You’re getting downvoted, but you’re right. This knife cuts both ways, and it far predates llms.

Any non trivial algorithm intended to rank is gameable.

This is the foundation of SEO. It’s how the Donald invaded reddit. It’s the fucking central pillar of modern propaganda dissemination.

They’re going to spend a ton of money to lock themselves into an ongoing arms race.

And if one is morality opposed to this type of pricing practice, I think one becomes morality obligated to do exactly what you described.

And honestly, I think you don’t even have to come out ahead for it to be worth it. If your LLM assessed price would be 1000, spending a full $200 on compute to game and $800 ticket is a wash. You SHOULD spend $300 to get an $800 ticket if that’s where the floor is. Because fuck em.

It’s all relative.

My 2 year old was sitting on the toilet and was like “sometimes, you just have to let the poop out”.

Hell yeah.

I understand what is happening.

I think that breaking a constant evaluated value into an expression that is still a constant comprised entirely of literals is bad.

Extract the constants (100 and 1) to NAMED constants if you wanna do this.

Edit: You also mentioned it might just be a side effect of a minifier. Maybe it is. I’ve got tons of grace if that’s the case, since the dev has little if any control. Be like if I was roasting someone for what a compiler did.

You’re obviously the js expert, so I’ll defer to you on expected minifier behavior, but there are 3 specific reasons that id be surprised (based on what I think a minifier should do)

• there is a defined variable that already exists “random”, i would any minifier worth it’s salt to make the variable name smaller

• since the expression (100 + 1 - 1) is a constant expression, I similarly would expect a minifier to reduce constant expressions to thier evaluated value (especially if the evaluated value is fewer characters than the expression) aka, just collapse to “100”

• there is still a ton of extraneous whitespace

(100 - 1 + 1) ??

How do you know the stage at the developer conference is level? The js speaker is drooling out of both sides of his mouth.

The crux of those scenarios you outlined doesn’t hinge on weather or not data is property. Their arguments are that it isn’t YOUR property.

Artist is reminding us all that (despite everything) within every small rock there is a pebble.

Really does make a bold political statement.

This is where I’m really fuzzy on the mechanics.

Any authentication is to establish an identity. At what point does that involve getting a unique id associated with an OS installation instance?

My original question is how the hardware id and ngrok get associated at all.

So, after getting frustrated and just going to sign up for an account myself, it looks like ngrok has options to sign is as a Google account, or sign in as a github account.

I’m guessing they picked github, and that’s why Microsoft had any visibility at all on the fact that they accessed a site that isn’t owned by Microsoft.

It still doesn’t answer the question of how the browser knows this id which is set at the os level. It still begs the question of what github authentication looks like differently between operating systems. Obviously a osx or Linux machine wouldn’t have that id at all. Is it part of the initial authentication request? Is there some kind of challenge and response?

This seems the most likely… but still I want clarity on the mechanism. An identifying token defined in the registry is being sent over the wire. That mechanic is pretty substantial, and I’m surprised a bigger fuss hasn’t been made about that. This is pretty far beyond conventional header fingerprinting.

From the article:

Microsoft’s records showed that at that exact same minute, a Windows device carrying GDID g:6755467234350028 had visited the ngrok signup page.

Why does Microsoft have a record that includes both the GDID and a web addresses? I am confused by this mechanism.

I think there are a lot of things at play here. Ultimately I don’t think you should, though.

The fact that you still want to tell them is suspicious. I think you’re not being honest with yourself. Your ulterior end game is a hope of some type of reciprocation. You haven’t moved on.

Just because (assuming it’s even true) a statistical model of a gender says “they probably would like it” is irrelevant. Would this individual like to hear it? It sounds like you don’t know. If you don’t know them well enough to anticipate how they would react, then I think it’s pretty safe to say they don’t know you well enough to receive the message “I used to love you” in a way that could ever come out as a net benefit to them.

I empathize immensely regarding your position. But as a 3rd party observer, don’t do it.

Yeah, I conceded that your call to action was correct.

Just wanted to add colour so people understand the mechanics at play. When you understand them, it lets people evaluate other things, without needing you to tell them what to do.

