Is this how low we've sunk - that even below taking a single personal anecdote and generalizing it to everything - now we're taking zero experience and dismissing things based on vibes?
I've seen lots of LLM-slop-lovers doing the same thing. Maybe it's a pattern.
We are way lower. At least this comment allows uncertainty.
The AI doomer literature is entirely from an armchair, with 100% certainty about the outcome, high confidence predictions about its timing. It’s literally fiction.
This is fallacious and extremely disrespectful (or even malicious?). You don't have to propose a way to fix a broken thing to point out that it's broken.
Normal and sane people understand this intuitively. If someone goes to a mechanic because their car is broken and the mechanic says "well, if you can tell that you car is broken, then you should be able to figure out how to fix it" - that mechanic would be universally hated and go out of business in months. Same thing for a customer complaining about a dish made for them in a restaurant, or a user pointing out a bug in a piece of software.
> Anubis uses a Proof-of-Work scheme in the vein of Hashcash
And if you look up Hashcash on Wikipedia you get https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hashcash which explains how Hashcash works in a fairly straightforward manner (unlike most math pages).
Oh fun so now we're effectively draining users' phone and laptop batteries now just to prove that they have batteries and somehow that's a proxy for them being human
Given that you're clearly completely ignorant of everything in the anti-spam space, you should probably do some research before making uninformed comments like this.
> For the same reason I'm not using Chrome, which intentionally kneecaps browser history sync when sync encryption is enabled, effectively forcing users to choose between non-synced history and privacy, when e.g. Firefox manages to do encrypted sync just fine.
This is novel to me - what's the kneecap specifically? How do you only kinda sync browser history??
Chrome only syncs "typed URL" (i.e. everything you enter in the address bar/"omnibox") website visits when your profile is encrypted, as far as I remember. "True" history sync is somehow tied to Google's generic "activity sync", which only exists unencrypted.
For me, this completely defeats the point of having history sync in the first place, so this particular change was what made me switch browsers several years ago.
Whataboutism (doesn't matter if another entity does it - if it's wrong, then pointing out another entity doing it is fallacious), redirection, and false dichotomy (you can care about the US and China doing it - for all you know the parent poster was in the EU and does care about both).
Nobody mentioned the US upstream of your comment until you did. This is obvious propaganda - one of the classic maneuvers in the PRC influence playbook is, when called out on anything, to try to implement whataboutism with the United States (even if it's not relevant, like here, which is equally sad and funny).
> No, because programs sending telemetry to the US is so routine that and pervasive that we don't even remark on it.
That's not a valid reason. Nice try, though.
> Now who's committing a whole catalogue of fallacies?
Calling a fallacious and manipulative comment that literally follows a country's propaganda playbook "propaganda" isn't a fallacy - it's just true.
It's extremely telling that you didn't comment on any of the actual points that I made, such as it being a false dichotomy and whataboutism - because you know that I'm right, and so you had to resort to insinuations and redirections yourself. Congratulations, you just proved me right.
The original comment was neither false dichotomy nor whataboutism. It was a simple point that the rest of the world is already used to their data being snooped by the US government. So apart from US exceptionalism, there is no particular reason they would be especially alarmed by the prospect of their data being sent to "Chinese servers".
What OP's saying is fundamentally true though? Unfortunately most people don't really care about privacy, regardless of whether it's going to an American company or a Chinese one.
Not exactly. Most US companies have a presence in Europe and so give at least an attempt to obey European laws. While the laws are different and not as strong, the US has privacy laws in place that will protect you. China might have some of those same laws - but they don't apply to the government at all (the US makes some attempt to have laws apply to the government)
That doesn't mean you should be happy with data in America, but China is worse.
Last I knew Opera still had a decent amount of engineering staff in Poland, and still had some in Sweden, both in the EU, plus still has some amount of staff in Norway, not in the EU but definitely in Europe.
That’s not to say their privacy story is fantastic, but they very much still have European operations.
> US has privacy laws in place that will protect you
They don't protect us at all. Thanks to Snowden, we all know that the US government has extremely sophisticated and wide-ranging ability to get access to any data we share with American companies.
