hendrik

Is there a recommended, shiny RSS reader for Linux and Android? Which I want to try?

Or the people who own the robots and dictate their programming (/control them). That would be my concern. Unless they’re sentient and make decisions completely on their own, they can be used to oppress people to other people’s wishes. As it’s the case with all (modern) technology. And currently AI isn’t shaped by the people, but by a rich minority and big tech companies. And I see some issues with that, specifically, in the near future.

Plus, both happens. I had content being georestricted and my access being blocked due to companies not bothering with European cookie popups. Similar to how porn sites now block southern US states. And sometimes companies just go with the stricter law and implement things so it caters for different audiences, disregarding if they could be more lax with one country.

Sure, they’re being regulated in other countries. I guess in the EU for example, it’s the Digital Services Act and other legislation which mandate moderation, cutting down on hate and disinformation. They’d need to be sanctioned if they don’t comply. Or leave the market if they don’t like the law…

So how are we going to find you? And what do you want to tell me? Or is this just intended to waste my time at this point?

I’d say do a teaser once you have a rough schedule ready. And maybe something to show off. And stick to the truth. If you say people can find you, that has to be correct.

no links, no hashtags
if you want to find us
you will

I don’t think so. Neither of the terms turns up anything useful on Google.

Well if it can replace senior software engineers… Wouldn’t it also be able to do almost all of the other jobs? Or are you referring to some specific future where AI advances massively, but robotics does not and handymen are still safe?

I’d say if all humans are unemployed, society would change massively. We can’t really tell how that’d work. But if machines / AI do all jobs, get food on the table… I don’t really know what other people would be doing. I think I’d relax and pursue a few hobbies and interests. Or it’d be some dystopia where humankind is oppressed by the machines and I’d fight for the resistance.

But regardless… In a world like that, money wouldn’t work the way it does now. Neither would salaries for labor mean anything.

What’s anti-power user about developing this extension?

My argument against that extension is just that it takes money and developer hours to program it. Resources that are taken away from other (more useful) things.

And I like some of the Mozilla products very much. And I think as a company, they’re not too well off. They have a limited amount of money and developers. They can now choose to invest that time in useful things, or things that attract money, or start 500 random side-projects. But then they can’t complain if that takes away from like Thunderbird and the translation tool I would like to see some attention given to.

I’m not opposed to this addon, I just don’t think it’s a wise decision to invest the limited resources in that.

I wholeheartedly agree with the rest of your comment. Linux has come a great way since then. But that means people have put in a lot of work to polish things. Directly opposed to what happens here, starting more half-baked projects and adding features, without polishing the existing ones and making them more useful or attractive to regular people.

I wish I could agree, but I don’t think I can. By that logic, Mozilla could as well stop developing their browser. It has dropped to a marketshare to like 2.5% by somewhat official statistics, maybe about 5% if we’re generous. That’s less than the ratio of Linux users. So I’d argue it’s for tinkerers, too. Seems people aren’t educating themselves, downloading Firefox, installing and configuring it either. I don’t really know what to make of this argument.

But it’s not my main point, anyways. It’s been more than a year since the translation feature got added officially to the browser. They’ve promised to add more languages from the start. But we’ve only seen small changes since then, like how you can select text. Ultimately, that translation project is from 2022. I doubt they’re actually working on it. I think it’s a shame. We’d need some good AI tools.

My point is, we already have several local LLM tools and chatbots. This is just yet another one (which isn’t ever there yet). I think you could as well use ollama for that.

While for example I still need to use Google Translate because Mozilla has a completely local translation tool for some time already. It’s just they promised to add more languages, but they don’t do it. Instead they use their time to get yet another addon to the prototype stage.

And you should try it. The (AI) translation is really good. It just needs a bit more polish and like 5 more languages… That’d help people massively. And it’s also in demand, I heard Reddit and a few other platforms have added translation as well. If you want to help people and offer privacy, I’d argue you focus on that. And this would be something useful.

