skybrian's recent activity

  1. Comment on Tildes and identity politics in ~tildes

    skybrian
    Link Parent
    On that subject, so far Tildes hasn't been good for carving out spaces for minority discussions, and it's been a sore point, particularly with some users who aren't here anymore. Not sure what...

    On that subject, so far Tildes hasn't been good for carving out spaces for minority discussions, and it's been a sore point, particularly with some users who aren't here anymore. Not sure what kind of explicit action you mean, but I agree that it doesn't fix itself.

    Some things that I think make it challenging: Tildes is so small that many of us read everything, so it's a fishbowl. (Maybe that will change now?) The way we do privacy is using pseudonyms. You can't really read the room when anyone could show up and they're strangers.

    I'm thinking about attention and how to manage it. Like, why does an Ask Me Anything discussion on Reddit often work for a celebrity, while in other cases, attracting lots of the wrong kind of attention is terrible? The thing about "voice" is that maybe you want more control over who can hear it and how much feedback is allowed. The "reply" button is right there under every comment, so it's not hard to overuse.

    Seems like some kind of structured conversation might be useful? The best thing we have along those lines are survey posts in ~talk, where someone can create a topic and set some ground rules for how to participate.

    4 votes

  2. Comment on Should I be using a passkey? in ~tech

    skybrian
    (edited )
    Link Parent
    The main way passkey protects your accounts is through a physical device acting as a key. It's like how a house key lets you unlock the door to your house. Passkey makes your smart phone into a...

    The main way passkey protects your accounts is through a physical device acting as a key. It's like how a house key lets you unlock the door to your house. Passkey makes your smart phone into a key that gives you access to a website. (Or you can use any other device that the passkey implementation runs on.) Then it's impossible for a bad guy somewhere else in the world to trick you into giving them login access. You could tell someone your password or type it into the wrong place, but you can't hand them your phone if they're not in the same room.

    Things like fingerprints are a second line of protection in case your phone gets stolen or you leave it lying around and someone tries to use it. But the website you're logging into doesn't care whether you use a fingerprint or some other method to unlock your smart phone. That's up to you and your device.

    For this backup line of defense, the question is how concerned you are about your physical safety, and passkey itself doesn't do anything new to fix that. Someone who lives in a house and doesn't worry about anyone else who might come in can just leave their house keys lying around and it's fine, and similarly they don't really need to lock their phone while they're there. Other people have more challenging security concerns. It depends how you live.

    There were previous schemes that did the same thing. Passkeys are a new standard that has the support of Apple and Google, so that's essentially all smart phones, and it can be implemented by anyone else, too.

    1 vote

  3. Comment on Tildes and identity politics in ~tildes

    skybrian
    (edited )
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    I'm guessing you're looking for some kind of debate because you hope it will go better on Tildes, but we're not immune to getting into unpleasant discussions about hot-button issues. There are...

    I'm guessing you're looking for some kind of debate because you hope it will go better on Tildes, but we're not immune to getting into unpleasant discussions about hot-button issues. There are some subjects that don't come up anymore because we all got tired of the debate. (Articles about "cancelling" are one of those.)

    Evidence may be hard to find because the worst discussions got frozen and unlisted. This can happen unexpectedly when Deimos gets to it, and it's usually for the best. Also, sometimes people delete their comments when they leave.

    Yes, "identity politics" is an umbrella term and that's something to be wary of. I recommend avoiding abstract philosophical debates due to a "blind men and the elephant" problem where people will interpret what you meant in their own way, often based on their previous bad experiences. It's better to talk about narrower subjects when you can. Politics will still come up, but it goes better when there are specific stories to discuss.

    A particular pattern to avoid is what I think of as a "contempt trial" where we debate whether something is or isn't worthy of contempt. Like, I would step in to defend something just because I think it's not so bad as to be condemned, and then I'm stuck digging up evidence about something I don't care about very much, or at least not enough to do research.

    9 votes

  4. Comment on Does Tildes *want* Reddit 'refugees'? in ~tildes

    skybrian
    Link Parent
    I think of megathreads as working around limitations in the design of Tildes that we haven’t figured out how to fix. When I get interested in a subject, I want to be able to post a dozen links,...

