NeatNit

joined 10 months ago
[–] NeatNit@discuss.tchncs.de 7 points 9 months ago (2 children)

I hate paywalls as much as the next guy but when I think about it from the publisher's protective I really don't see a way to be sustainable in this environment without a paywall. I'm sure the writers mostly want their articles read but they also want (and deserve) to be paid for their work. How do you do that if, like you imply, the content needs to be completely free for everyone to access? And I'll bet you use adblock too (I sure do) making it even more impossible.

I don't know how this shit works but the way you frame it isn't it.

[–] NeatNit@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 9 months ago

I found out way too late that "all but" means exactly the same thing as "almost". If "all but X" is taken literally, it should mean "you can describe this thing in lots of ways, but it's definitely not X".

(I am not a native English speaker but I use English more then my native tongue due to being online so much)

[–] NeatNit@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 9 months ago

I think each one of those dystopian ideas can be done in a safe and humane way, but needless to say it is not the current trajectory.

[–] NeatNit@discuss.tchncs.de 0 points 9 months ago (1 children)

okay, but there still needs to be a part that processes the scan images and that's not LLM.

[–] NeatNit@discuss.tchncs.de -2 points 9 months ago

Watch any video at random by John Green (vlogbrothers, and author of several successful books that I haven't read) and you'll know more than you could ever hope about TB.

[–] NeatNit@discuss.tchncs.de 6 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

it's all but guaranteed. Reminds me of this Computerphile video: https://youtu.be/WO2X3oZEJOA?t=874 TL;DW: there were "glitch tokens" in GPT (and therefore ChatGPT) which undeniably came from Reddit usernames.

Note, there's no proof that these reddit usernames were in the training data (and there's even reasons to assume that they weren't, watch the video for context) but there's no doubt that OpenAI already had scraped reddit data at some point prior to training, probably mixed in with all the rest of their text data. I see no reason to assume they completely removed all reddit text before training. The video suggest reasons and evidence that they removed certain subreddits, not all of reddit.

[–] NeatNit@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I think they use one of the FF forks. LibreWolf? I've never tried it but it's the one I keep hearing around the fediverse.

[–] NeatNit@discuss.tchncs.de 3 points 9 months ago

I don't think the photo at the start of the article has anything to do with it, it's credited as a stock image. Was there another picture?

[–] NeatNit@discuss.tchncs.de 4 points 9 months ago

"Revolutionize construction" is a questionable headline.

How about: revolutionize one very specific part construction under certain niche circumstances? Rolls off the tongue!

[–] NeatNit@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 9 months ago

The website on desktop. Footer says "BE: 0.19.3" so it's up to date.

[–] NeatNit@discuss.tchncs.de 4 points 9 months ago (3 children)

Ugh. Lemmy just deleted my whole comment because "Cancel" is WAY too easy to press... Dammit. Here's a reconstruction:

I didn't expect such a thorough reply! I still think Google is bound by LGPL because Blink is eventually derived from KHTML which was licensed under LGPL. This was based on just some quick Wikipedia "research", but now here's some better proof thanks to your links:

LICENSE_FOR_ABOUT_CREDITS says:

The terms and conditions vary from file to file, but are one of:

Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without
modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are
met:
[...]

*OR*

Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without
modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are
met:
[...]

THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY APPLE COMPUTER, INC. ``AS IS'' AND ANY
[...]

                  GNU LIBRARY GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE
                       Version 2, June 1991
 Copyright (C) 1991 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
[...]

So the license differs from file to file, and importantly, some files are still LGPL. Clicking around sorta randomly I've found an example: Page.cpp which starts with this copyright notice:

/*
 * Copyright (C) 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013 Apple Inc. All Rights Reserved.
 * Copyright (C) 2008 Torch Mobile Inc. All rights reserved. (http://www.torchmobile.com/)
 *
 * This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
 * modify it under the terms of the GNU Library General Public
 * License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either
 * version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
 * This library is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
 * but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
 * MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the GNU
 * Library General Public License for more details.
 *
 * You should have received a copy of the GNU Library General Public License
 * along with this library; see the file COPYING.LIB.  If not, write to
 * the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor,
 * Boston, MA 02110-1301, USA.
 */

So from my understanding of (L)GPL (which is the bare minimum understanding and potentially wrong), since some files are LGPL, Google must continue to release the full source code indefinitely, including the files that are licensed under BSD. Well, until the copyright on the LGPL files runs out, but thanks to Disney that's a very long way away in the US at least. Correct me if that's wrong.

The Android tragedy is shit but I don't think it's the same, though I do see the similarities. IIRC Android was started by Google so they have full ownership and control over it and aren't bound by any license, which is a different situation from Blink. Not to mention Blink is sort of limited in scope and can't really be taken apart and have its components parted off and replaced with proprietary bits - it's a web rendering engine, it only works as a complete package. Android is an operating system and the operating system is still FOSS, Google can make the argument that usable default apps aren't a necessary part of the operating system.

With Blink, but I don't think they have a legal way to nerf Blink FOSS to that degree. Any part of the web engine must remain FOSS. They differentiate their browser through the rest of the browser - UI, extensions store, sync, branding. Those parts of the browser are the equivalent of Google's proprietary default apps on proprietary Android.

As for alternative browsers using Blink - I'll admit I didn't actually have anything in mind and pulled that right out of my you-know-where. But it feels like if there's a vacuum in that space there'll always be someone to fill that vacuum. Right now Gecko is still relevant so the vacuum is filled with Gecko browsers. If Gecko really becomes unusable, I find it hard to believe that the same kinds of groups that maintain Gecko browsers today wouldn't continue to do the same with Blink.

Wikipedia also lists various browsers using Blink, including Falkon and Dooble licensed under GPL and BSD respectively. I haven't heard of them before, but there. (Again, I'm not doing more research than Wikipedia right now, feel free to do so)

[–] NeatNit@discuss.tchncs.de 8 points 9 months ago (5 children)

Thank you for this, it's a great breakdown. One question lingers for me:

You will then have to input intimate personal information into a proprietary software, by law.

Isn't Blink also FOSS? As you mentioned Chromium is open source, and my (weak) understanding is that Google are themselves bound by LGPL when it comes to Blink. So it's hyperbole - or just false - to say you'd be required to use proprietary software. It's developed by a shoddy company but it's not proprietary software - so long as other browsers exist that use the engine, of which there are plenty.

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