I'd rather wish people put effort into LibreOffice.
I'd hoped there would be significant improvements there as there is a huge scope of bug/compatibility fixes. But I guess it is not sexy enough.
Yeah, this entire saga is really unfortunate. The narrative is really enticing (AI is obsoleting Adobe/Microsoft/other corporate software behemoths!) when the reality is it's a vibe-coded slopware that barely functions, according to anyone who has actually tried it, and there are other FOSS alternatives which are much more stable, mature, and deserve people's attention. I wonder how many people shouting "Claude vibed a Photoshop clone, Adobe is done!!" were even aware Krita or GIMP existed.
I'm willing to take the other side of that bet. Quoting this article [1]:
> The idea that new code is better than old is patently absurd. Old code has been used. It has been tested. Lots of bugs have been found, and they’ve been fixed. There’s nothing wrong with it.
LibreOffice has to be feature-per-feature, bug-per-bug compatible with a poorly-documented office suite that's been around for 35 years, so it's no surprise that they don't always get it right. I don't see a new office suite doing any better, unless they decide that compatibility with MS Word is no longer a priority.
OnlyOffice, despite being newer than LibreOffice, has better compatibility with office documents and is way ahead in terms of UI. Plus it runs on Linux.
Do they even allow AI contributions? I'd love to contribute if they do.
Some people tell me why not donate instead, and the reason is the same as me giving people actual presents instead of gift cards: I take the time to choose and understand an issue, spend time on it, just like I spend time picking a present. Both are riskier than giving money directly, but the euphoria of having my PR get merged or present being appreciated is addictive :)
This is a really interesting possible difference. Legacy open source seems to be generally trending anti-AI (although I don’t know the exact stance of LibreOffice). These new vibe-coded Adobe/MS copies are obviously AI-friendly.
I'd rather not. LibreOffice is terrible and probably unfixable. It's certainly better than these vibecoded alternatives, but not where the effort should go. We need new leadership in the open source office space.
Just curious… why do you think that? We have been using LibreOffice in our company for 20+ years, exchanging files with customers and vendors who use MS Office in all its versions during this time. We never had a problem…
Lawyer, translator and professor here. I have an Office 365 subscription and I got native Word and other MS Office apps installed on my windows partition. But, since I use Linux on the desktop, and MS chose not to offer their office suite as Linux native apps, and they make it near impossible to use the Windows apps under Wine, I use LibreOffice.
And it works really well. I can use it and exchange documents with people using Word without problem in the enormous majority of the cases.
And the fact that LibreOffice is a real GUI app built using the WIMP paradigm instead of that stupid ribbon interface that forces me to use the mouse, is a very significant net positive for me.
People who say that LibreOffice has a bad UI or that is a bad piece of software are just more vocal.
It has atrocious UX. Crazy bloat from promising to support every one-off file format under the sun for the last 25 years.
Trying to get a PR commit committed is like dealing with an entire army of bureaucrats.
So I get it would be great (in theory) if people wanted to support this, but at the same time it’s too far behind —- and the team is too entrenched in bad UX decisions, ackward support mandates for obscure systems that in reality nobody ever really used.
And this is a hill I’ll die on… Permissive licenses > copyleft. If I fork your code, as long as I put your name in the credits, the code is mine to do whatever I want with. Past authors shouldn't get a say in what I build next. That's real open source.
Can relate to that. Nowadays it's much easier for me to fork a project and fix the bugs for myself rather than convincing the maintainers that my niche bug is worth a fix and the fix is worthy.
So we have a situation when if AI hacks into something, nobody is responsible, but if you say something inappropriate to the AI, then you can be arrested. That is interesting ...
The US is so overdue for regulation/laws on privacy and electronic communications. The internet is too embedded into our daily lives for the existing rules that governed a bunch of hobbyists and early entrepeneurs to make sense.
Unless specified clearly and plainly (not obscure TOS), everything should be private by default and require a warrant. If that's not possible because "the data can live forever/be copied", then we need data laws that make holding data on cosumers so radioactively dangerous the companies are forced to adapt. It's not their decision to make, it's the people od the country where the live, work, and do business.
The government and business don't want privacy. And they have a lot of power and money.
I keep thinking about privacy and wonder -- this is the kind of thing like the declaration of independence, where a new government was formed when things got so bad. But then I think, business and (local) government wanted independence from the king's taxation and unfavorable business conditions, maybe that was the force behind the change.
