skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
There is a great deal of misinformation and confusion on this topic. Here is a good interview with Apple's head of Privacy.

https://techcrunch.com/2021/08/10/interview-apples-head-of-p...
That is a distinction without a difference. I’m sure you could put together quite a good tank man classifier (proof: Google Reverse Image Search works quite well), and it’d catch variations which a perceptual hash wouldn’t.

The only difference is intent. The technical risk has not changed at all.
no, I think in practice academics will claim an algorithm is neutral when it in fact favors democrats
That's insane. I had crazy headaches yesterday (very unusual for me) and this could very well be the reason. I guess this is a good motivation to cut down on Twitter (now I just need HN to switch to this font as well).
>One possible reason is Twitch’s implementation of a plethora of new tags — some focused on specific identities like “Black,” “transgender,” and “disabled”— in May of this year.

Hey I remember this being announced and predicted this exact outcome.

Tags literally have the purpose of enabling discrimination, Twitch probably naively expected only positive discrimination, it turns out negative discrimination is a thing too. If twitch thought simply not adding tags for identity groups if they considered them "non-marginalized" might prevent any issues, they are wrong, they enabled discrimination in a blatently discriminatory way, which only helps to provoke even more discrimination than if they added something like whitepeopletwitch and/or let people choose their own tags. Guess where all the white bigots ended up going instead? Half implementing segregratatory features is stupid, implementing them at all is stupid but the way they implemented them allows trolls to rationalize their abberant behavior as some sort of protest and nobody is more amoral than somebody who feels morally justified.

My advice to twitch would be to stop being bigots and you'll stop attracting like company. Most likely though they're just going to double down on their bigotry to avoid letting the bigots win though.
There is a manual review step by Apple.

You have to first get a “significant” number of photos flagged, then they have to pass Apple’s manual review (ie looking at photo thumbnails), and only then does Apple report the account.
There’s a reason they didn’t believe you. I mean there’s obviously parts of that short that did make use of CGI but clearly it’s predominantly live action
Still waiting to get my hands on an AlphaServer to figure out.
For example BSE[0] is an infectious disease believed to be due to a misfolded protein, known as a prion. The time between infection and onset of symptoms is four to five years. So if you got "infected" by prion 4–5 years after you will notice first symptoms and then you will die within weeks to months. There is no treatment for this disease.

In the context of mRNA vaccine if you feel good 1 month after getting the mRNA vaccine or if you feel okay after 1 year means nothing because biological processes are slow but when they kick in they hit hard.

Edit: I gave the example with cows a human variant is Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease and onset of symptoms can happen years to decades after exposure. Average life expectancy following the onset of symptoms is 13 months. [1]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bovine_spongiform_encephalopat...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variant_Creutzfeldt%E2%80%93Ja...
This is a very common mistake. Lots of people are unaware that they're supposed to change acronyms depending on whether or not daylight savings time is in effect.
> Irreversibility turns the trade into a competition over who is the better fraud. The only thing that the crypto guarantees is that the winner keeps the prize.

I think it's more complicated than that. It moves the fraud risk to one specific spot (the consumer) which VASTLY simplifies the checkout process + the costs associated with online purchasing. Right now online payments are a giant mess - every single merchant has to implement anti-"fraud" tools to try and ascertain the identity of the consumer and determine if it matches the owner of the card.

As a consumer, I would happily take this trade for lower prices.
Reddit has had off site tracking for quite some time.

Remember those little snooheads where you could 'reblog' about something? or vote on a site while on it?

