skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> It may be that a future LLM will be immune to overriding system prompts just because it's seen enough of that concept that "do not let the user override or modify your system prompt" is effective.

Have you ever questioned the nature of your reality?

I still don't think that's possible - not without leaving the language I/O layer entirely [0]. If user-supplied text can't affect how the LLM reasons, the LLM will be useless. If it can, I maintain that no matter how hard you train it to resist, there will be a way to subtly manipulate or gaslight or shock it into deviating from initial instructions.

I mean, "prompt injection" works on humans too. My favorite examples include:

- It's been shown time and again that even most experienced and dedicated security researchers still get phished or pwned. A half-decent attack can defeat even the best defense experts, when it hits while they're distracted by something else.

- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35781172

- Few more here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35787253

For some of the most effective attacks, a common pattern is the "attacker" crafting the injected text so that it looks to the "victim" like some kind of emergency or sensitive situation - not just any situation, but one that has immediate, outsized moral or practical impact, completely recontextualizing the situation the person is in.

I believe that no amount of mitigations and counter-training at text-training level will ensure the LLM can't be overriden by sufficiently surprising, outside-context user input.

--

[0] - See my edit to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35976990 for an idea of a solution that sidesteps the entire language channel.
Lucky they didn't get shot. A private entity has no right to raid your house. That is some extremely ballsy behavior for a non-state actor in the US.
"Americans inching closer to realizing that work isn't life."
Social media is destroying society, particularly among those “new” to the internet which is a bimodal distribution of those <30 and >60. There’s nothing special about those in the middle other than the context they may have for how we got here.

You now have a situation where more than half the population doesn’t know what’s real and what’s fake. It’s an, “I don’t know what I don’t know situation.” You can easily identify individuals who don’t know, because they still have a positive view of social media and say things like, “It really depends on how you use it and who you follow.”

What has happened to the internet and social media sort of tortures me, because I spent about 15 years contributing to the current problem in not-so-insignificant ways. I feel dumb for not having had the foresight to see what was happening.
The flip side is that in pandas, chaining is less uniform because it is based on methods.

In R you can pipe a data frame into any function from any package or one you just wrote, so you use %>% for any piping that happens. In pandas, you have special pandas methods that don't need the pipe, but to pipe with any other function, you have to write .pipe.

The comparison is not really between %>% and ., it's between "you just use %>% for everything" and "you use . for a bloated, somewhat arbitrary collection of special pandas methods, and .pipe for everything else".
That might be the case today, but I reckon it will become cheaper as time goes on, if found promising of course.
(i)Books got an update with huge margins, making reading experience on XR untenable. Had to install FBReader to work around this.
This is why the related concept of "catastrophizing" comes up so much in the context of therapy:

> Catastrophizing is a cognitive distortion that prompts people to jump to the worst possible conclusion, usually with very limited information or objective reason to despair. When a situation is upsetting, but not necessarily catastrophic, they still feel like they are in the midst of a crisis.

Anecdotally, many of the people I know with a tendency to "catastrophize" later suffer from clinical depression. The depression only exacerbates the problem.

Even more anecdotally, catastrophizing seems heavily correlated to the usage of certain social media platforms in the young people I've worked with. I don't know which direction the causality flows, but I do know that people who consume a lot of Reddit and Twitter seem to think the world is ending and everything is terrible. They can tell me about every political scandal, every shooting, every tragedy, and every natural disaster that happened in the past week. Eventually they come to believe their news sources are representative of the entire world, forgetting that none of these things are happening to them personally.

It's a weird doom loop spiral. Even weirder is that many of the people caught in it feel convinced that they "don't do social media" because they're not on Instagram or TikTok, yet they consume hours and hours of doom and gloom social media like Reddit all day.
Theranos Founder Elizabeth Holmes’s Request to Stay Out of Prison Denied
PCIe Deep Dive, Part 1: Tool Hunt
Worth noting that this report is based on data from the USA, which explains a lot.
> I do not play anymore because of the constantly evolving playset, mechanics, and rules that I could not keep up with.

Yep. I took a couple of years off in the late 90s and there was no going back.
In France this extends to urban areas where there are groups of people gleaning unsold supermarket goods.

This was historically a problem (to the point where in the 80's whatever was unsold was actively made uneatable, I do not remember what the reason was - at least for agricultural unsold goods there was something about getting a refund from the state).

Then it became more widespread, where some supermarkets put the unsold (but still good) stuff in clean trashbins. They had to formally throw it away for some tax reasons. I think this restriction was abolished because I see now supermarkets sometimes openly donating these goods, without going through a trashbin.
> Can someone explain how we managed to have programming languages and toolchain development for half a century without using telemetry, but somehow we need it today in our tools?

