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Malus – Clean Room as a Service

malus.sh

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Re: Malus – Clean Room as a Service

#431

Post by jongjong »

jerf wrote: post #75

An interesting aspect of this, especially their blog post ( https://malus.sh/blog.html ), is that it acknowledges a strain in our legal system I've been observing for decades, but don't think the legal system or people in general have dealt with, which is that generally costs matter . A favorite example of mine is speed limits. There is a difference between "putting up a sign that says 55 mph and walking away", "putt…

The legal system is fundamentally broken. It's not designed to handle the kind of throughput that is required to enforce justice in countries with many millions of inhabitants.

The legal system is mostly a fantasy. It doesn't exist for most people. Currently it only serves large corporate and political interests since only they can afford access.

Re: Malus – Clean Room as a Service

#432

Post by [deleted] »

arrsingh wrote: post #295

It took me a minute to recognize this as satire (thank you HN comments). However it does actually make sense - maybe this could be a way for OSS devs to get paid. What if we did build a clean room as a service but the proceeds from that didn't go to the "Malus.sh" corporation, but to the owners / maintainers of the OSS being implemented. Maybe all OSS repos should switch to AGPL or some viral license with link to pay…

[deleted]

Re: Malus – Clean Room as a Service

#433

Post by akoboldfrying »

ikr678 wrote: post #407
terryf wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I meant a 911 but thank you for answering a completely different point than what I was making.

The reason we have speed limits isnt due to vehciles being unable to 'handle' certain speeds though, it's to minimise the damage of an incident at that speed, which is entirely a matter of physics.

AFAICT at least 2 people in this thread don't seem to think that visibility -- a function of, among other things, weather and time of day -- influences driving safety. I find this amazing.

The point of terryf's example was to point out that for practical reasons, existing laws don't capture every relevant variable. I (but not everyone, it seems) think that visibility obviously influences safety. The point I want to make is that in practice the "precision gap" can't be perfectly rectified by making legality a function of more factors than just speed. There will always be some additional factor that influences the probability of a crash by some small amount -- and some of the largest factors, like individual driving ability, would be objected to on other grounds.

Re: Malus – Clean Room as a Service

#434

Post by wisty »

modeless wrote: post #100
jerf wrote: post #75

An interesting aspect of this, especially their blog post ( https://malus.sh/blog.html ), is that it acknowledges a strain in our legal system I've been observing for decades, but don't think the legal system or people in general have dealt with, which is that generally costs matter . A favorite example of mine is speed limits. There is a difference between "putting up a sign that says 55 mph and walking away", "putt…

We should welcome more precise law enforcement. Imperfect enforcement is too easy for law enforcement officers to turn into selective enforcement. By choosing who to go after, law enforcement gets the unearned power to change the law however they want, enforcing unwritten rules of their choosing. Having law enforcement make the laws is bad. The big caveat, though, is that when enforcement becomes more accurate, the r…

The far left and neoliberals are united on this. Whether it's by malice, self interest or incompetence (or a combination), they end up discriminating against the lower classes.

Neoliberals and the far left, when forced to work in the real world, both tend to prefer putting power into rules, not giving people in authority the power to make decisions.

The upside is there's less misuse of power by authorities, at least in theory. The bad news is, you now need far more detailed rules to allow for the exceptions, common sense, and nuance that are no longer up to authorities.

The worse news is, that the people who benefit from complex rules are the upper classes, and the authorities who know how to manipulate complex rules.

"Don't be evil" requires a leader with the authority to enforce it.

A 500 employee manual will be selectively implemented, and will end up full of exploits, but hey, at least you can pretend you tried to remove human error from the process.

Re: Malus – Clean Room as a Service

#435

Post by array_key_first »

hamdingers wrote: post #309
ff317 wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reason speed limits make such a great example for these arguments is because they're a preemptive law. Technically, nobody is directly harmed by speeding. We outlaw speeding on the belief that it statistically leads to and/or is correlated with other harms. Contrast this to a law against assault or theft: in those kinds of cases, the law makes the direct harm itself illegal. Increasing the precision of enforcemen…

This unwritten distinction exists only to allow targeted enforcement in service of harassment and oppression. There is no upside (even if getting away with speeding feels good). We should strive to enforce all laws 100% of the time as that is the only fair option. If a law being enforced 100% of the time causes problems then rethink the law (i.e. raise the speed limit, or design the road slower).