Factually incorrect. US privacy laws pose a huge burden to US intelligence. The 4th amendment still applies. Warrants still exist.
> Thanks to Snowden, we all know that the US government has extremely sophisticated and wide-ranging ability to get access to any data we share with American companies.
Citation needed.
> And why so?
In the PRC, there are no privacy laws to protect you from the government. "Private" companies are an extension of the government and all of the larger ones are required to have a CCP party member on board to ensure that they are "aligned" with what the party wants. The party happily disappears dissidents at will, threatens dissidents in other countries, requires that all domestic companies provide encryption keys (or otherwise made encrypted data accessible) on demand with zero warrants or other legal protections, maintains the largest network of surveillance cameras in the world (several times more than the total number of those in the United States), and many more things.
This is extremely common knowledge, easily searchable online, and is factually and categorically different than anything the US, or any other Western country, does. Only the terminally ignorant or the propagandists believe that the PRC's surveillance is remotely similar to that of any western country - the available evidence comprehensively disproves that conspiracy theory.
> [T]he US has privacy laws in place that will protect you [...] (the US makes some attempt to have laws apply to the government)
I believe the US stance is that nobody outside the US is entitled to court relief against the US government regarding their privacy, and nobody outside the US and EU is entitled to any relief at all, even from the executive (the “Data Protection Review Court” non-court, formerly the “Privacy Shield Ombudsperson”). In the EU, there are some protections in some countries but for example the GDPR specifically does not apply to governments.
I mean, the Chinese government is worse on this, but the US is nevertheless really bad and a number of EU countries also suck to a remarkable extent. Until the US press starts dropping the “of Americans” from their latest surprised-Pikachu headlines on “mass government surveillance of Americans”, I’m unconvinced the situation will improve.
Windows (including Notepad and Explorer), too. I think ~Office~ ~Office 365~ ~Microsoft 365~ Copilot 365 is still technically useful despite the insane branding and licensing and AI slop features, but I doubt it'll last much longer.
> a lot of those uncertainty markers aren't fluff, they're essential to honest, accurate communication.
> Similarly, many times when you say a variation on "I know you're the expert on the codebase" or whatever, that's because it's true and important. Something I think is a problem, which this article wants me to phrase as a short, plain declaration, might actually just be a misunderstanding on my part.
This is not what the article says. The author is not advocating for removal of relevant information (including uncertainty markers and that which you describe as "true and important") - only information that is not relevant, such as "I'm not sure if I'm missing something here and sorry if this is a dumb question but" that is an example in the post.
And, if the information may be relevant, the author would ask you to include it - concisely, without fluff.
The main thing that Crocker's Rules are trying to cut out (in a LIMITED SPECIFIC OPT-IN BASIS) is specifically irrelevant information due to social graces/fear of offense. If it could be useful, the author (and Crocker) would have you include it.
Look at the actual examples they give of what you should say. Everything but the bald assertion is stripped away.
If you're saying the actual proper behavior is a middle ground: I agree! But that's not what the article is saying. (At least, not clearly, which would be its own irony.)
> Look at the actual examples they give of what you should say. Everything but the bald assertion is stripped away.
Right, I think the examples aren't the best. But, around the examples, look at what the author is advocating for:
> to skip social cushioning
> "your feelings about how I might receive this..."
> bears responsibility for their own emotional reaction to its content
> When you spend the first third of your message establishing that you are a nice person who means well
...etc. They're pretty clearly emphasizing the emotional content of messages, rather than informational content.
Then they explicitly say that the intent is to provide relevant information:
> You can document contributing factors if they are actually actionable, meaning if there is something structural that needs to change, name it specifically and attach a proposed fix to it.
...and then separate that from emotions:
> But confessing your emotional state and your reasoning process and your extenuating circumstances is not documentation, it is self-absolution
Yes, I agree that the author probably should have been a bit more clear, because people can get upset when it comes to workplace politics/communication, and clarity never hurts. But I'm pretty sure that the intent is what you'd want it to be.
I would love to see a modern competitive game with optional anticheat that, when enabled, allows you to queue for a separate matchmaking pool that is exclusive to other anticheat users. For players in the no-anticheat pool, there could be "community moderation" that anti-anticheat players advocate for.
