@SteveBellovin@mastodon.lawprofs.org
@SteveBellovin@mastodon.lawprofs.org avatar

SteveBellovin

@SteveBellovin@mastodon.lawprofs.org

I'm a computer science professor and affiliate law prof at Columbia University. Author of "Thinking Security". Dinosaur photographer. Not ashamed to say that I’m still masking, because long Covid terrifies me.
https://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb

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nickm, to random
@nickm@abyssdomain.expert avatar

Once AI is no longer captivating investors, what will people do with all that compute capacity?

A: make giant virtual prayer wheel, beg for forgiveness
B: sew gpus into underwear, market as personal heaters
C: get influencers to wear cpus as fashion, or possibly eat them as tiktok challenge
D: wait 15 years for the next AI summer, resell current cpus as "experienced" and "pretrained"
E: convince investors that the secret of power lies in the quintillionth digits of pi
F: ask the LLM what to do

SteveBellovin,
@SteveBellovin@mastodon.lawprofs.org avatar

@nickm Use them to calculate the nine billion names of God?

lauren, to random
@lauren@mastodon.laurenweinstein.org avatar

So I've been asked the following. Given a set of different CSV files, the first record of which is the various field labels, and all following records are data, are there any Linux-based tools that can take these files as input and graph them in a reasonable way without being manually configured for each CSV file? I don't know of any Linux-based tools that would handle this automatically in a reasonable way. Did I miss something? Thanks!

SteveBellovin,
@SteveBellovin@mastodon.lawprofs.org avatar

@lauren Python has good tools for dealing with CSV files formatted like that. If you know Python, you could write a very short script that would generate the proper gnuplot commands. (I think there are Python plotting packages but I don't know them, which is why I always use Python to generate the gnuplot input.)

mattblaze, (edited ) to random
@mattblaze@federate.social avatar

The Google AI summary suggesting that people eat rocks is amusing, but it's not a great example of AI "hallucination". The text is a pretty straight and accurate summary of a satirical Onion article. This isn't a complex algorithm synthesizing bogus conclusions from good data (something that's definitely a real risk in AI systems). This is simply Google mis-categorizing non factual input as factual, something it could have (and has) done just as easily without "AI".

SteveBellovin,
@SteveBellovin@mastodon.lawprofs.org avatar

@mattblaze @PlasmaGryphon The problem here is that today's AI systems are really bad at understanding context, humor, sarcasm, etc. If I do a search on loose cheese on pizza and see a link to theonion.com, I know the context of what I'll get. An LLM does not, which means it should have been excluded from the training data. But can Google do that with content (like snakes at dissertation defenses) that has been reposted? I suspect that if anyone can, they can—but canthey?

cstross, to random
@cstross@wandering.shop avatar

See also: "FAQ: The “Snake Fight” Portion of Your Thesis Defense" https://web.mit.edu/bbaren/Public/snakes.html

See, MIT has it on their web site so it MUST be valid training input for BullshitGPT!

(FYI @lauren )

SteveBellovin,
@SteveBellovin@mastodon.lawprofs.org avatar

@cstross @lauren Ah—they trained their models on McSweeney's, too: https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/faq-the-snake-fight-portion-of-your-thesis-defense

jvagle, to random
@jvagle@mastodon.lawprofs.org avatar

How can any of Alito's opinions realistically be considered free from motivated reasoning?

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/23/us/supreme-court-south-carolina-voting-map.html

SteveBellovin,
@SteveBellovin@mastodon.lawprofs.org avatar

@jvagle Are you assuming that the GOP cares?

SteveBellovin, to random
@SteveBellovin@mastodon.lawprofs.org avatar

This is one of (many) lessons I learned, way back when, from Brian Kernighan. His approach: first, get it right (my phrasing: there's no benefit to doing the wrong thing thing quickly); second, measure, because your guesses about bottlenecks are almost certainly wrong; third, optimize.
https://infosec.exchange/@larryosterman/112486986728658068

SteveBellovin,
@SteveBellovin@mastodon.lawprofs.org avatar

@Dianora Mmm—not sure I agree. There are often pretty solutions that are just plain wrong. Nor is the converse—ugly code is bad code—necessarily correct; reality is often ugly. Try writing pretty code to handle the US tax code…

brianklaas, to random
@brianklaas@journa.host avatar

Well that’s a plot twist: I finally get UK citizenship and I get to vote in my first British general election on…the 4th of July.

SteveBellovin,
@SteveBellovin@mastodon.lawprofs.org avatar

@brianklaas I was wondering if that was coincidental or not…

mattblaze, to random
@mattblaze@federate.social avatar

I spent about an hour an a half the other day on Roosevelt Island, shooting Big Allis. Mostly trying out different vantage points and then shooting different versions as the light changed.

While I was there, a guy went by on a bike, did a double take, and stopped dead in his tracks. He wanted to ask me about my tripod head (an Arca-Swiss "Cube"). We talked for a while about tripod preferences, which is much more interesting than camera preferences.

SteveBellovin,
@SteveBellovin@mastodon.lawprofs.org avatar

@mattblaze You go to Roosevelt Island and don't photograph the wild turkey that's been hanging out there lately? (It had been in Manhattan, even perching on Saks Fifth Avenue, before (correctly) deciding that Roosevelt Island was probably more congenial.)

