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analogika

analogika

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  • #2,082
    Echohead2 said:
    LOL...sure. Happens all the time. Eragon comes to mind, but others too.

    Plus, tons of non-fiction quote tons of other works.
    Click to expand...

    They quote and ATTRIBUTE content. If they don't, it's literally plagiarism, which is a cease-and-desist at minimum once discovered, lawsuit optional.

    There's plenty of lawsuits concerning a little-too-obviously, er, "derivative" (or accidentally similar) creative works — be they text or sound or whatever — as well.
     
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    papadage

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  • #2,083
    Mark086 said:
    NY time "regurgitation" issue was created by them.

    Plenty of people can, or could for a decade or two, regurgitate entire Monty Python scripts. I don't find that particular special, the difference is focus. Overall it isn't regurgitating everything it ingests.
    Click to expand...

    That's not how the law works. To regurgitate it, some record of the arrangement of words is needed. A coded reproduction is still a copy. Full copies are not allowed. Human memory is not a copy under the law. It's not "fixed" in a physical or digital form.
     
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    Echohead2

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  • #2,084
    analogika said:
    They quote and ATTRIBUTE content. If they don't, it's literally plagiarism, which is a cease-and-desist at minimum once discovered, lawsuit optional.

    There's plenty of lawsuits concerning a little-too-obviously, er, "derivative" (or accidentally similar) creative works — be they text or sound or whatever — as well.
    Click to expand...
    And most of the time, those lawsuits lose.
     
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    Horatio

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  • #2,087
    It looks like Microsoft made Google dance, and uh, it's a little out of step.
    9to5google.com

    Google says the wild mistakes in AI Overviews are just 'isolated examples'

    Google's new AI Overviews in Search are confidently spitting out misinformation in mistakes the company says are "isolated examples."
    9to5google.com 9to5google.com

    On top of the examples in this article, I've seen examples of it recommending eating rocks and straight up misinformation

    Not sure this tops OpenAI's ScarJo-related own goal for the week though.
     
    LordDaMan

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  • #2,089
    Horatio said:
    It looks like Microsoft made Google dance, and uh, it's a little out of step.
    9to5google.com

    Google says the wild mistakes in AI Overviews are just 'isolated examples'

    Google's new AI Overviews in Search are confidently spitting out misinformation in mistakes the company says are "isolated examples."
    9to5google.com 9to5google.com

    On top of the examples in this article, I've seen examples of it recommending eating rocks and straight up misinformation

    Not sure this tops OpenAI's ScarJo-related own goal for the week though.
    Click to expand...
    I hate how that's worded. Misinformation is deliberately misleading on a subject. What happened here is just plain wrong (and often nutty) responses.
     
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    wco81

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  • #2,090
    Horatio said:
    It looks like Microsoft made Google dance, and uh, it's a little out of step.
    9to5google.com

    Google says the wild mistakes in AI Overviews are just 'isolated examples'

    Google's new AI Overviews in Search are confidently spitting out misinformation in mistakes the company says are "isolated examples."
    9to5google.com 9to5google.com

    On top of the examples in this article, I've seen examples of it recommending eating rocks and straight up misinformation

    Not sure this tops OpenAI's ScarJo-related own goal for the week though.
    Click to expand...
    Do we have an AI thread?

    The contention would be something like the egregious disregard for copyrights by OpenAI and other companies.

    We can debate the merits of copyright laws (along with patents and trademarks) but those would be orthogonal to the blatant violations of the laws which are on the books.

    Well I guess a lot of litigation will settle the issue of the "training" data that the AI companies have used with without permission.

    In this case, Altman did ask Scarlett Johansen, was told no, did it anyways? So that's a little better, this time they did ask?
     
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  • #2,091
    wco81 said:
    Do we have an AI thread?

    The contention would be something like the egregious disregard for copyrights by OpenAI and other companies.

    We can debate the merits of copyright laws (along with patents and trademarks) but those would be orthogonal to the blatant violations of the laws which are on the books.

    Well I guess a lot of litigation will settle the issue of the "training" data that the AI companies have used with without permission.

    In this case, Altman did ask Scarlett Johansen, was told no, did it anyways? So that's a little better, this time they did ask?
    Click to expand...
    We should totally have an AI thread. I don't think the framing needs to be as restrictive as you set out, though a discussion on copyright vis a vis AI would definitely be a fine thread.
     
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    Horatio

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  • #2,092
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    wco81

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  • #2,093
    OpenAI drops their non-disparagement requirement of workers who leave the company. Possibly after outside criticism.