    I think of megathreads as working around limitations in the design of Tildes that we haven’t figured out how to fix. When I get interested in a subject, I want to be able to post a dozen links, but I don’t want a dozen links on the front page because that takes up a lot of space and we should have more variety there, and ignoring them all seems like it would be playing wack-a-mole?

    It’s unfortunate that links posted in comments aren’t searchable like top-level links, but that’s the way it goes until we figure out a fix.

    There’s also a fishbowl effect. I’m not sure how best to describe it, but top-level headlines attract attention and we don’t have a great way to selectively attract attention. A megatopic with a more boring, vague headline seems like it’s easier to skip over, particularly once you’ve seen it before. You can either read it or not.

    A downside is you need to click to read a topic with more replies, and there’s no way to tell whether it’s worth reading.

    8 votes

  5. Comment on Does Tildes *want* Reddit 'refugees'? in ~tildes

    skybrian
    Link Parent
    Yes, good post. I will add that, beyond basic civility, being kind online is a skilled practice and one I still struggle with. One way to screw up that I’m currently working on is not reading...

    Yes, good post. I will add that, beyond basic civility, being kind online is a skilled practice and one I still struggle with.

    One way to screw up that I’m currently working on is not reading carefully before replying and reacting to just one thing. (That is, skimming.)

    11 votes

  6. Comment on ChatGPT is cutting non-English languages out of the AI revolution in ~tech

    skybrian
    Link Parent
    I mostly disagree and can explain at length, but before I do I want to say there’s no hard feelings, it’s just hitting on some things I’ve thought about before. Sometimes I like to write and...

    I mostly disagree and can explain at length, but before I do I want to say there’s no hard feelings, it’s just hitting on some things I’ve thought about before. Sometimes I like to write and disagreeing with someone online is my most common motivation for writing. So here goes:

    You’re thinking of regulation as ideally all-or-nothing, either full government control or free for everyone. But it seems like cooperation between government and private industry is common and it doesn’t seem terrible? Even nuclear power isn’t completely government-run since public utilities are private but heavily regulated monopolies. Other examples are bank and auto industry regulation. It’s not hard to make a libertarian case that these industries have thickets of damaging regulations that drive up costs and keep us from having nice things. I’m fairly sympathetic to those arguments, but it also seems like government-regulated big businesses can work and provide important services to the public. Maybe a dystopia could evolve from that, but it seems fairly normal?

    My concern about spite is less about what it does to famous people being called names (often, they are unlikely to know or care what happens in an obscure forum) and more about what it does to us. Engaging in a hatefest about some common enemy often works for getting upvotes or reshares. There are some topics that often result in a hatefest on Hacker News, and OpenAI is one of them.

    I’d rather not see it happen here. We’ve had our own hot-button topics that eventually, we learned to avoid, and I’d rather not see any other topics become no-go zones. So, I’m a little wary of that kind of thing.

    Also, one way to justify a hatefest is to say that it’s sort of like political advertising or a political rally. It’s political advocacy and it’s important because it will eventually affect an election or something. This is a utilitarian argument that I think is a bit grandiose. It’s playing to an imaginary large audience of voters and we don’t even live in the same countries.

    So I think a better metaphor is to think of online discussion as sort of like education. A classroom discussion might have an indirect effect on politics eventually, but it comes from helping the students have good, in-depth discussions and learn to think for themselves. The long-term effects of that are unknowable, but hopefully positive.

    So it seems like we should pay more attention to having positive effects in the here and now, on the people who are actually here. We can often assume that whatever we talk about is unaffected by us talking about it. And therefore, there’s little reason to treat online arguments as the means to an end that’s outside the forum they’re in. They’re just for us.

    (We’re writing in public, though, so it’s good to be cautious about oversharing.)

    Thank you for coming to my TED talk.

  7. Comment on Should I be using a passkey? in ~tech

    skybrian
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    I’m not using it yet. I’m not opposed, but I haven’t seen a website where I would want to use it. I haven’t studied the protocol in detail but it seems well thought out. If you have multiple Apple...

    I’m not using it yet. I’m not opposed, but I haven’t seen a website where I would want to use it. I haven’t studied the protocol in detail but it seems well thought out.