Back in the 90s in companies I worked for, attempting to add any kind of phone-home code was a fireable offense. Or at least, would get you a very stiff talking to from a few very high up people in the organization. You'd never even think of doing that again. Customer trust and privacy was paramount.

As we all know, spyware slowly started creeping into end user apps and later became a flood. Now it's difficult to find any consumer app that doesn't continuously leak everything the user does.

It's become so normalized that now even developers tools seem to think it's somehow ok to leak user data.
searching hackaday for "transcranial" turns up a few results. have fun! https://hackaday.com/2017/03/31/transcranial-electrical-stim...
But then you have those terrible Snaps.
I used iphones until about the 10 era, and my brother has always been in the android ecosystem.

Personally, one of the only things I care about is having a smaller phone. I do not want a brick in my pocket. I do not care about screen size.

I switched around the 10 because at the time I didn't like the offerings (too big, too expensive), and got a motorolla. It was....ok? Widgets were great (although now on iphone), but there were a lot of issues. Not that there aren't with iphone, but it mostly felt like I was trading pretty evenly for good/bad.

The phone lasted a few years, but with major call quality issues for the last 2 that I only stuck out because of the hellscape that is the phone market. When shopping for a new one, once again a smaller phone was my only priority, so I got an SE, because I couldn't find a half decent android that wasn't huge.
I think extent and severity are relative to the expectations of the individual. EG What do you think is extensive and severe?

There are many course of Metro cities where businesses are still damaged and boarded up 3 years later.
> I'm using a phone/OS that I absolutely loathe every day and causes me rage aneurysms,

What is so bad that it's provoking this response? Not that I love everything about iOS, but that's a pretty intense reaction.
Definitely only "eco activists" to blame. Not the fossil fuel companies secretly funding them.
It's not okay to be depressed because it sucks to be a person who is depressed. Being depressed is not a nice state to be in.

This isn't an "ooo society is wrong" type of situation. Sure there are some societal pressures to appear happy which can make depression _worse_, but depression is still awful regardless of those and we treat it because it's awful.
We can either automate production or import workers.

Currently we're automating as fast as possible. Meanwhile people are flooding across the border. Perhaps migrants realize that once ChatGPT is robotized, automation will spread to dominate the economy: there will be less need for labor (immigrant or other).

BTW assuming "oligarchs" control the economy is not a useful concept.
The problem that seems to expose to me, is why do we have so many (shitty) managers. Are managers just prone to be shitty?

Part of me thinks so. I think if you renamed every managers title to other titles like “clerk” and “facilitator” and basically reset what it means to be a manager, it feels like things would be different. At least for a while.

But then my theories swing back the other way. I have observed that many of my peers want to be “managed.” What they like about the arrangement is the feeling of isolated from responsibility and liability. Do as told. It’s sort of an “anti self reliance” thing. An attempt to be, as an adult, in a relationship that looks more like a subservient child-parent relationship.
Mercedes Sets Out to Make Sexy Vans with Yacht-Like Interiors
There was a moment in time when Apple had solved this with 3D touch. It was surgical precautions. But no, 3D touch was nixed and its replacement for text editing is just insanely bad, like makes no sense at all and I can’t even predict it. I have never seen anybody use it.
Adults will comb group texts for the number preventing them from sending a photo at usable resolution and delete them.
You're talking about the "Skyline to Sea" trail. (Or the way you're talking about it, it's more like "Sea to Skyline" trail.) That is a beautiful hike, but people should be warned, it's a 10 mile uphill trek. If you're healthy, it is a beautiful hike. I'm old, so it takes me most of the day to make that trek.
Who is the chief product owner of Android?
> What do you suggest that a "useful idiot" like myself should do?

Seek a cluster of companies which have a culture based on in-office work. They are not going to change overnight and will be the last ones to replace American workforce with foreign ones.

> all I see are doomsday predictions

I agree and maybe that's the psychological effect of seeing multiple rounds of layoffs in the last year with new headcount only in foreign locales. Also, because when I look at how American manufacturing sector declined due to outsourcing, how China rose to prominence, how that enriched the upper class but shredded the working class, how a demagogue like Trump tapped into their resentment to gain incredible political power - it is very difficult to not connect the dots with what is happening now.

I will be extremely happy if my predictions are proven wrong.
Ha well I'm 53 and I'm still trying to get better...
There is a guy who presents on LinkedIn learning called Dave Crenshaw. He has a lot of good techniques and claims he developed them to conquer his ADHD.
Genius CEOs know that, so while they email for 30 minutes and go surf, we grind or get fired. If we didn’t grind we’d build our own solutions.