Laws can't be enforced 100% of the time because many laws require intent, which is unknowable. You have to make an educated guess behind it. Even if someone tells you their intent, straight up, you still don't know their intent. You just know what they want you to think their intent is, which may or may not be the same thing. It's legitimately unknowable.

Ideally, for a lot of things we want to punish people who knowingly do bad stuff, not people who do bad stuff because they thought it was good.

Re: Malus – Clean Room as a Service

#436

Post by datsci_est_2015 »

airstrike wrote: post #324
hamdingers wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This unwritten distinction exists only to allow targeted enforcement in service of harassment and oppression. There is no upside (even if getting away with speeding feels good). We should strive to enforce all laws 100% of the time as that is the only fair option. If a law being enforced 100% of the time causes problems then rethink the law (i.e. raise the speed limit, or design the road slower).

A system that solves for absolute compliance in every individual case does not result in the emergence of a fairer society. There are numerous cases, both in history and in fiction, that demonstrate as much.

What, do you expect techbros to have media literacy? We wouldn’t be in any of this mess if they did.

Re: Malus – Clean Room as a Service

#437

Post by cindyllm »

datsci_est_2015 wrote: post #436
airstrike wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A system that solves for absolute compliance in every individual case does not result in the emergence of a fairer society. There are numerous cases, both in history and in fiction, that demonstrate as much.

What, do you expect techbros to have media literacy? We wouldn’t be in any of this mess if they did.

[dead]

Re: Malus – Clean Room as a Service

#438

Post by necovek »

cuu508 wrote: post #140
jerf wrote: post #75

An interesting aspect of this, especially their blog post ( https://malus.sh/blog.html ), is that it acknowledges a strain in our legal system I've been observing for decades, but don't think the legal system or people in general have dealt with, which is that generally costs matter . A favorite example of mine is speed limits. There is a difference between "putting up a sign that says 55 mph and walking away", "putt…

> We are all making a continual and ongoing grave error > Blindly translating those centuries of laws into rigid, free enforcement is a terrible idea for everyone. I understand your point that changing the enforcement changes how the law is "felt" even though on the paper the law has not changed. And I think it makes sense to review and potentially revise the laws when enforcement methods change. But in the specific…

Any law, including a speed limit, has unforeseen consequences. In my part of the world, there is a 4km stretch of the road with good visibility, low pedestrian traffic, and which takes you either 10 minutes to go through if you follow the limits, or 3 minutes if you drive at +5km/h.

Other than lost time (which compounds, but also increases traffic congestion, so those 10 mins might turn into 20-25), the fuel use and pollution are greatly increased.

Interestingly, there are speed cameras there, and enforcement is not done on these slight violations: without this flexibility, I'd need to ask for traffic lights to be adjusted so they work well for driving under speed limits, and that is slow and an annoying process.

But without an option to "try", I wouldn't even know this is the case, and I wouldn't even be able to offer this as a suggestion.

Whether that accounts for consequences being "grave and terrible", probably not, but very suboptimal for sure.

Re: Malus – Clean Room as a Service

#439

Post by akoboldfrying »

exceptione wrote: post #338
arrsingh wrote: post #295

It took me a minute to recognize this as satire (thank you HN comments). However it does actually make sense - maybe this could be a way for OSS devs to get paid. What if we did build a clean room as a service but the proceeds from that didn't go to the "Malus.sh" corporation, but to the owners / maintainers of the OSS being implemented. Maybe all OSS repos should switch to AGPL or some viral license with link to pay…

I am only 50% certain that your idea is expanding on the satire, if not: project owners can provide dual licensing. I'm sorry if you are serious and didn't understand you.

After bogo-sort, it's the most badness-maximising "solution" I've ever come across. Why bother asking for the creator's consent to copy and run the original bytes, when you could instead ask for their consent to have a robot that no one understands and could potentially do anything read a few paragraphs of text describing what those bytes do, imagine how it might work, and try to build something resembling that from scratch, using a trillion or so times more energy.

Re: Malus – Clean Room as a Service

#440

Post by eranation »

A LOT of people are taking this seriously and not getting the (no so?) subtle satire in this. I fell for it at first glance too, had to do a double take. Some of the smartest people I know asked me for my thoughts on this.

The scary part - what's today is satire, is tomorrow's stealth mode startup.

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