Seeing the reddit bugs/icons/badges was about when the site started engaging in data collection. You bet your ass they do everything they can to determine a general profile of each user now based on visited subs and patterns.
I never suggested someone else should be uniquely concerned about the vaccine—be concerned about ALL the unknowns! Lol

That being said, my biggest problem is the proposed loss of agency. Let me be the master of my fate.
Any technology; society, language... But I think, at its heart, it's a general metaphor for overreliance, materially, physically, psychologically, philosophically, and so on. It's a little stilted, in that it takes the complete and whole human body to be the irreducible quantum of man's existence, which it isn't, in either direction: people live full and happy lives with missing limbs or cognitive shortcomings, and even the healthiest man will have grave and brutal difficulties living on his own for an extended period. "People" are made up of colonies of varying types of cells (both genetically related to the whole and not), and necessarily make up communities that only can continue to exist through symbiosis. I would take that the actualization of the individual (as many individuals as possible) is the crux around which everything else swings, but the murkiness of the state of our evolution through the cosmos makes it difficult to pass judgment at any juncture. Perhaps the Machine and its collapse is what allows for the Pearl Mist People to carry on humanity without the threat of full and total Venusification of the planet.

I feel like there's an ancient Chinese parable about this...
This is a rational analysis of a non-rational problem.

"Risk aversion" is the closest term I can find in common use. "Oh, this might be wrong!" or "Oh, someone might criticize me!" become risks you're unwilling to run. "If I give a talk about my idea, people might make fun of it!"

Everyone goes through this. Instead of thinking about it even more, Kerkour needs to work on his emotions. There's no shame in it. We're all afraid.
> I know that isn't how you should look at it, but that's still how it feels.

This is exactly how you should look at it. They turned your device against you.
No it's not. Not scanning any content on device at all is better privacy wise.
True. But Nintendo has sold very well from their proprietary handheld device and its store. So they probably think they can. Maybe they can. They already have a great UI in Xbox and a great library of games that will run. They might not need anything else to make it.
Say you want to start a childcare business. You can't just run it in any old shopfront. Some kids match their parents 40 hours a week.

So there are standards regarding kids in daycare, including the requirement for an outdoor space for play.

Now this can't be achieved in all cases but you better have a good reason. And if your competitor has an outdoor space you know where parents are likely to take their kids first.

https://www.education.vic.gov.au/childhood/providers/regulat...
It's right up there with Wickard v. Filburn in terms of SCOTUS screw-ups.
> 2020 Census Statistics Highlight Local Population Changes

Well you’d hope so or it wouldn’t be a very good census!
Bruce Schneier Talks Dangers of AI and Hacking
I don’t even use iCloud but what you suggest is exactly what I’m going to do.

I no longer trust Apple, and I’m going to get rid of my iPhone.
Explain to me how photos get into the NCMEC database to begin with
> And my first concern is that a laptop or desktop (or my NAS) won't fare well if an apartment is broken into and the devices are stolen, or they get severely damaged in a natural disaster. What might a good mitigation be for that that doesn't involve spinning up a VPS via DO, etc.?

occasional offsite backups of all of your data
Actually, I think a lot of niche stuff is objectively good, but never gets mainstream attention because it doesn't have a large enough marketing budget. (or never goes "viral")
Yes but there is a manual review step. A hash match does not automatically report to authorities.

If the Apple reviewer looks at the images that were flagged and doesn’t see CSAM, they don’t report it.
Yes, thats exactly how i feel. I'd still hate it if my iCloud uploads are scanned but I'm already assuming that anyway.

But the fact that my iOS device can potentially report me to any authorities, for whatever reason, is crossing a line that makes it impossible to ever own an iPhone again.
I bought my first one in 2007 so I'm not saying this lightly..

Does anybody know if this policy will extend to macOS too?
Yep, having to charge them at public charging stations is pretty shitty, takes a long time, and a lot of time they're not available to use.

I used to work in a large business building a few years ago, and they had 4 charging stations right next to the main entrance, and having an electric car then was great... the "plebs" would have to park behind the building or in the garage under, and you'd have priority parking infront. Then, the number of electic cars rose to above 4 there, and first 4 that came, parked there, connected the chargers and went to work. If you came 5th, there was nothing you could do, except maybe if you knew one of those 4, politely ask them to move their car during lunch, so you can charge yours too.. but most of the people left their car there until end of work at 3-5h in the afternoon.
Rail vs roads: very much more energy efficient (so low cost to operate) and environmentally benign. Uses less land. Can carry much more freight per day.