    Former and current OpenAI employees received a memo this week that the AI company hopes to end the most embarrassing scandal that Sam Altman has ever faced as OpenAI's CEO.

    The memo finally clarified for employees that OpenAI would not enforce a non-disparagement contract that employees since at least 2019 were pressured to sign within a week of termination or else risk losing their vested equity. For an OpenAI employee, that could mean losing millions for expressing even mild criticism about OpenAI's work.

    You can read the full memo below in a post on X (formerly Twitter) from Andrew Carr, a former OpenAI employee whose LinkedIn confirms that he left the company in 2021.


    "I guess that settles that," Carr wrote on X.

    OpenAI faced a major public backlash when Vox revealed the unusually restrictive language in the non-disparagement clause last week after OpenAI co-founder and chief scientist Ilya Sutskever resigned, along with his superalignment team co-leader Jan Leike.

    As questions swirled regarding these resignations, the former OpenAI staffers provided little explanation for why they suddenly quit. Sutskever basically wished OpenAI well, expressing confidence "that OpenAI will build AGI that is both safe and beneficial," while Leike only offered two words: "I resigned."
    Click to expand...

    arstechnica.com

    OpenAI ends harsh non-disparagement agreements that could claw back millions

    OpenAI releases employees from evil exit agreement in staff-wide memo.
    arstechnica.com arstechnica.com

    When there was the drama about the board ousting Altman a few months ago, there were allusions to the idealistic goals at the founding of the company, particularly about keeping AI from large companies.

    Of course, the company has partnered closely with Microsoft since.

    Maybe they'll hire some PR professionals who could help them in their decisions, rather than being called in after the fact to manage external backlash.
     
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    Mat8iou

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  • #2,094
    LordDaMan

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  • #2,098
    Horatio said:
    To its credit Google put out a really excellent article describing what happened and what they're doing about it:
    blog.google

    AI Overviews: About last week

    Here’s what happened with AI Overviews, the feedback we've received, and the steps we’ve taken.
    blog.google blog.google
    Click to expand...
    That wasn;t an excellent article. It was a "we had no idea people on the internet would ask our AI stupid questions" that says that google can't understand people would ask stupid questions. I mean at this stage, how the hell could an engineer not figure that someone would ask Google's AI questions designed to mess it up? It reeks of BS

    What I take from this is they got so flat footed with AI that they are sticking anything up there just to say me too when its obviously very alpha level code made by people who don't really understands how to program something like an AI. When they get caught with just how bad it really is, they offer some weak "we will fix it this time!".
     
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    wco81

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  • #2,099
    Yeah it's not like people asked Siri or other natural language agents weird questions, mostly for entertainment purposes.

    Maybe they can train only on "quality" data sources instead of apparently Reddit posts where people were apparently joking.

    But LLMs is premised on ingesting large data sets?

    So can LLM chatbots "get" jokes or understand any nuance in questions people might pose to them?

    Even if AGI is achieved, would it necessarily have a sense of humor or a strong sarcasm detector?

    As more and more people use LLMs regularly, the "how do I get rid of a body" types of questions will be more frequent.
     
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    wco81

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  • #2,100
    Pro Publica has a story about a Microsoft whistleblower who worked in security for them and tried to warn them about a huge vulnerability in Active Directory single sign-on features in AD FS.

    Microsoft at the time was trying to win a big Pentagon contract for cloud services so they rejected and ignored his warnings.

    As a result, a huge hack of government systems by state-sponsored Russian hackers.

    But Brad Smith went before Congress and convinced them that all is well and they're not responsible for the hack. He sold it.

    Within months, his fears became reality. U.S. officials confirmed reports that a state-sponsored team of Russian hackers had carried out SolarWinds, one of the largest cyberattacks in U.S. history. They used the flaw Harris had identified to vacuum up sensitive data from a number of federal agencies, including, ProPublica has learned, the National Nuclear Security Administration, which maintains the United States’ nuclear weapons stockpile, and the National Institutes of Health, which at the time was engaged in COVID-19 research and vaccine distribution. The Russians also used the weakness to compromise dozens of email accounts in the Treasury Department, including those of its highest-ranking officials. One federal official described the breach as “an espionage campaign designed for long-term intelligence collection.”


    Harris’ account, told here for the first time and supported by interviews with former colleagues and associates as well as social media posts, upends the prevailing public understanding of the SolarWinds hack.


    From the moment the hack surfaced, Microsoft insisted it was blameless. Microsoft President Brad Smith assured Congress in 2021 that “there was no vulnerability in any Microsoft product or service that was exploited” in SolarWinds.
    Click to expand...

