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há 5 anosdiscuss

I am actually in a very similar position to yours and agree with most of your points. I also assume you are in tech. I don't know what the immigration situation as a whole is, but I'm not sure tech is a good example of immigrants driving salaries down. Also, isn't it technically illegal for a company to pay the immigrant less? Rather than imposing limits on immigration, which I think is what the average conservative mindset would push for, I'd argue that companies should be punished for exploiting their workers -- regardless of where they come from.

há 5 anosdiscuss

I guess this must be the premise of capitalism.

há 5 anosdiscuss

We're not "innocently" dabbling with it, we're all experts here on HN.

há 5 anosdiscuss

Thank you for the summary. The arrogance and moral bankruptcy of the first two stories are marvels of human behaviour. I was not aware "safe ML" was a thing; I was aware of explanatory models, but I guess the safe ML research you do covers more than just that?

Your third and fourth points I think are linked. I am not exactly sure where or how you would draw the line, but I kind of think of these ML/AI applications as something that could be export-controlled or be regulated along those lines, just like certain pieces of hardware are export-controlled on the grounds that they could be used for harm, and weapons, of course (and I mean, add some salt here because governments will cause the harm regardless, but hopefully the point comes across.) Once the regulations are in place, and corporations take _substantial_ economical hits for their errors (unlike, say, GDPR violations, which Google just factors into their OPEX), those corporations will rapidly start effecting real change. Corporations understand the language of (economic) violence suprisingly well, it's an effective tool for change. But like you said, it is precisely the same governments and corporations driving the research and exercising economic and political power, so I am not entirely sure how that would start shaping into place. Like almost everything else in life, the first step will probably be to keep raising social awareness; change will emanate from us at the bottom -- if we can direct our anger correctly and if the climate catastrophe that is upon us does not wipe us all first.

há 5 anosdiscuss

As long as it gets you a blog post.

Did you also notice how the TLDR is at the end of that whole rant?

há 5 anosdiscuss

The issues with the "free" paradigm you point out are interesting indeed, and I think I have read some of your points elsewhere. I have also thought that the "free" model -- advertising -- is a creator of bad products, and like you said, it distorts many of the assumptions that make the market work.

I had also exaggerated my point on "all for-profits" and "simple" truths. Like I commented below, I do not believe that all for-profits or capitalism are necessarily evil; it's just that the American version of it often makes it look that way.

há 5 anosdiscuss

> Under capitalism, most systems are for-profit. Even governments and charities operate to raise capital to fund projects.

I think we're mixing things up here. A non-profit raises funds to run its operations; it does not seek to make profit, it does not have any private ownership of the means of production (the literal meaning of capitalism), and it does not seek to grow its profits YoY, rule out competition to sooth investors, and the usual day-to-day business of for-profits. That it needs money to run does not equate it to actual for-profit corporations in a capitalist society.

I agree with your last point though. For-profit corporations are not necessarily evil if they can put ethics before profit; it's just that American Big Tech chooses not to do so.

I also applaud your move.

há 5 anosdiscuss

How would Apple benefit from this conspiracy? Apple these days is throwing out the "secure" and "private" PR to differentiate themselves from their surveillance capitalist neighbors. They would never do anything that hurts their PR, and they would always do the bare minimum security and privacy to support it. If they knew of these vulnerabilities ahead of time, I am positive they would have patched them. This is not to say that they are doing everything they can, but I don't see your proposed conspiracy following profit-maximizing corporate logic. Apple isn't there to screw you; they're just there for the big buck.

há 5 anosdiscuss

https://xkcd.com/538/

há 5 anosdiscuss

It's not just search advertising, that was in the early 2000s. Their business now is to profile you anywhere, anytime. That's why they bought Youtube, Android, Fitbit, and the reason for their every move.

há 5 anosdiscuss

Wait, what ways did we have to combat the likes of Rosewell? I agree the old, 90s Web was much better overall than what we have today. But its openness and diversity seems to have been a temporary illusion; it was only a matter of time for it to fall to greedy, unethical corporations. Given that the W3C is run by these same corporations and that they won't be limited by their own moral constraints, it seems to me that half-assed regulatory attempts like the GDPR, while imperfect, seem like a good step in a not-completely-unoptimal direction.

há 5 anosdiscuss

I thought Korean soap operas were good until I read this article. What a whole bunch of unnecessary drama. The W3C always appeared to be one of the most dysfunctional entities in existence, and now the article leaves no question as to why.

Funny this Rosewell guy. "Should web browsers really become implementation mechanisms of specific government regulation?" -- Isn't everything a mechanism of specific government regulation? We seem to have an autocrat in the making here who would prefer the Web existed in isolation of civilization and where he could squeeze out that ad cash unhindered by government regulations. Given that he likes to ask philosophical questions, perhaps he could ask himself why the Web is being regulated in the first place.

It's also funny how in the article, the only people who seem to actually care about privacy are the non-profits advocating for it and the government regulators fighting antitrust.

há 5 anosdiscuss

Do not miss the Facebook articles linked from the page.

"We disagree: personalization doesn’t have to come at the expense of privacy. We can do both, and we can do both well. We’ve built products that lead the industry in transparency and offer settings and controls to help people manage their privacy."

"So if you recently bought a hiking backpack from a local outdoor gear supplier and are no longer looking for a new one, you can choose to remove the outdoor gear supplier from this list of businesses, and disconnect that information from your account."

For a company that prides itself with transparency, you could start with not lying to people in such a blunt and despicable way. See, I don't want you to know that I bought a hiking backpack. Why should you know? Why do you think you are the arbitrer of the market, that people cannot do their own research and that small business need you? This is a false premise, and your position is a blatant JOKE that at this point is also sad and unremarkable.

Stop lying to people, you sad surveillance capitalists.

https://about.fb.com/news/2020/12/personalized-advertising-a...

https://about.fb.com/news/2020/10/a-path-forward-for-privacy...

há 5 anosdiscuss

tl;dr Your browser is getting slower because some repulsive companies just can't keep it to themselves. The level of sophistication is far from trivial, linked from the article:

https://webkit.org/blog/8146/protecting-against-hsts-abuse/

"An attacker seeking to track site visitors can take advantage of the user’s HSTS cache to store one bit of information on that user’s device. For example, “load this domain with HTTPS” could represent a 1, while no entry in the HSTS cache would represent a 0. By registering some large number of domains (e.g., 32 or more), and forcing resource loads from a controlled subset of those domains, they can create a large enough vector of bits to uniquely represent each site visitor."

há 6 anosdiscuss

They are expressing their own opinion, and the comment clearly explains how they draw a parallel between Facebook and tobacco companies. Why do you need a link?

Also, while Facebook may not directly kill people, the hate speech that it helps proliferate does have real consequences for real people. One such instance was in the Muslim genocide in Myanmar. Since you appear to like links a lot, here is one for you:

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/meghara/facebook-myanma...

há 6 anosdiscuss

Let's not kid ourselves; an OS with an advertising ID is an assault on people's privacy and basic computing freedoms. The android situation is much worse, yes, but apple is still giving in to surveillance capitalism and nothing they do short of staying away from it can be regarded as a "privacy protection". Their advertising ID endorses surveillance, it does not protect you from it.

há 6 anosdiscuss

But you do get the irony, right? It's like a browser is not for reading by default anymore, like stepping into a car and putting it in "car mode".