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Computer, Respond to This Email

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Re: Computer, Respond to This Email

#191

Post by TeMPOraL »

bespoke_engnr wrote: post #190
eloisant wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think the risk is Google harming you for the books you bought, but disclosing the information to a government who may. For example, a government (China?) may pass a law to force Google to disclose the list of nationals who bought certain books (political book criticising the Chinese government?), and Google may choose to comply to stay in that market.

The fact that none of the other commenters above made this connection is a bit strange for a community of Tech/Internet/Web people. Is all of this really that shiny?

What about the fact that this situation has already happened, but played out differently - the government of China asked Google for moar intel, and Google basically responded "fuck it, we're outta here". And that's why today I had to check my private e-mail over a VPN.

Re: Computer, Respond to This Email

#192

Post by TeMPOraL »

eloisant wrote: post #184
TeMPOraL wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe I'm weird, but for me none of this (touchscreens too) is "magical", and all of this is "interesting" and then "obvious" when I learn/figure out how they do it. Maybe that's why some people are afraid - because it's more magic to them? > And please - like Google cares that you ordered that book from Amazon. Until they do. Well, if Google starts caring that I ordered a book from Amazon (more than they already do…

I don't think the risk is Google harming you for the books you bought, but disclosing the information to a government who may. For example, a government (China?) may pass a law to force Google to disclose the list of nationals who bought certain books (political book criticising the Chinese government?), and Google may choose to comply to stay in that market.

Except China tried something like that and Google abandoned the country. So we have at least one strong data point they're unlikely to do it now.

But basically, you can draw such arguments about anything. What if the evil government asks my local bookstore for CCTV recordings and credit card recipes? What if they ask my bank?

If your government wants to be evil, they will find a way to do this, regardless of whether people posted their data all over the Internet or not. The problem is with your government and not with the tools they would use in a hypothetical, unlikely scenario of going batshit insane in the nearby future. It's like a country deciding to destroy all roads and bridges because they can be used by an invasion force to quickly overrun the country. Well, they would be, but since you destroyed them your enemy will airdrop soldiers on you in the extremely unlikely future when they decide to invade. In the meantime, you have no roads and bridges.

Re: Computer, Respond to This Email

#194

Post by bespoke_engnr »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #191
bespoke_engnr wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that none of the other commenters above made this connection is a bit strange for a community of Tech/Internet/Web people. Is all of this really that shiny?

What about the fact that this situation has already happened , but played out differently - the government of China asked Google for moar intel, and Google basically responded "fuck it, we're outta here". And that's why today I had to check my private e-mail over a VPN.

PRISM doesn't ring a bell for you?

Re: Computer, Respond to This Email

#195

Post by bespoke_engnr »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #192
eloisant wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think the risk is Google harming you for the books you bought, but disclosing the information to a government who may. For example, a government (China?) may pass a law to force Google to disclose the list of nationals who bought certain books (political book criticising the Chinese government?), and Google may choose to comply to stay in that market.

Except China tried something like that and Google abandoned the country. So we have at least one strong data point they're unlikely to do it now. But basically, you can draw such arguments about anything. What if the evil government asks my local bookstore for CCTV recordings and credit card recipes? What if they ask my bank? If your government wants to be evil, they will find a way to do this, regardless of whether…

I see your point, but I think the counterpoint is that there is a huge difference between

1. getting a warrant and running down to the book shop to ask them about what a single suspect bought, and

2. Having enormous amounts of data collected about hundreds of millions of people, processed and interpreted, essentially sitting in one place. Whether Google voluntarily gives it up or not is almost irrelevant (as we saw, the NSA is happy to tap Google's private fiber without their knowledge even when Google is cooperating on other fronts).

Of course the government will find ways to be evil if it wants (and I think that we're generally lucky because it doesn't seem to want to with any particular intensity). But that's not really the point here.

It's the difference between having many small, complicated little targets that each yield very little information, versus one conveniently enormous target that yields information on everyone.