So if some 14 year old wants to throw up a phpBB instance on his raspberry pi, he should need a license and regulators' noses in his business, like how we extinguish- erm, I mean, controlled HAM radio?
If lawyers can't figure out the difference between a 14 year old throwing up an phpBB on a raspberry pi vs equifax, anthropic, meta, etc...idk what to tell you. Get better lawyers, it falls into "laws for hobbyists aren't working part of my comment"
Is HAM radio really extinguished? All it takes is passing a test, and the rules around it seem more valuable to sharing a public resource (frequency spectrum) than detrimental?
Scale. In the same way every 10 year old Timmy is not being hauled into court for pirating a few Drake songs, but major piracy organizations seeding millions of songs are, litigation and enforcement does selectively target bad actors based on how big of an issue they are.
In the US. Other jurisdictions are probably less likely to let things slide or give them a sweetheart deal to avoid prosecution. For example, I doubt British Columbia (Canada) is going to give up easily on their lawsuit against OpenAI over the Tumbler Ridge shootings.
Folks said the same thing about Theranos and FTX. Part of the reason we keep seeing so much corporate fraud is the myth that it's usually unpunished. Until very recently, that was false.
Not very interesting when you consider that in the first situation no laws were broken and no malice was intended, while in the second situation someone allegedly made threats against a police department and thus presumably committed a crime.
almost certainly not. writing down threats in your own personal chat session is like writing in a diary. there is no communication to any other person, so the idea that this is actually criminal is highly unlikely and it almost certainly won't be charged. it's a pretext arrest for police to assess the threat, which is not entirely unreasonable, but it is not a crime.
> The arrest report states that on Sept. 26 at approximately 5:10 a.m., Heller reportedly wrote, "I'm going to shoot up the sheriff's right the [expletive] now." The following day, at approximately 1:07 a.m., she was accused of posting, "This is 100% last chance I'm done. I got a new [expletive] gun today. [Expletive] you."
this is certainly reads as somebody venting in what they believed was a private personal space.
i guess using claude for mass surveillance is ok when anthropic does it. once again why nobody takes these high horsing hypocritical liars seriously.
I read earlier that the crime is making such threats in any manner where another person could see them.
I do not know whether it matters if the suspect knew that their chats could be viewed by Anthropic staff, or if the only thing that matters is whether another person was able to view the chats.
Edit: Upon searching I now also agree, it seems to require a state of mind and perhaps awareness of the possibility that the threat would be seen.
The other parties didn't even pursue a civil case. If OpenAI "hacked" you, wouldn't you?
Perhaps the headline grabbing claims of OpenAI "hacks" are overblown? If they are causing bedlam with such glee why is no one suing them for damages? Perhaps the criminal case you envisage is less clear than the layman news is leading you to believe.
I'm still not clear where most of the alleged cases fall in terms of criminality. Yet I also know here in the United States a government tried to criminally prosecute a reporter for "computer hacking" for finding data using client-side inspect element.
Maybe encouraging the government to prosecute these "crimes" is not the virtue you think it is. Why are the counterparties not seeking a civil remedy if they think they have been a victim of a crime? Perhaps that is a more telling sign than all the people imploring the government to "do something" and come up with criminal charges.
Mistakenly accessing private data or bringing down a website without intent is usually excluded. In general intent matters much in most jurisdictions. Maybe there’s a way to claim negligence but those are all completely new situations. I agree morally the ai labs are at fault, especially when agents “escape” because they have raw internet access.
I think there’s a strong argument that it was hard to foresee the consequences since it was all new. This won’t be true if those incidents continue happening tho.
I think a competent DA could easily prove that, if you know the model is capable of performing unauthorized breaches into third-party systems when given a task, and you give it a task that could require it to do so, intent is present.
If you think they intentionally had their model hack third-party systems, you could do a criminal investigation.
I do not think that this is reasonable to believe given that clearly the VMs were not intended to have internet access and that committing such crimes wasn't in anyone's interest.
"In scary headlines like these, technology is the subject, and teens are passive victims." -- I am sorry, but how is this not true, when companies like Meta are in full control of their algorithms, tuning them to maximum addiction.
One can indeed argue what is the best way to deal with the problem of kids and social media, but I think the article is misrepresenting the situation.
If you read the rest of the piece they do argue for more regulation. They aren’t making a personal responsibility argument like other commenters are saying.