For example, if your comprehension of these companies is that the companies are acting with the goal of profitability l, they would see something like a fast-track onto an index post IPO as a bid for legitimacy, some kind of ego play.

If you comprehend it as a beast that can only subsist on funding with no viable product, it entirely changes how you comprehend the post IPO index listing desire.

Counterpoint:

They already are losing money. They themselves do not project that they will be profitable until 2030. The idea that “smart people with spreadsheets won’t let them lose money” is obviously wrong because they have done nothing except lose money, ever.

They get thier operating capital from funding, not sales.

Now, I agree that the gambit is wrong. So you’re right. You’re just right for the wrong reason.

Funding is just the cash value of market optimism for the future of your product. High usage props up optimism. Social media IPOs were valued very much based on active users, the idea being that more users meant more opportunity for profit.

The more people actively using these tools, even if they’re just maliciously burning tokens, just add to the “active users” metric. Which makes funding easier. And funding is the ACTUAL way these companies “make thier money”.

Minors can legally own shares of a private company.

I’m not saying THIS child does… and out of EVERYONE on the list that kid is entirely morally absolved anyways by virtue of being a little kid.

But, they can own shares.

Another payment option is not tackling it at all and just “paying the interest” by having a larger engineering team to wrangle the beast than you would otherwise have needed.

I can point to examples of many civilizational collapses based on comparatively minor climate abnormalities in the last mere 7,000 years, and can say with certainty the earth has gone at least 5,000,000,000 without being bombarded by even one gamma ray burst.

I think any alien civilization with basic math would prioritize the bird-in-hand.

They’re asking us to scale back our usage.

I give it another year. The markets are souring on it, big time. Unless something big and good happens w/ spaceX (because retail investors are underwater on that) the next set of AI IPOs are going to be a disaster.

Ask yourself why all these companies are scrambling to IPO now. Thier investors see the writing on the wall: it isn’t going to happen. The breakthrough. The singularity. An army of virtual workers with the ability to actually do the job. The only thing left for investors to do is push the IPOs to get any kind of return.

They think we’re at a peak of perceived value, and a higher plateau isn’t anywhere in the foreseeable future. Judging by how quickly ALL these private companies are suddenly interested in IPOs, I actually think they think they’ve passed the peak already and are sliding.

You gotta understand, the C-Suite, even the CTO, need to collectively “paint a picture” for investors. And that is art, and art is subjective. If investors wanna hear “we are prepared to leverage a new technology so that we can remain competitive”, then you gotta paint that picture. The buy in, the double down… take it for what it’s worth.

Did you think your C-Suite has ever actually been honest with you about plans, priorities, the value proposition of your work… anything really? Don’t ever confuse what they “say” with what the actually think or believe.

You SHOULD quit, I WISH I was in a position to do so. I’d spin by we could crack a cold one. Hella jealous.

Just like… for your soul… don’t think this is the new normal. Some neat and good and useful stuff is going to come out of this… but the impact that this tech will have on the workforce is being wildly overestimated.

I’m glad they were around because they were singlehandedly posting an obscene amount which really helped lemmy not feel like a ghost town back then.

But, they clearly had mental health issues. No healthy person would post whatever he was doing… probably 1000 posts a day (did the math: 100 posts avg per day. One post every 14 minutes for 2 years straight). Considering HOW unwell they were, they were relatively good natured. But you could see thier worldview was rooted in pretty serious personal issues.

They were tedious, and frustrating, condescending, and a know it all. Absolutely couldn’t admit they were wrong… not even admit that weren’t perfectly right. But… they weren’t ok.

I was glad when they disappeared, but mostly because I was really hoping they had been intervention-d by loved ones. To go cold turkey one day must have been BRUTAL for them.

All in all I think he was the right person at the right time. Thier faults actually DROVE engagement, which was important for a blossoming platform. I don’t think anything they said or did was out of malice.

A complicated person. I really hope they’re doing better.

There was a radio station who’s whole thing was that they would never play nickleback. Then one day they accidentally played nickleback. The Playlists were coming from some head office 5000 miles away, and they missed pulling a nickleback track once it got to the local station.