It'd be really interesting to see what would happen - for instance, what fraction of players would pick each pool during the first few weeks after launch, and then how many of them would switch after? What about players who joined a few months or a year after launch?
Unfortunately, pretty much the only company that could make this work is Valve, because they're the only one who actually cares for players and is big enough that they could gather meaningful data. And I don't think that even Valve will see enough value in this to dedicate the substantial resources it'd take to try to implement.
This trust system reminds me of social verification of records in Trackmania. Since physics is deterministic, suspicious replay input is the source of truth which is both easy to fabricate (e.g. via TAS tools) and verify (available in replay file).
> I would love to see a modern competitive game with optional anticheat that, when enabled, allows you to queue for a separate matchmaking pool that is exclusive to other anticheat users. For players in the no-anticheat pool, there could be "community moderation" that anti-anticheat players advocate for.
This is roughly what Valve does for CS2. But, as far as I understand, it's not very effective and unfortunately still results in higher cheating rates than e.g. Valorant.
Huh. When you say that "it's not very effective" do you mean the segmentation between the pools, or the actual anticheat isn't very good? (I'm assuming the latter - I've heard that VAC is pretty bad as far as anticheat goes)
Oh sorry - I misread your suggestion! I thought you were talking about separate matchmaking logic for known cheaters, but you're asking about opt-in matchmaking for those willing to use invasive anticheat.
The example still kind of applies. In the CS world, serious players use Faceit for matchmaking, which requires you to install a kernel-level anticheat. This is basically what you're suggesting, but operated by a 3rd party.
Hmm, I guess that since VAC is not a kernel-level anticheat, the comparison between it and Faceit for CS is pretty close to my idea. Thanks for pointing that out.
VAC is actually an AI based anticheat. I guess IF (a big if) it ever gets good enough it will be better than any kernel level AC, because it analyzes the gameplay, not the inputs, meaning a DMA cheat would also be caught.
"VAC" is a catch-all term for all of Valve's anti-cheating mechanisms.
The primary one is a standard user-mode software module, that does traditional scanning.
The AI mechanism you're referring to is these days referred to as "VAC Live" (previously, VACNet). The primary game it is deployed on is Counter-Strike 2. From what we understand, it is a very game-dependent stack, so it is not universally deploy-able.
I don't think that's what VAC is. I think VAC just looks for known cheat patterns in memory and such, and if it finds indisputable proof of cheating it marks a player for banning in the next wave. Maybe there is some ML involved in finding these patterns but I think it's very strictly controlled by humans to prevent fase positives. That's why VAC bans are irreversible, false positives are supposed to be impossible.
Valve has some AI detection stuff for CS2, but it’s remarkably ineffective. VAC itself delivers small DLLs that get manual mapped by Steam service, do some analysis and send that to Valve (at least to the best of my knowledge, there may be more logic implemented in Valve’s games or in Steam/Steam service).
Wait, so the "community alternative" is also kernel-level anticheat? I think that's different from what I'm proposing - I'm suggesting a comparison between an anticheat and no anticheat (with community policing of lobbies and handing out of penalties).
It was terrible as it required the community to conclude beyond reasonable doubt the suspect was cheating, and cheats today are sophisticated enough to make that conclusion very difficult to make
Because their (or their friend's) computer can't run the anticheat, but they're interested in playing with friends? My sister and mom wanted me to play Valorant with them a free years back, but apparently it needs kernel anticheat, so I just can't run it. I'm not going to buy a new computer for a game.
And the way community policing worked in the past is that the "police" (refs) could just kick or ban you. They don't need a trial system if the community doesn't want that.
> Why would a player knowingly choose to play on matchmaking that is advertising no anti-cheat?
I guess I didn't exactly make that clear...
A few of the arguments advanced by the "anti-anticheat" crowd that inevitably pops up in these threads are "anticheat is ineffective so there's no point to using it" and "anticheat is immoral because players aren't given a choice to use it or not and most of them would choose to not use it".
I don't believe that either of these are true (and given the choice I would almost never pick the no-anticheat queue), but there's not a lot of good high-quality data to back that up. Hence, the proposal for a dual-queue system to try to gather that data.
