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InitialsDiceBearhttps://github.com/dicebear/dicebearhttps://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/„Initials” (https://github.com/dicebear/dicebear) by „DiceBear”, licensed under „CC0 1.0” (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)H

hersh

@ hersh @literature.cafe

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1
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120
Joined
2 yr. ago

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  • Thanks! I didn't see that. Relevant bit for convenience:

    we call model providers on your behalf so your personal information (for example, IP address) is not exposed to them. In addition, we have agreements in place with all model providers that further limit how they can use data from these anonymous requests that includes not using Prompts and Outputs to develop or improve their models as well as deleting all information received within 30 days.

    Pretty standard stuff for such services in my experience.

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  • I'm not entirely clear on which (anti-)features are only in the browser vs in the web site as well. It sounds like they are steering people toward their commercial partners like Binance across the board.

    Personally I find the cryptocurrency stuff off-putting in general. Not trying to push my opinion on you though. If you don't object to any of that stuff, then as far as I know Brave is fine for you.

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  • If you click the Chat button on a DDG search page, it says:

    DuckDuckGo AI Chat is a private AI-powered chat service that currently supports OpenAI’s GPT-3.5 and Anthropic’s Claude chat models.

    So at minimum they are sharing data with one additional third party, either OpenAI or Anthropic depending on which model you choose.

    OpenAI and Anthropic have similar terms and conditions for enterprise customers. They are not completely transparent and any given enterprise could have their own custom license terms, but my understanding is that they generally will not store queries or use them for training purposes. You'd better seek clarification from DDG. I was not able to find information on this in DDG's privacy policy.

    Obviously, this is not legal advice, and I do not speak for any of these companies. This is just my understanding based on the last time I looked over the OpenAI and Anthropic privacy policies, which was a few months ago.

  • Why I Lost Faith in Kagi

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  • I've been using Kagi for a while, so I'll post a few quick thoughts I had after reading the article, linked blog, and mastodon thread.

    The one thing in the blog post I strongly disagree with is her statement that the summarizer is "the same old AI bullshit". I think they just assumed that without actually testing it. The summarizer is fantastic, and is a great example of the right way to use LLMs. Its output comes entirely from the URL or file you specify. It does not hallucinate. You can ask it follow-up questions about the document, and again, its replies are limited in scope to what's actually in that document. If you ask it something out of scope it'll tell you that it can't find that information in the document. This is great because it's using the LLM for what LLMs are actually good for — complex language parsing — and not for what they're bad for, like reasoning or information storage/retrieval. It's actually quite difficult to misuse the summarizer. It's straightforward and effective. This is Kagi's killer feature, IMO.

    I can't speak as highly of its search-integrated AI features like FastGPT. They mostly take information from the contents of the first few search results, but they also seem to "fill in the blanks" more than I'd like. Sometimes it gives me information that is simply not in the sources that it cites. It's not as bad as using ChatGPT (which hallucinates all day every day, and if it ever tries to cite source is hallucinates those, too) but it needs improvement.

    That said, Kagi doesn't shove the AI down your throat like you might think reading the blog post. These are separate features that need to be explicitly activated. Plain searches don't return results from the LLMs. If you want that, you need to explicitly go to the assistant or trigger the "quick answer" feature on the search results page. EDIT: I just realized that this is not totally true as of a few weeks ago, when they added a feature to automatically trigger the "quick answer" blurb for search queries ending in a question mark. Perhaps that's why Lori felt like it was over-emphasized.

    Anyway, back to the summarizer, here is an example of it in action. I gave it the URL of the Mastodon post. I think this is an excellent result. I also asked it an unrelated followup question so you can see that it limits itself to the information in the URL. It will not make shit up!

    The summarizer lets me download conversations in markdown form, so I'll just paste it right in here so you can see.

    Exploring https://hackers.town/@lori/112255132348604770

    Assistant:Key points:

    • The author wrote a blog post criticizing the search engine Kagi, which then prompted the CEO of Kagi, Vlad, to email the author directly to argue against the criticism. [1]
    • The author woke up to an email from Vlad, the CEO of Kagi, who was upset about the blog post the author had written. [1]
    • The author decided to publicly share the email exchange with Vlad, as they felt it was important for people to see his unhinged behavior. [1]
    • The author refused to engage in a private debate with Vlad, as they did not want to be taken "to Crime Scene Number Two" without any accountability. [1]
    • The author believes Vlad is unable to accept criticism or disagreement, and that it "eats him alive" when someone doesn't agree with him or his company. [1]
    • The author states that no other search engine CEO has emailed them directly to "mansplain their company" in this manner. [1]
    • The author sees Vlad's behavior as "petty and sad" and believes he has no understanding of boundaries. [1]
    • Other users in the thread share similar experiences of Vlad's inability to accept criticism and his tendency to simply restate his own opinions rather than address counterpoints. [1]
    • The author and others characterize Vlad's behavior as that of a narcissist who cannot tolerate disagreement. [1]
    • The author and others are amazed by Vlad's decision to set up a separate company in another country just to print and give away t-shirts, rather than focus on improving Kagi's core search functionality.