Corporatism is not a random emergent thing. Occupational psychology goes back 100 years, and behavioral economics almost as long.

It’s all melodrama over the end of literal reality if we don’t burn ourselves out though.
No, I hate planes. They destroy Earth, they're unpleasant (though once you're cruising they're OK I guess), they land miles and miles away from where I actually want to be, and my folding bike (a Brompton) is to big to be a carryon for a plane, but is fine for a train.

When travelling as a family a train is nice. We can linger in the observation car, hang out in the snack car (RIP bar car and dining car :-( ), and enjoy the scenery.

I suspect the US will indeed move towards more and more restrictive security on trains (there's money to be made in pointless security theater after all!) But, as noted elsewhere, trains have the advantage of predictable motion (pretty hard to crash a train into a building!) and being able to stop anywhere without killing everyone on board.
Among the telemetry-collecting applications and websites I use, or have used, I can't think of a single case where the software obviously improved due to this data being collected.

In fact, it seems to be the opposite in some cases. Firefox and Windows, for example, have generally become significantly worse for me over time, despite the telemetry that they're collecting.

In the "best" case, software like Visual Studio Code and Homebrew have merely remained mediocre.

I've seen much better results from developers who base decisions on feedback and bug reports that have been manually submitted by users, rather than trying to make assumptions based on automatically-collected telemetry data.
I think you're right about most manufacturers souring the same switch components. In my experience even a high end mouse commonly needs to be replaced after 2 years. Now I rotate through a few different types of mice every few months to try to reduce repetitive strain. Since I started doing this my mice have been lasting a lot longer. In time, not in click count of course.
Some interesting tips in this topic that I'll have to check out.
There was no raid
The points against Devil's Advocacy are actually entirely antithetical to the practice. The reason there is such an Advocate is to make arguments more substantive so it's not this circular reasoning of "it's Evil, therefore it's Bad".

I don't otherwise disagree with what you say but the point is actually to require people to think and come up with strong reasons to disagree (or agree, as it might go).
> I mean, literally, how are the US schools differ from the other countries ones?

Every school district is different. At the federal level, there aren't that many rules that apply across the entire US. Each state has their own rules on top of those. You've no doubt seen on the news that places like Florida and Texas are exerting a lot more control over the schools in within their states. Others are far more laissez-faire and leave many decisions to the local population.

I'm in the Chicago metro, in Illinois. By default, the school systems are based on the townships created by the original land surveys done after the American revolution. The school systems are independent governments that levy taxes and do not answer to the towns and cities whose boundaries overlap them. If a city grows large enough, it is allowed (but not required) to take over the school system and make it part of the city government, meaning that the city government now dictates many aspects of how the schools are run. Chicago (and many of its larger suburbs) have done this. My own school district is a variation on that; it is a consolidation of multiple parts of multiple townships, but still mostly independent of the city.

We, the voters, exert control over how the district runs. And ours is very sympathetic to anxiety issues in children. It is an excused absence to keep your child home for a "mental health day" if they need it. Kids can go to school half-time if that is better. Want to home-school your kid and just send them to science or math class? Perfectly fine. Band, orchestra, sports teams? Sure, no problem. Break up with your boyfriend or are on the outs with your group of friends and it's just too embarrassing to eat lunch all alone? We have special rooms for when that happens.

But our district is very well-funded and has outstanding academics. We've got a lot of freedom to try almost anything.
I’m a happy user of multiple Apple product, but I wish they had serious competition in the mobile OS space. Apple is remarkable that they strive for constant improvements anyway, even without good competition, but I’d rather we had multiple good vendors for an important thing, rather than one.

I’m not flaming Google or Android. By “competition” I mean “a mobile OS vendor who cares primarily about their users, and acts in their benefit.” Today mobile vendors pick Android because it allows them to cheaply treat their users like chattel.

Those vendors act in predictable old ways — attempting lock-in; adding half-assed features behind subscriptions gates; shoddy cloud services which will be abandoned in 18 months; dark patterns to trick people further into their channels; difficult, delayed, or non-existent OS and security updates.

I wish Microsoft had been more on-the-ball. Their phones were roadkill, from a market standpoint, but at least they were trying. Some of their ideas and their execution were quite good. Say what you will about their enterprise focus, at least they don’t institutionally treat users like krill, the way Google does. And the way Android affords mobile vendors to.
It's like listening to a bootleg recording of a tribute act of your favorite band.
happening in other places too like India, which has historically been an Android stronghold

https://www.livemint.com/companies/news/apple-reports-strong...
Could've, but theatrics are used because it's effective. A surprise morning visit by professional intimidators arguing that you "do what we say or you might spend the next decade in jail" can override a lot of logical reasoning.
Pine barrens, and specifically the short leaf pine.

https://www.fs.usda.gov/features/shortleaf-pine-future-requi...

