, developers were paid poorly and commanded little respect. The heroes in tech companies that sold expensive devices were the salesmen back then. The commission on the sale of a single Therac-25 probably exceeded the developer's salary.

All of the following would indicate that this developer, no matter how senior or capable, was still a low-paid schlub:

- It's Canada, so automatically 20% lower salaries than in the U.S. (AECL is in Canada, so it's a good bet that the developer was Canadian.)

- It's the 1980s, so pre-web, pre-smartphones, pre-Google/Amazon, and developers had little recognition and low demand.

- It's government, known to pay poorly for developers. (AECL is a government-owned corporation.)

- It's mostly embedded software. Even though embedded software can be incredibly complex and life-critical, it's the least visible, so it's among the lower paid areas of software engineering (even today).

For 1986, I would put his salary at $30-50K Canadian, or converted to U.S. dollars at that time would be $26-43K U.S., and inflation adjusted would be $78-129K U.S. today. And no stock options.

cantrevealname

hace 7 añosdiscuss

> make the most of it by progressing deliberately in your social life

Ironically the Bay Area is among the worst places on Earth for improving your social life if you're straight and male. I noticed that you don't live in the Bay Area, you're married, you probably meant a much broader meaning of "social life", so your experiences are likely very different. But the typical clean cut, well-spoken, hard working, respectful, male SWE in the Bay Area making $120K+ a year in his 20s or 30s, who should be a magnet for women, turns out to be living in one of worst places because of male-female ratios among singles (and some other cultural factors).

My advice would be work hard, save your money, travel when you can to better locales to improve your social life, but with the eventual goal of permanently moving out when you've saved enough. If you pick your destination within the USA well, dating prospects will improve greatly, and if you look worldwide (and can overcome the language and immigration issues), it could improve dramatically.

cantrevealname

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