NeatNit

@NeatNit@discuss.tchncs.de

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NeatNit ,

It actually means di-aboly, as in having two abolies. An aboly is an organ exclusively found in beetles that regulates certain hormoes.

And it's called ironclad because they are well known for manufacturing and wearing suits of armor.

NeatNit ,

That is a ridiculous and baseless accusation that just by chance happens to be true

NeatNit ,

Seconded! I also can't wait to find out whether Chopper can save Vegapunk, but that's probably a ways away still...

NeatNit ,

I kind of assume this with any digital media. Games, music, ebooks, stock videos, whatever - embedding a tiny unique ID is very easy and can allow publishers to track down leakers/pirates.

Honestly, even though as a consumer I don't like it, I don't mind it that much. Doesn't seem right to take the extreme position of "publishers should not be allowed to have ANY way of finding out who is leaking things". There needs to be a balance.

Online phone-home DRM is a huge fuck no, but a benign little piece of metadata that doesn't interact with anything and can't be used to spy on me? Whatever, I can accept it.

NeatNit , (edited )

I feel like this will cause quality degradation, like repeatedly re-compressing a jpeg. Relevant xkcd

Edit: though obviously for most use cases it shouldn't matter

NeatNit ,

That's true. I was actually thinking/talking about this practice in general, not specifically with regards to Elsevier.

I definitely agree that scientific journals as they are today are unacceptable.

NeatNit ,

You're pushing it through one system that converts a PDF file into printer instructions, and then through another system that converts printer instructions into a PDF file. Each step probably has to make adjustments with the data it's pushing through.

Without looking deeply into the systems involved, I have to assume it's not a lossless process.

NeatNit ,

See my reply to another comment

NeatNit ,

It can be used to spy on any decent scientist who will send papers his/hers/theirs institution has access to, but their friend doesn't.

By "spy" I mean things like: know how many times I've read the PDF, when I've opened it, which parts of it I've read most, what program I used to open the PDF, how many copies of the PDF I've made, how many people I've emailed it to, etc. etc. etc.

This technique can do none of that. The only thing it can do is: if someone uploads the PDF to a mass sharing network, and an employee of the publisher downloads it from that mass sharing network and compares this metadata with the internal database, then they can see which of their users originally downloaded it and when they originally downloaded the PDF. It tells them nothing about how it got there. Maybe the original user shared it with 20 of their colleagues (a legitimate use of a downloaded PDF), and one of those colleagues uploaded that file to the mass sharing site without telling the original downloader. It doesn't prove one way or the other. It's an extremely small amount of information that's only useful for catching systemic uploaders, e.g. a single user who has uploaded hundreds or thousands of PDFs that they downloaded from the publisher using the same account.

And a savvy user can always strip that metadata out.

As a reminder, ...

All true, and fucked up, but it's not related to what I was talking about. I was talking about the general use of this technique.

NeatNit ,

What

NeatNit ,

You are arguing that Elsevier shouldn't exist at all, or needs to be forcibly changed into something more fair and more free. I 100% agree with this.

But my point was in general, not about Elsevier but about all digital publications of any kind. This includes indie publications and indie games. If an indie developer makes a game, and it gets bought maybe 20 copies but pirated thousands of times, do you still say "fuck that" to figuring out which "customer" shared the game?

I agree with "fuck that" to huge publishers, and by all means pirate all their shit, but smaller guys need some way to safeguard themselves, and there's no way to decide that small guys can use a certain tool and big guys cannot.

NeatNit ,

They maintain a high quality but not lossless.

As a trivial example, if you use the wrong paper size (like Letter instead of A4) then it might crop parts of the page or add borders or resize everything. Again I'll admit, in 99% of cases it doesn't matter, but it might matter if, say, an embedded picture was meant to be exactly to scale.

NeatNit ,

No point discussing this if neither of us is going to prove it one way or the other.

Bitmaps are actually a key part of what I was thinking about, so you agree with me there it seems. There's also the issue of using the wrong paper size. .IIRC Windows usually defaults to Letter for printing even in places where A4 is the only common size and no one has heard of Letter, and most people don't realise their prints are cropped/resized. This would still apply when printing to PDF.

NeatNit ,

Without IP your favourite books, movies, TV shows, music and video games would not exist.

NeatNit ,

"There are ways" ≠ this is what happens by default when done by the average user

NeatNit ,

I'm almost afraid to ask... How much?

NeatNit ,

Try this: https://superuser.com/a/1726367

Notes:

  • I haven't tried it myself
  • (step 6) In Mint, instead of using the terminal, open that directory normally in the file manager, then right-click on an empty part of the directory and choose "open as root". Both the file manager and the default text editor after you've opened the file will show red banners reminding you that they are running as root.
  • (steps 3-4) I hope you are at least a little familiar with the registry editor on windows, otherwise these steps might be hard to follow
NeatNit ,

A thing I did with Key Mapper from F-Droid lets me undo by pressing Volume Down + Volume Up, and Redo by pressing Volume Up + Volume Down (the order matters). If anyone's interested I can share how to set it up.