Summarization however, is not useful. I get people use it anyways. I just hope they have a look at the quality of the results. Because all I’ve seen are summaries that are between misleading and wrong. And that’s by the market leading products like ChatGPT and Claude… I’m not here to dictate people’s life. But they should be aware of it to make an informed decision. I think it’s sad that Mozilla just has shiny advertising online for a product that has quite some caveats and is unlikely to ever work well. And I think misinformation is a big issue of today’s world. It’s marginally better to generate it while respecting people’s privacy. Yes. But I’m not sure if that makes it a good thing.

And please continue working on the browser, the translation, Thunderbird and the dozens of other useful Mozilla projects. I think unless Mozilla has infinite money and developer resources, they should focus on products that work well for their users.

We discussed this briefly a few days ago. No one understands why Mozilla likes to waste their time and money on random sideprojects that nobody likes or asked for… Instead of something useful, or the things lots of people ask them to do.

And summarization is among the worst things you can do with LLMs. I’m not against AI, but they’re really not good at this specific thing. I’m not sure if people will use it anyways, but I think this project is a waste of resources.

Do you mean something like a phone or a computer? What’s the question?

Btw, I think it’s pretty much accepted fact that smartphones do spy on everyone. It’s the main business model of any big tech company. Google, Meta… They definitely have algorithms to tailor their targeted ads to someones personal profile. And per default they look at what you’re doing online all day. Keep track of your location if they can… The one thing that’s unclear is whether they use the microphone and also listen to your offline conversations. My main point being: Listening in with the microphone isn’t that far off. If you feel uncomfortable with that, you might want to re-consider a few other things as well.

With the scientific method and anecdotal evidence: kind of never. It’s illegitimate to draw that conclusion, this way.

You got to dig down to the facts. Or we can just tell the fact that a lot of people feel that way. And I mean “confirmation bias” is a very good explanation. We also have thousands of people believe in esoterics, homeopathy etc. The mechanics of psychology are well-understood. And it’s kind of the reason why we invented science in the first place. Because we found things aren’t always as they seem. And there are a lot of dynamics to factor in.

If we want to get to the truth, we have to do a proper study. I’m not an expert on this, so I don’t know if we got to that, yet. I know people have demonstrated this is technically possible. But as far as I’m aware people have also taken apart a few of the major apps like Facebook etc, logged the traffic and couldn’t find anything that uses microphone data to do targeted advertising.

Conclusion: It’s either not there, or we missed it.

Difficult to judge. Could be confirmation bias, as well. Meaning you got ads for flight befores. But you were not paying attention to them at that point. Which changed after your session and now you think these are connected. (Or you looked something up about that location and that kicked it off.)

These are the usual findings in the rare cases people are able to trace it back and they write some article or podcast about it. Mainly confirmation bias. And once you interact with one ad that got you taken aback, you’re trapped.

Doesn’t rule out other possibilities, though. I guess what I’m trying to say is, this counts more as anecdotal evidence. And we have plenty stories like this. It’s not enough to infer anything. More a reminder to investigate some more.

And yes, it’s good practice to keep your phone someplace else when you’re having protected/confidential conversations. Smartphones are very complex and they certainly have the potential to spy on you. In fact we know a lot of the apps and computer code is meant to analzye your behaviour and transfer that information to third parties.

And what would that be?

I think this is a bit more like it. I once had a very nice and transparent ISP for some time, due to circumstances. They didn’t keep any logs at all. That’s better than most VPN providers. So any VPN would have been a major downgrade for me. Now I’m with one if the major Geman ISPs. I’m pretty sure they don’t steal my data, because that’s not in the contract we signed. And not like common knowledge that they’d do anything like that. I think I trust them more than a random NordVPN or shady super cheap VPN provider. Sure they’ll do lawful intercept. And there are use-cases for VPNs. But I rather do my online banking without any VPN and the data travelling through 3 other countries, since I have a good alternative. Also makes gaming, videoconferencing etc faster/better.

And a VPN just doesn’t do much in a lot of scenarios. For example if my cellphone provider uses or sells my location data from the cell towers… That’ll happen with or without a VPN. You’d be better off changing providers.

That’s what the VPN providers like you to believe in.