Now is the time to look into Meshtastic or Meshcore.
The devices are pretty cheap, and the more poeple have it ready when needed, the better.
Also, stock up on guides from the anarchist library. Having an offline copy so you don't have to search for it later will help with going under the radar.
You are right, I'll fix it. Always confuse those two :D
The only joy I've ever gotten from LLMs was telling my work-heavily-recommended Claude that I want him to act, talk and treat me like SHODAN in every conversation.
Hmm, I wonder how well would formal verification work with LLMs. I'm not really a fan of vibe coding, but the little I know about formal verification, it could very well work as a way how to prove your vibe-coded slop isn't shit.
I've looked into formal verification once few years ago, but it's too much math and thinking for me to grasp. If I remember it right, I guess the problem would be that you'd (or, LLM would, in this case) have to correctly describe the code in the formal verification language, and it would have to match 1:1 with the code, which is a point of failure? So we'd be back to square one, but instead of having to verify every single line of code, you'd have to check the proof. But maybe I'm wrong.
The scary part is the mental state he was able to get into with only a randomly generated text. If you haven't already seen it, I highly recommend the Down the Rabbit Hole video about it, although it's pretty heartbreaking. So much wasted talent.
There's people like him who are similarly psychotic, but couldn't usually get to the point where they could access a tool that would trigger them. Personalized chatbots were mostly a niche non-tech savy person doesn't really get to that easily.
Now, it's everywhere. A lot of people will loose their sanity over this.
I wouldn't be surprised if something like that popped up very soon. Probably is in the works on someone's drive already.
I remember hearing an arugment against AI coding that if it's so good, why aren't there apps popping up left and right? Which was true at the time.
Now? In the past month, I've seen a pretty in-depth Murloc-tamagotchi addon in WoW (that kills your FPS), a whole open-source custom World of Warcraft client, an E2E Tor-based messenger (that signs messages with 128b CBC key), a game engine based on a lost Standart Model of physics that was mentioned by Tesla, but lost to time, that someone reverse engineered (which had very TempleOS vibes, as far as the authors mental state goes), a Matrix protocol on Cloudfare microservices (that skipped message signature verification), and I could go on.
Open-source is going to become a hell to navigate. I was already anxious about using FOSS tools due to malicious typosquatting clones, supply chain attacks and general security of using someone's FOSS code on my PC. Now, add vibe coded shit to the mix, and finding a good FOSS projects and tools will be hell :(
You can stream video and voice over IRC?
Tbh from my experiences, AI is also turning current senior devs into juniors. The skill erosion is real, and I could see it on myself just after a week of trying out Claude (since we've gotten access at my job).
The skills I've spent a great part of my life acquiring are really not worth whatever advantages AI use may have, even if I just did my job to earn a paycheck and didn't care about the quality of my output, as long as it's acceptable. It may feel easier now, but eventually you will have to pass another interview, and good luck when the last time you actually coded without AI was a year ago.
The algorithm is probably made to maximize the time you spend on the platform, and is really good at it. (I mean, just look how good are ML algorithms on text -> picture, and add to it that the algorithm that does your info -> engagement has decades of data and training on billions of people).
My theory is that it has misaligned, because it turned out that radicalizing people into right-wing bullshit will glue them to the social network very effectively, so it just started to do that. It makes sense - once you start spewing right-wing bullshit, it will probably isolate you from your IRL friends, you will have an echo chamber on the social network, and it is made to sound like some kind of deep truth no one else knows.
You getting left-wing content might be simply because it would not be efficient to try to convert you, so the algorithm is trying something else that's more effective on the (minority?) of people like you.
I've been using Graphene for years at this point, and so far it has been amazing.
I have two profiles, main one without Google Play services, and fortunately a lot of apps just work out even without them. Some complain about it, but still work at least as far core functionality I want is considered, and for the few that don't, I have a second profile that runs sandboxed Play Services and just switch when needed.
I'm a little bit worried about Google's push around installing apps from other sources than orignal Play Store, or the new integrity API, but I'm willing to just stop using any app that requires it, and change banks to one that either doesn't require an app for login, or can work without play services. Fortunately, my current one works without, for now (mBank).
Permanently Deleted
For me, it was about gear. I impulse bought a grill that can detect the width of meat, and can pretty reliably grill whatever I put there, assuming I choose the correct program. That made me buy a lot more steaks, since they were super easy to prepare.
Another one was getting an instant pot, and just randomly choosing recipes on the internet, mostly focusing on one-pot recipes. It's so much easier when you don't have to deal with standing there and guarding the stove, which I always found super boring and that was keeping me from cooking.