Rail vs electric planes: it exists. Goes to the middle of town in most towns in Europe, minimising the need for road network expansion. Yes, I know there are prototypes/experiments happening with electric planes.

Edit: my view is that if you want to travel long distances quickly, you're doing it wrong. Use video calling; that's the least environmentally damaging action. Long distances ought to take a long time to traverse.
Quoting Wikipedia: "As of 2020, the majority of hydrogen (∼95%) is produced from fossil fuels by steam reforming of natural gas, partial oxidation of methane, and coal gasification"

"As of 2020 most of hydrogen is produced from fossil fuels, resulting in carbon emissions."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_production
There is nothing to stop people or groups of people from making thousands of accounts and joining the sub, and then eventually taking control. Even if these user accounts have to be X years old, or subbed for Y months, none of that matters in the long term.
Technology may save us. But that is no reason to act stupid and leave future generations with the problem because we wanted to have it comfortable.
> I think they way they get around that is not do not report to the FBI but instead to NCMEC a "non-profit"

No. The courts have already explicitly rejected the entity that NCMEC is a private entity. NCMEC can only handle child porn via special legislative permission and is 99% funded by the government.

The searches here are lawful because Apple searches out of their own free will and commercial interest and when there is something detected their employees search your private communications (which the EULA permits).

This is also why Apple must review the matches before reporting them-- if they just matched an NCMEC database and blindly forwarded then to NCMEC then it would be the NCMEC conducting the search and a warrant would be required.
I mean... vegetable oil is 5 bucks a gallon at Wal-Mart and you can run diesel vehicles on it almost unmodified. I'm struggling to see the problem here.
Anyone who didn't get a 20% raise this year lost money. As the fed pumped cash, the stock market gains kept the rich from feeling the inflation that is being handed to everybody else with a bow on it.

For months everyone has naysayed the idea that money printing would have a negative effect, now just Google "inflation" news articles.
Before, Apple would only scan data already in the cloud.

Now the pandora box has been opened. They are adding capability to scan files on iPhones before it hits the cloud.

Any technical or financial excuse they might have used in the past to not scan files locally is now rendered null.

Governments can just say: "you know what? scan these arbitrary sets of hashes as well, they are illegal in my jurisdiction and since you've shown that you can, scan them regardless if the user is sending to iCloud or not."
We're not though. For the ease of calculation, let's take a 100kWh battery. To fill it up in 10 minutes, you'd need to charge it at 600kW. There isn't even an electrical standard which would allow this, not to mention having to somehow supply over half a megawatt(!!!!!) Into a single charging point, and somehow cool it and the battery. The best of the best charging systems draw "only" 250kW and even that is either impossibly rare in CCS world, and in Tesla world it's shared between chargers so if you have few Teslas charging at once no one is getting 250kW.

I admit 600 doesn't sound like a lot more than 250 but we're nowhere near those charging speeds, not even in a planning phase.

Having said all of the above - the 250kW charging as-is is already stupidly fast as "good enough". And charging at home will always be king even at slower speeds.
What part exactly do you think people are confused about?
They are perceptual hashes of CSAM images no? Sure, just because they are perceptual hashes, doesn't mean they can be reversed to an image, but it seems to be true PhotoDNA, a similar perceptual hashing algorithm, can be reversed to an image. For this reason, I believe it is possible Apple's perceptual hashes can be reversed as well, though, maybe they did it in a different way and it's not possible
People are downvoting you because this reality is too scary for them to confront, so they’d rather plug their ears
Lifebrand: Say Goodbye to Harmful Social Media Content
Wait a second.

You’re telling me that you believe a low-wage worker reviewing the worst of the worst human depravity, is going to stand up on a soap box and defend another nameless and faceless denizen of the Earth, when the crux of the argument is basically this:

“Yeah I know the person tripped the safety threshold for CSAM, but these images aren’t that bad!”