    [1] lori (@lori@hackers.town)

    Query:What's the capital of North Dakota?

    Assistant:The knowledge provided does not contain any information about the capital of North Dakota. The context is focused on an email exchange between the author and the CEO of Kagi search engine regarding criticism of the company.

  • Orange Pi Neo is new handheld powered by AMD and comes preinstalled with Manjaro

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  • Because it's not the same class of device. The PS Portal is very niche. It's a $200 device that basically just runs the PS Remote Play app.

    I've used PS Remote Play on my phone and laptop, and it's just not good in the cases I actually want to use it: when traveling away from home. Even with a good Internet connection it's only "okay". It's utterly useless when in transit (trains, places, etc.), and 99% useless in any public place (e.g. cafe or library WiFi).

    These are all cases where the Switch, Deck, and similar devices excel. The PS Portal addresses a much smaller market.

  • "Copy Link Without Site Tracking" now on ! 🙌

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  • Oh yes, definitely. I think this is why Mozilla has not made this the default behavior in Firefox; there will always be the risk of false-positives breaking copied links, so it's important that people know that there's some kind of mutation happening.

    ClearURLs uses a JSON file with site-specific regex patterns and rules. In theory I could customize this for myself, or better yet submit a pull request on their GitHub. If I have time I'll look into it.

  • "Copy Link Without Site Tracking" now on ! 🙌

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  • Personally, I have found this feature to be too limited. I still use the ClearURLs extension, which is more effective in my experience.

    However, neither one is a silver bullet. Here's an example I just took from Amazon (I blocked out some values with X's):

    Original URL:https://www.amazon.com/Hydro-Flask-Around-Tumbler-Trillium/dp/B0C353845H/ref=XXXX?qid=XXXXXXXXXX&refinements=p_XXXXXXXXXXXXX&rps=1&s=sporting-goods&sr=XXX

    Using Firefox's "copy link without site tracking" feature:https://www.amazon.com/Hydro-Flask-Around-Tumbler-Trillium/dp/B0C353845H/ref=XXXX?qid=XXXXXXXXXX&refinements=p_XXXXXXXXXXXXX&rps=1&s=sporting-goods

    Using ClearURLs:https://www.amazon.com/Hydro-Flask-Around-Tumbler-Trillium/dp/B0C353845H?refinements=p_XXXXXXXXXXXXX&rps=1

    The ideal, canonical URL, which no tools I'm familiar with will reliably generate:https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0C353845H

    Longer but still fully de-personalized URL:https://www.amazon.com/Hydro-Flask-Around-Tumbler-Trillium/dp/B0C353845H

    If anybody knows a better solution that works with a wide variety of sites, please share!

  • [NikTek] These Two Games are 9 Years Apart

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  • Not sure if you're referring to the graphics or to the shitty bench design. If the latter...it's a real thing. :(

    They're called "leaning benches" or "lean bars". This bench design is sort of "futuristic" in the sense that adoption has only recently started taking off around the world. They are a user-hostile design made specifically to prevent people (specifically homeless people) from lying down, sleeping, or otherwise, y'know, using it as a goddamn bench. Because removing the ability for anyone to sit down is apparently, in the eyes of authorities, a small price to pay to make homeless people's lives that much harder.

    The Wikipedia article for "Leaning bench" redirects to hostile architecture, where you can read more about this and similar efforts, if you are in the mood to be enraged at the sheer malice of bureaucrats.

    I've seen them in several cities across America. NYC starting rolling them out within the past decade and you'll see them in any recently renovated station. See https://www.nydailynews.com/2017/09/11/subway-riders-slam-brooklyn-stations-new-leaning-bars-as-incredibly-unwelcoming/ (scroll through the image slideshow to see the new).

    Not sure if the image embed will work here but I'll try:

  • Apple says third-party app marketplace creators must have €1,000,000 'letter of credit'

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  • Correct. This is also why Apple switched to zsh as the default shell over bash. They still ship Bash 3.2 in macOS, because from 4.0 on, Bash started using GPLv3 instead of GPLv2.

    I'm not against the idea of creating proprietary software out of open-source software, if the license allows that. However, I am always against this practice of "closing the door behind you".

  • Apple says third-party app marketplace creators must have €1,000,000 'letter of credit'

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  • Apple: builds their entire software ecosystem on free, open-source foundations.

    Also Apple: better have a million euros if you want to even start distributing software.

    The best use case for an external app store is free open-source software, like we have on the Android side with F-Droid. Apple stopped that before it even started. Jeez.

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  • Yeah, I wouldn't be too confident in Facebook's implementation, and I certainly don't believe that their interests are aligned with their users'.

