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notabot

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notabot ,

Crabadile - the ultimate lifeform.

TIL about Roko's Basilisk, a thought experiment considered by some to be an "information hazard" - a concept or idea that can cause you harm by you simply knowing/understanding it (en.wikipedia.org)

Roko's basilisk is a thought experiment which states that an otherwise benevolent artificial superintelligence (AI) in the future would be incentivized to create a virtual reality simulation to torture anyone who knew of its potential existence but did not directly contribute to its advancement or development, in order to...

notabot ,

Whilst I agree that it’s definitely not something to be taken seriously, I think you’ve missed the point and magnitude of the prospective punishment. As you say, current groups already punish those who did not aid their assent, but that punishment is finite, even if fatal. The prospective AI punishment would be to have your consciousness ‘moved’ to an artificial environment and tortured for ever. The point being not to punish people, but to provide an incentive to bring the AI into existence sooner, so it can achieve its ‘altruistic’ goals faster. Basically, if the AI does come in to existence, you’d better be on the team making that happen as soon as possible, or you’ll be tortured forever.

notabot ,

I’m not suggesting it could, or would, happen, merely pointing out the premise of the concept as outlined by Roko as I felt the commenter above was missing that. As I said, it’s not something I’d take seriously, it’s just a thought experiment.

notabot ,

I think the concept is that the AI is just so powerful that humans can’t use it, it uses them, theoretically for their own benefit. However, yes, I agree people would just try to use it to be awful to each other.

Really it’s just a thought experiment as to whether the concept of an entity that doesn’t (yet) exist can change our behavior in the present.

notabot ,

Yes, the hypothetical posed does reveal more about the human mind, as I mention in another comment, really it’s just a thought experiment as to whether the concept of an entity that doesn’t (yet) exist can change our behavior in the present. It bears similarities to Pascal’s Wager in considering an action, or inaction, that would displease a potential powerful entity that we don’t know to exist. The nits about extracting your consciousness are just framing, and not something to consider literally.

Basically, is it rational to make a sacrifice now avoid a massive penalty (eternal torture/not getting into heaven) that might be imposed by an entity you either don’t know to exist, or that you think might come into existence but isn’t now?

notabot ,

I’d imagine the shock loading into the drone’s structure would soon damage it if it was powerful enough to flip it. You’d need a significant damper to spread the shock out over a longer period. Alternatives are either recoilless rifles as suggested or something more akin to rockets, basically a tube that’s open at both ends, with a round that has enough propellant to fire without the need for a breech, and electronic ignition.

notabot ,

I was thinking about those, but I understand they tend to suffer from inaccuracy due to even slight imperfections in the manufacturing of the jet openings.

I think something more like a conventional round, with a heavier casing and more propellant might work. The casing gets ejected backwards and the projectile forwards, without imparting momentum to the barrel. You do need more propellant to get the same muzzle velocity though.

notabot ,

I don’t think that’ll do it. The propellant deflagration is so quick that the momentum of the drone means it can’t be accelerated backwards enough to significantly reduce the force on the airframe. Even if it did, that would just end up applying the acceleration to the internals such as the batteries and motors/engine instead. I think you would need a spring damper that would allow the weapon to recoil quickly and dissipate the energy more slowly, and I’m not sure you could make obe effective on something the size of a drone.

notabot ,

Thanks a lot, I just sprained my brain trying to make sense of that.

notabot ,

It sounds like you’re actually more concerned about the data in the files not being able to ‘pop up’ elsewhere, rather than the files themselves. In thus case I’d suggest simply encrypting them, probably using gpg. That’ll let you set a password that is distinct from the one used for sudo or similar.

You should also be using full disk encryption to reduce the risk of a temporary file being exposed, or even overwritten sectors/pages being available to an attacker.

notabot ,

Nothing can prevent a disk clone cloning the data, and there’s no way to make something happen when a disk is cloned as you’re not in control of the process.

If you wish to mask the existence of the files, use either full disk encryption, in which case cloning the disk doesn’t reveal the existence of the files without the decrypt password, or use a file based encrypted partition such as veracrypt in which case the cloner would just see a single encrypted blob rather than your file names.

Ultimately encrypting the files with gpg means they have already effectively ‘destroyed or corrupted’ themselves when cloned. If you don’t want to reveal the filenames, just call them something else.

If you could be a bit more specific about your threat model people may have better ideas to help.

notabot ,

Ok, I’m still not clear on exactly what you’re trying to achieve as I can’t quite see the connection between somehow preventing certain files being duplicated when cloning the disk and preventing yourself from reinstalling the system.