Re: Computer, Respond to This Email

#196

Post by TeMPOraL »

bespoke_engnr wrote: post #194
TeMPOraL wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about the fact that this situation has already happened , but played out differently - the government of China asked Google for moar intel, and Google basically responded "fuck it, we're outta here". And that's why today I had to check my private e-mail over a VPN.

PRISM doesn't ring a bell for you?

It does. I remember Google being the victim, not a perpetrator.

Re: Computer, Respond to This Email

#197

Post by TeMPOraL »

bespoke_engnr wrote: post #195
TeMPOraL wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except China tried something like that and Google abandoned the country. So we have at least one strong data point they're unlikely to do it now. But basically, you can draw such arguments about anything. What if the evil government asks my local bookstore for CCTV recordings and credit card recipes? What if they ask my bank? If your government wants to be evil, they will find a way to do this, regardless of whether…

I see your point, but I think the counterpoint is that there is a huge difference between 1. getting a warrant and running down to the book shop to ask them about what a single suspect bought, and 2. Having enormous amounts of data collected about hundreds of millions of people, processed and interpreted, essentially sitting in one place. Whether Google voluntarily gives it up or not is almost irrelevant (as we saw,…

I agree that it's easier when it's all sitting conveniently in one place. But if we're really to be worried about it, we need to ditch the concept of civilization as it's presently understood, because everything we do to make our society better leads to more information about us being available to more people. You can't have a cake and eat it too.

I structured my previous comment in this way to proactively address the argument that someone always brings up - the story of how Nazi Germany used census data to track down and exterminate Jews. My point being that yes, evil government could use this data to do evil things in an efficient way, but it doesn't mean that we have to proactively stop doing censuses - they have many other, real, actual, positive uses.

Or another example - the best way to prevent a house fire from burning down a neighbourhood is to not build houses near each other. But instead, we invest in firefighters, better materials and procedures, all of which addresses the problem of fire spread. Why? Because we want the houses to be close to each other.

Re: Computer, Respond to This Email

#198

Post by sandworm101 »

"...In developing Smart Reply we adhered to the same rigorous user privacy standards we’ve always held -- in other words, no humans reading your email."

That the humans at Google may read my email is the least of my privacy concerns. That the robots will pass them along to other robots at places other than google is the real worry. But as no such agency exists, why worry?

Re: Computer, Respond to This Email

#199

Post by imh »

Houshalter wrote: post #173
imh wrote: post #29

I appreciate the privacy standards they used (no humans reading your email to develop this), but am concerned that it's not enough. As I understand with language models, overfitting takes the form of returning a sequence of words seen in the training set. If this is overfitting in any part of the response space, this could happen. Out of a million emails, how many suggested responses are going to substantively resemb…

Overfitting requires "memorizing" the dataset, instead of generalizing it. I think that's very very unlikely. The neural network parameters can only store so many bits of information. But the dataset is millions of times bigger.

That's why I wouldn't worry about how it performs in general, but in edge cases. The question isn't whether it's memorizing the whole dataset, but whether it's "memorizing" any particular points it shouldn't. Kinda like when you do a polynomial regression and the ends go more wild than the middle. The predictions in different parts of the space have different variances, some determined more strongly by single data points.

I have no doubt that in the vast majority of the email space, this will do great, but wonder will it leak privacy anywhere at all?

Re: Computer, Respond to This Email

#200

Post by i336_ »

dredmorbius wrote: post #166
Maxious wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I seem to recall the Microsoft Mouse drivers for Windows 95 had a key shortcut to make lines radiate out of your cursor. Very useful on the low refresh rate LCDs where that cursor would appear like a submarine on the other side of the screen.

I liked the "shroom mode" mouse option in one of the hack packs. Trails, man....

And now I know what I'm using Resource Hacker for later on: changing "Pointer Trails" to "Shroom Mode". Thanks.
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