    That said, it seems like we're reaching a turning point for big tech, where having access to private user data becomes more of a liability than an asset. Having access to the data means that they will be required by law to provide that data to governments in various circumstances. They might have other legal obligations in how they handle, store, and process that data. All of this comes with costs in terms of person-hours and infrastructure. Google specifically cited this is a reason they are moving Android location history on-device; they don't want to deal with law enforcement constantly asking them to spy on people. It's not because they give a shit about user privacy; it's because they're tired of providing law enforcement with free labor.

    I suspect it also helps them comply with some of the recent privacy protection laws in the EU, though I'm not 100% sure on that. Again, this is a liability issue for them, not a user-privacy issue.

    Also, how much valuable information were they getting from private messages in the first place? Considering how much people willingly put out in the open, and how much can be inferred simply by the metadata they still have access to (e.g. the social graph), it seems likely that the actual message data was largely redundant or superfluous. Facebook is certainly in position to measure this objectively.

    The social graph is powerful, and if you really care about privacy, you need to worry about it. If you're a journalist, whistleblower, or political dissident, you absolutely do not want Facebook (and by extension governments) to know who you talk you or when. It doesn't matter if they don't know what you're saying; the association alone is enough to blow your cover.

    The metadata problem is common to a lot of platforms. Even Signal cannot use E2EE for metadata; they need to know who you're communicating with in order to deliver your messages to them. Signal doesn't retain that metadata, but ultimately you need to take their word on that.

  • Difference with "Select" and "Copy" availability between browsers

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  • Any Safari extensions installed that might be interfering with this behavior? That's the best I can figure.

  • George Carlin’s Daughter Blasts Dudesy AI-Generated Comedy Special Impersonating Her Dad: “No Machine Will Ever Replace His Genius”

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  • Bell Riots are coming this year. The Second American Civil War starts in 2026, which leads directly into WWIII.

    From there, everything is pretty much terrible until warp drive is invented.

  • KDE 6 Megarelease - Release Candidate 1

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  • This is correct, albeit not universal.

    KDE has a predefined schedule for "release candidates", which includes RC2 later this month. So "RC1" is clearly not going to be the final version. See: https://community.kde.org/Schedules/February_2024_MegaRelease

    This is at least somewhat common. In fact, it's the same way the Linux kernel development cycle works. They have 7 release candidates, released on a weekly basis between the beta period and final release. See: https://www.kernel.org/category/releases.html

    In the world of proprietary corporate software, I more often see release candidates presented as potentially final; i.e. literal candidates for release. The idea of scheduling multiple RCs in advance doesn't make sense in that context, since each one is intended to be the last (with fingers crossed).

    It's kind of splitting hairs, honestly, and I suspect this distinction has more to do with the transparency of open-source projects than anything else. Apple, for example, may indeed have a schedule for multiple macOS RCs right from the start and simply choose not to share that information. They present every "release candidate" as being potentially the final version (and indeed, the final version will be the same build as the final RC), but in practice there's always more than one. Also, Apple is hardly an ideal example to follow, since they've apparently never even heard of semantic version numbering. Major compatibility-breaking changes are often introduced in minor point releases. It's infuriating. But I digress.

  • Everything wrong with databases and why their complexity is now unnecessary

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  • Kagi doubles down on paid Brave partnership despite losing at least 0.5% of users in 1 day. And invoking Godwin's Law

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  • As a Kagi subscriber, I've been very happy with their transparency in general. The feedback site is open to the public and Vlad and other staff members regularly engage in conversation about possible future features, limitations, and even business decisions in the Discord. It's been refreshing.

    ...which makes the response to this issue all the more frustrating and disappointing.

    I think Vlad's comments in the original feedback thread were fair enough, but then later, in the Discord, I saw a lot of "let's move this to a private chat". They even changed their General channel to "slow mode" to prevent live conversations as this topic became hot. Now I see they were also deleting threads?! Ugh. That's not transparent at all. Not what I expected based on my previous experience with Kagi.

  • It is essential to stop using Chrome. Under the pretense of saving users from third-party spyware, Google is creating an ecosystem in which Chrome itself is the spyware.

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  • Oh, gotcha. I misunderstood and thought you were describing a Chrome-vs-Firefox difference specifically. Yeah, I can relate. I'm de-googling my life but I'm not sure I'll ever be 100% de-googled. I'm taking it bit by bit. I sign up for new things with different email addresses now and occasionally I'll change existing services if it's possible. But there's no way I'm going to go through my bajillion web site accounts and move them all.

  • It is essential to stop using Chrome. Under the pretense of saving users from third-party spyware, Google is creating an ecosystem in which Chrome itself is the spyware.

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  • I don't understand the problem. Google services work in Firefox pretty much the same way, yeah? Does Chrome integrate an authenticator app? If som you might want change your 2FA settings at https://myaccount.google.com/security . If you have an Android phone you can get push notifications on it, or you can also use third-party authenticator apps.