Bear in mind that reinstalling the system would replace all of the OS, so there’s no way to leave counter-measures there, and the disk itself can’t do anything to your data, even if it could detect a clone operation.

If what you’re trying to protect against is someone who knows everything you do accessing your data, you could look to use TPM to store the encryption key for your FDE. That way you don’t know the password, it’s stored encrypted with a secret key that is, in turn, stored and protected by your CPU. That way a disk clone couldn’t be used on any hardware except your specific machine.

notabot ,

This seems like a very complicated way to achieve your goal! It sounds like sitting yourself down and giving you a stern talking to might be a beter aporoach.

Having said that, if you have these very important files that you don’t want to lose, please make sure they’re backed up somewhere off of your machine. Storage fails, and it’s a horrible feeling losing something important. Unfortunately doing so would defeat the approach you’re thinking of.

This might be a case of needing to reframe the question to get to the cause of the issue, and then solve that. So, why do you want to make it hard to reinstall your machine? Is it the amount of time you spend on it, the chance of screwing it up, needing it working, has it become a compulsion or something else? Maybe if we can get to the root of the issue we can find a solution.

With regard to TPM, it’s basically just a key store, so you can use it fir anything really, althought it’s normally used by generating a TPM key and using it to encrypt the key that’s actually used to encrypt your data, storing the encrypted key with the OS. Just reinstalling won’t wipe the TPM, but unless you made an effort to save the encrypted key it’ll be gone. Given your problem statement above it just adds to the data you’d need to save, which isn’t helpful.

notabot ,

You’ve taken an apex predator, evolved for the stresses of the tooth and claw natural world, fulfilled their every need and whim, and now all they have left is choir practice and occasional surprise attacks on unwary feet.

notabot ,

I think that might be geographic dependent, for instance there’s nothing around here that would predate cats, which would suggest they are, locally at least, apex by default.

There aren’t many wildcats left here though, maybe if there were we’d see larger predators move in and push cats down the food chain, so I can see the mesopredator argument.

notabot ,

I don’t think foxes typically go for cats around here, and, as far as I’m aware, not much eats them either. We don’t have any of the larger predators that might kill them just to remove competition either, so I suppose foxes are apex predators here too.

On the other hand, I can see either a cat or a fox being a tasty morsel for a bear, so tge whole apex/meso distinction is certainly location dependent.

notabot ,

Ah, memories. That was me on a Spectrum. It’s all fun and games until you forget to save (to tape) and your code hangs the machine, losing everything.

notabot ,

It looks like AssDB uses a weird SQL syntax? Is it worth upgrading to, I hear it’s great at pulling information out of unstructured and even imaginary data sources?

notabot ,

This is an approach to life sentences I’ve considered before; I would suggest the prisoner could only petition for execution after being incarcerated for a significant period (20 years or so maybe?) and having exhausted all possible legal appeals. The delay is there to ensure it’s not a decision taken in desperation and haste. By that point, if any new evidence to exonerate them is going to turn up, it probably has, although I acknowledge that’s not always the case.

I’m not sure I’d equate it to voluntary euthenasia as the prisoner isn’t leaving jail alive either way. On the other hand, I can see why linking the two makes sense too.

notabot ,

While I agree with most people here that finding a keyboard and screen would be the easiest option, you do have a couple of other options:

  • Use a preseed file A preseed lets the installer run completely automatically, without user intervention. Get it to install a basic system with SSH and take it from there. You’ll want to test the install in a VM, where you can see what’s going on before letting it run on the real server. More information here: wiki.debian.org/DebianInstaller/Preseed
  • Boot from a live image with SSH Take a look at wiki.debian.org/LiveCD in particular ‘Debian Live’. It looks like ssh is included, but you’d want to check the service comes up on boot. You can then SSH to the machine and install to the harddrive that way. Again, test on a VM until you know you have the image working, and know how to run the install, then write it to a USB key and boot the tsrget server from that.

This all assumes the target server has USB or CD at the top of its boot order. If it doesn’t you’ll have to change that first, either with a keyboard and screen, or via a remote management interface sych as IPMI.

notabot ,

Yes, that’ll work too, it does involve adding the disk to your machine temporarily though, so just be carefully which disk you format to do it. Please don’t ask why I say that, it brings back painful memories…

notabot ,

It’s going to be a balance between your time getting an automated approach to work and the cost/effort of getting a monitor. Getting preseed working can be a bit fiddly, but it does mean you’ve learnt a new skill, getting a monitor sounds like it’ll be a pain, and you might only need it once.

notabot ,

Putting a simple preseed file on a debian install image is probably going to be your best bet. Assuming you can run a VM on your current machine it shouldn’t be too difficult to test it until you’re happy with it.

notabot ,

Debian works fine with SysV init currently, there’s even a page on their wiki on setting it up: wiki.debian.org/Init#Changing_the_init_system_-_a…

Source: have been happily using Sysv init on Debian for years. Working on SystemD servers feels incredibly painful in comparison.

notabot ,

I haven’t seen any breakage, although you may find documentation assumes SystemD. Debian maintains init freedom, and support for sysVinit was improved in Bullseye, so it’s not being forgotten about.