    Read in ProPublica: https://apple.news/Ay07X4LQQT_qtVSdxdc0MiA

    The whistleblower left to go work for a security firm, says MS culture doesn't value security enough.
     
    Ecmaster76

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  • #2,101
    The SolarWinds attack was carried out via a compromise of the software vendor of the same name

    Possibly SolarWinds, the company, might have been compromised by an ADFS vulnerability. Regardless I'm not sure why fixing an ADFS vulnerability would have endangered a contract negotiation. Its not exactly a secret that software has flaws and MS patches major ones every month

    Lets look at the flaw itself which is mainly explained via frustrating slideshow: if you make a copy of the private key from a SAML server you can forge access tokens. Like yeah, duh. That's how SAML works and this isn't unique to MS. The only way to get that key is via obtaining highly privileged access to the authentication service which would be very bad on any platform. Or finding the key laying around if an admin is very sloppy. Neither is directly a flaw of the technology.
    This is what makes a SAML attack unique. Typically, hackers leave what cybersecurity specialists call a “noisy” digital trail. Network administrators monitoring the so-called “audit logs” might see unknown or foreign IP addresses attempting to gain access to their cloud services. But SAML attacks are much harder to detect. The forged token is the equivalent of a robber using a copied master key. There was little trail to track, just the activities of what appear to be legitimate users.
    Click to expand...

    Thats, uh, not how the internet works. A forged token can elevate your access but it doesn't hide your IP. There are other ways to do that of course. (and WTH is with the scare quotes?)

    Later it goes on to talking about how smartcard SSO was part of the problem but dont explain how that anything to do whatsoever with a compromised SAML key

    Further the link to a CyberArk article that's hilariously bad
    www.cyberark.com

    Golden SAML: Newly Discovered Attack Technique Forges Authentication to Cloud Apps

    CyberArk Labs discovered a new attack vector, dubbed “golden SAML,” which allows an attacker to authenticate across every service that uses SAML 2.0 protocol as an SSO mechanism.
    www.cyberark.com www.cyberark.com
    Golden ticket is not treated as a vulnerability because an attacker has to have domain admin access in order to perform it. That’s why it’s not being addressed by the appropriate vendors. The fact of the matter is, attackers are still able to gain this type of access (domain admin), and they are still using golden tickets to maintain stealthily persistent for even years in their target’s domain.
    Click to expand...
    No shit. If your root admins get popped and you do a bad job of cleaning up everything they could have compromised, you are still vulnerable. This has been true since the first physical lock and key were invented.


    Either the author of the article badly mangled the description of the flaw or they got played. Either way its a bad look for them
     
    Ecmaster76

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  • #2,103
    wco81 said:
    If it was a simple patch, then why didn't MS do it?
    Click to expand...
    There's nothing to patch. If a credential like a token signing cert is compromised you must replace it. If you dont realize you've already been compromised then you're just boned. There's nothing unique about ADFS in that regard. It would be just the same for literally any other bit of federated infrastructure ever. There will necessarily be a root of trust that can be compromised to affect multiple systems. The "Golden SAML" text above neglects to mention that someone whose gained such access would already be able to trivially intercept user passwords or even create their own accounts with any level of access they wish.

    The solution to this is just to limit the extent of trust between systems. That's an architectural call made by the customer. Its not like segmentation was an unknown practice prior to these reports

    wco81 said:
    Why did they shut down the security group?
    Click to expand...
    A security group. They have a lot of them. I'd guess because he seems to be a bit of an obsessive crackpot.

    Glancing at the article again it even they state Solar Winds wasn't hacked by this. They were just sloppy on multiple fronts and didn't clean house after the original breach
     
    Nevarre

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  • #2,105
    Horatio said:
    Apple is shutting down Apple Pay Later

    IMO, good. This business never really made sense for Apple or its clientele
    Click to expand...

    Is that a veiled reference to the "Apple users are rich and spend money like water while Android users are dirt poor and/or stingy" stereotype?

    I'm not sure if it's appropriate or not for their "clientele" but they seem to want to have a finger in all sorts of financial transactions for their users.
     
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  • #2,106
    Nevarre said:
    Is that a veiled reference to the "Apple users are rich and spend money like water while Android users are dirt poor and/or stingy" stereotype?
    Click to expand...
    Not really, but I just don't see Apple as catering to people that buy things in installments - Apple Card make sense to me, but Apple Pay Later does not.
     
    Nevarre

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  • #2,108
    Horatio said:
    Not really, but I just don't see Apple as catering to people that buy things in installments - Apple Card make sense to me, but Apple Pay Later does not.
    Click to expand...