Note that it'd work better and more seamlessly if you use Shizuku, but I don't so there's some caveats. I'll happily go into more detail, just ask.

NeatNit ,

Take a look at Unexpected Keyboard too, it's great and actively developed. F-Droid / GitHub / Play Store

NeatNit ,

Still works.

Development stopped on Hacker's Keyboard in 2018(?) and people keep using it.

NeatNit ,

Me too, but Unexpected Keyboard is useful for niche situations that crop up.

NeatNit ,

\cdot all the way (except e.g. cross-product for vectors, I'm not an anarchist)

NeatNit ,

Who or what is 2B? Isn't that a type of pencil?

NeatNit ,

The Sinclair video is expertly edited.

NeatNit ,

Absolutely, I'm only commending the effort. It can't be easy just to gather this many clips from different sources, let alone edit them like this to both highlight the problem and maintain the viewer's attention - all without saying or explaining anything. It's obvious from just watching it. It's a masterpiece.

NeatNit , (edited )

You still have to prove that the integral exists, i.e. that from x=0 to x=∞ the integral is some number (not ∞ and not indeterminate). So it's not a total waste of time.

Edit: oh, the limits aren't ±∞ so if the function has no vertical asymptote in the range, it's a given.

NeatNit ,

dammit I should have got that

NeatNit ,

I'm also thinking Borderlands

NeatNit ,

Cartoon addiction combines with superpower to stop war

NeatNit ,

Until earlier this year, I could make NFC payments with the app of my credit card company. AFAIK contactless payments on Android were never locked to Google Pay/Wallet. But I have no idea why there's no competition in this space. I'd expect e.g. PayPal to have something, but if they do I never heard of it - and I did look once, briefly.

NeatNit ,

For generic contactless payments at shops? Or some closed system that only works with other PayPal users?

NeatNit ,

Alright, good to know.

NeatNit ,

You mean the thing any credit card issuer does anyway?

NeatNit ,

He did the backflip, all that was left to do is snap the bad guy's neck and save the day. So close!

But I gotta say I really don't understand what's happening in the top right image, or the order of events.

NeatNit ,

Degrees F or C? And no, I will not look this up for myself, what do you take me for? Some kind of guy who makes trivial web searches instead of asking in a public forum?

NeatNit ,

Well, if it's been running for a long time, it's up to some random point in pi and we missed the start. But we can still try to interpret the signal as digits, and check if this sequence appears anywhere in pi... Well what do you know, it does!

(disclaimer: it has never been proven that π has this property, but it is suspected)

NeatNit ,

I forgot already before I started writing this comment

NeatNit ,

I think this is more to do with scientists' definitions than English in general. See also: what is and isn't a nut, what is and isn't a vegetable, is there such thing as a fish.

NeatNit ,

I'll have a tidal salt fen marsh, with extra tide.

NeatNit ,

thank you, I hoped this would be here.

AI Ruined My Year - Robert Miles ( www.youtube.com )

You might know Robert Miles from his appearances in Computerphile. When it comes to AI safety, his videos are the best explainers out there. In this video, he talks about the developments of the past year (since his last video) and how AI safety plays into it....

NeatNit OP ,

Reposted because someone else's post was removed after I took issue with its AI-generated summary. If you're reading this, I didn't mean for this to happen, I hope you're not too angry. I actually would have preferred if you just edited your summary to correct it. And FWIW, I upvoted your post.

NeatNit OP ,

I'll try to add that in. It's actually a fairly old story (in AI timescale) but you're right, it's worth mentioning.

NeatNit OP ,

We'll see if my efforts fare any better.

NeatNit OP ,

Also feel free to cross-post this to the other community, or anywhere else.

NeatNit ,

Reasoning and "thinking" can arise as emergent properties of this system. Not everything the model says is backed up by direct data. As you surely know, you've heard of AI hallucinations.

I believe the researchers in that experiment allowed the model to write out its thoughts to a separate place where only they could read them.

By god, watch the video and not the crappy AI-generated summary. This man is one of the best AI safety explainers in the world. You don't have to agree with everything he says, but I think you'll agree with the vast majority of it.

NeatNit ,

well the recap is wrong :(

NeatNit ,

Do you watch every video available? I certainly can’t. So I make use of teasers and descriptions. That’s what they’re there and useful for.

Sure, me too, but when you literally say "Instant disqualification for me" that's an insane reaction. You should know when reading a summary that it's not a perfect representation of the source. Even human-written summaries or articles very often misunderstand or misrepresent their sources, many times stating the exact opposite of the source because of it. This obviously happens with AI summaries as well. The "instant disqualification" is what you can't excuse.

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