If you aren't aware: a Virtual Private Network creates a fully encrypted link between you and a remote node. So long as your encryption keys are secure, there's no way for anyone (even a global superpower) to listen to or intrude on that connection. There is no possible way to break into this connection, even with the entire planet's computing resources.
From the outside, all you can see is a stream of encrypted data between two nodes. You cannot tell where the traffic goes once it exits the VPN server or what it contains.
The only way to compromise a VPN connection is the most straightforward and pedestrian: compromise the VPN host and directly spy on their clients with their own hardware.
The GFW certainly can and has detected such encrypted streams and blocked them for being un-inspectable. With a VPN you can perfectly hide what you're doing and you can perfectly prevent intrusion. You cannot prevent someone noticing you're using a VPN. China can simply blanket ban connections that look like VPN traffic. But they cannot tell what you're doing with that VPN.
LLMs are bad for bad programmers. LLMs will make a bad programmer worse and make a layperson think they're a prodigy.
Meanwhile, the truly skilled programmers are using LLMs to great success. You can get a huge amount of value and productivity from an LLM if and only if you have the skill to do it yourself in the first place.
LLMs are not a tool that magically makes anyone a good programmer. Expecting that to be the case is exactly why they don't work for you. You must already be a good programmer to use these tools effectively.
I have no idea what this will do to the rising generation of programmers and engineers. Frankly I'm terrified for them.
Maybe Apple and Amazon are the only cool heads in this absolute shitstorm.
The real, intrinsic value of AI is essentially zero compared to the hype and tech-biz cargo culting. If I were John Apple, I would simply sit back and wait while all your competition dump all their money into the AI bonfire. Once the dust settles all the hyped-up ai startups are dead, you can come in and pick up whatever worked best and have a stellar AI product with no real cost. Assuming such a product can exist, it still isn't clear.
I don't think companies not literally setting billions of dollars on fire is a bad thing.
IF (and ONLY if) you are fully cognizant and aware of what you're doing and what you're talking to, an LLM can be a great help. I've been using a local model to help me work through some trauma that I've never felt comfortable telling a human therapist about.
But for the majortiy of people who haven't seriously studied psychology, I can very easily see this becoming extremely dangerous and harmful.
Really, that's LLMs in general. If you already know what you're doing and have enough experience to tell good output from bad, an LLM can be stupendously powerful and useful. But if you don't, you get output anywhere from useless to outright dangerous.
I have no idea what, if anything, can or should be done about this. I'm not sure if LLMs are really fit for public consumption. The dangers of the average person blindly trusting the hallucinatory oracle in their pocket are really too much to think about.
LinkedIn has the single worst search function out of any job board or website in general I've ever seen. It's astonishingly bad.
The only hit I got from LinkedIn applications turned me down because the CEO didn't think I had enough activity on LinkedIn.
Frankly that's a huge red flag. If you're concerned about how a potential engineer looks on LinkedIn, you probably don't know or care what an actually good and skilled employee looks like.
Subtitles are very explicitly not something you're meant to engage with or focus on which is why people hate it when you make the subtitles more "engaging" than the content of the video. If you want people to focus on your subtitles, you should write a blog instead of make a video.
Subtitles are an accessibility feature. They are meant to stay out of the way and add to, not detract from the video content. They are meant to be subtle and only visible if you need to look at them.
Because it would cost money to upgrade our financial infrastructure and processes.
Americans aren't opposed to it. Like so many problems with America, our institutions are simply opposed to anything other than maximal profit extraction at any and all costs.
Americans are, however opposed to the kind of national ID system you'd want for this kind of national banking scheme. For some reaon, they think it's more private or secure to use a 9-digit number assigned at birth.
The modern piracy experience is exactly what everyone hoped and was promised that streaming would be.
My husband is a non-tech person. I set up radarr and jellyfin, and now he has a website he can go to request any piece of media ever created, and then it magically pops up in the jellyfin app in like half an hour. He can watch it anywhere, at any time, for any amount and number of times. And there are no ads from the service we already pay for. Quality is better, streaming is flawless since it's on the local network. No one is monitoring his views and using it to profile him.
This is everything we all wanted streaming to be, before capitalism (inevitably) ruined it.
And honestly the fact that it's free is irrelevant. Most of us would happily pay for a service that operates this way. But such a business cannot possibly exist under capitalism so we must pirate.
But really, think about the experience of your favorite streaming platform. On radarr, you plug in a search term and you get a flat list of items matching your query and nothing else. The thing you wanted is always in the top three results. When you look at the library, you get a flat alphabetical list of everything available to you at that exact moment. No animated garbage, no endless multi-dimensional scrolling, no dickless executive trying to force you to watch whatever reality slop they're pushing that week.
Simple, respectful, and it shuts the hell up and gets out of your way. You can have anything that humanity has ever produced. There is simply no way for any business to compete. Capitalism just does not know how to make such a thing work.
Oh well, it's not like movie studios and record labels were giving that money to the artists anyway. I'd rather take $30 from Sony than give 15 cents to an artist and $29.85 to Sony.
Apart from visiting the creator and physically handing them a wad of cash, you can't. There is no way at all for you as a consumer to ensure the creators are fairly paid. Simply put, the people you're paying for access to the content take most of the money and the creators get next to none.
Why do you think it's better for studios and labels to be allowed to extort artists this way?
The artist isn't getting fair pay in any situation, so why would you want to make things worse for everyone by continuing to encourage this rent-seeking behavior?
If you aren't aware: a Virtual Private Network creates a fully encrypted link between you and a remote node. So long as your encryption keys are secure, there's no way for anyone (even a global superpower) to listen to or intrude on that connection. There is no possible way to break into this connection, even with the entire planet's computing resources.
From the outside, all you can see is a stream of encrypted data between two nodes. You cannot tell where the traffic goes once it exits the VPN server or what it contains.
The only way to compromise a VPN connection is the most straightforward and pedestrian: compromise the VPN host and directly spy on their clients with their own hardware.
The GFW certainly can and has detected such encrypted streams and blocked them for being un-inspectable. With a VPN you can perfectly hide what you're doing and you can perfectly prevent intrusion. You cannot prevent someone noticing you're using a VPN. China can simply blanket ban connections that look like VPN traffic. But they cannot tell what you're doing with that VPN.