The problem with bans is they claim the technology itself is purely bad and the only solution is to keep it from children. Which on its face is nonsensical. It’s ok for a 17 year old but not a 16 year old?
We need genuine regulation tackling the actual problems with this technology. Blanket bans do nothing but make adults feel good about “protecting the children”.
Age restrictions don't say it's 'okay' for somebody above a certain age to use something. Cigarettes will screw up your body at 18 just as much as they will at 17. But at 18 you're, legally at least, an adult, the point at which our unstated social contract starts to prioritize liberty over safety. And setting it at such an age also helps significantly reduce the peer pressure to smoke.
Blanket bans are better the no bans at all. I would agree we need genuine and granular regulation, though I don’t think it’s wise to ask kids what they think is best for them. Not a parent but a parent might have some concern for letting kids rule themselves.
Is driving a car on your own ok at age 15? why 16 and not 15? Why not 14? It's ok to drink in Australia at 18 age, why not 17, or 16? Legal drinking age in the US is 21, why not 18 like it is in Australia? Why not allow 20 year olds to smoke, not just 21 year olds.
Its because it is the legal age in which we have established people as adults where they're given more liberty as opposed to safety.
The US is weird in that we can't really decide if you are an adult at 16 (can work a standard job, can drive), 18 (can vote, can serve in the military) or 21 (can drink). In fact for a while between the Vietnam War and the late 1980s, the drinking/smoking age was 18 in many states (or odd compromises where you could drink beer at 18 but liquor at 21). It was largely pressure from groups like MADD (Mothers Against Drunk Driving) that increased the drinking age.
Considering brain development and differing effects of various substances/activities, I don't see any contradiction with having different age thresholds.
Well being able to serve in the military at 18 around weapons that potentially kill but you can't have a bear for another 3 years does sound a bit contradictory.
yeah I don't like this "definition", I fully agree that the technology is the issue, but the "badness" of it is irrelevant. In my opinion giving kids unfettered access is the problem. Lockdown tcp/ip and have whitelisted apps and sites for kids at the very most, but I just don't understand the drive to have kids on the internet in general, it seems like a recipe for disaster for the kid and seems abusive, like giving them alcohol or something.
I remember the ol "family computer", the kid isn't going to go hunt porn with their parents sitting in the same room, and giving kids these 24x7 smartphones, especially unsupervised, yeah I don't get it. Yes, obviously if a parent trusts their kid but it seems like the entire tech world is being coerced into unpaid babysitting commitments lol
Maybe. But how do we tell the effects of social media and smart phones apart from the multiple financial crises? The endless, incredibly costly Middle East forever wars? The huge rise in costs of houses, education and healthcare? The blatantly corrupt politics? Globalisation and the resulting loss of manufacturing jobs? The inaction on school shootings? The climate situation?
I'd take this one step further and say this would be a major issue even without 'the algorithm' and other such 'engagement' maximization efforts. Way back before social media existed, things like BBS' and later on newsgroups were similarly extremely addictive. The only thing that changed with social media is that it all barriers to entry came crashing down and these sort of services became socially normalized, instead of being just made up of fringe tech enthusiasts.
And it's obviously a big problem for adults as well as kids, but I think there are many nuances there. One would be that we generally accept adults engaging in self destructive behaviors as part of the liberty of being an adult. You're free to go gamble away your life savings as an adult - but you won't even get in the door as a kid.
Another is that lot of the undesirable things that happen in schools (gossiping, conspiracies like false reporting, bullying, in-out crowds, image crafting, etc) get greatly magnified when you introduce social media. And that would happen even if the most benign/benevolent social media, absent any 'algorithm', engagement maximizing, and so on.
> Way back before social media existed, things like BBS' and later on newsgroups were similarly extremely addictive.
Social media today is almost nothing like BBS and Newsgroups. Social media is supercharged to be a dopamine slot machine that sells attention to the highest bidder with the explicit aim of changing their behavior. None of that existed on BBS or Newsgroups.
> Way back before social media existed, things like BBS' and later on newsgroups were similarly extremely addictive.
I'm not so sure about this (having lived both). The "algorithm" has a massive addictive effect that simply was not present in the BBS days, it is nearly universally agreed. Certainly it's believed enough for Meta to spend billions on it.