    If you have multiple Apple devices and are unlikely to lose all of them then I think it’s pretty safe, since it gets synced. Ditto if you are logged into Google on multiple devices. If you only have one device, or you bring them all with you when you go out and there’s risk of theft, you’ll need a recovery plan.

    I don’t think Google will abandon it since it’s a web standard. They don’t remove the implementation of a web standard from Chrome unless usage is very low on the web, which basically means it failed. If they do there will be plenty of warning.

    Another failure mode might be ether Google or Apple locking you out of your account, and that causing you to get locked out of some other accounts. It seems unlikely, particularly for Apple. But it might be covered by having a backup way of logging into whatever website you’re logging into. Maybe that means adding both Google and Apple passkeys to whatever account you’re logging into?

    I expect password managers will support passkeys soon and that will cover people who don’t like either Google or Apple.

    5 votes

  8. Comment on ChatGPT is cutting non-English languages out of the AI revolution in ~tech

    skybrian
    Link Parent
    Well, that’s the libertarian position and many people agree with you, most recently Marc Andreesson. I think that if AI really is dangerous (as in actually gets many people killed, like, say, cars...

    Well, that’s the libertarian position and many people agree with you, most recently Marc Andreesson.

    I think that if AI really is dangerous (as in actually gets many people killed, like, say, cars or airplanes or some drugs) then there is a reasonable case for government regulation, and this doesn’t seem inherently dystopian, even though regulatory overreach is a real problem. And I don’t think spite makes for good online conversation.

    But the arguments for AI really being that dangerous are theoretical at this point, and I’m doubtful that generating text alone can do anything worse than people could already do themselves. It would need to be hooked up to something.

    1 vote

  9. Comment on ChatGPT is cutting non-English languages out of the AI revolution in ~tech

    skybrian
    (edited )
    Link Parent
    That depends on what the threshold is, though. It’s also theoretical until a government actually makes some regulations. It doesn’t seem like they’re going to do anything any time soon? Edit: also...

    That depends on what the threshold is, though. It’s also theoretical until a government actually makes some regulations. It doesn’t seem like they’re going to do anything any time soon?

    Edit: also they seem to say that the threshold they have in mind doesn’t apply to any system that currently exists, including their own:

    Today’s systems will create tremendous value in the world and, while they do have risks, the level of those risks feel commensurate with other Internet technologies and society’s likely approaches seem appropriate.

    By contrast, the systems we are concerned about will have power beyond any technology yet created, and we should be careful not to water down the focus on them by applying similar standards to technology far below this bar.

    1 vote

  10. Comment on They're rebuilding the Death Star of complexity in ~comp

    skybrian
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    Seems like the alternative is to be a minimalist. Currently I use Netlify for static websites. I used an edge function once and it was okay. Deno Deploy could do the same thing if you want to...

    Seems like the alternative is to be a minimalist. Currently I use Netlify for static websites. I used an edge function once and it was okay. Deno Deploy could do the same thing if you want to stick to TypeScript.

    It lacks a database. If I needed one, I suppose I could get a PostgreSQL instance somewhere, but I don't know what the minimalist way to do it would be.

    2 votes

  11. Comment on Tildes fundraiser June 2023: Encourage an app developer (me) to work on a Tildes app faster, by donating to Tildes (not me)! in ~tildes

    skybrian
    (edited )
    Link Parent
    You're proposing some kind of federated system, but maybe we should think about what problems are being solved, first. Reddit has a common login that's very convenient when joining new subreddits,...

    You're proposing some kind of federated system, but maybe we should think about what problems are being solved, first.

    Reddit has a common login that's very convenient when joining new subreddits, but it also means there's a problem with people dropping in on communities without learning their way around first. Tildes has an invite system that adds friction, which is the opposite of having a super-convenient shared login, so there's some tension there.

    There might be a way to get both, though? Substack has a common login system, but Substacks still feel pretty distinct.

    One way to make communities feel connected-but-distinct would be to share common usernames. You can do that yourself by choosing the same username on whatever instance you're joining (like I do), so I guess it's about reserving usernames from a common pool?

