Comment Re:The new word in replacements (Score 1) 54
lol - same thing with pilots
Comment Re:Nice to see Ian is still at it. (Score 1) 54
Thank you!
Comment Re:MOD PARENT UP (Score 1) 54
You're very welcome
Comment Re:Nice to see Ian is still at it. (Score 4, Informative) 54
When the new Freenet is up and running, I think it will be the first system of any kind that could host something like wikipedia, not just the data but the wiki CMS system it's built on. An editable wikipedia, entirely decentralized and very scalable.
Comment Re: Best of luck (Score 4, Informative) 54
I think when the history of the last decade is written, it will be about - in part - the terrible social damage caused by opaque and biased social media algorithms manipulating the public discourse.
Comment Re:Best of luck (Score 5, Insightful) 54
Locutus is primarily designed for decentralization, not anonymity - which will make it less suited to IP theft than various other technologies that are already pervasive, the same is true of a lot of the other "people you don't want to be your early adopters" that you mention. It's definitely a risk for systems like Freenet, but it's a manageable risk.
Comment Re:Nice to see Ian is still at it. (Score 5, Informative) 54
Not quite sure how reality will go for this project at least based on comments here so far
Most of the negative comments so far are from people who I doubt spent 20 seconds looking at our site, so I hope they don't color your judgement. Read through our user manual and form your own opinion.
Of course, the irony of using Youtube and Google Docs for the presentation kind of hurts.
Once there are viable alternatives on Freenet we'll use them.
I remember a few years back thinking how the promise of Freenet was so easy to achieve today between low power computers, cheap storage, and bandwidth... yet we are stuck with what we have.
I think the time is right, which is exactly why I'm doing what I'm doing
Comment Re:I'm glad they used a simple, functional name (Score 4, Insightful) 54
Totally agree about the importance of naming, and Freenet has the advantage of literally describing what we're building - a free network.
Comment Re:Best of luck (Score 4, Interesting) 54
We've already had interest from everyone from video game developers who want to build a decentralized MMORPG, to political advocacy groups across the political spectrum. Plenty of people value freedom.
Comment Re:Terrible name choice and marketspeak "info" (Score 5, Informative) 54
Wish you'd explained how you match or differ from the only other similar tool I know of (Ethereum, right?). Or is this for a different purpose than "running work on computers I don't manage, and being able to pay fairly"? Doesn't matter how good a hammer you have if we don't need to nail things.
You're being surprisingly judgmental when it doesn't seem like you even read the first few paragraphs on the website about it, let alone the other available documentation.
We're still early but we already have a user manual that goes into quite a bit of detail, if you'd like to take a look and if you still have questions I'd be happy to answer.
Submission + - Freenet 2023: A drop-in decentralized replacement for the world wide web
Sanity writes: Freenet, a familiar name to Slashdot readers for over 23 years, has undergone a radical transformation: Freenet 2023, or "Locutus". While the original Freenet was like a decentralized hard drive, the new Freenet is like a full decentralized computer, allowing the creation of entirely decentralized services like messaging, group chat, search, social networking, among others. The new Freenet is implemented in Rust and designed for efficiency, flexibility, and transparency to the end user.
OpenAI No Longer Relies On API Customer Data To Train ChatGPT 7
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman told CNBC that the company no longer trains its AI large-language models such as GPT with paying customer data. "Customers clearly want us not to train on their data, so we've changed our plans: We will not do that," Altman told CNBC's Andrew Ross Sorkin. From the report: OpenAI's terms of service were quietly updated March 1, records from the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine show. "We don't train on any API data at all, we haven't for a while," Altman told CNBC. APIs, or application programming interfaces, are frameworks that allow customers to plug directly into OpenAI's software. OpenAI's business customers, which include Microsoft, Salesforce and Snapchat, are more likely to take advantage of OpenAI's API capabilities.
But OpenAI's new privacy and data protection extends only to customers who use the company's API services. "We may use Content from Services other than our API," the company's updated Terms of Use note. That could include, for example, text that employees enter into the wildly popular chatbot ChatGPT. Amazon reportedly recently warned employees not to share confidential information with ChatGPT for fear that it might show up in answers.
But OpenAI's new privacy and data protection extends only to customers who use the company's API services. "We may use Content from Services other than our API," the company's updated Terms of Use note. That could include, for example, text that employees enter into the wildly popular chatbot ChatGPT. Amazon reportedly recently warned employees not to share confidential information with ChatGPT for fear that it might show up in answers.
US Department of Homeland Security is Now Studying How to Make Use of AI (cnbc.com) 59
America's Department of Homeland Security "will establish a new task force to examine how the government can use artificial intelligence technology to protect the country," reports CNBC.
The task force was announcement by department secretary Alejandro Mayorkas Friday during a speech at a Council on Foreign Relations event: "Our department will lead in the responsible use of AI to secure the homeland," Mayorkas said, while also pledging to defend "against the malicious use of this transformational technology." He added, "As we do this, we will ensure that our use of AI is rigorously tested to avoid bias and disparate impact and is clearly explainable to the people we serve...."