By not having exactly the correct ingredients, I've eventually discovered that most of cooking is just "stock, veggies, meat and seassoning", maybe cream, and i can just do whatever (within reason, but you can usually guess what works together) and it probably works and tastes good.
On disadvantage my mostly random approach has is that I can make an amazingly good meal, but have no idea how I actually did that, only to never be able to make the same food again. I have a memory of a goldfish on ketamine and hate planning stuff, so my cooking is mostly random. Most of the time it tastes good, but I was never able to exactly repeat the same process twice, hah.
I've had a similar experience at my job, where we've gotten an unlimited access to a few models.
There's one huge problem I've very quickly ran into - skill attrition. You very quickly get lazy, and stop being able to critically think about problems. Hell, I've only had access to it for two weeks, and I'm starting to see the effects. "Can you add this button?" is a very simple change that I could probably make immediately, but AI can make it a little bit faster, and without me putting in the effort. Or it can at least show me the correct script to put it in, without me having to go scouring the code looking for it. It's addicting, and quite scary. YMMV, you might have stronger willpower and be able to switch between lazy and locked in mode, but I very quickly found out I can't.
But is it useful? That very much depends on what do you want out of your job, and both cases have major (and mostly similar) problems.
If you don't really care about the quality of your job, and are there just to work your 8/5 and get money, hoping to just balance effort vs. quality so they won't fire you, the it might help. Especially at this point, where management isn't really used to it that much, you can get away with a lot. But, eventually, you will very probably need to look for a new job, and good luck getting through an interview when you haven't really thought about code without the help of an AI for the past two years. The fact that you started coding before AI is the only advantage you now have against literally EVERYONE who can do the same job with AI. And every day you don't write a piece of code from scratch, you are loosing that advantage.
I have I job I don't particularly care about, but I still use it as a learning opportunity. It might be vastly different in other projects, but my job is mostly just support and bugfixing on a game that has been released for years at this point by a large developer, so nothing really involved, so I can usually afford to use my time to research things I wasn't familiar with, look into things we could do better thanks to new tech or updates that have been released, and how to refactor or rewrite our code into it. Or making tools that would make our testing easier. I could just not do that, easily get my paycheck, and be glad I have a somewhat stable position, but that would not help me much. In this case, AI is actively harmful for what I'm trying to get out of my job, even if it works pretty well. It only erodes my skills I have, which are not very practiced even without AI, since bug fixing isn't really much of development. Adding AI to the mix would just throw away my years of college and dozens of projects I've learned on. And I won't learn anything new.
Obviously, if you care about your job output and want to do it perfectly, you don't want to erode your skills, and you don't want AI output in your code. AI by definition outputs mediocre and average work, riddled with hard-to-spot bugs, and you should not be ok with mediocre if you really care about the work you do and leave behind.
Especially the point about the pretty large probability of having to seek a new job eventually is IMO the most important thing that's really worth considering, before you go all in on AI. It's something that a lot of programmers spend years (and in less developed countries thousands of dollars) in learning, and throwing it away in favor of a service that will very soon need to massively ramp up their costs to get out of red and earn billions they have invested into it is not worth it.
Currently, AI is cheap. It also actively harms your ability to do the job without it. They have also invested billions of dollars that they need to eventually make up, and you will eventually need to pass a job interview. Keep that in mind when deciding to offload your thinking to AI.
Remember that (I think) C++ race condition in RTG software, that killed people with something like 0.0001% probability and it was a huge deal and a reason to immediately retire the devices (or maybe just fix the bug, the point is that in medical, it's super important to have a high success chance)?
I'm sure AI doing diagnosis will be able to get to a higher success chance, lol.
EDIT: From a quick search, it looks like mis-diagnosis chance in doctors is around 10%. I still don't think AI can do better.
I'm also betting on Graphene. Been able to get by with a profile without Play Services, thankfully my bank doesn't require it, but if they ever do (or the new integrity bullshit), I'm immediately switching banks to one that doesn't.
That's the only app I need on my phone, anything else I can get without if they require it.
In a hypothetical situation where you get a law passed in your country, where it's mandatory to perform age verification on all social media apps, it's simple.
No verification? Jail time. Will they go after you? They could, if someone pointed them towards your server. (I think they even have to, at least in our country, the government has to persecute a crime they are made aware of if I remember my college law courses right)
In some states, if I understand it right (based on a quick googling, might be false) failing to do verification for porn can be considered as a felony. It's a slightly different example (porn vs. social networks), but if the laws are written in the same way, there's not really much you can do about it.