    This is assuming you actually want your forum identities connected. It makes it easier for people to get a unified view of which forums you participate in, like they can find out which subreddits you post in on Reddit. But that undermines the privacy you get from keeping accounts separate.

    Anyway, none of this is true of Tildes today. If someone wants to run Tildes software, they can, but it's an entirely separate website.

    Getting back to the mobile app, I think the modern way to handle logins to a bunch of entirely separate websites might be PassKey support? An older way would be a password manager of some sort, but if I were writing a mobile app, I'd want to avoid storing people's passwords.

    6 votes

  12. Comment on ChatGPT is cutting non-English languages out of the AI revolution in ~tech

    skybrian
    Link Parent
    Yes, the framing this article uses annoys me too, but I think it's mostly the headline. There's an implied standard that out of fairness, products should be deployed with the same quality in every...

    Yes, the framing this article uses annoys me too, but I think it's mostly the headline. There's an implied standard that out of fairness, products should be deployed with the same quality in every language in the first release. That would be ideal, but it's unrealistic and would result in only the largest companies having a chance of competing.

    It sounds like you might think that OpenAI wants to shut down open source competitors? People say that online, but it's not what OpenAI is saying:

    We think it’s important to allow companies and open-source projects to develop models below a significant capability threshold, without the kind of regulation we describe here (including burdensome mechanisms like licenses or audits).

    So it seems like it's only the big competitors that they're hoping to see regulated (as well as following the same regulations themselves).

    4 votes

  13. Comment on Megathread #11 for news/updates/discussion of AI chatbots and image generators in ~tech

    skybrian
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    The Unintended Consequences of Censoring Digital Technology -- Evidence from Italy's ChatGPT Ban Here's the abstract: (Via Marginal Revolution.)

    The Unintended Consequences of Censoring Digital Technology -- Evidence from Italy's ChatGPT Ban

    Here's the abstract:

    We analyse the effects of the ban of ChatGPT, a generative pre-trained transformer chatbot, on individual productivity. We first compile data on the hourly coding output of over 8,000 professional GitHub users in Italy and other European countries to analyse the impact of the ban on individual productivity. Combining the high-frequency data with the sudden announcement of the ban in a difference-in-differences framework, we find that the output of Italian developers decreased by around 50% in the first two business days after the ban and recovered after that. Applying a synthetic control approach to daily Google search and Tor usage data shows that the ban led to a significant increase in the use of censorship bypassing tools. Our findings show that users swiftly implement strategies to bypass Internet restrictions but this adaptation activity creates short-term disruptions and hampers productivity.

    (Via Marginal Revolution.)

  14. Comment on Stack Overflow moderators are striking to stop garbage AI content from flooding the site in ~tech

    skybrian
    Link Parent
    Ideally there would be some kind of educational process: I think StackOverflow is dealing with an Eternal September problem, though? Maybe they need to get better at onboarding clueless...

    Ideally there would be some kind of educational process:

    Great that you're trying to help, but this is low-effort. You can use ChatGPT in your own investigations, but you need to verify that the result works before posting it.

    I think StackOverflow is dealing with an Eternal September problem, though? Maybe they need to get better at onboarding clueless volunteers, somehow.

  15. Comment on Stack Overflow moderators are striking to stop garbage AI content from flooding the site in ~tech

    skybrian
    Link Parent
    So here's what I tried: Yeah, these jokes are mostly pretty awful, but I think a few have potential. (It would look better if I threw out the bad ones.)

    So here's what I tried:

    Could you generate some funny quotes from famous people commenting on the following article? https://www.vice.com/en/article/4a33dj/stack-overflow-moderators-are-striking-to-stop-garbage-ai-content-from-flooding-the-site

    Sure, here are some humorous quotes from famous individuals commenting on the situation:

    Albert Einstein: "Two things are infinite: the universe and AI-generated content on Stack Overflow, and I'm not sure about the universe."

    Mark Twain: "The reports of the usefulness of AI-generated content on Stack Overflow are greatly exaggerated."

    Oscar Wilde: "Experience is simply the name moderators give to their AI content removals."

    Groucho Marx: "Behind every successful AI, there are a lot of unsuccessful Stack Overflow moderators."

