Because I am terrible at writing, most of this was painstakingly generated using LLaMA 3.1 70B & 405B. Believe it or not, this was actually a lot of work.

The LLM ruins your presentation in my opinion. I do not mean that you disclosed the use of a LLM, I personally appreciate that honesty quite a lot. The short version is that there is too much elaboration.

That’s the first thing the LLM provided for you: It elaborates too much and gives a massive wall of text. One that you spent a long time painstakingly editing. If you had started from scratch and formulated it yourself, you most likely could have come up with a far more readable essay for the average stranger on the internet (I’m assuming that was your intended audience. I’m frequently wrong about things.) Look for the redundancies. LLM’s seem to love saying the same thing in different ways. Just an observation I’ve made which I have no backing for. Many of these points could easily be combined in my opinion.

The second thing using AI did to your detriment, is that the sections are not human-like. They are formulaic, each one having several clauses or thoughts strung together with commas. Sure, each sentence might be grammatically correct but I bet I could read this to my nephews as a way to quickly get them to fall asleep. Not only does every sentence have multiple thoughts and concepts, there are few intermediary sentences to break up the monotony.

The third and final thing I will point out is that page breaks and spacing things out are absolutely critical to keeping people engaged. Twitter became popular because of the character limit. If your point takes longer than 7 seconds for someone to read in their head, you’ve lost half your audience. Tell the AI to be more succint if you continue using one.

I think you might do better if you took out all of the text that isn’t bolded/strong or a header. Link to the full manuscript somewhere else at the end for those who are interested. Those 2-4 words starting the numbered points are all most people will need. If they do need further clarification or specifics, visit that’s when they can visit a link at the end.

Just my two cents.

man -k libass

libass: nothing appropriate.

weird, mine does too. at least they fixed the KDE calculator… mostly. before the last update it wasn’t using the result of calculations to start the next calculation. so typing 2+2 then hitting enter gave 4 but if you typed +2 after that, it would error. had to type the answer if starting a new calculation. it was very frustrating.

That’s a lot of information, for me at least. Short of searching for what those mean individually, is there a recommended way to learn more about these? Like how they ultimately effect people or could be used maliciously or effect security or privacy?

I have no usable programming skills and my knowledge in this subject is limited to roughly what I’ve learned from https://amiunique.org but those two links seem to be on a whole different level.

Maybe better questions to ask would be: How could a layman understand these things better? Is it feasible to learn more without extensive college level classes on programming and/or computer science? Should the average person need to worry, assuming they have nothing more to hide than a less-than-average bank account balance or habitual browsing of adult media which to the best of their knowledge is legal and consensual where they live and who have no social media or social life or ties to political movements, major corporations, news organizations, critical infrastructure or charities?

But pretty much everyone who heard about their ebook scheme agreed it was an awful idea.

That’s a false consensus in my opinion. Assuming ‘everyone’ agrees, will rarely ever be correct.

You are correct in saying that IA is not a library. In my opinion it should be treated as one, if not better. it provides free knowledge, much like a library, but unlike a library you do not have to give back because of the ability to produce a nearly infinite amount digitally.

the point of lending has become useless for anything that can be digitized. i think copyrighting needs to end. creating and not sharing “intellectual property” is an attack on humanity. the arguments in support of copywriting are all rooted in the same concept that copywriting itself is mostly based on: greed. before it was a resources issue as well. it still is but with diminishing requirements that should and could be trivial in this digital world we have now.

your comment is innacurate and does not add to this discussion in my opinion.

i do not trust ford for many reasons beyond the invasion of privacy outlined here. while i never stated it explicitly as the reason for my mistrust of ford, i’m well aware that all car companies do data trading/selling and that details of the extent are largely unknown outside the shady data brokerage world. at no point did i state that they did not or that there are companies that do not.

this example is an example of what i feel is a company that went too far, by extracting data from the vehicle without informing me they were doing it. a vehicle which was brought to their authorized dealer, to repair their faulty parts, which they were deemed responsible for after numerous complaints and fatal accidents, some involving children falling out of the vehicle after the doorsprings malfunctioned, even when the doors appeared to be locked, while the car was moving in excess of 60mph. this was not the first recall for the issue either. it was the second for all doors except for the back/trunk door, where it was the third.

that is still irrelevant information though. the car was no longer under their warranty, it was purchased used. i gave no permission for them to do anything beyond the necessary and required repairs which came about due to their negligence. i signed no contract with them. i was supplied with no terms or conditions.

if i went to the doctor to get my appendix removed, i would not expect to wake up and learn the doctor decided to do a colonoscopy just for shits and giggles, even if it did detect something critical. if i mentioned my grandparents address while going under with aenesthesia, i would not expect the doctor to send them an offer addressed to me, to purchase my tonsils.

at no point did i make the claim that anyone could buy a car without it selling data of the purchaser. until now, where i will state that yes, you absolutely can buy a car that is not selling data. any car being sold that isn’t younger than me will not be selling any data, unless major customization was performed because they would be far too old. the technology didn’t exist 40+ years ago.

what motivation was behind your assumptive and half false comment?

I see this post is old enough that my comment is less likely to be seen but i feel this is a somewhat relevant anecdote regarding the sale of automotive data.

last april i bought a used car. i had not owned or driven a vehicle in well over a decade. i had never operated a vehicle with a computer, not like the kind this car had at least with its ‘infotainment’ console and numerous digital featrures. one such ‘feature’ was the navigation system. a map on the little tv in the console would show me directions after i entered an address into it. how useful!

i was taking a trip to visit my grandparents not long after buying the car and to test out the navigation system, i entered their address into it. it failed to give me correct directions however, since the nav system was ran off an SD card inserted into a port inside the storage space between the driver and passenger seats. the car was made in 2013 and the sole previous owner had never used the nav system. the SD card was in its original packaging, unopened and in the glove box.

i ended up visiting the grandparents by finding their home by memory, the way i normally navigate, and went on with my life. after that weekend, i learned the car had a recall. i could take it to a authorized dealership and have the faulty system replaced at no cost to me. so i did just that. the recalled part was supposedly fixed and all seemed well.

a week or two passes and i get a call from my grandfather. he recieved mail addressed to me, asking if i wanted to sell my vehicle. my name, his address. i have never searched for his address on the internet, i know it by memory. the only place i have ever entered the location was in that car navigation system. i have never even spoken the address out loud nor heard it spoken in several decades, so those who believe phone are always recording with their microphones.

i believe the only way that mail could have been sent in my name to their address, was through the navigation system data being downloaded from the car and sold to third parties. my grandparents have recieved several pieces of mail addressed to me since then. always, it is referencing my vehicle, with the correct make, model and year showing.

i will never trust ford or purchase their products ever again. i should have known better than to have purchased this car, but it was a very good price with only one previous owner and a great carfax report.

I simply use my credit card number for my password on every site. it makes it so much easier to remember both. back in the day i would use my social security number. thanks to that simple trick, i never get robocalls or spam and i’ve been removed from most mailing lists because no one will ever issue credit or do business of any kind with me. a hacker stole my identity once and my credit score quadrupled. he even gave my identity back a week later!

I’m poor (income is ~20% below US poverty line) and only vaguely understand how things work and speak one language. So I have no money, wouldn’t trust my advice to fix things or explain them and translations can be done better with other resources than me. I did try to make wallpapers and icons for a few things but they weren’t professional looking enough to share. As I learn more I hope to contribute more in any way I can, if I’m confident it will help, but for now the best thing for me is to stay out of the way.