It’s the fascist slide: every day a new outrage, then by the next day it’s normalized. Everyone thinking “surely this time someone will do something to stop them.”

What a move, asking someone a question, then cutting them off every time they begin to answer with “Why won’t you answer the question?”

it could be a simple as installing and sharing a key with their friends.

That’s more than most people will be prepared to do. I can tell my family to install Signal and message me there, and after many years of asking them, some actually do while most still insist on WhatsApp or SMS. If I were to tell them to send me a key, none of them would do it. It’s frustrating but most people are willing to put zero effort into privacy, and most people don’t understand or care why it’s important. So it’s really valuable to have something like Signal where it’s extremely easy for them to get started, and still some of my friends and family say it’s too complicated to install Signal as well as WhatsApp.

The masses will migrate to WhatsApp, which is a step in the wrong direction in many ways. But Signal and WhatsApp both make it very easy to get started and find contacts, and that’s essential for anything most users will adopt. I don’t know of any Signal alternative that’s comparably secure and equally easy for a new user to get started with. Most truly secure messaging apps are quite difficult to get started with.

The biggest worry I see is laws appearing all over the world that demand ID verification, surveillance features or encryption backdoors that Linux developers and distributors aren’t in a position to comply with. If it becomes a legal liability to oversee or contribute to a Linux distro, only those with the deepest pockets to pay lawyers will dare do so, and there will be intense pressure to corporatize its distribution. They won’t be able to undo open-source licenses for existing code, but if using or distributing that code still gets you sued it could be a problem for all independent actors.

That license suggests these people don’t know what they’re doing, or don’t care. Maybe they think they’re geographically out of reach of Adobe’s lawyers. In any case, it’s hardly striking a blow for open-source software when its provenance and legal status are so dubious. FOSS should be done honestly and with pride.

You could argue that “vibe coded” and “clean room reimplementation” are by nature incompatible with one another, since you can’t prove the AI didn’t ingest the original code. But you could also question whether the AI could possibly be trained on Adobe’s code when Adobe keeps that under wraps. It could be trained on leaked code, but that would be hard to prove.

If they used decompilation as a guide for the AI, that might be easier to establish regardless of what the LLM was trained on. There could be telltale implementation details that Adobe could cite.

In any case, Adobe has a huge number of patents on its software, so I imagine there could be grounds for legal action just because these applications faithfully copy the look and feel and functionality of Adobe products. That might be easier for them to prove in court than anything about the code’s provenance.

It would be more surprising if they weren’t.

If this happens it seems decentralized E2EE messaging would be the only option for Canadians who value privacy. And that stuff tends to be more awkward to use, and much harder to get people to use, than something as slick as Signal.

And it’s not just Signal. Major VPN providers are also threatening to quit Canada over this bill. Which will go perfectly with demands for online age verification (that is, ID tracking) and a crackdown on “piracy” sites. Many of the best things on the internet, amd what little online privacy we still have, could be taken away from Canadians in coming months or years.

And that’s before even considering what it means for low-budget operators of websites and services like the Fediverse, who may not be able to afford to comply. These laws always seem to squeeze the small players and favour the mega corporations. Not to mention that despite all Carney’s big talk and the clear threat the USA poses to Canada, the Canadian government’s actions seem determined to hand ever more Canadians’ data over to the USA.

You don’t use these in your code? // 💙

It may be useful for the very specific kind of use case you describe, but that doesn’t help the AI companies with their claim that this needs to be a multi-trillion-dollar industry. I too have found it’s good for little applications I never intend to distribute, but as soon as I think of sharing a project, it’s clear that there’s quite a bit of slow work needed to check its quality and security.

Why do you say that? The news stories don’t specify. The Guardian says he was well connected in Russia and China, though it’s a bit odd how they just throw that in.

That’s kind of the whole problem with AI in every domain: it can save you time if you let it churn out unchecked garbage, but if you check its outputs it won’t save you time and you’d have been better doing the work yourself. It’s still not clear whether there’s any room for actual value in between these.

Too many people (including my boss) seem to think AI is a magic oracle that can replace the whole messy business of ever investigating even the tiniest thing. It’s astonishing how many people were apparently just waiting for the first chance to give up on doing anything at all for themselves.

Capitalism.

Some people are smart enough to be a lawyer yet still really fucking stupid.

How like your wife does she need to be?

I also doubt ChatGPT is just going to say “vote Republican”.

Propaganda is usually far more subtle than that. You can gently color the way the issues are framed, choose what to present as the important questions and deciding factors, omit to mention certain evidence or arguments, describe some candidates in appealing terms and others less appealingly, etc. All it needs to do is nudge some of the questioners a little to the right, not overtly or dramatically, but just enough to tip the votes statistically just a little bit towards the Republicans.

Well the tech CEOs are doing very well for themselves, governments are finding it easier to suppress dissent than ever, and corporations have a ready excuse for firing more people and paying the rest less. Those are the benefits.

He didn’t say they’re benefits for us. There are plenty of benefits for Sam. And we’re a sacrifice he’s willing to make.