If you don’t fancy going that route, there are Debian forks that are designed to be SystemD free such as Devuan or MX linux, which defaults to sysVinit. I’ve not tried either, but they seem well regarded, and I’m sure there are others too.

notabot ,

I was doing fine, seeing two cows, right up until I read your comment, and now I see it as some sort of weird giraffe like creature with short legs and a surprising ability to balance even with its neck stretched out that far.

notabot ,

I was doing fine, seeing two cows, right up until I read your comment, and now I see it as some sort of weird giraffe like creature with short legs and a surprising ability to balance even with its neck stretched out that far.

notabot ,

It’s obviously just a glitch in the matrix, and you may be the chosen one for noticing.

I got a 504 server error the first time I posted, but apparently it worked anyway.

I cannot make any post/comment containing the string [slash]etc[slash]passwd on lemmy.world (lemmy.world)

When I try to submit a post or comment containing the string [slash]etc[slash] passwd, the submit button goes into a loading state and spins indefinitely. The request is blocked by Cloudflare with status code 403. I can’t even search for the forbidden string. You have to check dev tools to find out what went wrong, this error...

notabot ,

Tried with ‘Connect for lemmy’ against lemm.ee and just got a full screen error that vanished after a second.

/ etc / passwd <- so none of the components are blocked.

notabot ,

Of course they’re not blowing up the hamster! That would be unethical, immoral, probably illegal, very hard to clean up, and, most importantly, lasers don’t blow things up, they vapourise them.

They vapourise the hamsters.

notabot ,

I, for one, welcome our immortal, time-travelling, hamster overlord, but please stop giving away their secrets. The ‘vapourisation’ is the cover they need to make the particularly tricky jumps through time and space. It’s not needed every time, hence why it’s not more common, just when they need to arrive at a very specific point that’s already crowded with other manifestations of the ur-hamster.

notabot ,

They each expend less energy per kill, and face less risk, when hunting in a pack. That means that they can make more kills and get more sustinance. A pack of six wolves only needs to make four kills to get more sustinsnce each than six wolves each making an independent kill. Working as a pack also increases the reliability of hunting as they’re more likely to make a kill each time they expend the considerable amount of energy it takes.

notabot ,

The device captures visible and infrared light, just like a typical night vision scope. They’re working on expanding the spectrum too, which could lead to some interesting and useful results. I understand that, for instance, skin cancers are more visible under certain UV wavelengths, so imagine a doctor being able to just put on a pair of glasses that convert that wavelength to give you a once over during a checkup.

notabot ,

The material captures visible light too, so headlights would be brighter, but I wonder if there’s a way to reduce the contrast by either filtering out some wavelengths (like driving glasses) or the material simply not boosting it’s output past a certain level?

notabot ,

The article says:

The photons travel through a resonant metasurface, where they mingle with a pump beam.

From that, I think it’s suggesting it needs a separate beam of photons to amplify the signal, much like a transistor needs a supply current to amplify the signal it gets.

They also say:

This new tech also captures the visible and non-visible (or infrared) light in one image as you look through the ‘lens.’

Which sounds like it produces an image showing both the IR and visible spectrum in the visible range.

Mind you, re-readind it, most of the article just talks about IR, so I’m not certain what it’s actually doing. It could just be transparent to the visible spectrum. It wouldn’t be much good for driving if it did that though, the windscreen blocks a lot of IR and you’d need IR headlights!

notabot ,

am I still vunerable to not being able to tell reality from talking points?

You’re absolutely still vulnerable, and the fact you sometimes notice you’re in an echo chamber means that when you don’t spot it you’re more likely to think you’re not in one, even if you are. It’s an interesting dilemma; if you’re not aware then you risk falling into any echo chamber, but the more aware you are of a trap like this normally, the more you risk being sucked in due tp misplaced confidence when you miss the signs.

Stay alert, keep questioning why you agree with others and welcome to Lemmy!

notabot ,

!support might be a good place for that.

notabot ,

Look everyone! That Weird Guy over there is Crazy Hair Guy!