    I'm not going to find answers on the paywalled bloomberg site, but it sounded like they had more regulatory headwind than they were willing to put up with.

    I tend to think more holistically in that a lot of young people are Apple-only consumers, and nobody is more financially challenged than young people. Honestly, the Apple Card has been key to a lot of their demographic (without hurting their brand cachet) but having a CashApp competitor for the consumer without spotless credit and a fat bank account would service a lot of their customers. The problem with that sort of business is not any lack in lucrative fees or interest -- unlike the Apple Card -- it's wrangling a chaotic and risky customer.

    Still, Apple owns the overwhelming majority of that 18-25 customer base in the US, and I'm sure they've had internal discussions about how to capture more of their financial life.
     
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    ant1pathy

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  • #2,109
    Nevarre said:
    I'm not going to find answers on the paywalled bloomberg site, but it sounded like they had more regulatory headwind than they were willing to put up with.

    I tend to think more holistically in that a lot of young people are Apple-only consumers, and nobody is more financially challenged than young people. Honestly, the Apple Card has been key to a lot of their demographic (without hurting their brand cachet) but having a CashApp competitor for the consumer without spotless credit and a fat bank account would service a lot of their customers. The problem with that sort of business is not any lack in lucrative fees or interest -- unlike the Apple Card -- it's wrangling a chaotic and risky customer.

    Still, Apple owns the overwhelming majority of that 18-25 customer base in the US, and I'm sure they've had internal discussions about how to capture more of their financial life.
    Click to expand...
    I Like'd it, but I can't say I like it.
     
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    LordDaMan

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  • #2,110
    Ughh, why do websites come up with new horrendous looking logos and/or websites to replace their old one?

    Here's ZDNet's old logo:
    zdnet-old.png

    Now here is thier current one

    zdnet-new.png

    Is it ZDnet? NDNet? ZDZET? Also why that color? It hurts my eyes looking at it.

    The old logo and site weren't bad, so why this terrible update? Are they out of touch and think this is good look?
     
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    cateye

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  • #2,113
    There are trends in design as there are trends in fashion or any other sector where art and commerce overlap. Churn is part of the fabric of branding design, and it doesn't surprise me that ZDNet, a somewhat stodgy old-guard stalwart of tech journalism, wanted to refresh their branding to try and achieve some of the same visual relevancy as the new kids on the block. That may or may not be the correct approach (compare, for example, Ars' "steady as she goes" approach to its own branding and content presentation despite this pressure from their much larger competitor) but there are risks for moving against-type, again as I'm sure Aurich is acutely aware.

    As a designer, there's a lot I like about The Verge's visual identity, and ZDNet's new brand and redesign. There's a lot I don't like about both, too. But The Verge's design in particular does present as uniquely aligned to its identity, medium, and audience, in a way that "boring old" ZDNet does not. And sites like Anandtech that haven't had a visual or functional refresh in years broadcast and amplify their own decline and irrelevancy as a result. It should come as no surprise that Ars is working on its own redesign, and I'm sure Aurich will start thinking about the redesign that comes after that one as soon as he's done. Because you have to.

    (Speaking as a designer, but I'm not your designer. Please consult a fully qualified design professional local to you before creating your own brand identity. And please don't do it yourself using Canva, for fuck's sake.)
     
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    Louis XVI

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  • #2,114
    cateye said:
    There are trends in design as there are trends in fashion or any other sector where art and commerce overlap. Churn is part of the fabric of branding design, and it doesn't surprise me that ZDNet, a somewhat stodgy old-guard stalwart of tech journalism, wanted to refresh their branding to try and achieve some of the same visual relevancy as the new kids on the block. That may or may not be the correct approach (compare, for example, Ars' "steady as she goes" approach to its own branding and content presentation despite this pressure from their much larger competitor) but there are risks for moving against-type, again as I'm sure Aurich is acutely aware.

    As a designer, there's a lot I like about The Verge's visual identity, and ZDNet's new brand and redesign. There's a lot I don't like about both, too. But The Verge's design in particular does present as uniquely aligned to its identity, medium, and audience, in a way that "boring old" ZDNet does not. And sites like Anandtech that haven't had a visual or functional refresh in years broadcast and amplify their own decline and irrelevancy as a result. It should come as no surprise that Ars is working on its own redesign, and I'm sure Aurich will start thinking about the redesign that comes after that one as soon as he's done. Because you have to.

    (Speaking as a designer, but I'm not your designer. Please consult a fully qualified design professional local to you before creating your own brand identity. And please don't do it yourself using Canva, for fuck's sake.)
    Click to expand...
    I have nothing against redesigning in general; images need freshening from time to time. But ZD Net’s is so hideous that I’m afraid I might turn to stone if I look at it again.
     