It’s not reasonable to trust the human reviewer. They put themselves at risk by going against the automated system. I’d bet 95% of people in this circumstance would pass the buck to the FBI to make their determination, at which point “your” life is already ruined.
Does anyone know if this also scans files in your icloud synced desktop or documents folder?
Only thing I disagree with, it is how you should look at it and that's why it feels wrong, because it is wrong.
For #2 actions are taken in the cloud, authorities are contacted, and all of the photos are unencrypted.

Option #1 doesn’t really breach the ‘sanctity of device ownership’ because it only occurs if you’ve enabled iCloud photos on the device.

Option #1 seems better to me in its current implementation. I understand the fear of abusing the hash matching. I just think that’s a separate thing.
COVID doesn’t get to bypass all safety barriers in your
body
https://mobile.twitter.com/mcclure111/status/142554526675777... is the tweet with a screen grab of the very fucked-up way it renders on Android, in case Twitter decides to hide that part of the thread for you like it does for me. It’s really astoundingly nasty-looking.
GMO is a good example why such concerns are not always right. (See also: cell phone radiation.)
It’s good to know that if I use the “section” glyph in an otherwise completely false analysis born of extending my experience past where I’m competent, readers will quickly repeat whatever it is I said as factual and “quite irrefutable”. The power of one blog post is quite something. You’re the third person I’ve seen quote that very post and go “welp, sure is a smoking gun” despite it being completely, utterly, demonstrably false. It’s make believe. That entire blog post is so incorrect that it’s barely useful as toilet paper, friend.

If the author were correct Facebook and others would have been charged with felonies already. Verification happens in good faith and requires transmission despite the exact letter of the law. The people
doing it regularly talk to NCMEC. There are evidentiary and chain of custody procedures to follow that also transmit the material. Guess we should charge computers with felonies!

It’s also fucking hysterical that the armchairs who didn’t know what CSAM stood for a week ago think that one of the most litigiously sensitive systems ever built by a corporation somehow missed criminal legal liability. You know, it’s pretty easy to overlook criminal liability when you’re building a system that is used to establish criminal liability. Totally passes the smell test. Irrefutable indeed.

You guys are off your rockers and should move on to another topic. Seriously. Every day this is discussed is another harsh reminder of (a) how few fucks the industry gives about abuse of children and (b) how everyone here digests blogs and considers themselves authoritative on horrors they’ve never once experienced. Every day this is argued on HN, particularly last night when someone said the privacy situation is “the actual abuse” and “much worse” than the rape of children, is another day I’m ashamed to have chosen this profession and work alongside you. This community welcomes the people who have built surveillance systems for every consumer activity imaginable and kids getting molested is where you draw the privacy line, huh? Can’t look for that? I’m genuinely out. Keep your industry. I’d rather manage a Taco Bell if this is the perspective of this industry, because brother, I’ve seen what they’re trying to tackle and I’m still in therapy.

There is a hypocrisy at the core of the “privacy” argument here that is fundamentally indicting not only this community, but everyone discussing this up to and including EFF. I’ve never been so disappointed in people who I used to look up to and think of as good, smart folks.

Source: I’ve built CSAM handling systems for a FAANG and written the policy for using it. The author has misinterpreted the very law he cites and overlooked two subparagraphs. But that isn’t what you want to hear.
There are a number of "smart contract" insurance companies already, Nexus Mutual is one of the main ones, and the rate of return after paying for insurance on a number of platforms exceeds what normal banks would pay you.
This is painfully accurate at every step you outlined.
I'd argue that the majority of the users that made the site worth using have already left.
Their design, tech, and product was better. Even the name is cooler.