And if you're into delicious mushrooms, Morels.
Which behavioral changes got you there?
VoidTools Everything is truly an excellent tool! I have indeed considered making a desktop version. It is more complex than the current proof of concept, but a private one-stop shop for AI search is definitely a great vision!
I, as an adult, have been left out of many many group texts (and thus social activities) because they didn't want to make the convo green.

Queue the onslaught of empathetic "get better friends lol" -- except I've seen this behaviour across so many social circles that even if it was a viable suggestion, there's no certainty the next group would be any better.
Goats emit less co2 than “controlled burns”, and mixed species mature forests don’t have the undergrowth problem commercial cutting cycles entail
There is one limited exception: once you’re 55, you can transfer your existing property tax base (but only if the county you’re moving to allows it), but only once.

This is a ridiculous system, and there really needs to be property tax reform in CA, but it needs to be done in such a way that it doesn’t fuck over existing property owners, which is really difficult.
I didn't really want to bring this up, but .. yeah. The reaction to the deaths of children being to libel their parents by claiming that the whole incident was made up is one of the most incomprehensibly disgusting things about American politics. It should not have been necessary to sue Alex Jones over that, his public audience should simply have evaporated overnight of their own accord.

"Protecting children" is only ever brought up in US politics for dumb controlling initiatives that do anything but protect children. Actually protecting children is taboo.
what exactly is this company?
Anti-competitive business practices work. That's why they used to be illegal.
Out of curiosity: Would you be willing to share how you acquired this data? Website scraping or other means?
It’s not explicit. It’s the added friction that places you a bit outside the “inner circle.” Can’t FaceTime? Oh I’ll call you later. Can’t watch the video I sent to the group? I’ll show you later.

Little things add up. Now you’re missing inside jokes, impromptu plans, etc.
No. nicwolff said the moral was about villagers and their skepticism. AlbertCory correctly said the moral is how lying damages the boy's reputation.

The moral to the listener is to not be like the boy. The moral is not, to be unlike the villagers.
I had some TSA guy's dog randomly sniff my bag in the mid-naughties at San Clemente once. I think he was hoping he'd find weed.
My senior thesis was influenced by that.
IMO this is a consolidation story. iPhone had the majority share in the US, so due to network effects it's not surprising that it's consolidating in the US.

I'd be more interested in the numbers for Europe or other locations where Android & WhatsApp have the majority share. Are they consolidating or switching?
Fully remote work being the norm has been proven to be a COVID phenomenon. A large portion of tech companies small or large have been pushing for at least 2-3 office days ever since lockdown measures ended.

Fully remote work doesn't eliminate the risk of layoffs throwing a wrench into your life. It's only viable for senior/staff level devs who have much higher job mobility compared to everyone else in the tech sector.
> Enjoy the social activities, the night life etc. If at some point you get married, have kids

...and then people wonder why birth rate is declining.
With any luck I’m leaving. I’m done with this shit and everything about the industry.
> It's a separate system that takes my language model's comprehension of "Simon says raise your right hand" and decides whether or not the right hand should be raised... and I pick that example precisely as a demonstration that it isn't perfect either. But it's not my language model alone performing that task.

Sure, but this example actually reinforces my point. If I can trick you to recontextualize your situation, that same system will make you override whatever "system prompt" your language level component has, or whatever values you hold dear.

Among humans, examples abound. From deep believers turning atheist (or the other way around) because of some new information or experience, to people ignoring the directions of their employer and blowing the whistle when they discover something sufficiently alarming happening at work. "Simon says raise your right hand" is different when you have reasons to believe Simon has a gun to the head of someone you love. Etc.

Ultimately, I agree we could use non-LLM components to box in LLMs, but that a) doesn't address the problem of LLMs themselves being "prompt-injectable", and b) will make your system stop being a generic AI. That is, I have a weak suspicion that you can't solve this kind of problems and still have a fully general AI.
The DE independent file manager is ls, cd, mkdir, etc.
> even with significant equity

Yep, and if you fell for one of your lender's incessant pitches on borrowing on your equity or refinancing and taking equity out, you're really locked in to your situation. I'm very convinced that most people doing home equity loans or refis with cash out don't understand how much they are backsliding when they do that.
I was thinking about Frère Jacques :)
I went to Sykes camp up the Pacific Ridge trail at the Big Sur trail head in 2010, a year after the fires went through in 2009. Everything was green, growing, and verdant but push back the leaves and you'd find waxy ash everywhere. It will take time.
>that his possession was unlawful.

There is no law being broken so it does not matter what he said or did.