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    Echohead2

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  • #2,115
    cateye said:
    There are trends in design as there are trends in fashion or any other sector where art and commerce overlap. Churn is part of the fabric of branding design, and it doesn't surprise me that ZDNet, a somewhat stodgy old-guard stalwart of tech journalism, wanted to refresh their branding to try and achieve some of the same visual relevancy as the new kids on the block. That may or may not be the correct approach (compare, for example, Ars' "steady as she goes" approach to its own branding and content presentation despite this pressure from their much larger competitor) but there are risks for moving against-type, again as I'm sure Aurich is acutely aware.

    As a designer, there's a lot I like about The Verge's visual identity, and ZDNet's new brand and redesign. There's a lot I don't like about both, too. But The Verge's design in particular does present as uniquely aligned to its identity, medium, and audience, in a way that "boring old" ZDNet does not. And sites like Anandtech that haven't had a visual or functional refresh in years broadcast and amplify their own decline and irrelevancy as a result. It should come as no surprise that Ars is working on its own redesign, and I'm sure Aurich will start thinking about the redesign that comes after that one as soon as he's done. Because you have to.

    (Speaking as a designer, but I'm not your designer. Please consult a fully qualified design professional local to you before creating your own brand identity. And please don't do it yourself using Canva, for fuck's sake.)
    Click to expand...
    But aren't there plenty of examples of redesigns that failed horribly? Sometimes keeping the old really helps out (thinking of www.google.com as least the search page design...they tried messing with it and got lots of backlash).
     
    cateye

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  • #2,116
    Echohead2 said:
    But aren't there plenty of examples of redesigns that failed horribly?
    Click to expand...

    Absolutely! Bad design can have terrible consequences. But horrible how? Is the design itself, or how the design is applied? Is it a qualitative judgement ("I don't like that") or quantitative ("I can't read these icon labels because the text is set in red on a purple background.")

    ZDNet's new logo may be controversial, but how some of the same ideas are applied to their new home page are quite functional—The yellow/green background works well when against white and black text and navigation elements. There's a persistent scroll of story headlines running all the way down the left hand side you never need to leave if you don't want to. Then feature stories with large photos stacked along the right. It's geometric and structural and works at a variety of screen sizes. Text is a basic, readable sans-serif. If anything, it's remarkably understated given how wild some homepage designs are these days.

    When viewed in a vacuum, the logo lacks reason. When viewed as part of the home page, it's a brand anchor to the whole design and works in a way that the old logo wouldn't. But of course, that doesn't preclude anyone from having a negative reaction to it.
     
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    LordDaMan

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  • #2,117
    cateye said:
    Absolutely! Bad design can have terrible consequences. But horrible how? Is the design itself, or how the design is applied? Is it a qualitative judgement ("I don't like that") or quantitative ("I can't read these icon labels because the text is set in red on a purple background.")

    ZDNet's new logo may be controversial, but how some of the same ideas are applied to their new home page are quite functional—The yellow/green background works well when against white and black text and navigation elements. There's a persistent scroll of story headlines running all the way down the left hand side you never need to leave if you don't want to. Then feature stories with large photos stacked along the right. It's geometric and structural and works at a variety of screen sizes. Text is a basic, readable sans-serif. If anything, it's remarkably understated given how wild some homepage designs are these days.

    When viewed in a vacuum, the logo lacks reason. When viewed as part of the home page, it's a brand anchor to the whole design and works in a way that the old logo wouldn't. But of course, that doesn't preclude anyone from having a negative reaction to it.
    Click to expand...
    I have to disagree with you because the website seems to be designed for tiny mobile devices and just stinks on anything else

    (there's a lot of images and they are rather big, so ample use of hide tags to make this thread more bearable

    Take for instance the "tiny" version for mobile:
    Revealed content
    small-mobile.jpg

    Pretty standard stuff there. It fits nicely in the window.


    Now go to the regular sized site:


    Revealed content
    full-desktop.jpg
    Almost a third of the space is wasted by whitespace. I get why they did that, to remain in sync with the front page but it's hard to read with all that white space. If it had the same space on Both sides, your eyes could at least follow it better

    Now to the drop down menus:
    Revealed content
    menu-tredning.jpg
    Not too bad right?

    Now go to the advice menu
    Revealed content
    menu.jpg
    It seems like it's aligned with the menu choices, right? Lets skip back to the security dropdown:

    Revealed content
    menu-sec.jpg
    How is this even aligned?
     
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