    Stephen Hawking: "I have noticed even people who claim everything is predestined, and that we can do nothing to change it, look before they post AI-generated content."

    Winston Churchill: "The AI content on Stack Overflow is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma; but perhaps there is a key. That key is human moderation."

    Dorothy Parker: "The first thing I do in the morning is brush my teeth and sharpen my tongue... to argue with AI content on Stack Overflow."

    Mae West: "Between two evils, I always pick the one I never tried before... so I guess it's time to moderate some AI content."

    Yogi Berra: "The future ain't what it used to be. It's now full of AI-generated content."

    Benjamin Franklin: "In this world, nothing can be said to be certain, except death, taxes, and AI content on Stack Overflow."

    Yeah, these jokes are mostly pretty awful, but I think a few have potential. (It would look better if I threw out the bad ones.)

  16. Comment on Stack Overflow moderators are striking to stop garbage AI content from flooding the site in ~tech

    skybrian
    Link Parent
    I'm wary of treating this as an "average" opinion. First of all, chatbots use random number generators when generating responses. You would need to regenerate the response multiple times and see...
    • Exemplary

    I'm wary of treating this as an "average" opinion.

    First of all, chatbots use random number generators when generating responses. You would need to regenerate the response multiple times and see how its responses vary to get a better idea of the average chatbot response.

    But let's suppose they're all much like this one. I still don't think it makes sense as a human average opinion. Whenever there's an average, you have to think about what's in the denominator. Which people do chatbot responses average over? Does it give the people surveyed equal weight? Surveys are cursed instruments, but a properly-run poll is a much better way of trying to get an average opinion of a human population.

    So instead, I think it's better to use chatbots as tools for brainstorming. If it generates an argument that you hadn't considered, you can look into it. If it just gives you arguments that you would have thought of on your own, it didn't help.

    In this case, it just generated bland boilerplate, like a student trying to complete a homework assignment who doesn't really care. So, it's not that good from a brainstorming perspective.

    But maybe we could do better at getting it to generate some interesting ideas with a more creative prompt? For example, you could ask what a Marxist would think of this situation. (Or substitute someone more interesting.)

    1 vote

  17. Comment on SEC sues Coinbase over exchange and staking programs, stock drops 12% in ~finance

    skybrian
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    From the article: [...] [...] The SEC also sued Binance yesterday: The SEC sues Binance, unveils 13 charges against crypto exchange in sweeping lawsuit (NPR) Matt Levine has commentary: [...]

    From the article:

    The Securities and Exchange Commission sued crypto exchange Coinbase in New York federal court on Tuesday morning, alleging that the company was acting as an unregistered broker and exchange and demanding that the company be “permanently restrained and enjoined” from continuing to do so.

    [...]

    The SEC has alleged that at least 13 crypto assets available to Coinbase customers were considered “crypto asset securities” by the regulator. Those assets include Solana’s SOL token, Cardano’s token and Protocol Labs’ Filecoin token.

    [...]

    Coinbase’s staking program was also identified as a investment contract and as an unregistered security: The SEC had already taken similar action to force the closure of crypto exchange Kraken’s staking service.

    The SEC described the staking program as a way for “investors to earn financial returns through Coinbase’s managerial efforts.” The SEC says the five “stakeable crypto assets” are considered securities under its interpretation of the law, an assessment that will no doubt be disputed by Coinbase.

    The SEC also sued Binance yesterday:

    The SEC sues Binance, unveils 13 charges against crypto exchange in sweeping lawsuit (NPR)

    In the Binance lawsuit, the S.E.C. accused Zhao and his company of misleading investors about Binance's ability to detect market manipulation as well as of misusing customer funds and sending some of that money to a company controlled by CZ, among other charges.

    The S.E.C. also accused Binance of running an unregistered trading platform in the U.S. and allowing U.S. customers to trade crypto on an exchange that is supposed to be off-limits to U.S. investors.

    Matt Levine has commentary:

    There are basically two ways for a crypto exchange to get in trouble with the SEC. The good way is that you get in trouble for running an illegal securities exchange. In April, the SEC sued Bittrex Inc. for allegedly operating an illegal securities exchange; any reasonable reading of the Bittrex case made it clear that similar cases were coming against Coinbase and Binance. Just being a crypto exchange in the US is, in the SEC’s eyes, illegal.