Louisiana chemical plant threatens to shut down if EPA emissions deadline isn't relaxed (apnews.com)

A synthetic rubber manufacturer accused of increasing the cancer risk for the nearby majority-Black community in Louisiana told a federal appeals court it will have to shut down “likely permanently” if it’s forced to meet the Biden administration’s deadline to reduce emissions....

notabot ,

Hmm, now where’s that ‘oh no…anyway’ meme gone?

FOSS Media Playback Device

I want to create a minimal install for mpv playback through jellyfin-mpv-shim and macast. this is going to be a base for a FOSS media sink akin to a Chromecast. you attach it to your TV and it plays whatever you send it, like movies from your jellyfin server and youtube/vimeo/piped/etc videos. otherwise, there’s no interaction...

notabot ,

You shouldn’t need a window manager, you should be able to pass a tell mpv to just run full screen.

Alternativly, if you’re up for a bit more work, it looks like you can get mpv to run in tge framebuffer and so not need ecen X11. It might take recompiling a few packages, I’m not sure whether the options are built by default now, but you could have a look at this thread fir example: bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=176072

notabot ,

I believe so, but that’s definitely something you’d need to check yourself.

notabot ,

It doesn’t really matter whether the FMR is one in a hundred or one in a million, for the uses it’s being put to it’s still too high. If it was only being used as one factor for authenticating someone (I.e. the ‘thing for are’) but still required the other factor(s) (the ‘thing you know’ and the ‘thing you have’) then it’d be adaquate.

As it stands, when it’s being used either to pick someone out without further scrutiny, or to make payments with no further checks, it’s simply unacceptable. There’s good arguments to say it’s not just the error rate is unacceptable, but that the technology simply shouldn’t be used in those scenarios as it’s entirely inappropriate, but that’s a separate discussion.

notabot ,

Oh no, the more dramatic orchestras will use cannon indoors too. I was at a rather excellent concert some years ago, thoroughly enjoying the music and very much ‘in the moment’ as you might say, when I discovered this fact. I was seated up in the gods, and one of the cannons was, it turns out, on a gallery almost directly above me. They pretty much had to scrape me off the ceiling when that thing went off, and I don’t think my heart rate came down until I got a stiff drink in the intermission.

notabot ,
  • George
  • Bob
  • Geofry
  • Gertrude
  • Agetha
  • Agness
  • Nelly

…what do you mean, that’s not what you mean? It’s what you said!

notabot ,

It’s the same problem with a drive like this, or any long term archive, you either store the data unencrypted and rely on physical security, or make sure you store the encryption key and algorithm for the same length of time, in which case you still need the physical security to protect that instead. In both cases you need to make sure you preserve a means to read the data back and details of the format its in so you can actually use it later.

Paper is actually a pretty good way of storing a moderate amount of data long term. Stored correctly it’s unlikely to physically degrade, the data is unlikely to suffer bitrot and it can be read back by anything that can make an image in the visible spectrum. That means you can read it, or take a photo and use OCR to convert it into whatever format is current when the data is needed.

notabot ,

That argument seems to boil down to whether or not a thing can be a member of a category before that category is described and named by humans, or presumably any sentient entity. You seem to ne arguing that it can’t, I would say it can.

Considered anything that existed before humans. Let’s take dinosaurs. They existed, but before humans came up with the name ‘dinosaur’ were they dinosaurs? I would say that the category existed even though there were no humans to describe it. Likewise with aesthetic categories, the entity exists and either fits within the category, or it does not, even if the category has not been described by humans. Thus, if you consider fossils to be poetry, they are, indeed, poetry older than words.

If we’re nit picking the meme I would instead take issue with the concept of fossils being a memory of bones. We have fossils of plants, boneless creatures and even soft tissue from creatures with bones. Despite that, I think the meme is reasonable enough, and a fair way to look at things.

notabot ,

I think I understand your point of view, but I would argue that even an aesthetic category such as ‘poetry’ can exist without sentient beings to experience it. Ultimately the category is not defined by the things in it, but by the criteria that define what is in it, and so the category of ‘poetry’ is populated by everything that fits a definition along the lines of: combinations of words or arrangements of things that would spark an aesthetic experience, rather than things that do spark such an experience. This is necessary if we wish to include works that have been created, and which presumably do not generate precisely those feelings in the author, but which have not yet been experienced by others yet. I would suggest we should include such works from creation, rather than them suddenly becoming poetry when first experienced by an audience. If we use the latter definition, who creates the poety, the author or the first audience?

notabot ,

Have you ever seen them both in the same room at the same time? I know I haven’t. :)

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