Completely anonymous hosting that's in no way tied to you (through IP, credit card, location, domain, logs, etc) is difficult. While you'd still probably be fine if you have a private-use server, you'd still give anyone who doesn't like you and knows about it a pretty easy way how to make your life a lot more difficult. This of course heavily depends on how would (will) the laws be written in your country, but give the track record of lawmakers understanding tech, there is a chance that even small self-hosted stuff would catch flak. If it's written in such a way to not be i.e limited by user count, then there's not much you can do.
A lawyer would probably be able to talk you out of it, but you'd still be charged and it would suck (and be expensive) to deal with.
So, yeah. "How could the government force me to enable it" boils down to "jail time". I mean, it's basically a similar question like "how could the government stop me from using Telegram or VPNs", and IIRC there are some examples for that already.
EDIT: Not having public sign-up enabled could be a way around it, since random people can't make an account there, so you're basically doing age-verification by a veto. However, if someone under-age got into your server, they then have a leverage on you, since they are there illegally (in the hypothetical scenario).
This is a good reminder for people to run Snowflake relay if they can. Just installing the relay extensions is all you need to do.
I've had the extension for a bit now, and I usually get a few connections the moment I open my browser. I quickly forgot about having it installed, and it never gave me any trouble.
Snowflake allows you to connect to the Tor network in places where Tor is blocked by routing your connection through volunteer proxies located in uncensored countries.
Similar to VPNs, which help users bypass Internet censorship, Snowflake disguises your Internet activity as though you’re making a video or voice call, making you less detectable to Internet censors.
I've been a fan of MASH, an ansible playbook that can host a lot of stuff.
I only have experience with their separate Matrix playbook, but it is super robust and I haven't ran into any problems the playbook couldn't deal with (aside from running out of VM disk space once), so I'd expect this would be similarly good.
Time to finally use my https://noyb.eu/'s free one hour of legal privacy consultation that comes with a membership to find out if forging my ID for the purpose of verification will get me realistically in trouble or no. And buy Death Stranding.
Fuck this.
Yeah, I'm all against this kind of surveillance, i.e the whole stuff about Ring cameras, but this is not the case.
It's the product working as intended. If I ever had a reason to install security cameras to my home, I would expect them to work especially when someone is trying to cut out my power.
She lived in an entirely different city across the country (Europe, so like two hours of train ride).
She saw me on Facebook, based on photos from a goth festival in our city, so I got a message on Messanger from a profile without a profile picture and no mutual friends. We talked for a bit, I was single at the time, and we eventually decided to meet. I had no idea how she looks like, and I kind of found this idea of a blind date funny - either it works, or I'll get a good story out of it.
We decided to meet and go to a local goth scene hangout, and not only she was really pretty, she also brought two bottles of mead. We managed to drink both of them before even getting to the hangout, where it turned out that she was actually not only a classmate of my best friend (a long time ago), but also used to be part of the scene around 5 years ago (before I joined it), before she went no-contact and changed her nickname due to a relationship (that eventually turned out really terrible). So, she knew most of my friends.
That was 7 years ago. At the time she was living in a small flat, after just getting out of a 7 y.o terrible relationship that she couldn't leave due to having a mortgage, but she managed to save enough on a minimal wage to leave when she found out he was cheating. Her grandma was living with her in her small flat, and she was really a terrible person, even had her aunt with the most entitled child move in, and they were even worse. Always arguing, screaming, being rude, and just acting like dicks. She let them live with her, just because they had nowhere to go, even though she was earning a minimal wage. Them saying that "If we don't like it, we should move out", or that "I shouldn't argue, because I don't live here", while I was actually helping her with rent they weren't doing anything for was insane.
I kept visiting her almost daily, spending time in the one small 5x5m room she had for herself, even though it was two hour train ride. During covid, I was mostly staying at her place, and since she loved animals (her mother worked at a zoo, before cancer got her), we discussed what we want to get, and pet racoon was high on the list. And when she said that we will get a racoon once we live together, I immediately found a flat in my city, and we moved in together around 5 years ago. We stole the ashes of her mother and went no-contact with the people living at her old flat. They can burn in hell.
Unfortunately, racoons are not easily legal to own, but we got a lot of different animals instead. She also helped me with starting to make our own goth events, DJ, and help local promoters, and now we're responsible for more than half of goth events that happen in our city. She's now earning more that I do (and I work in IT), and I'm really happy how did everything turned out. We have no idea how did the rest of her familly end up, but we don't really care.
We are kind of planning a wedding, with only witnesses, but so far what's stopping is that I can't find my birth certificate, and that it looks like it's not possible for both of us to have both surnames (the options are one of us keeps theirs, and the other get's both, or we choose one only, and we both want to have both), so we kind of didn't want to bother with it for a while.