Putting in the community review of the no-anticheat pool is just to head off the inevitable goalpost-moving of "well of course no system would be worse than a crappy system (anticheat), you need to compare the best available alternative (community moderation)".
> Why would a player knowingly choose to play on matchmaking that is advertising no anti-cheat?
My understanding of the proposal is that it advertises no invasive anticheat (meaning mostly rootkit/kernel anticheat). So, the value proposition is anyone who doesn't want a rootkit on their computer. This could be due to anything from security concerns to desiring (more) meaningful ownership of one's devices.
It might be, although trust factor has a major outcome of match quality.
I have over 10,000 hours in the game, majority played on official servers with quite a low % of matches impacted by cheaters. The match quality does deteriorate with Premier rating. I noticed a decent jump in cheaters after about 25k rating, although the number is not as much as people like to make it out to be.
> pretty much the only company that could make this work is Valve
at least when focusing on counter-strike (CSGO/CS2), they've tried tons of ways to segregate the player base in terms of trustworthy vs not.
from "anti-cheat" vs not, verifying users using phones, paying vs not, you name it.
none of their initiatives managed to ward off the bad actors from the "secured" version. does not give me the confidence that they could make a system work effectively, but something that can work cross-platform, perhaps.
It exists, it's called FACEIT (for CS, specifically). Anyone who seriously cares about the game at a high level is pretty much exclusively playing there.
Community moderation simply doesn't work at scale for anticheat - in level of effort required, root cause detection, and accuracy/reliability.
I support this idea. Personally, I do not really care about cheating in video games. If some is cheating in a video game, I can just turn it off, go outside, and take deep breath of fresh air and touch some grass.
I rather play with cheaters here and there than install some kernel level malware on machine just to make sure EA, Activision, et al can keep raking in money hand over fist.
Or better yet, I can just play on console where there is no cheating that I have ever seen.
I can't be an anarchist because I don't believe anarchy exists. In every group of humans, power structures and hierarchies form spontaneously from normal social interaction. Even if you abolished all forms of government, they would simply reform. A state of anarchy is impossible.
> Any man who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust and willingly accepts the penalty by staying in jail to arouse the conscience of the community on the injustice of the law is at that moment expressing the very highest respect for the law out of all other freedom struggles.
Civil disobedience is wrong. Society has established ways to change the rules. Breaking rules instead of changing them is disrespectful to the society that has been built. Just because you quote someone, that does not mean what they are advocating for is just.
Society is wrong. It allows trillion dollar corporations to simply buy the laws that they want to impose on you while conveniently leaving loophopes for themselves. Why the hell would you want to "change" this rigged system through the system? That's mind boggling.
There is absolutely no reason at all to even so much as recognize these laws as legitimate. Society can go to hell if it thinks otherwise. They were supposed to be working for us, not the corporations. Since they aren't, we simply revoke their power over us. It really is that easy.
Power isn't something you have, it's loaned out to you, and it can be revoked. People give you power because they believe you'll act in their best interests and solve their problems for them. Once it becomes clear that's not happening, there is absolutely no reason at all to defer to some corrupt "authorities" who are doing nothing but enriching themselves at our expense.
> Society is wrong. It allows trillion dollar corporations to simply buy the laws that they want to impose on you while conveniently leaving loophopes for themselves. Why the hell would you want to "change" this rigged system through the system? That's mind boggling.
So much for "Resolving inconsistencies between my ideas is the entire reason why I come here to discuss them."[1] - you're just here to engage in propaganda.
(propaganda that, for the future record, isn't even true - corporations do not get votes and do not get to "buy the laws they want")
>Why the hell would you want to "change" this rigged system through the system? That's mind boggling.
The current system allows for changing it if you have enough support. People who try to go around it because they do not have the needed support. If society was truly wrong we could easily dissolve it.
The book of Isaiah tells us to denounce unjust law. And the book of Matthew tells us to recognize Caesar’s secular authority. Anarchism is not the only explanation.
This is just false. I know many Americans and have never observed any of them acting like this, so categorical statements like this are false.
Your claims would be more credible if you didn't lead with something so obviously untrue.
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