    The bad way is that you get in trouble for stealing all the money. Last December, the SEC sued FTX Trading Ltd., a big crypto exchange. Here is the SEC’s complaint against FTX. I am absolutely certain that the SEC thinks that FTX operated an illegal securities exchange in the US. But that does not even come up in the complaint. There is too much else going on. FTX allegedly stole all the money! When an exchange steals all the money, the SEC focuses on that. When it doesn’t steal all the money, the SEC focuses on the illegal securities exchange stuff.

    And so one question about this week’s cases is: Is the SEC suing Coinbase and Binance for being crypto exchanges, or for being bad crypto exchanges? Is the claim here “you let people trade crypto, which we think is illegal,” or is it “you let people trade crypto and steal their money”?

    [...]

    [F]or the most part the Binance complaint is the same as the Coinbase complaint: Binance is accused of operating a crypto exchange that was open to US customers and that listed crypto tokens that are securities, without registering as a US securities exchange. I am tempted to read yesterday’s lawsuit as kind of an endorsement of Binance by the SEC. The SEC, and before it the CFTC, investigated Binance carefully and wrote a 136-page complaint about every bad thing it could find, and all it could find is that Binance is running a crypto exchange.

    Still, while the arguments in the two complaints are mostly the same, Coinbase’s and Binance’s attitudes are very different. [...] Coinbase recognized that this was a potential risk, and set up committees and procedures to ponder and mitigate it. [...] Meanwhile here is how Binance’s wonderful chief compliance officer described his fact-intensive analysis of whether Binance listed security tokens in the US:

    As Binance’s CCO bluntly admitted to another Binance compliance officer in December 2018, “we are operating as a fking unlicensed securities exchange in the USA bro.” (Emphasis added.)

    Just a much clearer perspective! Coinbase hired a lot of lawyers and did a lot of analysis and wrote a lot of checklists to convince itself that it was legally running a crypto exchange in the US. Binance was like “well obviously this is illegal in the US, ah well.” The SEC absolutely agrees with Binance.

    2 votes

  19. Comment on Introductions | June 2023 in ~talk

    skybrian
    Link Parent
    I've thought about playing piano more since I'm listening to piano music a lot lately. (I've recently gotten obsessed with listening to Hiromi.) But one thing I like about accordion is that it's...

    I've thought about playing piano more since I'm listening to piano music a lot lately. (I've recently gotten obsessed with listening to Hiromi.) But one thing I like about accordion is that it's not a popular instrument, so I could do a cover of a song and be the only one who played it on accordion on YouTube. With more popular instruments like piano or guitar, I wonder if there would be a point since there are so many great players already.

    I've tried learning guitar and ukulele before but found them hard to get into. Starting out with chords rather melody doesn't seem as fun, particularly when learning to fret each new chord and transitioning between them takes so much practice.

    Another less common instrument that I particularly like is melodica. This is usually a beginner's instrument (apparently it's common in Japan for schools to use it instead of a recorder), but they're cheap and fun. For a keyboardist, it's fun playing a wind instrument, and I typically play one-handed which is easier compared to coordinating two hands.

    So I recommend beginning with that. Accordion is fairly easy to get started on too, except for the part about actually getting your hands on a decent accordion. Accordion shops are pretty rare and buying used is a crapshoot for people who don't know what to look for.

    2 votes

  20. Comment on Home and garden: Boring “watch grass grow” thread in ~hobbies

    skybrian
    (edited )
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    In California, it's the time of year when the grass starts drying out and dies for the season - unless you water it, which we don't. My wife and I having been talking about replacing the lawn with...

    In California, it's the time of year when the grass starts drying out and dies for the season - unless you water it, which we don't. My wife and I having been talking about replacing the lawn with something else, but we have no real plans. We like the look of Carpobrotus chilensis (sea fig), which my wife took a cutting of in Monterey and we have a small patch that's growing well. It's somewhat controversial (considered an invasive species), but for a suburban lawn it seems okay?

    3 votes