SteveBellovin,
@SteveBellovin@mastodon.lawprofs.org avatar

@mattblaze It's been hanging out a block north of the subway station.

SteveBellovin,
@SteveBellovin@mastodon.lawprofs.org avatar

@mattblaze Entirely possible—there are reports that some people were trying to get far to close and hence harassing it.

lauren, to random
@lauren@mastodon.laurenweinstein.org avatar

Anyone really paying attention always knew what Trump was. But Rudy G.'s fall is nothing short of biblical in scope.

SteveBellovin,
@SteveBellovin@mastodon.lawprofs.org avatar

@lauren Those of us from the NYC area have never been under any illusions about him. He’s always been an authoritarian, self-aggrandizing thug; in TFG, he met a kindred soul.

SteveBellovin,
@SteveBellovin@mastodon.lawprofs.org avatar

@lauren RIght—and one of the things he did after 9/11 was to try to postpone the election to replace him., since he was term-limited.

SteveBellovin,
@SteveBellovin@mastodon.lawprofs.org avatar

@sumisu3 @lauren It existed before him but he expanded it.

cstross, (edited ) to random
@cstross@wandering.shop avatar

Can anyone recommend a decent iTerm2 replacement for macOS now that iTerm2 has jumped the shark and is pushing ChatGPT integration down my throat? (Preferably one that is (a) free and (b) doesn't require hand-editing JSON files to change the font size and typeface.)

EDIT: hint: point (b) is crucial—if I have to hand-edit a config file that's an automatic fail. Life is too short to be forced to futz around to configure a basic tool.

SteveBellovin,
@SteveBellovin@mastodon.lawprofs.org avatar

@cstross Let me know what you eventually pick. ITerm2 has long had a case of galloping featuritis, none of which interest me.

SteveBellovin,
@SteveBellovin@mastodon.lawprofs.org avatar

@enoclue @cstross My X apps move around overnight when the display sleeps.

SteveBellovin,
@SteveBellovin@mastodon.lawprofs.org avatar

@enoclue @cstross Maybe. Not really an option for me, with the external monitor and laptop I have. I haven't tried it in my office, where I have a Mac Studio with two monitors.

karlauerbach, to random
@karlauerbach@sfba.social avatar

I find it amusing how stupid some organizations are.

Consider "Tribel" - hoping to be an alternative to Musk & Zuck - it's home page on the web has an unavoidable pop-up demanding assent to a "Policy Update" in which you agree that you have read that policy.

Except that you can not read that policy until you assent.

That website must have been assembled by people who built Tesla's driver interface - clearly they have never attempted to use it.

SteveBellovin,
@SteveBellovin@mastodon.lawprofs.org avatar

@karlauerbach I’ve seen that with Certificate Policy Statements

SteveBellovin, to random
@SteveBellovin@mastodon.lawprofs.org avatar

Worth reading. Note that “law enforcement as we know it" is largely about the surveillance state.
https://press.coop/@nytimes/112457287671658010

mattblaze, to random
@mattblaze@federate.social avatar

The secret to a good marriage is to have a clear mutual understanding of which partner is responsible for the flag in front of your house.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/16/us/justice-alito-upside-down-flag.html?unlocked_article_code=1.sk0.ya83.n8G49DAhJEPK&smid=url-share

SteveBellovin,
@SteveBellovin@mastodon.lawprofs.org avatar

@mattblaze It's a question of traditional family values, as upheld by people ranging from Justice Alito to Senator Menendez:
Man: Profession: public official
Woman: Profession: crime-maker

SteveBellovin, to random
@SteveBellovin@mastodon.lawprofs.org avatar

Say what?!?!!!!
https://press.coop/@nytimes/112453112829237738

evacide, to random
@evacide@hachyderm.io avatar

When I talk about digital privacy, there is always some smug genius who shrugs and tells me, "Who cares? We all know we don't have any privacy anyway." Nothing could be more wrong. Convincing you that the fight is already over to the way people in power get you to stop resisting.

SteveBellovin,
@SteveBellovin@mastodon.lawprofs.org avatar

@evacide I saw you on PBS last night!

SteveBellovin,
@SteveBellovin@mastodon.lawprofs.org avatar

@benjistokman @evacide https://infosec.exchange/@CaffeineDreams/112452489772170768

peterhoneyman, to random
@peterhoneyman@a2mi.social avatar

why is it that WiFi never works for me on planes, neither on my iPhone nor my iPad? I must have set network something or other on them … i get redirected from, e.g., connect.klm.com to this page.

works for lynn’s iPhone… ¯_(ツ)_/¯

it’s DNS, innit?

SteveBellovin,
@SteveBellovin@mastodon.lawprofs.org avatar

@peterhoneyman Auto-VPN setup?

peterhoneyman, to random
@peterhoneyman@a2mi.social avatar

vatican city

image/jpeg

SteveBellovin,
@SteveBellovin@mastodon.lawprofs.org avatar

@peterhoneyman Looks like a faint double rainbow!

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