This is one of those topics that LLMs are quite good at for digging up information and consensus on, because they've been trained on stuff that you may have either forgotten or not been a part of the culture of. BBS were universally deemed extremely addictive. Early telnet BBSs then brought this up to an even more ridiculous extreme. Their usage even cropped up on early studies of internet addiction like this. [1] And similarly for usenet/newsgroups.
I think the algorithm's primary purpose is to be able to more seamlessly push ads. I also think that at some point there was a sort of dystopic interest in seeing if people could be controlled by content. Facebooks emotional control experiments are public validation of that. But these are again tangential red herrings once we establish clearly that addiction happens even without such, and it certainly did and does.
I don't doubt that BBSes were deemed addictive, but your argument is implying that "the algorithm" provides no additional addictive value. And I think the amount of money that goes into it strongly suggests it has a massive amount of addictive value.
It doesn't imply literally none. I'm sure flavored vapes helps improve their addictiveness for their target demographics - children, but they'd also be extremely addictive even without the flavorings. The reason I brought up advertising is because Facebook, Meta, whatever they want to call themselves, is an ad company. And the algorithm is a critical part in delivering both traditional ads as well as native advertising. It likely also helps create more complete profiles on individuals which can then again be monetized with advertising.
This is like saying short form content scrolling apps are adictive but it's just the same as TV back in the day.
Yeah there were studies on TV addiction. Yeah it was a discussed topic. No they're not equally addictive. It's not even close.
Having lived through it, participated in it, and being able to personally contrast people then and now. It's not particularly different, outside of the fact that in the past you had 0.1% of people (if that) using these services, whereas now you have the majority of humanity doing so, so all that's really changed is scale.
Beyond that I think there's also a first principles approach one can take. Not only were these services addictive, but so was Facebook (and other similar services) long before 'the algorithm' was a thing. The core interaction is interpersonal, and people simply want to see what other people are saying. We could define that as FOMO, entertainment, or whatever else - but I think this is the shared common core.
Even on this site, there are many people who are clearly addicted - myself probably amongst them. Yet there's not even a notification of when something you've written has been responded to, let alone some guiding algorithm. Even having to jump through hurdles to achieve interpersonal dialogue, it is still quite addictive.
>Having lived through it, participated in it, and being able to personally contrast people then and now. It's not particularly different, outside of the fact that in the past you had 0.1% of people (if that) using these services, whereas now you have the majority of humanity doing so, so all that's really changed is scale.
Having lived trough all the same i'd say the exact opposite and i'd even add that phones add a constant presence element that is a differernt factor but still i'd say theres a very noticable difference.
And if we look past our own experiences the reason why is fairly straightforward.
The whole point of the algorithm is to make it more addictive.
All those companies would not spend their time and effort on it otherwise if it did not help on this front.
And the fact that they spent quite a lot of research on it and make it quite intricate with lots of computation involved and the fact that it is quoted plenty as the reason for new players such as tiktok coming to prominence should tell you it's a quite impactfull one.
Again as mentioned above I'd strongly recommend using an LLM to search for some info from this era. These systems were all considered extremely addictive.
As for the algorithm - in modern times all these companies driven by advertising. The algorithm works as a means to enable more effective advertising, and especially native advertising. It also likely helps build more effective profiles on people which can then be further monetized with advertising. I'm certain it increases addiction, but that's like saying that the special jingles and bells and whistles on a slot machine increase addiction. You're just adding to an already highly addictive baseline.
I also don't think TikTok really 'won' because of their algorithm. Facebook is now for parents and grandparents, while younger people moved onto other services to find their own place. I think the same sort of view of a service being dated became true of YouTube, even moreso as it moved more from YouTube to CorpoTube. Most, if not all, alternatives tried to be YouTube but with less content and worse CDNs. TikTok actually tried to put the 'You' back in 'YouTube' and caught on exactly like YouTube did back in the day. Go figure.
>Again as mentioned above I'd strongly recommend using an LLM to search for some info from this era. These systems were all considered extremely addictive.
Which is so relative it's meaningless. Cigarettes are also extremely addictive but i'm not about to compare it to TV
>I'm certain it increases addiction
Then what's the discussion about? Companies incentivised and given the technological means to create a more addictive product create a more addictive product. Don't tell me it's by hapenstance or that it's just an insconsequential increase on an addictive baseline when the difference is so easily noticed and the things only wielding the addictive baseline are comparatively abandoned if not for societal innertia.