Mayorkas gave two examples of how the task force will help determine how AI could be used to fine-tune the agency's work. One is to deploy AI into DHS systems that screen cargo for goods produced by forced labor. The second is to use the technology to better detect fentanyl in shipments to the U.S., as well as identifying and stopping the flow of "precursor chemicals" used to produce the dangerous drug.
Mayorkas asked Homeland Security Advisory Council Co-Chair Jamie Gorelick to study "the intersection of AI and homeland security and deliver findings that will help guide our use of it and defense against it."
The article also notes that earlier this week America's defense department hired a former Google AI cloud director to serve as its first advisor on AI, robotics, cloud computing and data analytics.
The task force was announcement by department secretary Alejandro Mayorkas Friday during a speech at a Council on Foreign Relations event: "Our department will lead in the responsible use of AI to secure the homeland," Mayorkas said, while also pledging to defend "against the malicious use of this transformational technology." He added, "As we do this, we will ensure that our use of AI is rigorously tested to avoid bias and disparate impact and is clearly explainable to the people we serve...."
Mayorkas gave two examples of how the task force will help determine how AI could be used to fine-tune the agency's work. One is to deploy AI into DHS systems that screen cargo for goods produced by forced labor. The second is to use the technology to better detect fentanyl in shipments to the U.S., as well as identifying and stopping the flow of "precursor chemicals" used to produce the dangerous drug.
Mayorkas asked Homeland Security Advisory Council Co-Chair Jamie Gorelick to study "the intersection of AI and homeland security and deliver findings that will help guide our use of it and defense against it."
The article also notes that earlier this week America's defense department hired a former Google AI cloud director to serve as its first advisor on AI, robotics, cloud computing and data analytics.
YouTuber Tricks ChatGPT Into Generating Windows 95 Keys 51
A YouTuber has published a video where he tricks ChatGPT into generating usable Windows 95 activation keys. Tom's Hardware reports: After asking Open AI's chatbot directly for Windows 95 keys, he received an expected reasoned refusal. YouTuber Enderman then asked the same thing but from a different angle. The result was a success which was somewhat limited by ChatGPT's ability to process natural language requests into formulas. [...] Some of the tested results were checked by attempting to activate a fresh Windows 95 install in a virtual machine. While the keys passed a casual inspection, it turns out that only about 1-in-30 keys seem to work as expected.
So what is the problem with these keys? Enderman complains that "the only issue keeping ChatGPT from successfully generating valid Windows 95 keys almost every attempt is the fact that it can't count the sum of digits and it doesn't know divisibility." In the five-digit string divisible by seven section, the AI appears to provide a stream of random numbers that don't pass this simple mathematical test. The report adds: "[W]hile quizzing ChatGPT about key generating may be fun, it would have probably been more productive to manipulate the AI into writing a Python script to generate a conforming key or to DIY it."
So what is the problem with these keys? Enderman complains that "the only issue keeping ChatGPT from successfully generating valid Windows 95 keys almost every attempt is the fact that it can't count the sum of digits and it doesn't know divisibility." In the five-digit string divisible by seven section, the AI appears to provide a stream of random numbers that don't pass this simple mathematical test. The report adds: "[W]hile quizzing ChatGPT about key generating may be fun, it would have probably been more productive to manipulate the AI into writing a Python script to generate a conforming key or to DIY it."
UK Treasury Is Giving Older People $90,000 a Year To Keep Working (bloomberg.com) 128
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Convincing older British workers to stay in their jobs will cost the UK Treasury 75,000 pounds ($90,000) per person in tax breaks for some of the country's wealthiest savers, analysis of Chancellor of the Exchequer Jeremy Hunt's budget shows. In his budget speech on Wednesday Hunt scrapped the lifetime allowance on pensions -- the total that workers can pile into their retirement pot without incurring tax -- and increased the tax-free annual limit on contributions by 50%, to 60,000 pounds.
The shift is designed to reverse a trend in the number of older workers dropping out of jobs since the pandemic, which has contributed to a shortage of staff and is fanning inflation. But the Office for Budget Responsibility, the independent fiscal watchdog, calculated (PDF) that Hunt's pension reforms are likely to add just 15,000 more workers to the labor force by 2027/28. They will cost 1.1 billion pounds, meaning the reforms effectively offer a 75,000 pounds per person boost to those able to save enough in their pensions.
The shift is designed to reverse a trend in the number of older workers dropping out of jobs since the pandemic, which has contributed to a shortage of staff and is fanning inflation. But the Office for Budget Responsibility, the independent fiscal watchdog, calculated (PDF) that Hunt's pension reforms are likely to add just 15,000 more workers to the labor force by 2027/28. They will cost 1.1 billion pounds, meaning the reforms effectively offer a 75,000 pounds per person boost to those able to save enough in their pensions.