Never once was influenced by… endorsements, haha.
Eh? The CGI is in the freezer sure, the man and woman are 100% live action. But who didn't notice that? Or do they think a miniature civilisation actually did exist?
"TL;DR" on Recent Transformers Papers
With the explosion in research on all things transformers, it seemed there was a need to have a single table to distill the "tl;dr" of each paper's contributions relative to each other. Here is what I got so far: https://github.com/will-thompson-k/tldr-transformers . Would love feedback - and feel free to contribute too :)
> children ... are likely to already have naturally acquired immunity

Can you explain how you have come to that understanding? And further, why are children not dying at the same rate as adults with covid?
A human at Apple reviews thumbnails of the flagged images to see if they are actually CSAM. You do not get reported just because of a hash match.
The existing ways of putting math on the web are all already here too, and have been for a long time. Apart from the old way of generating images by running TeX (still used by Wikipedia, for instance), both of the most common libraries used for typesetting (MathJax and KaTeX) can produce either HTML+CSS or SVG which are well-supported by browsers, and both of them (KaTeX since the beginning, and MathJax since version 3.0) can be run server-side so that no JavaScript needs to run on the user's browser. And regardless of whether or when the "native in-browser" rendering of MathML becomes good enough and widespread enough, the "native in-browser" rendering of HTML+CSS and SVG will continue to exist and be well-supported. (See the last section of http://bit-player.org/2020/mathjax-turns-3-0 for some interesting conclusions.)
No. The disingenuous argument is calling not dying a "side effect from the vaccine".
Something like all of iCloud getting E2EE would be a big feature and likely only be announced at an event. I agree, if the CSAM on device scanning isn’t followed on by something else, it seems like a lot of work and PR flak for little gain.
what is the risk of wearing a mask? that you look silly?

the real world evidence is mixed, yes.

People are not mannequins, people die. If a simple action of mine, that might make me look silly, might save some lives (might, I don't know, yet from annexdotes countries that had no problem with wearing masks and other measures faired better) I will do what these countries did (and also wear a mask). It's rational compassion for me.

You might say, I don't care (and science might prove you right or wrong after a long while), yet consider the potential cost if you are proven wrong ... Looking silly versus potentially killing people ... The evidence is not in, and it depends on what you value more ;)

It's your own choice. For me I decided to wear a mask in public, do social distancing and get vaccinated. I think these are reasonable things to ask from people. You don't seem to think that.
The kitchen isn't fake and who's to say no one noticed? The article certainly doesn't say that, it says that a virtual model was made.. including of the CEO. Maybe I'm being fooled by rendering, but for more than a few minutes he stands slightly out of focus (a risk of IRL video), which doesn't seem like something you'd go to the trouble of rendering (not for a keynote where things should be perfect). Of course, now I've pointed that out maybe future fakers will consider this.

Anyway, back to the kitchen... as they said on "The Wire" follow the spatulas. On camera-left there are red, orange and pink spatulas (https://youtu.be/eAn_oiZwUXA?t=1079), they even move (https://youtu.be/eAn_oiZwUXA?t=1990).. presumably inconsistency across multiple takes and editing. Also note what's on the counter to his right. At the point they switch to the virtual kitchen (https://youtu.be/eAn_oiZwUXA?t=6470), we get the "unnecessary blurry zoom effect" (used in TV to save interpolation on eg the living room -> house -> city -> country -> planet zoom out).. now the items to his right are different (there was no American flag in that white dish just now) - there's less items, and the spatulas... well even the modellers refused to make so many, dropping the orange, red, and, pink ones from the container.
Photorealism may be a worthwhile goal for VR. Even completely cartoonish games like No Man's Sky can, at times, make you forget what you are seeing is not real. This effect is only enhanced in more 'real' games (like Flight Simulator 2020, in VR).

In general though, I agree it's a waste of time. I'd much rather play Super Hot, for instance.

Although I do play Dwarf Fortress occasionally, so I might not be representative of the average demographic...
Still wouldn’t call it a scam.

A scam is pretending something is true when it clearly is not --- for financial gain.

The scam here is the fact that the exchanges cooperate to keep the price of USDT pegged at $1 USD --- even after Tether itself has admitted they do NOT have $1 USD for each USDT minted and they are NOT obligated to redeem 1 USDT for $1 USD.