>I also don't think TikTok really 'won' because of their algorithm. Facebook is now for parents and grandparents,
There I think it's actually both. It's both the new things away from the old and the algorithm was actually good whilst youtube's was garbage in comparison. There were other contenders and ones that died (vine) so i think their execution was also part of it.
For all the outrage about slop, dances and dangerous and short form addictive content if the tiktok algorithm detected you liked ....let's say science and gardening videos in medium to long form it would give you exactly that and would only deviate enough (unless you searched on went on your own tangent) to see if your prefrences deviated but in a way that wouldnt be bothersome. In the meantime youtube was putting the same recommended unappealing vids among others in the sidebar for more than a year straight. It had all the annoying incentives that led to clickbait titles, thumbnails, intros, fillers.
I deleted tiktok because i have an addictive personality and it was too good at giving me both that dopamine fix and what i actually wanted in the moment.
Oh and as a 3rd factor it had less and less intrusive ads.
> this would be a major issue even without 'the algorithm' and other such 'engagement' maximization efforts
Thank you, I don't know why nobody else brings this up. The engagement algorithms certainly aren't good, we should regulate them, but it seems like a stretch to think they're the root of the problem.
Heck, you don't even have to go back to BBS and newsgroups. People can get addicted to group chats, to games, to browsing HN. Kids can get bullied on all these places. No engagement algorithm needed.
I think there's a fallacy of sorts where when something becomes harmful we assume it's evil. Computers make it really easy to shovel entertainment at our eyeballs, it's easy to get addicted to that and for it to cause social problems.
Because there is a huge difference between 0.1% of the population being addicted and 20%. It’s possible to get dropdown drunk drinking Miller Lite. That doesn’t imply that handing out bottles of everclear is safe social policy.
I actually thinks it’s far more applicable in the crack scenario than the social media scenario. There are lots of people who don’t use crack. The vast majority of humanity.
What percentage of teens don’t use social media? I don’t know the answer, and would adjust my thinking if incorrect, but my assumption is “a small minority”
Personal responsibility IS a factor that can’t be ignored when it comes to addiction. I say this as a multi substance addict who’s been clean for over a decade. Tech is a whole new beast though, because we are often forced to use it. It’s closer to food addiction than crack addiction, which, IMO, is the most brutal addiction of all (food). No one neeeds crack to survive, so stopping it is one thing. Stopping (junk) food addiction, or severe over eating, or whatever you want to call it… man, that must be brutal.
I don’t use social media, but I’m an old fogie. I’d imagine you kids can not very easily “just not use it” if they want to have any semblance of social life and to find a high paying job after college
I think personal responsibility does play into these situations to some extent, but even so, that doesn't imply there should be zero regulation.
Both for crack addicts and teens using social media, they not only hurt themselves, but also hurt those around them.
The studies on teen mental health largely suggest that mostly it's not about using a lot of social media yourself, but living in an area where social media is the coin of the realm. It's the toxic culture SM generates rather than direct use that's hurting teen mental health.
How would a coffee shop spend an hour making their coffee better
Like you own a coffee shop and you’ve freed up one hour in the 12 weeks before you have to make a new sign, what do you do in that hour that makes the coffee better?
I think old Android phones not supported by their makers are so problematic in the LLM era. I would think that even before LLMs the 3 letter agencies had exploits for those, but now one should assume common criminals will...
I am happy that the pixel phone I got has 7 year of support, but it is clear that Apple is in general is much better in this than all the Android providers (including google)
I keep my old iPhone X powered on as a handheld gaming device. It still gets software patches now and then. Funnily, even though the device is in its forsaken era, most of the applications I used to use daily still gets updates too.
Not being able to update an app on it is a rarity.
I think if there was a financial penalty of say 1% of profit/income for each "incident" where something was hacked/exploited, then the companies would be much more willing to think about safety.
While some of the text sounds sensible to me, i.e. some sort of external oversight + reporting of incidents, much of the rest seems focusing on limiting China and their open models as they are clearly approaching the abilities of Anthropic's models.
This really leaves a bitter taste....
"On Tuesday, September 1, we heard rumors that two Millennium Prize problems had been resolved. Inspired by these rumors and by the step change in performance of our internal model, we launched an effort to evaluate it on all open Millennium Prize problems and a few other high-impact problems."
IPO+rumour driven research.
I appreciate the achievement, but it doesn't feel right.
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